Jegogan – Jegogan

My daughter came home yesterday enthusiastic about Sefton Music Services having a Gamelan orchestra just up the road. This was news to me but she we even more tickled when we told her that there was a Gamelan instrument on its side under her bed and it had been there for years. I have to admit that it arrived from Bali with a crucial part broken and that has not been fixed. I may have already mentioned about the piece of leather that it requires to get working again and how I got some funny looks when asking around for something suitable to facilitate the required repair. I even asked at Madam Foner’s surgical supplies which had a branch outside the main hospital in Liverpool. So if anyone knows where I can get a long thread of cow skin about 8 mm wide and at least a metre long then please get in touch.

I have two ways of getting home, each of which I choose depending on how bad the traffic is at a particular point. One of these routes brings me down towards the docks of North Liverpool where the peaks of various ships show above the quayside buildings. It always looks quite special and makes me feel lucky to live in a place with such lively industry though I suppose that might make a few people upset because automations has meant that the number of people who actually work in the docks is a small fraction of the thousands who used to work there. The area has always inspired me. When I used to work at a big factory with lots of noisy high-tech machinery, the whole atmosphere of the docks seemed to link in with that continuous chug and clank though even then the main part of the operation was run by a few men driving those container cranes. There is a compound just inside the perimeter fence of the docks where large items that have come off ships and are waiting to be picked up are stored. Very often these are large items of farm machinery or speed boats but occasionally there are Humvees or other giant US automobiles. There is also a bird reserve which is actually inside the perimeter fence and I’ve never been – now you have to book because of the security regulations that apply. I may persuade my dad to book us in sometime. The reserve is noted because it often has rare species that hitch across the Atlantic on the ships that dock here.