Catching up

Colindale, London, England // 4.08 pm // Mostly sunny 17ºc / 63ºf

One of the best things about the shifts that I do, well actually the single best thing, is the days off midweek. Particularly when they form a long weekend, as they do once a month. Today was the last day of my latest long weekend, and I also need to wake quite early so I'll be tired enough to sleep tonight, in time for my 4am wake up.

So I was up at 7.30am this morning and I've done quite a bit of DXing/radio listening this morning, along with starting and finishing preparations for tomorrow night's radio show. I remember the days when it took me up to four hours to prepare a two hour show. Now it takes me about an hour at the most, which is just about right for a one hour show. It's also helped by the fact that I have a much larger library of music now than I did then, at around 5,000 individual tracks. So it goes without saying that no two shows will be the same!

Really glad that the first show is available to listen to on-demand now, although I was a little surprised to find that the handful of tracks I played before 7pm last Tuesday night have been kept into the on-demand stream. Ideally, it would start right at the start of my show. I'll have a word with the station manager about that tomorrow night.

Also made some lunch today, and did the dishes in preparation for tonight's meal of chicken curry soup, which is the last recipe to come from my "Cooking with the Wok" cookery book. Next it'll either be one of my two Indian curry books, my pasta and risotto book or the BBC Good Food Guide meals for 2 book. And by the way, although it's a "soup", I cook a portion that is apparently for four people. With a crusty baguette. So it's pretty much a meal.

Not a great deal else to write about really. Was glad to see CNN have changed their broadcasting hours on Freeview, now available from 7pm till 12am, with the following two hours leased out to a roulette TV channel. A bit dismayed to see the loss of three local radio stations in the last few weeks though. The last few years really have changed the UK radio landscape, with so many mergers of ownership and subsequently output, handing back of licences and stations going bust. Still, at least I've got Colourful Radio, although god knows how long it'll be before they decide it's no longer viable to be on DAB. And where are the DRM receivers I've been waiting for for years?

Shortwave is ever declining too, generally, although there are some pockets of resistance. One of those seemed to be the Voice of Russia, who recently revealed that they were to reinstate a 24 hours a day World Service in English. All good, you'd think. But at the same time, they seem to have all but abandoned AM SW broadcasting to Europe. Still, I'm more positive now than I was several years ago that there will still be lots to listen to on SW in the next decade or two.