Out of touch with my banjo.

I decided not to take my lap top to Los Angeles and as I don't have a 'smart phone' – just a regular mobile/cell –  I was 'out of touch.' I was out of touch for all the time I was there. I could have used the computer at the house where I was staying but hot mail didn't think it was me when I used it so they wanted to send me a text. That would have been okay if I'd have been in Yiggieland*, which is there my phone works, but I wasn't in Yiggieland I was in La La Land**.

The first thing I discovered was that I didn't know my wife's cell phone number in Yiggieland; it was in my address book on my mobile; I hadn't bothered to remember it didn't even know any of the numbers – I know it now. Why? Because I had to. In my head I have all the numbers I had to remember – all the PINs, my national insurance number from Yiggie, mine and my wife's social security numbers from America, bank account numbers, sort codes and the rest of the access numbers, favourite name of first pet, mother's maiden name and the rest.

It got me thinking – if we never have to remember numbers and other things we save to machines maybe we will stop being good at it. Now you may ask why we want to remember those things for when we can have it done for us with the fine fine super fine technology of today and you may be right but if we get out of the habit of having to learn and remember things our brains may turn into grey matter – well they are already grey matter but you know what I mean.

People will have to think for us; people being the people who make the computers, invent the programmes, apps and the other stuff. They will be the only people who speak the special language and be able to read it too and the rest of us (well you, I will be dead by then) will have to believe what they say. Just like when only the church people could read and the plebs had to believe what they said. This is why they didn't really want the plebs to be able to read – just like these days when they (the magic 'they' who rule us) don't really want the plebs to be educated.

So I did a bit of work in Los Angeles and the other things I had to do by visiting my old haunts – Chili Johns, The Farmers' Market – and pick up my banjo which I had left with a friend.

I wasn't sure if the banjo had go as a 'special' item or not, on the flight back, so I decided to get it packed properly and checked it in and the greatest news is that there is no story about it getting broken or smashed to smithereens and there is the picture to prove it at the top of the page. And if you want to hear my banjo and me playing on some of the tracks copy and paste this http://tinyurl.com/bpyerf2

* Yiggieland - England

** La La Land - Los Angeles. 

Oh by the way. The other good thing about my trip was that I could get a decent cup of coffee and here I am drinking it in Chili Johns.