ALMOST 10,000 people have died already from Covid-19 in the UK and I’m on with trying to set up an interface for online livestreaming on YouTube and Facebook. It isn’t a healthy psychology to contemplate.
On the one hand there is the odd propaganda promoting the likes of Boris Johnson as a kind of Battle of Britain war hero giving him the Medal of Honour for Public Bumbling and then there’s the reality of doctors, nurses, bus drivers and care workers becoming infected and dying due to a lack of PPE which the same fools promised but failed to provide.
In the middle of that I am living with my girlfriend and two rabbits in the suburbs enjoying our holiday which isn’t in Portugal which is what we planned (cancelled). Trying to be happy, healthy and productive as an entertainments worker while talking to no one else and going nowhere. It’s all a bit weird and it’s no wonder I can’t sleep past 6 hours.
The main concern is that Princess Cruises forgot to incude me in the CEO’s public thank you payment this month announced to all crew members on the 19th March 2020. My extended contract ran until March 22nd 2020 but I was evacuated off the infected boat on March the 11th, through no fault of my own.
If they don’t pay me the full amount in May I’m going to have to mount a legal case with the backing of the Musicans’ Union. Something which I don’t want to have to do – obviously. Maybe they were simply catching up with the financial complications of paying evacuated crew. I imagine so.
And my playing is geting rusty, as far as I’m concerned, because I was performing 2 or 3 times a day working as a cruise musician and now I play in front of YouTube to the telly.
So what to do?
Finish off my accounts as a self employed musician in time to make a claim for the UK government’s promise of a lump sum of 80% of your annual income in June 2020. Claim back the tax I was paid while on board – which was the emergency tax rate so be warned. While keeping up the universal credit claim.
Practice the Beatles’ Blackbird on the telly to YouTube before making a film of playing it and transferrring on my SD card to this laptop.
Prepare my one weeks online lesson by actually creating a curriculum or set of lesson plans for my one remaining student. Start afresh having taught privately and in schools since 2005.
Start preparing an online beginners TESOL course and pitch it as a freebie experiment to a fellow musician in the Ukraine who has a desire to learn English off me. To prepare for the future.
Keep studying and hoping for the job of delivery driver since I’m on the waiting lists of both Amazon Flex and Hermes Courier which caters for the self employed. I saw a post online this morning of a guy with a car full of parcels saying he might be delayed today. I noticed he’d been doing it for years. Like I would know what I was doing at first. As if
Focus on and finish off a couple of songs without worrying about them being stunning and worry more about them not being finished at all. Try recording them using my Focusrite and Cubase – which I don’t know how to use.
Try using the Focusrite as an interface on musicworkersdairy so that this coming Friday I can do a livestream again without the quality of sound being total shite.
Write a dull working blog that only my girlfriend will be kind enough to read before playing a few songs with her on the bass in the conservatory – well that’s happening right now. Plus the interface thingy -especially as I got a personal e mail from a viewer telling me how shit he thought the quality was last week. Also – god I mumble. What happened to that Speech and Drama kid who got all those distinctions as a 9 year old.
If you made it this far. Thank you. The last two.
The Music Workers Diary 