yr2wk28

just me on my own, a little late, i can't remember the last it happened on a sunday, but then it has been christmas week...

x enjoy x i know, a little bit videotastic at the moment, but you got some actual paragraphs in that last post... huh?

x

marbles

well, 2nd night back in the smoke and i can't sleep, probably the smoking...

since i posted that marble run video i've taken an interest in these 2 videos that this character has posted of his marble machines, also this marble adding machine...

i'm slightly obsessed with filming again since my folks got me a new camera for christmas, the dawn project videoblog below was shot on it and it's very groovy, it has this thing called stitch assist which shows you the last picture you took just to the left of the picture you're about to take, then a bit of software that will take this series of pictures and turn it into a panarama:



this being where i took some of the 2nd shots this morning (well, yesterday morning) for the dawn project...

given a tripod and a good high place, i could get great results...

balthazara is being lovely, i haven't yet told the story of her coming to this flat but i will, i think she's close to being settled enough to let her outside every now and again, but that could be wishful thinking... it's only been a week and my intention was to leave it 3 weeks, i'm used to dealing with her poo now...

& i've got my eye on a new soundcard fairly soon, a small windfall is allowing that to happen, or will allow it to happen, but my room is the furthest from being ready, the ceiling has yet to be painted let alone the whole room being papered and painted so i'm reluctant to set stuff up, although i can't stop, the weekly improvisation must push on (saturday now for this week's, when i wake up)...

oh well, i think i can feel sleepyness... i'll call this a night, oh but just to say, at some point in the next week my numbers will be @ 7777 and i'll be doing my customary thing with the location of my 7777th visitor x

marble run with felinity

here it is, we had such fun x

Dawn Project videoblog week 42

we came back to london last night to balthazara's delight, she who was licking my fingers earlier on today after i'd had about an hours sleep after the dawn project,

another video brewing, the results of me & felinity's efforts to build a marble run over christmas...

x

yr2wk27 moog, rhodes, drums, guitar with D & G

recorded on friday at Hammersmithwork on D's beautiful moog opus3 synth and a rhodes sound, D on drums & G on guitar, the same trio as yr2wk6...

x

short on sleep

i've been up since 4 on a crazy escapade that hasn't yet worked, more details once it's done, i've decided to stay awake, even though i only had about 3 hours sleep, i'm gigging tonight and the adrenalin will keep that working then i'll collapse in bed once home and make my early morning thursday work a little easier...

or at least that's the plan x

yr2wk26 piano & voice improvisation

recorded this afternoon with my many aches & pains, having fallen off my bike yesterday on the way to the dawn project, my right elbow and my neck/back on the right, along with some vicious leg cramp my body decided to give me last night in my left calf...

but do you hear me complaining about it...? do you? well not in the improvisation but i am complaining quite a lot in real life...

felinity sick in bed and therefore not over here which is a shame ... i hope she's feeling better soon...

and if i can muster the energy i'm going out to G's show & prove @ the queen elizabeth hall tonight, it's free, you should go too...

x

internet at last

and what have i done since the internet arrived this afternoon?

i've played sudoku over on the new scientist website -(where, as soon as i get paid, i'm so going to get a subscription to the magazine) - i've updated the index page on longcat.net showing the correct weekly improvisation, something i might have worked out how to do out there in internet cafe land but it so much easier at home...

i've made a move on chess.com, i've established that the muswell hill odeon is not currently working, sadly, as me & dinah were going to go there tonight...

and that's mostly it, other than watch that video just below this several times... thanks felinity i agree it's marvellous...

i bought a wired router today, which is currently supplying internet to both this PC and dinah's mac, although the mac isn't definitely seeing the internet yet, now, will my email address just work? being as i was with virgin media before the move...?

let's see...

anyway, must get bread & cheese...

x

packing up longcat's room

here it is, the photo project made flesh...

when we were packing up the old room (documented here) we went through G's stuff that had been occupying the two top shelves in my room all the 4 years i lived there...

in amongst a few different things was a tin can with (i counted them today) 31 pounds worth of old 50p pieces...

so one of my out of the house tasks today has been to find out just how to convert old money into new... no luck so far, the bank of england are the way it seems, a trip into town therefore... one of those subjects you'd think it would be easy to research on the net but i'm getting nowhere...

last night me & dinah met with felinity and co for a night of karaoke madness... pretty wierd setup but with a certain amount of alcohol it was damn good fun, bohemian rhapsody a surprise hit...

x

yr2wk25 rhodes improvisation

friday's improvisation, just the rhodes, taken this long to get online but it's there now, our internet arrives on wednesday and it will all be a lot easier...

i'm also uploading (from this internet cafe) the finished version of the photo project i did in that room in birnam road, on the day of the move i set the camera videoing for about 30 minutes so it's a combination of the stills and the video, to some great music (not mine)... it'll probably be in the next post...

x

internet cafe

so here i am in this internet cafe just across from turnpike lane station, uploading the improvisation i recorded yesterday afternoon...

life is proving a touch difficult recently what with the moving, the not sleeping enough, the not having balthazara yet and the continued nonsense from the old housemates about taking her... i find i'm a little more fragile than usual which is not surprising i guess, i might get myself some arnica, carry it around like a i used to...

this week i did two gigs on wednesday and thursday nights, wednesday night was in the poshest flat i've ever seen in my life, over in holland park and it paid pretty well, it was with G & T, G who is one of my search&reflect apprentices and T who me & dinah met while out celebrating G's new baby girl...

we played three sets of 45 minutes each, the same amount of time i used to do with that piano gig back in the summer but much easier because i had bass and sax with me... we also had the maddest cabbie soming back to north london that i've ever had, he deserved more than a sentence so i'll devote a bit more to him in another post...

thursday night T's band played at the 12 bar with a promoter we've played with before who always - without fail - cuts our set short, it's because we don't bring any audience, every time we do a gig for him we say we're never going to play for him again but we've played 3 times for him...

this time we played 4 out of our 10 tunes and he came up and said one more, we played two more, while packing up i asked T if we could never play another gig with him, the promoter was walking behind me as i said it and he definately heard..

i hope we don't do anymore gigs with him but you never know...

ok enough blogging, i'm going to read from the proust book i'm reading until it's uploaded... x

dawn project

just like last week i was enjoying the lastness of almost everything, this week it's all about the 1stness of it all...

so this morning i cycled from our new flat to the dawn project, it took me 12 minutes and it involved more than one up & down... harder work than the old route but i'll get used to it...

i didn't cycle to my hammersmith work afterwords, 40 minutes on the tube gave me time to get back into my book which i found last night from amongst the boxes...

anyway, must teach x

new flat

internet arrives at our new flat next wednesday and i tried to steal some off the neighbours but they're protected...

so this is a brief post from floopy & T's, much documenting of stuff yet too show but it'll be slow arriving...

the builder finally came and plastered the ceiling today (in one of the rooms) half the flat is now carpeted, the considerate carpeters leaving two massive rolls of carpet directly behind our front door yesterday...

hopefully the rest of the flat will be carpeted today, much papering & painting over the next few days...

the box room was absolutely stuffed full of boxes up until last night when i moved more than half of it (including the piano)...

this flat is going to be so fantastic it's almost good that it's so mad to begin with... we appreciate the carpets that are down sooooooo much x

ok laters x

12 hours

M's coming with his luton van around 9, by then W(floopy)shaman & spski will be around...

the flat has no carpets in it, the builder is completing his work on sunday, the carpets going down monday, there isn't yet a bed for us...

i know, sounds perfect...

and as for the room shots felinity i haven't taken my camera down from it's vantage point yet since i put it up there on... sunday?

so no more pictures just yet, i'll be showing them soon enough though...

we won't have internet for a few days so i'm leaving this all plugged in until we go...

still an awful lot of packing to do x

just a quickie

i know it won't seem like such a big thing to you...

but now, i have every improvisation that i need to listen to on my shuffle...

it could happen before i move...

my room seems to be in complete disarray but i did get to smash some bottles at the bottle bank earlier which was pretty cool x

still listening

still trying to listen to every improvisation i've ever done (for the video series)...

currently on week 47, over half way there, although i don't think i can do it all before we move, which i guess i wanted, but no matter, the point i think is that this improvisation series is all about place in some respects and it all came from living here...

so even though it only represents a year and a half out of the 5 years i've lived here by listening to it all i go on a journey that ends with us moving...

of course i could just as well read my entire blog, which also began since i moved here, but you can't pack while you read blogs...

the process of moving of course doesn't begin when the moving van comes and it doesn't end when it's gone from your new place, so it works that this listening process goes over the actual move itself into the new place - unpacking -

so i'm really tired, i got 5/6 hours last night, dawn projected this morning... worked all day which involved losing my patience with a class which i never like...

i've still got a whole bunch of packing left to do... i'm going to make a tea and then i'm getting back to it x

yr2wk24 rhodes & voice

recorded on tuesday, that rhodes is now in it's suitcases x

just one more...

packing to move...

just need to get to the floor which used to be under the bed, sift through the detritus until i can hoover...

i'm listening to all of my improvisations, all 16/17 hours of them...

i'm currently on week 16...

not much to say, just packing... packing... packing...

once my current task is done i'm probably about half way through... maybe...

x

disengage

not sure what to do about internet in the new place so i'm not accepting any more challenges in the internet chess world until we're up & running...

i've still got 4 games on the go on facebook chess, but there's no time limit on them so that's alright, and i'm playing dinah & her dad over on chess.com, G (who used to live in this room) has recently beaten me and has challenged me to another game on gameknot but it seems i've broken a rule and they've completely stopped all my ability to talk to G, it's really dumb, i'm tempted to bin off gameknot completely but chess.com is not quite so good yet...

so once these 2 games are done with dinah & her dad i'll be largely disengaged from internet chess - very strange - opening firefox and seeing if it's my move is such a part of my day, i already feel slightly lost...

so far i've packed 3 boxes of books and i've decided to lose about a 3rd of a box of books... x

last time last series

cycling home tonight from W&T's, up endimian road because finsbury park is shut at night, a small trial for me & dinah which it's always been ever since they moved there a few months ago, i was singing "the last time" by the rolling stones to myself and it turned into "late in the evening" in my head when it got to a certain bit in the chorus,

i love that musical thing...

and indeed it was the last time we'll be doing that journey, at least in that way, a week from now we'll be living in turnpike lane and any late night's & W&T's will mean a whole different (& easier) journey home...

i love the last time... in anything, i used to move around alot in the early years of living in london, pre-blogging days... and whenever i was moving i would be the same, looking forward to the last time i'd do certain things, loving the melancholy/hope of it...

so in this coming week i'll be taking the tetrapaks to be recycled for this household and that will be the last time, tomorrow we're going for our regular sunday veggie roast @ pennie's (the amazon) and that'll be the last time...

thursday will be the last dawn project from here and the last journey from here to hammersmith in that way, friday will be the last journey to shoreditch in that way...

whenever i do my improvisation this week it'll be the last improvisation here, (although i was planning on doing it over @ my soon to be not landlord's like last week but i think i owe it to this room to do it here, on the rhodes)...

the whole thing steeped in lastness... bring it on,

and lo i announce the beginning of one last series here, i just set up G (who used to live in this room)'s tripod as high as it will go in the corner of the room and i took a picture (even though it's night time)... which will be the first of a series of pictures - maybe 2 a day - to document the packing up of this room...

watch this space x

yr2wk23 grand piano improvisation

recorded this 3 days ago, and in 7 days we're moving, very much counting the days these days...

say D&M last night and i'm off out shortly to see them again with felinity x

irrepressible

i don't know why, although i have an idea...

i am in a very happy mood... slightly nervy happy... we just had the cat meeting, ending in deadlock, 3 of us thinking she should come with me & dinah and 3 (all of whom were there) thinking she should stay,

in retrospect the 2 who are the negative reason for leaving were never going to change their minds but possibly T, she might... and it's just possible i might...

unlikely but i could wake up one day and say - you know what, it's better for balthazara that she stays...

however if it stays as it is, the fact that i've largely paid for her up to now could (and some would say should) give our side more weight,

G who the other day told me i could take her said today that he'd abstain...

anyway, we'll be meeting again about it and who knows what will happen...

i spoke to our future landlord yesterday at last and he confirmed that we can move in on the 1st and that the rent is the figure we thought it was and this alone is enough to make me dance up and down, i think i've been delaying it because of this scary meeting and now that's done, even though the matter is still in the balance, it's showing it's face,

it's dancing about with joy face...

but as i'm happy because i can move my lovely sister felinity has to move out of her home for a few days while they sort out something... and balthazara... what will become of her?

oh, strange days x

yr2wk22 rhodes & guitar with P + DawnProjectVideoblog

i so cannot wait to get out of this house...

currently there's a custody battle for my balthazara going on, certain people in this house - one of whom does love balthazara very much - but the other 2 are the 2 who form the negative reason we're leaving - they don't think i should take balthazara with me, essentially, of the 7 people that live here, 4 of us agree that she should come come with me & dinah but there's a meeting tomorrow night with the others... around 9 o'clock, do send me love for balthazara at that time (GMT) if you can x

in other news though it looks like googlevideo have resolved their issues, they've been rubbish for a couple of weeks and T's improvisation with me last week has never worked on googlevideo which is why i posted it from youtube instead,

basically D's improvisation with me a couple of weeks ago started off alright but stopped working after a few days, it's almost 25 minutes long so way too long for youtube and i didn't know what to do but it started working again about a week later, by which time i'd uploaded T's improvisation with me, which as i say never worked, but at under 9 minutes youtube could deal with it,

so it was with some trepidation that i uploaded P's improvisation with me on friday, coming in @ over 15 minutes so beyond youtube & even facebook, i was more than a little relieved just now when it finally worked... and there it sits at the top of this post...

he came round on friday and he's a lovely player, we had a couple of go's at the improvisation, the 1st one never quite worked, a very real risk when playing with someone for the 1st time, but this 2nd one worked out really well i think...

i've also posted another dawnproject videoblog, this one encompassing the last 3 weeks, ever since the clocks changed..:

kenneth

thursday was a really mad day for me...

spski joined me for the dawn project which was previously unheard of and very pleasant, i decided to cycle into work and back instead of taking my keyboard there on the tube then on to the rehearsal with the new band...

i found out that me & dinah can move into the flat we wanted...

i found a way to get from finsbury park to south bermondsey without going through any barriers...

i met the new band who turned out to be lovely, quite a possibility there i think...

and i was travelling home around elevenish, i got onto the northbound picadilly line platform @ kingscross and there was a seat free, only it had a bag on it...

so i asked whose bag it was and if they'd mind moving it so i could rest my keyboard and it turned out to be kenneth's bag and he asked me if it was a trombone i was carrying...?

he's from barbados and i guess he's in his 60's and we spoke at length waiting for the tube about singers, musicians, the crash of the cymbals, ray charles, harry seacombe, he was a passionate man and he expressed it well, his love of music...

i love random meetings x

print to tape

i've spent quite a lot of time today with W(floopy)shaman's camera, last week's dawn project was the last one with the 1st tape and tomorrow i ride out with the 2nd tape, but i have no money and therefore i'm recycling an older tape,

so this afternoon i transferred 20 minutes of video onto my old computer, then onto my new computer, 4.25Gb of it... to make way for the new dawn project stuff, it was all stuff i'd video'd back in the easter holidays and some of it is gorgeous...

well, once i'd done that i realised i wanted to begin the process of getting from the 1st dawn project tape onto computer so i sent over the 1st 6 days of filming, 10 minutes of video, again onto the old computer before reaching the new computer, i've just edited together 2 seconds or so of the 1st 6 shots and it looks like this:



it struck me, coming back to tomorrows filming, that it would be useful to have last weeks 1st shot at the beginning of the tape, for when i'm setting up tomorrow's 1st shot, so i investigated the "print to tape" option... sadly to no avail... so now i'm going to have to take the old tape up there, set up the shot so it lines up and then put in the new tape... oh well... but hang on... you can't change a tape while it's on the tripod...

oh well, i guess i'll set the tripod up exactly then taking off the camera to change tapes won't push it off too much, if at all... except the small amount left right movement that is possible with that tripod clamp... hmmm...

oh well...

vlad contact lens puncture

vlad and the puncture are today, the contact lens thing is yesterday and this morning...

so let's start with the contact lens thing...

yesterday as i put in my lens i noticed that one of them (the left one) had a very small knick in it but i didn't have time to get new ones out so i put it in intending to change the lens when i got home, i had my keyboard with me because we were rehearsing with T's band in the evening, i was also listening to each of the collaborative improvisation i've so far done on my ipod...

so i was travelling from shoreditch to kennington on the 133 bus around 7ish and i was pretty tired, the bus had been fairly empty but it was just about to get really busy, i rubbed my right eye a little too vigorously and suddenly i couldn't focus in that eye...

i started to look around me to see if i'd knocked out the lens somewhere and at that exact moment a crowd of people came in and i moved along my seat to let someone else sit down (hugging my keyboard stand)...

i asked the man who'd sat down to look at my eye and see if he could see my lens... he couldn't, it wasn't anywhere to be seen and if it had gotten on the floor it would have been all over anyway... london bus dirt...

so i had a psychedelic 10 minutes or so, listening to me & D's improvisation from a few weeks back and only being able to focus on one of my eyes and i started to realise that it must be still in there because looking down and left i could see a strange kind of shadow... so i got off the bus (a palaver indeed with my keyboard) and continued the strangeness that my journey had become walking to SLP...

i arrived and went straight into the toilet to look in the mirror and lo and behold my lens was still in there, folded over... i got it out, (also a palaver) unfolded it and put it back in, went about with the rehearsal...

only it wasn't happy about this and that eye was getting sore so i asked T if there was any contact lens solution around, which of course there wasn't... i decided to take it out and throw it away, i could possibly have kept it in water until i got home but carrying a glass of water, along with my keyboard from south to north london...?

anyway we rehearsed until quite late and i got the tube home, all with only one eye to focus with... once back at finsbury park it became clear that i should throw away the other lens (which had a knick in it anyway) and walk back to ours (but only for another 19 days) unfocussed and that is what i did ladies and gentlemen and it was lovely, i do like a bit of blurred at night time, so long as you know where you're going...

the added part of the story is that this morning i got hold of new ones (my last pair, once we've moved i'll have to get some new ones) and put them in, but once they were in i couldn't focus on anything, i blinked several times but the mist didn't clear until i worked out that i'd put both lens into the same eye... which i think i've done before and which is pretty spectacular...

ok, so briefly vlad, it had rained so the roads were wet and this is the classic time to get a puncture, on the way home from a brief stint at work this afternoon i could feel my back tire going down not too far from home, close though i was i decided to pretend that i wasn't to practise my roadside puncture repair...

i turned by bike up-side-down and set about trying to remove the outer tire... after 5 or perhaps 10 minutes of this with no visible results vlad came over to help, he has one of those jobs where you stand around a lot and he's from russia, he helped me get the outer tire off and find the puncture, also clearing the tiny bit of glass from the outer tire when we'd found the hole...

so much for my independent roadside puncture repair... anyway it got to the glueing stage and it became apparent that i didn't have any glue in either of the tubes of glue i had... so i had to carry the bike, still up-side-down, up hornsey road and through the andover estate to home before i could complete the operation... but the kindness of strangers ladies & gentlemen...? bless vlad...

x

yr2wk21 piano & voice with T

T being a student of mine with a wonderful voice... this on youtube because googlevideo is messing me around at the moment...

x

new computer

just a quick one to say i'm blogging from my new computer... i've dusted off the PC-linq USB cable and the KVM switch i've had since the last time i was running 2 computers...

i'm fairly slowly putting the software i need on the new PC... anyway, just marking the moment x

synth inspiration

cycling through north london between 8:30 & 9 at night as i did last night is quite a thing, the amount of random fireworks going of all around... i've always liked it...

me & dinah went over to walthamstow on sunday to see fireworks which is also quite likely to be where we'll be living in a months time...

yesterday i'd cycled across london from east to west from work to marylebone crossing about 4 or 5 different north/south routes that i normally take, i'd never quite gone that straight east west before...

i was meeting K (& G) & dad for an indian meal which was lovely, K told me D & M's cat is going to be in blewbury over christmas and she also started applying pressure for me to move my between christmas and new year dawn project back by a day, (being as it will be dark anyway then), so that i can be around more for M & D who are arriving at some point on the wednesday...

it troubles me but i might just relent...

i paid my 1st congestion charge today for the watts to drive Gordy's car through town for their gig tonight, i'm about to head over to hammersmith for a jam and to pick up my new computer...

and i am so enjoying this synth...

T from this house is having a performance party on saturday and i'm working out what i'm going to perform... it looks likely i'll be using the synth to give a rhythm in a strange way, singing a song for the house i'm leaving...

x

yr2wk20 rhodes, synth & guitar with D

here it is x

improvisation gay cabaret

old, old friend D came round yesterday for an improvisation which was one of the longer ones, 25 minutes rendering now...

as soon as we'd done i had to get on my bike and race down to the pigalle club in picadilly for a rehearsal for the gig i did later on last night...

my end of the whole thing was only set up 2 days before and the promoter was one of the more disorganised promoters i've come across... it was a kind of gay cabaret / new artists night, hosted by a beautiful drag queen called miss K, a monthly affair that i will probably be playing the piano for again, one of these occasions where you have to put up with a fairly unsatisfactory organiser, (having to wait until 2:30am to get paid) for the sake of working...

so yesterday:

get up for work, cycle into town,
work, cycle home, set up improvisation,
improvise (which was lovely), cycle into town,
rehearse (which was insane), cycle home,
eat shabbat meal with my beautiful dinah (which was lovely), cycle into town,
wait around a great deal, do the gig, wait around a great deal, get paid, cycle home,
crawl into bed with my beautiful dinah...

we have announced our impending exit from this house which was the big news mentioned on monday, we can now plan our move out loud instead of in secret...

i have quite a few groovy things planned next week, an improvisation with a great singer, a recording of drums for stardust & the arrival of my new computer... it's all going on...

x

synthtastic

st L came round on saturday to drop off his NORD rack synth which i'm checking out with a view to buying off him...

i was deep in editing the improvisation then and didn't get a chance to check out the sounds until later and when i did i couldn't work out a few things... so it remained beautiful but very much not used properly...

i saw him again yesterday where he is a student of mine... in fact the last time i'll be teaching that whole group which is a little sad, they were great... they include S from lucky elephant, G from Show & Prove, and of course st L himself to name but a few...

as it was the end of my teaching them we went out and drank and in fact i drank more than i've drunk for quite some time, me & st L were counting drinks by intervals, the last time we'd been drinking in the summer we'd reached the perfect 5th... this time we reached past the octave... although i was drinking less of each drink the later it got...

me & alcohol don't really mix well, not in large amounts...

so today i woke earlyish with dinah making me a tea, i didn't feel too bad, it could be still on it's way... and i've relooked at the NORD in light of what st L said to me last night, and also i've found a manual online...

so today i am in synth heaven...

i've got to pop over to W(floopy)shaman's in a bit to get the camera but other than that i think i'm going to be synthing all day... x

electronic intifada

i went to the anarchist bookfair on saturday and whilst i was struck anew by the amazing uniformity of most of the people there, (black or logo'd T-shirts, jeans, a certain "crusty" look) i was also pleased to reacquaint myself with AK books & the palestinian struggle, i found a group in haringey who run a cinema club right by where W(floopy)shaman & T live, i also bumped into an old friend who works for the freedom press, i bought a book called live from palestine from AK and i've just dipped into it and found the electronic intifada which is a wonderful resource...

i think i'll be putting ei over there in my links section...

tomorrow i've got a mad afternoon assessing 2nd year teaching students which will be the end of my teaching for that group and so we're drinking afterwards...

was going to meet my sister and my dad this evening and i rearranged a rehearsal for T's band to do it and then in the end my dad didn't come to london today, we've rescheduled for next monday...

ok, well, in search of lost time continues to be great, me & dinah continue to feverishly plan our next big thing, news of that on thursday when we announce it to those that need to know...

yr2wk19 rhodes & voice

just me & the rhodes, filtering going on, recorded yesterday x

lurgy trying to get in

one of those days where i got a lot done, house chores, my own stuff, all before i left the house for work in the afternoon, now i'm home and i can feel a cold type thing settling into me...

i've just had a couple of vitamin tablets and i'll be drinking alot of water tonight and over the next few days, i suspect that i'll go to jai krishna one day soon that often helps...

i finished the end of mr Y and it was great, i've got the 1st book of remembrance of things past waiting for me, not that it's called that now, in search of lost time i think... there's a train ticket in between two of the pages as far as i got last time, it's dated 1998... better luck this time...

i'm moved to read it because we saw onegin the other day, hungover as we were on saturday after a monster friday night with W(floopy)shaman, it was slow and irritating but by the end it had got good... it made me want to read the book it's based on, and then i realised i just wanted what literature can do but film can't... so it's my intention right now to give proust another go...

x

yr2wk18 rhodes & cello

currently rendering the 2nd version of this, i'll be checking it out and probably uploading over the 1st version later tonight, couldn't tell you which version you can see, depends when you're reading this...

i had a disaster with both camera's recording this yesterday, Hcello played beautifully and i really like the improvisation, but my camera didn't film my fingers (almost certainly my fault) and W(floopy)shaman's camera ran out of tape a few minutes before the end, that was definitely my fault... so the video is a little odd, almost no me in it... but that's not so bad... i think i comes out well...

W(floopy)shaman & T are coming round later to have shabbat with me & dinah which will be lovely... x

she's in the troposphere

i'm reading a great book these days, the end of mr Y...

i'm also teaching application of number for the first time in my life tomorrow morning so of course it makes sense to simply print out the thing i'm meant to teach without really reading it while i go off with a glass of wine to watch march of the penguins with dinah even though it's a dawn project night and i have to be up hella early in the morning...

sure it does...

x

yr2wk17 piano & voice

x

dawn project videoblog week 31

apparently it's not a green man, it's a spriggan... x

DayWatch & T.E.E.D

last wednesday night (well last thursday very early morning) i foolishly stayed up to watch nightwatch on filmfour...

foolish because i had the dawn project the next morning and also dinah's birthday, but not so foolish because it was really great, i loved it, i loved the main character anton, i loved the story, i loved the production...

so anyway, today i cycled into town to catch daywatch @ the westend vue managing to get charged £11.75 for the 3.00 showing which outraged me but i paid up because this was the time i needed to see the film...

during the trailers i noticed that a piece of curtain was hanging down over the screen and i was impressed when, after the trailers, everything stopped for awhile for a vueman to come and fix this...

and the film was great, very pleasing, when i saw the 1st one on filmfour the announcer said it was the 1st of a trilogy, can't wait for part 3...

and then Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosoars... they asked to be my myspace friend and i checked them out as i do all friend requests, and they rock...

their "Dinosoars having a p..." is just wonderful, it fades after a few minutes, i don't know if there's another longer version out there at all, and i also don't know what the P stands for, although it probably is Party... myspace often cuts the last letters off my tune's names, must one day work out just how many characters you can have...

so there you have it, if you can see nightwatch do so in the next few days and go catch daywatch at the cinema and check out those funky electro dinosoars... x

cycling moment

i was cycling home today from work, my apprentice P came back today and it was great to have him the class and chat with him afterwards, so anyway, there i was, cycling north on hornsey road as i do and on my left, just on the road side of the fence there were quite a few things covered in plastic and i thought to myself,

oh, that's sad, they must be flowers left for someone who had an accident here...

months before i'd seen flowers by the road at that crossing although on the other side (where seven sisters road meets hornsey road)...

but when i got close to the things they were plastic bags full of bottles i think...

not a sign of an accident but of haphazard recycling...

deep in the editing of a video for T's band, using the shots & video from the photo shoot a week ago x

yr2wk16 rhodes x

recorded last night before dinah came home for her birthday giggles x

not as hungover now as you might expect x

dawn project on dinah's birthday

love you boobelah x

photo shoot film fest

so last night i travelled down to tooting to see felinity and also to be there at 6:45am when i woke up so i could get to tooting bec common for 7:30am...

felinity and me had a nice quiet night sipping beer and going through her pictures of the wedding, also catching an episode of a bit of fry and laurie which was great, particularly hugh laurie's legs...

her G rolled in around 4am, really drunk and unable to lock the door behind him,

i rolled over and did indeed rise @ 6:45, making it to the park on time, meeting K, followed by T & M, with O rolling up 45 minutes late...

we had a good morning taking shots for the band, K with his fancy camera and me videoing with my little one, which i'm tempted to make into a scratchy video for one of the tunes that T has recently finished mixing, i'm listening to them now and they sound amazing, it's the recording we did ages ago with the strings we added later, and the other little bits of sessions we did over the last few months,

i think T has put some of them on his myspace,

after the shoot and a lovely green lentil soup from the cafe in the park i went back to felinity & G's for tea and much hanging out with felinity & hungover G, making it back to my ends in time to eat our customary veggie roast with dinah then straight off to the islington vue to meet with felinity (again) for the angel film festival which was truly great,

it was the final of the festival and the quality was very good, we laughed a lot at a very small ahaaar, we were moved by a sad tale of saving suicides on beechy head, we were frankly amazed by a film called surprise...

altogether an inspiring day, just a bit of work for teaching tomorrow and fixing a puncture for dinah then i can go to my well deserved bed x

yr2wk15 rhodes & synth

recorded yesterday and beset by wierd little problems, but it came out good in the end x

synth frustration

so dinah got the advert job and i didn't, they didn't want any keyboard or piano players, they wanted synth players, 8 of them, they had 5 synth players and there was a possibility that i could have been one of the 3 keyboard players synthing themselves up but it didn't happen, which bummed me right out yesterday...

i worked this morning which was great, search & reflect with the production course @ CM, always interesting...

it's a bleak rainy day and i was going to do my improvisation only my batteries are low, charging them up now and i guess i'll try again in an hour or so, or i could just go buy new ones, it's just that it seems like such a waste buying non-rechargeables...

i did begin the improvisation before my camera died and i'm using rhodes, voice and synth, daring the world to accept me as a synth player, a strange new experience, and once again it makes me want to have access to these great sounds in my computer at gigs...

so i'm a little frustrated what with the improvisation all set to go and then the waiting and in a broader sense what with the not getting the advert, although dinah is doing it and it's much better one of us doing it than neither...

x

sore

well, the wedding was great, we had a great time, i got some french laughs and some english laughs for my bestman's speech, me & felinity lindyhopped on the dance floor after dinah tutored us for a little while, i forgot my shoes which i discovered an hour before the wedding, but for some reason my dad had brought 2 pairs so it was all alright...

he wears a lift in the left shoe so i spent the day very slightly higher on my left...

the father of the bride crowed like a cock on the hour, every hour of the meal, at one point i was getting the laces off the grooms shoes while the sister of the bride tried to get my laces, so i pushed my feet all the way under D's chair whiich didn't stop her, once i had D's laces i made my way back to where they were taking a chair away each time with E still sitting on my legs extracting my lace...

my tunes went down alright, but of course they were background music for the wedding so it was a touch anticlimactic for me after all the work i did on them, but they were perfect for the event... dinah sang her tune really well on mum's guitar while they signed the register and it felt just like being in a film...

cousin M bought me a cigar which i hated but i tried to smoke a little of before giving it to felinity's G...

the bride was beautiful, me & dinah cut a dash or two (outfit change midway through the day), felinity was lovely and my mum was looking regal, me, felinity's G, trave & dad were all in matching mossbros suits which apparently looked ok, i was much happier in the paul smith suit later on...

dinah and her mum had swore at her dress for weeks to get it right and made and she was absolutely gorgeous x

reprieve

on monday i reorganised a couple of things to make way for the advert that i still might be in...

it meant that i had to teach this afternoon which wasn't ideal but it had to be done because of the advert...

so today i woke up and i knew i had an awful lot to achieve before i went to work in the afternoon and by midmorning i was motoring along but it was beginning to look a little tight, the 3rd piece was beginning to come together but i still had to get to muswell hill to pick up the suit for tomorrow, write the speech, get it translated in places...

anyway, M from work rang and told me the class today had to be cancelled due to lack of space... so i actually had all afternoon in the end which was a relief...

i got the track into a good state to leave it and went up to muswell hill for the suit and i stopped off in manolos's new place on the way back... by chance his new waitress is french...?

so i qiuckly set her to worktranslating a few choice phrases for me which i recorded into my minidisk and i hotfooted it back here to complete the track - which i have now done... and it sounds great...

dinah has just cut my hair, we have a few more things to achieve and then we're out of here x

yr2wk14 longcat piano improvisation

18 minutes long, with the piece i'm writing for the wedding guests sitting down very much in my mind, and in fact that piece will probably be made up out of bits of this improvisation... mix of composition and improvisation...

just went to see 3:10 to Yuma with spski... very good x

wedding tunes

i started and finished (mostly) one of the tunes for the wedding on saturday today...

i hope the happy couple like it, i'm still scared because i have most of the speech and 2 more pieces of music to write...

arrrrgh x

sleep stories

i've watched ovingdean so many times now i have no idea if it's any good?

so, grabbing a couple of minutes to tell you the sleep stories, 1stly:

some night last week balthazara came into my room while i was asleep and jumped on the bed, demanding stroking...

in my dream i was stroking a cat and i slowly started to realise that the cat i was stroking was just like my own cat and this surprised me... what was balthazara doing in that strange dream place?

the 2nd was just over a week ago, on a friday night, i woke up holding down a chord on my piano, i'd played a few notes, really loudly, and this had woken me up... dinah was saying something like: it's not the time for piano playing now...

x

ovingdean

that's me & grace wandering into the sea from this saturday x

yr2wk13 rhodes & voice

recorded yesterday early evening, me & dinah shaping up to travel down to brighton today for grace's birthday - a few sleep stories i wanted to tell you but they'll have to wait x

GRRRP new cycle maps

i had just numerically ordered my old cycle maps from 2002 and 2004 as part of the GRRRP and i thought, wouldn't it be great if they'd updated them by now, i was expecting an update in march 2006 but it hadn't happened...

imagine my delight when i found these brand spanking new cycle maps that were made in august 2007...?

i heartily recommend you order yourself some if you live in london with a bicycle... they are excellent and they are free.... you can order 6 at a time...

i was cycling around fulham the other day following one of the 2004 ones and it led me the wrong way down a one way street and i thought, you know they should update these... AND THEY HAVE!!!

the numbering system has changed, we used to live on 5 and get the 10 out when we got to town but it's all changed now, can't wait to see them...

and yes, the GRRRP...

being the Great R's Room Regeneration Project, (R being the 1st letter of my real name), me & dinah, although much more her than me, are undertaking it... if i was doing it on my own i'd have moved everything how i wanted it by now and there would be a huge pile of random stuff in one corner of the room that i would then cover with something and forget about for a couple of years, but no, we are boobelahs now and dinah has a way with these things,

all the stuff is being gone through carefully, much, much recycling and throwing out, order is being returned to this room of mine... it's amazing, she's amazing, i have no real stomach for it but she's a trooper, just how long it stays this way is another matter but it is a miracle in the doing...

so the big objects have yet to move but the stuff is diminishing...

more as the GRRRP continues...

x

yr2wk12 piano & tenor sax longcat with Simon D'Souza

part of my trip to brighton, playing with this wonderful saxophonist, more stories to tell but a little drunk & tired now x

yr2wk11 longcat with tony cannam & gareth mitchell: voice, guitar & keys improvisation

about to get on a train bound for brighton, go see my lovely grace and josiah, just waiting for last week's improvisation to upload, recorded last wednesday and only just got hold of the audio last night...

then tomorrow i'm going to see S d'S to talk about a course of his i'm taking over, and also to do this week's improvisation...

i was up this morning as ever filming the dawn project, beautiful day... then i travelled to W(floopy)shaman's new abode, as i always do post dawn project, only now he's a little further off... but only 15 minutes on the bike so nothing too strenuous...

ok, there it is x laters x

just before bed blog

repacked my keyboard just now, from the chaos of post gig, freeing up the stage for the next band, no dressing room to sort it out... got it home and now it's waiting by the door for the morning...

switch my head back from T's band to the reluctants over the course of the night and the long drive up to sheffield...

apparently we will be on T4 (channel 4), although probably not tomorrow, it turns out the singer is from sydney so i'll be getting information from her about where felinity and her G can go to when they're over there next easter...

very tired and no dinah to rest my weary head against in the night... oh well... the rock'n'roll life x

nuts

i'm about to go to my first rehearsal with the reluctants, a band i joined on tuesday, then straight from that rehearsal to a gig with T's band, then home tonight, only to be picked up tomorrow morning @ 9 by the reluctants to travel to sheffield to audition for mobileact...

it's all a bit nuts x

wedding text

it's been a mad day, my last meal @ manolis's (god only knows what i'd do without you playing on the radio as i left), scratching (as mentioned below) and reading...

yesterday i realised that to the wedding was not in my possession... i think i lent it to dad one day because he had a train journey ahead of him and no book... anyway i was convinced that i'd find the reading for D & M's wedding in that book so i took my remaining book tokens and bought it (again) along with the english patient because the writer is appearing in the world book club's 5th anniversary recording at the end of september...

read the wedding book (by john berger) in two days but didn't find an appropriate reading...

so:

over a few hours i had a look in many, many books before deciding to do the reading as the lyrics to a song, which i'm not going to tell you about, in case you come to the wedding...

x

Manolis's letter

To all my customers - old and new

Just to let you know that I shall not be operating after this coming Thursday 30th August so I would like to thank you all for your support throughout all these years.

- No need to be told you are going to be missed
- Not for improving my bank balance
- But for being you.

You can look forward to new food experiences like I shall look forward to a different kind of life.

If my manner or my cooking was, on accasion, not to your liking, please don't take it too personally. I have meant well, at least, in most times.

So on that note I would like to thank you all sincerely and wish you the best of luck in whatever you want to do.

Thanks

Manolis

P.S. If any of you wish to see me again I shall be performing my cooking tricks at:

No.3 Stroud Green Road,
Finsbury Park

bitten again

bram stoker was probably suffering like i am when he wrote dracula... it's such a sensual thing, knowing that you shouldn't scratch but scratching anyway... the momentary release before the nagging need begins again...

it's as though my bites were independent beings, calling to me...

a couple of nights ago we slept in dinah's room and a mosquito bit me in 4 places...

i was awake when it was happening and i could feel it, i've suspected for awhile that there is at least one, if not a family of them in her room,

anyway, i pulled anchor and relocated back to here with dinah in sleepy tow and have been dealing with those bites since...

i was fairly good yesterday, there's one on my neck and i was wearing a T'shirt which rubbed against it all day, so that was hard, but i only succumbed once or twice,

then we slept again in her room last night, after she'd burnt citronella in there to clear them, in fact i'd cleared one the night of the bites, possibly the only one that was in there...

it had bitten my left elbow where my arm had been around her and my right shoulder... then i'd moved, trying to cover up completely but with my hands were by my neck and it had bitten my right hand and my neck...

so when i decamped i found it on my shirt, patiently waiting for me to settle down again, so i grabbed it in a tissue and flushed it down the loo...

last night i don't think there were any in there but there were some in my brain, i would almost fall asleep and then automatically scratch one of the bites, before scratching all of them... leaving me in a state of nervous/anguished/half-satisfied wakefulness...

my right hand is looking a little better today but around the bite a sea of red has expanded, taking over at least half of the back of my hand, and a trail of red snakes it way down my wrist almost to my elbow... very strange, i might get some antihistamine tablets...

anyway, long and rambling and i haven't even got to the main thing which is manolis's letter... i'm going over there in an hour or so for my last ever meal in that cafe, this is the letter he's put on the window of the cafe... actually i think it deserves it's own post... x

back home

glad to be back, but it was lovely being away...

visiting greenclementime & trave & chatoille...

felinity came too, just lovely hanging out with family, all us brothers and sisters, me with my dinah, trave with his clementime, but felinity without her G...

very tired now,

had a notion that we could make it the 30 miles or so beyond leamington to where an old, old friend was celebrating his 40th birthday but it was a very car centred place and the taxi was going to be too much...

anyway, too tired even to link to these folks... bed now x

yr2wk10 longcat piano improvisation

posting this from M & D's x

transformers

oh... piracy...

so me & felinity saw transformers a week or so back and since then i've been itching to find a pirate copy of it so i can get all the early desert battle bits that i like and put them together...

and now i have achieved exactly that... it's 5 minutes long and i've put miles runs the voodoo down to it... i'm tempted to put it on youtube but it's definitely copyrighted material...

for now i'm just happy to watch it myself...

oh that scorpion robot transformer thing... i can be such a geek sometimes...

about to go out to the piano job, thinking of taking W(floopy)shaman's camera tomorrow and getting some footage for prospective work hunting...

x

yr2wk9 rhodes & voice

recorded last night after my week of work...

but the other thing i want to briefly mention is the mediatheque @ the BFI, where on thursday and friday night's after work i sat and watched great things...

thursday night was my 1st visit and i foolishly only asked for 30 minutes at 1st, which ran out and i had to ask for more time... in particular i really enjoyed Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1968), which i watched all of, and We Are The Lambeth Boys (1959), which i watched some of on both thursday and friday night's, also on friday i saw hitchcock's blackmail (sound version - 1929)...

all for free... what an amazing resource ladies and gentlemen, check it out if you are london based and with a bit of time at your disposal...

x

tuned heaven

still short on sleep and i've just returned from a lovely night's work playing the piano...

only 2 nights next week now and this 6 week stint will be over, still haven't found myself anything else...

they had the piano tuned today and it was heaven... i started playing @ 8 and after some gorgeous improvising i started playing my first tune... when that was over i looked at my phone and i'd already been playing for 30 minutes...

that's how lost i was in the sound of that beautiful instrument...

funny how last night's gig was fraught with worry of one kind of another and tonight's was so lovely...

this sleep business has something to do with it probably,

i haven't caught up since sunday night's lack... monday night watching the cloudy sky for a gap and a meteor... in bed late and up in the morning, last night piano playing, tonight piano playing... every day this week i'm working during the day, tomorrow morning i'm up super early for the dawn project...?

so... my bed now, and my beautiful girlfriend...

x

sun on unmade bed

short on sleep and if the sky is clear tonight i'll be up until about 3 looking at the meteor thingy...

i'm into this summers weeks work, going well, with lovely J who used to be my apprentice...

cycled into town early to accompany dinah but also to check out the BFI's archive thing and it was shut (as it is every monday),

then after work i went to the same place and lost two games of chess to the bookseller...

short on sleep... off now, enjoy the film,

x

yr2wk8 rhodes, voice & bongo paul crawford

the 4th collaborative improvisation features bongo fella himself...

x

dawn project videoblog week 21

this is from last week's dawn project, i had decided the week before to stop doing them, but it was such a beautiful morning...

as it says in the video this will probably be a monthly affair, or more likely, whenever i think it's worth doing...

x

short on sleep

i worked last night instead of tonight and by chance my dad is watching the cricket today so me & felicity are meeting him for dinner tonight... i forgot to remind dinah to record heroes for me last night, and i wonder if she did it anyway?...

2 nights ago i slept badly, worked all day yesterday and then gigged in the evening...

i was pretty fragile by the 2nd set but then i played the opening to gymnopedie no.1 (i can only play the opening so far, but then that's the bit everyone knows - dinah knows it as bom ching... bom ching... from the amount of times i've called it that but claims not to actually know what it is...) and i heard a voice behind me say... oh how lovely - i must get a piano... and as i improvised over those 2 chords (with the leaping left hand) the room gradually quietened and i think i'm right in saying i brought a hushed silence to the room (just for a moment)...

not that anyone clapped or anything, that's not what you get in this kind of gig, i've had it once in the 8 gigs i've done there... after my last tune - which generally is april in paris at the moment...

anyway this revived me and i felt a little less like i was being eaten by flesh eating beetles...

i came home and foolishly fell into watching TV with dinah gradually curling up and sleeping on my shoulder, in the middle of the night i saw that the skulls was just over an hour in and i'd been vaguely wanting to see it for a little while, so i found ITV2 + 1, and watched it, and it was pretty good, it's got that guy from CSI in it as a senator...

then immediately after that the larry sanders show was on over on ITV4 so i couldn't not watch it... it was fantastic...

crept into bed around 3:30... was up @ 8 for the dawn project...

so still very short on sleep...

think i'm going to skip over to a mossbros in muswell hill to book my suit for trave & clementine's wedding...

slow but nice day...

goodbye piano

went into work today a little hungover, to hand in some marking that i toiled over this weekend. while i was there somebody told me that some men had come to meet me today to pick up the piano...?

and i realised that the piano i picked out many years ago to hire for work must be leaving, being as that work is shifting to another building - so i'm assuming the piano is going back to the people we hired it from...

i swiftly nipped upstairs to say my goodbyes to the piano and video'd it for posterity... i finished playing - i've been practising this amazing piece of music called lushlife recently - and went downstairs to leave, only to find the men had come back, so i showed them to the piano, watched while they carted it away, played it a little in the alley outside work - in transit -

it was very sad, seeing that piano go, i've played many things on it, wrote more than a few tunes on it, sang songs to people, to classes...

i will miss it...

x

yr2wk7 piano & voice

took a break from marking to record this week's improvisation x

i have been ignoring facebook for awhile now and today, particularly after speaking with felinity yesterday... i gave in...

did the dawn project this morning and i did do a videoblog, even though i'd told myself i wasn't going to... at least not every week... but i've been knee deep in marking all day and haven't had a chance to edit it...

felinity met me yesterday to buy me my birthday present, a ritual we began on her birthday, (or was that last year?) and she got me the birth of the cool music, scored out for 9 musicians...

i can't wait to get my teeth into it and get an arrangement for my piano...

we almost went to see transformers... it looks like that'll be saturday night now... and we did eat in the chinese place we eat at and drank in the salisbury... awfully nice as ever...

and earlier on during the day i'd been to the BFI, largely to play chess with the bookseller there (although he didn't have his board with him) & i took the opportunity to check out the new back bit...

and it is lovely...

it has a media centre there where you can search the BFI's archives... some day soon i will be perusing randomly...

anyway, still marking and i've got to get myself ready to gig tonight so i'll leave it @ that x

2 haircuts

john coltrane playing "countdown" from "giant steps", dinah cutting my hair (twice), me having my hair cut (twice) and messing with the video's x

thursdays collaborative improvisation

with gareth mitchell on guitar and darren smart on drums, @ shiftworks studio, recorded by ellis gardiner, (using thomas's wurlitzer) x

dead?

felinity rang earlier to make sure i was still alive, i hadn't replied to a message of hers earlier in the week, and i hadn't blogged since last saturday...

now i think i've always been rubbish about answering messages, but when was the last time i didn't blog for a week?

so, apart from telling you that i'm not dead, lets give you a little run down of my week:

sunday night: saw W(floopy)shaman & T and T returned spski's book the historian to him via us, which i then routed to myself...

in fact that probably explains it... it's a 700 page book and if i hadn't left it at the recording session i did yesterday i would have finished it by now...

but let's move on...

monday: largely lazy day, read alot...

tuesday: a couple of hours work took up much of my day... played piano in the evening,

wednesday: working, meant to be all day but it stopped around 2:30, but my bike was in the menders nearby and not ready until 5:30 so i read the book in the local library... watched heroes in the evening (great)...

thursday: recording session @ lovely E's, with D & G from hammersmith work, ten minutes of which make up this week's improvisation, left the book there by accident, played piano in the evening,

friday (today): up at stupid o'clock for the dawn project (because i slept through it yesterday), then over to W(floopy)shaman & T's for his firewire cable, back to mine to capture the video of yesterday's improvisation, then a nap, then editing video, back to floopy's to drop off camera and lend mic, over to E's to pick up audio of improvisation, which is now rendering...

my boobelah is cooking our shabbat meal downstairs, my computer will be rendering into the early hours, we've been videoing kingdom hospital since wednesday night and haven't yet caught up, that's 3 hours of TV before we can watch tonight's episode, we'll be recording that one as well then... (but there isn't one on tonight, does that mean it's finished?)

and how great is heroes?

retrospective deflea post

for some reason i didn't post at the time of the last deflea, and it's about the one thing i have to do in this blog, so that i know when the 6 weeks are up and know to do it again...

so there you go, i think it was around now...

x

yr2wk5 rhodes & voice & bass

RAM doom improv CD arrives

in fact the improv CD arrived on monday, just been a little busy changing into piano player in restaurant man to have told you...

i think it took 3 weeks to arrive from the states, impractical...

but it looks gorgeous, W(floopy)shaman's work on my basic design is just beautiful:



isn't it?

lovely G from college came round last night to improvise with me, this week's improvisation, the 2nd collaborative one... uploading now...

all day yesterday my computer was freaking me out, i was trying to speed up the film of dinah cutting my hair on monday so that i can have my wicked way with it but vegas kept crashing, i'd leave it alone for awhile do render it's happy little way and i'd come back and my computer would be smiling at me saying "hi, i've just turned on... what shall i do?"

it did the same thing last night with me & G's improvisation so today i had a little look into it and it turns out my old 512Mb RAM was damaged, maybe by the heatsink i have on my processor, so i put in the 256Mb one i'd taken out before, relieved that it wasn't the new 1Gb one that was broke, and everyone is happy today, the improvisation is rendered and... has just finished uploading...

the haircut has also gone through it's 1st stage of speeding, probably another 2 times for that...

so i'm happy x

new person walking the streets

so yesterday i become a new person...

i mean obviously we all become new people everyday, bits of our bodies constantly renew, psychologically we are subtly different day by day, but yesterday i became different slightly more...

i spent the day creating 3 sets of 45 minutes each, come 6 i put on the paul smith suit and i took the tube to fulham... whereupon i played those 3 sets in a restaurant called the farm...

i've never done it before, strange, playing the piano most of my life but i've never done a proper restaurant gig on the piano before...

when JtJP asked me to cover for him for 6 weeks (tuesdays and thursdays) i originally said i'd start next week, give me time to build up a set, but then i realised that i needed the money for this week too so i took it on, knowing that the 1st one would be hairy...

and hairy it was...

i did well, but on thursday i'll be loads better, in fact i'll probably be improving all the way through the 6 weeks, maybe peaking around week 4...

also it was very tiring, 3 sets...

but it's such a nice thing to do, thinking of all the tunes i love and finding the music then playing them...

also nice to look natty x

seemingly unrelated sentences

3:22 am and i should be in bed...

me & dinah have to go to pennies early tomorrow because i'm gigging in O's band in the afternoon...

i'm really enjoying listening to my music, and i just tried to set up a secondary myspace account to showcase my more experimental side - currently it all lives in the same place - but they told me i was not eligible to sign up to myspace...?

i'm about to spend almost a hundred pounds on a new sound card... or am i?

just spent a lovely night round W(floopy)shaman & T's...

i feel good about the world...

this week i start covering for JtJP playing piano in a restaurant in fulham...

x

yr2wk4 rhodes & voice

yesterday's hungover improvisation x

gig last night was a triumph x

gig of RAM and a muffin

needless to say i'm feeling pretty rancid today,

i couldn't sleep so i got up to install the RAM, shushed balthazara out of the room because she was making sounds as if to be sick... which she was, on the stairs...

cleaned that up and narrowly missed throwing up myself in the process...

took my PC into the front room so as not to wake dinah, out with the old RAM and in with the new...

then i starting being sick in earnest...

but let's rewind 12, 15, 19 hours...

i got up to do the dawn project, it went ahead, W(floopy)shaman hadn't got out of bed when i arrived at his to drop off the camera so i pootled off home, woke dinah with a coffee, made myself a tea, saw spski...

all very nice...

once dinah had arisen she went and checked the post and i was very excited to find that my 1st ever ebay snipe, 1Gb of RAM, had arrived...

also a present and a card from my folks and a card from my brother D...

went off to work where there wasn't very much for me to do, a few of us (including lovely D) went off to the cafe and had a meal, so i was about to pay for mine when i saw a chocolate muffin, and i knew i had to have it, i asked the man behind the counter to give it to me, being as it was my birthday, saying that if he didn't i would still buy it...

and he gave it to me...

which made me enormously happy...

i went out onto the street and started singing to the world of my muffin and my gig of RAM...

also yesterday we played some music, improvised as we tend to do on a thursday, me & D, sometimes with JtJP, today it was with G - a guitarist, who i'd seen play with rediffusion once before it turned out, lovely player, i hope to get him into the weekly thing real soon...

then there was the staff party @ work where i had a couple of glasses of red...

then i cycled home where dinah had prepared a lovely meal but i was late and felinity & G were @ the pub and they were going to have to go soon so i went to get them, helping felinity drink her bitter while i was there, brought them back to ours where we drank champagne...

all abit mad and a few different kinds of alcohol which explains my feeling like this today... anyway, must dash, gigging tonight with T,

my improvisation is currently rendering, i'll upload it probably tomorrow now...

x

dawn project week 18 ON MY BIRTHDAY

oh yes....

birthday...

x

rescued collaborative improvisation

me & tooting tone, had to work hard to rescue it but rescue it i did x

lost improvisation russian visitor

T came round yesterday to do probably my last session for the recordings, some piano, some clav, some hammond and also my voice...

good session, closing with the 1st of my longcat collaborative improvisations, T on voice, me on voice & hammond...

and i half knew it would happen, but somehow i thought if i waited long enough it would right itself...

cubase freezing at the moment i pressed stop, we went out to the plough after to wait it out and when i came home much the worse for wear 4 or so hours later it was still frozen, so the improvisation is lost...

it's happened before and i really need to get into the habit of saving just before i press stop... or maybe set up auto saving... foolish, and it means this week's improvisation will be recorded later today on my own...

i did however meet a man in the pub who said steven seagal is a great blues musician... this is going to make me laugh for weeks...

and then also at roughly the same time i had my 6666th visitor, sadly @ 8:04pm on the 6th of the 7th 07 and not 4 hours later on 7/7/07 but it's still great...

and tonight i'm meeting with felinity to go the circus courtesy of spski which is lovely, i was meant to be going with my dinah but some work has come up and though i'm very sad not to have her on my arm it's great that felinity can come...

oh yes, and where did my 6666th visitor hail from?

well i'm glad you asked, they hail from the great city of st petersburg.

x

numbers & rain

it was the last day of term for my students today, and therefore it was a bit mad...

i was pretty vacant being as i'd had not that much sleep, nervously waking up on the hour from 4am onwards...

i started cycling back with D and within a few streets we'd stopped to put on our jackets, then a few streets later our waterproof trousers...

we parted company, as we always do, @ ladbroke grove and i found my way (as i always do) to the regents canal, by which time it had started to chuck it down some...

i was really enjoying the look of the raindrops hitting the water and i stopped after awhile and left my little camera running facing the water, under a bridge, so the raindrops ended in a line in the water...

i was listening to my shuffle and just waiting while my camera filmed, if the rain had let up a bit i would have set off but it just got worse & worse...

i turned the camera the other way and was delighted when a family of geese swam past, one of the gosling's swimming right by the camera...
oh, and numbers,

i was hoping that we might have a coincidence of numbers on saturday, which is the 7th of the 7th month 2007, and it might still happen that my counter over there on the right hits 6666 on 7/7/07 but looking less likely now that it's 58 tonight and there's all of tomorrow to go in between...

either way, whenever it comes i will be doing my customary thing with the 6666th visitor, assuming i can see where you're browsing from i'll post a picture of your town...

x

dawn project videoblog week 17

freed in gaza

VERY good news, delighted that mr johnston (the BBC reporter) has been released into the hands of hamas officials in gaza after 4 months...

x

mesa of lost women

i bought this DVD with 3 films on it because of the 1st of the 3, carnival of souls, which is excellent,

every now and again when me & dinah are stooging around for a film to watch i suggest watching mesa of lost women which is the 3rd of the 3, and over the weekend she succumbed and we watched it...

as she has said it would have been much better if we'd been drunk or stoned or hungover...

anyway this dance from the film is just amazing, amazing for it's badness as well as something else than i can't put my finger on...

so i've put it on youtube, not sure if i'm allowed, but i have x

a moment

boobelahs rolling in @ 4am, the full (ish) moon looking so lovely just before it disappears behind a cloud, the sky beginning to lighten and being such a beautiful shade of blue...

sleep cycles messed up & dinah not overly impressed with the late hour but a magical moment,

cycling through deserted streets @ this hour is one of life's pleasures x

appearing rooms

this is from last wednesday (10 days ago), when me & felinity didn't go to the cinema, i've put it with the improvisation i did @ tin pan alley studio and i've messed with the video speed...

x

longcat weekly 54 (yr2 wk2)

miss moneypenny writes

quite a day...

from this (above) this morning to getting the tube to south wimbledon and doing the flute thing...

which was so scary i managed to do my back in in some odd way...

to having a great random conversation on the tube sparked by a joke about the smoking ban... the stranger was on both the northern line and then the victoria line, and it turned out that he used to play the trombone just as i did, we touched on the oppressed peoples increased level of community as well as the johnny briggs theme tune...

all very marvellous and my tube travel made even better by beginning the waves by viginia woolf, which i am reading in tandem with my beautiful, gorgeous, talented, deeply sexy, highly intelligent and caring girlfriend who is typing this for me under dictation and not adding any of her own words...

because i am laid up in bed with the aforementioned bad back...

i don't know what else to say, i mean that's all really...

x