Blackberry Picking

A week ago, I made pots of blackberry jam from a 20 minute picking spree which was curtailed by a sudden rain shower. Despite getting extremely wet, I managed to pick two pounds of fruit. There is a glut this year and I could afford to fail; despite pretending that it wasn't going to set, it did so and it tastes wonderful- there is a very fresh taste to it that you don't get with commercial jam. We went to pick some more yesterday and on the way back there was a box of cooking apples by someone's fence, so this lot is going to become a blackberry and apple cake. I no longer have a freezer big enough to freeze boxes of blackberries, so they all have to be used straight away.

And music? Last week I made an acapella jingle for the Outsiders radio show. Today's project has been the continuation of a remix for the Brighton indie band Assistant. I think it's almost there: it feels emotionally right, but I'll have to wait till tomorrow for fresh 'ears' to listen to it. I didn't know whether I still had the patience to mix someone else's songs, but once you start to inhabit their music, it's fascinating. It helped to have a vocal take without reverb so I could make an atmosphere that I am used to.

On Tuesday I went to Gina's to listen to her new work in progress. There are some really good songs there, and I had some ideas and suggestions, one of which was to play a fuzz guitar line along with the vocal, a bit like René Lussier in his General De Gaulle speech. Steve Beresford suggested the track to me years ago after I'd recorded an episode of Gardener's World when it was presented by Alan Titchmarsh, which I had been planning to orchestrate and make Titchmarsh: the Musical. I've still got that recording on a DAT tape, but I never got around to doing the music. I also have recordings of a whole bunch of bus drivers and conductors from Golders Green Bus Garage that I interviewed for the same purpose. 

If life had gone in a different direction and one of the many crossroads I've encountered, I would have become an experimental musician, or at least an experimental musical writer!

That's the crisps eaten, the music mixed, the claim for the disastrous rail journey submitted. It's time of the ironing (urgh) with Terry and Arfur, followed by The Professionals charging about with their guns and hairdos. No match for me and my steam iron!