GAS! And more

Pictured is the Behringer B-TRON III, a faithful copy of the Mu-Tron III envelope filter, launched in 1972. You can pick up a Mu-Tron for getting on towards the thick end of a thousand pounds, or buy the clone for sixty-nine quid. 

Behringer get a lot of stick for their copies of famous bits of kit, but they are incredibly good quality (to my ears) and, I'm told, very faithful to the originals. And at a fraction of the cost. I can't think of a reason not to buy their stuff / satisfy my gear acquisition syndrome. 

But to the rest of my day...

Many years ago, more than twenty, in fact, I worked with a guy called Hugo. He was an eccentric character but we got on pretty well. After I'd known him for a while I discovered his name was actually Charlie, but, perhaps in a prototype for 'Severance', used a different name for the office. 

And somehow, we discovered that he knew my cousin, Kate, whom I saw recently at my Dad's funeral. She said to me had I seen Charlie recently, which confused me momentarily until I thought "Oh, Hugo". But no, I hadn't seen him for twenty years.

And then, a few days ago, I received a message from Hugo/Charlie, which seemed a massive coincidence until it turned out that he'd been to visit Kate. And that resulted in us having breakfast together at Sizergh Barn, this morning. 

We sat and ate out in the sun, and had a lovely hour chatting. We didn't talk about work or our former colleagues, as is often the fallback in these situations, but rather about our families and what we were up to these days. It was quite lovely.

And then, after a midday run - first outing post-Coniston, everything in good order -  I went over to school for the Headteacher's retirement do. I made a speech, which seemed to go down OK, and then, as I had been first up, I was able to sit back and relax, enjoying the speeches by Steve (the vice-Chair of Trustees) and Cathy (who is retiring). Both were excellent, and I'm glad I went first!

And after that I changed out of my suit, collected the Minx, and we headed down to the Royal to meet Chris, Janice, Cathy, Pete, and Steve for beers and pizza. And that was lovely, too. It's been a good day for friends!