The Corona Diaries

Greetings from NYC…. I have to say that this week has gone by in a a bit of a blur. Indeed, it seems a long time since I was strapped to the chair, recording this week’s TCD (sorry, Lucy) pondering what I still had left to do, before I could set-off to board a plane and cross the Atlantic. Certainly, I wasn’t expecting Ant to take me back to shooting the promo videos for Holidays in Eden, or to be...

Here we go then, the second half of my Seasons End musings, based on having listened to the album again for the first time in ages. Of course since we last spoke it has tipped past its 35th Anniversary, which is a statement that has the power to stop you dead in your tracks, particularly if it feels like last year. Anyway we got as far as Holloway Girl on TCD #219 (sorry Lucy) so today we start wi...

Who says you can’t teach on old dog new tricks, well to be fair lots of people - including me as it goes - but you know what I mean. So for this episode of TCD (sorry Lucy) we are having a crack at something a bit different, based around an idea that Ant had. I happened to mention a few weeks ago that I rarely listen back to the Marillion albums and haven’t done for quite a while. Consequently my...

The first TCD of September (sorry Lucy) and we are starting with what could be loosely called ‘a plan’. Following some imaginative intervention from the Purples, we have a rich vein of chat suggestions to mine over the coming weeks, starting with a belter from Roger Harvey. But I ain’t going to spoil the surprise, so you will just have to listen for the details - and of course we will also be requ...

It’s literally two years since we had an episode quite like this one. And in an unusual foray into accuracy I can give you the exact details, because it was Chapter 122 The reason I know this is because that week Ant was on holiday in Catalonia, and as such he recorded his half of the conversation in a lively cafe in Platja d’Aro. And, literally just for the hell of it, he is back in the same spot...

Big shout out to Roger Harvey, who in a round-about way has filled the middle of the TCD doughnut this week. Confused? Well let me explain.. As you know I read a bit of something in the middle of each week's pod. Since I got through all of The Invisible Man diaries, I have been rooting around the bottom of the digital drawer looking for interesting (and previously unread) stuff to include. And, as...

It struck me as I was listening to chapter 215 that one of the quirks of recording TCD (sorry Lucy) is that the process is often interrupted by what has gone before. It isn't exactly a 'ghost in the machine' because it is all very explainable, and indeed predictable. Let me try and enlighten you. The way I record my half of the conversation involves overdubbing onto a file that contains snippets o...

I was minded on listening back that we spend years fine-tuning our quirks, in fact I am not convinced it's a process we ever actually get to the end of. But these are the things that define who we are. So to know me is to know both my caffeine routine and how I close an overhead locker when I am on a plane. So I say 'embrace all quirks without fear or self consciousness' and respect and cherish th...

This week's TCD (sorry Lucy) reminds me of when you take a drive to somewhere you travel to often. Not a quick-round-the-corner to the shop kind of trip, more a journey that you know well but maybe takes an hour to two. Sometimes you arrive at such a destination, not really remembering exactly how you got there. You know you have been in the car for a couple of hours, and that you have covered 103...

It’s the end of an era, sort of. Back on the 27th April, 2020 the first episode proper of TCD (sorry, Lucy) was published and we have been chucking them out every week for well over four years. But with 212 that streak comes to an end, because as of next week we are changing our cadence.  I don’t think either of us expected to still be doing this after 50 episodes, let alone 200, and of cours...

Apologies for missing last week (though very soon you will know why) This one was a little tough in prospect but alright once we got going. It sounds a bit different owing to Ant not being able to get his tech to work (post Spanish-holibobs) and having to use the USB mic instead of the flash one he normally uses. Having said all that, in many ways it is an archetypal episode of TCD - bawdy seaside...

Well it's been a bit of a palaver this week, trying to get TCD (sorry, Lucy) ready for the outside world. The recording seemed to go well, but when I was putting it together it became apparent that Ant had forgotten his trademark 'and we're back' after the diary reading, so I had to crowbar one in from a previous episode. Actually on that point, the first person who can correctly identify which of...

I am properly losing track of what I am reading every week in the diary section. Even since we finished Volume II of The Invisible Man (1998-2014) I have been scrabbling around on my hands and knees (figuratively speaking of course) under the lid of my MacBook trying to locate odd bits of stuff to read out. And because I keep stumbling on stuff, we have lost all sense of chronology in terms of wha...

We don't very often about the technical side of producing The Corona Diaries (see what I did there Lucy) mainly because we don't want to be seen to be blowing our collective trumpet, and partly because it isn't that interesting. But it is slightly relevant this week so here we go. Most weeks, usually on a Tuesday, Ant sets up a Zoom call and we congregate - rarely on time, and never before ten - t...

It doesn’t really matter which of the many metaphors you choose, win or lose, the ups and the downs, the peaks or the troughs. The fact is that when we started this run of AHBID themed episodes we kinda hoped by roping in members of the band we would be able to provide a broader collective on the making of that particular record. Alas it hasn’t really worked out that way, so although we have manag...

There is something about being in a room (or indeed on a Zoom call) with Trousers that is one of life's great pleasures. Let me clarify that, because it is all about the capitalisation. Being in a room with trousers is a fairly mundane occurrence for many of us, but being in a room with Trousers is a joy. The fact is, he is really funny. Mike Hunter thinks so, Ant thinks so, and I am sure after li...

Well we have only gone and ruddy well done it... It might have evolved slowly as an idea, but you can't say that we haven't upped our game a little and actually delivered. Assuming that you are up-to-date with your TCD listening (sorry Lucy) you will know that instead of recoding a load of episodes about FEAR (which as it turns out we have already done...) we are moving onto some chat about AHBID....

It runs out the best way to throw your fellow podcast host off his axis, is to turn up to his house and proclaim “I’m here” with outstretched hands. After a couple of hundred of these over Zoom, there are consequences in jumping in the car and heading up to Heckmondwike for a face-to-face. Firstly there is no obvious improvement in the depth or quality of the content, and all that happened is that...

What can I tell you about this this week's TCD (sorry Lucy)... Well if it is randomness you are after, then we have it in the kind of quantity that would require a sturdy barrow to transport it about the place. In fact we start in a random place and then we proceed to meander, seemingly unchecked by social convention or common decency. Which is why we go from football, to snooker, to Warren Close,...

The story of TCD this week (sorry Lucy) has an awful lot to do with two questions and one piece of re-direction. The first question, and let me tell you neither Ant or myself were able to proffer any kind of definitive answer ourselves, is whether or not a number can be classified as a palindrome. The second question is also a recognition that something Ant said may well be wrong. He asserted that...

There is most definitely a sense of meander about this week’s TCD (sorry Lucy). After all the excitement of Cruise to the Edge, I needed a little bit of a reset so Ant took pity and let me empty my head of the all things that had made an impression over the course of the trip, without worrying about whether they were in order, were said more than once, or indeed made sense. The only caveat to that...

A little late (to be fair, we did warn you it would be) but we actually made it to the big number. Three years, 10 months and 12 days ago the first episode proper of TCD (sorry, Lucy) was published and there probably isn’t a one of us that would have thought we would be here, 1414 days later, offering up a bi-centennial chapter whilst aboard a boat. And in all honesty this one was about as wacky a...

Believe it or not #199 was actually quite a tricky one to pitch, because it is difficult to focus on the job in hand when you know that an episode with a significant number is just around the corner. Of course TCD (sorry Lucy) has a secret weapon that can be deployed in just these circumstances, and so we pressed the big red button marked ‘slipshod’ and powered on through. And even when we are bei...

As you would expect after a couple of weeks of content-heavy TCD (sorry Lucy, and big tens to Captain Hunter) we regress to a more predictable episode complete with a heavy dose of wheezy laughs and surreal notions. The reading this week is an almost forgotten recollection of my 100th gig, somewhere back in the hazy days of Seasons End in a disco. Thanks to Roger H for the inspiration (and the cop...

As you can expect Ant and I were very pleased when the face of Captain Hunter appeared on the Zoom screen for the recording of this week's TCD (sorry, Lucy). He had said he was happy to come back and talk a little bit more about 'With Friends' and being the fine upstanding fellow that he is, he was as good as his word. Of course that DID mean we moved onto the rather more delicate subject of the p...