"On you, anything looks good."

The hardest thing about this topic is not giving into the temptation to just waffle about the TV show. Even though the series wrapped up almost a decade ago, it's still a big part of popular culture. I think I quote Friends almost as much as The Simpsons. Nahhh, maybe not that much, but it's up there. Anyway, before I actually do start blogging about Friends, I shall start blogging about friends.

I can't say that I'm a big fan of the ocean. I love watching the sunset over it, preferably from a pub or restaurant. Even on the beach with some fish and chips is okay too. I don't like being in it. I'm not a beach person. I hate sand and I hate the effects of being in salty water. Your legs chaff and you get incredibly thirsty. That salt water taste in your mouth? Yeeeesh. Don't like the ocean as a place to hang out. I'll look at it from a distance and go "ooh" and "aah", but you won't catch me swimming in it. As Billy Connolly once said, there are things in the ocean that don't like us.

I was pretty much baptised in vinyl. My father had amassed a fairly healthy collection of records by the time I was born, and I think from about the age of three or four I would share the floor with him. There'd be record covers and lyric sheets all around us as we listened to albums together and then a lighthearted argument as to whose turn it was to flip the vinyl. The sharpest memories usually include Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell or Queen's A Night At The Opera. I remember him pointing to me to sing the vocal responses on 'You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth' and/or 'Bohemian Rhapsody'. He had a big black pair of headphones that would I love to have a turn of.  When I put Billy Joel's Glass Houses on the turntable for the first time, I remember how freaked out I got by the sound of breaking glass that opens the album in those headphones. They were great headphones. Similarly, 'Death On Two Legs' from Queen's ANATO had an intro that slowly built up in volume with scary guitar sounds. The first few times I heard that in the headphones I got a little freaked too. But music in headphones wasn't always anxiety inducing. It was just a cool way to relax absorb the music.