Whittington

The first part of this run is the same as the walk that Dan and I did yesterday and this is my favourite part of it; a stretch of the footpath that runs through some fields between Whittington and the Lune. (As you can see from my extra, I'm a runner at heart.)

I followed that with a nap, a WhatsApp video chat with Dean, a late Sunday lunch, and a walk with Dan, which left me with a time-sensitive decision between recording the radio show and a Zoom chat with the Good Gang. 

Well, to be honest, there was only one outcome to that choice: the radio show can suffer a week's absence. And after an hour and a half's slaloming between the high and low brows, I retired to the living room for a family viewing of 'Flushed Away', which was even better than I remember it.

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-10.2 kgs
Finished 'Kraftwerk: Future Music From Germany' by Uwe Schütte

I realise now that I've met Herr Schütte; he was the conference organiser at the two-day Kraftwerk Conference that I attended at Aston University in January 2015. 

His book is interesting although in terms of detail it feels unfortunately biased to the post 'Computerwelt' era. And its confidence is undermined by my own experience: Kraftwerk's album covers, for example, were not that groundbreaking; lots of of artists in the seventies and early eighties drew on a wide variety of historical sources and influences. 

And with some statements he is just wrong: the link between Numan's 'Cars' and Kraftwerk's 'Autobahn' is lazy, as is his assertion that Numan's 'Friends' are related to Kraftwerk's robots. 

All that said, it is a good read. Kraftwerk were groundbreaking but not uniquely so and, indeed, he subscribes in places to the very 'myth machine' that he derides. 

If you like Kraftwerk, I'd recommend this but, to be honest, I'm still waiting for a really satisfying biography of the band.