EASTER STARTS WITH A SWING

And lo it came to pass.... the holidays finally arrived!! Thank God - or to be more precise in the case of the Easter holidays - his wee boy.
Anyway. A holiday is a holiday.
Don't normally run on a Friday. It's usually my rest day. Also, I've had quite a high mileage week (70+) with more of the runs edging into my "blue" tempo zone than should have been. Add on to that quite a hard track session last night and the legs felt a bit tired today.
However, the big plan for this week-and-a-bit is mileage; so off I trotted at a slow pace for six and a half miles.
Quite nice. Just down through Innerwick and home. Actually stopped at Innerwick for a little while to pass a few words with Harvey who's staying down there while Ray travels in New Zealand. Well, I say a few "words" but Harvey's vocabulary is pretty much limited to "woof"!!
Spent the majority of the run contemplating what cake I'd have with my morning coffee. A bit of Christmas cake perhaps - we still have loads? We still have mince meat pies in the freezer, one of them would be nice. In the end I settled for a bit of ginger bread. How seasonal is that?? I might get round to having a hot cross bun about August!

Had a chance now to listen to my new Benny Goodman CD a few times. Splendid stuff indeed, and a real bargain for £3 at Fopp. Only £3, and packaged in a nice wee cardboard sleeve that's a replica of the original Vinyl release - why aren't more old albums available in budget format like this?

I love a bit of the old Benny Goodman big band, but this is a quartet with Benny on clarinet (obviously), Lionel Hampton on vibes, Teddy Wilson on piano and the great Gene Krupa on drums. Ten upbeat tracks that swing. "Swing" with a capital SWING! A reunion album that was recorded in '63, 25 years or so after these guys first got together and it still sounds fresh. It's Goodman's album but Hampton and Krupa are the ones who really set the pace here.
My only "niggle" would be that the vibes appear to slightly push the sound of the piano to the background. That however, may simply be due to the recording "limitations" of the day (or my tinnitus?).
Highlights? Got to be their version of the early jazz classic "Running Wild" or the uptempo version of "Seven Come Eleven".
Buy it - bung it on - crank up the volume - and as Trevor and Simon would say; "swing your pants"!