Squeaky Toy Bulldog

Over the back fence there is a very beautifully turned-out light brown bulldog that potters about in the garden. I'm not sure whether it's a temporary visitor or a permanent resident but it doesn't bark, which is odd given the barkophonic orchestra in our neighbourhood.

However, in the middle of the sweltering night, an eloquent succession of squeals from a squeaky toy roused me from my slumbers. Every facet of expression emitted from the squeaker: appeals, cheers, pleas, whoops and whines.

How very sweet for such a butch-looking dog to use the sound of a plastic toy as a mouthpiece for its complex emotions and what a pity the toy didn't include a bark in its repertoire!

Solo Gig in September!

More detail to follow! Too hot to write anything

Gypsy Hill Is A Hill

Well, that was a workout to end all workouts! Up the hill with the Green Goddess on my back (is she putting on weight?) from Gypsy Hill station for the session at One Cat Studios yesterday. It was a really good session despite Ian Button not being able to join us- he was with us in spirit however and we managed to record three songs. The magic is still there! Because we have done lots of rehearsing we were able to blend our guitars really successfully, and I think we have some lovely vocals plus all the harmonies down as well. Three songs, two more to go and another five to write before we have an album. This is just such a great collaboration! Someone asked me a couple of weeks ago who wrote the words and who wrote the chords and music, but there are no roles- we do either or both and make a collage of our ideas that you couldn't unstick or uncreate. It's brilliant to have a wordless song (or part fo one) and have someone fit the perfect lyrics to it, or be given an instrumental to discover the melody and meaning inside it. And we resolve each others musical conundrums too- where a song needs to be finished, or needs to travel somewhere else, we both do that too.

Here we are in the studio, with Jonathan who records us and plays bass, and with the studio carpet (photographed by Robert). Roll on the next time!

Preparing to Record

Later this week Robert, Ian and Jonathan and me will be recording some songs. My fingertips didn't go to soft while I was away, and in a funny sort of way I'm trying not to over-rehearse. It's a bit like the goalkeeper's fear of the penalty (apt, I know, but also the title of a Wim Wenders film). If you put too much pressure on yourself the magic just isn't going to happen.

I've stopped for today: well, I might just run through some difficult chord changes later on. 

Yesterday early morning I recorded a one-minute song for Dexter Bentley's annual one minute song fest on Resonance FM. I had to keep changing the BPMs and began in the wrong direction. Shaving seconds off a song is quite good fun actually. There's no breath at the beginning, and I had to expand the display to the max to edit the very end of the final guitar chord. There is also a pop at one point on the vocal track, but c'est la vie! The song is entirely twee, and the title is Little Heart-Shaped People from Venus.

So housework beckons (doesn't it always?). There is no way any other sort of work is going to get done until After The Recording, which means next week is going to be Very Busy Indeed with University work.

Celebrating Brian

It was worth travelling back a day early to meet up with the remaining members of Asbo Derek (is it rude to call them the 'leftovers'? Good!) and some other pals including Kim and Simon from Oldfield Youth Club, Joe Davin from The Cravats and Steve Clements, to commemorate Brian Blaney's life and the publication of a book of his celebrated stories. The book was put together by Jem and Mark and is a wonderful tribute to Brian's life. It only seems a couple of weeks ago that I was zipping his wooly cardy up to his chin after spending an afternoon in the bawdy company of the band at the Prince Albert (all staff apparently suffering from Covid infections at the moment).

True to form the weather forecast was entirely wrong, and we sat in the sunshine and talked our heads off. Most people drank copious quantities of booze but I and my companion ate copious quantities of chips instead (although I still managed a Mr Whippy on the way back along the seafront).

There are still good things in life despite it's grim and overcast sky, and friends are very important at this time. I was delighted to hear that the band are going to continue in a slightly altered format and with new songs. The spirit of musicians is hard to crush!

Midnight Mastermind Tonight, BBC Radio 2

I will be asking OJ Borg three tricky questions tonight on BBC Radio 2's Midnight Mastermind:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000xt4j

Goodbye to Cumbria

Somehow, we went twice to Hadrian's Wall, wandered on the Solway Coast and climbed through huge elephant-skin rocks and ran on the sand, went to Ullswater and watched the cows wandering on the lake beach and saw the penny tree where people slot pennies into the bark, saw Jonny Hanna's exhibition in Hexham, and explored Kielder Forest with Kenji and Till, cheating in the maze with our umbrellas. And on the last night, Saskia and Russ came over with a huge chocolate and courgette cake. It was so awful that Offsprog Two got contacted by test'n'trace and couldn't come along, but we sent her loads of photos and tourist observations. Bloody Johnson and his variant!

It was so sad to drive south. I almost cried. 

Overherd in the Café

 

Wild Strawberries

It's been windy and rainy, and I don't think I have ever seen so many wild flowers in one place in one day in my life before. Wild strawberries, thyme, purple vetch, red and white clover, orchids, bacon-and-eggs, so many I couldn't name. Tiny little white blossoms, papery yellow snapdragon types, fluffy cream coloured ones, swathes of miniature yellow stars....

We are watching BBC Alba, and there's a banana cake in the oven. 

Holidays!

Baby's Ear Shells

As a child on the Solway Coast we could find what we called ice cream cone shells: elongated swirls of pale shell that looked just like miniature cones. Alas, this must have been a thing of the 1960s; the colony must have departed. But you can still find what McMum called baby's ears.

I realised that nobody likes anyone's shell collection, apart from the person who has collected them themselves. Resisting the urge to look for the perfect cockle, I stuck to collecting a handful of these tiny things. They seem so mysterious: what is the point of being so beautiful if you live under the sea where the sun can't catch you?

Characters

Holiday reading is a book by Donna Tartt, which is having the unfortunate effect of making me recognise characters from the book (or very similar ones) in everyday life. Oh deary me!

Happy Birthday NHS!

 

Rescue Dogs in Training

When we went for breakfast in Brampton yesterday (that sounds rather like the title of a smart New York novel, doesn't it?), we wandered round the closed-for-Sunday town and noticed women in hi-vis jackets with three dogs. They told us that they were training them to be rescue dogs, so they could find lost people with dementia, for instance, and showed us the way they let a dog sniff a piece of cloth that smelled of the person they they were looking for. The dog then searched, pulling their walker along by its lead. False alarms... and the dog realised and turned back.

Later, they bounced past us in the distance. 'She did it!', they shouted. 'Good dog!' from us. The dog perked up it's head, ears alert, and wagged her tail. She knew what those words meant.

Out of Office Reply

Where is this place? The football still managed to get here, through the screen of the pub down the road.

At the time were playing Racing Demon and Happy Families and all the better for it, even though there was a card missing from one of the packs. More tomorrow. I'm tired. That was a steep hill we climbed today.

Nowhere, Middle Of

I am sitting on a very squashy sofa in a large old building a tiny hamlet in the borders, looking out of leaded windows at a white sky and listening to a cacophony of sparrows. We made our escape yesterday, and despite my having a horrible headache all the way up the road, we got here in good time with our rain gear (do reindeers wear rain gear?), board games for bored days, sketchbooks (one each), books (I've almost finished mine) and tins of tomatoes. I love driving and it was great to be on the one road with no traffic lights, although big motorway traffic (gigantic commercial vehicles that pull out into your lane at the last minute when you have nowhere to go) appears to have colonised the A1 for some reason.

Here, it's huge, quiet, peaceful and satisfyingly lost off. Kenji and Till are coming later, and Offsprog Two is coming on Sunday. There is room for us all and even a swinging cat, if we were interested in such activities.

I couldn't pack my guitar and I was reluctant to leave it, but I think I need a break from that too. I just need a break from everything to do with normal 'me'.

I had to stop myself this morning, just get up and get on with the day. I was making a list of all the terrible things that the Conservatives have done, do and will do. I won't call them Tories- that's them pretending that there has been some sort of break from their awful policies, which have basically carried on for far too long. I'm not going to list them here because I left them upstairs and with any luck when I go back up to get dressed the list will have dissolved and drifted out of the upstairs window, which is what I wish would happen to the Conservatives in all honesty.

So this is a conservative free sofa, with the anticipation of a cup of proper coffee in a minute or so.