kew

she woke in a blue mood, i peeked behind the blind and it was a beautiful morning...

so i suggested she not go to work and instead we go to kew gardens...

which she agreed to,

so we got the bus here to feed the shmoosh... i shaved, finishing the job i'd started yesterday before the recording session... i picked up my camera which has been laying dormant for too long... we ate in the cafe by turnpike lane station then travelled to kew on that little train from highbury...
a train journey i love, passing by all sorts of memories... kensal rise where i lived for years, the view from willesden junction, on the train not quite as nice as from the platform but still lovely (a very different kind of lovely to the lovely of kew a little later)...

got to kew @ 2.30, with just less than 2 hours before it shut, and only 75 minutes before the glass houses were shutting, luckily emivore's science museum volunteers card got her in free... we raced over to the palm house...
basked in that amazing place...

wondered over to the treetop walk...
strolled over to the temperate house...
the sun, having gone behind clouds for much of the afternoon, came out again just as we were walking in the park, down vista's, the sunlight coming in low, lighting up the trunks of the trees... we saw a few green parrots...

it was heaven...

we ate in a much more expensive cafe by kew garden station, then got back on that little train, now full of commuters... i got off @ highbury and braved the rush hour tube north, she stayed on until homerton, where she went to work for a few hours (she's there now)...

loveliness x

tax return done

all done...

met emivore in jai & she came back here... she had a nap and i lay with my back to her, filing my tax return online on this here laptop...

so it's all over...

x

tax return woe

so i just did josiah's tax return, took me half an hour...

then i tried to log in to my tax return, not that i was ready to do my own one yet, just wanted to check it out...

and i found my user id in my old computer, typed it into my new computer and tried a couple of passwords... to no avail...

i must have tried wrong passwords 3 times, because when i got firefox running on my old computer, firefox who knows my password from last year, it still wouldn't let me in...

it turns out i've locked myself out for 2 hours...

fantastic...

so i've got 2 hours to find all the stuff i need to find... i did get scared, but i phoned up the tax office and very quickly got through to a nice man who explained what was going on...

i finished a whole heap of marking on thursday and i'm recording all day tomorrow with the SJP's... it doesn't stop people, it just doesn't stop...

once i've done this tax return it will be a weight off my mind...

ok... laters x

cookies google chess tax return cubase

so that was weird, google wouldn't accept my password all morning...

i was having odd thoughts about someone hacking in and changing my password...

anyway it's working now... maybe it's time i changed that password anyway...?

i gigged with the SJP's on saturday night to a lovely big crowd (including dinah, floopy, Nslider & emivore), the venue was right by a sainsburies so i popped in after the soundcheck and got some of those cookies that i love... i had them tucked behind my stool on stage while we were playing...

i ate one between sainsburies & the venue, me & emivore had one each between the two sets... so that means there are two left... and it's just possible that they are still tucked behind something on the stage @ the round midnight jazz & blues bar...

i won't lie, it is odd having both one's ex-girlfriend and one's girlfriend at the the same gig, odd for me, odd for dinah, odd for emivore...

the gig was triumphant though... a big crowd really pulls something out of us i find...

i'm currently down in brighton to help josiah with her tax return, it turns out she didn't request an activation code before this morning, something i was worried might happen and i thought she'd already done it, so they're sending it out by post and it may or may not arrive before the deadline... anyway, i'm adding up her numbers for her so she can put it in when the time comes...

i've got my own tax return looming, and that'll probably be done on saturday now, what with the moving but ever so slowly moving marking mountain that i'm still under...

and i'm a bit stuck in a game of chess i'm playing with felinity, one of those knight situations where all sorts of forks are available to her, and what do i want to safegaurd...?

oh & i'm in denial about this little computer being just a netbook... it's only a couple of decimal points below my recording computers processing speed (this is 1.6G, that one's 1.8...) and i used to run cubase on older computers...

so i've downloaded a free bit of music software called Kristal... it seems to do what it needs to, although i'm sad that i can't get my old favourite the arcdev dubb bbox working with it...

it made me decide to get hold of cubase... which i duly did last night... and it turns out this copy of the arcdev dubb box doesn't work with that either...?

cubase certainly takes up more of my computers thinking than kristal, but i know cubase (although this is cubase 5, i've been using sx3 for years) so i'm hoping i can use that... i loaded a demo song into cubase, with all the bells and whistles galore and tried to play it and my computer just laughed at me... in a very unpleasant digital distortion kind of laughing way...

ok, later x

brain working

sometimes you only have to write a problem down to solve it...

and in this case, that's what happened...

i put the DVD into my... what do i call that one now?

my music recording computer... the one i used to call my new computer...

the asus DVD has 4 & a bit Gb's on it, so i clear off the appropriate amount of room on my longboat... it's currently taking an age to copy all of those files from the DVD onto my longboat... must take the DVD drive from the older currently not working PC & put it in this one... this DVD drive is a bit rubbish...

(exactly as i wrote that, the humming sound of the rotating DVD stopped, as if to say... insult me will you? well let's see how you like not working at all eh?!!!... thankfully it was only a pause in it's business)

i'm off to the post office with the clock... when i come back it may have finished doing it's thing, it may not, but once it's all on there i'll connect the longboat to the Eee & then begin the next stage...

unless of course i decide to concentrate on the marking for a brief few hours... just to ease my worried mind...

sample tracing new laptop adventures...

here i sit, blogging when i should be taking my poor clock to the post office to send back to the science museum, but i wanted to record this moment...

last week a member @ core arts was talking to me about steely dan, 3 albums in particular... so i got hold of two of these albums - the royal scam & aja...

and today i'm listening to them both... and on aja, there's a track called peg...

so i'm listening to peg & i hear something familiar... it takes me a little while to find what it is in my mind... but then it becomes clear, there's a track on 3 feet high & rising (de la soul's 1st album) that samples the track peg...

hugely pleasing to trace that...,

ok, laptop adventures... i'm blogging on it right now... there's a wireless router waiting for me in a different post office which i'm picking up in the morning... (i think)...

it came with windows 7 starter... and several cool asus things attached to it... the way the touchpad works & an over/under clocking thing...

but windows 7 starter frustrated me, so i got hold of windows 7 home premium, and put that on this machine, all well & good...

but i didn't do it how they expected me to do it, so the groovy asus things have gone...

how do i get them back?

this machine (an asus EeePC 1005A) came with a DVD... (although not a DVD drive)... so maybe those things are on there...

also, since putting W7HP on here i think it's got a bit more glitchy... (i could be wrong), so maybe W7 starter is in fact the right thing for this machine...?

so can i go back to how it was? do i want to?

all this in amongst the marking mountain i'm still climbing...

i'll keep you posted x

more clock doom improv listening rennaisance

slept @ hers last night, came home and the clock was stuck @ 11:45 (am or pm - unclear)

so i plugged in the mains supply and it started working again, i manually put in all the balls needed to push through to 1st 12 O'clock, then the big 1 O'clock tumble,

then set the time right (1:45) then spent a few hours faffing... then i looked at the clock and only ten minutes had passed...

even with the mains supply...

so sadly, that little puppy has to packed up and returned to the science museum...

...............

in other news, i've decided to watch/listen to all the improvisations...

i just saw a couple of odd ones from the middle, i'm right now listening to the very 1st one...

it'll take awhile yes... but that's what i'm gonna do...

oh - and i bought a laptop... quite cheap, more news when it gets here...

x

clock tale hour

so, briefly...

i got home yesterday to find my beloved clock had stopped @ 11:52 am...

this threw me...

i took it apart, i gazed at it, i took out the batteries, put them back in...?

then in the night i got a head ache and it woke me up... the same kind of head ache i'd had yesterday morning on waking...

anyway, i took some ibuprofen and tried to get back to sleep, but to no avail, only when it was getting light, around 7:45 am did i slip back into sleep...

waking @ 10:30, the time i should have been starting teaching...

so i phoned in sick...

i decided to eat @ jai's and see if it made me feel any better, so i was waiting around for 12 O'clock to come and i paid some attention to the clock, in bits...

i plugged in a mains adapter and it started working... strange... the batteries surely wouldn't have run out in a week?

i set the time and left for jai's...

when i came back i decided to try the batteries and it worked also... strange..

then i realised that i'd got it working exactly 24 hours after it had stopped working... 11:52 am...

so now i'm assuming it took a day off sick, like me...

x

clock again

ok, so it's a little noisy...

i'm not sure i'll be able to sleep with it in here, (being the living room) being as the doors have to be open for balthazara to move freely between the outside world... her food... & my bed...

not that she has to have access to my bed, but i do find it comforting, if sometimes a pain... a warm, cat shaped presence curled against me on the other side of the duvet, an excited cat waking me up when she comes in from the outside...

hmm...?

of course emivore is allergic to her, so nights when she's here balthazara is kept out of the bedroom anyway...

but that's not the issue right now...

anyway, tonight i'm going to try it out, leave it on all night... we'll see how it goes... or we'll hear how...

i do love the thing... it has a certain grace, when, every minute, it's arm does one rotation, picking up a ball at the bottom and putting it at the top, also opening a gate to let some balls go through to the bottom, regulating the balls for a reason i don't yet know...

i currently love looking at it, and i love the different way it presents the time to me...

it's possible the novelty will wear off, it's possible i'll get into the habit of taking out the batteries @ night and forgetting to put them back in in the morning...

anything's possible... but i love it right now...

finsihed BSG season 3 tonight, an orgy of viewing which was partly inspired by the marking i need to get on with... a perverse nod towards getting those episodes out of my way, so i can concentrate on the marking...

i think the novel i'm thinking of is also partly to do with not marking...

anyway, BSG season 3 was great, although it ended with a dodgy version of all along the watch tower, but nobody's perfect...

ok bed x

my clock

yesterday, in the basic music skills class i teach @ core arts, my 1st teaching session of the new year, one of the members was singing, and we were all singing what he sang back to him, it's something i do there every week, everyone has a go @ leading (and being copied)...

anyway, this particular member has a habit of doing this a bit longer than the others (and indeed myself) and the style of the vocals (which i'd started) was a sort of singing what was happening in reality...

and he sang that tomorrow (today) the clock he'd ordered would arrive...

and i told him afterwards that i was expecting a clock to be delivered also tomorrow (today)...

anyway, i'd given up hope of it being delivered today, i'd been out doing a few chores (like picking up this years volume of proust, eating in jai shri krishna where the proprietor told me my hair was like Mr T's hair (?), foolishly cycling but not falling off in the snow)



and i was back home, in slippers & dressing gown, watching BattleStarGalactica when there was a knock on the door and it was delivered... & it's doing it's little clocky thing right now...

i love it...

i've wanted this clock for about 20 years... since it used to appear in the innovations catalogue... and then, when i was in the science museum christmas shopping i saw one... and i had to immediately stop myself from getting it for myself - reminding myself that i was shopping for other people that day...

anyway i ordered it from their website between christmas & new year (it was almost immediately on getting back to london from visiting blewbury for christmas) and it's here now...

but i've said that,

oh & look, it's about to turn 6 O'Clock...

i so love this thing...

ha ha ha... i just had to set it to 12.59 and watch it all tumble back to 1:00...

anyway here it is just turning 6:23:



x

scifi

so, ages ago i had an idea for a story, based upon my experience in the shower...

it used to make dinah laugh...

anyway, i've started working it into a novel, just working out a rough outline of the plot, more specific at the beginning and a rough direction with a couple of ending ideas, or rather at least 2 things that i know have to happen...

i've been partly inspired by bad television, such as flash forward, i really like that part of my brain that appreciates a good story and notices when bad TV separates from good story telling, and i was thinking, if i have this finely tuned storytelling nerve, can i therefore write a good story...?

and this is kind of the crux of it... i have a few ideas about the basic story, i have notions about why the characters do or have done things... but can i actually write it?

x

2010 new tune BSG good again

ok,

so i spent last night and most of today with Emivore... we walked on the heath this afternoon, cycled there from hers, lovely to know that's easy...

2 years ago today i improvised a short piece of music, 1st on the piano, then on the rhodes...

the rhodes part i repeated twice, with the original piano part coming in on the repeat...

this tune - 1st january 2008 - is one of the tunes on my myspace...

since i woke today i've been itching to get back here to do a similar thing... but my music making equipment is in disarray and i currently have 15 minutes left of this 1st of january 2010...

one of the differences between me now & me 2 years ago is that it's easier these days when things don't work out how i want them to... at least in this setting... today i don't mind letting it go, the kind of mania that used to fuel the weekly improvisations is a little eased... so there won't be a "1st january 2010"...

having said that i did just set up the juno 6 and got it going into the computer...

over the holidays (both down in seaford with emivore & in blewbury for christmas) i had my DSI mopho with me... without any kind of keyboard around me i was glad to have it... the opportunity to make music... so i made a few nutty loops & i got into the habit of it...

so the other night, (30th/31st december) i couldn't sleep, i got up and started writing down ideas about my scifi novel (more on that later) - i also got out the mopho and programmed a simple thing to keep me company while i wrote... well... simple thing has been floating around for the past couple of days and i really like it... so i'm excited about putting it down into the computer and building something out of it...

in general this is pleasing because i have about 10 different ideas in the mopho, from this last holiday season and from trips i've made before, and it'll be nice to get them all recorded into the computer and work on them (if they deserve working on)...

ok - and lastly, i'm in the middle of BattleStarGalactica season 3 and it's good again... the 1st season was great, the 2nd season lost it, this 3rd season is back on track and it makes me happy... i guess the writers strike in america was to blame for the faulty 2nd season, or am i just making that up? the timings don't necessarily match up.. anyway...

balthazara here x happy new year x

new years eve

ok so its new years eve... i'm going to spend it with my girlfriend shortly...

i do hope those of you who read this (if there are any of you left, i know i haven't been a very good blogger recently) have a lovely new year and can be proud of what you did in 2009 and look forward to the good you are going to do in 2010...

x

Burning Sand 2

well, well, well...

i downloaded a falling sand game from the internet...

it's called Burning Sand 2...

and i'm loving it...

x

all the fleas are dead

(all the fleas are dead)

and the sky is grey (and the sky is grey)

at least I hope they are... it's been very cold, & they can't be living on balthazara..

both my computers continue to be dead & I managed to upgrade the firmware in this here phone the other day, so I'm going through a hero renaissance...

it's my email, my internet... my phonecalls... my texts...

it's everything right now...

I'm blogging on it from bed in a slightly insomniac way...

loving certain apps... (full list to follow)...

loving the whole HTC hero experience...

ok, sleep... x

deflea

I de-flea'd balthazara this afternoon...

about half an hour later she'd forgiven me & came to see me where I was fiddling around with both my computers, both dead as you like...

tomorrow morning I may forgo cycling, there's a risk of ice...

I just finished Palestine by Joe Sacco, a non-fiction comicbook about the writer's time in Palestine at the time of the 1st intifada... very good, moving account... I wonder how things have changed for the Palestinians in the book in the 17 years since that visit...

quite possibly things have got worse for them...

emivore leant me the book... that being the longcat blog name of the woman I'm sharing my nights with...

my girlfriend... E as was...

ok, not much more in me... I hope I have the strength not to watch flashforward later...

in fact the best thing to do would be to go out to the spanner bigband gig @ the cross kings... but I don't know of I have the energy...

x

last spanner gig of the year

floopy was there, resplendent in purple top hat & coat, videoing the whole thing,

dinah of course, lovely,

it was a private party, we were great, i think,

afterwards i got the bus up to east finchley where i am now, blogging from E's bed while she meditates, just listened to boychild by scott walker...

the spanners are concentrating on recording in the near future...

ok, that's all i've got x

back, but sick - a chapter ends

ok...

so it's been awhile since i last posted...

i'm currently coasting over the top of an illness, E had it, i now have it...

did i tell you about E?

well, she's mine, we're together these days...

i know that we're gonna be together you & me,
for more than a rhyme or two you're time belongs to me...

as john martyn says it...

my more recent computer has died, it's the on switch, it's gone, i'm going to have to open her up and look inside and trigger the on in a different way i suppose...

so i'm back to this computer, which has spent a month of so under my dining table...

it was busy downloading something and must have been writing to the disk at the moment when there was a power cut...

so that drive is dead, i'm running this from my dual-boot ubuntu...

the 1st time i've tried it since that day (at least a month, maybe 2... 3?)

i twitter these days, i can be found here: http://twitter.com/robbielongcat

i can tweet from my phone, for that matter i can blog from my phone also.. my phone which only came with one lead, USB to it... that one lead which you need to connect the charger to the phone and which you need to connect the phone to a computer...

great, only one crucial lead, and i've lost that lead... so my phone gradually dying until i can get another lead (or find that one - i was connecting the phone to E's computer on sunday and when i got home i didn't have the lead...)

sunday, yes sunday,

so if you look at my twitter page you'll see the 2nd last, (at the moment of writing) tweet being about eating lamb... in fact - i'm going to copy the whole tweet - hang on:

"Finally had the roast lamb i've wanted... the holy grail... almost as though it's the end of one chapter & the start of another x with her x"

it was several months ago (august 15th), i was in brighton, on DMT & meow, and i saw some lamb being prepared, or maybe just waiting to be prepared...

i think that that was the event that triggered this current trip down carnivorous lane, and it was specifically lamb that i wanted...

i passed through salmon, (with pregnant K-wo, spski, and EQ wierdly enough)
chicken (with felinity, her G & dad)
pork with ham over it, (with felinity & dad)
chicken (with E)
chicken (with E)

before having roast lamb with E in a pub in east finchley on sunday...

so in a way i'm choosing to see this eating of lamb as closing the period that began with the brighton DMT/meow time, just over 3 months...

also - i just heard through felinities twitter that honey is not long from this world, dad rang her, she may not make it to christmas, i don't know the full story...

very sad, & it makes me all the more glad to have balthazara...

anyway, there you go, long splooge of a post...

booker done tv heaven

read the last booker book this morning in bed...

j m cootzee, summertime, badly named, badly written, occasional bits of good writing but all kinds of unsatisfactory writing...

when he's writing as women I find him pretty rubbish...

so, definitely ended on a low, those 6 books I read...

also I watched monday's flashforward which was distinctly average... just like lost, take the smallest amount of storytelling you can, wrap it in the thinnest drama you can find, pretend it's fantastic...

but the day was rescued by channel 4's HBOfest from 10... trueblood & generationkill...

just wonderful...

and then there's hung.. josiah mentioned it over the weekend... any good?

my cup runneth over...

x

review of FlashForward, True Blood & Generation Kill

in the last week, i've seen the opening episode (or 2) of 3... just 3?... yes, 3 i think...

3 new tv things, all american, 2 on channel 4, one on 5...

Flashforward
True Blood
Generation Kill

flash forward first:

it's the only one of the 3 programs that hasn't already been shown in america...

this is nice...

i watched it on the internet, because demand5 is not yet on virgin V, unlike all the other terrestrials, (4 on demand, BBC i-player, ITV...thing)...

demand5 delivers adverts, at a few points in the show, which you can see as dots in the line at the bottom, also they have adverts before the show starts...

the 2 adverts at the beginning are repeated at least once in the show...

this is shit...

and to think i could be downloading this nonsense and not watching any adverts...

so to the show itself... it's made by the makers of lost... and i remembered this midway through the 2nd episode and i laughed at myself for watching it...

it has a good premise, and the story looks promising, and it good in it's way,

but there were a few too many moments where the cheese got grated a little too much... the main male character, whose wife saw a future in which she was loving another man... keeps giving her a hard time about this... he's dumb therefore... his side-kick / another important male character, spends ages being down on our main characters theories because he didn't see anything in his future and therefore might well be dead...

so already, within the 1st 2 episodes, drama is being inserted with no good reason to insert drama...

in this current world we live in, too often we are expected to sift through flaws in TV shows to find the good that is in them... i don't know if i have the patience for flashforward...

ok True Blood:

which i watched on the TV as it was broadcast, with dinah, after our turkish resaurant/police with large guns event earlier...

HBO made which counts for alot...

great so far, but a little too much "local colour" here and there, something heroes did with it's new orleans characters...

not only from black characters, but mostly from them, larger than life, sassy, performances which distracted a little from the story i found... not that i'm faulting the acting, it's the writing i'm unhappy with,

but not too unhappy, this is a smaller complaint than i had with flashforward and i think it'll be worth sticking with true blood... the magic, the sense of real connection the main woman feels for the vampire... and already a good story...

i loved buffy the vampire slayer and so i was always going to like true blood anyway,

it's quite explicitly rude for TV which is nice... the characters are coming along nicely, no 1 dimensional people as far as i can see, although there's time...

so to Generation Kill...

watched last night on catch-up, on the TV, after a mental few days of not enough sleep, a few pints and some smoking (which is exactly the right idea after a mental fews days on not enough sleep)...

then watched again this afternoon, again on catchup, after a lovely night's rest..

made by the team that made the wire... and just fantastic, no flaws to speak of... (as indeed the wire was flawless)... a huge cast of characters that it's quite hard to follow, and no easy explanatory TV, which is a strength in my world...

i'm curious who wrote it, as in, which character is the writer, it's from a book and it seems likely that the reporter in the story wrote the book... but not for sure...

it shows a side to the tank loving boy audience, lots of hummvees... in formation rolling through the desert... a nod towards the glory of the mechanisms of war... while showing the stupid choices of the military...

just as in the wire there are people in the military world of this show who are willing to do a good job, and there a people who are motivated by other things, greed, power, and for many different reasons do not do a good job...

a great character who wistfully pisses on the desert while talking about the destiny of the white man... a curious mix of racism in a seeming lovable character...

a seemingly true account of what it was like in that unit... with porn magazines, chewing tobacco of some kind, drugs, well almost drugs... homophobia, racism, comradery, stupidity..

hasn't put a foot wrong yet...

so that's what i think x

from bed

hmmm... a sedintary life for me, the booker prize all done... the last one I read won it, the great wolf hall... I got through 5/6 with the 6th now in my possession, I don't know if i'll read it... we'll see...

blogging from my phone, in bed, just to check it out really...

not working Wednesday but if I can i'll pick up my fender rhodes x

yr4wk11

x

my friend (with yr4wk10)

the weather today was very appropriate for my emotions...

these days i can go from feeling really low to feeling great and back again in such a short space of time...

and today's weather was doing exactly that... i left the house to go & do some errands and it started raining, so i put on my waterproof trousers, but took them off again by holloway road because the sun was out again...

my friend GM, the guitarist came round in the evening, he's just left, we had a lovely time, playing music, eating @ lavas, (turkish place near me), playing music, talking...

we're performing together at the core arts gig tomorrow night, just a couple of tunes, walk on by, and one or 2 of mine... one of which is so new it's as yet unwritten...

the main line is written, and i'm fairly sure of where the chords are going, but there's a whole load of lyrics that need writing before tomorrow night, and i'm working all day...

in fact, tomorrow is the beginning of my mental weekend, i'm covering for GM in the morning, running my regular jam in the afternoon (which will be largely taken over by the needs of the evening gig) then gigging in the evening...

tomorrow i'm being picked up around midday, we're driving down to bristol, we're gigging as the spanner jazz punks, stripped down... then i'm being dropped (i hope) in bath where my mum & dad are celebrating their ruby wedding anniversary with all us kids and partners and grandchild...

makes me a little sad, not being with dinah no more, but then dinah would have tried to get out of going anyway, not a huge socialite when it came to my family that woman...

so i'm basking in the family celebration until monday, then limping back to london...

and i haven't done my improvisation this week...

oh - that reminds me, last week's improvisation is here:

yr4wk10, voice & hammond improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

yr4wk9 piano

yr4wk9 piano from longcat on Vimeo.

x

yr4wk8

yr4wk8 moog & overdrive from longcat on Vimeo.

x

5 year return

i'd been talking to someone about the 27 year saturn return, when it became clear that i had a kind of 5 year return going on...

a week ago - on the wednesday - i get a text message from josiah marking the 5 year anniversary of grace's naming ceremony...

@ which i played the piano & sang...

a week ago i was on my way to a small gig in brick lane, promotional thing for CM, lovely H was there DJ'ing and he dropped a few choice textures behind my playing...

i was videoing it with the idea of using some of it as my improvisation...

so, two piano playing events in the open air, exactly 5 years apart...

back in 2004, midway through my version of the song for grace (wild is the wind i think...?) some of witchy godmother's kids came and started messing about on the keyboard as i was still playing...

2009 - i had, 1stly a small group of asian kids, playing the odd note on the keyboard, then a small child, playing notes on the keyboard, but this time i'd invited them to play and i was happy with the situation...

in 2004 i was a bit flustered by it...

now please bear in mind that i had no conscious thought of this link while i was doing the gig, although my subconscious could see what was going on i'm fairly sure...

anyway, it was on friday/saturday when it became apparent, i like it, i don't know what it means beyond me moving more towards acceptance, but i like it...

just to say, friday/saturday/sunday i was in brighton and i had an old fashioned weekend, with more than a little bit of indulgence... which i'm still paying for a bit...

x

yr4wk7 overdrive heaven

yr3wk7 mopho, hammond & blackstar overdrive from longcat on Vimeo.

thursday... very late, no good... but don't you just love this overdrive?

fixed my puncture yesterday, had a fine day of cycling as a result...

went down to an odd fete in a park in poplar for work, met a few nice kids...

then back to whitechapel (although to be fair this was all taxis' from whitechapel to poplar and back)... a lovely chat with G & H @ CM's office...

then into town to see felinity, no cinema but some food & a few gin & tonics, a lovely night, much laughing... walked her to waterloo, then sat in the royal festival hall for awhile using their wifi for my phone... then a cycle home with herbie hancock in my ears, magnificent, foolish yes, but beautiful... i love that bike..

x

sometimes a hero comes along

what is that song?

no, not that song, this song... "i'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me"

anyway...

(unrequited's for losers...)

now, many years ago, i did my 1st ever tax retun, and it scared me, and i rang up a helpline...

a very nice man, very calmly told me what i had to do, what numbers to put in which boxes...

all very easy...

i love that man...

on thursday i was in brighton with grace & her mum & her 2 cousins...

my phone had stepped up it's irritating behaviour and i'd been threatening it for awhile (you're days are numbered, i'm getting a smartphone)...

so on thursday, this entire troop of people, large & small, went into the orange shop in brighton, and a very nice man gave me a new smart phone...

all very straight forward... i love a good bit of customer service...

these people are heroes...

but not only that...

my new smart phone is a hero...

i'm teetering on the brink of the smartphone way of life, just as soon as orange text me that they've enabled my internet...

x

nothing for nobody

i'm taking some time off...

i've got 2 weeks off from my work, and i'm also taking a break from all the rehearsing, recording, mixing i'm doing for other people...

off down to brighton on tuesday to see my glorious god daughter & her lovely mum...

dinah's in poland,

my time is my own...

got hold of a BlackStar HT-Drive overdrive pedal this week... i'm just listening to the improvisation i recorded tonight with the hammond & the mopho going through it...

valve distortion... it's a beautiful thing... of course whether anyone else other than me will like it is another matter, but right now i'm in a pretty much - it's all about me - zone anyway...

x

yr4wk6 moog & voice

yr4wk6 moog & voice from longcat on Vimeo.