Micro-Editing

Editing became so absorbing today that it's unlikely I'll record the Spanish guitar, which may have to wait until next week. I cured a weird-sounding problematic vocal that had really been bothering me on one of the tracks though: it sort of sounded lovely, but by the time you got to the end of the track you just wanted her to shut the f*ck up. And her is me, so I had to do something about that.

One of the songs I recorded right at the beginning has more pops than I can get away with on the vocal track, so I'll have to re-record that vocal too, which is a pity. The rest of it sounds good. Maybe it's an edit thing, but I'll have to see about that.

After three hours of marking this morning I went for a walk. The cut behind the back gardens, tarmac-ed, dark and decorated with weeds and rubbish, smelt like heaven all the way down. Some hidden blossom scented the air and made the walk absolutely blissful for the first time ever. I kept expecting the perfume to stop, but it accompanied me all the way down the path.

On the Dollis Valley Green Walk, a ride-on mower and a tractor mower performed elegant curving dance moves across the grass, spraying clouds of clippings into the air in greyish-green arcs. I marvelled at their co-ordination, and thought about motorway driving, which I absolutely love. The choreography! The director of movement is our mutual agreement to abide by the highway code: we drift and glide to our destinations, overtaking, joining, leaving, lines of vehicles heading to the imagined spot in the future where we will greet our families, meet our holiday head-on or in cases like mine, get to the gig. What a beautiful collaborative artwork we make, without even recognising it for what it is. A celebration of human co-operation, even though we all appear to hate each other sometimes.

Back to the walk. I was hoping for a sighting of the Little Egret but it wasn't there. A flock of starlings were having a mass disagreement and I did see a bullfinch by the tennis courts. A cross council worker, who I naively thought was waving at me, was actually gesticulating furiously as I tried to take a photo. For the rest of the walk I was frightened in case he found me and took it further, because that's what it's like being a woman. Might as well tell you that.

There's a huge fly in here, the size of a bomber aircraft. I open the door to let them out sometimes, but they are usually too intent on crashing into things to notice. ZZZZzzzzzZZZZZ, then silence.

I'm going to put the headphones back on.