night falls over north london

emailed in a request to jarvis but he didn't play it... it was Bee Gees – Love You Inside Out  for siggi on mothers day x

left mine around 7:15pm, knowing the sunset was due @ 7:40...

wanted to get out there at least once...

cycled out northish... i love the way my mind gradually finds out where i'm going...

crossed over the railway at alexandra palace station, into ally pally park... joining the route me & dad walked on wednesday (and indeed, me & emma walked last sunday)...

could see the sunset was the other side of the hill so i tried to move up to it... joining another path traversing the hillside...

i could hear music from the palace, a random guy working the barriers told me it was indian music..

one of those lovely experiences where you can hear the sound sometimes, when the wind is in the right direction...

passed on towards the edge of the park, other side from the station, the light fading as i reached the passage under muswell hill road, then the disused to highgate...

by now i'd started singing, an imaginary gig where i'm singing with the audience at the top of the gig...

"you know you are you know you are you know" - quick, in 3's...

triggering a slower part "you know the way you are"


went past that fantastic view over london... (the journey back's dark view of it at the top, the journey there's evening view, wednesday's view with dad here , last sunday's with emma below, and old friend J's drawing from 2008 at the bottom)

cycled on the highgate, out of the parkland and then along to the entrance to highgate woods... almost cycled in but i could see they would be closing the gates @ 8 & i guess it was 7:55 or so...

so i locked up my little bike on the road and went into the woods... singing as i went, the song growing all the time...

sat on a log and smoked half of the little fella i'd brought with me...

walking on i was videoing my face, while walking - singing the song wherever it was then and i came accross two park ranger types, R & D, who told me they were locking up... i told them i'd be ok and that if i needed to i could jump over the fence... R told me to be careful...

i walked on, now in a part of the woods i hadn't been in before... with the light failing more and more... a fence, across my path, a sign announcing a conservation area... finding a way around...

now off all paths... starting to slightly worry about the darkness and tripping over... i found my way back to a path and stuck to it...

getting to a gate just as R was locking it... i asked to be let out and it was onto an odd path that goes by the side of the woods, i walked along singing my song and just as i reached the corner of the woods and walked around to where my bicycle was locked up i could see R, or her shadow between the wooden bars of the fence...

she was locking the gate just as i was unlocking my bike...

back along the disused, stopping at the amazing view to take the night time panorama that is at the top of this post...

met one more random person @ ally pally - where i took loads more potential panoramas, chatted about games, both of us keen to see portal 2 when it arrives... i smoked the other half as we talked...

then back onto the path and out of the park, over the railway @ alexandra palace station and home through woodgreen...

the song now much more complete - a chorus that i'm pleased with x

yr4wk7 overdrive heaven

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

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

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

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

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

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

x

rain and no rain neve joy

last night around midnight, cycling by the thames, the houses of parliament on the other side of the river... lowtide, mad, mad rain pouring on me... joni mithcell's hegira in my ears... as though the river was so low because all the water was falling from the sky...

tonight, around the same time, (a little later), no rain, clear, crisp sky, a bite in the air... carl craig in my ears...

last night, coming in and having to take every single item of clothing off, not even my T-shirt escaped the wet... a hot shower, careful arranging of things on radiators...

similar shaped days today and yesterday... well, yesterday and the day before yesterday if you're reading this on thursday... me being in the early hours thereof...

saw spski yesterday, he of job interview fame, lovely to hang out with him, popped in for a tea around 2...

today i was supposed to meet one of the actors from the show i'm doing, to go through his big number... he didn't show, wasted 90 minutes of my life, time i could have spent fetching the proust which has arrived at the bookshop...

then, yesterday and today, i spent a couple of hours being a session piano player for the students @ CM, yesterday with MM running the class and today with yimkin in that position, yesterday i recorded my weekly improvisation after, today i recorded some current compositional ideas...

had a bleak moment or 6 around 6 o'clock and i was very glad of that piano to play... came up with some melancholy drenched thing... worked on the "dreamt i was bach" piece, just learning how to play it on the piano...

yesteday i went and got spski again, dragged him out of the flat to get a curry, today i met yimkin, (who had in the mean time been @ ginger B's studio) and we got a curry -

yesterday on my own but meeting T (and M) there, today with yimkin in tow... i went to the studio... down in kennington... new home of my rhodes...

yimkin & me got something working in the system, UAD plugin's which i thought we had but which weren't showing up... the PULTEC of which i'd heard tell and several NEVE plugins's - channel strips or EQ's... so very sexy...

i'm going to put this weeks improvisation through some of it... in fact that all worked really nicely, recording @ CM and then opening exactly the same file in the studio...

good times ahead...

much work to do on the studio but it's going to be so, so sexy...

of course it's quite alot of time away from my dinah which is sad... this week she's a studio widow... last night dripping wet me found her asleep on the sofa...

tonight she'd gone to bed by the time i got in...

and that's where i'm headed now, hammersmith work tomorrow and i'd like to cycle in, i wonder how the distance compares with the studio schlep? hmm... and weather..?

i'm rehearsing with the spanner jazz punks tomorrow night so if i cycle i'll have to get back here and then strap the keyboard on and hit the tube...

anyway, must sleep, i want to get that proust in the morning, and in fact that would be beautiful, the whole tube journey to hammersmith (barons court), to try and start this proust, then head down to the studio, do my thing with the improvisation, then skip over to the rehearsal...?

which to choose? bike or tube?

x

no bristol but snow

i got up this morning because me , T & S, the same team who went to gloucester a few weeks back to get the mixing desk, were going to go to bristol to get the computer...

i've got a small mark on my face, not quite a bruise, from last night, i was cycling back from the christian musical rehearsal and it had been lightly snowing since i'd cycled in, cycling in the beginning snow had been lovely...

cycling on the way back was lovely at first, but cycling over a bridge over the railway i decided it was so great looking i had to stop and take a picture...

even though i'd told myself at the start of the journey that the key was to try not to break, i broke, and i fell off my bike... noone around to see, but it was fairly miserable still...

as i was cycling up the hill (towards where i used to do the dawn project) someone through a snowball at me, and i'm ashamed to say it drew from me a "f*ck off", my 1st snowball of the season and i didn't see the joy in it...

much later, just before bed, dinah called me into the bedroom to see a fox that had found something to eat in our garden and was busying himself with it...

it continued to snow all night and it was beautiful this morning... i was still in bed when dinah got out and i heard her say "oh... it's a winter wonderland"...

she went off to work and i was about to go meet T & S when i rang T to check it was still on and he cancelled it, maybe tomorrow, maybe wednesday now, so here i was, all dressed and ready to go out... beautiful snowing day out there...

how could i not walk to the park?

my john martyn listening is coming along, so far i've listened to "bless the weather", "grace and danger", most of "inside out", and most of this listening was this morning in the park... i left @ 9am and got back @ 10:30, very glad of the 2 hot patches that i bought down in brighton...

x

persepolis... & beyond

i forgot to eat breakfast,

ran out the house down to the prince charles cinema to see persepolis which was wonderful, if a touch too long...

during the film i found some chocolate in my bag from the night before... strange breakfast...

then afterwards i got on the bike and rolled gently downhill to the river, crossing the (non) jubilee bridge, (it doesn't make me cross anymore but i mutter to myself as i cross it these days), then up by the south bank, delighted to see the water sculpture back again (appearing rooms), although the day yesterday was a bit grey for it...



up past the Hayward and through that little passage underneath waterloo bridge, down some stairs and then the booksellers under the bridge...

i found my chess opponent and defeated him a couple of times... eating a few nuts he had,

then continuing along the river, past a crowd of people looking down onto the beach where no doubt someone was sculpting sand, all the way to the tate modern so i could check how long the cy twombly exhibition was on for (until 14th september)...

then over the (non) wobbly bridge,

all this in the way that i used to love doing, still love but somehow i don't have occasion to do it so much anymore, probably since CM moved east and further away from the river, drifting on my bike amongst the bank holiday crowds, (those who weren't carnivaling)... slowing for knots in the people, speeding up when there was the room for it, only having to put my foot down once from waterloo bridge to the tate, slowing to walking pace when necessary...

all the while listening to music, mostly the instrumental version of the song i'm working on at the moment, although the lyrics have slowed to a trickle again for now,

so over the (non) wobbly bridge i go, up toward st pauls, round the side, eventually finding my way onto high holborn, by which time i know exactly where i'm going,

to that church where i lost that piano all those years ago,

and they've got a new grand piano, not brand spanking new but newer than the (lovable) wreck they used to have... it's rolled into a niche so you can't get at the keys easily, but i played a few notes at the top of the keyboard and i'm considering how to get a gig in there...

on leaving there i headed straight up to floopy's and by this time, all that cycling, so little food, i was in quite a strange state... floopy insisted i ate a cheese sandwich and i just about made it home, slumped out in front of an episode of the wire, the last series now showing in my computer, being as i looked and it seems we don't have FX... i though we did, but we don't x

dawn shenanigans

so i was up last night blogging away, my head in the clouds, i look out of the window and i see this sky...

so how could i not go and check out the dawn..?

all manner of video's coming out of that little trip, but for now just these pictures and my cycling extravaganza...





x

too much footage

and it was going so well...

yesterday was mental as well as monday and tuesday, this life is pretty hard the moment,

so anyway, i was looking at my dawn project footage and i noticed a folder marked 17th january... so i had a look and inside were shots i took on that day for the dawn project, on a DVD camera belonging to hammersmithwork... shots i hadn't counted before, and yet without these shots i was happy that i had enough weeks, accounted for all the shots...

but no... and i still don't really know what's going on, it was very dark around that time so maybe i'm thinking one of the other shots is a main dawn project shot...

oh dear...

in other news i cycled all the way to the school in langdon park today, i go there to support one of my students who is on placement there, it took me just under an hour and it's a great ride, mostly on waterways, 1stly the river lea and then the limehouse cut, i love cycling x

mad route planning

not too much sleep ahead of me, then the dawn project, then back here (not to floopy's) to shower & break my fast - (very necessary) - then i'm cycling on this route:



to hammersmithwork...

that'll be interesting,

my whole day bookended in theory by spski who thinks he's meeting me for the 2nd time @ the dawn project, and is definately coming round to ours in the evening...

that'll be interesting 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

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

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

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

routes

i cycled 11.5 miles last night to get home from felinity's place in tooting, (and in fact i followed a very similar route to the outward journey, so it was 23 miles in all yesterday), & if i cycle to work on friday (a days work in a PRU in kidbrooke, covering for a friend) then that journey will be 11.6 miles...

a handy comparison, knowing that it took me 80 minutes to get home last night, that the guy whose work i'm doing on friday said it takes him 90 minutes to get there from roughly where i live...

i guess it depends on the weather report...?

x

dawn project nonvideoblog week 12

this time i took the camera but without the batteries... good job the videoblog is only a secondary activity...

it was one of those nights, me & dinah had been over @ T & W's and we'd drank quite a bit and i hadn't risen before midday once so far this week, so my 7:30ish dawn project rise was always going to be a shock...

& my body decided to spread the waking up over many hours...

1st @ around 3 am, accompanied with the knowledge that i'd missed the dawn project and not knowing how to tell the time from my phone which was resolutely saying 3:07, when it was clearly 8ish...

that kind of dream logic that lingers...

then again @ 5am...

then @ 7, even as i closed my eyes again i knew i wouldn't get much after 7...

so i made it out there, armed with umbrella, waterproof trousers, coat... turned out to be lovely, lovely, lovely and i performed my two shots, pootling around on the very muddy disused... rolling up @ T & W's to drop off the camera and the tripod and sip tea and eat toast which has become a tradition over the last month or two...

i came home intending to do my improvisation but i had to do some archiving before i could begin, both in my PC and in my little camera, so it was very close to when i should have left for work when i started playing... dinah had slowly arisen with the mocha i gave her... strange pleasure, waking her up slowly and deliciously...

i did do the improvisation but i had to leave it completely unrendered in any format and go to work... odd... half the job done with that hanging over me all day in a wierd way...

cycling was beautiful, on the way home i was eager to get editing but i couldn't help stopping and taking a few pictures...




beautiful day it turned out to be...

almost out from under

killer day today,

i woke up this morning with that sudden wakefulness that alcohol the night before can do... me & dinah celebrating 18 months since our first kiss last night and i was a little unsure that i would get up today...

but i did, and i cycled out to the canal, sadly couldn't stay on it all the way to my destination as there are works going on... got to the school with moments to spare, found out that the lesson i was observing actually started an hour early...

did my observation then i was out....

found the limehouse cut and spent an idyllic hour or so cycling around and filming, another videoblog on the way...

and now i'm here @ work again, just 3 more students work to go over then i'm out from under this particular paperwork mountain...

another one just a little further on i'm sure but the sun is shining and i'm almost free...

x

a fan

ok, so firstly, i've found a fan...

he put one of my weekly improvisations on his blog saying isn't he good?...

isn't that nice? (you know i just had a look at that improvisation - one of the few hosted on youtube - and it's been viewed 3306 times.......?)

and secondly i've been tinkering with the thames path film, the one i showed at my december gig... this week has seen me find a new way of doing something i've been wanting to do for ages and i've implemented an idea of spski's in relation to colour...

it's rendering now in it's most recent version and i can't wait to see it... gordy has a party on saturday night where we're showing films and it's a good kick up the arse to get this moved on...

i went over to felinity's new house last night where she's now living with her G, we ate fantastic vegi indian food and cooked, flipped & ate pancakes... lovely to see them both, strange to go visit her and for G to be there, not that it's strange seeing him, just that i'm so used to solo visits with felinity, this is it though, a new chapter in their life...

living together in a lovely, cute house..

makes me a little jealous...

it took me 2 hours to cycle home from there... although this was not a direct cycling experience... it was raining just slightly and i was a little camera mad... kept pulling it out of my pocket and snapping away...

well i had taken off my gloves by this point as it was not too cold and one time pulling out the camera i must have pulled out a glove at the same time...

i realised this on that road separating kensington gardens from hyde park and i spent a good twenty minutes looking for it, retracing my journey back to the royal albert hall but to no avail... i am now without my right glove which is a pain...

i cheered myself up with the thought of the miniroll that was waiting for me at home and i continued on, getting ever more into filming, until i was on the canal, the rain still there but only light... under a railway bridge, lights shining in wierd ways...

i don't know how long i spent videoing down there, and i haven't checked the footage yet, could well be all useless, too dark... but it was a lovely time spent all alone with the night and the water...

half remembered faces - the dead C & a stupid tale

watching the dead C perform last night in kilburn i found myself fantasising that i was on stage at such a gig (the support) and in my mind i started improvising lyrics that i was performing there & then...

i wrote the lyrics down when i got home and today, half remembered faces is becoming a song...

more on the mighty dead C later...

so the stupid tale...:

this is yesterday morning and i hope i tell it right...

i left the house to go to londonbridgework wearing my small coat, i've been wearing the big coat more and more now it's getting colder - even cycling - however work days, cycling longer distances is the smaller coat...

but being a two coat individual these days i forgot to transfer my keys and my travelcard (wallet) into the small coat, a fact i discover a couple of minutes into the journey... i decided not to go back for them, just going to work, i had enough money...

so i'm cycling along and i reach the point near angel about half way through my journey and i get a flat tire...

it's been awhile since i've had a puncture and i'm not at all in the habit of carrying around the doings to fix them these days...

so i think alright, that's ok, i'm near enough to angel tube i'll lock up the bike there and get the northern line in...

so i'm walking my limping bicycle along to the tube, trying to ring work to no avail to get a message to my students that i'll be late, they're not answering the phone, i'm getting worked up by this now, a simple phonecall to let them know where i am would ease my mind and i can't get through...

i try the two students whose numbers i have, i try my friend M who is on the staff, she's on holiday, i try the main work number again and again...

by this time i've reached the tube - where i'm aware i won't be able to make the phonecall and i'm accepting the fact that i'll be 10 - 15 minutes late and i won' t be able to let them know...

so i reach into my pocket to get the keys to lock the bike and only then do i remember that i've left my keys at home...

so i cannot lock up my bike...

this was huge... my brain just couldn't take it in for a minute or so... i had a puncture, no repair kit, too far to walk home or to work...

i remembered once i was with felinity and i'd forgotten my keys and we were going to the cinema (also another time - in camden... who was i with?) and both times i found a way to hide the bike, or actually in camden the staff took it behind their counter...

so with this in mind i went into the station and asked someone what i should do and instead of saying, alright, just put it in here, come back later, as i was hoping (foolishly) a man in there suggested i take it to a police station, there's one a few streets away from the tube...

which i did, the police station turning out to be right where i got the puncture, i waited in there a good 20 minutes and then was told that no, sir, that's not something we do here...

so i walk out of the police station, really not knowing what i should do...

and then i hit upon the notion that i should have thought of all along which was to find a bike shop... leave it there... or better still, get them to fix it, go on my way...

i ring spski who thinks for a moment and then tells me the name of a bike shop on essex road... (amazing mind that man) and i trundle over to mosquito, by now i've walked 1 & a half miles with my limping bicycle, mosquito charge me a little more than normal to fix the puncture i cycle on my way...

i arrive at work over an hour late...

the dead C deserve their own post... all that stupidity has taken up too much space... later on x

cycling

just a quickie,

i cycled 27.8 miles yesterday...

over to hammersmith to work, (which was pretty grim, i had to put someone on report and it shook me up)... then from there to london bridge to drink with M & producerG from londonbridgework... which included an indian meal...

then M went home and me & producerG raced (me on bike - him on tube) to nottinghill gate to catch goldielocks who had L (another londonbridgework tutor) playing synths for her and looking amazing in dark goggles and a guitar style synth...

part of my shaken state @ hammersmith had been because i got an angry text from a friend and it was pretty strange that that very same friend was @ the gig in nottinghill... slightly at arms length at first as she wasn't ready to speak to me and let go of her angry thing but it wasn't long before we were back to our normal laughing friendly status... i guess sometimes you know a friend is truly your friend when they are ok with letting you know that they're angry with you...

anyway i didn't hang around long after goldielocks's set, she was great, i skipped out and bid farewell to producerG who had been buying me drinks and food and had got me into the gig, last night before payday as it was...

and i found my way from there to my usual route home from west london and that is how i managed to cycle 27.8 miles in one pretty wet day...

oh and i bought myself some waterproof trousers today... (payday)

x

many pens

dropped off dinah @ her class... picked up a london paper for the sudoku... went to the bike shop to get waterproof trowsers and decided to get a new back outer tire...

it's been skidding a bit in the rain my back wheel, scary...

so i asked if they could put it on for me and they said leave it and we'll do it in the morning, so i strolled back home, throwing out most of the paper, just leaving the sudoku section, wandering along on this beautiful early evening without a pen, scrutinising the difficult sudoku, but numbers kept coming to me... difficult? i ask myself...

anyway i strored up number in my head and stopped random people in the street asking for pens, writing down the numbers i'd got in my head then moving on... 2 different pens before i got home, from asking about 10 people...

just completed it... not so difficult but pleasing none-the-less...

and then my fender rhodes...

mars came round again last night to fix it, he who had cancelled & rearranged several times and then made it round on tuesday without his circuit tester... came back last night, and we couldn't get all the screws off...

i found the bits from rhodes, the circuit diagrams, got hold of a screw driver and between us we got 7 of the 10 screws off... after he left i applied some WD40 and managed to get 2 of the remaining ones off but one remains...

stubborn as you like...

so it's proving to be a long project, the fixing of this beautiful beast... slightly concerned for mars who is a busy man, that it's taking several visits, and probably at least 2 more on top... maybe i'll make his myspace for him... last time he fixed the rhodes it was a one visit deal and i did a lovely recording session for him with the rhodes...

but we are planning a couple of social things, chess playing is one and pretending to need saving in that big church on seven sisters road is the other, just so we can see the interior...

hmmm... maybe i'll have a go at the recalcitrant screw right now...

x

wet

crossing the seven sisters road coming up hornsey... whooping at the top of my lungs... probably noone hearing me except maybe that woman who was about to cross, i was catching the last of that green light...

the rain had been getting gradually worse but just before this it had got considerably wetter in one fell swoop...

i was soaked through...

it had just stopped being a pain and started being quite marvellous... glad to be alive marvellous...

of course the sun is out now, it's been a day of changing amounts...

i'd left the house this morning and the rain was fine and wet but still small... i got out on to hornsey road going south and it opened up... right in my face... really wet... then by the time i reached shoreditch it had almost stopped...

this journey home (with the whoop) had begun with almost no rain.. ending with every single item of clothing i had on being wet...

x