The Unexpected

Introduction

This is just a stream of consciousness about things that have happened unexpectedly over the last couple of days. These are, actually, in my opinion, positive things, just things that were unplanned or I didn't expect to happen, and I suppose that most of the time, life is like that.

The music is the excellent "Unexpected Things" by Hozho, whom I just discovered in a search for the word "Unexpected" on YouTube, and that was unexpected, and that feels like some kind of mental paradox unexpectedly feeding off itself.

The Unexpected

This started yesterday while I was working, and I picked out the first Kraftwerk album to put on the player. When I opened it, there was an extra CD that I must have burned decades ago that said Kraftwerk. So, before the album, I thought I would play the burned CD.

It started off with some Wendy Carlos when she was Walter Carlos with Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" from the "A Clockwork Orange" soundtrack, which I thought odd, but it's a great piece of music, then that morphed into some like Kraftwerk music, so obviously the Wendy Carlos was just an introductuction.

Eventually, "Autobahn" started, and that is at least twenty minutes long, and I assumed that the disc would end there, but no, it went on.

My CD player remembers where it is when I switch it off, and the disc was playing well into the night. I realised that this must be an MP3 disc, and I was unaware that my CD player could play that format.

At some point, "Ruckzuck" from the album that I thought I would be playing came on, and the disc is still playing as I write this. I don't know when it will finish playing, maybe sometime next week.

Then I went to RPM to buy some vinyl they had advertised, but I didn't expect to get the ones I wanted. I managed to get two, and two unexpected extras, which you can see here:

Prior to dropping into RPM, I made a visit to the Vampire Rabbit and took a few pictures:

If the text is difficult to read this is it as text:

The Vampire Rabbit

Look up to the left of this board and you will see the vampire rabbit. No one is quite sure why the blood-sucking lepus was created with the rest of the building in 1901. Locals tell a tale of grave robbers who were exhuming skeletons from the graves all around the cathedral until one dark night the fanged beastie rose above the graveyard as if to scare them off.

Less superstitiously, it has also been theorized that the vampire rabbit is in fact a hare whose ears were mistakenly put on backwards. If this were the case the bloody little creature could have been installed to reference Sir George Hare Phipson, a local doctor, Freemason, and friend of the cathedral's architect. Most basically the rabbit could simply be meant to represent the coming of spring, invoking the same symbolic association that created the Easter Bunny. While the vampire rabbit of Newcastle was originally the same sandy color of the surrounding stonework, in modern times it has been painted a menacing black with droplets of blood staining its teeth and claws.

Researched and created by Liam Matthews and Logan Rollie

Conclusion

So that is some of the unexpected things that have happened in the last couple of days with me. Tomorrow, no doubt, something else will happen unexpectedly.

Thank you so much for indulging me with your time.