after the rehearsal tonight, when we got home i realised that i'd left my keys & my travel card (you know the blue plastic holder, i keep all kinds of things in mine - including my cash card) @ the rehearsal place, which is an office on the other side of town...
one of the keys on my keyring is a key i have to give back to the council tomorrow by midday... being josiah's key, thankfully auntie E has another key so i've just been and got that, i've got the spare keys to this house, i've sorted out the immediate money problem i had... it just seems to me that this is absolutely the perfect time to be leaving those things there, @ no other time could it be trickier...
anyway, winge, winge, moan, moan, i'm toying with the idea of watching some seinfeld... auntie E's going to bang on my door @ 9 tomorrow morning and i really can't stay in bed, still some items to be taken to the charity shop, plants to be moved here (and then looked after until i can get them to brighton, i'm not a natural gardener, it will be a test...), then once it's all done i'm taking the keys to the council office, probably around eleven, then straight to the landlord's to practise connie, which as i've said is named after my brand new niece and my gran, but now i've heard from felinity that my cousin told her they didn't name their daughter after gran, it's the same name, just a coincidence... somethin slightly funny about that, anyway my tune is for both of them, whether the baby is named after gran or not...
in fact i've been calling her my niece but i guess she's not my niece, maybe she's a second cousin? being my cousin's child... hmmmm?
whilst on the estate just now (getting auntie E's key) i took the big bag of bottles to the bottle bank on hornsey road, smashing things when annoyed with yourself is wonderful... quite cured me,
but look i'm rambling... later kids...
x
Sunday, July 31, 2005
Saturday, July 30, 2005
short journeys gift from the universe
much walking between here & josiah's old flat today (meaning friday - still friday for me now), touched with a certain melancholy, linked with this idea of mourning that flat as though it were a person that i alluded to in my last post... all the journeys from here to there with a cup of tea (in the mug they gave me for my birthday last year), all the journeys back with that empty mug... and many other assorted items...
i had a long talk with josiah sat in her garden (over the phone) which was really nice, i miss her, & grace of course...
the last journey back i was carrying our mop & bucket, windchimes, the mug, the porn chair, listening to gillian welch singing one monkey don't stop the show... that melancholy almost tangible, the windchimes were threaded onto the mop handle, the mug forced onto the end of the same handle, through it's handle... firmly in place so as not to fall and break, all that in one hand with the porn chair in the other...
the porn chair to go to P, i was looking at it earlier today, almost resigned to throwing it out when she came to mind, & of course she wants it, though i'm keeping it for her for a week or so... sitting now behind my keyboard... much comedy potential that chair...
then much later me & K shared an indian takeaway & then a DVD, we decided on enduring love in the shop, but when we got it into our player it turned out to be the machinist, we almost didn't watch it, the video shop had shut by the time we found this out... but we decided to give it a go...
so pure accident meaning we had no expectations of this film at all...
and it was fucking great...
(i very rarely curse in this blog but sometimes you just have to)
i don't want to say too much about it because i really think you should watch it if you haven't and if you're going to watch it i don't want you to know anything about it...
but if you do watch it be warned it messes with your head...
really great film, and a complete accident that we got it, unless the shop guy secretly knew we needed to see this film and slipped it in, but on balance i think it was the universe, giving us what we needed...
it's enough to bring out the hippy in me...
x
i had a long talk with josiah sat in her garden (over the phone) which was really nice, i miss her, & grace of course...
the last journey back i was carrying our mop & bucket, windchimes, the mug, the porn chair, listening to gillian welch singing one monkey don't stop the show... that melancholy almost tangible, the windchimes were threaded onto the mop handle, the mug forced onto the end of the same handle, through it's handle... firmly in place so as not to fall and break, all that in one hand with the porn chair in the other...
the porn chair to go to P, i was looking at it earlier today, almost resigned to throwing it out when she came to mind, & of course she wants it, though i'm keeping it for her for a week or so... sitting now behind my keyboard... much comedy potential that chair...
then much later me & K shared an indian takeaway & then a DVD, we decided on enduring love in the shop, but when we got it into our player it turned out to be the machinist, we almost didn't watch it, the video shop had shut by the time we found this out... but we decided to give it a go...
so pure accident meaning we had no expectations of this film at all...
and it was fucking great...
(i very rarely curse in this blog but sometimes you just have to)
i don't want to say too much about it because i really think you should watch it if you haven't and if you're going to watch it i don't want you to know anything about it...
but if you do watch it be warned it messes with your head...
really great film, and a complete accident that we got it, unless the shop guy secretly knew we needed to see this film and slipped it in, but on balance i think it was the universe, giving us what we needed...
it's enough to bring out the hippy in me...
x
Friday, July 29, 2005
norway emptying a flat new life for old
closing in on connie, six days left 'til the recording and it's getting there - slowly,
i was playing it just now and i was struck by how similar an act it seems to the norwegians, claiming back land from the sea, 2 weeks ago this piece was a loose structure, some firm melodic/arrangement ideas and the rest improvisation... the sea, if you will,
as time goes on i take more of the playing that is... natural, that just comes out when i sit at the piano, and i examine it and fix it so that i do the same each time, instead of the ebb & flow of improvised arrangements which is how i normally play...
claiming back land (fixed melodies, arrangements) from sea (improvised arrangements),
whilst still keeping lagoons and streams, to push the analogy just a little further, i still have improvised sections, some left hand, some right hand, some both...
i've said it before i know, but i love writing music...
the other act that's going on beside this creativity is the clearing of josiah's old flat, the keys have to back with the housing association on monday, met with S today, one of the caretakers on the estate and we cleared the big objects, the bed, cooker, fridge, washing machine,... the fate of the big wicker chair that josiah used to call the porn chair and a small table that auntie E calls the threpenny bit table, once i've settled their final location (probably by the bins waiting for someone to pick them up if they want them) it's just about throwing everything out, recycling what i can (& can be arsed to), mopping the floor, giving it a cursory clean... saying goodbye...
i feel a little as though it has died, the kind of ritual you go through with the body of someone you loved, you still love, although they're no longer there, the time set aside for mourning, laying the body out for a few days, the wake... me & spski passed by the flat this afternoon after a trip to manolis, spski said it was odd seeing a flat with the soul taken out of it...
and just as this flat passes away a new life comes along, when i got to the estate this afternoon i found S sat on his barrow, (which he'd brought to move the heavy things from the flat) talking with D, auntie E's son, expectant father, auntie E was @ the hospital with D's girlfriend, D didn't have keys to his mums flat and was waiting to get a bag and go back to the hospital, he already had the pub worked out where he was going to have a drink afterwards, it hadn't happened by then but it must have happened by now, (mind you, some labours can be long, long, long)...
x
i was playing it just now and i was struck by how similar an act it seems to the norwegians, claiming back land from the sea, 2 weeks ago this piece was a loose structure, some firm melodic/arrangement ideas and the rest improvisation... the sea, if you will,
as time goes on i take more of the playing that is... natural, that just comes out when i sit at the piano, and i examine it and fix it so that i do the same each time, instead of the ebb & flow of improvised arrangements which is how i normally play...
claiming back land (fixed melodies, arrangements) from sea (improvised arrangements),
whilst still keeping lagoons and streams, to push the analogy just a little further, i still have improvised sections, some left hand, some right hand, some both...
i've said it before i know, but i love writing music...
the other act that's going on beside this creativity is the clearing of josiah's old flat, the keys have to back with the housing association on monday, met with S today, one of the caretakers on the estate and we cleared the big objects, the bed, cooker, fridge, washing machine,... the fate of the big wicker chair that josiah used to call the porn chair and a small table that auntie E calls the threpenny bit table, once i've settled their final location (probably by the bins waiting for someone to pick them up if they want them) it's just about throwing everything out, recycling what i can (& can be arsed to), mopping the floor, giving it a cursory clean... saying goodbye...
i feel a little as though it has died, the kind of ritual you go through with the body of someone you loved, you still love, although they're no longer there, the time set aside for mourning, laying the body out for a few days, the wake... me & spski passed by the flat this afternoon after a trip to manolis, spski said it was odd seeing a flat with the soul taken out of it...
and just as this flat passes away a new life comes along, when i got to the estate this afternoon i found S sat on his barrow, (which he'd brought to move the heavy things from the flat) talking with D, auntie E's son, expectant father, auntie E was @ the hospital with D's girlfriend, D didn't have keys to his mums flat and was waiting to get a bag and go back to the hospital, he already had the pub worked out where he was going to have a drink afterwards, it hadn't happened by then but it must have happened by now, (mind you, some labours can be long, long, long)...
x
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
tube travel high & low culture
had to travel into town and i hadn't eaten, which meant i would have been in a pretty wierd state by the time i cycled in, so i got the tube, i was going out with felinity after so i was committing to several journeys, i saw it as a way to read more...
only a month or so back i used the tube every day, but since the advent of my bike, and also the attacks i've been distanced from that strange world down there...
firstly then reading, which is currently clea by lawrence durrell (more on that later), the book is wonderful, by now in the quartet you're really in his style, his way of switching between characters to express interesting ideas... it is also lighter, somehow less desperate than the other three...
so i'm really digging that...
then the tube, the way in fine...
the way from work to leicester square where i was meeting felinity @ rush hour was a bit mad... often glad not to be a regular rush hour traveler...
but the tube home from meeting felinity...
hmmmmmm...
just how i like it..
so i'm deeply in the book, but just a few stops before warren street (where i changed) i notice a man addressing the next carriage along, i can just see him but i have to ask my neighbour if he's really short or if he's kneeling down?
fortunately my neighbour has all the info, he says he's just knelt, he's talking about disabled access and women giving up their seats for disabled people...
whereupon A (for this turned out to be my neighbours name) asks me about the book i'm reading, and i'm happy to talk to him about it, deeply immersed in it as i am...
clea is the fourth book of the alexandria quartet, which i've been rereading this last month or so, it was cedric nash who introduced me to them properly, (although i'd actually met them by chance before in a bookshop, story told behind that link), and i'm grateful to him for that, as for many things...
the books are set in alexandria (you don't say) and the sense of place that you get from them is very tangible...
Walking about the streets of the summer capital once more, walking by spring sunlight, and a cloudless skirmishing blue sky - half-asleep and half-awake - I felt like the Adam of the medieval legends: the world-compounded body of a man whose flesh was soil, whose bones were stones, whose blood water, whose hair was grass, whose eyesight sunlight, whose breath was wind, and whose thoughts were clouds. And weightless now, as if after some long wasting illness, I found myself turned adrift again to float upon the shallows of Mareotis with it's tide-marks of appetites and desires refunded into the history of the place: an ancient city with all its cruelties intact, pinched upon a desert and a lake.
(not that this is saying bags about the city, but when i read it yesterday i wanted to record it, so many gems in these books)
anyway A is telling me i should go to alexandria, he is a photographer and he proceeded to tell me all kinds of stories about times when he has read such a book and then been driven to go there, photograph it, stories about lorca, fernando pessoa, jose saramago...
really interesting man, just the kind of random conversation that i love, he said he knew someone locally (we were talking for awhile, pausing at the point where our paths diverged, him out to warren street and me to the victoria line), who'd been to alexandria and loved it, knew people out there... this friend of his had said that you can get a boat to alexandria from crete...
much interesting talk, some great stories about pessoa & saramago, portuguese writers, apparently the year of the death of ricardo reis
by saramago is based on a one of pessoa's pseudonyms, (he wrote under many different names)... A travelled to lisbon to follow the trail...
thankyou universe, my first day properly back on the tube and i'm given this...
hmmmmm... (i'm repeating myself),
and then the film, the wedding crashers, me & felinity intended to see it on that day a week or so back, we knew that it was going to be an appropriate choice for us, vince vaughn & owen wilson... we'd seen dodgeball as a second choice months back and they do live in the same world, dodgeball & the wedding chrashers, although the wedding chrashers is miles better,
timeout had been lukewarm about this film & we weren't expecting much,
& yes, yes, YES PLEASE keep making these films... it was wrong in many ways, (in particular the cartoon gay character, but also overlong), but it made us laugh alot, and it so delivered the goods just when you needed it to, hollywood manipulation but when i like it this much i don't mind...
lovely to see felinity, as ever, so nice that the film was so perfectly us,
we ate in that dirt cheap (for westend) eat all you like chinese place, we walked through leicester square itself after the film and they've decked it out in a largely great way in homage to willy wonka, which i really, really want to see...
x
only a month or so back i used the tube every day, but since the advent of my bike, and also the attacks i've been distanced from that strange world down there...
firstly then reading, which is currently clea by lawrence durrell (more on that later), the book is wonderful, by now in the quartet you're really in his style, his way of switching between characters to express interesting ideas... it is also lighter, somehow less desperate than the other three...
so i'm really digging that...
then the tube, the way in fine...
the way from work to leicester square where i was meeting felinity @ rush hour was a bit mad... often glad not to be a regular rush hour traveler...
but the tube home from meeting felinity...
hmmmmmm...
just how i like it..
so i'm deeply in the book, but just a few stops before warren street (where i changed) i notice a man addressing the next carriage along, i can just see him but i have to ask my neighbour if he's really short or if he's kneeling down?
fortunately my neighbour has all the info, he says he's just knelt, he's talking about disabled access and women giving up their seats for disabled people...
whereupon A (for this turned out to be my neighbours name) asks me about the book i'm reading, and i'm happy to talk to him about it, deeply immersed in it as i am...
clea is the fourth book of the alexandria quartet, which i've been rereading this last month or so, it was cedric nash who introduced me to them properly, (although i'd actually met them by chance before in a bookshop, story told behind that link), and i'm grateful to him for that, as for many things...
the books are set in alexandria (you don't say) and the sense of place that you get from them is very tangible...
Walking about the streets of the summer capital once more, walking by spring sunlight, and a cloudless skirmishing blue sky - half-asleep and half-awake - I felt like the Adam of the medieval legends: the world-compounded body of a man whose flesh was soil, whose bones were stones, whose blood water, whose hair was grass, whose eyesight sunlight, whose breath was wind, and whose thoughts were clouds. And weightless now, as if after some long wasting illness, I found myself turned adrift again to float upon the shallows of Mareotis with it's tide-marks of appetites and desires refunded into the history of the place: an ancient city with all its cruelties intact, pinched upon a desert and a lake.
(not that this is saying bags about the city, but when i read it yesterday i wanted to record it, so many gems in these books)
anyway A is telling me i should go to alexandria, he is a photographer and he proceeded to tell me all kinds of stories about times when he has read such a book and then been driven to go there, photograph it, stories about lorca, fernando pessoa, jose saramago...
really interesting man, just the kind of random conversation that i love, he said he knew someone locally (we were talking for awhile, pausing at the point where our paths diverged, him out to warren street and me to the victoria line), who'd been to alexandria and loved it, knew people out there... this friend of his had said that you can get a boat to alexandria from crete...
much interesting talk, some great stories about pessoa & saramago, portuguese writers, apparently the year of the death of ricardo reis
by saramago is based on a one of pessoa's pseudonyms, (he wrote under many different names)... A travelled to lisbon to follow the trail...
thankyou universe, my first day properly back on the tube and i'm given this...
hmmmmm... (i'm repeating myself),
and then the film, the wedding crashers, me & felinity intended to see it on that day a week or so back, we knew that it was going to be an appropriate choice for us, vince vaughn & owen wilson... we'd seen dodgeball as a second choice months back and they do live in the same world, dodgeball & the wedding chrashers, although the wedding chrashers is miles better,
timeout had been lukewarm about this film & we weren't expecting much,
& yes, yes, YES PLEASE keep making these films... it was wrong in many ways, (in particular the cartoon gay character, but also overlong), but it made us laugh alot, and it so delivered the goods just when you needed it to, hollywood manipulation but when i like it this much i don't mind...
lovely to see felinity, as ever, so nice that the film was so perfectly us,
we ate in that dirt cheap (for westend) eat all you like chinese place, we walked through leicester square itself after the film and they've decked it out in a largely great way in homage to willy wonka, which i really, really want to see...
x
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
musician angry neighbour
O came round today & me & K played through some of nippy's tunes with him, he being our new bass player, so we had bass, keys & guitar, 3/5ths of the band...
i really like O, he's a great bass player and he's got just the right attitude...
we're playing as a band @ the party we're having in this house on august 6th... odd to invite random people to that but if you fancy it...? drop me a comment and i'll send you an invite (north london based)...
after O left K went off to teach & i was alone in this big old rambling house, i put on that gorgeous verve remixed album (the first one) and found myself dancing on my own, in the kitchen... i love dancing, but i rarely dance, too self-conscious generally... really nice to just have the place to myself, just after having worked hard as a musician as well... really nice to be reminded that that's what i am, the skills of running a rehearsal cross over with the skills of being a music teacher...
nice work if you can get it...
then after the dancing i went upstairs to T's piano and worked on the tune, connie, tightening up the edges, still one of two bits that need attention, trying to have a rough idea of the atmosphere of the improvised sections, partly crystalised since i decided to name it for my brand new niece, the notion of a new baby in the world, exploring slowly at first, so my two main improvised sections have to be recognisably different in tone, the first will be almost shy, exploratory... fragile, the second more confident, faster, more at home...
i love writing music, the whole process, the initial inspiration, the fleshing out, the gradual finishing... the mix of improvised and worked out sections in the finished tune, the gradually approaching deadline of the recording, set now for next wednesday, 1.00 pm...
midway through my piano playing the doorbell went, being the only one in i went and answered the door to find our friendly next door tree surgeon... only he wasn't so friendly... our bush is massive... it so needs cutting back, gets in our way when we try and get out through the gate, must get in pedestrians way as it bulges out almost half way into the pavement...
so one of our number must have attacked it last night (or maybe earlier today), and put the cut off branches in the open trailer of the tree surgeon...
and he was not a happy man, i've met him several times before and he's really nice, so his frothing at the mouth is nothing like anyone else's frothing at the mouth but it sure is frothing at the mouth...
f**king neighbours... mixed with a customary politeness, very odd...
he dumped the branches back into our garden, in fact as i'm relating it it so reminds me of when our next door neighbour T, dad of M & S got angry when we'd rolled a snowball of snow around his garden, (we were 8ish), spoiling his nice snow and littering his garden with the offending snowball... i don't think i'd seen many real angry people before and i was deeply shocked when he took the (quite large) snowball and threw it over the fence...
sheltered child (sheltered from anger certainly) as i was..
x
i really like O, he's a great bass player and he's got just the right attitude...
we're playing as a band @ the party we're having in this house on august 6th... odd to invite random people to that but if you fancy it...? drop me a comment and i'll send you an invite (north london based)...
after O left K went off to teach & i was alone in this big old rambling house, i put on that gorgeous verve remixed album (the first one) and found myself dancing on my own, in the kitchen... i love dancing, but i rarely dance, too self-conscious generally... really nice to just have the place to myself, just after having worked hard as a musician as well... really nice to be reminded that that's what i am, the skills of running a rehearsal cross over with the skills of being a music teacher...
nice work if you can get it...
then after the dancing i went upstairs to T's piano and worked on the tune, connie, tightening up the edges, still one of two bits that need attention, trying to have a rough idea of the atmosphere of the improvised sections, partly crystalised since i decided to name it for my brand new niece, the notion of a new baby in the world, exploring slowly at first, so my two main improvised sections have to be recognisably different in tone, the first will be almost shy, exploratory... fragile, the second more confident, faster, more at home...
i love writing music, the whole process, the initial inspiration, the fleshing out, the gradual finishing... the mix of improvised and worked out sections in the finished tune, the gradually approaching deadline of the recording, set now for next wednesday, 1.00 pm...
midway through my piano playing the doorbell went, being the only one in i went and answered the door to find our friendly next door tree surgeon... only he wasn't so friendly... our bush is massive... it so needs cutting back, gets in our way when we try and get out through the gate, must get in pedestrians way as it bulges out almost half way into the pavement...
so one of our number must have attacked it last night (or maybe earlier today), and put the cut off branches in the open trailer of the tree surgeon...
and he was not a happy man, i've met him several times before and he's really nice, so his frothing at the mouth is nothing like anyone else's frothing at the mouth but it sure is frothing at the mouth...
f**king neighbours... mixed with a customary politeness, very odd...
he dumped the branches back into our garden, in fact as i'm relating it it so reminds me of when our next door neighbour T, dad of M & S got angry when we'd rolled a snowball of snow around his garden, (we were 8ish), spoiling his nice snow and littering his garden with the offending snowball... i don't think i'd seen many real angry people before and i was deeply shocked when he took the (quite large) snowball and threw it over the fence...
sheltered child (sheltered from anger certainly) as i was..
x
insomnia statistics
crazy sleep patterns actually becoming late, late sleep patterns... not so crazy, fairly regularly late...
living without work, aside from the finacial considerations it so allows me to sleep when i want, which means i sleep alot... i so love my bed...
but then it becomes not being able to sleep when i want because i want to sleep earlier, get up earlier, too much to do to sleep this late...
ok, rant over...
you get the picture... here i am @ 3:30 am and i want to wake up in six & a half hours... which will just mean i'm ratty for a day... not so terrible, get in that bed right now you fool...
really enjoying playing cards with G these days... muttering motorhead lyrics whenever a certain card comes up, yelling in mock fury when we are challenged by some random card event... you wanna piece of me?
which always makes me think of seinfeld and then i want G to like seinfeld...
the tune i've been writing which i'll be hopefully recording next week will be called connie (i think) - after my brand new neice who is in turn named after my gran...
future tunes on the solo piano album will be named for grace... balthazara... i guess... funny how insomnia makes me plan ahead...
and then nelly, in ganching's comments got me onto sitemeter... a free statistics generator for blogs (well, probably for anything), which i have duly installed and put over there under the london bloggers link...
i find it absolutely addictive...
maybe the allure will wear off someday soon but it fascinates me to see all this information about who is reading me... and there are more of you than i'd thought...
not masses more, but a few more, which is nice, although probably just random, one referral came from a website that had me listed as an insignificant microbe... in fact i just checked back and i'm no longer even an insignificant microbe...
x
living without work, aside from the finacial considerations it so allows me to sleep when i want, which means i sleep alot... i so love my bed...
but then it becomes not being able to sleep when i want because i want to sleep earlier, get up earlier, too much to do to sleep this late...
ok, rant over...
you get the picture... here i am @ 3:30 am and i want to wake up in six & a half hours... which will just mean i'm ratty for a day... not so terrible, get in that bed right now you fool...
really enjoying playing cards with G these days... muttering motorhead lyrics whenever a certain card comes up, yelling in mock fury when we are challenged by some random card event... you wanna piece of me?
which always makes me think of seinfeld and then i want G to like seinfeld...
the tune i've been writing which i'll be hopefully recording next week will be called connie (i think) - after my brand new neice who is in turn named after my gran...
future tunes on the solo piano album will be named for grace... balthazara... i guess... funny how insomnia makes me plan ahead...
and then nelly, in ganching's comments got me onto sitemeter... a free statistics generator for blogs (well, probably for anything), which i have duly installed and put over there under the london bloggers link...
i find it absolutely addictive...
maybe the allure will wear off someday soon but it fascinates me to see all this information about who is reading me... and there are more of you than i'd thought...
not masses more, but a few more, which is nice, although probably just random, one referral came from a website that had me listed as an insignificant microbe... in fact i just checked back and i'm no longer even an insignificant microbe...
x
Monday, July 25, 2005
day out of time the moon
a while ago i found out about the 13moon calendar...
just after me & P were no more, a time imbued with a certain manic energy as i plunged into any number of odd esoteric ideas,...
i still like the idea of the 13moon calender, although the fact that it's not actually based on the moon as seen from earth, but is a generalised moon in a pattern that repeats exactly every solar year (the moon follows different patterns to the sun and rarely coincides with solar years)... this detracts from it, but as an alternate way of ordering our days, instead of our irregular calender, it does an alright job...
so i have a look at my calender with no days only numbers, that i converted into a 13moon calender several months back, and today is the day out of time, the whole thing starts again tomorrow, 13 moons each of 28 days, which will eventually lead us back to july 25th (2006), the day out of time...
i've been reading about the moon recently in an excellent series of articles written by an ex-farmer (calls himself JACKME on the megalithic portal site) who has spent a decade or so working out the system behind the great stone circles of england... the point on the horizon where the moon rises or sets moves north and south in a monthly pattern... the furthest north & furthest south it moves follows an 18.6 year pattern, this year (2005) sees the moon reaching as far south as it ever does in this 18.6 year pattern... i don't know when this is but i intend to find out...
so JACKME has spent the last 3 weeks talking about how stone circles can be used to trace where we are in the moons cycles, previously he's been talking about the sun... very interesting guy, lives near the stone circle @ swinside so much of what he says is based on that, but he also travels around the country to watch the sunrise (or set) at any number of other stone circles...
went over to the landlords place to play the piano, i've arranged to record my solo piano piece there in a week and a half, the first of an album of solo piano pieces i hope...
x
just after me & P were no more, a time imbued with a certain manic energy as i plunged into any number of odd esoteric ideas,...
i still like the idea of the 13moon calender, although the fact that it's not actually based on the moon as seen from earth, but is a generalised moon in a pattern that repeats exactly every solar year (the moon follows different patterns to the sun and rarely coincides with solar years)... this detracts from it, but as an alternate way of ordering our days, instead of our irregular calender, it does an alright job...
so i have a look at my calender with no days only numbers, that i converted into a 13moon calender several months back, and today is the day out of time, the whole thing starts again tomorrow, 13 moons each of 28 days, which will eventually lead us back to july 25th (2006), the day out of time...
i've been reading about the moon recently in an excellent series of articles written by an ex-farmer (calls himself JACKME on the megalithic portal site) who has spent a decade or so working out the system behind the great stone circles of england... the point on the horizon where the moon rises or sets moves north and south in a monthly pattern... the furthest north & furthest south it moves follows an 18.6 year pattern, this year (2005) sees the moon reaching as far south as it ever does in this 18.6 year pattern... i don't know when this is but i intend to find out...
so JACKME has spent the last 3 weeks talking about how stone circles can be used to trace where we are in the moons cycles, previously he's been talking about the sun... very interesting guy, lives near the stone circle @ swinside so much of what he says is based on that, but he also travels around the country to watch the sunrise (or set) at any number of other stone circles...
went over to the landlords place to play the piano, i've arranged to record my solo piano piece there in a week and a half, the first of an album of solo piano pieces i hope...
x
Saturday, July 23, 2005
to have and have not
woke up late (nothing new there), strolled downstairs and chatted amiably with G & E, idly opened timeout to see if there was a film on and saw that....
i'd already missed the first half an hour of to have and have not...
so i raced up to the top of the house, found spski watching the blessed film..
and blessed it is ladies and gentlemen, not only lauren bacall & humphrey bogart (they met on this film, had an affair, later got married...) but also hoagy carmichael, the great songwriter... lauren bacall improvised a little wiggle at the end of the film to signify to hoagy carmichael's character that she was happy...
somehow it resonated with the alexandria quartet... that i'm reading, particularly clea, the last one... set in alexandria as the second world war is breaking out, to have and have not set in martinique around the same time, humphrey bogart's drunken friend eddie reminding me of scobie from the quartet...
saw 3-iron last night with K, who is, as joni mitchell puts it, strung out on another man, (california, coming home), the film was great, mad ending which she hated and i loved, we saw it at the curzon soho which is a lovely cinema, i left her getting on a bus @ highbury corner & strolled up holloway road listening to gillian welch, most of time, the revelator with the really long last tune finishing as i got to crystal kebab and ordered a halloumi & falafel pitta, first time for that combination and it was nice...
came home to K, M & G and we played cards awhile...
you know how to whistle don't you steve, just put your lips together and blow...
x
i'd already missed the first half an hour of to have and have not...
so i raced up to the top of the house, found spski watching the blessed film..
and blessed it is ladies and gentlemen, not only lauren bacall & humphrey bogart (they met on this film, had an affair, later got married...) but also hoagy carmichael, the great songwriter... lauren bacall improvised a little wiggle at the end of the film to signify to hoagy carmichael's character that she was happy...
somehow it resonated with the alexandria quartet... that i'm reading, particularly clea, the last one... set in alexandria as the second world war is breaking out, to have and have not set in martinique around the same time, humphrey bogart's drunken friend eddie reminding me of scobie from the quartet...
saw 3-iron last night with K, who is, as joni mitchell puts it, strung out on another man, (california, coming home), the film was great, mad ending which she hated and i loved, we saw it at the curzon soho which is a lovely cinema, i left her getting on a bus @ highbury corner & strolled up holloway road listening to gillian welch, most of time, the revelator with the really long last tune finishing as i got to crystal kebab and ordered a halloumi & falafel pitta, first time for that combination and it was nice...
came home to K, M & G and we played cards awhile...
you know how to whistle don't you steve, just put your lips together and blow...
x
Friday, July 22, 2005
a little down
but as i am a creative genius i will probably get over it..
woke to nippy cancelling tonights gig by text...
then later in the day i spoke with F the french carribean singer who was going to swap me some piano tuition for vocal tuition, only she's not ready for piano tuition yet and we were going to swap some english writing (text for a website) for vocal tuition, then today she told me the writing didn't seem worth the vocal tuition, so i could go on one of her group courses in exchange...?
which isn't what i'm after..
so this is probably fair enough, just to have two let downs in one day...
wrestling with the epinthetic R also infuriating, as new websites always are, one minute they're not going to do what you want, the next minute they are happily chugging away giving you your heart's desire, the next they've clammed up again and you have no idea what happened....?
but on the other side of the balance sheet i got through an onerous piece of work, and i finished mountolive today lying on that odd, circular stone thing atop that odd manmade hillock in that tiny park by the beau arts building...
and honestly, check out the genius link above... such fun to paint and then to see yourself painting...
x
woke to nippy cancelling tonights gig by text...
then later in the day i spoke with F the french carribean singer who was going to swap me some piano tuition for vocal tuition, only she's not ready for piano tuition yet and we were going to swap some english writing (text for a website) for vocal tuition, then today she told me the writing didn't seem worth the vocal tuition, so i could go on one of her group courses in exchange...?
which isn't what i'm after..
so this is probably fair enough, just to have two let downs in one day...
wrestling with the epinthetic R also infuriating, as new websites always are, one minute they're not going to do what you want, the next minute they are happily chugging away giving you your heart's desire, the next they've clammed up again and you have no idea what happened....?
but on the other side of the balance sheet i got through an onerous piece of work, and i finished mountolive today lying on that odd, circular stone thing atop that odd manmade hillock in that tiny park by the beau arts building...
and honestly, check out the genius link above... such fun to paint and then to see yourself painting...
x
Thursday, July 21, 2005
the epinthetic r
i need a bit more regulation in my sleep, too many late nights and odd waking times...
i've just ordered a new website: www.epinthetic.com
but there's nothing there yet, i only just paid for it so it's not even registered properly yet... it comes from something M said to me, she's spanish, talking about the english word: sawing, which, when pronounced, tends to have an r sound before the ing, this r, says M, is the epinthetic r... as my name begins with r it amuses me to think of myself as the epinthetic r, although i still haven't quite worked out what it would mean to describe myself thus...
the r which doesn't exist, but effects the sound... this is kind of what i would like it to mean, but i have no clear definition yet so it might well mean something a little different...
anyway, web domain paid for, some new hosting company i haven't met before, wasn't very careful, so i'm hoping it will work how i want it to work... oh sleep...
i must x
i've just ordered a new website: www.epinthetic.com
but there's nothing there yet, i only just paid for it so it's not even registered properly yet... it comes from something M said to me, she's spanish, talking about the english word: sawing, which, when pronounced, tends to have an r sound before the ing, this r, says M, is the epinthetic r... as my name begins with r it amuses me to think of myself as the epinthetic r, although i still haven't quite worked out what it would mean to describe myself thus...
the r which doesn't exist, but effects the sound... this is kind of what i would like it to mean, but i have no clear definition yet so it might well mean something a little different...
anyway, web domain paid for, some new hosting company i haven't met before, wasn't very careful, so i'm hoping it will work how i want it to work... oh sleep...
i must x
circus troubled libraries
took felinity to see a fantastic show @ the circus space tonight, courtesy of spski, dj & resident of birdbath road who works there...
2nd year students on the foundation degree in circus arts doing their devised graduation pieces...
i don't see enough of this... and by this i don't only mean circus, more broadly i mean performance... good performance...
and the performers we saw tonight are all good performers... which seems to be a whole lot more exacting than music preformance... the strength, and poise necessary to pull off what they did and still make it look graceful...
a few individuals stood out for me in their imagination and ability, but to be honest the whole thing rocked... if you get a chance (tickets are very few now), go & see it, there is a matinee tomorrow (thursday) and then it's each evening until saturday...
then i was looking for a picture of the N4 library here in finsbury park and i came across this piece of news (albeit news on the islington liberal democrat's website & therefore propaganda)...
this relates to a conversation i was having tonight with M, she was talking about the difference between bookshops and libraries, particularly 2nd hand bookshops, the one being elite and the other being open to all... in the sense that 2nd hand bookshops cater to a much smaller demographic than libraries... listening to this i so know that i'm in that much smaller demographic... and this is partly why i find this troubling,
i'm still angry about the closure of the arthur simpson library, i miss it, and i'm reluctant to accept the new N4 library in it's place... i probably should let go off that old library, surely if i find the N4 library not for me then the arthur simpson library was probably equally not for me... i liked it because it had strange, not mainstream films for hire... and to be fair i haven't checked out the N4 libraries film collection...
of course the arthur simpson library was/is closer, and there's nothing like walking passed a heap of rubble that used to be your library and still has the mural alongside it to keep the heart warm to the past and cold to the harsher architecture of the more central, bigger future...
x
2nd year students on the foundation degree in circus arts doing their devised graduation pieces...
i don't see enough of this... and by this i don't only mean circus, more broadly i mean performance... good performance...
and the performers we saw tonight are all good performers... which seems to be a whole lot more exacting than music preformance... the strength, and poise necessary to pull off what they did and still make it look graceful...
a few individuals stood out for me in their imagination and ability, but to be honest the whole thing rocked... if you get a chance (tickets are very few now), go & see it, there is a matinee tomorrow (thursday) and then it's each evening until saturday...
then i was looking for a picture of the N4 library here in finsbury park and i came across this piece of news (albeit news on the islington liberal democrat's website & therefore propaganda)...
this relates to a conversation i was having tonight with M, she was talking about the difference between bookshops and libraries, particularly 2nd hand bookshops, the one being elite and the other being open to all... in the sense that 2nd hand bookshops cater to a much smaller demographic than libraries... listening to this i so know that i'm in that much smaller demographic... and this is partly why i find this troubling,
i'm still angry about the closure of the arthur simpson library, i miss it, and i'm reluctant to accept the new N4 library in it's place... i probably should let go off that old library, surely if i find the N4 library not for me then the arthur simpson library was probably equally not for me... i liked it because it had strange, not mainstream films for hire... and to be fair i haven't checked out the N4 libraries film collection...
of course the arthur simpson library was/is closer, and there's nothing like walking passed a heap of rubble that used to be your library and still has the mural alongside it to keep the heart warm to the past and cold to the harsher architecture of the more central, bigger future...
x
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
balfron & trellick
a question i asked myself on saturday, approaching the blackwall tunnel, which i stated online @ my flickr, is this building:
a sibling of this building?:
the latter being the trellick tower which i wrote a song about in the first year or so after i moved here from oxfordshire... mistakenly calling it the trellis building...
and i've found the answer with a bit of research on the web, which of course has pleased me no end with my detective skills... the first picture is of balfron tower, built a few years before & serving as a model for trellick tower, both designed by erno goldfinger who sued ian fleming for using his name as an arch bad guy in james bond.
if i find the recording i made of the trellis building song, i will post it up here, (assuming it's not rubbish, which i suppose it could be)... i hope i can... (& i hope it's not rubbish)
x
a sibling of this building?:
the latter being the trellick tower which i wrote a song about in the first year or so after i moved here from oxfordshire... mistakenly calling it the trellis building...
and i've found the answer with a bit of research on the web, which of course has pleased me no end with my detective skills... the first picture is of balfron tower, built a few years before & serving as a model for trellick tower, both designed by erno goldfinger who sued ian fleming for using his name as an arch bad guy in james bond.
if i find the recording i made of the trellis building song, i will post it up here, (assuming it's not rubbish, which i suppose it could be)... i hope i can... (& i hope it's not rubbish)
x
Monday, July 18, 2005
happy birthday godma G small bike beside big table & chair
just finished listening to the lovely voice of godma G - funki-g to some but godma to grace & therefore godma G to me, her birthday today and she was doing an internet radio show... it seems it's on the third monday of every month, 18:00 - 19:00 (British time) on Stads FM, i miss her...
after reading ganching's blog i cycled over to the writer by Giancarlo Neri (pictured here beside my beloved but much maligned bike):
it's on hampstead heath, parliament hill, the one-gear nature of my bike was hard work going up the hill, pure bliss coming down...
i met a nice young woman name of R, we circled around the thing, both taking pictures with our phones, met in the middle & spoke a little, then continued circling, at different distances from it... still taking pictures...
x
after reading ganching's blog i cycled over to the writer by Giancarlo Neri (pictured here beside my beloved but much maligned bike):
it's on hampstead heath, parliament hill, the one-gear nature of my bike was hard work going up the hill, pure bliss coming down...
i met a nice young woman name of R, we circled around the thing, both taking pictures with our phones, met in the middle & spoke a little, then continued circling, at different distances from it... still taking pictures...
x
Sunday, July 17, 2005
mammoth sleep after big old move
as i was dropping off last night i said to myself that i wanted to eat @ manolis's today, and therefore to be awake by 2... that would have given me 12 hours, ample...
i finally crawled out of bed @ 4pm... clearly really needed it...
me & josiah had stayed up late on friday night, chatting, smoking & drinking gin with G, K, M...
grace had woken me up @ 9:30am on saturday, five & a half hours sleep that had given me... always nice to see grace, we pootled about for an hour and a half, blowing bubbles, knitting (a tiny bit, me not her - you don't say, almost 2 and she can't knit yet?), playing the guitar ritual (it stands in the corner, one of us strums it, then we sing a vocal line, no words), playing the piano, eating strawberries... before josiah took her to her dad...
i went off to the amazon cafe, ate a hearty breakfast, waited for josiah, then when she didn't make it i brought her a takeaway...
while we were doing the final preparation for the move dr K showed up, i thought she might have done but i forgot all about her, really nice surprise... shortly after that C came, really helpful, in the country for only three days, dr K & C both ex-residents of this house & they never really got on...
auntie E was there by now when Cadiz E showed, the man with his van who i'd hired for the trip... everything went in... the cot wouldn't fit through the bedroom door and there wasn't time to dismantle it there and then so it's coming later... by the time it was almost all packed T from this house came... T & auntie E also not exactly best of friends...
really funny, festive atmosphere, auntie E's 3 year old grandson carrying tiny bits to help... strange that our four helpers (all women) slotted into two pairs of enmities... so many great times, friends made up, arguments had, in the 9 years she lived in that flat... to close it with these two odd pairs...
the other odd thing about it was that grace's dad slept in that flat the night before, he'd been in london going to a gig and lost all his friends and had phoned josiah late on friday night... no electricity in there...
anyway it all fitted in the van, dr K bought josiah & me an espresso and a cup of tea respectively, along with pringles and hobnobs... cadiz E got us going and we rolled off...
took a lovely route through east london, i so love being driven through london when it's a good route... saw a building that looked just like the trellick tower, took pictures of it, (hadn't taken a single picture of the crazy van loading), but actually this is all after the crazy guy:
he was crossing the road slowly in front of us and just as we reached level with him he threw a stone at our window... cadiz E stopped the van, no damage but... crazy guy walks up to the cadiz E's window, shouting violent abuse... claiming we were trying to run him over... cadiz E eventually spitting at him and driving off... no dodgy incident to mess up our move... vary spanish gesture the spitting... crazy thing, random violence, just someone looking for trouble... one more reason josiah really happy to be leaving london...
josiah sang close to you the van, i sang you make me feel so young and new kind of love and almost you'd be so nice to come home to except i don't know the words...
cadiz E said he'd sing but it would start to rain...
he also said he was the best because he had no grandma, a spanish phrase that me & josiah tried to learn in spanish but miraculously had no memory of later that day...
he's doing a one off performance installation thing on friday night... i might take K...
so anyway we reached brighton, took an improvised, windy route and found our way perfectly to the new flat where A & L were working, painting it...
moved everything in, including the sofa which managed to bend spacetime getting through the front door...
we said goodbye to cadiz E, (josiah praising him several times throughout the evening... what a find) & josiah took me & the boys for a pint, really nice pair, reminded me of being seventeen, eighteen, we left the pringles & hobnobs with them as they continued to paint (L a real biscuit man, likes all biscuits), me & josiah drifted down to the seafront... just relaxing, amazed that the move had gone so smoothly, exhausted but not..
i felt the urge to paddle so i rolled up my jeans and did so, the first few waves just perfectly coming up to my knees, then as i heard these 2 girls behind me screaming i saw a succession of much bigger waves going way past my knee...
so i was salty & soggy for much of the rest of the evening, (by the time i was on the tube home around eleven i had just about dried out), we went for bombay sapphire gins overlooking the water, ate a nice meal, just hanging out after the big event, enjoying each other's company...
frank sinatra accompanied my train journey home, i read a bit but was too tired... just grooving away in my small sat down fashion to songs for swingin' lovers
x
i finally crawled out of bed @ 4pm... clearly really needed it...
me & josiah had stayed up late on friday night, chatting, smoking & drinking gin with G, K, M...
grace had woken me up @ 9:30am on saturday, five & a half hours sleep that had given me... always nice to see grace, we pootled about for an hour and a half, blowing bubbles, knitting (a tiny bit, me not her - you don't say, almost 2 and she can't knit yet?), playing the guitar ritual (it stands in the corner, one of us strums it, then we sing a vocal line, no words), playing the piano, eating strawberries... before josiah took her to her dad...
i went off to the amazon cafe, ate a hearty breakfast, waited for josiah, then when she didn't make it i brought her a takeaway...
while we were doing the final preparation for the move dr K showed up, i thought she might have done but i forgot all about her, really nice surprise... shortly after that C came, really helpful, in the country for only three days, dr K & C both ex-residents of this house & they never really got on...
auntie E was there by now when Cadiz E showed, the man with his van who i'd hired for the trip... everything went in... the cot wouldn't fit through the bedroom door and there wasn't time to dismantle it there and then so it's coming later... by the time it was almost all packed T from this house came... T & auntie E also not exactly best of friends...
really funny, festive atmosphere, auntie E's 3 year old grandson carrying tiny bits to help... strange that our four helpers (all women) slotted into two pairs of enmities... so many great times, friends made up, arguments had, in the 9 years she lived in that flat... to close it with these two odd pairs...
the other odd thing about it was that grace's dad slept in that flat the night before, he'd been in london going to a gig and lost all his friends and had phoned josiah late on friday night... no electricity in there...
anyway it all fitted in the van, dr K bought josiah & me an espresso and a cup of tea respectively, along with pringles and hobnobs... cadiz E got us going and we rolled off...
took a lovely route through east london, i so love being driven through london when it's a good route... saw a building that looked just like the trellick tower, took pictures of it, (hadn't taken a single picture of the crazy van loading), but actually this is all after the crazy guy:
he was crossing the road slowly in front of us and just as we reached level with him he threw a stone at our window... cadiz E stopped the van, no damage but... crazy guy walks up to the cadiz E's window, shouting violent abuse... claiming we were trying to run him over... cadiz E eventually spitting at him and driving off... no dodgy incident to mess up our move... vary spanish gesture the spitting... crazy thing, random violence, just someone looking for trouble... one more reason josiah really happy to be leaving london...
josiah sang close to you the van, i sang you make me feel so young and new kind of love and almost you'd be so nice to come home to except i don't know the words...
cadiz E said he'd sing but it would start to rain...
he also said he was the best because he had no grandma, a spanish phrase that me & josiah tried to learn in spanish but miraculously had no memory of later that day...
he's doing a one off performance installation thing on friday night... i might take K...
so anyway we reached brighton, took an improvised, windy route and found our way perfectly to the new flat where A & L were working, painting it...
moved everything in, including the sofa which managed to bend spacetime getting through the front door...
we said goodbye to cadiz E, (josiah praising him several times throughout the evening... what a find) & josiah took me & the boys for a pint, really nice pair, reminded me of being seventeen, eighteen, we left the pringles & hobnobs with them as they continued to paint (L a real biscuit man, likes all biscuits), me & josiah drifted down to the seafront... just relaxing, amazed that the move had gone so smoothly, exhausted but not..
i felt the urge to paddle so i rolled up my jeans and did so, the first few waves just perfectly coming up to my knees, then as i heard these 2 girls behind me screaming i saw a succession of much bigger waves going way past my knee...
so i was salty & soggy for much of the rest of the evening, (by the time i was on the tube home around eleven i had just about dried out), we went for bombay sapphire gins overlooking the water, ate a nice meal, just hanging out after the big event, enjoying each other's company...
frank sinatra accompanied my train journey home, i read a bit but was too tired... just grooving away in my small sat down fashion to songs for swingin' lovers
x
Friday, July 15, 2005
books cycling routes
i popped out to get some more food for balthazara, then over to manolis for a quick bite to eat before i went to work, this meant i took a different route to work today, and it cut 5 - 10 minutes off my journey...?
when i first started cycling to work i found a fairly direct route that was a bit unpleasant as regards traffic... i then changed to a slightly longer one that was much nicer, today i combined the 2 and it surprised me just how out of the way i was going in order to have nice back streets...
(of course i find this great route just as i stop teaching there for the summer)
saw K today and we're going to the pictures next friday i hope... groovy, nippy also in, we're meeting on monday to get ready for a duo gig next thursday...
and i can't find mountolive... i think i left it somewhere on wednesday, (i was leaving all kinds of things everywhere on wednesday... one of those days), i bought three more books from that bookstall outside the NFT, all women this time: what i loved by siri hustvedt, time and tide by edna o'brien & under the net by iris murdoch, this last because of ganching reminiscing about her first years in london & mapping it through this book...
and while i'm about it i'll name the three i bought on monday (when i was still a prime number...): the dark room at longwood by jean-paul kauffman, a thousand acres by jane smiley & the roaches have no king by daniel evan weiss...
who knows when i'm going to read all this, my i'm hoping to read list is already too big even before these go on... i just love buying books...
josiah & grace on their way round, big move tomorrow...
x
when i first started cycling to work i found a fairly direct route that was a bit unpleasant as regards traffic... i then changed to a slightly longer one that was much nicer, today i combined the 2 and it surprised me just how out of the way i was going in order to have nice back streets...
(of course i find this great route just as i stop teaching there for the summer)
saw K today and we're going to the pictures next friday i hope... groovy, nippy also in, we're meeting on monday to get ready for a duo gig next thursday...
and i can't find mountolive... i think i left it somewhere on wednesday, (i was leaving all kinds of things everywhere on wednesday... one of those days), i bought three more books from that bookstall outside the NFT, all women this time: what i loved by siri hustvedt, time and tide by edna o'brien & under the net by iris murdoch, this last because of ganching reminiscing about her first years in london & mapping it through this book...
and while i'm about it i'll name the three i bought on monday (when i was still a prime number...): the dark room at longwood by jean-paul kauffman, a thousand acres by jane smiley & the roaches have no king by daniel evan weiss...
who knows when i'm going to read all this, my i'm hoping to read list is already too big even before these go on... i just love buying books...
josiah & grace on their way round, big move tomorrow...
x
Thursday, July 14, 2005
bombay sapphire gin & frank sinatra
@ around midnight tonight i cycled out into the world to find fresh tonic, the turkish supermarket @ the top of stroud green road was open (as it is all the time) although they only had slimline tonic, (oh, the sacrifices), i returned to the house with tonic and limes and used the bombay sapphire gin that dr K bought me for my birthday to make some killer G & T's...
Gu skinned up and we started talking to interactive Edna, a toy spin off from the incredibles who responds to what you say to her, reminded me of the Artificial Intelligence robot i used to talk to online (i wonder if i can find her.... no, no trace in my mind or online), interactive technology has come a long way since those days, i suppose AI chat-bots are probably fairly sophiscated now, ( i just whizzed past one called ELIZA, modelling a person-centred therapist...)
anyway Gu bought the Edna for M, she said it was just like her, M took it well,
we started playing idiot, we've really got into cards recently, me & Gu were in the kitchen late one night and she used the word stick, it made me ask if she wanted to play cards and we haven't looked back...
anyway, M fell away an hour or so later, me & Gu carried on demonically mixing gins and playing cards, listening to Frank Sinatra which i requested and she managed to supply, all my frank is on vinyl & we only have CD's in the basement...
it struck me that frank & bombay sapphire gin go very well together, i plugged the record player in in our front room about a week ago so i may be dusting off some classic frank sinatra/nelson riddle records in the near future, armed with a bombay sapphire gin & tonic...
bring on the summer...
x
Gu skinned up and we started talking to interactive Edna, a toy spin off from the incredibles who responds to what you say to her, reminded me of the Artificial Intelligence robot i used to talk to online (i wonder if i can find her.... no, no trace in my mind or online), interactive technology has come a long way since those days, i suppose AI chat-bots are probably fairly sophiscated now, ( i just whizzed past one called ELIZA, modelling a person-centred therapist...)
anyway Gu bought the Edna for M, she said it was just like her, M took it well,
we started playing idiot, we've really got into cards recently, me & Gu were in the kitchen late one night and she used the word stick, it made me ask if she wanted to play cards and we haven't looked back...
anyway, M fell away an hour or so later, me & Gu carried on demonically mixing gins and playing cards, listening to Frank Sinatra which i requested and she managed to supply, all my frank is on vinyl & we only have CD's in the basement...
it struck me that frank & bombay sapphire gin go very well together, i plugged the record player in in our front room about a week ago so i may be dusting off some classic frank sinatra/nelson riddle records in the near future, armed with a bombay sapphire gin & tonic...
bring on the summer...
x
Wednesday, July 13, 2005
primary school teacher
walking up hornsey road with josiah, (she's clearing out her flat ready to move) i see the headline proclaiming that one of the bombers was a primary school teacher...
this is twisting my head right up.
aside from this i'm having a by turns nice, by turns frantic day, first day off for a little while, feel somehow as if i can breathe again, i think the party looming really clouded my week last week in a wierd way, also working, so i'm trying to find a man with a van (i have rung many mans with vans in the last hour) to move josiah on the weekend... being the frantic part...
a primary school teacher, about the most human of occupations i can think of... not that i wish to demonise or dehumanise the bombers, just having a hard time fitting those two things into one man... primary school teacher / suicide bomber...
x
this is twisting my head right up.
aside from this i'm having a by turns nice, by turns frantic day, first day off for a little while, feel somehow as if i can breathe again, i think the party looming really clouded my week last week in a wierd way, also working, so i'm trying to find a man with a van (i have rung many mans with vans in the last hour) to move josiah on the weekend... being the frantic part...
a primary school teacher, about the most human of occupations i can think of... not that i wish to demonise or dehumanise the bombers, just having a hard time fitting those two things into one man... primary school teacher / suicide bomber...
x
birthday jai eating apples still
felinity, mum & dad, dr K, & spski (in the end) all joined me for a trip to jai krishna yesterday to sample their delicious vegetarian indian food...
i wasn't sure that dad would like it but he said it was really nice (it is after all really good food, even if it is vegetarian), really nice surprise to see dr K, her dad is about a month or two younger than my dad and we talked about late 50's britain, conscription, my dad being a student and later being in a job that carried deferment, which took him through to when conscription was stopped, dr K's dad going into the army, being posted in kenya, then going back out to kenya after he was discharged, eventually becoming a £10 pomme, sailing over to australia where he started his family, dr K being one of the fruits of that family...
dad gave me a couple of books of sudoku, including one supersudoku which is a 16 by 16 grid, using hexadecimel (0123456789ABCDEF), but the same otherwise, oh the long summer afternoons...
lovely as ever to see felinity who will be joinging me to see the wedding crashers some day soon, she carried mum's guitar all the way from tooting which we'd brought up when we brought the bikes up, my intention is to use it to practise the singing of exact harmonic intervals as laid down in harmonic experience, the huge music theory book i've been holding off until i can really practise what the writer is talking about...
i'm about half way through the apples that i bought on saturday night for the apple bobbing, which didn't happen in the end, along with the three-legged races & the passing the balloon between your chin & your shoulder... when i got to the party spanna was really up for it but noone else and it fell away... there's talk of some kind of birdbath road alternative olympics which will embrace all the above and more so none of it is wasted...
x
i wasn't sure that dad would like it but he said it was really nice (it is after all really good food, even if it is vegetarian), really nice surprise to see dr K, her dad is about a month or two younger than my dad and we talked about late 50's britain, conscription, my dad being a student and later being in a job that carried deferment, which took him through to when conscription was stopped, dr K's dad going into the army, being posted in kenya, then going back out to kenya after he was discharged, eventually becoming a £10 pomme, sailing over to australia where he started his family, dr K being one of the fruits of that family...
dad gave me a couple of books of sudoku, including one supersudoku which is a 16 by 16 grid, using hexadecimel (0123456789ABCDEF), but the same otherwise, oh the long summer afternoons...
lovely as ever to see felinity who will be joinging me to see the wedding crashers some day soon, she carried mum's guitar all the way from tooting which we'd brought up when we brought the bikes up, my intention is to use it to practise the singing of exact harmonic intervals as laid down in harmonic experience, the huge music theory book i've been holding off until i can really practise what the writer is talking about...
i'm about half way through the apples that i bought on saturday night for the apple bobbing, which didn't happen in the end, along with the three-legged races & the passing the balloon between your chin & your shoulder... when i got to the party spanna was really up for it but noone else and it fell away... there's talk of some kind of birdbath road alternative olympics which will embrace all the above and more so none of it is wasted...
x
Monday, July 11, 2005
from prime to binary
tonight i'm still a prime number, tomorrow morning i'll wake up as 2 to the power 5... massively binary...
i had a birthday party on saturday night with an old friend of mine who is two days older than me, stayed up all night without the aid of class A drugs and took josiah to victoria station for her 8:30 am train...
the party was nice, although a little strange in places for me, i'm not as close to the other birthday person as i once was, i saw quite a lot of bo's friend M, may go out with her someday soon, each member of nippy's band came, M who'd been celebrating his birthday the night before, K who i live with, arriving with the spanish contingent, and nippy herself who got on really well with bo which pleased me immensely...
so yesterday i was short on sleep, caught a western in the afternoon with spski (major dundee with richard harris & charlton heston, richard harris was really great), then later on big brother made me cry when they showed each housemate a video message from their family, and both craig & kemal had messages from their parents telling them they loved them unconditionally, implying an acceptance of their sexuality... it was lovely, and all too much... later still i watched strictly dancing and practically cried all the way through, sleep deprivation means i have few barriers up against tears...
then today i went into work to run the last workshop of the summer as part of the interviewing process, i grabbed a salad from TAZ after and cycled by the river to eat it by the tate modern, a little further down @ the NFT i bought three books, three new writers i hadn't heard of (two men and a woman), sat and read mountolive and then took in a robert mitchum double bill, when strangers marry, & west of the pecos, 1944 & 1945 respectively, robert looking very youthful, enjoyed both immensely, then cycled home before the sun went down (no lights), passing by russell square and the blocked off streets around where the bus blew up...
x
i had a birthday party on saturday night with an old friend of mine who is two days older than me, stayed up all night without the aid of class A drugs and took josiah to victoria station for her 8:30 am train...
the party was nice, although a little strange in places for me, i'm not as close to the other birthday person as i once was, i saw quite a lot of bo's friend M, may go out with her someday soon, each member of nippy's band came, M who'd been celebrating his birthday the night before, K who i live with, arriving with the spanish contingent, and nippy herself who got on really well with bo which pleased me immensely...
so yesterday i was short on sleep, caught a western in the afternoon with spski (major dundee with richard harris & charlton heston, richard harris was really great), then later on big brother made me cry when they showed each housemate a video message from their family, and both craig & kemal had messages from their parents telling them they loved them unconditionally, implying an acceptance of their sexuality... it was lovely, and all too much... later still i watched strictly dancing and practically cried all the way through, sleep deprivation means i have few barriers up against tears...
then today i went into work to run the last workshop of the summer as part of the interviewing process, i grabbed a salad from TAZ after and cycled by the river to eat it by the tate modern, a little further down @ the NFT i bought three books, three new writers i hadn't heard of (two men and a woman), sat and read mountolive and then took in a robert mitchum double bill, when strangers marry, & west of the pecos, 1944 & 1945 respectively, robert looking very youthful, enjoyed both immensely, then cycled home before the sun went down (no lights), passing by russell square and the blocked off streets around where the bus blew up...
x
Saturday, July 09, 2005
disturbed sleep low through piano
so both nights since the attack have been more than usually disturbed, thursday night i woke to find three silent men in my room, threatening me... they gradually disappeared as i really woke up, then last night i was drifting off and i awoke with a shock, similar to when you fall in a dream and you have that rush of adrenalin that wakes you up, but no memory of the dream (if there was one) just the shock & the adrenalin...
party tonight and i had a low moment an hour or so ago, pre party low i guess, afew culprits, so i sat @ T's piano and played for awhile and it eased me, a new shape emerging as well as the more or less finished solo piece, and also an unfinished piece from around the spring equinox... felt as though i hadn't played for ages, good to reconnect with it...
yesterday i saw felinity after her interview up in angel, (i would love it if she worked in angel), we didn't go and see the wedding crashers because the vue website lied to me, we just chilled out, drank tea, shopped for books, ate in wagamama's... she bought me stitch & bitch for my birthday, inching me along in the knitting world, really nice to see her, particularly as i'd spent a couple of hours getting back to her on thursday morning, (i was sleeping)...
she's coming to jai krishna's on tuesday for my actual birthday, as are my mum & dad i think, & spski...
anyway, music to find, party games to prepare...
x
party tonight and i had a low moment an hour or so ago, pre party low i guess, afew culprits, so i sat @ T's piano and played for awhile and it eased me, a new shape emerging as well as the more or less finished solo piece, and also an unfinished piece from around the spring equinox... felt as though i hadn't played for ages, good to reconnect with it...
yesterday i saw felinity after her interview up in angel, (i would love it if she worked in angel), we didn't go and see the wedding crashers because the vue website lied to me, we just chilled out, drank tea, shopped for books, ate in wagamama's... she bought me stitch & bitch for my birthday, inching me along in the knitting world, really nice to see her, particularly as i'd spent a couple of hours getting back to her on thursday morning, (i was sleeping)...
she's coming to jai krishna's on tuesday for my actual birthday, as are my mum & dad i think, & spski...
anyway, music to find, party games to prepare...
x
Friday, July 08, 2005
london lives
went into work this afternoon but what was planned didn't happen due to our ineffective partners in this project.. but it meant i saw nippy & also K & C, C who'd contacted me yesterday and K who i'd contacted, that chain of concerned messages, hopefully both coming to the party tomorrow night down in brixton,
so after sitting in a cafe chatting with nippy i cycled home and you know london is just as great and ugly as it ever was, i saw no real difference today on the streets, i didn't use the tube but apparently they were running alright, i felt a strange kind of love for this city as i cycled through it today...
tonight nippy's picking me up and we're going to kensal rise for M's 40th, drummer extraordinaire, two parties in two nights, might even pop to the pictures before nippy comes actually... hmmm...
x
so after sitting in a cafe chatting with nippy i cycled home and you know london is just as great and ugly as it ever was, i saw no real difference today on the streets, i didn't use the tube but apparently they were running alright, i felt a strange kind of love for this city as i cycled through it today...
tonight nippy's picking me up and we're going to kensal rise for M's 40th, drummer extraordinaire, two parties in two nights, might even pop to the pictures before nippy comes actually... hmmm...
x
Thursday, July 07, 2005
sleeping through bombs
i spoke to P this morning when i woke up, she told me there had been many bombs exploded on public transport in london, it didn't make any sense to me, but i was very glad i was in bed...
this was around 11:30, i went up to the tv room and sat in front of it all for an hour or so, finally got through to those i wanted to get through to on the phone,
had i been working this morning i would have cycled near where the bus exploded (russell square) but about half an hour after it all happened, also it wasn't very long ago since i was using the picadilly line at around these times where it seems a bomb exploded on a train...(?)
so that's fairly scary, for now i'm just glad to be safe, although shocked, really want to know exactly what happened... keep thinking of other people who might have been hurt and trying to get in touch with them... mobile phone network terrible but texting effective...
meant to be @ work later today, unlikely many of my interview subjects will show so maybe no point but can't deny i have a perverse desire to go, to cycle across this mad london and check it out,
the tv news playing down the number of casualties but i realise i have a morbid fear of, and fascination for, the full news gradually coming into view.
x
this was around 11:30, i went up to the tv room and sat in front of it all for an hour or so, finally got through to those i wanted to get through to on the phone,
had i been working this morning i would have cycled near where the bus exploded (russell square) but about half an hour after it all happened, also it wasn't very long ago since i was using the picadilly line at around these times where it seems a bomb exploded on a train...(?)
so that's fairly scary, for now i'm just glad to be safe, although shocked, really want to know exactly what happened... keep thinking of other people who might have been hurt and trying to get in touch with them... mobile phone network terrible but texting effective...
meant to be @ work later today, unlikely many of my interview subjects will show so maybe no point but can't deny i have a perverse desire to go, to cycle across this mad london and check it out,
the tv news playing down the number of casualties but i realise i have a morbid fear of, and fascination for, the full news gradually coming into view.
x
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
moderation
the stress of getting ones evidence together for the moderator, much more organised this year so much of the work already done... she's just finishing up now and i'm calming down after the mad preparation, going to get on my bike and return home just in time to get ready to go out again, two more bass players auditioning for nippy's band tonight...
brief post just wanted to mark this moderation done and easier than last year... may it always get easier... x
brief post just wanted to mark this moderation done and easier than last year... may it always get easier... x
duchess through a haze of alcohol
after work last friday i went for a drink with the guys from hammersmith college, got drunk talking to diagram & redeA & ended up @ the foundry where there was an odd laptop improvisation thing going...
today i went to my more regular college and did some interviews for prospective students & after that went up to WAC to observe a project being run by one of our students, a genius improvising saxophonist who suggested we went for a drink with ramjac, who was also working there tonight...
i mention last week as well because the two nights were oddly linked, diagram talking about the saxist, ramjac texting me that night about a jam session, saxist telling stories about diagram & the former east germany, getting drunk, chinese food...
anyway it was really nice, both nights, maybe get some work eventually @ WAC this summer, saw duchess on my way home, got close enough for her to scratch my hand, as that song i wrote goes:
duchess is fickle but she's fond of my caress,
not these days, fickle still but deeply suspicious of my caress, the third sighting this year, maybe we'll be friends again some day... i remember one of the verses of that song being inspired by my thinking that duchess snubbing me was preferable to certain people i know welcoming we...
x
today i went to my more regular college and did some interviews for prospective students & after that went up to WAC to observe a project being run by one of our students, a genius improvising saxophonist who suggested we went for a drink with ramjac, who was also working there tonight...
i mention last week as well because the two nights were oddly linked, diagram talking about the saxist, ramjac texting me that night about a jam session, saxist telling stories about diagram & the former east germany, getting drunk, chinese food...
anyway it was really nice, both nights, maybe get some work eventually @ WAC this summer, saw duchess on my way home, got close enough for her to scratch my hand, as that song i wrote goes:
duchess is fickle but she's fond of my caress,
not these days, fickle still but deeply suspicious of my caress, the third sighting this year, maybe we'll be friends again some day... i remember one of the verses of that song being inspired by my thinking that duchess snubbing me was preferable to certain people i know welcoming we...
x
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
shameless
biting wind on the way into work,
1 marking meeting &
2 workshops later,
the wind decided to change direction,
biting wind on the way home...
doesn't seem fair somehow,
just saw my first ever full episode of shameless and i have to say i loved it...
but now my bed needs me, (of course i could just stay awake all night, but if it needs me then i'll help it out, just this once)
x
1 marking meeting &
2 workshops later,
the wind decided to change direction,
biting wind on the way home...
doesn't seem fair somehow,
just saw my first ever full episode of shameless and i have to say i loved it...
but now my bed needs me, (of course i could just stay awake all night, but if it needs me then i'll help it out, just this once)
x
Sunday, July 03, 2005
Saturday, July 02, 2005
a nice hot bath
too long has that mouse been messing with me, see how it sits so dejectedly now i've discarded it... ha ha ha... i laugh at you oh defective information technology device...
i bought it for a £5 a week or so ago, after the man in the shop had been trying to sell me one of the £10 ones, and as my friend bo never used to tire of saying:
buy cheap buy twice!
so today i got on my bike and pedaled off to the computer fair in town, bought the microsoft approved mouse, there it sits on my knee right now and it so calmly does the job it's meant to...
ok enough about the mouse.
on the way in i was cycling through regents park and i could here Youssou Ndour's lovely voice singing seven seconds away, i got confused for a bit and thought live8 was in regents park, but soon discovered that it was a huge screen set up to broadcast the hyde park event... i had a nasty feeling that dido was singing the neneh cherry parts and this was confirmed a little later... neneh did such a great job back then, dido is not, not, NOT an appropriate replacement...
after the computer fair i cycled south, towards the middle, caught a few pride events, some cabaret in leicester square, a big stage in trafalgar square, i cycled down to the river and went along the north side, from charing cross all the way to wapping in the east where i found where the regents canal ends up, the limehouse basin, i turned on my ipod and drifted up the canal all the way to islington, where i used one of my free cinema tickets to see war of the worlds... which, while it wasn't a complete waste of time is not something i'd recommend, just too much adrenalin for hardly any reward, for the first time in ages i left the cinema before the credits finished...
not good quality cinema but then what was i thinking?
so now my body is calling out for a nice hot bath to ease off the miles i've cycled today...
x
i bought it for a £5 a week or so ago, after the man in the shop had been trying to sell me one of the £10 ones, and as my friend bo never used to tire of saying:
buy cheap buy twice!
so today i got on my bike and pedaled off to the computer fair in town, bought the microsoft approved mouse, there it sits on my knee right now and it so calmly does the job it's meant to...
ok enough about the mouse.
on the way in i was cycling through regents park and i could here Youssou Ndour's lovely voice singing seven seconds away, i got confused for a bit and thought live8 was in regents park, but soon discovered that it was a huge screen set up to broadcast the hyde park event... i had a nasty feeling that dido was singing the neneh cherry parts and this was confirmed a little later... neneh did such a great job back then, dido is not, not, NOT an appropriate replacement...
after the computer fair i cycled south, towards the middle, caught a few pride events, some cabaret in leicester square, a big stage in trafalgar square, i cycled down to the river and went along the north side, from charing cross all the way to wapping in the east where i found where the regents canal ends up, the limehouse basin, i turned on my ipod and drifted up the canal all the way to islington, where i used one of my free cinema tickets to see war of the worlds... which, while it wasn't a complete waste of time is not something i'd recommend, just too much adrenalin for hardly any reward, for the first time in ages i left the cinema before the credits finished...
not good quality cinema but then what was i thinking?
so now my body is calling out for a nice hot bath to ease off the miles i've cycled today...
x
purling free cinema
...which is a great deal different from pearling, and there i was trying to see the little pearls in the pattern on that side of the knitted square...
very last day of term @ hammersmith yesterday which meant real madness, so many students to assess, trying to make sure they don't just leave, several different courses at once, different kinds of assessment... someone with my first name (the formal version of my first name) had a delivery earlier in the week to the college, it just said:
R,
Hammersmith & West London College...
so on tuesday the post guy came to our department looking for me, telling them that there were only two R's in the whole college and it wasn't the other one... he showed them what the package was and it was 20 free cinema tickets to a certain flavour of cinema (not odeon)...
so when i got to work on wednesday D was keen that i go and pick up this package, even though it wasn't meant for me... the tickets all expire by september and it was the end of term so if we didn't get them noone would use them...
wednesday was too busy, but yesterday when i was there finishing off stuff i happened to pass by the post room and i got the package, split the 20 tickets with D, there's a cinema of this flavour down in islington...
that's 5 trips to the pictures with another,
thankyou world, and thankyou R, i guess you wanted to take your students to see a film... only you don't seem to exist, unless you are a student? in which case they would never have found you...
hmmmmmm... cinema...
x
very last day of term @ hammersmith yesterday which meant real madness, so many students to assess, trying to make sure they don't just leave, several different courses at once, different kinds of assessment... someone with my first name (the formal version of my first name) had a delivery earlier in the week to the college, it just said:
R,
Hammersmith & West London College...
so on tuesday the post guy came to our department looking for me, telling them that there were only two R's in the whole college and it wasn't the other one... he showed them what the package was and it was 20 free cinema tickets to a certain flavour of cinema (not odeon)...
so when i got to work on wednesday D was keen that i go and pick up this package, even though it wasn't meant for me... the tickets all expire by september and it was the end of term so if we didn't get them noone would use them...
wednesday was too busy, but yesterday when i was there finishing off stuff i happened to pass by the post room and i got the package, split the 20 tickets with D, there's a cinema of this flavour down in islington...
that's 5 trips to the pictures with another,
thankyou world, and thankyou R, i guess you wanted to take your students to see a film... only you don't seem to exist, unless you are a student? in which case they would never have found you...
hmmmmmm... cinema...
x
Friday, July 01, 2005
knitting
sometimes i think it's too much being single, the way your mind makes things up, meeting someone who you happen to find attractive becomes complicated in your mind, when it really doesn't need to be...
anyway, my bike met another bike today, very similar to it, also small, also with only one gear (that works), i'm going to have to keep an eye on my bike in case it starts obsessing about the girl bike... can't have my bike's attention elsewhere when it's whizzing me along a canal...
rehearsed with nippy and maybe found a bass player at long last, groovy young man from streatham, then once back home i was drinking the elderflower cordial that my mum made and K asked me what else my mum makes... including a question about her knitting?
which prompted me to go and get my knitting... knitted and pearled a couple of rows before coming up to bed, curiously satisfying as knitting is, maybe i'll embark on a jumper before the summer's out (maybe i'll finish before winter)..
x
anyway, my bike met another bike today, very similar to it, also small, also with only one gear (that works), i'm going to have to keep an eye on my bike in case it starts obsessing about the girl bike... can't have my bike's attention elsewhere when it's whizzing me along a canal...
rehearsed with nippy and maybe found a bass player at long last, groovy young man from streatham, then once back home i was drinking the elderflower cordial that my mum made and K asked me what else my mum makes... including a question about her knitting?
which prompted me to go and get my knitting... knitted and pearled a couple of rows before coming up to bed, curiously satisfying as knitting is, maybe i'll embark on a jumper before the summer's out (maybe i'll finish before winter)..
x
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