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

yr3wk33 john martyn gone my week

yr3wk33 moog opus 3 improvisation from longcat on Vimeo.

once again no words all week, just videos... sorry,

this one recorded on friday morning before work, i'd got up earlier than normal to allow enough time to get the tube in with the moog (the harmonic series demonstrated with the moog filter) but then i decided i could do that next week and use the extra time to do my improvisation, being as i didn't know how long i would need in the evening doing my tax return...

so i did it, i like it, turned off the computer and the camera's and cycled into work,

found a Roland Juno 6 in the cupboard @ work and it turns out it belongs to MM, he who helped me fix my rhodes back then, and who promises he's going to help me fix the moog too... we've been making music together over the internet a bit recently and he said i could borrow the Juno... which is great, it's a similar era synth to my moog, a little later, not a moog, but still a great sound...

i'm going to use it next week to demonstrate the harmonic series like i was going to bring my moog in for and then i'm taking it home...

i had a lovely hour or so with it on friday after teaching, just wandering about in it's sound...

in other news i popped down to brighton on monday night to record josiah on the lullabye, also i took grace to school on tuesday morning... lovely to see them, josiah going through it a bit just now...

i've been so busy since then that i haven't unpacked the audio i recorded down there, the lullabye probably near to being done now, just have to get my editing head on and give it a few hours...

directly after brighton i went over to the studio in kennington to meet T and sweep up the place, it's amazing how different it looked after a day of organising things...

i also bought a book on tuesday - a new one by michael ondaatje called devisadeo...

i really love his writing and i'm very glad to be inamongst his words again...

on thursday i went out after teaching to celebrate one of my students 16th birthday, hanging out with the teenagers for a couple of pints...

then friday... oh, we've talked about friday already, except for the tax return which i did that afternoon, surprisingly easy for once...

when i was applying for housing benefit recently i came across the relevant payslips i knew i would need for the tax return so it was kind of all laid out for me already, but it's still a beautiful thing to be done one of those things,

i helped felinity through it a few weeks back and that made it easier when i came to do it for myself...

floopy came round friday night (last night) and he told me john martyn had died on thursday, very sad, i'm going to load up the shuffle with him and nothing but him for a little while...

we had a great night, dinah, floopy and me, at one point i put solid air on the shaky turntable and we offered john martyn our laughter as the record player occasionally skipped up to 45 RPM for a moment, it was magical and poignant and a good way to mark his passing...

very, very sad though, such a wonderful song writer & singer...

anyway... i hope you enjoy the improvisation..

x

leeds new telly

so, what with the rec-calculation based on ignoring myself, our 7777th visitor turned out to be... from...

(wait for it)

LEEDS

which i know very little about, only that i once stopped off in leeds on a hitching journey going further north and i found myself doing magic mushrooms with some lovely people and listening to john martyn who i just spelt wrong and searched for in google maps by mistake & found Big John Drive in Martin:


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but enough random frivolity... TV baby TV... i took the plunge and bought a TV from argos which had a sticker on the box saying:

two person indeed but did i need another person?

did i heck, well, just within sight of home it started to slip a bit on the bicycle (strolling beside the bicycle not madly cycling along) and in fact when i got it to the front door i had to ask for dinah's help to get it off the bike and into the flat..

so now we can watch DVD's better quality than my computer gives and we can watch BBC2 pretty well and all the other channels except channel 5 fairly poorly until next friday when virgin media are installing our digital TV ness and then... well that'll be quite something, let me tell you x