Not A Good Day For Teenage Organisation

There’s very little traffic on the roads this morning. I think a lot of people are already on their Christmas break, the 112 days of Christmas and all that.

I’ve not often seen eye to eye with Billy Bragg but I had to nod in agreement the other day as he laid into the Government’s plans to disconnect file-sharers. Billy sees downloading as ‘not about piracy, it’s about promotion’, pointing out that the music industry ‘in danger of persecuting people for listening to records’ and therefore alienating potential customers.

I agree. What he means is that these days’ people go on to buy the music of artists that they first listened to via ‘free’ downloads. Personally I've acquired quite a bit of music ‘free’ in the last few years and consequently go on to buy the stuff I like, whilst not bothering with the stuff I don’t. A consequence of this is that I’m buying more music now than ever before but there’s also the fact that I can now afford to do so. When I was the age of your typical downloader, I didn’t buy as much, we used to get our music by home taping off other people’s records. So probably not that much has changed. Funnily enough, I’m now going out and buying CD versions of those albums that I taped years ago because I want a better copy and can now afford it. What goes around comes around.

Whilst ultimately people need to be persuaded to pay, otherwise musicians won’t get paid and therefore they’ll be no music because they’ll all become bin men instead, the industry needs to work out a method of how they’re going to do it. Hopefully these folks will start to buy more as they get older and wealthier, that is provided the industry doesn’t totally alienate them first.

L has a Christmas party at lunchtime; she’s really been slacking, considering how many I’ve already had. Not that that’s much to brag about. The emails I get off her in the afternoon seem to have the slant of a couple of glasses of wine about them. She doesn’t want to be drunk driving her PC, even if she’s only doing Christmas shopping on it, who knows what we might all end up with for presents.

We have one appointment to remember tonight, as does Son. Ours is at his college, Parents Evening part two. We’re there and on time, although our appointment doesn’t actually materialise. Son's appointment is at the opticians, which he totally forgets about. So it’s not a good day for teenage organisation. Thankfully he did belatedly text us through a couple of other appointments for us, which at least saves us from a wasted journey.

Back home the tree goes up and L makes the Christmas cake. I just hope no one spots the lack of currants, there's been a rush on them and Sainsbury’s were all out. The cake is supposed to be fortified with brandy every two weeks but due to the closeness of Christmas, I think we're going to have to accelerate this process to perhaps every two days, or maybe even every two hours. We’ll see how it goes.