Roker and Stockport

Roker has a life of its own; of an evening, hordes of young parents with babes in pushchairs make for the seafront and walk along the promenade by the beach in the dark.
In the daytime with the wind whipping up, Martin, Lou and I walked out to the lighthouse.
It was a blustery day, with whole hay bales washed up on the beach from the storms last week, and heaps of grey branches piled on the shingle with wounds where they'd been torn from their trees by the wind. The sky was a clear blue; the clouds had gone to Manchester. The wind propelled us along the pier, then punched us in the face repeatedly with bitterly cold fists when we turned round to come back.
We struggled against it, and I almost got blown over when I stopped to take a photo.

Later, we went to Stockton and found the Georgian Theatre which was hiding from us amongst a pile of buildings. Fin was there waiting and the band set up to sound check. They played a fantastic set, really tight and well-paced. The sound in the venue was crystal clear and the audience was really good- they sang along and really appreciated the gig. Good promoter, too. And I played a few songs at the beginning and got some nice comments later on.
An extremely drunk woman was flopping about knocking things over but I gave her my chair so she didn't fall over and the security guard asked her daughter to make sure she sat down on pain of being ejected. She gradually sobered up as the evening went on and the daughter got drunker. Oh dear... Saturday night!

Three cheers for my little knackered car with a million miles on its clock that lets me bomb about all over the place. I'm taking it to the nice Hungarian valets next weekend for a bit of TLC.

This evening? Working, writing stuff... Tuesday evening, Brighton Green Door Store's John Peel night.

I wonder if he would like my new songs? We had just started writing to each other again, and then I found out that he had died. It was hard to believe. I wonder what sort of music he would be playing now?