Very odd Saturday

Having been off work most of the week, it feels peculiar now Saturdays come round for it to be just the same.

I've been giving Ben driving lessons, and we did around an hour together this morning. He's normally very good at this sort of thing, but driving's a little too demanding even for him to just jump in a car and be competent in 30 mins. The thing he's struggled most with is separating the sides of his body. Thus it was hard to push down with the right foot while lifting the left foot, and to hold the wheel still with the right hand while changing gear with the left.

For my Canadian friends, few in the UK believe in using automatic cars so he's learning with a normal gearbox and clutch. This has caused a few 'interesting' moments, where the brain goes into complete overload with too many things to do. However the upside is that he's gained in humility and respect for a female other that drives now.

We also went out on the road for the first time.

As a cyclist, Ben has a lot of instinct that tells him to keep close to the kerb. As his passenger I have a lot of instincts that prefer if I survive. We had some entertaining moments where I encouraged him to move nearer the centre of the road. Louder. AND LOUDER. The lanes round here are lined with ditches, and some are deep. If our little Citroen goes down one, it'll only come back out as scrap.

But the boy done good. He was also heard to comment how amazing it is that 55mph feels really fast when you're holding a steering wheel, but 70mph feels so slow when you're a passenger. We might get that put in writing for Chris some time.



The rest of the time I just lounged around and slept quite a bit. Managed about 2 hours guitar playing this afternoon, which was necessary to keep the fingers moving. I replaced the speaker in my little AXL amp (Celestion super 8 in there now) in the hope of giving it a better balanced tone and getting rid of some of the 'fartiness'. When used straight it isn't particularly inspiring. The fendery forwardness of the other speaker has been removed, but it just sounds a little thin and flat now. However with the Korg processor plugged in it really rocks again, whether played clean with chorus or using a variety of overdrive tones.

It lacks the purity and harmonic richness of the Bluebuster but instead it has a kind of ease of use and straight ahead rockiness that works great. There's one exception - using a compressor/EQ combination the new speaker helps produce a fat clean jazzy tone that will makes the hairs stand on the back of your neck. It's a truly beautiful tone, and one that I used to draw complements from pro-musicians with, using the other little amp. Nice to know it's back again.