I have to take back one of the endorsements I made in my last post- the one regarding decaf tea. I realise now that while the removal of the caffeine takes with it the mild stimulant effect and allows the late-night tea drinker to get to sleep in the normal way, the diuretic effect remains exactly the same as with standard builders' tea, meaning the late-night tea drinker will be awoken from his or her sleep by an urgent call of nature, sometime in the wee small hours. In future I will be drinking nothing but corporation pop* after 9pm.
Spent several more hours working on the record with Hubcap tonight, and all we had to show for it at the end was two and a half minutes of (flawless) drums and fried brains. A strange thing happens to my ears after a couple of hours' recording- the equivalent of eyes "glazing over" when the brain becomes completely saturated with information- at which point they cease to be reliable listening devices and I've learned not to trust them because anything I've ever done with glazed ears has been bollocks. Normally, when my ears start going funny I know it's time to end the session or take a break for a while, but lately when we've had lots of stuff to be getting on with I've been trying to flush them out by listening to loud white noise (from a detuned radio or TV) for a few minutes. I think it's helping to delay the onset of brain-fade but it's hard to tell. There are too many other variables.
Lexi bought me a magnetic dartboard for Christmas and I've developed a cod-superstitious ritual where I have to throw at least 100 with three darts before I can go to bed each night. I'm not very good at darts, so this normally takes a long time. It's 11.30 and I haven't thrown a single dart yet, so I'd better get cracking.
until next time
Dave
*a Staffordshire euphemism for tap water, used to trick naive southern boys into thinking they're about to get some amazing new fizzy drink.
