You see...it's all your fault

Seven of us headed to the big screen to watch Bridge of Spies.  Big screen it was due to a booking cock up that saw us sitting as near to the front as possible.  The Cat's Mother and Muffin parents decided to sit elsewhere and face the possible embarrassment of being moved by people who had booked the seats they chose to sit in.  They moved twice; the rest of us took our places and ended the evening with neck strain!  Anyway, as to the film, we were divided 5-2...in favour of it being a fabulous film.  A terrific piece of story telling, fabulously filmed with terrific performances from  Tom Hanks and Mark Rylance and the rest of the cast too.  For a Spielberg film there wasn't too much schmaltz...some but not over bearing.  The tension built throughout, and the film is well paced.  Some scenes are outstanding...when the Berlin Wall is being built for example.  So highly recommended.  My one complaint?  Call me a car-geek, but the East German lawyer drives a Volvo P1800.  The year is 1961, the year it was launched.  So possible, but unlikely...especially at the price they sold for.

I knew it would happen, and it did.  I forgot something really quite important.  Well not important, but memorable.

I had a last minute chance to go to Abbey Road Studios and listen to the great Alan Parsons.  Abbey Road well known, of course for its zebra crossing.  Slightly lesser known as the recording studio for Dark Side of the Moon.  Alan Parsons was the recording engineer for that album, and many others too (he helped out on Let it be...and the list of other albums he worked on there is enormous, including one or two by the fabulous Mrs Mills - if you remember her, you're doing well).  So a couple of hundred of us sat in Studio 2 in the full knowledge that this was where The Beatles performed, as did Pink Floyd.  We were surrounded by history.  In an interview format with David Hepworth he talked us through his career, and then showed us with the help of the original 48 track recordings of Dark Side of the Moon how much control he had as the recording engineer.  There was even one bit when he said, "Oh I don't remember that".  He came on to his own work, The Alan Parsons Project which is where I know him from having been introduced to his music at school.  We sat next to his wife, who could just about have been my daughter if you see what I mean.  I'd submitted a question, but evidently it was judged serious enough..."How do you feel about Mike Myers?"  Anyway, perhaps you had to be there...I was absolutely blown away.