Leo News: You're Off and Running!

...Aaaaand, we're back. Been busy doing some properly intense child-rearing so no new posts for a couple of months, but what's happened since I last hollered into one of these little boxes? Well, you're talking in full sentences, which amuses our various healthcare professionals no end. You can repeat almost anything I say, basically verbatim, on first listen. This means you share a skill for language with me - I can remember being the same when I was only a little older than you. A right little chatterbox, in other words. I love it.

You're also dabbling with potty training, so our bathrooms have these insane wee-Dalek-things on every toilet, should Sir deign to go the whole draws-dropping hog. Sometimes you do, sometimes not, but as with most other things, you're pretty sanguine about things. You seem to oscillate wildly from laissez-faire, laid back little geezer one minute and incredibly precise, intricate, detail-obsessed perfectionist the next. Your personality is your own, but I can see a little man with a face like mine, a demeanour that's a blend of me and your Mum, and some great aspects of your grandparents as well. You stick at things until you're happy with them, like your Mum, but you're impulsive and prone to mood-swings, like me. You're getting braver, like your Mum, but you're prone to timidity and shyness, like me. It's fascinating. You're fascinating. You don't have my obsession with pizza yet, but you appear to like the smell of coffee. You'll do well in the long run, mate. 

Also, you're a genuine pleasure to be around. Sometimes, you drive us both to distraction, and you've caused more arguments than Brexit or lockdowns combined, but only because we both love you to bits and you're a demanding little boy. You make us better at being humans - thankyou for that. You demand food, love, attention, help, praise, comfort, shelter, warmth, challenges, reciprocation of effort, time, money and 99% of the available space in our brains, but we'll let you have all of that. I think you're going to be a hell of a guy, and I hope you'll be a good man, full of life, hope and conviction. I get the feeling you're going to be a handful, as there'll be no little foil for you to compete with for a while, but you'll get there, my man.

The struggle is real

Really not feeling good today, or yesterday. Cancer, it won't surprise you to hear, can be a nails-hard bitch. Today I have been apocalyptically tired, wobbly, easily confused, hot, sweaty, clumsy, permanently spooked, jumpy, tense, emotional, physically weak, fearful over nothing. Bit of a shambles really. I don't like it. Still, tomorrow's tomorrow, which might be different. And knowing this disease, it probably will be.

Called my oncology team today. They were supposed to send me the results of my last scan, which was itself four months late, and finally took place two weeks ago. They didn't send it, though. Why? Nobody knows. Further arse-kicking apparently needed tomorrow, then. None of this is helping matters.

This might be the start of the phase I'll call 'digging in'. For the first time in months, I am actually a bit fearful today. It's real, and it's not going to stop.

If it's right, or right enough, do it.

 "There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures."
William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar.

I am waiting for a long-overdue scan. I have a feeling the result will be bad. I have been in bed this morning, but was awake, worrying, at 0430. This causes my symptoms to make their dubious presence felt.

So: tired + stressed + (symptoms arising from stress) = tired, symptomatic and stressed.

These are the days I would skip altogether. The sun is out, and you are at nursery. You're due back soon, all hot and bothered, and you'll probably go to bed. The dog hasn't eaten. I have. 

I feel no better. Some days, everything is a task, to be tackled or avoided. There is no point to sunshine on days like this. It just makes me hotter, which I do not need.

Poem: In the Long Grass

I fell out, out, out of the plain
Falling, I burn crops off the end of the world
In the long grass, clocks tick, wires hum
A dry-stone edifice cartoon roadrunner brick wall

When I think of it, darling
I've been like this for some time
Go see a mother's real woman, child
Don't ask me to explain why I know

But I am a lighter

I've got a fight left in me

It's going to the wire

All I know is the man in the grey suit knows who wins

She'll extinguish my attitude

I wanna cup of coffee and a smoke on the side
Cos I'm no longer the feeling thing

I'll be, be, be a spectre
Someone's got to tame your monsters before they tame you
I'd do it for crackers, weed and a bottle of booze

My house parties all over me
Cheap wine leaks from the weeds
Grown in grit and rain by my front door

There's no kerosene there, and the earth is soft

But I am a lighter

I've got a fight left in me

It's going to the wire

All I know is the man in the grey suit knows who wins

 

She'll extinguish my attitude

I wanna cup of coffee and a smoke on the side

Cos I'm no longer the feeling thing

My fickle limbs make me sway like Patti Smith
Call me ashamed, sometimes just delight and delete me
Call my name in the dark when you need me
Will I ever learn?

When will we ever learn?

Cures roam the streets at nights

Sodium strip light tight skin slick fang fat twitch muscle split blood food life itch

That's the real deal

She knows that it's here, now

She sees the change in the way that I walk

The gate was open, now the gait's closed

But she'll extinguish my attitude

I wanna cup of coffee and a smoke on the side

Cos I'm no longer the feeling thing

But I am a lighter

I've got a fight left in me

It's going to the wire

All I know is the man in the grey suit knows who wins

Lockdown Music

Hey - thanks for coming back. That's the sort of bravery that gets rewarded around here. 

The good news today is that in yesterday's post, I didn't decide today's would be about politics. If it was I'd be furiously tapping away, railing against Mr Trump and his hoodlums. But no - today is a Music Tuesday. As promised, this is an off-the-cuff, unresearched, ad-libbed treatise on music generally. It's a bit harder than I expected, because the live music scene is effectively shutdown globally at present, thanks to our friend Covid19, so I thought I'd start elsewhere.

Spotify's a divisive, possibly malign presence in modern life, dressed up as an all-you-can-stream buffet of musical choice. A freewheeling, listen-to-anything consumer-led utopia, where everything feels free and instantaneous. When Arcade Fire released Everything Now, they were basically lampooning the cultural shift towards streams, the absence of ownership on the part of consumers, and the masterstroke, pulled off by record labels and the service itself, to convince their former customers to effectively rent things they already own. Simultaneously, Spotify presumably donned the floor-length black cloak beloved of pantomime villains and swept evilly away, cackling at the Moon as it went. 

I knew this day would come the moment the Green Demon launched. I resisted it for a couple of years, bought more vinyl than ever, had long, circular conversations about audio quality with friends, and even started making my own music sound as analogue as possible. But I knew the writing was on the wall. Streaming stuff just feels easier to do, once you get your head around it, and if you don't mind cheating artists out of a few quid now and again. It had been there in plain sight for years. 

The digital takeover of previously analogue media (not to mention the misty-eyed reverie for the crackle and pop of the past) gathered pace alongside faster, more stable internet connections, smaller, more capacious forms of digital storage, and what we used to call 'convergence technology' back when I worked at MacUser. Again, the fact that I'm tapping this out on a Chromebook - essentially a browser with a keyboard attached, with almost no storage to speak of, and no need for anything as crass as an external hard drive or as slow as physical media - should tell its own story. Everything is digital now. Everything. 

Music itself, as far as I'm aware, has to be digitised in order to be distributed these days, too. I think I'm right in saying that unless the vinyl you're listening too was recorded straight from the original analogue master, there's bound to be some ones and zeroes in there somewhere. The record labels (all four of them - ha!) knew this, and realised that all they had to do was keep signing up the cultural touchstones that the Boomers needed to see on there, and play the long game. Eventually, whole generations of kids wouldn't understand 'the  album' in the same way that their parents did, and it wouldn't matter at all. Songs are just songs. Artists are just brands. Listening is still an emotional connection, and that connection is controlled entirely by users now. Things done changed, for real. 

An example of what I mean: In 1974, Stevie Wonder released Talking Book. I think it's a pretty good record, and I bought it when I was at university. I listened to it mainly because I knew and liked his voice, his lyrics and because I admired the fact that he is a black man whose God-given talent enabled him to overcome racism, prejudice and segregation through the sheer power and emotional pulse of his songs. With all that, I only really knew Superstition well, and loved it. Did I listen to the rest of Talking Book as closely as I did that particular song? No, I didn't. Why not? Because I really only wanted to listen to Superstition to confirm what I already knew about it. It's funky as fuck, his voice is amazing on it, and my confirmation bias, effectively, stopped me from learning more about him. Nowadays, I don't think I could name two other songs off that album. 

Spotify knew this all already, of course. They could see that people would just go for what they knew, and wouldn't mind being 'nudged' into the quasi-unknown by a service that had historically served them dutifully and well. The service started suggesting songs users might enjoy after a couple of years, and consumers never really looked back. Increasingly, rivals like Deezer, Tidal and even Apple Music have started to look irrelevant, as the might of Spotify's millions of users started to dictate terms over the rest of the market. Artists started issuing singles exclusively through Spotify - creating a cheap, instantaneous ROI for the labels, and making it easier for Spotify to control who listens to what, when and where. Slowly but surely, Spotify has become the music business, and has taken the payment model away from the labels, replacing it with an arbitrary £-per-stream model. God help struggling artists in currently-unfashionable genres now. 

About a decade ago, I remember reading somewhere - it may even have been out of the mouth of Simon Cowell - that you needed at least a million quid spare to launch a new pop artist to the level where they're on, say, Later With Jools Holland. Once they're there, you need to record an album, tour for two years, get a US and ROW deal and just keep going until you're in the black. That model wouldn't work at all now, would it?

And there's more, too. Former UFC chatterbox and occasional transphobe Joe Rogan's podcast is pretty damn interesting and funny, and he is, to coin a phrase, already absolutely fucking minted. His Youtube channel has 8m-plus subscribers, and he's just been paid about $100m to switch to Spotify from December 1st. Whatever you think of Rogan - I happen to find him amusing, and his guests frequently interesting, funny and left-field - that means he is the biggest 'artist' on Spotify. If that move away from YouTube succeeds and grows the platform, more popular podcasts will join Rogan's. Spotify will eventually become not just 'a distributor' or 'a platform' but 'the only platform that matters' in the longer term. Spotify could become what we used to think of as 'the record industry' itself. 

But is that bad? It seems inevitable that something will come for YouTube in the middle of the night at some point - that's capitalism, folks! - but record labels are already faceless conglomerates owned by shareholders. Does any of it matter to consumers? It doesn't seem to. Also - I used to buy albums by established artists on physical media, for example, 'so that Weller got some of my money, because I want to support him and help him pay his bills.' How twee. As if me buying 22 Dreams on CD the day it was released would help the Modfather out with the next month's Council Tax.    

What matters to me is that there are brilliant, angry, left-field artists out there, doing it their own way. Taylor Swift is all well and good, but Billie Eilish is far, far more interesting. They are both on major labels, but Eilish has a new, bold aesthetic that I've not really seen before. Musicians who shake things up have done just that ever since Little Richard. That's what's important, really. Music shouldn't all be safe, homogenised pap for the masses, and really, as long as there are innovators around, who gives a shit how you got their music into your life? 

To me, Spotify just gives me an easy way to do what I love doing: exploring music, finding new sounds, reliving older stuff and uncovering proper gems amid all the twaddle. Without Spotify, I wouldn't be able to listen to a crazy Purple Disco Machine remix of an old Chaka Kahn record that came out yesterday. That element of discovery is what I've always loved about it. I don't want everything now. But I might want a dazzling breadth of choice, and the opportunity to uncover songs that can brighten my day, change my life, make me cry, give me hope and everything else in between. Spotify can do that, sure, but the medium is not the message in this case. I just love music, and all things considered, Spotify presents an easy way to continue doing that.

I didn't soundtrack this piece of writing, but maybe I will do so in future. I didn't really need to, since my wife was streaming Alanis Morisette pretty much for the duration. I think that's an effective measure of how we work now. 1463 words, off the top of my head, in just under 90 minutes.

The End of Lockdown

Since mid-March, we've been in lockdown, which has basically meant that most shops, offices and pubs have been shut. It's been a difficult time, but you've not really noticed. You're back at nursery, Mummy is back at work, and I am back doing whatever it is I do. We'll call it 'existing' until a better definition surfaces.

I feel hollow, really. Frustrated by my own inadequacies as a father, the overwhelming sense that I'm useless and the notion, even harder to shift, that you don't need me, and I don't really provide anything useful to you. I never thought I'd feel this way when you were a rumour, but there you go. That's what I feel. I don't know where this has come from, but it's made life pretty difficult of late.

Poem: Berenice

I love the Veils, especially their first few albums. This is an Edgar Allen Poe-inspired lyric I like so much I made a screenprint of it once.

Berenice, my hands my feet are worn
As much as yours are
And though my head, my hands, my heart are forming
They still feel worlds apart

Berenice
Beneath it all You're golden
And that's all I'm feeding off

And though my head, my hands, are growing colder
We move circles now

Berenice, there's no release at all
That's not worth dying for

Berenice, my hands, my feet Are worn
As much as yours are

Berenice, there's no release at all
That's not worth dying for
And it's not for our desires but our design that we all fall apart

Berenice, there's no release at all
That's worth crying for
And though I'm on my knees, I still don't don't believe it

But, we all fall down

Mummy goes back to the coal-face

For the last few months, we've been living through what can only be described as a once-in-a-century, global pandemic. You've probably heard about it by now. It's called Covid19, and has fundamentally changed how we live, work, meet up and suchlike for the foreseeable future. As a result, Mum and I have been stuck indoors for three months, while thousands of people all over the world have had to self-isolate - not see anyone etc - until the infection either goes away or a cure is found.

It's been a shitty nettle to have to grasp, but grasp it we have. We are fine - although your uncle Neil's had it and mercifully made a full recovery - but it's meant you've not been able to go to nursery or play with other kiddoes, and everyone's had to keep their distance from everyone else, which, as you can imagine, has been basically farcical since it was introduced three months ago. Essentially, though, we're fine. Grandad Nigel - or GranGran as you call him - has an underlying health condition which means he has to be 'sheltered' at home, so you've not, technically speaking, been able to see him.

That said, restrictions are loosening and you've bumped into Nanna and GranGran a couple of times. It's been a toughie, so it has. I've felt rough as a result of stress caused by it, and in turn been pretty useless here and there. You've been a little geezer throughout, though, and haven't really complained about the lack of playdates or social interaction that's been enforced by the Government. You little soldier, you.

Anyway, restrictions have now been lifted a bit, so Mum has gone back to work today, and has been beavering away pretty diligently today. You're off to nursery tomorrow, for the first time in three months, which we're nervous about, but it's required, and the chances of anything bad happening are pretty low for you and us. Your Mum and I both reckon we've had Coronavirus already - never in my life have I had a virus as horrid as the one that struck just after lunchtime on Boxing Day.

All of which means I am in charge of you today. Luckily, I'm feeling pretty well, all things considered, and you've been a sun-dappled little joy all day. Less fortunately, it's hotter than the seventh circle of Hell here today. Honestly, you could smelt copper on the patio. That said, please don't try that when you're older. My plan for this afternoon's fascinating, educational and inspirational session is to.. stick your dirty little body in the bath, as that's always been a sure-fire way to calm you down. Waking you up from your afternoon nap is always a struggle, but it's one that Radox has always alleviated.

I've also decided to set myself a proper creative challenge using my new and still-excellent Chromebook - I'm going to write 1,000 words per day, every day, for a year, and possibly seek to publish the results. You and doubtless thousands of others can head over to 1keveryday.blogspot.com to check out my latest repetitive bletherings if you'd like.

Right - time to run Stig of the Dump a bath. Love you grubface x

Poem: Shouts from Downstairs

Today's only getting warmer
Too hot, too close for dog's paw or man's feet
The pavements compete with the concrete heatsink
That grey-glowing, surrounds each bright house

Barbecues lit, at a social distance
Embers and cold bottles warming
Screw the pestilence
Paddling pools for wading
Shorts and wet socks
Cut grass and birdsong
Glass in quartz flecks on pavements
And shouts from downstairs

Reverie #2

It will be quiet and full of dappled light in the large, wooden shack. My clothes and everything I need will be on a table in front of me, and sunlight will creep through the gaps between the old planks. I’ll realise nothing hurts, I’m stood up, and I feel great. I’ll get dressed, and bergamot and vetiver will scent my fresh, new clothes. The sand will tickle the soles of my stupid, flat feet. A warm, jasmine breeze will blow through a window to my left, through which a broad, lapping ocean will glitter. On the table in front of me will be a watch, three silver bracelets and a leather one, inscribed TH & AJ. I’ll put them on my left wrist, and my wedding ring on my left ring finger. Everything in its right place. 

I will by now have realises what has happened, and be afraid. I will panic, and try to go back, but there will be no door. I will worry, feel lonely, cry, and then come to terms, and realise that I am OK, and can only go forward through the door into the unknown.

I will dust myself down, breathe a painless and sweet breath, stretch my limbs for the first time in ages, and smile. I will open the door in front of me to find an enormous, idyllic beach - a perfect ocean, with multitudes of people I have known and many I have not, laughing, playing, walking and greeting each other. The surf will be perfect, and I will know that here, I am a perfect surfer. 

There will be a really nice beach bar, with no queue.  I will grab a drink at the bar - most likely a martini - kick my flipflops off, and wander into the warm surf, the sun heating my back. After a time, I will find Lucy, who will ask where I got the martini from. She will take me to Mum, Grandma and Grandad, who will be wondering whether to put the windbreak up. I assume that even in the afterlife, my sense of direction will be crap, too. We’ll greet each other like lost souls, cry and laugh, and stroll around. Grandad will suggest some sort of walk to a distant smattering of rockpools, but I’ll swerve that, as a cheerily-waving Bowie will float over on a bright yellow lilo, and start playing The Prettiest Star for us on Robert Johnson’s guitar. That’s sure to be good.  

After that, I’ll just circulate with the great and the good, top up my tan, eyeball Marilyn Monroe a bit and get a round in. Maybe I’ll sit and play cards with the fam until Hendrix, Elvis and Prince do the sunset/acoustic thing and someone lights the bonfire. Maybe I’ll go and book a meeting on a pedalo with God, entitled Shit That Doesn’t Seem To Stack Up (1 hour). Maybe all things will be revealed unto me, and all this will make perfect sense. Maybe it is my job in life to leave one good man on the Earth to be upstanding and grow old in my stead? Who knows? Chances are, I’m going to find out before you do. Anyway, one night, around the time the stars come out, you guys might even start to show up. No muss, no fuss - take your time.

Practicality

Before I actually pop off, I’ll leave a will, so everything I want to be done will be done right. I’ll be cremated, and I think I would like it if my ashes were scattered in or near water - partly on Barton beach at high tide - where I started - partly in London’s Thames, where I defined myself - and partly in a river in Dartmoor in Devon, where we brought new life into the world and I left it. 

I like the idea that my body will become one with the air, the sea, the fields and the clouds, and this way, will eventually join the cycle of the earth, my ancestors and the entire universe, as we are all made of energy, and energy is indivisible. I would like to think that I will be part of everything and everywhere, all the time and for all time. Carl Sagan, who I will chat with on the beach, will no doubt confirm all this. He’s a smart man, Carl. 

I am only sorry that my son and wife will miss me, but I feel like I will be able to watch them somehow, nudging and trimming their fates, just as I feel my mother has done for me since she died. There is a poetry to the arrival of my son, in some ways, don’t you think? I’ll be rooting for him and all of you, just around the corner, and you might be sad for a while, but you’ll be fine without me. 

I know I will see everyone again as clearly as I know tomorrow is a day of the week. Death holds no fear for me whatsoever. I don’t like pain, or liars, belittlers, or people who let me down, but people are human, too. I have loved far more than not. I have had a good time, despite some bad times. I have plenty of good times to come, too. I have learned a lot about people, and this set of events has finally convinced me that when true friends are truly needed, they truly appear. Everyone is either excellent or capable of being so if they try.  

Religion

I do not really believe in God - I am open to Him being up there, of course, but I sincerely doubt He exists. I love the idea of an idyllic, permanent afterlife, though - as a freedom from pain and suffering experienced here, and a reward for living and dying well. That idea sustains me as I go on this journey. I feel like if that’s what I want to believe as I reach the end, that’s my choice. I want to go to that beach, and rest and recuperate with my relatives, and have fun. So, since that’s my vision - the one I have carried with me ever since I did some hypnotherapy a few years ago, and the one I revisit in times of stress - that’s the one I’m going to at the end. My perception is my reality. 

As far as God’s will is concerned, I can’t help noticing that every time I’ve ever needed help, I believe I have received it not from a spirit, but from a real person. Their motivations to do good by others are sometimes religious or spiritual in origin, but real people do all the heavy lifting. While I believe that my ancestors sometimes seem to have ‘willed’ something into my life - my Mum especially - real flesh-and-blood people are usually the actual architects of change. You don’t need faith or hocus-pocus to build a church after all - they are made of bricks, mortar, people’s effort and willpower. That’s not God carrying bags of cement around - that’s ordinary folk, either working because they believe in Him or because they are being paid to. Simple. 

That said, I sometimes envy the succour that people derive from an unprovable notion that ‘someone up there’ will look after them in the end. Their adherence to an idea that cannot, as far as we know so far, actually be the case, is as impressive as it feels unfounded. I don’t want to denigrate it - faith has, historically, made ordinary people do some extraordinary things, after all. 

I can’t claim religious belief in that way - science makes more sense to me. Then again, science is the enemy of mysticism, and I am quite into that - while I want to believe in the essential goodness of people, I truly hope that all of that positive energy goes somewhere else when the body stops working. 

If it doesn’t, so be it - I will become nothing, with no consciousness - just worm-food; part of the rock you’re standing on in space. Sounds good to me. If that’s the case, I won’t even be there ‘intellectually’ to realise I’m dead. Either way, I am fine with it - my ‘afterlife’ will exist in the form of the legacy I leave for my child and Tamsin’s future. 

In a way, as long as I do good things and leave a mark, I don’t really die at all, and I find that hugely comforting. I don’t regret anything I’ve done, or what I became, or who I am. I am proud to have called everyone I know a friend. To me, this whole thing is just walking through a door. Everyone does it, and it doesn’t even hurt. Just a blues player gone to another town. I’ll see you in the next one - don’t be late. 

I will continue to love and treasure you all, and you know I’ll see you soon.

Selfish New Computer Post

I bought a new computer. Despite it being a Macbook Pro, and having, at first glance, lots of grunt and all of that stuff, my existing laptop was a depressing companion. I've owned it since 2011/12, and flogged it to death, creating a career and sanity-saving video-editing sideline at work. I've also used my venerable metal friend to create over 200 songs in Garageband, as well as a bunch of heavy-duty uploading, downloading and general digital tomfoolery. As a result, it's completely funked: it's slower than molasses in zero-gravity, loading things is an almost Biblical struggle sometimes - like, tabs in browsers, not InDesign, for crying out loud. It even has a few dents where my trademark sanguine, laissez-faire attitude has - gasp now if you like - slipped a little, and I've wanted it to die. Hard to believe, I know.

So, I did some research, some soul-searching, went on a retreat or two, meditated, listened to my inner spirit animal and realised that really, all I actually do is write things in various places, watch various bits of digital media, and listen to songs on computers these days. I also like the idea of a computer being what I believe the originators of the Internet foresaw when the web was created - millions of nodes, feeding an unimaginably diverse galaxy of connections with information, which has long since made the leap from the printed word to the virtual one. The internet is now cloud-based, and in my case, light, fast and agile. So, I bought a Chromebook.

I am tapping this out on it now. I got a Pixelbook Go, the basic m3 model of Google's latest fast'n'light machine. I love it so far. The keyboard is sensational. The speakers are hands-down the best I've ever heard on a laptop of this size. It's faster than a greased ferret down a Welshman's trouser-leg - mainly because it doesn't have a great deal to actually occupy its time, other than throwing the characters I ask it to up on its 1080p screen. I like it a lot, so far. Initially, I'm a bit fearful that it might be too limited - too one-dimensional, and too much like a big, fast phone with bells on. But hey - I've done it now.

I went back and forth over the various ramifications of buying either (a) a cheaper Chromebook, (b) a Microsoft Surface thingy, (c) a new Macbook Pro, or (d) nothing at all. In the end, I decided that a new, fast, responsive computer would encourage me to write more, and I'm allegedly a writer, so a brand new, flexible platform on which to document things would get me back down the word-mine. And it has. There will be drawbacks, unforeseen fuckery and missteps aplenty, but in the main, I love it already.

In Dreams

Simply one of the best songs I've ever heard. This is pre-'fame' Finn Andrews of the Veils, aged about 18. It's as true a song as they come.

I've been seeking to avange my design You're in keeping with what I've had in mind The night will come for us and there we'll meet again The skies will unfold and shift in seas within I've learned to live in dreams and I will now part with them for the lenght of the night and ever after Is this how it works? Is love just what we've said? For the lack of a heart and for want of a better word Well I, I guess, you've heard by now The night, I guess you've heard by now And I've been seeking to avenge my design You're in keeping with what I've had in mind The night will come for us and there we'll meet again The skies will unfold and shift in seas within I've learned to live in dreams and I will now part with them For the lenght of the night and ever after Is this how it works? Is love just what we've said? For the lack of a heart and for want of a better word Well I, I guess, you've heard by now The night, I guess you've heard by now I've been seeking to avenge my design.

You're a rockin' two year old!

Your second birthday was great fun. You're now a talkative (in your own way) little boy. You have amazing rock'n'roll hair. You are fully independently mobile, too! Not potty trained yet, but you know what it's for and use it occasionally. No pressure.

I am feeling OK, and am still very much mobile. We recently bought you a shoulder harness so you can be carried on my shoulders without falling off etc. Tis hilarious, and you absolutely love it.

We've also started potty training you, and I have to say you're doing pretty bloody well, you smart little crapmachine :) I love you little man xx.

Poem: The House Where We All Live

The House Where We All Live

There's an old child's swing set on the lawn

And an ivied wall cured by the years

A neckerchiefed spaniel patrols the swamp

And drinks from the garden through the year

There are many rooms, and many floors

There’s a billion up, and a billion down

I'm not sure that God knows we're all here

Most nights He keeps to Himself

There's a Widow's Wing and an Unloved Wing

On the Unwanted Floor towards the rear

Many times, I’ve tried to memorise their names

But no sooner one leaves, than another appears

There once were verses all down the walls

But they soon got replaced with explicit cartoons

There are lipstick marks on all of our collars

And the sign on the gate reads 'Come back soon'

We all do our best to keep it clean

But tired guys’ minds get like a sieve

Sometimes it's a little hard to sleep at night

In the house where we all live

Now and then, when I walk the grounds at dawn

I hear the sound of far off bells

As my feet sink slowly into the reeds

I dream of being somewhere else

So, why don’t you, next time you’re in town

Just ring the bell, and I'll let you in

No-one ever really needs directions

They just ask for the house where we all live

Ma, I wish you could see this moment

Ma, I wish you could see this moment

I wish you could all see this moment

Poem: Captains

Captains

My beautiful boys all got old.

All that potential spent imprudently

The greatest guitarist

Makes fake plastic guns

For imaginary heroes 

Who live with their mothers

Out of touch yesterday men

Lambert and Butler

Dirty plates

Lost and alone

A PC, flickering

What happened to the girls, man?
Where's Kym? Where's Dawn? Where's Claire?

Where did they go with all that hope?

Why would they stay for this, though?

Warm lager. Cold chips

We were skinny, hopeful, bright once

Whatever it was, it left

We aren’t living in that bright future any more.

This is the kingdom our habits made

I regret nothing except all the mistakes and laziness
Needless hangovers and rows
Self-sabotage
Lacked ambition
Skiving
Not finishing anything
Phone calls to bosses - 'I've got a migraine, I can't come in today.'
Hungover and stinking of booze
Wrong change for the wrong bus to get to the wrong job in the wrong town
Impostor syndrome
Missed chances

Tim had it right:
'Self-confidence is all you need.'

Poem: Translucent Light

Increasingly, I write poems, too. Here's one I wrote today. It's a bit sad, but good.

I think.

Translucent Light

Another day together

Translucent, dark green

The windows, the windows

Let down the light; betray the rays

Motes cling to clothes

To hair, to space, drifting

Hope rides eddies of silence 

Currents of too-warm air

The creak of the door

Food is prepared in another room

The vent clanks day and night

Time passes

Pulse

The clock

Motes

Memories

Uproarious parties

Love and laughter

Rock and roll; joy

All those kisses atrophied to this

A pestilential husk

Not so fucking cocky now, Mister. Hair, like hope, all gone

End it now, end it 

Why walk on to end up back here?

Another day together

Translucent, dark green

The windows, the windows

Let down the light; betray the rays

Motes cling to clothes

To hair, to space, drifting

Hope rides eddies of silence 

Currents of too-warm air

Food. Another room

The vent clanks

Time passes

A cough

The clock

Motes

Memories

Uproar

Love

Rock and roll; joy

All those kisses 

A pestilential husk

Not so fucking cocky now, Mister.Hair, like hope, all gone

End it now, end it 

Why walk on when you’ll only end up back here?

End it

Another day 

Translucent, dark green

The windows

Let down the light

Motes cling

To hair, to space, drifting

Hope rides. 

Food. Another room.

The vent 

Time passes

A cough

The clock

Motes

Memories

Uproar

Love

Rock and roll; joy

Kisses 

Pestilence

Not so fucking cocky, hope all gone

End it now, end it 

Why walk on?

Another

Translucent, dark

Windows

Let down light

Motes 

Space, drifting

Hope rides 

Food. 

The vent 

Time 

The clock

Motes

Memories

Rock and roll; joy

Kisses 

Pestilence

Hope

End it now

Why walk on?

Another

Translucent

Window

Light

Motes drifting

Hope. Food. 

Time 

Memories

Rock and roll; joy

Kisses 

End it

Why walk on?

Translucent window

Light drifting

Hope. Time 

Memories, joy

Kisses 

End it

Translucent light

Hope. 

Memories

Kisses 

Translucent light. 

Memories

Kisses 

Translucent light 

Kisses 

Translucent light 

Translucent light

Lucy and bass playing: they're related, apparently.

Lucy was a tall, chatty, brave, good-looking girl. Being her older brother, I felt like I had her number pretty early on. She was younger, smaller and as a result, obviously stupider than me. Being a boy also made me completely superior to this small, noisy creature, and I realised with a timeliness that you could call my hallmark that she would need some controlling. As her older brother, it fell to me to school her in the ways of the world, even though I was myself only 18 months old when she careered into the world in 1982.

I don’t remember her arriving, of course. I was a bloody baby. Apparently, I ran around the maternity ward and kept the nurses, not to mention my long-suffering Dad, more than occupied while she was neatly Caesarian’d out of my Mum and into Poole General Hospital and peak-Thatcherism in June 1982. I have no recollection of this, as I was only 18 months old at the time. Having been the appreciative recipient of my own caesarian delivery at 1824 on February 1979, I would probably have thought it was standard procedure. Probably just gave her it some serious side-eye and moved on, busy in my own baby affairs. Frankly, though, side-eye would never have been in short supply, either, as I was born with the mother and father of all squints, too. Oh boy. My father, letters passed to me much later in life attest, was keen to get this physical abberation to his only son’s beautiful face mended pronto, and therefore I was shipped back into Poole General, where I’d hatched just nine months previously, to have it corrected in 1983. By then I can only assume we had our own parking space. Of course, this was the Eighties, so the eye-fiddling didn’t really work as expected. I went and grew quite a bit, and my eyes, it later emerged, had quite a bit more wrong with them than initially assumed.

Firstly, they didn’t really cooperate. They tersely got on, yes, but rather like a marraige becalmed by infidelities on both sides but glued together by long silences and children, they rarely worked well together, and when they did, the data that came back from each of them was often contradictory.

As a result, I fell over a lot. I banged into things. I lost stuff. I got lost ridiculously easily. I was clumsy first, then once I’d fallen down the same set of steps two or three times, as well as kerbs, loose paving slabs, blades of grass that were woefully misaligned and so on, the powers that be - my parents, Barry and Sue Jones, thought it prudent to get their Dear Son back to an eye doctor on the double.

On doing so, I was subjected to what can only be termed an armada of rafts of tests, and they diagnosed acute astigmatism, long-sightedness and mild aphasia, which means that left and right hemispheres of my considerable brain didn’t talk to eachother in a way the other could easily understand. In layman’s terms, I was a Clumsy Little Twat.

I, of couse, thought all of this was normal. After all, my eyes were my eyes, and what I saw was the only world I knew. Sometimes I fell over stuff I hadn’t seen previously. Sometimes I got lost. These things are sent to try us, really. I noticed, by about the age of four, that I was quite crap at catching a ball, and wasn’t the fastest runner, but I put that down to being small, and, well, four. It didn’t worry me. I was really ace at some stuff - reading, vocabulary, impressions, creative writing and imaginative stuff were all easy for me. Words would just form in my mind as soon as I heard them, and spelling was a matter of ‘reading’ what my mind’s eye told me the letters in a word were. I never thought about it. I still don’t, and I’ve been a writer for 20 years. It is just in the wiring, that.

Similarly, music has always had a transcendental quality to me. I don’t have synaesthesia - a condition which makes ‘sufferers’ able to perceive sound as colours, shapes or patterns, but I am acutely aware of harmonies, and discord is very noticeable and can be quite unpleasant.

I have always ‘understood’ music, and rhythm, in a sense. I’ve dabbled with guitars and keyboards since I was a kid, but reached the limits of my ability to play - not to mention my patience for scales - when I was about 20.

What I really love about music is improvisation - the ability it gives you to stand in a room and make magic out of thin air and shared ideas. I have been told I have good pitch and good timing, and of all the instruments I’ve ever had a go at, bass is my favourite.

Nobody likes the bass unless they are interested in the slivers of space between everything else, and being the glue that holds a song together. As a bassist, you’re a Sapper, in the engine room of the band, but you can turn, catch the drummer’s eye, and floor the accelerator whenever you want, in a way that no guitarist can. Being bass means you’ve bought a house between rhythm and harmony. Your job is to create a sense of speed, tension, mood and swing, as needed. Bassists don’t have to learn chords, either. They can smoke while they’re playing. They often die spectacularly. Their instruments are cheaper than guitars. Their amps are much louder. Bassists are often quiet and cool onstage, mostly because they are drunk or high, and not really thinking of anything much. Bass is not about thinking. It is about feeling. I have done some serious meditation while playing bass. I tried to do it on guitar, and everything just stops. Bassists are moody, but then their chosen instrument is pretty easy, while also being utterly vital. Every band needs one. Just listen to a band without a bass and you’ll quickly realise that what they need is something glueing the vocals to the guitar, and stirring the drums. It’s a really fucking cool job.

On a bass, I can change the whole feel of what the guitarist is doing without so much as looking up. That alchemical thing is so fleeting I can’t really describe it. When you’re in a room with four of your oldest friends, just jamming something, and it just gets really good out of nowhere, it feels like flying. I have done every drug it is sensible for a young man with time on his hands to fiddle with, and none of them are as good as that half a second when something that didn’t exist moments ago suddenly takes flight, I’m telling you. Yeah, it’s fair to say I’m pretty into it.