wedding text

it's been a mad day, my last meal @ manolis's (god only knows what i'd do without you playing on the radio as i left), scratching (as mentioned below) and reading...

yesterday i realised that to the wedding was not in my possession... i think i lent it to dad one day because he had a train journey ahead of him and no book... anyway i was convinced that i'd find the reading for D & M's wedding in that book so i took my remaining book tokens and bought it (again) along with the english patient because the writer is appearing in the world book club's 5th anniversary recording at the end of september...

read the wedding book (by john berger) in two days but didn't find an appropriate reading...

so:

over a few hours i had a look in many, many books before deciding to do the reading as the lyrics to a song, which i'm not going to tell you about, in case you come to the wedding...

x

Manolis's letter

To all my customers - old and new

Just to let you know that I shall not be operating after this coming Thursday 30th August so I would like to thank you all for your support throughout all these years.

- No need to be told you are going to be missed
- Not for improving my bank balance
- But for being you.

You can look forward to new food experiences like I shall look forward to a different kind of life.

If my manner or my cooking was, on accasion, not to your liking, please don't take it too personally. I have meant well, at least, in most times.

So on that note I would like to thank you all sincerely and wish you the best of luck in whatever you want to do.

Thanks

Manolis

P.S. If any of you wish to see me again I shall be performing my cooking tricks at:

No.3 Stroud Green Road,
Finsbury Park

bitten again

bram stoker was probably suffering like i am when he wrote dracula... it's such a sensual thing, knowing that you shouldn't scratch but scratching anyway... the momentary release before the nagging need begins again...

it's as though my bites were independent beings, calling to me...

a couple of nights ago we slept in dinah's room and a mosquito bit me in 4 places...

i was awake when it was happening and i could feel it, i've suspected for awhile that there is at least one, if not a family of them in her room,

anyway, i pulled anchor and relocated back to here with dinah in sleepy tow and have been dealing with those bites since...

i was fairly good yesterday, there's one on my neck and i was wearing a T'shirt which rubbed against it all day, so that was hard, but i only succumbed once or twice,

then we slept again in her room last night, after she'd burnt citronella in there to clear them, in fact i'd cleared one the night of the bites, possibly the only one that was in there...

it had bitten my left elbow where my arm had been around her and my right shoulder... then i'd moved, trying to cover up completely but with my hands were by my neck and it had bitten my right hand and my neck...

so when i decamped i found it on my shirt, patiently waiting for me to settle down again, so i grabbed it in a tissue and flushed it down the loo...

last night i don't think there were any in there but there were some in my brain, i would almost fall asleep and then automatically scratch one of the bites, before scratching all of them... leaving me in a state of nervous/anguished/half-satisfied wakefulness...

my right hand is looking a little better today but around the bite a sea of red has expanded, taking over at least half of the back of my hand, and a trail of red snakes it way down my wrist almost to my elbow... very strange, i might get some antihistamine tablets...

anyway, long and rambling and i haven't even got to the main thing which is manolis's letter... i'm going over there in an hour or so for my last ever meal in that cafe, this is the letter he's put on the window of the cafe... actually i think it deserves it's own post... x

back home

glad to be back, but it was lovely being away...

visiting greenclementime & trave & chatoille...

felinity came too, just lovely hanging out with family, all us brothers and sisters, me with my dinah, trave with his clementime, but felinity without her G...

very tired now,

had a notion that we could make it the 30 miles or so beyond leamington to where an old, old friend was celebrating his 40th birthday but it was a very car centred place and the taxi was going to be too much...

anyway, too tired even to link to these folks... bed now x

yr2wk10 longcat piano improvisation

posting this from M & D's x

transformers

oh... piracy...

so me & felinity saw transformers a week or so back and since then i've been itching to find a pirate copy of it so i can get all the early desert battle bits that i like and put them together...

and now i have achieved exactly that... it's 5 minutes long and i've put miles runs the voodoo down to it... i'm tempted to put it on youtube but it's definitely copyrighted material...

for now i'm just happy to watch it myself...

oh that scorpion robot transformer thing... i can be such a geek sometimes...

about to go out to the piano job, thinking of taking W(floopy)shaman's camera tomorrow and getting some footage for prospective work hunting...

x

yr2wk9 rhodes & voice

recorded last night after my week of work...

but the other thing i want to briefly mention is the mediatheque @ the BFI, where on thursday and friday night's after work i sat and watched great things...

thursday night was my 1st visit and i foolishly only asked for 30 minutes at 1st, which ran out and i had to ask for more time... in particular i really enjoyed Les Bicyclettes de Belsize (1968), which i watched all of, and We Are The Lambeth Boys (1959), which i watched some of on both thursday and friday night's, also on friday i saw hitchcock's blackmail (sound version - 1929)...

all for free... what an amazing resource ladies and gentlemen, check it out if you are london based and with a bit of time at your disposal...

x

tuned heaven

still short on sleep and i've just returned from a lovely night's work playing the piano...

only 2 nights next week now and this 6 week stint will be over, still haven't found myself anything else...

they had the piano tuned today and it was heaven... i started playing @ 8 and after some gorgeous improvising i started playing my first tune... when that was over i looked at my phone and i'd already been playing for 30 minutes...

that's how lost i was in the sound of that beautiful instrument...

funny how last night's gig was fraught with worry of one kind of another and tonight's was so lovely...

this sleep business has something to do with it probably,

i haven't caught up since sunday night's lack... monday night watching the cloudy sky for a gap and a meteor... in bed late and up in the morning, last night piano playing, tonight piano playing... every day this week i'm working during the day, tomorrow morning i'm up super early for the dawn project...?

so... my bed now, and my beautiful girlfriend...

x

sun on unmade bed

short on sleep and if the sky is clear tonight i'll be up until about 3 looking at the meteor thingy...

i'm into this summers weeks work, going well, with lovely J who used to be my apprentice...

cycled into town early to accompany dinah but also to check out the BFI's archive thing and it was shut (as it is every monday),

then after work i went to the same place and lost two games of chess to the bookseller...

short on sleep... off now, enjoy the film,

x

yr2wk8 rhodes, voice & bongo paul crawford

the 4th collaborative improvisation features bongo fella himself...

x

dawn project videoblog week 21

this is from last week's dawn project, i had decided the week before to stop doing them, but it was such a beautiful morning...

as it says in the video this will probably be a monthly affair, or more likely, whenever i think it's worth doing...

x

short on sleep

i worked last night instead of tonight and by chance my dad is watching the cricket today so me & felicity are meeting him for dinner tonight... i forgot to remind dinah to record heroes for me last night, and i wonder if she did it anyway?...

2 nights ago i slept badly, worked all day yesterday and then gigged in the evening...

i was pretty fragile by the 2nd set but then i played the opening to gymnopedie no.1 (i can only play the opening so far, but then that's the bit everyone knows - dinah knows it as bom ching... bom ching... from the amount of times i've called it that but claims not to actually know what it is...) and i heard a voice behind me say... oh how lovely - i must get a piano... and as i improvised over those 2 chords (with the leaping left hand) the room gradually quietened and i think i'm right in saying i brought a hushed silence to the room (just for a moment)...

not that anyone clapped or anything, that's not what you get in this kind of gig, i've had it once in the 8 gigs i've done there... after my last tune - which generally is april in paris at the moment...

anyway this revived me and i felt a little less like i was being eaten by flesh eating beetles...

i came home and foolishly fell into watching TV with dinah gradually curling up and sleeping on my shoulder, in the middle of the night i saw that the skulls was just over an hour in and i'd been vaguely wanting to see it for a little while, so i found ITV2 + 1, and watched it, and it was pretty good, it's got that guy from CSI in it as a senator...

then immediately after that the larry sanders show was on over on ITV4 so i couldn't not watch it... it was fantastic...

crept into bed around 3:30... was up @ 8 for the dawn project...

so still very short on sleep...

think i'm going to skip over to a mossbros in muswell hill to book my suit for trave & clementine's wedding...

slow but nice day...

goodbye piano

went into work today a little hungover, to hand in some marking that i toiled over this weekend. while i was there somebody told me that some men had come to meet me today to pick up the piano...?

and i realised that the piano i picked out many years ago to hire for work must be leaving, being as that work is shifting to another building - so i'm assuming the piano is going back to the people we hired it from...

i swiftly nipped upstairs to say my goodbyes to the piano and video'd it for posterity... i finished playing - i've been practising this amazing piece of music called lushlife recently - and went downstairs to leave, only to find the men had come back, so i showed them to the piano, watched while they carted it away, played it a little in the alley outside work - in transit -

it was very sad, seeing that piano go, i've played many things on it, wrote more than a few tunes on it, sang songs to people, to classes...

i will miss it...

x

yr2wk7 piano & voice

took a break from marking to record this week's improvisation x

i have been ignoring facebook for awhile now and today, particularly after speaking with felinity yesterday... i gave in...

did the dawn project this morning and i did do a videoblog, even though i'd told myself i wasn't going to... at least not every week... but i've been knee deep in marking all day and haven't had a chance to edit it...

felinity met me yesterday to buy me my birthday present, a ritual we began on her birthday, (or was that last year?) and she got me the birth of the cool music, scored out for 9 musicians...

i can't wait to get my teeth into it and get an arrangement for my piano...

we almost went to see transformers... it looks like that'll be saturday night now... and we did eat in the chinese place we eat at and drank in the salisbury... awfully nice as ever...

and earlier on during the day i'd been to the BFI, largely to play chess with the bookseller there (although he didn't have his board with him) & i took the opportunity to check out the new back bit...

and it is lovely...

it has a media centre there where you can search the BFI's archives... some day soon i will be perusing randomly...

anyway, still marking and i've got to get myself ready to gig tonight so i'll leave it @ that x

2 haircuts

john coltrane playing "countdown" from "giant steps", dinah cutting my hair (twice), me having my hair cut (twice) and messing with the video's x

thursdays collaborative improvisation

with gareth mitchell on guitar and darren smart on drums, @ shiftworks studio, recorded by ellis gardiner, (using thomas's wurlitzer) x

dead?

felinity rang earlier to make sure i was still alive, i hadn't replied to a message of hers earlier in the week, and i hadn't blogged since last saturday...

now i think i've always been rubbish about answering messages, but when was the last time i didn't blog for a week?

so, apart from telling you that i'm not dead, lets give you a little run down of my week:

sunday night: saw W(floopy)shaman & T and T returned spski's book the historian to him via us, which i then routed to myself...

in fact that probably explains it... it's a 700 page book and if i hadn't left it at the recording session i did yesterday i would have finished it by now...

but let's move on...

monday: largely lazy day, read alot...

tuesday: a couple of hours work took up much of my day... played piano in the evening,

wednesday: working, meant to be all day but it stopped around 2:30, but my bike was in the menders nearby and not ready until 5:30 so i read the book in the local library... watched heroes in the evening (great)...

thursday: recording session @ lovely E's, with D & G from hammersmith work, ten minutes of which make up this week's improvisation, left the book there by accident, played piano in the evening,

friday (today): up at stupid o'clock for the dawn project (because i slept through it yesterday), then over to W(floopy)shaman & T's for his firewire cable, back to mine to capture the video of yesterday's improvisation, then a nap, then editing video, back to floopy's to drop off camera and lend mic, over to E's to pick up audio of improvisation, which is now rendering...

my boobelah is cooking our shabbat meal downstairs, my computer will be rendering into the early hours, we've been videoing kingdom hospital since wednesday night and haven't yet caught up, that's 3 hours of TV before we can watch tonight's episode, we'll be recording that one as well then... (but there isn't one on tonight, does that mean it's finished?)

and how great is heroes?

retrospective deflea post

for some reason i didn't post at the time of the last deflea, and it's about the one thing i have to do in this blog, so that i know when the 6 weeks are up and know to do it again...

so there you go, i think it was around now...

x

yr2wk5 rhodes & voice & bass

RAM doom improv CD arrives

in fact the improv CD arrived on monday, just been a little busy changing into piano player in restaurant man to have told you...

i think it took 3 weeks to arrive from the states, impractical...

but it looks gorgeous, W(floopy)shaman's work on my basic design is just beautiful:



isn't it?

lovely G from college came round last night to improvise with me, this week's improvisation, the 2nd collaborative one... uploading now...

all day yesterday my computer was freaking me out, i was trying to speed up the film of dinah cutting my hair on monday so that i can have my wicked way with it but vegas kept crashing, i'd leave it alone for awhile do render it's happy little way and i'd come back and my computer would be smiling at me saying "hi, i've just turned on... what shall i do?"

it did the same thing last night with me & G's improvisation so today i had a little look into it and it turns out my old 512Mb RAM was damaged, maybe by the heatsink i have on my processor, so i put in the 256Mb one i'd taken out before, relieved that it wasn't the new 1Gb one that was broke, and everyone is happy today, the improvisation is rendered and... has just finished uploading...

the haircut has also gone through it's 1st stage of speeding, probably another 2 times for that...

so i'm happy x

new person walking the streets

so yesterday i become a new person...

i mean obviously we all become new people everyday, bits of our bodies constantly renew, psychologically we are subtly different day by day, but yesterday i became different slightly more...

i spent the day creating 3 sets of 45 minutes each, come 6 i put on the paul smith suit and i took the tube to fulham... whereupon i played those 3 sets in a restaurant called the farm...

i've never done it before, strange, playing the piano most of my life but i've never done a proper restaurant gig on the piano before...

when JtJP asked me to cover for him for 6 weeks (tuesdays and thursdays) i originally said i'd start next week, give me time to build up a set, but then i realised that i needed the money for this week too so i took it on, knowing that the 1st one would be hairy...

and hairy it was...

i did well, but on thursday i'll be loads better, in fact i'll probably be improving all the way through the 6 weeks, maybe peaking around week 4...

also it was very tiring, 3 sets...

but it's such a nice thing to do, thinking of all the tunes i love and finding the music then playing them...

also nice to look natty x

seemingly unrelated sentences

3:22 am and i should be in bed...

me & dinah have to go to pennies early tomorrow because i'm gigging in O's band in the afternoon...

i'm really enjoying listening to my music, and i just tried to set up a secondary myspace account to showcase my more experimental side - currently it all lives in the same place - but they told me i was not eligible to sign up to myspace...?

i'm about to spend almost a hundred pounds on a new sound card... or am i?

just spent a lovely night round W(floopy)shaman & T's...

i feel good about the world...

this week i start covering for JtJP playing piano in a restaurant in fulham...

x

yr2wk4 rhodes & voice

yesterday's hungover improvisation x

gig last night was a triumph x

gig of RAM and a muffin

needless to say i'm feeling pretty rancid today,

i couldn't sleep so i got up to install the RAM, shushed balthazara out of the room because she was making sounds as if to be sick... which she was, on the stairs...

cleaned that up and narrowly missed throwing up myself in the process...

took my PC into the front room so as not to wake dinah, out with the old RAM and in with the new...

then i starting being sick in earnest...

but let's rewind 12, 15, 19 hours...

i got up to do the dawn project, it went ahead, W(floopy)shaman hadn't got out of bed when i arrived at his to drop off the camera so i pootled off home, woke dinah with a coffee, made myself a tea, saw spski...

all very nice...

once dinah had arisen she went and checked the post and i was very excited to find that my 1st ever ebay snipe, 1Gb of RAM, had arrived...

also a present and a card from my folks and a card from my brother D...

went off to work where there wasn't very much for me to do, a few of us (including lovely D) went off to the cafe and had a meal, so i was about to pay for mine when i saw a chocolate muffin, and i knew i had to have it, i asked the man behind the counter to give it to me, being as it was my birthday, saying that if he didn't i would still buy it...

and he gave it to me...

which made me enormously happy...

i went out onto the street and started singing to the world of my muffin and my gig of RAM...

also yesterday we played some music, improvised as we tend to do on a thursday, me & D, sometimes with JtJP, today it was with G - a guitarist, who i'd seen play with rediffusion once before it turned out, lovely player, i hope to get him into the weekly thing real soon...

then there was the staff party @ work where i had a couple of glasses of red...

then i cycled home where dinah had prepared a lovely meal but i was late and felinity & G were @ the pub and they were going to have to go soon so i went to get them, helping felinity drink her bitter while i was there, brought them back to ours where we drank champagne...

all abit mad and a few different kinds of alcohol which explains my feeling like this today... anyway, must dash, gigging tonight with T,

my improvisation is currently rendering, i'll upload it probably tomorrow now...

x

dawn project week 18 ON MY BIRTHDAY

oh yes....

birthday...

x

rescued collaborative improvisation

me & tooting tone, had to work hard to rescue it but rescue it i did x

lost improvisation russian visitor

T came round yesterday to do probably my last session for the recordings, some piano, some clav, some hammond and also my voice...

good session, closing with the 1st of my longcat collaborative improvisations, T on voice, me on voice & hammond...

and i half knew it would happen, but somehow i thought if i waited long enough it would right itself...

cubase freezing at the moment i pressed stop, we went out to the plough after to wait it out and when i came home much the worse for wear 4 or so hours later it was still frozen, so the improvisation is lost...

it's happened before and i really need to get into the habit of saving just before i press stop... or maybe set up auto saving... foolish, and it means this week's improvisation will be recorded later today on my own...

i did however meet a man in the pub who said steven seagal is a great blues musician... this is going to make me laugh for weeks...

and then also at roughly the same time i had my 6666th visitor, sadly @ 8:04pm on the 6th of the 7th 07 and not 4 hours later on 7/7/07 but it's still great...

and tonight i'm meeting with felinity to go the circus courtesy of spski which is lovely, i was meant to be going with my dinah but some work has come up and though i'm very sad not to have her on my arm it's great that felinity can come...

oh yes, and where did my 6666th visitor hail from?

well i'm glad you asked, they hail from the great city of st petersburg.

x

numbers & rain

it was the last day of term for my students today, and therefore it was a bit mad...

i was pretty vacant being as i'd had not that much sleep, nervously waking up on the hour from 4am onwards...

i started cycling back with D and within a few streets we'd stopped to put on our jackets, then a few streets later our waterproof trousers...

we parted company, as we always do, @ ladbroke grove and i found my way (as i always do) to the regents canal, by which time it had started to chuck it down some...

i was really enjoying the look of the raindrops hitting the water and i stopped after awhile and left my little camera running facing the water, under a bridge, so the raindrops ended in a line in the water...

i was listening to my shuffle and just waiting while my camera filmed, if the rain had let up a bit i would have set off but it just got worse & worse...

i turned the camera the other way and was delighted when a family of geese swam past, one of the gosling's swimming right by the camera...
oh, and numbers,

i was hoping that we might have a coincidence of numbers on saturday, which is the 7th of the 7th month 2007, and it might still happen that my counter over there on the right hits 6666 on 7/7/07 but looking less likely now that it's 58 tonight and there's all of tomorrow to go in between...

either way, whenever it comes i will be doing my customary thing with the 6666th visitor, assuming i can see where you're browsing from i'll post a picture of your town...

x

dawn project videoblog week 17