out there

just finished capital by maureen duffy, letting it sit there for awhile in my head, experimental right up to the end, the narrative broken up by pieces representing various different bits of londons history, listening to dirk wears white socks, the first album by adam & the ants earlier while i helped spski cook a house meal for dr K's birthday, released in '78, speaking of a london not dissimilar from that of this novel...

went out to buy figs earlier, a worker from the fruit shop had just been involved in a motorcycle accident on seven sisters road, paramedics, police, onlookers, the desire to take pictures suppressed because of sensibility, walking up salterton road after, images running at me to take them, getting further from the scene of the crash, eventually giving in to take pictures of these two trees, the very tops of which bathed in the late light, last night with this time, British Summer Time ends tonight, gaining an hours sleep.

saw spanna last night, lovely to see her and chill out, this after me & M from work had drunk abit & checked out the sound installation in the tate modern turbine hall, interesting, will have to go back and check it out, can't help feel that more could have been done with it in terms of sound...

spanna telling me i can get a bluetooth dongle to plug into my usb, phone pictures then making it into my computer... not long kids, not long...

& then just a word about these angry resentful fantasies that are keeping me awake at night, always with me in the wronged, angry role, righteuos... not sure where's that's coming from, although a few candidates do present themselves... i don't like that side of me, i hate self righteousness in anyone else and i'm none too pleased to see it in me...

x

trees out there 

arnica layer cake network shoplifter nippy

so i'm in a shop today with josiah & grace, josiah returning some rice milk for some that has calcium in it,

a small shop, no room really for a baby buggy, constantly in peoples way...

picked up another tube of arnica,

lovely as ever to see grace... (josiah would hate that, oh, it's lovely to see grace is it? noone ever wants to see her mum anymore...)... lovely to see josiah too...

josiah having an argument at the till, eventually she storms out the calcium rice milk is more expensive so she has to pay something, she's off to get some money.. i ask how much it is, 40p, i pay it, we load up the rice milk in the buggy, we leave, josiah comes back 5 minutes later ranting about customer service.

we walked up to the amazon where i was having breakfast while she & grace went up to crystal to meet nippy & R (R her son, rather than R her partner), (crystal where i met that pickpocket), but before we get to the cafe i find the arnica in my pocket, oh well, i tell josiah, she delighted, funny to be a shoplifter again (that is a very long story - another time).

so i ate my breakfast while they ate lamb, chatted a little with S, fairly recent waitress there, about art, artists, the rent...

then i went up to crystal to hang out with them, nippy & R even came back here, R keen to play me @ chess, for some reason i was less considerate with R today, beat him twice, he was cool though, good for him i guess, but it's hard losing when you're 12,

grace came round for an hour or so, climbing stairs, playing the piano, i played her the skryabin thing, she added her own part to it, (like when i played wild is the wind @ her blessing, but this not a performance so i more than happy to go where she goes...), i also sang her harbour walls at least the verse which is based on a melody i wrote for her, the wa ha song, really moved me singing that to her, she lost interest after the verse but she had that quiet listening for the melody (or at least that's what i'd like to think)...

then me & dr K went to see layercake, she for the second time, 2for1 orange wednesday thing, pretty good, nice to see a quality english film for once, really nice to chill out with dr K, on the way home i wore my brand new reversible fleece reversed, horrible tartanesque pattern on the inside, the one and only time i'm wearing it like that in public, she said it looked like something her dad would wear...

and now here i am setting up the network that links together these computers, well at least mine and this basement one, information courtesy of my brother D, satisfying...

so pretty cool day really, it's 12:23 now, got a little preparation work to do for tomorrow but i should be in bed by 1,... conscious of sleep more now from being so rubbish on tuesday...

x

skryabin

yesterday was a little rough because i didn't sleep enough the night before, sleeping too much when i can and not enough when i need it is really not the way forward, after my evening class i was pretty low & tired, just before i went to bed i found my skryabin cd downstairs (i'd been listening to it cooking the other day) - john ogdon playing all the piano sonatas & a few other bits and pieces...

so i gave myself a little of the 4th piano sonata, so light and beautiful... it's in two halves & the second half is pretty heavy and thunderous but this first part...

so now i'm learning to play it, at least the opening, i'm 8 bars in so far, there is some heavenly high chords played in 4's over the melody in 6 coming up that is going to twist my fingers right up...

so i was lying in bed today, gradually coming round, someone started playing some piano music close to me,... probably edge actually playing the piano i worked out in the end, really nice, lovely shapes... reminded me of the skryabin at least in mood... so i'm lying there feeling all freshly woken & langourous & he (not knowing i was in) went upstairs & started pumping out some breakbeat tune he's working on that just didn't sit so well with where i was at, where his piano playing had put me...

hmmm, anyway, the real world out there...

x

regent street at the end of an alley 

autumn colours reflected in puddle 

london

finished ghost of chance by william burroughs last night in bed so i picked up capital by maureen duffy as i went about my day today.

i'd bought it awhile back but hadn't read it yet, somehow it didn't appeal to me before but then i was reading the london review of books and someone mentioned her name in an article and when i checked that the book had been written in the 70's somehow this appeased me... so anyway i'm reading it, and it seems appropriate to be reading it after ghost of chance, burroughs and duffy seem to share an experimental edge, also the way time is presented in both books...

capital published in '75, almost thirty years ago, walking around london today reading this...

ate in top nosh, absolutely my favourite falafel place in london... anywhere in fact, when i moved to holloway and started going to the amazon cafe i was struck by how good there falafel was, almost as good as top nosh, they being the bench mark.

as i came in the proprietor was looking at a copy of a student newspaper that had named his place as doing the best kebabs, the evening standard had named his falafels the best sometime before he told me.

he also told me that they would be shutting for december, maybe for good, depending on this deal he's working out with the landlord, he said he always wanted to reach 60, see his son through university, pay off the mortgage then he could retire, all these things have now happened so maybe this is good timing... he'd been there 14 years, half the time ago since the novel was published, similar amount of time for the other arabic restaurant that i have always called the lebanese bakery even though they are not lebanese (?) which is round the corner from top nosh.

then i went into regent street and bought a few warm clothes, then back up to home.

all this on this beautiful day, choosing ways around town that allowed me to walk through lovely streets, taking pictures, some of which i'm uploading here...

then tonight i went up to stansted airport to meet josiah & grace off their plane from ireland, nice to be able to take grace off her mum who obviously needs a cigarette and go change her nappy...

lovely to see them, i've missed them since thursday when they left, did i mention before that after spending so long trying to get her to say r.... she now calls me wa ha, uncle wa ha... me & josiah piss ourselves laughing...

x

hangover coffee & cigarettes

went to the last of bash on saturday & consequently had a hideous hangover yesterday.

so drunk & foolish when i got in i didn't drink water before going to bed, basic rule of drinking heavily forgotten.

so yesterday was quite hard at first. one of those nauseous hangover, no headache just a lingering mistrust of your stomach.

me & spski went out to the pictures, beautiful day, made it down to the angel just in time to catch coffee & cigarettes, the new jim jarmusch film. how perfect for a start just the expreience of going to the cinema when hungover, yesterday sudden changes in temperature or movements made me feel terrible, to sit in a darkened room not moving, screen on the green cinema has such comfortable seats... & then what a perfect film to ease me back into humanity. i could easily wacth that film again, made me think of bo - she always used to talk about cooking a meal for her house which was just coffe & cigarettes (and they'll just have to bloody like it won't they?)

x

last night of bash burroughs arnica

saw bash last night & i'm going again tonight - the last night, with D (who doesn't write books about cars) & M (new housemate).

last night it was the pigs, was going to be E as well but she didn't make it, this & other small petty thoughts about my life, tiny grievances, melted into nothing as the play got under way with bo & nash beside me... i went on wednesday too & met the writer Neil Labute albeit briefly.

i was going to go to an enlightened discussion group with the andrew cohen people this afternoon but timing didn't quite work, instead just dealing with a few things i need to deal with, leisurely saturday, lent M my bilingual pablo neruda & borrowed ghost of chance from her, a late burroughs that i haven't read before. i've put this picture up in contrast to the very grey day we're having today out there,...

went out to the amazon for breakfast with spski today, really nice, on the way home i had my hand in my pocket & i could only feel one of the two small cylindrical objects that i always have with me... when i got in i checked and i found that i had my lipsalve but that i did not have my arnica, nowhere @ home either (that i can see)...

exactly four weeks ago today, as i was recording the music to bash, i had a hard time, stress, emotional bruising, i reached for my arnica & i'd left it @ home. strange to be without something that you know helps you in troubled times. i remember when i bought arnica for the first time (instead of josiah just giving me some every now & again), it was one of those times when me & E were breaking up and i accepted that my life would be hard for a while, this at least a year ago. i forgave myself any mad behaviour that was coming, the kind of bigness of heart that i have towards others sometimes when they are going through stuff, i told it to myself. always have arnica with you...

& now i don't have that kind of trauma going on, i am finding this season a bit hard, not depression as such but a little troubled, so i find myself getting over small troubles almost every day (don't we all) and as i'm accepting that as where i'm @ this autumn i'm not reaching for the arnica, getting more used to dealing with stuff without it,

i just hope i get some more before i have any big upset to deal with...

x

brilliant light & dark shade a few days ago 

old resonance

so my sister saw a poem on the tube which reminded her of me, this prompted me to go to the poems on the underground website and look through a fair few poems, i've only found a way to get to poems from 3 - 4 years ago, i would love to have a look @ poems from further back, poems on the underground has been such a great aspect of my life in this city, my first glimpses of c p cavafy & of pablo neruda came from the tube,...

so browsing through the last few years of poems was quite something, some that i hadn't seen, some that hadn't grabbed me, but the odd one that had touched me, strange how seeing the graphics and the text from a poem on the underground can really evoke that time for me, some isolated poems, then a whole rash of them that i'd been scribbling down on whatever came to hand back then...

listening now to a tune called monk that i wrote years and years ago, maybe the first production of mine that i liked, that felt complete, still not so many of them kicking around, this on a cd i made for one of my classes which i threw these old tracks onto on a whim, this one now i called sol, both titles came from the era of naming things by the name i'd given a sample in my S950, the basic name it gives you is TONE, MONK is a derivation of that, SOL isn't far off, sol based on a recording i made @ the brick lane festival of a street piano, mixed with a sample from bill evans playing solar (the miles davis tune), really lovely listening to old tunes, both of these written since i moved to london, with some poem on the underground resonating in my brain somewhere...

x

tube transport training day behaviour awareness

had a training day at work given by a marvellous disability awareness teacher, although she immediately told us she'd rather it be about behaviour, an amazing analogy later in the day about acting, sometimes you think a certain way to inform your acting (internal to external), sometimes you act a certain way and that feeds your thoughts (external to internal), in the same way, sometimes a shift in our awareness can change our behaviour / language, but sometimes a shift in our language can effect a shift in our thoughts...

amazing light we've had today too, taking lots of pictures with my new phone and with my little camera,

& then i was on the tube coming home, in the last carriage of the victoria line train by the first set of double doors, (which is the best place to get off @ finsbury park), i saw a poem, the long war by laurie lee (curiously with her birth year this time, old style), and i realised i'd noticed exactly the same poem, in exactly the same place on the train a previous day, in fact i'd tried to align it a bit better because one of the top lines was half hidden, i got quite a few funny looks for that, leaning over and tugging at it to no avail, it was definately the same train because the same line was half hidden...

i may start counting how many different trains i encounter on my journeys, always at the same point in them as i am...

(internal tube train spotter)

x

bash audience book done

went to see the play for the fourth time last night, but this time with some of my housemates, i wish i'd started this a bit sooner, only 5 performances left and now i really want more of my friends to see it. it's funny, with a few people i'm slightly hurt that they haven't yet, and almost certainly won't go and see it, which is not really something i'm liking about myself... understandable though it is. in a wider context i see this play now as a very high quality thing and it would be a shame to miss it, quite apart from my connection to it...

the slightly hurt side of things is to do with a wider thing of having shifted down a gear or three in a certain half assed relationship i'm (not) in. once my lover now my friend as fiona apple has it, what a cruel thing to pretend. although for this once my friend then my lover then my friend then my lover then my friend then my lover then my... is more to the point, you'd think i'd be getting used to that shift by now...

i finished jonathon strange & mr norrell the other day, just after my sister as it goes, that was funny, i'd intended to wake up slowly on wednesday morning and finish it, something which made K almost yell in frustration that i was going to beat her to it, which of course made me enjoy that all the more, but then wednesday didn't go like that at all, and she finished on the way home from work, me just before i went to sleep that night, good book. satisfying, i'm in LRB limbo for now, as i can easily be these days with so many back issues lying around.

oh & i guess i want to blog this, from tuesday night, i went round to josiah's for some dinner and to pick up something B had given her for me, she was on the phone when i arrived. she is on the phone alot these days. so i made myself a cup of tea and went into the kitchen to read the book (still in it then), time passed, i got as far as i wanted to in the book, realising i was that close to the end and not wanting to be interrupted in that last stretch, so i checked the clock & josiah had been on the phone since i arrived for 20 minutes... i made my presence felt, fetched the thing that i'd come to get, josiah still talking, eventually @ 25 minutes & by now she's stopped talking (to D - up in scotland) but had started talking to someone else... & i left, josiah surprised, you don't have to go you know, i raised my eyebrows and glinted my eyes slightly and walked out, my annoyance gone by the time i reached mine (4 minutes later), in fact the annoyance of it pretty much entirely balanced by the action of going, of making that point,

i guess it illustrates josiah's ability to talk, how comfortable i am being there and she with having me there, grace long in bed by this time, but we all step over certain lines with our friends and they let us know if they are good enough friends, i'm going round there now in fact.

cedric nash was with us for 5 days or so this week, he's gone now, backpack on his back, going on the European Social Forum march this afternoon then on to heathrow, india. the ESF which i completely failed to get to at all, there was a talk on the myth of zionism this morning that i could have got to, but you know my bed was sooo nice during that meeting,

balthazara being very loving just now with me,

x

absence

been a little while since i last blogged, my life has been disrupted by my friend josiah being hounded by her ex-boyfriend, father of grace, also this weather here in england is getting really cold, time to change my answer phone message, not only that but i forgot to buy cat food in the last couple of days, poor balthazara has been starving,

i'm alright though, very tired now, i'm addicted to this game, it reminds me of a spectrum game that my family used to have...

any way, later kids,

oh, and why don't the poems on the underground have the dates when the poet was born anymore?

x

thankyou G

so maybe you'll think bad of me for this?

i went out into the world to eat something tonight, jai was my chosen venue, even had a lovely conversation with a new friend on the way there, jai shut, so la porchetta got my business, read some of this huge huge book that me & K are reading and ate.

and how did i pay for it?

this is the thing, concerned as i am that i may have trouble lasting til payday i was also tidying my room today in preparation for grace's stay here tomorrow, i came accross a pot that belongs to G, previous occupant of this room. actually 2 whole shelves of this stuff remains here, it's been awhile (a year?) and i may chuck it out one of these days.

anyway the pot, one of those pots many of us have with small change, my pot, (well, i created the pot today, it was a part of my desk) has pennies, twopennies and 5-pence pieces in it, never amounts to much. G's pot however has the aforementioned, plus 10-pence pieces, 20-pence pieces, 50-pence pieces and pound coins!?!

plus francs from a couple of different countries, euros, dollars... plus sundry small items, like yet to be developed film, a magnifying glass (ish), two nail clippers...

well let me tell you that in these (slightly) lean times this is a find. a small amount of expeditionary digging gave me enough for my pizza. just the knowledge that i have that kind of buffer, when my bank says no sir! i can exist for a few days on this pot, also that i have to look for it, it's not just there, i have to sit down and sort...

so thankyou G for your past diligence. who knows, maybe i'll keep a note of it and give it to you back in more minted times...?

i resigned in a match against G a couple of days ago, not like me to do that but it was getting really tricky to move at all, maybe i should have stuck with it and tried for a stalemate... me & G used to play all the time when he lived here, now we play all the time anyway, (thankyou gameknot). i used to have the edge over G, i don't know that i'm losing it necesarily, but he's been beating me a bit recently...

actually cedric nash is seeing G today, cedric nash who appeared behind me this afternoon whilst i was still in my towel, first waking hour of the day making myself a tea, i hear this hmmm behind me & there he stands, with us for 5 days or so he reckons, always nice to see him. just as i'm struggling to complete harbour walls which i started (lyrically) when he was last here.

x

the truth

so i got to meet andrew cohen last night, only to say how much i enjoyed his talk and to tell him a little about my relation to his teaching over the years, he asked if i was coming to the retreat, (which is going on right now), and obviously i'm not at it, bo's birthday celebrations today and anyway i can't afford to spend that much, but i realise that i would really like to do it one day.

he is a spiritual teacher who i was really ckecking out around the time i was leaving university through to when i moved to london a year or so later, at that time i'd been reading books on zen buddhism (& i read my christmas humphreys book on zen) by people like alan watts, also andrew harvey, andrew cohen was who i found at the end of that trail of writing, a living and breathing man. also his teaching seemed (and still does seem) to resonate with certain visionary hallucinogenic experiences i've had.

i had a long day of teaching yesterday, ending up with two of my students collaring me to go through their songs and find accompaniments to them (they're performing in the lesson next week - i performed wild is the wind in the lesson this week), which bothered me in the end because i didn't have much time to get to the talk, in fact i snapped at the last student, (who was taking the piss), so i was in a bothered state, not dissimilar to the state i was in just before i reached my sister on wednesday, in fact i spoke to E today & she told me bo was a little upset about what i said to her about her plans for today, on that day, i told K (sis) that i was annoyed by it but i hadn't wanted to sound so annoyed, anyway, a slightly dark place to be. i saw josiah very briefly, she in the throws of her first whole night without grace, it's hard...

so i got to the talk and got chatting to people, ended up sat next to a woman (L) from america who runs earthaction, she told me her time as an art teacher gave her many of the skills she uses now running this huge organisation. i found that in the early part of the talk i was overcome by sleepiness, even started drifting off in the way where you almost start to dream, in a way i was already dreaming.. but L was taking copious notes and following this i got out my pen and started writing a few things on my hand, that feeling of the point on my skin and of the focussing of my mind allowed me to be more with andrews words, i took off my shoes as well which was amazing...

the talk was great, he reminded me a little of edward said in his ability to create a really big picture and then take you through it.

i found that the whole experience really put me back where i belong, back to who i am. it's almost as if the darker, bothered me actually did fall asleep and my truer self remained.

the question for me now is whether i'm happy to leave it like this, where i go to see this man speak every now again and feel centred by his words even as i'm feeling challenged by them, or whether i want to go deeper into it. back then when i'd just moved to london i was struck by him saying freedom can't be just a hobby, it has to be the most important thing in your life. this along with the fact that i only ever saw andrew cohens books on their shelves made me take a step back, it wasn't the most important thing back then.

x

nippy heard it too

only last week nippy found that same cd (of an old cops gig) and listened to it in her car...

so that's a little bit wierd

x

well it's all very nice today

got a lovely long email and indeed a portion of her journal post from my correspondent, then i went downstairs to cook myself beakfast, something i should do moreof, i'm poorer than i was last year and i can't afford to go to cafe's as much (sadly), so i took down some music to listen to, and it was a recordong of a Hotel Full of Cops gig @ the spitz back in april 2001, late incarnation of the band, nippy on vocals and no N on guitar, the era when J the dj was shuffling further & further off stage with every gig, and you know people? it rocked,

really nice to hear it, 40 minute set, from one of my creations (rare) through J's tracks, one of J's based on my bassline (which i really love, nippy's great on it but beefy used to be soooo great on that track), through to S's more techno-esque tracks, ending with that great drum'n'bass version of inside straight we used to do, nippy coming through really nicely on the later tracks particularly, edge ckecking it out at one point, because nippy recycles so many of her vocals, he's playing the odd gig with her these days and he's stood there checking these lyrics he's familiar with, done in such a rudely different style... nice to hear myself in there, the different sounds i used to use, from the vintage keys and from the nanopiano,.... and then just the pleasure of hearing it when it's particularly working, music that i was a part of, we were a great band, albeit incredibly adhoc.

then i phoned orange, all ready with my line about why they should give me the phone i want for nothing, actually the same phone K has, damn near the same line she used as well, but F, the woman i spoke to, was just alright, there you go, that's fine no argument necessary, whereas earlier this week i'd had (and i forget her name) who was standing firm that with my tariff i would have to pay £29 for that phone,... it's all about who you get people,

several years ago when i started doing my tax return i was paralysed with fear. i rang up the helpline and an exceedingly helpful man calmed me down, told me what numbers to put where, made it all really easy, i thank you anonymous tax phone man even now. every year since then i've rung up this helpline only to find grumpy, begrudgingly helpful people... but of course you want it that way round, i don't need exceedingly helpful man quite so much now, i'm still afraid but with every passing year it gets easier, this year i did josiahs tax return as well, (look at me getting over my fears, you could almost write a bad made for tv movie about it, 80's style)

so that's it really, nice, nice, nice. getting my new phone on monday (between 9am and 5:30pm - helpfully), going to listen to the recording of the rehearsal the other day, then maybe find someone to go see bash with tonight...?

x

josiah lack of sleep turbulence pictures with sis listing books joy links too

had breakfast with josiah & grace, got rained on hugely on the way to the cafe in a shower that lasted just long enough to soak me, the amazon was full, josiah late, so manolis had our custom, they arrived once i'd dried graces chair and strapped it in place, grace looking at me curiously as i repeated my name to her heaps of times, i've got her all day on monday so maybe she'll be saying uncle r by the time i give her back to her mum.

grace teething so josiah very short on sleep with all the mad turbulence that brings,

met my sister k tonight for a trip to the pictures, i think it's the power of this book over me but as i was approaching ray's jazz where i was meeting her i was feeling plagued by a swarm of small irritations and i said to myself my aggravations are legion, and this amused me enough to be rid of them, i've repeated this a couple of times since when i've been mulling over one thing or another and it has a certain potency, also potent is the power of my relationship with k, the telling of small woes...

we were originally going to see anchorman, my second time, because i'm the only person she knows who would see it with her, but it's almost left london, (only on in far off romford and it's ilk) so we settled on terminal, except that it was sold out, much to her chagrin (i was unmoved either by the idea of watching it or by being denied it). so we settled in the end on dodgeball, which had it's moments, certain genius cameos, and was certainly a whole lot better than the stepford wives which was our last cinema trip.

lovely to see k, left her on the southbound northern line platform @ leicester square and followed a few fairly dr whoesque corridors to the picadilly line, almost missed my stop (again) through reading that book.

that book which is now at the top of a list of books that i've read recently on this very blog, i also added a links bit but couldn't think of much to link to just yet. quite pleased with myself that i worked out how to do even just this, now if i only knew how to make the books text a little smaller, maybe a different colour.... how much i like looking back at the books i've read, reminds me of my early blogging, typing in a book to my profile and searching for other people who'd read that book in blogdom...

oh literature...

x

empty yet full day

rehearsed the 4 piece, there you go, the percushunist has disapeared from my view, maybe it will be just a 4 piece now? a bad spelling moment, need my bed, a little upsetting because of a comment from one of the musicians, basically it's my compositions being worked on & it makes me vulnerable, but aside from that it was a great rehearsal, the music coming together nicely, strange how small things can overturn your apple cart though, still niggling at me that comment,

also taught my first notation class of the year, that was good, i had a notion to go catch the end of bash but i was too late, so i didn't meet with who i thought i might, funny how lightly or heavily these things effect us,

caught up with dr k when i got home, feel as though i haven't seen much of her recently,

day off again tomorrow,...

oh look mr longcat just go to bed, you're not making any sense....

x

glacier auntie E book symbiosis

so i lost my keys, two weeks ago, i went home to blewbury to see my family & when i came back i reached into my pocket and there they weren't,

just prior to leaving the house before the trip i'd had to nip out to buy cat food and in the hurry, i thought maybe i'd put them down somewhere, but i really looked and they were nowhere to be found, i phoned home and they weren't there, even phoned my friend M to see if i'd left them round there,... no avail,

because we have so many people living in this house there is a spare set, i had that for awhile but it was beginning to impinge on the other housemates, C needed them earlier this week and so she'd borrowed auntie E's set, which i then swapped for the spare set, and needed to return to auntie E before tomorrow, when she'll need them.

i was gradually accepting the fact that i'd lost my set, at some point in the last 2 weeks i'd taken my camera out of my pocket and the long string had pulled my keys out of my pocket, i started to believe that my keys were somewhere in the lovely countryside around blewbury, dropped on one of the walks i'd gone on,

so today, just as i was about to leave the house, i picked up my keys, and realised they were my keys, they'd been there all along, and spski commented later as i was telling him, your room is like a glacier, things disappear into it that come back at some point later, we started talking about that alpen climbing accident in which some people fell into a glacier in the 20's, only to come out again, perfectly preserved almost 70 years later,...

so on my way home from waitrose today i dropped in on auntie E and gave her her keys back, fell into a long chat, which is inescapable, and finally left there i don't know how many hours later, lovely though this chat, talked about family, relatives, distant relatives you've never met...

it struck me this afternoon as i was reading in bed the book that D & H gave me as a present for singing @ their wedding, that my sister K would enjoy this book. it is a huge hardback called Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. i never buy hardbacks, they are too much of a pain in the arse to read, but this seems to be a really well written book, D has given me one book before which was great, i do trust his book choosing abilities,

i left the wedding last night around 11:30 to a light drizzle, walked along the thames to the cutty sark DLR getting actually really wet, just in my suit, trying to protect this book in my jacket but not succeeding, really was very wet when i got onto the train, wetter than i've yet been in the suit, meant that i didn't want to rest the book on my legs as i began reading it in my drunken state, had to hold it up, away from contact with my wet clothes,... pain, huge hardbacks, what can you do? and it is a lovely present,

so i rang my sister today after going to manolis's too late to eat, had a brief chat with him and scrutinised his globe of the world, had yet another oh, that's where that is moment, (this time with cyprus) which i hope to have many more of, eventually ate in O & L juice bar on the holloway road for the first time, not bad as a contrast to the dross that missing manolis on a sunday normally offers me, but to be honest the food on offer is alright, but the same but better food i could get @ the italian deli round the corner from me, so why aren't i eating there on a sunday?

anyway, the point is i spoke to my sister, and amongst other things i recomended this book to her, and she said yes, i do like it, i'm reading it now, which is (i believe), unprecedented for me & her, if not for me & most people, except for when i was in that book club back then, so although symbiosis is the wrong word almost entirely, that's the best i've got today, my and K are symbiotically reading Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrel, it's going to be tricky talking about it, i think we're going to have to start quoting what page we're on to make sure we don't tell each other what they're about to read... anyway, also had a nice chat to E today, maybe go to the pictures this week, but i must go now, because i might go to the pictures this very night but i'd better get my arse in gear if that's going to happen,...

adios

x

wedding album reconsidering

D & H got married today, in a Fantastic style, H's dad air guitared with the best of them at the end of the night, well, at my end of that night, i'm home and sniffing now, who knows maybe they're still rocking over there in grenwich,

when i got up this morning i sang the song i wanted to sing at the wedding and i couldn't reach all the notes satisfactorily, i've had this cold advancing on me (in me), and it started in my throat, today it shifted to a cough and now in fact to a runny nose, but the main issue was my voice,

i drank all day, spent a fair bit of time with my old friend G who used to drum in the Red Herrings - a band i was in @ university which is where i know this whole crowd today from,

great, great speeches, very funny, very moving ceremony, great music used in the ceremony, theme tunes to tv programmes,

so my turn came to sing after the cake was cut, i was wearing my paul smith suit, i sat down at the (very nice) grand piano and played the first chord singing love me, hoping that the melody would come to me, and then i got into it, opened my eyes midway through to see a video camera right in my face, (common theme throughout the wedding), i hit the notes, i got a really nice response, slight possibility that i was just drunk and didn't notice that i didn't hit the notes, but i don't think so, after i sang i nodded to my cold and said ok then, bring it on, run through me, and hence the sniffing now,

i've been emailing my album to someone in canada and you know i've been really enjoying reevaluating it, i made it years ago, got it to a certain point, not properly mixed / mastered which is because i'm not able to do that on my own, i gave it to a few different people to get feedback on it, intending to throwout certain tunes and produce up the rest, then i moved on from writing musicon computers and got into singing with the piano, so it just sat there gathering the comments of these various people i chose,

and now in a compressed form (sort of mp3 compression but they're wav files still..?) it's being heard by j s, my new email correspondent, and i've really dug the process,

x ok sniffy bedtime x