shameless denied catnip dark lullaby

last week at the same time josiah was here and we ran up the stairs to see shameless only to find irish G sat watching a DVD...

this week i'd arranged to meet the very same irish G up there for it, stepped in only to find K & M sat watching a DVD...

denied, two weeks in a row, you'd have thought this would happen all the time, but until recently i've never had to reserve the TV for something i'd like to watch...

the winter months bringing the cold... bringing more of the residents into the TV room...

damn them...

so instead of watching shameless i went downstairs with balthazara to have a play with the catnip... the plant that i brought home from work, given to me by sox's T, only just got around to reading up on it on the web, previously i've put the plant on the ground and she's gone up to it to check it out, sticking her nose into it...

T had told me that they like the leaves dried... so i'd picked off some dried leaves and crushed them but she hadn't seemed that interested, now i find that i have to pick a healthy leave and dry it myself... not so straightforward...

and i'm wandering if she's immune to it, she doesn't go particularly crazy for it, but then maybe she's not getting the right dosage/fix..?

more news as and when it comes in...

and then the dark lullaby, which now seems to be hanging out with an older tune that i found written on some paper when i was looking for tax return related things...

this other tune was only the bare bones, i played it the other day and i remembered it but the arrangement i was playing before wasn't there... i've been playing around with it for the last few days trying to awaken the tune in my head/soul/body... tonight after the catnip test i came up to the fender rhodes and gave it another go and another piece fell into place, how i'd been playing it, and now i'm wandering just when that was...?

this one is a rising thing, set against the dark lullaby which is falling, they're definately related, belonging to the same family... just got to stitch together a family tree and find the missing links...

x

online tax return

and lo it did happen...

had to ring the helpdesk once...

but he was very helpful...

and it's done...

WAY too easy...

still slightly in shock...

x

all in place lovely day

ok, just worked out my expenses for that tax year, i think i have all the information i need to fill in my tax return...

so tomorrow, apart from the meeting i'm meant to attend for work, i will complete my tax return...

that's the plan anyway,

now i can do it online i have a childish desire to submit it at 11.55pm on tuesday, being absolutely the very last 5 minutes before i get fined £100...

bravura, in a boring subject...

me & G spent today wandering around town, chinese new year and we missed the fireworks, arriving at travalgar square dead on 5... only to learn much later that the fireworks had been at leicester square...

another great plan from me... she didn't seem to mind too much though, we have so much fun together... last night she came out with me to meet loads of my old friends, pretty traumatic for her... she was a star...

drunken night, all that bombay sapphire...

anyway today, we went to the pictures and took a good long moment deciding between hidden & fun with dick & jane... (which i so want to see tha original of, saw it when i was young with jane fonda... loved it, never seen it since, nor heard of it... )... hidden winning in the end... hardcore intense over fun, fun, fun...

heavy film, great, irritating...

ok, must sleep...

i love my girl...

almost tax returned...

x

satisfying

about 30 minutes ago i was facing the fact that i had to find 2 things, here, in this room...

tax return related...

the first was the relevant payslip, the second was the letter from the inland revenue containing my user ID for the online tax return...

now last weekend i found the tax return itself which was a milestone and i was disapointed to find that i hadn't put the relevent payslip with it as i thought i'd done last april...

i've turned over much of my room since then looking for the payslip, turning up interesting things as this always does, like the cd of houselink, the backing for... a hotel full of cops track that we used to do live based on my bassline... of which there is a tiny clip of on the website from around 2000 (listed as live at the mass, brixton under live tracks), now the whole of that recording i would be so happy to find... anyway, this cd made me wander about using the backing and performing a version myself, on my own, at the vibe bar in a month or so... singing as well as playing groovy rhodes keys...?

anyway, each area of my room that i checked out at least allowed me to cross off the list, where the payslip could be was getting smaller and smaller...

but now i had to find something else as well and would have to revisit all the regions...

it looked bleak...

and then within 20 minutes or so i found them both...

the payslip was nestled in the pages of the tax return, if i hadn't opened the tax return i would have carried on looking potentially right up to the 31st deadline...

and then the user ID which i'd thought was probably in this computer, surely i would have made a note of it somewhere, just pops up finally in a nondescript looking file...

so now i have it all...

the first discovery made me shout with satisfaction, the second just made me smile in that relieved way...

oh tax return you are a rollercoaster...

x

numbers

at the start of the evening, when i was still at work, i had 15 (x2) essays to write feedback for...

in order to make it easier on my mind i split them into 3 groups of 5...

i didn't last long at work, the radio station underneath us (that i used to DJ for, many years ago) held a meeting just where i was trying to work...

i cycled along the river to clear my head, listening to my shuffle, cycled past the critical mass that was gathering by the NFT, a chill in the air and the beginnings of rain, cycling as fast as i could when the space allowed me...

got as far as the point where you can drive down to the water's edge, towards vauxhall, paused with the music of meshell ndegeocello dying in my ears, gazing at the water, orange streetlights reflected... then raced back, this time the critical mass people were gradually moving out... made it back to the tate modern and crossed over the river at the millenium bridge...

took off my headphones, strapped on my helmet and made it home eventually with cold, cold hands...

that clearing of my head cycle journey on this cold night was a strange choice... but it was great...

anyway, the essays, got through the first third of them before i got hungry, did just one more which disturbed the symmetry of the three's or so i thought, but on the way to jai krishna's where i was picking up my meal i realised that 6 is 2 fifths of 15... each fifth being a 3...

about the enter the 3rd 5th... the 7th and 8th (pair of) essays, being the guardians of the halfway point... once i've done 7 i'm almost halfway, 8 and i'm past it... then with 9 i'll be 3 5th's and my G will be home,

might call it a night on these then... alternating between tax return searching and completing these tomorrow...

i think the looming tax return has increased my fascination with numbers...

x

work

end of my teaching week... but i'm going to stay here @ londonbridge work, finishing the essay feedback that's been hanging over me...

the tax return looming beyond these essays winking at me... the weekend quite possibly lost in a flurry of displacement activity...

beautiful day it was today, one of those really bright glaring sun bicycle journeys, depending on the road, certain roads pointing directly at the sun...

makes you more aware of the angle of roads to each other...

my bike fell over as i was filming the canal on my way to work and my smily face bell broke... hopefully fixable...

anyway, to it...

x

backwards hangover celebration

my first thursday without londonbridge work today...

so i cycled over to hammersmith from here...

and then after work i cycled over to londonbridge work to drink to the memory of a student who died a couple of years ago...

so a backwards thursday...

the entire cycle journey backwards....

the hammersmith part was good, it's a route i'm a still a little hazy on as i cycled it with a friend from there so much, didn't have to know the way... he's started leaving work ealier now so i'm on my own and it's still solidifying...

really good to have to do it backwards... gets the brain working,

which was good today because my brain wasn't really working, me & G celebrating with alabama slammers last night and i had a sore head this morning... my hammersmith class really demoralised me today, just didn't feel equal to the teaching task what with the hangover and it's not solid enough that it just runs on it's own, it needs constant attention and i wasn't as good as i could have been today...

but i was still good... certain students having semi ah ha moments... always nice...

after work i sat for awhile in an almost pitch black room and played the piano... at first the odd random effect of not knowing what keys i was touching, but once i'd found myself i addressed myself to C, the student we were raising our glasses to tonight and i set to it...

a great thing in 5 came through... maybe weld it onto the fragile beginnings of the current piano piece... producer G was there tonight and he told me that he 's eager to get recording again... he who recorded connie with me about 4 months back, being the first to this fragile second...

also amongst us was M who has been my apprentice for many years but is no longer, spreads her independent wings these days, she taught the search & reflect intensive on wednesday that i'd been doing on monday, and now she's off to australia with her loved one... great to see her this last time...

M & M made up the 5 of us, with L leaving just as i arrived earlier on in the night... M being my work sister/confidante & M being the man who came round and fixed my fender rhodes last year...

lovely people, the memory of C carried us through, a celebration more than a mourning,

x

doing good work

lovely to have the mother & daughter here, grace destroyed the remote controlled car that G got me for christmas, this morning i had books for her on the edge of my bed, ready for her, she rolled in around 9:30, wake up uncle longcat... wake up... oh... let's read this...

at one point it looked like a beautiful day, once josiah & grace had gone on their merry way me & G were going to celebrate 4 months of loving by going to kew gardens... but the weather didn't hold and we had one or two troubles to overcome (out in the world troubles, not trouble in paradise troubles) so we went to the V & A...

her dad has some hand printed wallpaper in the permanent collection there, we didn't find it...

strolled over to the prince charles cinema to see broken flowers from one of those sofaish two seaters at the back... great film, bill murray... yes please...

then on the way home we tried to find felinity but somehow missed her... very cold night to be wanderly along the caledonian road...

now we're both a little tired, although me more than her, we're about to crack open the champaigne...

a little champaign, some seinfeld...

x

day off grace coming vibe night

yesterday was the first day of the intensive 2 week search & reflect workshops @ londonbridge work...

i taught the first day and also ran my notation class in the evening and i was in a pretty out there state when i finished...

cycling up towards london bridge weighing up whether i was just going to go home or go out to S & M's live night @ the vibe bar...

the vibe bar won and it was lovely to see them... crazy stuff going on, i'd missed 2 acts already and the first act on when i arrived was a mad duo, japanese woman and english woman... singing elaborate, produced, sometimes beautiful, original music to a backing track... S controlling the CD so he had to nip behind the DJ every tune, wearing his trademark hat...

by the looks of it i'll always miss M's set at the start of the night because of when i finish teaching, but i think i'll be going to quite a few of those nights... a little bit of sunshine... looks like i'll be playing there in march... potentially with L, who showed up last night as well, if he's not in australia...

really nice to have the three of us there, me, S & L, all kyo folks,

L had turned up with A... conscious, berobed, dread, rastafari singer who was on last, i hadn't seen him play for years... not that i've seen him socially for a little while either, he used to do his thing down at that pub in brixton where i played and where i joined kyo, S having moved up in the world from running that night to running this one...

A was great, his material has moved on a little, more fullon dance music than before, very accomplished sound on his backing tracks, great performer...

went round to L's afterwards for a tea, he lives in a great place right by the vibe bar, very close to spitalfields, his roof is stunning, he played me some tracks of his that he's got together with a harmonica player and the other S, another percussionist... lovely stuff, he wants some piano on some of it which pleases me...

then eventually i went out into the night, pretty drunk, racing home on the bike...

waking up today slowly, not much longer before josiah comes and i've still got one or two things to get ready...

x

whale dies

just heard, he/she was on a barge heading down the river towards the thames barrier...

wasn't paying attention properly, don't know what she/he died of but it's not been an easy 24 hours for the interloper...

i was down by the river this afternoon again, me & spski cycled down to the south bank to see a talk on variety shows given by various interesting people...

he took me on a great route from ours that i'm going to have to try and recreate, not my normal route by any means... culminating with waterloo bridge which we crossed around 2:15 with the sun shining through the millenium wheel in that classic almost smoky way that these winter days have sometimes...

the whale at that point was further upriver... battersea bridge, being coaxed onto the barge i guess...

of the people speaking at the thing we went to spski's work-mate C gave a 10-minute anthology of great vaudeville acts through the decades (starting in 1902), really great, a woman whose name i've already forgotten talked about her work in theatre and street theatre... a company called hesitate and ... hesitate and demonstrate maybe, alot of what she said resonated with me and with friends of mine, bo who i saw last night and my G...

a man called T had much interesting talk... related the words showman and shaman which i like...

also there were a stripper/burlesque teacher and an artist/performer who does odd marionette style dance in shop windows... or has done anyway...

met a scottish woman who i've met before and couldn't work out the connection, i've definately met her somewhere, some project i did years ago... tantalising...

anyway as i said, i saw bo last night with filmo @ his, spent part of the night playing that beautiful piano while we chatted and bo video'd around us with her new phone... interesting shape coming out on the piano, could become the second piano piece that started with connie...

lovely, lovely night... the first of many i hope in that house, reminded of how great the space is where that piano is and i want to do another gig there in the next few months...

which ties in with the fact that S offered me a spot at his live event @ the vibe bar this coming monday... i turned it down because i don't have anything ready right now but i'm really up for doing something... on my own if i can, scary prospect...

and that poor whale who lost her/his way... they weren't that hopeful yesterday about it's chances... sad though, i wanted it to have a happy ending...

x

whale trapped in the thames

after work today i cycled by the river for a litle while, it was a beautiful if cold day and the thames path was pretty busy, my camera ran out of batteries as i was doing a bit of filming for one of my projects so i didn't go on to take advantage of the amazing light as i might have done...

this was around 3pm and i don't know exactly but this whale would have been in the thames at that time... i didn't see him/her but i'm pleased that i was on the river today...

went out with uncle filmo last night to the redrose, very close to my house, to see han bennink, the dutch improvising drummer...

the redrose was packed, i have never seen an improv gig with an audience like that, for the first 5 minutes of so after i arrived i was wedged into a crowd just a meter from the door...

improv events are normally very poorly attended, it's not a big scene, but then he's a big name, and there was some drum'n'bass link-up apparently, springheel jack were putting on the night... not that i know who they are...

when i arrived he was doing a solo piece, i wish i'd got there earlier as this was pure gold... wonderful playing, inventive...

after the break he was joined on stage by a host of players, including AW who is one of my apprentices for the improv workshops i teach... great sax player, fiery, quite scary at times...

but there were too many of them and it didn't work at first, not like the immediate, visceral stuff of the first half, after a bit of playing they found some interesting places but i would have preferred to see some smaller groups, duo's ideally...

han bennink himself had just got back from america where it appears he was involved in some education work, there were photo-copies of letters written by students about him on different coloured card/paper... a couple of quotes:

he was the most lively, exciting, amazing drummer i've heard live or on recording. it was the most inspirational art experience i've ever had...

to me, han truly was an inspiration through his incredibles sense of unrestrained, unlimited, free expression. i have never encountered someone who lets their energy flow loose like han's does...

tell it like it is school kids...

oh and i've been working out some ideas i've had for awhile about the i-ching and musical scales over on deoxy, in response to something someone posted about the guitarist pat martino... interesting to put it down these kind of thoughts...

going out tonight's to see filmo and bo, who's coming over to his, also where that beatiful piano lives... also where my landlord lives...

x

yes i'm a geek

but i'm a quiet geek...

today was the second time i took off my motherboard... the first time was when i took it off to fix... well, in the end replace it...

taking off the motherboard was previously a scary prospect and now it's nothing special... i only wish my tax return followed the same trajectory...

beginning with very scary prospect we're now at scary prospect, 5 years later... more on that in the next week and a half...

last april i appear to have laid the groundwork for this year's tax return so you never know, we might get scary prospect down to unsettling prospect...

ok, geek statistics:

my AMD athlon 1800 processor was running at 40C before... a perfectly happy temperature, with a really loud CPU fan/heatsink buzzing away on top of it...

now it runs at 39C with a very sexy and quiet CPU fan/heatsink on it with the option of turning off this fan... leaving the heatsink alone to deal with it and my CPU temperature goes up to 45C...

perfectly happy still...

i am a great deal happier with my beautiful beast of a computer, i am also thankful to quietPC who have sold me both the quiet power supply and the quiet CPU fan/heatsink...

and finally i am thankful to the nice man who delivered my fan/heatsink this afternoon, exactly the same man who delivered my quiet power supply and flatscreen monitor last thursday morning... nice to see a friendly face...

of course within a few days the much reduced volume from my computer will seem loud again... i will be pushed once more into a never ending search for a genuinely silent computer...

but i'm happy now...

x

you hear this sound?

no of course you don't, only i can hear it, as you're not in the room with me... it's the sound of my computer...

last week in an abortive attempt to fix my PC i bought a quiet power supply which, when i finally fixed my PC, didn't seem to make any difference...

i think it was because this power supply is open to the inside of the PC and so the CPU fan noise is louder now, the old power supply was noisier in itself but the CPU fan was enclosed and therefore quieter...

anyway, the point is, my new zalman super-flower CPU fan has arrived and is right now sat on my bed, and this sound that you hear now (i know you can't hear it, but humour me)... this is the last time i'm going to be listening to this sound... i'm going to turn off this computer, go out and eat some loufkia, come back and take it apart and install that thing over there and then we'll see what the world sounds like...

PS - i found an insanely addictive game on the web last night, i've put it over there in the links alongside a flash animation i used to love that i've rediscovered...

x

waiting for pluto & loufkia

i've had the bbc news live video link running for the past 45 minutes waiting for NASA to launch it's mission to pluto...

high winds by the sound of it, they're hoping to launch in about 5 minutes.. 45 minutes behind schedule...

on sunday my firefox went wierd on me and i lost all my bookmarks and whatever cookies i had... i still haven't logged back into deoxy, i have no idea what my password is...

instead of the tabbed bookmarks i had set up i now just had latest headlines... which when i press it gives me a list of headlines from the BBC...?

anyway i've accepted this new paradigm and i'm digging the BBC thing, it being where i found out about this mission to pluto...

i've had a little trouble with my new motherboard, it still thought it had a slower CPU in it so it behaved accordingly, i think i've got it now... i've also bought the CPU fan which i've had my eye on... a very sexy thing which noone will see as it'll be shut up inside my computer... should arrive tomorrow morning...

i went over to manolis's earlier and he told me he was cooking loufkia, so i left there and pooped over to the landlords to play the piano and drop off a rent check...

returning about 45 minutes later the loufkia was ready and delicious, i picked up the short story i'm reading there, strange comfort afforded by the profession by malcolm lowry, began last week when i'd forgotten monsieur, my current book... should be finished with that short story the next time i go there, which will be tomorrow, taking advantage of the loufkia...

manolis had won about £50 at the bookie's and he bought a big bottle of teachers of which he urged a glass on me... not a whiskey drinker but i like drinking with manolis, in the small way that it happens... the character in the story was drinking grappa in a bar in rome and reading through his notebook... i felt closer to him...

ok the launch now set back first to 19:30 and now to 19:50 GMT, another 20 minutes... spski left the kitchen now so i'm relocating up to my room...

the voice on the video called the launchtime 19:50 zulu...?

x

wrong

wrong in the head, and consequently in my body... don't know why...

knocking into things, burning myself on the oven... second time in about a week for the burning, same hand...

about the only memory i have of the head teacher at my primary school in blewbury, mr M... in the last few years there we had mrs P, so mr M is further back in my mind...

he was telling us that if we burnt our hand we shouldn't put in hot water, we should put it in cold water, the implication being that we would naturally put it in hot water, which seemed wrong to me...

that small confusion, an adult telling us something that wasn't quite right, and realising it wasn't quite right instead of just accepting it...

probably why i remember it...

maybe it's the full moon, is it full now?

x

i'm back

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

back in my computer, one week and 4 hours later (roughly)

33 emails waiting for me,

ok, this is the very first PC open and on it's side while i test it turn-on, so i'm going to go away and tidy things up...

just wanted to mark this moment...

x

semble sad motherboard hopeful

made it out into the world last night, over to bush hall to catch own little world & semble... on my own which scared me slightly...

i met with M the student of mine who drums for own little world, also J, another student on the same course, both really nice fella's and clever, in the mountain of essay's i still haven't marked their's are both really good...

i didn't catch much of own litte world's set, my last train home called to me, i could see they were good but it wasn't a great performance (by the end of the set they may have really rocked), semble however were simply marvellous, and more than a little tragic...

they're quiet and they had a dedicated group of audience who were listening and a larger group of audience who were talking... they had a tough time of it and the whole thing was all the more emotional because i really wanted them to win through... quite apart from how emotional their stuff is anyway...

i spoke to S & then M after the set, it turns out what i took to be a joke was in fact true, they're splitting up, they have only 2 more gigs, one in brighton and one in kingston...

very sad, wonderful band...

and then today i went out into the world armed with 1 each of the defective capacitors, intending to investigate new motherboards and pop into maplin to get new capacitors... but i didn't get beyond the computer fair...

i was weighing up the different options of new motherboard, from about £120 to £220, when i chanced upon a motherboard & CPU for £30 which was my exact motherboard with a lesser CPU... of course i haggled because i only wanted the board and i walked out of there with the motherboard for £15...

i'm about to go plug it in... a little scared but hopeful..

x

the mist clears

oh the net...

a helpful word or two from some stranger has shown me that the problem with my poor, broken PC is the capacitors on the motherboard... several of them are bulging upwards (just about visible on the pictures from the last post) which apparently means they're blown...

which in some possible version of the future means i can go to maplin in about 10 minutes, buy the correct kind of capacitors, fix it myself...

not a massive chance of success if i did try it but what can i lose? i need a new motherboard anyway if i can't fix it... computer fair tomorrow, in money again...

and then in other news i want to go to a gig tonight over in shepherds bush...

i have noone to go with... so it's possible i might wimp out...

one of my teaching students is in a band called own little world described on the flyer as alternative pop/rock, narco glam with acoustic roots, absinthe with both ears, sprawling and lush, intimate and jagged...

never heard them...

also on the bill are semble who i saw a few years ago at the turaya gathering that kyo played at... fantastic band... there's a quote from timeout on the flyer but you're not getting that... beautiful, still, finely honed... that's from me...

but if i'm going i'd better get my skates on... and maplin? capacitors?... increasingly unlikely...

x

purely so i can post these pictures somewhere else

should be in bed by now beside my beautiful girl but i've just joined a forum so i can pick people's brains about my sick computer... hence these pictures

behold the inside of the perhaps mortally wounded creature...

i'm preparing to mourn if necessary

x

quiet but broken big cycling

i ordered a flat screen moniter and a quiet power supply a few days ago and they both arrived this morning before i left for work...

today was my first big cycling day of 2006, really enjoyed the cold but beautiful, clearish day... the journey from london bridge to hammersmith was lovely, the river and then the parks, the light coming in from low in the sky, creating different kinds of pictures for my eyes...

cycled home like a man possessed... got a little lost around westbourne park but found the canal fairly easily then got enchanted by the beautiful canal in the dark...

anyway, i intended to not work on the broken PC until i'd finished marking the essays but it was irresistible... the quiet power supply was easy to install, i plugged it all in, held my breath...

and found that it didn't fix the broken PC...

crest fallen now...

life goes on, must be some other thing...

x

greek to me

i have confronted problems with syntax and grammar in my young days...

manolis as he nods towards eats, shoots and leaves that he's dipping into these days and that i too have sitting in my pile of books to read... eventually...

atic syntax... i used to know this... 40 years ago i could tell you why but now i can't...

he said he had no way of finding the answer now so i told him that i'd find out, and so i turn to you oh readers...

greek syntax... in the (greek) statement:

the chidren play, you use the singular of play and not the plural... atic syntax apparently and there is a reason for it, but manolis has forgotten...

answers on a postcard (in the comments)

x

pie crust love shameless survives

the first episode was rubbish, but the second one, tonight, was great...

i only started watching it midway through the second series, channel 4 were doing it nightly, i fell in love with fiona, in the way that we fall in love with tv characters...

last week it hadn't really sunken in that she'd left the series and maybe it wasn't as bad as i percieved, maybe i was just heart broken... in the way that we can only be heart broken by tv characters...

a pie crust promise, easily made & easily broken...

x

bruised but happy

G woke up last night to find me stood over her, reaching towards her clothes rack...

she told me that she grabbed hold of my legs and then i was saying to her i'm awake, it's alright, i'm awake...

i have only a very vague memory of this last exchange, a much more vague memory of the vivid dream i was having and a bruise on my left leg, on the shin...

i remember waking up and then lying down next to her again, this time on the other side of the bed from where i'd fallen asleep before...

the first movement dream in her room, only about the third dream in all my many movement dreams in which i've hurt myself... but this time no memory of the point in the dream where this happened, the other two times were accompanied by my screaming at the top of my voice and my dream perception that someone i loved was in danger...

this time just G's perception that her clothes were in danger...

and i've finished the work i've been doing for stumpy, the last tune completed about 30 minutes ago, a fantastic little piano piece in 9/8... made my realistic piano module sound as sexy as i've ever heard it, it responds so much better to that kind of piece than to my soft touch when i use it live...

so, one of the many veils lifted from my eyes and i'm a little more free...

still no money, still the essays, still the broken computer...

x

going dark

at some point in the 3rd series of 24 chase says this... by this point i'd lost faith in 24 and it just sounded daft...

but i, ladies & gentlemen, am indeed going dark in about 15 minutes, which means i'm unplugging this PC from the internet and taking it up to my room to set it up to work on the last two tunes for stumpy...

so no communication with net for a little while, which i find a little disconcerting...

my PC remains broke, i've decided to invest in a quiet power supply for it, on the assumption that it's the power supply that's broken, with the get out clause that i want one anyway, even if it's something else that's broken, (which would upset me, i wouldn't be able to play with my new world of quiet computing), while i'm about it i'm also going to buy a quiet fan for my CPU... it's all about quiet... and a flat screen monitor...

but this is all in the future, days away at least and i'm enjoying the noncomputerness of my room for this little respite... of course i have this beast down here that i'm lugging up to my room for the work so i'm not completely bereft of the 0' & 1's...

survived my day but am mighty tired now...

x

in need of sleep

about to teach my DOTS class, my first long day of teaching, indeed my first day of teaching of 2006,

foolishly but deliciously opted for a shared bed last night and am suffering a little today because of it...

under no illusions though, i'd always make the same choice...

x

calmer

i apologise for the bile that was coming out yesterday, it wasn't a very nice day...

until about 8ish when i found the software i needed and everything calmed down a little, spanish M invited me into the dinner party she was having which was lovely, food prepared by her & the other spanish M, they were both monkettes for the watts at the party i didn't go to last year...

(the watts being my G's band, they have a tune called suck da monkey which recquires two dancers to dress in hotpants, bikini tops & monkey ears & tails... like i say i didn't go to that party but G's told me the watts won't be performing that tune without the monkettes, so i'll witness it some day)

i excused myself after awhile and went about my business, preparing the space for the work i needed to do, i was just getting ready to actually start work when G came home... hmmmm....

anyway i did the work i needed to do last night, playing tunes into my computer then emailing them to stumpy, who looks alot like irish G's A i've realised, stumpy being the one who i'm doing the work for...

one of the tunes was called i bought me a cat by aaron copeland and the piano part is really good... changes from 2/4 to 3/4 time at different points throughout the tune and is quite fiddly, but really nice...

and it turns out that the no cashback routine with my credit card is a purely waitrose deal... not a consequence of anything i've done, just their policy... ok then...

my computer is still broken and will be until at least tuesday, that mound of essays remains unmarked, i've still got three more tunes for stumpy... and no money...

but the world is a much better place today than it was yesterday...

and i have cake...

x

bad day

you know when it mounts up & you stop being able to think properly...?

i found a pound or so in a coat pocket and i'm going out to buy chocolate in a moment...

i've made a tea, there it is, over there...

it'll be alright...

so i went out and tried the prototype pin number in the cash machine and it wasn't the one...

fair enough i thought.. took out the card, went over to waitrose who are still in the 20th century as far as credit cards go and haven't yet started using chip & pin... a fact that i only remembered today... got to the checkout, saw the chip & pin machines still covered over but in place... could only days before they're in operation but they're not working yet...

ask for cashback...

no this card will not allow cashback...

?

now is this because i just tried a wrong pin number with that card? is it that clever? or is there another, darker reason?

so i cancelled my mad dash into town to catch a computer fair and buy another power supply which was my stab in the half dark solution... felinity rang with a suggestion from her G which i haven't properly tried yet but that i doubt will work (of course i'll get round to it in an hour or so and find it works a treat)... thankyou felinity & G i do appreciate it...

right now i'm trying to find a software CD so i can install cubase on this computer and get working, except that spanish M is having a dinner party tonight... so i'm taking this computer upstairs to mine where it won't be attached to the internet...

happy day, joy of joys,

bullshit, bullshit, bullshit...

x

shit and death

woke up today and the thing from the credit card people still hasn't arrived... we're at the end of the 2 or 3 working days period and we're into... hang on weren't these people really shit at sending out items the first time around?

so i've had a fresh attempt to remember the pin and now i have a prototype of what it could be... i fire up my computer... to try out the possible number...

it dies...

IT DIES!!

yes, ladies and gentlemen i kid you not... it has fucking DIED...

in a way that i can't fix... on my own... a strange burning smell that comes at the moment it dies... it's died several times now, i reset it, set it going again and it dies each time, less and less time into the booting up... always the smell...

so i'm slightly at a loss, i don't know how i'm going to go about fixing it... it might be the time to get a whole new computer, but it might not...

i have only imaginary money, although i potentially have quite alot of that...

one of the things i have to do this weekend is do some work for a friend, converting sheet music (manuscript) into MIDIfiles, easy enough, a challenge learning the tunes at first but no particular problem,

unless of course one's computer doesn't work...

so i'm about to set up my keyboard and install cubase down here in the bassment, a comunal area in this house... potentially hellish working down here with people walking in and out but what can i do?

oh and i found the piece of paper with the dark lullaby written on it, it's lovely,

x

remembering or not

once i got my credit card a few months ago i used it only for awhile in september/october, it saw me through a tricky patch... it's remained dormant ever since...

so, approaching a smallish tricky patch as i was last week i realised that i didn't remember the pin number...

chip & pin...

it's all about the pin...

and of course it wasn't until i was in the tricky patch (tuesday...) that i phoned them and began the fixing of the problem, which of course takes several working days...

it has killed me trying to remember that number... a certain logic numerically that i liked and that i remembered... the first number, maybe even the second one...

anyway i'm hoping the several working days in question should end tomorrow and all will be well...

in a similar way i'm trying to remember a tune i wrote a month or two back... it was a sad tune written while G was dropping off in bed... a kind of dark lullaby... it ached...

i remember writing it down somewhere so i know i'll find it... but until i've found it it pulls at me... the rhythm i remember... the way the high pedal note fell on a slightly odd place in the bar... what that note was... maybe even the first note in the bassline...

but that's all...

and whilst this is a little frustrating it's also quite beautiful... the way the mind works... the way memory works... the tune being like one of those small islands that are hidden at full tide but gradually reveal themselves bit by bit as the tide goes out... the water level drops... the shape gradually comes into focus and then the rush as the actual remembered shape snaps into place...

if i remember the tune before i find the written notes... this focussing...

hmmmm...

x

tv

from a disappointing shameless with irish G to a very satisfying seinfeld with my G...

seinfeld that came 3rd in channel 4's ultimate sitcom last night on tv... beaten by fawlty towers, which was in turn beaten by frasier, amazing how possessive i feel about tv, how much i wanted seinfeld to win...

we're in a hiatus of lost, it seems the americans are resting inexpicably at the 9th episode and we're not used to having to wait... it's been... i don't know... a month or so of catching up and we're accustomed to the faster pace... to have caught up america and for america to be waiting...

so anyway we're in a hiatus of lost and now we're watching seinfeld, felinity gave me the 3rd series box set last christmas and i haven't watched it all the way through yet...

good tv with one's lover...

x

glamourous

the party was actually quite a lot bigger than i'd expected, josiah came and i was sat chatting to her and sipping wine, 15 minutes from the moment when my stunning girlfriend walked into the room... she got a round of applause...

wearing a dress she'd made and a hat her friend had made... pure old-fashioned glamour, just like she'd walked out of a black & white film... gracefully draped in duchesse satin...

very much out as a couple now in this house... neither of us very comfortable with being intimate in public but new years eve and a huge desire to kiss my girlfriend...

just before she DJ'd a couple of hours later she changed into another glamourous outfit, this one pink...

quite the belle of the ball...

i was suited up in my paul smith suit & liberty shirt so i was pretty classy for once as well... nice to be able to go some way towards matching my lover... i have visions of us going out to restaurants dolled up like that... who knows what 2006 holds...

she was woken up way too early today and went off to see her mum & dad, a little unsettling accident that is pretty much through the other side now, recovering, but not a nice way to welcome in the new year...

i've been sweeping and mopping for a little while and now i'm waiting for my girl...

x