Friday, November 07, 2014

to Michael, Bolton

hello there

ok, this is was not my idea. the person whose idea it was shall remain anonymous, partially to protect them from press attention but mostly, as you would expect, because i have forgotten exactly who it was that suggested it. i have a short list, but would not wish to declare one the genius at the expense of the other, look you see.

i would suspect this is also not the first time that someone has done this. i do not, then, proclaim any sort of creativity or originality in the events and actions you read of here. so, with those disclaimers and partial discredits, or indeed disavows, out of the way, let's get on with it.

in music - not any more, but when music mattered - some albums became seminal. some became celebrated. some were declared to be essential; others legendary. very few albums ever attained the quadruple status that is seminal, legendary, essential and celebrated.

is Time, Love & Tenderness by Michael Bolton one of the albums in the world to have achieved all four values to be attributed to it? it is not for me to say.




there are, as you hardly need me to tell you, dear reader, some staggering, formidable and undisputed facts one can say about this 1991 (or whenever the f*** he released it) album. one of them is, of course, that there is a picture of him, with him being Michael Bolton, on the cover. another is that there are ten - 10 - tracks on it. and not just ten ordinary, conventional tracks. no, these are ten tunes that he, with he being Michael Bolton, sings on. well, sings and does whatever else he actually does.

of the ten tracks, which one is the most outstanding? i am unworthy of addressing this, for i have pretty much the same view on one of them as i would do all of them.

i am not sure that i am of the right value to even touch this disc, but here you go, here is a picture of me holding it. 



some of you will have worked out by now where this is all going. if you have not, well, you are not at fault for having normal, rational thinking mechanisms on the go, and there is certainly no lacking on your behalf for not thinking what i have done to be a perfectly natural or good idea.

you may well have noticed that in the first picture the CD of the Michael Bolton album rested upon a padded envelope. yes, my intention, indeed ambition, was to post it. no, someone has not fallen ill yet again, this one is not being sent to heal someone. although if it does heal whoever gets it, well then so much the better.

the idea someone gave me, look you see, was to post a Michael Bolton CD to someone in Bolton that happens to be called Michael.

sheer genius of an idea, if you ask me. which you didn't, except you are reading this, so actually yes you did so don't get all Australian if you do not like the answer.



so, if this by any chance got delivered to someone and they have taken to google to find out just what the hell is going on, should google have done its thing then i trust that you have your answer.

no, i did not put any information, letter or contact details in. don't be silly, that would spoil the surprise of the magic of the gift, and anyway i am not at all sure that my name is worthy of being included with the name of the Michael Bolton.

to give you a brief break from the excitement of what i have done here, here is a picture of a Sports Direct truck from earlier this morning; around 8:27am i believe if for some reason precision of time is of some benefit here.



i suspect the truck driver was lost, or had for some other reason taken quite a shine to block the road off for a bit. i don't know, i am afraid i did not ask him. one hears all sorts of stories about these truck drivers, and i believe the conventions are that one does not approach one of their number unless they absolutely, really mean it.

am i in some small way testing the patience and the resource of Royal Mail with this parcel? yes, probably. they charge a fair bit for their stamps, though, and besides they are very efficient. i am sure they will work out what to do with it. 

here is a further testing of the patience of the services of Royal Mail i engaged in as recently as this week. i for some reason decided that it would be a good idea to buy some stamps featuring Thatcher. in a moment of madness i opted to use them by sending cards to people, including a portrait image of myself.



i got a bit emotional and, to an extent, carried away with the cards and addressed one or two people as "friend". this presumably confused them more than anything else.

so anyway, back to the Michael Bolton postal initiative. here it is, ready to post as of a not unreasonably late hour last night.



oh yes, that is indeed, ladies and gentlemen, a 1st Class "large" stamp on it. why did i go first class? well, it would be somewhat disrespectful to use a 2nd Class one for Michael Bolton. also, it's a little bit of a statement to some people i know - Spiros and Sharpy in particular - who get things from me almost exclusively with 2nd Class stamps on. and even then that is only because there is, so far, no such thing as a 3rd Class stamp.

off i went this morning, then - prior to the incident with the Sports Direct truck - to post it. here is a bizarre image of me walking towards the letterbox to post it.



i, my blueberry, or both of us had a little bit of a brain melt and it or i kept taking images of the ground as i walked along. eventually i just got bored and tired of deleting these images. either i on a subconscious level or my blueberry on a very real level wanted you to see me in my stride, so there it is.

another diversion, then, and something ace - boss, indeed - that i saw in the shops today. 



yes, that is Ash out of Evil Dead 2, with the chainsaw on his arm where his hand once was. did i purchase it? no, alas not. spending somewhere just under £2 on randomly thrusting a Michael Bolton CD into the world is one thing, spending 1p short of £20 on something that i would not know what to do with other than say "this is cool" and shove in a cupboard is quite another.

into the letterbox, then, with the Michael Bolton CD, addressed to Michael, Bolton.



i would like to think that the current world is not quite so lacking in imagination that no one has ever done this before. ideally, and i mean no ill-will by this, some poor b@stard in Bolton that happens to be called Michael has had dozens of packages like this arrive, so brilliant have so many others thought this idea to be.

there are many variations, perhaps variables, here. will this get delivered to anyone? will i or anyone else ever find out that someone got it? this remains to be seen. my expectation would be that the sorting staff at Royal Mail will shove this in some sort of "undeliverable and unable to return" department, eventually incinerating it or putting it up for sale or something.

whatever happens to it next is, to an extent, academic and not really relevant. i have done my bit in getting the music of Michael Bolton to someone called Michael in Bolton, and i can do no more.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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