hope?

watched a bergman film called wild strawberries on film four, very good, rich... close to an edge...



my first bergman,

also had a random cycle trip, going over to leytonstone to practise vocals with T & S, for friday's gig, sounded great, it's going to be fantastic on friday...

so i cycle to the station in 10 minutes, just in time for a train that would take me 5 minutes from S's house...

but the train doesn't come, a man with a megaphone tells us the train will only go as far as the next stop... there's been a fire... i get talking to an older guy who runs a computer shop and lives near the next stop...

i have no map with me but i'm already late, (S is also late, she works on this same line)

so i start cycling, get to the river lee and cycle down to springfield park, then over that bridge and along through that mad bit of walthamstow marshes, by the reservoirs...

all this i know the way, but once in walthamstow i have only a vague notion of how to get there... so i cycle onwards in that same direction for a bit, roughly the right amount i think... stop and ask directions and get a few different opinions, but im not very clear about the address of where i'm going...

i'm travelling by a piece of partially wooded srcubland, along a road with town on one side and scrubland on the other and S lives on such a road, and i'm near enough now and really expect her house to just appear but strangely it doesn't...

i talk to T & S and S directs me in... i've been on a massive circle...

anyway... we rehearse, we're great, it's too late for the train back but having done it once without knowing where i was going, i'm happy to cycle home, i travel up to walthamstow and cut across the same path by the reservoirs through the north bit of walthamstow marshes... now dark and a stretch of it with no lights at all, i turn off my bicycle lights and let my eyes get used to the limited light around and it's beautiful...

such a lovely day and then night to be out cycling...

ah and the hope...

this being a combined hope for the world a few months from now when , (as seems likely) both Barack Obama and Tzipi Livni will be head of their respective powers...

now as to whether either of these individuals are worthy of the hope, or rather, whether any individual can make a difference in this very corporate of worlds who can say?

but tonight, i have hope...

x

tuesday afternoon cycle ramble

spur of the moment little cycle investigation of some green i could see to the north east of us here...
....................................................................................................................................

a sometimes grey, sometimes bright april afternoon...

4 mile kind of triangular journey

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

that walk

10.8 miles...

of which 6.8 miles were on foot...

(4 miles on the train)...

i did indeed listen to all that i intended to listen to...

a heady dose of strange era scott...

in the rain...

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

walking with miles

ok, so i got hold of porgy & bess, the miles davis/gil evans one, which, now i remember it was one of the 1st cd's that dad got with his new cd player when he retired & i was either a late teenager or very early 20'ser...

a beautiful album, accompanied me through many different parts of my life...

i remember how neatly prayer (oh doctor jesus) & fishermen, strawberry & devil crab used to fit exactly into the cycle ride from my house to my work when i was working in that vast windowless room for directory enquiries in leamington spa...

also how the entire album fitted into the journey time from here to a past lovers house...

the way gil evans makes the musicians rise & fall so gracefully and seemingly without structure while miles floats over or plays his part within...

so anyway, i carefully didn't listen to any of it until it was all on my shuffle and then me & dinah went over manolis's where we were in a perfectly stupid laughing mood... i left her @ the busstop heading to college and put on my headphones and set off walking down tufnell park road...

strange mix of familiar emotional reactions to the music and contemporary sights & sounds...

i walked in a wide arc from there (walking away from ours) back round to our road and our house...

found this beautiful rainbow of leaves, similar to the leaves that turn so wonderfully red in our garden for a couple of weeks each year... but so many different hues in one place...

found myself taking loads of pictures and a few videos - all on my phone - greyish autumn day throwing up strangely satisfying dark glimpses of landscape and buildings...

then these wild flowers that i carried for awhile in my buttonhole, destined for a jar on dinah's desk...

all to that album, to miles & gil...

i was concerned that when i got to the main roads i'd have to cross to get home the cars would interfere with my listening pleasure, but crossing both holloway & hornsey roads was remarkably easy and natural, you know when you don't even have to stop walking, just drifting over in a gap when the traffic is stationery, or the traffic in both directions thinning out miraculously to let you cross...

and so i was about to cross over into our road when the album came to it's huge end and i'm very happy that it's back in my life...

x

train journeys

i took my last journey on the gospel oak to barking route this morning, last of this week's journey anyway, i'll probably be darkening those train doors again someday...

and i have 2 things to say...

firstly there are some nice things to look at from that train, i was filming videos through the windows this morning, much to my fellow commuters bewilderment...

around blackhorse road station the train goes across the lea valley, the river lea, the reservoirs... lots of nice water in amongst the industrial & residential landscape...

also there is a strange site underneath the north circular, just before the train reaches barking station... as i was looking at cycle maps before i started this week, considering the mad cycle journey i was curious about the north circular, as it seems there are not nearly enough points to cross it on a bicycle...

and then from the train i spied these strange looking tents that you can just see in this satellite image... a little scifi looking, or radioactive or... you know how you're brain makes things up on little sleep..?

ok so the 2nd thing... advice to people avoiding conductors on that train line...

the conductor starts at different ends of the train on different days and doesn't seem to make it all the way through the train, even though it's only two carriages... so the days when i had my bike with me i picked an end, hoping to pick correctly and both times i picked wrong, and couldn't move to the other carriage because of the bike... but the two days without the bike i was able to slip through to the other carriage when i spied the conductor - i still picked the wrong carriage but it didn't matter...

it's a train line without proper stations so you can't buy a ticket until you're on the train anyway so you don't get stung for a £20 fine if you don't have a ticket, but it is pricey if you meet the conductor, £4.20 for a single (9 stops)...

and i never saw a conductor on the return journey @ rush hour...

if i was doing this work for more than a week and i was still without money i would do a proper study of the ends of the train that the conductor starts at... because you never know, they might have a pattern...

oh the way that my mind works in these non-financial summer periods...

x

playing in a park maybe cycling far frivolous film

as the crow flies it's 10.7 miles, a possible cycle route would be 14.4 miles, the train would take about 40 minutes so the cycle journey would be a mad option but i may take it just once or twice... we'll see...

i hit the brick wall of no sir, you may not take out money this afternoon, just as i start my one week's work of the summer - often the way...

a cab is picking me up @ 8:15 tomorrow morning and then i'm in that week, real shock to my system it will be too, but i'm looking forward to it...

gigged in a park yesterday, strange time we had, an audience you could count on your fingers, a few technical confusions at first but we did alright, because of the strangeness of the event i found myself talking with the audience a fair bit and i enjoyed the humour of it... by the end i was shivering, just in a T-shirt and a windy, rainy afternoon...

the event was partly put on by the southwark playhouse who ran a week long summer school for kids which culminated in a performance in the park... primary school age kids, they'd made three papier mache heads of varying sizes...

as we were setting up to play one of their papier mache heads blew across the stage and it gave me an idea for a short film which i later enacted with the help of one of the kids - tori - once i've edited it together i'll post it, it's entirely frivolous and nonsense but it made us laugh...

the day before the trio had rehearsed and the day before that me & Wfloopyshaman had done the piano recording session... busy, busy, busy... in fact i'm listening to the fruits of that session now, i need to pick the take that i use or perhaps glue together two different takes... or three for that matter...

i love the sound of the piano that we got, just with my two mics,

oh - and a peculiar thing - through myspace i've met a netherlands based musician and i commented to her that one of her pieces of music reminded me of a band called outside (although i mistakenly called them inside outside) and then after playing yesterday, a member of the audience told me my music reminded him of outside...

x

wending by the wandle

so, as an amateur, as in doing it for love, i got up this morning and traveled down to tooting to check out J's project... he's been my apprentice all year and it was effectively a way to feedback on his teaching and how it's developed...

got up with minutes before i had to leave so my plan of cycling down there... (a very long way) was scuppered, meaning that by the time i'd got there and finished my business with J (lovely guy, i will miss him in my lessons next year) i was on foot in the arse end of nowhere...

really close day, an abandoned looking path seemed inviting at 1st, being as i didn't know where i was going, it drew in hugely and was quite scary - the detritus of humans inamongst towering weeds, nettles, a common theme over the next hour or so...

the path eventually fed onto the back of an industrial estate so i back-tracked and phoned felinity for directions, having established that she'd had lunch already and we weren't all that close anyway she told me how to get to wimbleden park, which had seemed to me closest of the tube stations to this obscure place, i had no intention of walking back to tooting broadway station which seemed miles away... this morning i'd walked along garrett lane with a scalding hot cup of tea inadequately insulated in cardboard - munching on a toasted cheese sandwich with the sun roasting the back of my neck bemoaning the length of the walk...

so following her directions i set off down plough lane, a horrible road full of trading estates, before long i was drawn off the road by some kind of electricity sub-station that i had to get to the back of a ford dealership to take pictures of...

i rejoined the road but left it again almost immediately as there was a bike/pedestrian path that led alongside a small river & seemed infinitely better than the road,

so i walked along this path, passed the electricity sub-station from a different angle - all kinds of industry going on on the other side of the river - the wandle as it turned out to be...

no clear idea of direction, just a vague thought that i was heading (with the flowing water) to the thames.. at one point i heard thunder, probably a little before my own house was briefly wetted in a shower as i found out later...

after a little less than an hour the path stopped as the river widened, i did find another path by the river but it was another human detritus/weed zone, and it ended fairly quickly, i took a nice piece of video of the rail bridge ahead, just caught a southwest train crossing it... (can i be arsed to youtube it and post it here...?)



so i decided to leave the river and follow the trainline to the right, odd to be on streets again after that openended river... i met a couple of guys unloading something and asked to look at their A to Z and saw that earlfields station was very close, had i just walked as i'd intended i would have found it anyway...

for some strange reason i decided to get the train in a big W, one stop to clapham junction, then up to willesden junction, then from there to highbury, then finally the tube up to finsbury park... deliberately indirect... i had a fair amount to write in my journal (some of which appeared in this post) and the neil labute shortstories to keep me company, they really are good...

and then tonight, after a brief lovely kiss with my dinah just before she went off to work, producerG came round and we made beautiful music... very nice day...

very tired now,

x

idle

yesterday (sunday) me & dinah missed out on our sunday lunch @ the amazon cafe, so we got it today, set us up very nicely it did too...

i started the blog bit of mypace also today, just about the improvisation i did last week, that i'll be doing again on thursday...

went to the pictures with a free ticket to see united93, the 11/9 film about the plane that crashed without hitting it's target, surprisingly good...

then just now i was waiting for my girl and i picked out my route from our house to paddington...

glad to be going to bed...

x

things are afoot

so yes... i did indeed cycle the 15.6 miles from blewbury to reading... i set off thinking it would take me 45 minutes, an hour at the most...

left mum & dads @ 9:40pm and arrived at reading station at 11:00pm...

so an hour and 20 minutes...

the big hill really hurt, but also the many, many smaller ups & downs, (that part of the countryside is known as the downs) weren't always what i wanted, particularly as i was carrying three of mums paintings, hung somewhat precariously from my handle bars, gyrating wildly every time i picked up speed, well, they found their niche after about 5 miles or so but it was pretty freaky the 1st biggish downhill i had...

but i'm sounding as if i didn't enjoy it, which isn't true, it did take longer than i thought it would and not all of it was that nice, but certain bits were just beautiful.. a road that gmaps seems to think is called tour of berkshire but presumably can't be was just heaven, i was over half way through the ride and the big hill was behind me by now, the sun was over the horizon which meant that when the road went through a wood it was very dark, but there was still some light in the sky, the road had evened out and the ups & downs were still there but much gentler...

also cycling through goring, over the thames which is really wide there, very posh looking with all kinds of boats.. very nice...

i'm glad i did it, it's good to know exactly what that cycle ride entails, but i was thinking it would be a 45 minute journey which would have made it a viable option in terms of travel... hmmm? not the last time i do it i hope,

and so to today, me & dinah are hatching a plot which is making us laugh alot, more details when it's completed, this is her with a piece of cake & a cosmopolitan last sunday when we were out celebrating Wfloopy (shaman)'s 50th... i love this girl x

hills

in blewbury, just for a few hours, me & D came down for the photo...

i'm pondering whether to cycle to reading instead of didcot... being as more trains go to reading than didcot these days (unlike in my youth, didcot seems to have fallen out of fashion in the last 5 years or so) and it would be easier in the future to just get the london to reading train... but there's a hill...

it's 15 and a half miles and it's probably beautiful... the sun would be setting over my journey...

i'll let you know when i reach the other end...

x

toilets i have known

i've often considered writing a toilet review section of this blog... i so appreciate a good public toilet... well, more often i'm found appreciating the toilet of a retail outfit, or possibly an entertainment building...

and obviously i'm not at the top of my spelling game right this minute as i write this...

today i worked in the morning and then was let loose on the thames for the afternoon... hoping to get a game of chess with the guy i bought carter beats the devil from on thursday... one of the waterloo bridge bookstall people...

cycling along listening to gillian welch... weaving my way between pedestrians... as the weather improves that strecth of the thames is going to get fuller and fuller with the walking... wounded or otherwise... and i may have to stop using it, even though i love cycling through pedestrian bits, being patient, going at the same speed as the walkers if necesary... being responsible even as you're being irresponsible...

i dreamed a highway back to you came on (shufflewise, came after a miles davis track (with charles mingus)) and i had to cycle a fair bit further than i was going to to accomidate the song, all 10 or so minutes of it...

ended near the NFT and popped in for a cup of tea & a pecan plait, taking advantage of the toilets while i was there... but the mens was being cleaned so i was forced (yes... forced) to use the disabled toilet which was a joy...

very well maintained, a tap you could leave on if you wanted to... (very important)

actaully the second disabled toilet i'd been this week, i'd found one in the barbican that i could fit my whole bike into on wednesday, solving a potentially awkward situation...

so anyway, i sat down with my tea & my pecan plait and i read solidly for a good twenty minutes or so... this carter beats the devil book is certainly a page turner, i've been taking weeks and weeks to finish books recently and i've read 177 pages of this one in 2 days...

echoes of jonathon strange & mr norrell, not just because of the magic theme but also the compulsiveness of it...

going roung to producer G's tomorrow, he lives not very far from the furthest point on that mad 35 mile cycling day i had a few weeks ago...

sang the neurotic love song to dinah yesterday and it was great... partly just to sing it to her whom i wrote it for, but also to practise singing to an audience... i recorded myself singing it today and i have a lot of work to do before the vibe bar gig (24th april)...

then H cello on tuesday, it's all beginning to happen...

my bed calls

x

yesterday in pictures & video

all in all it was a 35 mile cycling day, i think my route looks a little like a strange fruit, or possibly a strange face... no pictures from the morning cycle as i was in a hurry, the pictures start once i'd gone past to the south western tip of my journey, once i'd left felinity in clapham and i was chilling out in battersea park:

at first i thought these were wierd modern sculptures but after a while i realised they were sculptures that had been wrapped up for some reason...

i sat down by the water and let the various different waterfowl come and say hello and then ignore me:



this one was preparation for the second of the slowing bicycle wheel videos, which ended up at 13 and a half minutes, not so successful as the first which was cut short sadly because my camera was full, here it is in all it's 6 or so minutes (there's an angry swan chasing geese):



yes the videos are probably way too long, i have a fondness for what others often think boring... partly though, watching these today, which was such a foul, cold, rainy day it's just lovely seeing the way the sunlight plays on the water...

outside the stage door waiting for my G i was listening to my shuffle and taking pictures...

and finally to describe a little more precisely what it was like hearing these herbie hancock tunes last night as i waited for my food @ crystal...
i'd completely forgotten that i'd put them on there, all day i'd been randomly listening to tracks as i cycled by the canal or the river thames, not one herbie tune all day... i mistook them for miles davis tracks... from the era when herbie used to play for him, as did tony williams, the drummer... i hadn't put any miles davis on there at all... it was great hearing miles... (so i thought)... but i had absolutely no notion how it had got onto my ipod shuffle... (i'd had a long day - i was pretty stupid by this time, and romantic in that full moon hanging over the millenium eye kind of way)...

i started half believing that the universe had put them there for me... here you go longcat, miles davis...

ouch

i'm planning my route for tomorrow's school visit, it's going to be 14 miles long and i'm going to have to be there by 9 am...

that means leaving mine by 7:15 i reckon, to be on the safe side...

that means getting out of bed @ 6:30am...

considering i eventually arose today at around 1:30pm that is going to be quite a challenge...

also mirrormasking tomorrow with spski, who was my consultant on the route...

x

routes and dark places

went with spski to the NFT yesterday to see kinoautomat, 1967 czech film where the audience votes on which choice the character makes...

interesting, some very funny bits... i found it a little unsatisfying but spski loved it...

anyway, on the way back he took me a route that we've cycled together once before and it's a good one so i tried to remember it...

we passed very close to where my G works and she'll be cycling to work any day now so i'm having a look at routes for her too (not that she's incapable of finding her own route, she's been pouring over maps...),

taught today and afterwards i ambled (can you amble on a bicycle?) down the river for awhile before deciding to try and recreate spski's route...

got it just about, i could have chopped off a corner here and there but i think i've got it, and it's 4.17 miles from right by G's work, as opposed to 4.79 miles, the route i've been following up until now...

oh and the dark places... very eerie... oh yes...

i was walking G up to a watt's session on tuesday, up the disused railway, and she was telling me that she'd walked it once before with shaman (fellow wattage) and they'd walked down a long dark tunnel... well every time i've reached the end of the disused that long, dark tunnel (one of two) has been locked...

i assumed that they must have walked down it a long time ago, but no, she told me, this was late last year...

so yesterday, pre NFT, i jumped on the £10 bike and i set off up the disused, listening to the chords of the song i'm trying to write... it had rained and hailed earlier on in the day and it was very muddy up there, even though the sky was blue, i got covered in black mud, black mud that still clings to my shoes, i kind of like it, very unlondon...

i reached the highgate end and indeed the 2 tunnels were unlocked, at least that end of them, so i locked up the bike and i explored...

pretty scary, even though it was bright outside it was very dark in the tunnels. at intervals along the walls there are hollows that are probably locked doors, or just hollows maybe, almost certainly only about a foot deep, but it's so dark you can't tell, for all you know they could go back much further... i'd seen a bunny version of night of the living dead (me & G's 1st date movie) earlier on in the afternoon and i was scaring myself by thinking of zombies...

the other end is locked but you can see into the now overgrown highgate overground station, another fear that plagued me was that someone would come and lock the other end and i'd be stuck in there...

after i'd been all the way down both tunnels and satisfied myself that there were no monsters/homeless people lurking about i started singing into the tunnel i was in, a strange metallic resonance down there that was very satisfying, changing depending on where in the tunnel you are... i wonder what's happening acoustically...?

i'll definately be going back there...

x