today... the day before my brothers birthday

worked...

the 1st full day of the new term... although not such a full tuesday as i used to have... the spanners not rehearsing this time, and in the future they won't be rehearsing on a tuesday any more which, no matter which day it eventually falls upon, will make my life easier...

after work i walked over to see C (homerton to broadway market) - guitarist and recording engineer... as well as being many other things... we recorded over @ his place a few weeks ago, in the week where i had no work at all - (except a meeting... nothing's prefect)...

then after leaving his i got onto the canal and walked to angel... even trying to go beyond the bit that's closed off... i got through several fence type obstructions before a security guard stopped me, very reasonably from going the final 20 meters... the concrete had just gone down today apparently and even if he hadn't been there i probably would have turned back anyway...

then into the vue cinema for the loo, finally finding my way into wagamama's for a small meal...

i wrote this down while i was in there:

quite richard fordesque acceptance falling over me


although of course it's also eminently longcatesque & it's one of the things i like about richard ford - & about frank bascombe - that in some ways they are like me -


the rhodes situation casting a lovely bubbling presence behind my mind all day,


slightly timeless quality now - in that i don' know what time it is - only that it was 9 when i got on the canal -


walking also a welcome influence on my mind - the hint of autumn that the low sun coming through the trees @ london fields... not quite - it's more that lovely late summer magic that blesses us a few more times...


trave 39 tomorrow-


frank bascombe being richard ford's main character in the sportswriter, independence day & the lay of the land... the 3rd of which i finished reading today while waiting for students to show for my keyboard class - a risky strategy because it could have been cut off at any time... but it wasn't...

the rhodes situation being that part of my lovely suitcase rhodes piano is currently in milton keynes, under the watchful eye of a very nice silver haired old git who is mending it for me...

i don't know... you wait for a reason to go to milton keynes for decades... and then 3 turn up all at once...

x

Richard Ford & me

@ 8 last night i was getting changed in A's car... (A is the bass player in the Spanner Jazz Punks), listening to Richard Ford on the World Book Club...

i got the suit on by around 10 minutes in & then A came back down & we went up to the stage... got caught in the speech being made by Ab who was having her birthday party & had drunk a little bit...

then A was moving bales of straw for me to sit on & i was setting up my keyboard, whilst a salsa thing was going on...

the band who had played before us were leaving so 1stly i had to take the drummers place in the salsa line (men remain stationary while women move along the line, very odd), and then just before playing our set the same drummer found me & i had to tell both A & P (tenor sax) to move their cars so the other band could leave...

then we played our set to a small but perfectly formed audience... (aliens)... lovely time had i think...

we got out of there quite swiftly... P driving me & M (bari) back to london... i got in to mine around 2:05am...

i very quickly transferred myself into bed and was drifting ever closer to sleep when P rang me & told me i was on Radio 4... he'd just heard me ask my question to Richard Ford...

the world service popping over to Radio 4 in the night...

i did indeed make it onto the show, i can be found asking my question @ around 14:53 - 17:12... but you can also hear my chuckles, laughs, a "yeah" @ all kinds of moments in the whole show...

it was a lovely afternoon spent listening to him talk, and aside from my relentless need to self publicise i think it's a great show, he gives good radio...

x

richard ford

it turns out he was just like old friend DR... (PD to some)...

i woke early, went over to beneath the trelick tower...checked out the lesson i'll be teaching in a few weeks, the man who's currently teaching it is off touring by then...

perfectly nice...

then home, found the sports writer which had been missing for a little while... got on my bike, went down to aldwych... bvsh house...

had a fine old time... asked my question.. which i think has a better chance of being aired on the show than last time's question... because it drew an interesting bit of conversation...

he signed my copy of the book, i had a glass of wine, played the thing i often end tunes with on the steinway grand in the room...

then once outside i bumped into him again, he was waiting for his car to take him to the hotel, i offered him a backy, but he said his prostate might give him trouble, he said my prostrate might start giving me trouble too...

i asked him how old he was, hoping he'd say he was 72... because i met the 18 year old me on the train down to brighton on friday night & it made me realise i was surely going to meet the 72 year old me as well fairly soon...

(18 years old (ish), half my age, doing mechanical engineering (mathy) @ university, plays piano, has a stud cat... (we had a female stud cat)... so the 72 year old i'm going to meet will have been doing roughly what i'm doing now... 36 years ago...)

he said no he was 66... oh well, nobody's perfect...

it also turns out that there's a 3rd book to the frank bascombe books (the sportswriter, independence day...) called the lay of the land, which he was writing just as i started reading him... back in 2002...

so that's very exciting... i've got independence day ahead of me, then the 3rd...

so i was totally high on life as i cycled away from bvsh house... went over to le fam pevo to deliver some books josiah wanted them to have (baby stuff)... had a gradually calming down evening with those lovely folks...

it turns out EQ is just about to pop... by friday apparently...

now i'm home & i've got my 1st huge tuesday since the holidays ahead of me...

oh & i met a nice woman on the tube... as you do... (in the 1st half of the day, the 2nd half all bikey)

x

large emotional gradient important me is interviewed

the 1st of several mental days today...

and i didn't know it was going to be this mental when i woke up,

in fact, when i woke up, i felt quite desperate, not sure why exactly, but then about 12 hours later, cycling up kingsway, i felt like i was floating on a cloud...

because, whilst i was @ work, i got an email from someone @ the BBC, asking if i could be part of a trailer for the world book club event coming up in about 3 weeks... the one where richard ford is coming to talk about the sportswriter...

the one that i'll be attending,

the email i sent to ask whether i could come was very enthusiastic...

that's why they asked me to be part of the trailer, because i was so enthusiastic...

and i was so enthusiastic, not just because richard ford is such a fantastic writer, but because i'd started rereading richard ford a few months back, well, further back really, 6 - 8 months... in an effort to connect with the version of myself who existed before i was with dinah... a getting over dinah kind of thing...

that book that i'd left down in brighton in the house of a man i barely knew, and got back a month or so later...

that was "just a little piece of my heart", it was great, and it was very good timing for the world book club to decide to bring him over...

anyway, la la la...

i finished the sportswriter over the weekend and again, very good timing to be asked today to do the trailer thing...

it turned out that the best time to do it was this evening after work, (because the next few days are going to be mental) and i cycled over to bvsh house in the rain around 7ish, floating through the barbican highwalks along the way which i love...

met with a lovely guy called B who led me through the plush old parts and into the not so nice newer parts, sat me down beside a neumann mic and asked me questions about the book, the writer, myself, my thoughts...

it was lovely... just to have a chance to talk about something i care about, and be listened to...

i left there just after he turned up the microphone on big ben for the 3 chimes of 8:15.. (so cool to have that mic on big ben all the time, live, so when you hear the bongs for the news it is actually big ben bonging...)...

and i cycled home high on life... stopping off in muratori's cafe, full of cabbies, for a largish roast meal... while mum & dad were probably eating down in earlsfield with kat & her G, celebrating the new flat, which is on my itinerary for tomorrow...

the trailer will be made by next tuesday and there'll be an extended web version around too, B's going to send me a link when it's around and it will make me very happy to hear myself on the BBC, or at least on the BBC website...

ok, bed, big day of travel tomorrow, biking it down to whitechapel for a meeting and to drop the bike off for a service in the one bike shop i trust in london (bicycle magic, greatorex street)...

then public transport down to earlsfield to see kat & the new flat...

then up to ladbroke grove for another meeting,

then the science museum for their science museum lates night, a core arts staff do type affair...

covering all 4 corners of this great city i'll be...

x

highs & lows

proust's on hold, because richard ford is going to be on the world service's world book club and i'm going to be there to ask him a question...

so i'm rereading the sportswriter, the book of his that's going to be discussed...



judging from the cinema ticket stub that is the bookmark, i last read this book in 2002, the film (from the ticket stub) was Ivans XTC, which i might put on my lovefilm list to see again...

the sportswriter is wonderful and it has made me laugh out loud (not lol) several times already, made me smile many times and brought me quite close to tears...

richard ford isn't wholly responsible for the almost tears, i've been quite low recently... lonely...

bubbles, the downstairs cat, meows mournfully all day when they're not in down there, i feel for her, and try and show her a little attention whilst at the same time assuring balthazara that i'm not cheating on her... i'm a one cat man... even if that one cat wakes me up in the morning by touching my face with her paw...

i'm very glad to have her, i think it's true to say she's very glad to have me...

other highs have been:

true blood season 2, which i've had for a little while, but was holding off because it's on the telly (FX), but since last friday's episode i've been hungrily devouring the whole season, and it is better without adverts, the only thing is sometimes my copy of the episode doesn't have the closing tune, which changes each episode and is generally both fantastic in and of itself, and funny, in relation to the story just told...

one episode left and i'm trying to hold it off, but i won't be able to hold off for much longer...

my piano, tuned a week or so ago and in a wonderful place, no downstairs neighbour conflict, possibly side to side neighbour issues to come but i'm not being rude about it, if someone can hear me that way...

i'm writing a synth thing that currently has piano playing on it, i've ordered a couple of niceish mic's that i intend to have setup on the piano fairly constantly, my nice condenser mic would have been recording that piano by now, but it's still in the hands of T who i used to make music with... he's dragging his heals to an extent... glad to have ordered the other ones, they'll be here in a couple of weeks or so, coming from america, i wonder if i'll have my stuff back off T by then?

all this piano playing has given me a renewed interest in my GEM piano module, that may surface at a gig some time soon...

my tetra, my space echo, both of which met my gigging keyboard last night at the spanner jazz punks rehearsal in the venue for next saturday's gig... my keyboard which is so slim the mopho fell off it many times, and last night the bari player knocked the tetra to the ground and i lost the plot a tiny bit, it's partly my fault, i haven't yet invested in the bluetack necessary for the purpose...

on the way back from the rehearsal, keyboard on my back, a drunk polish man (i think he was polish, and he was definitely drunk) told me he needed someone to make music for him, him being a rapper, he wrote his number on the brickwork by where we were standing with a bit of chalk from the ground and proceeded to sing a really long and loud tone into the wall to prove to me that he could sing... i left him there...

x