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There've been a rash of interviews lately - it's all good

Mike's Pith & Wind - The interview
Spike Milligan’s Q series was notorious for sketches that had no written endings. Instead Spike would look blank and intone ‘What are we going do now?’ over and over again. I’ve reached that moment in my particular sketch.
At a time when I’m making the biggest transition of my music career, if not my life, I’ve been involved in a cluster of interviews that have given me cause to reflect on where I am and how I got here. ‘And what exactly is this life-changing transition, Cruddy?’ I imagine you muttering over your corn flakes, as though this was a column in a daily newspaper rather than a scarcely read blog in some dusty corner of cyberspace.
Well, my dusty reader, it’s a two-fold transition really, part one engineered by the fickle finger of Fate, with part two prompted by a laughable-if-it-wasn’t-so-serious bout of personal optimism.
The Fate part is down to my health, or lack of it really, which is starting to impinge on my enjoyment of playing music, if not my ability to perform it. I’ve mentioned the failing hearing issue before - well, it’s not getting any better. It simply doesn’t get any better and I’m resigned to that fact. I think I’ve also mentioned my hearing aids and, while I’ll concede they do have an overall positive effect on my day to day living, they don’t really have any positive effect on my playing or listening to music.
In fact, the hearing aids are a bit of a distraction really. They’re set-up to amplify marginally different high frequencies in each ear and my.. read more.

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Dick's Toolbox - Days like this..
I know they were playing Van Morrison’s song ‘Days like this’ but I didn’t hear it at all as I walked Elizabeth through the green cloisters of Carlton garden to where her husband to be awaited. I felt as if I was caught in a spotlight of her barely contained happiness and joy, bathed in the light of her astounding happiness and expectation. She was, as usual, gorgeous; the weather was perfect and her friends and relatives utterly delighted by the simple ceremony that followed. And yes I did shed a tear or two – how could I not?
I was dressed like a cross between a retired banker and a pox-doctor’s clerk in a suit that I haven’t worn since I retired, but with a new shirt and tie, and which probably won’t wear again until someone dies. With a different tie.
Last month I wrote about the expectations of the Father of the Bride Speech and the other speeches that were to be made. All were very, very good and Una’s speech (Elizabeth’s best friend) was delivered in a way that would have.. read more