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

from the National Film Theatre Cafe

(this is the 2nd extract from my imaginery blogging journal that updates to the web as i put pen to paper)

sat in NFT cafe, having eaten a piece of toffee cake which i couldn't afford because i spent most of my money on cocktails with my boobelah a couple of hours ago... my tea awaits me...

the woman behind the counter gave me the cake even though i didn't have enough, a little present, & while i ate that cake i completed today's difficult sudoku - the 1st time i've done it...

i started it after i left work, grabbing ten minutes by the thames before going to meet dinah... sat beside an elderly couple - she wanting a drink - he wanting to walk - she wanting a drink - he wanting her to pack her bags for their holiday tomorrow - she wanting a drink - he folding his arms - she wanting a drink -

lovely to drink cocktails with my baby - her last double show wednesday - my last chance to bring a smile & some alcohol to her work before she becomes a student next week... such a delicious brief thing... much glee...

once she'd gone back to work i sat by the river again - the beautiful september sunlight fading as i worked on the sudoku - taking occassional pictures of waterloo bridge - when it got too dark to scribble numbers in boxes i locked up my bike & explored the lowtide, lower than i've ever seen it...


more pictures... my feet very slowly sinking into the damp sand of a peninsular reaching further into the river than i'd ventured before...

then this cafe - the cake - the alcohol wearing off - the sudoku triumphantly completed - the tea now drunk -

life is good

x

gear change

after such a lazy day yesterday it was hard getting up this morning to go to work and all through the day i was swinging from focused to vague in a way that was obvious to my students... they didn't seem to object however and i gave a good lesson...

at one point i asked them to, at some point in the next hour, write down a sentence that i or someone else said... i got them to work in groups and make rhythms out of these sentences and one group in particular started with a sentence of mine that began:

ok... errr... right... now...

and turn it into a james brown style:

OK! ugh! Right Now!

i was pleased with the workshop, it's a funny one, it serves the function that another teacher takes out the students one by one to assess them, and i teach the same group two different modules throughout the year that pretty much encompases my known workshops, so not only does it kind of not matter, but i don't want to do anything i'm going to repeat later so i often come up with something just for this session... as i did today... successful, if vague...

and then afterwards i took a copy of the london paper and sat by the thames doing the sudoku, very similar to last tuesday, taking pictures of my bike at intervals to try and catch the changing light... the difficult sudoku is so hard in that paper, i don't think i've got one right yet...

popped over to the cafe near dinah's work to see her before she started her last ever tuesday working at that place...

then cycled home as the evening drew in, once more out without lights, must get used to having them with me...

x

sudoku & reflect

i taught my 1st session @ my work today... search & reflect... it went really well... i've got a great apprentice...

after work i was given the london paper in the street which i at first declined - but then accepted because they have 3 sudoku's in there...

last week at some point i was given the paper and i tried the difficult sudoku and it killed me... i was sat on a bench by the thames trying to work it out for hours it seems, a very nice woman from one of the stans sat next to me and gave me the odd biscuit while i furiously worked at it... in the end i thought i'd found a way in to the last stage but in my haste to complete it i got it wrong...

but by then i was so cold i gave up & headed home...

so today i started with the easy one... i did it while i was still at work...surprisingly hard actually... then i cycled down to the river and did the medium one... taking pictures of the lovely sky every few minutes... easier than the easy one as it turned out...

i began the difficult one but fairly quickly decided it was time to head home being as i didn't have my bike lights with me and the sun was setting...

when i got home i began the difficult one in ernest and it is damn hard... i'm banging my head against it and getting nowhere fast...

so here's a slideshow of the setting sun pictures i took... i'm getting back to the sudoku... take care...



x