Found in a Notebook #3

The sun rises. Then it sets. Rises and sets. Rises and sets. All oin all, not a lot changes. Sun rises. Sets. Comes back for more. Brave old sun, eh?

In our midst, there are those for whom the endless risng and setting are but commas in another story - one of persistence, growth, betterment and hope. There are those whose path never crosses ours - then again, there are those who path must corss those who live more, for one reason or another.

Quite how these 'people' are remains a mystery, and is in itself surrounded by heresay, but exist they do, move they must, and arrive they will, in our lives or just outside them.Lots of poeple thing they've seen them, be they suddenly 'brilliant' friends or strangers you've met  on a train who have suddenly said something cutting or pertinent without knowing the full you - for some reason they've picked something hidden out of your personality that - on at least some sort of basic level - makes sense. Not to say that these pepel are necessarily magical or in posession of guidance from a higher power, but they are, in a wierdly elemental way, ebetter than us and seem to have us sussed. The sun rises, sets, rises and sets. On it goes.

I met one of these people once. It was a hot day, the kind of weather that gets on the news. My train journey was taking longer than usual, but the denouement  of The Catcher in the Rye' was taking my mind off the worst of it. After a while, I realised that the  guy opposite me - who must have been eighty, giben his shjock of white hair, receding gently at the temples, the quality of the briefcase he was carrying and the depth of the lines on his face - was checking out hte well-thumbed copy I was reading. I thought nothing of this for a good twenty minutes or so,  as after all, it's a very popular book. Holden's brush with the hoker with just playing out when a soft, discernably Australian lilt broke my concentration:

"That's a fabulous book - but you'll know that by now."

The moment the first syllable left his lips, I was utterly stunned. Such warmth, directness and, behind it all, insight in the tone and the calm confidence of the way he spoke. It was almost as if he was speaking directly to my subconscious. A deeply odd feeling, and not one I'd felt before.

"It's fabulous", I stammered, trying to make sense of the piercing blue eyes that now fixed on mind from the other side of the pile of dead coffee cups and magazines on the small table that separated us. "I have to say, it's not my favourite, but I can understand its value, I suppose."

The next senence nearly knocked me off my chair:

"If you understood anything about what real travel was, my man, you'd appreciate little fairy tales like that one all the more."

"What do you mean?" Still unnerved by those blue eyes, beautiful in their own way, but empty, too.

"That book's changed many a life, son. You'd do well to understand it - brilliant prose often reveals certain things to all of us."

I was more than a little stunned by this. I've loved the Catcher since my teens, for one reason and another, but never really given it much thought. Interested by the old duffer's take on it, I persisted:

"What do you mean?" Quite blunt. Waiting.

"It's yours," he continued, warming to his theme. "That and every book you've ever read will give you the story you've been looking for."

A strange kind of silence broke over the carriage.

"I don't really understand", I said.

"It's yours to find, young man. Understanding is not something I care about or can help you with. Belief, on the other hand, is a different matter.  Anyway, this next one's my stop, so I'd better be off. I trust you'll have a good day, and a good life, full of good moments and interesting interludes such as this one. And if you're ever in Australia, I recommend you visit the Gold Coast. There's some great places to see there, if ever you find yourself back there."

"Thanks, I'll bear that in mind", I said, wondering what the old man was on at this point, but oddly transfixed nonetheless.

As he left the train, and my journey continued, I found it increasingly difficult to forget the face, the voice and the strange manner of the man who had introduced himself. As the train finally pulled into my stop and I collected my things, I realised he'd left an old, leather-bound volume behind. Roughly the size of a bible and clearly very old, it was locked shut at the spine in the style of a diary or notebook, and bore the monogram 'PL' on the front cover in small, exquisite script. I looked at the book for a couple of seconds, and put it in my case without clearly understanding why. Perhaps I could trace the man and return it to him?

Makes you think, dunnit

Some of these are just extraordinary.

London Pubs: A Diatribe

I just posted this to a thread about pubs on the Guardian, because I’ve had a long day and fancy shouting at something. I feel better, and some of this is quite funny, I think:

I live in London, (not by choice - long story) and I love pubs. Love them.
London has some fabulous ones, but most of them are either dull or complete rubbish. It's not the price of beer - that's going up steadily in most parts of the UK since I've been drinking it. The thing that ruins pubs for me is the profound lack of space in them.

The lack of space in London pubs can render even the quaintest, most interesting or most historic venue a nightmare. I have had a long day. I want a pint, and a whinge, then another and a laugh, then another and some tunes, then I'll go home. It's not much to ask. Central London's pubs are, however, literally awash with half-dayers by about 3pm, so by the time I arrive at 6-ish, I have to settle for a handheld pint of warm lager stood by the gents, because the place is already rammed. Cheers!

The problem extends outside of modern boozers, too - now that we're all metrosexual, sophisticated arrivistes with complex tastes, teased hair and a burgeoning interest in 'craft' ale and 'artisan' this, that and the other, we can't get enough of al fresco drinking. Even before you get into the place, the outside of a pub is covered in gangly aesthetes braying about themselves from early afternoon onwards. Farringdon, I'm looking at you here.

In a damning indictment of this, I saw a bunch of blokes outside a crowded pub the other day. They appeared to be in their mid-Twenties, and were sharing a portion of chips, drinking beer and smoking. Nothing amiss, really, except for the fact that the pub of choice was so oversubscribed, they were balancing their pints, chips, fags etc on the top of an overflowing bin. Because there was nowhere else to put anything. Because of everywhere being crowded. Everywhere. All of the time.

How can balancing your shit on a bin while drinking in the gutter for £4.50 a pint be deemed acceptable? What can we do to stop this?

Full ego-mirror here.

Oops, sorry

Didn’t have time to write for the last few days. You’ve not missed a massive amount. The Royal Mail shares I was seconds from buying at £750 are now worth £1100, but I’m not going to cry into my keyboard over it – might play along the next time a decent opportunity comes along, but I actually find the whole IPO thing a bit risky and distasteful. Free money, however, I’ve never had a problem with.

You may have noticed that the second epic essay in the 50/5000 series is a little on the tardy side – again, this is down not necessarily to a lack of time, but more likely a lack of planning and scheduling prowess on my part. I’ve set aside Thursday night to knock this off – T has to go to Bristol for work on Friday so is quite rightly staying at her mum’s over the weekend. Let’s see just how much creative-type stuff I can get through while I’ve got no distractions, eh?

Important music-geekery news! I’ve FINALLY managed to isolate the problem with Logic around monitoring of output /and/ recorded tracks, and can now record multiple tracks of guitar/vox/whatever over previous ones, studio style. This paves the way for ridiculously precise, complex and layered guitar pieces, similar to the ones I’ve had wandering around my head for the last few months. Quite how they’ll fare on the vocals front is another matter entirely, but with enough scotch and an empty house, I may even give it a whirl.

Work is fine – I have a few case study visits to do end of this week/beginning of next, which will see me wandering distractedly around post offices and a big hole in the ground they call Crossrail. Could theoretically prove interesting I suppose. Things on the escape front are looking more promising, with a contractor of ours talking quite seriously about offering me a job in Bristol/London/home-based (and fully commutable from Plymouth). It would be a hike in salary from here, but I’m ready for that. Inertia doesn’t suit me, frankly.

On that subject, I have a bunch of shit to organise, so had better skidaddle. England-based flutters are placed for tonight (four easy ones, a total of £4, nice and easy). I also have another small flutter linked to the success of the first one but including Bayern Munich’s walk-in-the-park in the Champions’ League the following week for another £10

Cat Cafe: Lunacy Beckons

This is now a thing: http://now-here-this.timeout.com/2013/09/10/were-so-cat-sited-the-location-of-the-cat-cafe-is-revealed/

I would love to go, and inevitably, probably will end up going. I was about to protest the idiocy of such an escapade, but resistance is futile. Instead of saying ‘I told you so’, I’m just going to articulate my concerns in the silent void of the internet.  

Assumptions: Lots of girls read TimeOut, and want cats, but can’t have them because London is shit and their jobs take too long.  Girls also like coffee, and the strange mix of companionship, soft fur and lack of responsibility that comes from playing with a friend’s pet, perhaps over a coffee at their house, then going home.

Some clever ladies have come up with a Cat Cafe, having seen a Cat Cafe in Japan. Geniuses, those two. What inventive people they are.

Timeout has mentioned this to its largely female and pet-affection-starved readership, and some people very close to me would like to visit said establishment. I am felt compelled to issue the following:

TIMEOUT OVER-EXPOSURE CAVEAT: Now that everybody knows where it is, and the weather’s foul, it will be:

FULL of people getting in the way and not finding anywhere to sit, and

FULL of people standing near people who are sat near cats

It may even be so over-exposed that the beleaguered owners have to give those intending to sit cat-adjacent a time-sensitive ticket, reducing the crush between the Cat-Approach Area and the cramped Non-Cat Area of the Cat Cafe. This may even lead to the existence of a Cat Queue.

Such a crush will be encouraged by the owners, as it will allow them to maximise revenue generation and ‘buzz’ around the Cat Cafe, so I expect the Non-Cat Area to be extra-narrow, hot, loud and uncomfortable, and by design, forcing us into the apparent comfort offered by the Cat Approach Area.

Despite all this, we should go. Could be a laugh, and who doesn’t like cats?

Found in a Notebook #2

There’s another snippet of something here, too – this one lurks between notes for meetings in my work book, and looks like it was hammered out on a train, given the state of my handwriting. Brevity abounds, if that’s possible.

The ground beneath Sally’s feet was warm – baking powder-fine dust rubbed between her toes, her sandals keeping the worst of the stones on the verge from bothering her. Another car passed at speed, whipping her Sunday dress as it went. She scarcely noticed, starin instead at the small, dull metal disc in her hand. Not long now, she thought.

The knapsack’s dumb weight was just beginning to bother her when the needle started twitching, then speeding.

It spiked, unequivocal. Into the field on her left, it said. On she went.  Sally instinctively checked the road for cars, just as Miss Foster had taught her and the rest of the class back at St Beatrice’s since she could remember. She turned. The needle nodded in approval. Sally started at it, willing it to talk or otherwise enlighten her. The needle bobbed sarcastically, wavering again, then reiterating its latest instruction. Sally complied, weary.

On entering the field, with cicadas keeping time for the high noon sun as always, Sally passed an old elm tree that had seen many days better than this one. She reached into the only pocket on her dress for the last piece of paper she owned, and read it to herself yet again – just as she had every day at this time, since finding it in the street four days hence. The calm, old-time handwriting was already familiar. The foolscap old and classy, just starting to yellow. It said:

And then it ends, fucksake! This is so much better. Definitely something in that. Don’t remember writing it, but so many questions. Who is Sally? Where are we? What’s with the needle? Will Philip Pullman mind if I’ve ripped off the Golden Compass?

There is something in this, somewhere. Needle in a fucking haystack it may be, but at least there are traces of haystack.

Found In A Notebook

Found this in a workbook at the bottom of my bag. One can only imagine what the hen party got up to next.

The day ended much as it had begun, with a rush of bags, coats, passes, beeps and doors, people and half-shouts, “excuse mes” and platform alterations. Finally, Morton Glennister and his assorted baggage – a rucksack containing dirty washing and a small laptop bag he picked at of the corners of when he was waiting on platforms, and contain at least a pound of assorted stationary, tobacco and other detritus sure to clog the sockets of his iphone and ruin anytyhng that had the misfortune to find itself trapped in its murky depths.

Slumping into the nearest empty table seat, Mort – 28, nondescript brown hair, browner eyes – exhaled and gazed out of the window for a few seconds, and with a little affirmative nod, reached into the smaller of the two bags, fishing out a typically unkempt copy of JD Salinger’s overrated student stable The Catcher in the Rye. Mort had several hours of rain-based monotony to blot out before his train eventually limped into the small provincial station that was close enough to his parent’s modest cottage for you to smell dinner from the platform if the evening breeze was so minded.

Engrossed in Holdens brush with the law after the business with the hooker, Mort ignoed the landscape’s judder past his window, featuring increasingly decrepit stations. The cast of faces and pasts around him shifted, too. He did look up and sigh outwardly when the hen party from Tredegar at the end of his carriage, emboldened by pints of Asti...

And then it tails off. You can almost smell the Berkeley menthols they’ve been cadging in the train’s disabled loo-cupboard, can’t you?

This is actually a draft of a draft of the real-life story of when a strange man on a train appeared to either (a) be a version of me from the future or (b) be a relative of mine from a different universe. Really perceptive old guy, seemed to know me really well, had a very strange, oddly timeless look in his old blue eyes. I like to think of him as a time-traveller. In fact, The Book is based on there being a load of people like him among us, if you must know. Quite how it will differ from all of the other time-travel books in the world is beyond me at present. Then again, the main reason it’ll differ from the other time-travel books is that I’ll have written it. I’m reading some Gael Garcia Marquez to get my head around this Magical Realism thing and hopefully some of his beautiful imagery and wordplay will rub off.

There are more snippets of stories I found in notebooks, too. Maybe I should put them all here, and then interlink them in some way.

Ramping up/music writing

The Work has got far more extensive and fast-paced since taking the New Job, it seems. I have to say I initially enjoyed the old-school buzz of /having to/ produce words on an almost hourly basis. In truth, it’s not a job I’ve had to do full time before. In the past, I always thought of myself as a frustrated writer, cruelly run off the road of full-time scribbling and labouring on the hard shoulder reserved only for put-upon subs. Tortured metaphors aside, it’s all getting a little bit frantico. Still, better that than the underemployed mess I have been in past lives eh?

 

Trouble is, now that I’m the Internatonal Go-To-Man for data about this company, I’m finding it hard to find the time to write the case studies and other shit everyone else is so keen to nick and stick in their bids. I’m also really easy to pick on if the bundle of stuff we have already is in any way not up to snuff. But hey, I’m workin’ on it, dammit.

 

Quite excited about seeing The Death of Pop – Thom and Angus’ new noisy adventure, upstairs at the Garage tomorrow. I might even interview them, stick the result here and then sell it to Music Radar, Line of Best Fit, the Quietus or something. We’ll see...

 

Having something on the Quietus would be awesome, but they’re weapons-grade pretentious arseholes, so I doubt it’ll get that far. There might be a nice piece about the differing fortunes of Joe (who will be there in support/van-driving capacities) and Thom. Family Fortunes: A Story About Committment, I could call it...

Brighton/weddings/winnings

So we went to Brighton on Saturday, the events of which basically nixed my lofty ‘write-every-day’ ambitions. Thankfully some new ideas around worlds-within-worlds have started to bob to the surface in the absence of the thousand or so words I should have produced, like long-forgotten corpses on a moonlit lake. Purple simile use aside, Brighton was as predicted – inherently smug, full of crap vintage shops, but not short of a beer, so all was well. Chloe turned up, we bought her dinner in a US diner, we sent her home, the roof of her hotel room collapsed. The usual.

Yes, the roof of her hotel room had collapsed while she was out for dinner! Typically for someone who has only ever taken the cheapest available route to anything, our Chlo had needlessly placed herself in danger by paying under £30 for a night’s accommodation in a room barely wider than the bed at its end, with ‘bathroom on the second floor, showers on the third’, apparently. Jesus. Who does this in 2013, I hear you cry? Even as a witless borderline alcoholic idiot, I would probably have factored the cost of a decent room into the photography-course bottom-line before booking it. She lives in Newport, so three hours’ drive across the country (away from the outright ugliness of Wales, which isn’t worth photographing, obviously) resulted in a near-death experience. Fuck that.

Anyway, all was well – she hesitantly got a refund, and will be billing the OAP Chinese (!) people in charge of the hotel for ‘the cost of cleaning her camera’, in a vibrant seizure of her inalienable rights as a consumer, and not in a limp and half-arsed way, of course. Personally, I’d have been down the road in the Premier Inn for another £50 anyway, or at least gone there, explained the situation and then wrestled compensation from the fuckers on my return. To take being moved to another room in the same dilapidated shithole is to infer that it’s inconvenient, not outright dangerous. I hope she grows a pair as a result of this, I really do. It would be about time.

I may not have mentioned the nuptials of Andy and Sasha on here before now – a brilliant afternoon/evening in Bath, catching up with all of the Future gang (or those that are left, anyway). I’ll do a full post on the state of the old Alma Mater in due course. Suffice to say I seem to have put a bizarre, 7-fold spread on Barcelona, Real, Bayern, Chelsea and all kinds of other stuff, which all came in, meaning I’m into three figures off an initial stake of £5, in two months! £108.11! Who says gambling’s for fools (besides Lemmy)? This means that the round of international matches due tomorrow – which contains some seriously lopsided affairs such as Spain vs. Belarus – could be another bonanza.

A Future Beckons

This, from the Guardian’s eloquent, passionate and positive review of GTA V Online, is a two-paragraph précis of what I want from an online, open-world game:

“What the game definitely realises though, is the chaotic thrill of life in an urban sprawl entirely populated by gun-toting ne'er-do-wells. You can be cruising the streets looking for a convenience store to turn over (sorry mum) when in a flash, two other players in roaring muscle cars scorch past pursued by half the LSPD. At other times, there are weird moments of unspoken camaraderie – like Journey re-imagined by a 14-year-old action movie fanatic with attention deficit issues.

On Sunday night my female character was waiting at an ATM to cash in about seven grand's worth of stolen car funds; when I turned round there was a male player character waiting for me beside a motorbike – he sounded the horn and waited some more. So I got on. We spent the next half-hour riding around the city and ridiculous speedlike Tom Cruise and Kelly McGillis in Top Gun, zipping in and out of the traffic as the giant sun sunk behind the skyscrapers. Then some other player took a shot at us as we passed. We followed him to a tattoo parlour, where he got out of his car and walked in for some new ink. My new friend calmly stopped, got off his bike, pulled out a can of gasoline and poured it all over the car. He then poured a line all the way up to the door of the tattoo parlour. When the guy came out, my pal ignited the line and rode off; I looked back to see our victim attempting to get into his vehicle as it exploded. We just kept riding. ”

Sure, the servers are broken, and people are, in the words of John Connor, doing a whole lot of ‘running around in helicopters, learning how to blow stuff up’. But imagine a world beyond that. In a future world where servers don’t lag, and rank idiocy/mindless violence is an option, but not a massively profitable one, lots and lots of players will go straight and therefore coexist in a – largely – peaceful ‘online economy’ of new friendships, businesses and busty avatars. That’s what I want.

Unfortunately, this in turn will be fed by real-world cash in the form of seamless integration with our real-world bank accounts, and social interaction between NPCs and the real world will be arbitrated through Facebook or whatever follows it.

The immersiveness, the dreamlike omnipotence, the endless opportunity for - albeit virtual – self-expression will be utterly compelling for a while. Film, as a medium, is fucked once this goes properly mainstream, and massive, immersive adventures are mainstream enough to be downloaded in three seconds and enjoyed by your parents. Film is something you watch. This – whatever this is – is something you do, with friends, strangers, whatever. This therefore wins, long-term.

It is becoming an industry and a lifestyle all its own. This game (and others like it, let’s be honest) is a stepping stone on that road. How thrilling it could be. I don’t want to be living my life vicariously through a screen full of made-up people at any point in my future, but this stage, where it’s literally somewhere else to go, and virtual tourism is a real thing, is fascinating.

Fake nostalgia/pebbles

What’s it called when you’re nostalgic for a period of time or a sequence of events that never were? When you hanker to revisit a set of emotions and situations that you know, in reality, that you never had? I find myself periodically – particularly on Friday afternoons when all I’ve got to do is knock out case studies – experiencing this in regard to my first job.

Working at Paragon, for the 20 months it lasted, was a bit mental. My sister died, I fell in love, I fell out of love, I got very sad, I started a life-long distrust of senior managers, I began to understand the difference between hard work and dossing about, and defiantly backed the latter as a career principle.

It was so volatile, seat-of-the-pants and emotional that I effectively left in a huff (as discussed elsewhere on this blog). And yet, and yet, I find myself wondering how Nicky, Nerys, Lisa, Chandra, Martin, Andy H, Karen and Russell are – where they’re at and what they’re doing, like we’re in some way still friends. In some cases, i wasn’t even great friends with some of the names in that list, but that just serves to mystify even more. Why should I still care? It was very formative I suppose. In truth, true friendship survives when both parties involved want it to in equal measure. None of those people have spoken to me in anger since Ieft in 2002/3 – jeez – but here I am, absent-mindedly googling them. I ran across this: http://magazinesfromthepast.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Search?search=kimber&fulltext=Search&ns0=1&ns14=1#

...which is about my first boss, from some sort of half-arsed archive of old magazines I worked on back when I was funner. How things have changed. I miss those guys, dammit. I think. Some of them. Maybe.

Off to the home of raw-sewage enthusiasts, overbearing vegans and renowned homosexuals tomorrow – sunny Brighton beckons. I’ve always found Brightonians to be terribly interested in telling you how amazing Brighton is, despite it being a slightly naffer version of Bournemouth with a shingle bank where the beach should be, galloping heroin addiction rates and about 2000% more fucked Cockneys than my erstwhile stomping-ground. It does, however, have a lot of well-appointed places to get riotiously hammered in before weaving one’s way back to the comparative familiarity of Oyster cards and silent, faintly sinister nightbuses, which is why we’re going.

I may blog from there in accordance with my stated aim of doing this every day for a month, but you never know, I might get my 4s pinched by a corn-fed seagull the size of a Dachshund. You never know.

Weddings, trips, football, gambling

The Wedding was at the top of our to-chat-about list last night. It’s been bubbling away at the back of our heads for the last two years, obviously, but living in London has kind of stymied/slowed decision-making. Knowing that we’re certainly leaving next year has galvanised our thinking somewhat and we’re close to a theme for the day. The prospective costs are a bit of an issue, but there are ways around these. I think once the end of the year comes around we’ll be in a good place to book venues, decide on decor etc etc. I don’t want anything too fancy, as we’re not really fancy people, and our friends and family have to love it, so it’s not going to be all about DJs and fireworks. Something cool in the West Country – where we met and fell in love, after all – seems the most sensible option.

On the whole, Autumn next year seems to be the best time, giving us enough of a window to put something together that ticks all of the above boxes and gets everybody who needs to be involved on the same page. I can’t wait to put some concrete in the foundations of this idea, which has been mere sketches for so long.

A quiet evening last night, after accidental after-work beers the night before. Did some writing (‘Apple’ is proving a lot more straightforward to knock out than ‘Age’ ever was, and hopefully won’t contain quite as much self-reverential nonsense). I think it’s a good discipline to aim for getting one of these things done a week, and the longer I spend writing something – anything – on a daily basis here, the more likely that is.

I emerged from steering an imaginary Arsenal side to European glory on PES last night to find Tam’s character in GTA in the grip of a post-Alien-induction acid trip, complete with phasing visuals, sitar’n’bongo backing music and all kinds of analogue-delayed vocals, as he fell serenely to earth. I’ll post some images of it here in due course, but suffice it to say it is easily the most out-there visual I’ve seen in any media – TV, film, whatever – in a very long time. 

Rockstar could be accused of shark-jumping at this point, as it feels that they’ve run out of better ideas and have opted for the fantastical, but it raises an interesting potential direction for future games on this model. Open-world games such as GTA seem to succeed because they represent a skewed or dreamlike version of the real world, while unapologetically ‘fantastical’ sandbox games revel in their unreality. Truly combining the two has probably been done – apologies, I’m no student of videogame history – but the idea that there’s another world ‘behind’ ours, in the style of Stephen King and Peter Straub’s book The Talisman – is compelling. It’s one of the ideas I’m toying with for my magnum opus. I wonder what a combination of Oblivion and GTA would be like, for example?

Before witnessing Rockstar’s latest fever-dream first hand, I’d been listening to a nightmare of sorts, as Manchester City were taken apart by a Bayern Munich side who are steadily usurping Barcelona as European football’s pre-eminent force. I only listened to the increasingly fatalistic 5 Live coverage, but from what Alan Green and co were saying, combined with the Guardian’s reaction this morning (http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/oct/02/manchester-city-bayern-munich-champions-league) it was brutal out there. Their strikerless, endlessly shifting dominance of midfield and exploitation of space will probably even have Neymar and co shitting it a little bit. Even so, I had a good day at the office, with Real Madrid and PSG both winning at a canter. My latest foray into the world of high-stakes gambling reads thus, predicted winners in bold:

Wednesday 3 Oct

PSG v Benfica - won

Real Madrid v FC Copenhagen – won

Saturday 5 Oct

Liverpool v Crystal Palace

Levante v Real Madrid

Barcelona v Valladolid

Sunday 6 Oct

Tottenham v West Ham

Norwich v Chelsea

As you can see, there are relatively few risks here. I can’t say I trust Liverpool 100% to get a result, but Palace were so pisspoor against Southampton that I had to have a go. Real away at Levante might also come unstuck, but I doubt it given the form they’re in. Tottenham should be pretty safe against West Ham at home, and I assume that Chelsea will be able to overcome Norwich, even though the Canaries are tough to beat at Carrow Road. Sensible bets all, though, and if they all come in, that’s £50 on a fiver, right there. Two down, six to go. I’ll let you know.

On the strength of last night’s schooling of Man City, I may have to add Bayern to my ‘stable’ of regular bets, to (qv. Barcelona, Real Madrid, Chelsea) and remove Man United, who are getting a little better each week, but have clearly lost a lot of their potency and ‘fear-factor’ since Lord Ferg retired to the golf course.  

Housekeeping

Pretty uneventful day, really. I did some general thinking around what it might cost for us to buy a house (the price of surveys, legal shit etc etc). Turns out it’s between six and ten bigguns, which is a little more than I’d anticipated, but not that far away. The general feeling seems to be heading more towards renting somewhere lovely outside London for 12 months and then buying, enabling us to stack up a proper fund and not scrape every last penny out of the kitty before moving. Sensible, relaxed, no hurry. We really don’t need to rush.

Following on from my piece earlier in the week (Age, above) it dawned on me yesterday that October 1 was my grandmother’s 96^th birthday. Ninety fucking six. Sadly what with everything else, I forgot to send a card, and I can only assume no-one else will have done. This leaves me conflicted because she’s not in a position to worry about it, but I hope that when I’m that age nobody forgets. In many ways I’m glad her condition precludes her from thinking about endless empty days, loneliness and memory in same way I was forced to when I realised my error. She is effectively the last of the clan. I’m sorry, Grandma.

In other news:

There are interesting alternatives to the job I’m currently doing in the ether, and I’m wondering whether to jump, as ever. Really great, but for the brave only, I think. How brave am I, though?

I have written over 10,000 words since changing roles one month ago – roughly a half-and-half split between paid words and free words. This is unprecedented and probably a unanimously good thing. I’m certainly taking some pleasure in seeing them pile up on here, if nothing else. For the first time in my adult life, I actually /want/ to write. Distracted quite a lot by work and various other things, but still finding the time to jot something down here every day. I’m also inspired by Colin Greenwood’s diary around the increasingly fraught sessions for Kid A – a fascinating insight into the inner workings of the best rock band of their generation, by their bass player. How can I not be interested in that sort of thing.

I’m also pretty close to choosing another tattoo (lower right arm sleeve, since you ask). I’m posting this from work email, so no image just yet, but it’s pretty cool and worth sharing so I’ll ping it up here when I get the chance.

Generally positive, we continue.

Creating and waiting

So, I just read a piece on the Grauniad about how creative people are often at their most productive – creatively speaking at least – when they’re away from their chosen outlet, which I find really interesting, if only because I’ve forced myself to write something every day here for the foreseeable future. The main thrust of the story seems to be that (I’m paraphrasing) creative energies are stored up in rather the same way that KERS works – while the brakes are on, the ability to accelerate is increased.

In other words, you get your best ideas when you’re not trying to have your best ideas – or indeed any ideas whatsoever. It’s a theory that won’t surprise musicians (McCartney regularly opines that he ‘dreamt’ Yesterday, and one of the few evenings in 1965 that saw Keith Richards fall asleep was interrupted when the riff for Satisfaction crashed, unannounced and unbidden, into his beleaguered frontal lobes).

I’ve experienced similar things when playing around with the music I occasionally create as a hobby – I’ll be tinkering around with something, trying to make it work in a way that’s in some way different or better than the stuff I’ve made previously, and nothing gives. No great leap forward is forthcoming, and in fact, more often than not, incremental, dispiriting hops backwards are more likely. If, however, I load up a bank of samples and progress into a new Logic project window as fast as I possibly can, the results are often more vibrant, more interesting and better to listen to.

Some of the best tunes I’ve ever made were hammered out in a couple of hours, and to be honest, I’ve never really developed anything from 6/10 – more work needed to 9/10 – ready to be pressed, by worrying about the whys and wherefores of individual signal fades or the position of the odd, errant snare. Barrelling into a new project works wonders, and at its best, the fuel for it – a half-formed idea for a blogpost or a song or whatever, is insanely fleeting, but creates longer-term, more substantial results, almost like the initial spark and its resulting bonfire.

In the case of this blog, I reckon that something concrete and manuscript-shaped could definitely come out of it. There’s the larger 50/5000 project, which I’ve promised myself I’ll finish, and is already one post strong (Yay!). Any undertaking that forces me to knock out a quarter of a million words by the end of the year has to be a good thing. 245,000 to go, and I think I’ll get there. It’s making me want to write, and in the last two weeks, I’ve created over 10,000 words, which is a PB all over the place. Intriguingly, it seems that the more I force myself to write, the more I’ll write, and the more I’ll like it. Just have to see how it goes.

On the subject of improvisation, creativity and weird noises, chief NYC blipster OneOhTrix Point Never’s new album R Plus 7 is shuffling apologetically onto my iPhone as I write this. I’ll do a bigger piece on OPN in due course (perhaps as part of a Musicians I’ve Met With Weak Handshakes feature?). Really looking forward to hearing it thanks to the Quietus’ review.