Leavin' You Baby

I'm having a rare slobbing-about morning before rehearsing for tonight's gig at the Amersham Arms in New Cross.
It's a late one, mid-week and sandwiched between work and finalising gig dates for 2019. The first lot are sorted; this doing-it-yerself malarkey is knackering, and I was fantasising last night with the Offsprogs about holidays.
Oh me oh my. Somewhere warm and somewhere lazy, with no computer and no internet connection for the phone either. Sea, sand, ice cream (vanilla please), warm sun and an occasional cool breeze, good company, a blue sky and beautiful sunsets.....
Out there it's splodgy snow, slush, and one poor snowdrop given to me by Adrian in a bag of plants from his allotment years ago. It is valiantly flowering (yes, I notice you snowdrop, every morning: thank you for trying!).
And the beautiful thing that has brightened the day is to see a little flock of Coal Tits drinking droplets of meltwater off the Weeping Mulberry, and helping themselves to peanuts from the bird-feeder that the squirrels haven't managed to destroy. The squirrels ate their way through two plastic ones to get at the nuts, scoffing them off the ground after the feeders collapsed. This one is made of metal and they have tried their hardest to get at it, to no avail.
The back yard is so dark for birds to dare to fly into, but at last they have braved the gloom.
What else?
On days like this, you are supposed to do housework, but bugger that. And the upstairs ceilings need to be painted, but bugger that too (weekend perhaps?).
I will do some research for the chapter on Oh Bondage! Up Yours, maybe collecting together the thoughts I've scribbled on packets of paracetamol, my phone notes and various other spontaneous places.
And I will listen to this song, which was a hoot to record. We did one version in Robin Scott's (Pop Music by M) studio in Wivelsfield, and then this final version in Alaska Studios in Waterloo with Gary Glitter's son engineering it; he was a really nice bloke, and an exceptional sound engineer. He had his husky dog with him in the studio. Simon Walker played fiddle, Nick 'Dubulah' Page played lots of instruments, I vocalised and programmed the drum machine and Mykaell Riley just happened to be passing by, and he played harmonica on it before leaping into his car and driving off int the Waterloo Sunset.
It was the first time I had been told in no uncertain terms that I HAD to be able to sing in the mornings, and all the claptrap about singers' voices only sounding good later afternoon and evening was a load of rubbish: Be Professional! (thank you for the talking-to Nick).
We waited till the engineer went to make the tea and pushed all the volumes right up on the mixing desk (sorry!) (not sorry!), drove the Bell sampler to its limits and then some, kept all the madness and generally had a great recording day.
There are more stories around this release too but I'm off to make a cup of coffee. Ta-ra!