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Villette read-a-long Week 7 : Chapters 31-35

2011-03-24T18:59:00.001+01:00

I've been writing so much in these blog posts; some of it musings and thoughtlings and various witterings; some of it factoids learnt from my fascination with all things Bronte. I've read other posts from other excellent bloggers involved in this wonderful read-a-long by dearest Wallace and I like to think we're all gaining that little bit more love for this wonderful book. Even if you've found you don't really like the book very much.

I would love to just say something like "the big question I have is this...", but I just cannot. Villette is simply too complex a novel, too deep in its emotions, too nuanced in its examination of relationships (across the whole spectrum of that word's meaning) to be boiled down into anything so mundane or simplistic. And on top of that I have to keep pinching myself into reminding myself that Villette was written over 150 years ago. And with THAT in mind, I just keep getting struck with how similar Charlotte's world is to our own, not how different it is. From Villette (and I'm sure many of you will agree here), schoolgirls are very much the same creatures nowadays, as is much of human nature; whether it be Madame Beck's nosiness or Graham's pathetic blindness to Ginevra Fanshawe's spiteful side. Of course there is some Victorian drawing room etiquette to discard - although Charlotte's stories always have class structure at their heart, they're never as heavily bogged down in it or as reliant on it for their plot mechanics as say Jane Austen, whom I find very hard-going. But I digress...

In this week's reading, the chapters have very much focused on M. Paul and Lucy's budding - let's call it - friendship. She's had an idyllic little interlude in the country where Paul's feelings are becoming more open; and she's had a gothic tinged journey into the heart of Paul's private world, allowing us to better understand this strange little man - but also allowing us to better understand Lucy's growing feelings for him. Other characters have been briefly faded down in the mix; Lucy is now in M. Paul's world and not her own. When you get those flutterings of love everything else gets tuned out - at least in my experience - and perhaps Charlotte is helping us to feel this; creating a vacuum where only M. Paul's and Lucy's heartbeats are to be heard.

Villette read-a-long week 6 : Chapters 26-30

2011-03-17T18:56:00.002+01:00

(The above picture is Constantin Heger, the real M. Paul, with whom Charlotte fell in (unrequited) love during her spell in Brussels. Not how I imagined M. Paul to look from reading the book...)

Lucy's relationship with Dr. John, their conversation so often revolving around other people, particularly the singular Ginevra Fanshawe, was surely a red herring for us readers in determining where Lucy Snowe's heart will find its berth. As other bloggers have so eloquently pointed out in their posts, Graham Bretton is the perfect suitor on paper only, carrying an inbuilt outward respectability that comes from being that icon of the Victorian age: a doctor, and yet being so silly and frivolous in mind as to be taken in by the shallow charms and selfish nature of Miss Fanshawe. Don't get me wrong - Graham is a wonderful friend and courteous gentleman to Lucy - but their relationship stays where it very much belongs; in a love of the surrogate sibling kind. I think we maybe knew this in our hearts all along, but we want Lucy to find the happiness that seems to so elude her that we read things into the little nuances of their relationship. I'm sure this is just as Charlotte Bronte intended.

And so we slowly open our eyes to M. Paul Emanuel emergence as Lucy's true romantic foil. For this reader, it is endearing to read of M. Paul's blundering, gruff, jealous attempts at gaining Lucy's attention, at wooing her. At least I think that's what he is attempting. It's almost as if we haven't really noticed it thus far; we think he's just a rude little man - a peripheral character simply there to add colour to Lucy's life in the school - whose outburst at the Hotel Crecy are something to be laughed at when overheard by the ever-mischievous Graham. But there seems to be a subtle turning point here. As Graham scurries away to flirt with Polly (his eyes having been forcibly opened by our Lucy), she reflects on how she felt about what Graham had said about M. Paul, and how her reaction might look in his eyes - how "the evening had not been one flow of exultant enjoyment for the volatile, pleasure-loving Mademoiselle Lucie".
Later in this chapter he have the 'mon-ami' conversation between M. Paul and Lucy. As Lucy knows very well, the literal English wording - 'my friend' - doesn't quite tell the whole story as it doesn't convey the sense of familial intimacy of the French phrase. And we just KNOW that M. Paul knows this very well. But she agrees to at least say the words in their English translation, and the beautiful observation of M. Paul's resulting smile takes up the best part of half a page and is as good a place as any to witness Charlotte Bronte's descriptive genius:

"You should have seen him smile, reader; and you should have marked the difference between his countenance now, and that he wore half an hour ago. I cannot affirm that I had ever witnessed the smile of pleasure, or content, or kindness round M. Paul's lips, or in his eyes before. The ironic, the sarcastic, the disdainful, the passionately exultant, I had hundreds of times seen him express by what he called a smile, but any illuminated sign of milder or warmer feelings struck me as wholly new in his visage. It changed it as from a mask to a face: the deep lines left his features; the very complexion seemed clearer and fresher; that swart, sallow, southern darkness which spoke his Spanish blood, became displaced by a lighter hue. I know not that I have ever seen in any other human face an equal metamorphosis from a similar cause."

What an amazing awakening of feeling which, through Charlotte's fevered pen, we get to feel first hand - the first sentence of the passage almost IMPLORING us to be there with Lucy. The power of simple muscular movements to evoke and disturb emotions lying too dormant for too long. We, along with Lucy, have just seen a fresh side of M. Paul we never imagined to be there.

I'm sure that I've written far too much for a weekly little post, so I should really leave it there. Chapter 28 (The Watchguard) is the beginning of the third part of the original triple-decker format of the novel, and it is interesting that it's opening words are "M. Paul Emanuel", leading as it does into the wonderfully funny 'broken glasses' sequence that so wittily encapsulates where his and Lucy's hearts are going. I'm sure there are still twists to the tale, but we can be sure that the final part of Lucy Snowe's adventures in this funny little town are now going to be very much more intertwined with a funny little man who is (like Jane Eyre and Edward Rochester) her intellectual and emotional equal.
Wherever they go, we follow, as ever, mesmerised.

Villette read-a-long week 5 : Chapters 20-25

2011-03-10T20:50:00.003+01:00

It has struck me, more than anything else about Villette, in reading the novel again thanks to Wallace's read-a-long, how much Lucy's involvement with events fluctuates throughout the book. She gets involved with the story, and I mean involved as in a moving the action along kind of way, in only very brief interludes; coming to the forefront of the story almost as a last resort. This isn't the way of Jane Eyre, which is a much faster paced narrative, and so we must assume that Villette is deliberately so; profoundly meditative on everything Charlotte Bronte holds and held dear during that deeply tragic part of her life. Is Lucy in Villette deliberately aloof from events, enabling her to become a kind of diffusing screen for Charlotte's exploration of her own current events in a fictional form?

Anne and Emily were both dead, as was the troubled brother Branwell who had held so much promise and hope for all of the sisters. Alone in the parsonage apart from her blind father who was in her charge; Charlotte was facing un uncertain, unhappy future exacerbated by her distaste for the trappings of her newfound celebrity after the mega-success of Jane Eyre.
We only have to lightly scratch the surface of Villette to discover Charlotte's thoughts on many if not all her demons; and I'm sure I've mentioned some of my thoughts on these in past posts. In this week's reading it is Lucy's set-in-amber descriptions of the perfect family moments that resonate with me very much; John and papa Home returning from their snowy excursion creates a memorable scene that to my mind betrays a yearning for the vibrancy of family that no longer lit up the Bronte parsonage. So much sadness; yet I detect no bitterness in her musing.
Then there is Dr. John. I think of Branwell Bronte and the hopes and dreams bestowed upon him by three adoring sisters, when I read of Graham Bretton. Branwell couldn't possibly live up to the expectations thrust upon him (and which almost certainly contributed to his downfall), but in Dr. John / Graham they thrive; his unassuming good nature and proud adoration of his mother are the embodiment of a brother that never was, and a mother that Charlotte never really knew. Maybe I'm completely wrong of course. Charlotte's writing is too brilliant to be that literal, and wouldn't be still being read 170 years later if her secrets could be unlocked that readily; but when I read Charlotte's work, it is her that I think of (and I am but surely a little bit in love) scratching away short-sightedly with her pen.
I'd be interested to hear what others think on this subject; with a little extra knowledge of the darkness surrounding Charlotte when Villette was being written; what do other read-a-longers read into some of Lucy's situations and relationships?

Villette read-a-long week 4 : Chapters 16-20

2011-03-04T14:33:00.004+01:00

Thanks to Wallace at www.unputdownables.net, I am taking part in a read-a-long of Charlotte Bronte's Villette. Each week a handful of chapters are read and discussed...

For me, and indeed many bloggers if Wallace's comments section is correct, these chapters are when Lucy really comes out of her shell. We are seeing her in open public spaces really for the first time, and perhaps thanks to our ability to empathise with her in these situations (previously it has been hard to reconcile her 'outsider' characteristics when aloofly describing a family scene for example) we can understand where her 'head is at'.

The gallery scene, with M Paul catching our Lucy gazing at the picture of Cleopatra is certainly the funniest in the book so far. The scene's tone is undoubtedly deliberate as Lucy leaves behind (with a handful of bittersweet memories) the summer spent in solitude. She is brought to the gallery in the genteel glow of Graham's good grace and superior breeding. Finally acknowledged by and acknowledging a social equal in this strange country; "a cicerone after my own heart" as she puts it. For me, it is Graham's gentility perhaps just his sheer Englishness (or Protestantism!) that Charlotte juxtaposes with the disdain she shows for the Labassecourian (and no doubt Catholic) culture. The smaller Flemish pictures, dismissed comically as "excellent for fashion books" even though she notes "fragments of truth here and there which satisfied the conscience" are but an introduction the main event of 'Cleopatra', a painting of a lady "put into a scale of magnitude suitable for the reception of a commodity of bulk, would infallibly turn from fourteen to sixteen stone." A string of stinging insults to both the picture and its audience (noting a bench placed for viewers to sit once they had "gazed themselves off their feet") follows. Incidentally, the picture I have used at the top of this week's post (Une Almee by De Biefre) has been acknowledged as the inspiration behind Cleopatra, although Charlotte is also riffing on other Flemish masters such as Rubens. Charlotte saw the painting at the Salon de Bruxelles in 1842 (according to my Oxford edition of the novel). When Lucy is then discovered by M. Paul alone (gasp!) looking at the picture, the delicious dialogue which follows is pure Bronte genius, perfectly revealing Lucy's mischievousness in the face of M. Paul's indignation. I love it. It reminds me so much of my favourite scenes of Jane Eyre with Jane and Rochester's linguistic tete-a-tete's which they both revelled in equally. For me, this sort of wordplay is where passionate love always takes root in Charlotte's work, and Graham is simply a decoy (yet again with Lucy being an unreliable narrator maybe) for us readers to lay our romantic hearts.

I'll leave it there. I was originally going to write an extra section to just talk about the brilliance of the following concert sequence. Charlotte's powers of description here are so subtle yet so powerful, little do we realise until after reading, just how powerfully we have experienced the sensations Lucy has felt at the aural, visual and emotional escapades of the evening's spectacle. These emotions are of course heightened and offset by the powerful slash of Ginevra's true colours being revealed to Graham and his massive disappointment in her.

Villette read-a-long week 3 : Chapters 12 to 16

2011-03-01T21:57:00.000+01:00

I'm really late this week, thanks to a fine little break in the beautiful city of Chester. Lots of English history here from all eras, with plenty to inspire my Bronte reading. I've read all of the other read-a-long bloggers posts this week, and apart from a few people flagging thanks to the sheer density of Charlotte's writing, there is lots of wonderful insight from readers with such a diversity of experiences. If you're reading this Wallace; I'm really enjoying doing this, and thanks for hosting it.

This week's chapters can indeed be heavy-going. There's some tongue-drying sentence lengths going on here, and we're busy grappling with characters in a narrative which is hampered by (as plenty of fellow bloggers have pointed out) a narrator who isn't being quite straight with us all of the time. Lucy Snowe is busy carving out her own little niche in the school. We've already seen how she has established herself in the classroom. Her assertiveness there however doesn't appear to be so forthcoming when it comes to the social aspect of school life. Indeed, Lucy finds a dark secluded backwater of the garden, where the "very gloom of the walk" attracted her, and with a little TLC and a scrubbing brush, made the area her own. Lucy's detached inner thoughts tell us that she is perfectly content with her outsider's perspective on life inside and outside the school:

"Quite near were wide streets brightly lit, teeming at this moment with life: carriages were rolling through them to balls or to the opera. The same hour which tolled curfew for our convent, which extinguished each lamp, and dropped the curtain round each couch, rang for the gay city about us the summons to festal enjoyment. Of this contrast I thought not, however: gay instincts my nature had few; ball or opera I had never seen; and though often I had heard them described, and even wished to see them, it was not the wish of one who hopes to partake a pleasure if she could only reach it—who feels fitted to shine in some bright distant sphere, could she but thither win her way; it was no yearning to attain, no hunger to taste; only the calm desire to look on a new thing."

Lucy is forcibly no longer the observer thanks to the mysterious casket thrown into her secluded corner of the garden. Her human instinct for intrigue is piqued. Far from the passive Lucy we have known thus far, strange passions are being stirred as she, gasp, interacts with other people:

"The spectacle of a suspicious nature so far misled by its own inventions, tickled me much. Yet as the laugh died, a kind of wrath smote me, and then bitterness followed: it was the rock struck, and Meribah's waters gushing out. I never had felt so strange and contradictory an inward tumult as I felt for an hour that evening: soreness and laughter, and fire, and grief, shared my heart between them. I cried hot tears: not because Madame mistrusted me—I did not care twopence for her mistrust—but for other reasons. Complicated, disquieting thoughts broke up the whole repose of my nature. However, that turmoil subsided: next day I was again Lucy Snowe."

Again, other bloggers have brought attention to how Charlotte Bronte uses weather as a powerful metaphor in her writing. In this week's chapters the rolling frisson of early summer is excitedly anticipated by the whole school, and this comes out gloriously in Charlotte's writing, recreating this "strange, frolicsome, noisy little world" for us to enjoy.
The fete really is the finally to this section of the book; things will never be the same again. In real life, Charlotte was no longer a nobody hiding away in a secluded garden watching the whirl of life but taking no part in it herself. Surely Lucy's enforced performance in the play echoes Charlotte's own experience as she was forced to come out into London's literary society, and forced to shed the Currer Bell facade as her fame grew. Just like Lucy in the play, Charlotte stood in front of her new audience on her own terms: as a woman.

Villette read-a-long week 2 : Stranger in a Strange Land

2011-02-17T17:48:00.003+01:00

With thanks to Wallace at unputdownables.net, we are reading chapters from Charlotte Bronte's last novel 'Villette', and writing a short piece of comments and/or thoughts. I won't bother with a synopsis. If you want to know where we're all at, please pop over to unputdownables and check out Wallace's posts there. The picture above is an impression of what the Pensionatt looked like when Charlotte was there. Clicking on it should give you the full version of the picture.

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This week's chapters seem to be all about differences: differences in social status, differences in language, and differences in culture. She explores those differences with their petty contrivances and hollow conventions. Instead, I am finding that Lucy is using her wits to find a new world based on compassion, intelligence and humanity.

Lucy's arrival on the foreign shores of Labassecour is already foreshadowed by her arrival in London, with their use of English "odd as a foreign tongue". Already she is a stranger in a strange land, "confused with darkness, palsied with cold, unfurnished with either experience of advice to tell me how to act, and yet - to act obliged." (And just get a load of the beautiful rhythm in that sentence.) The minor characters she meets in London are grasping, arrogant; behaviour determined entirely by social status. Just like her narrator, Lucy takes solace from the world in a book to brighten her countenance. Only after this does the chapter come alive, and we have a last hurrah to the beauty of London's great sights. These joyful descriptions are in stark contrast to Lucy's first daylight take on Labassecour; "bare, flat and treeless was the route along which our journey lay; and slimy canals crept, like half-torpid green snakes, beside the road". All this beneath a sky deescribed as "monotonously grey", with an atmosphere "stagnant and humid". Charlotte leaves us in no doubt that Lucy is in a very alien place. So much so that we feel her joy as the French-speaking Englishman comes to her resue when the coach arrives. She describes the incident easily, with the two travellers, although strangers, sharing a bond of social status. This is soon to be turned on its head as Lucy, in a passage of almost dream-like logic, is delivered by fate at the door of the Pensionnat.

Soon we meet Madame Beck. Lucy finds it very difficult to pigeonhole her into any particular social status. She is truly bourgeoise, and Lucy's attempts to describe her physical aspects deliberately appear to contradict each other, her figure "short and stout, yet still graceful in its own peculiar way". She is described as a charitable, forward-thinking woman, and yet what sort of English lady would ever creep silently about at night and secretly violate personal property and space?

Lucy settles into her new life remarkably quickly, clearly her intelligence (I think Wallace also touches on this) stands her in good stead; her learning of French is definitely rapido, and she takes charge of the classroom with a sly wit and considerable skill. Once again Lucy Snowe proves she has some powerful passions lying dormant within her.

Villette Read-a-long (Belated introduction)

2011-02-13T22:07:00.002+01:00

I'm participating in the Villette Read-a-Long hosted by Wallace at Unputdownables. We're reading Villette by Charlotte Bronte over the next 8 weeks. I've read the book before, but it's really interesting to read the book again with a little grain of purpose and the opportunity to post a few thoughts on what my brain throws up over each set of chapters.

The reading schedule is as follows:

Week One/ February 1st-7th :: ch. 1-5 (i.e. read chapters 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5)
Week Two/ February 8th-14th :: ch. 6-11
Week Three/ February 15th-21st :: ch. 12-17
Week Four/ February 22nd-28th :: ch. 18-22
Week Five/ March 1st-March 7th :: ch. 23-27
Week Six/ March 8th-March 14th :: ch. 28-32
Week Seven/ March 15th-March 21st :: ch. 33-37
Week Eight/ March 22-March 28th :: ch. 38-42

Villette read-a-long : Week 1 (Chapters 1-5)

2011-02-12T20:00:00.003+01:00

It struck me, upon reading Villette again, just how much our narrator Lucy Snowe is so very much the silent ghost, (the "noncom observer" for any Marillion fans out there haha), the watcher who digests the reactions and interactions of the characters we meet. Read any biography of Charlotte and you will discover the tragic conditions under which Villette was written; the despairing grief of the still recent losses of Branwell, Emily and Anne surrounds the writing, and Charlotte's ability to express those feelings so hauntingly is part of what makes this book so beautiful.

Miss Marchmont in chapter IV is very much a stand-in for those beloved siblings. Lucy/Charlotte discusses here what has just passed and what is possibly to come as she faced life as the only remaining child of an increasingly dependent father:

"I reflected. Of course it ought to appear tolerable, I argued inwardly; but somehow, by some strange fatality, it would not. To live here, in this close room, the watcher of suffering—sometimes, perhaps, the butt of temper—through all that was to come of my youth".

Polly's childish liveliness in chaper 3, in addition to being viewed by Lucy in a most dispassionate fashion, as if deliberately stripping away the excitement being described, is also barbed with a grief-stricken bitterness:

"How will she get through this world, or battle with this life? How will she bear the shocks and repulses, the humiliations and desolations, which books, and my own reason, tell me are prepared for all flesh?"

These early chapters of Villette are the sombre launchpad of the experiences to come. There is pain here to be sure, but it is tinged with the most delicate tendrils of hope, springing from a cautiously optimist mind. So deep is Lucy/Charlotte in her grief, that this delicacy can only be expressed by Miss Marchmont:

"I love Memory to-night," she said: "I prize her as my best friend. She is just now giving me a deep delight: she is bringing back to my heart, in warm and beautiful life, realities—not mere empty ideas, but what were once realities, and that I long have thought decayed, dissolved, mixed in with grave-mould. I possess just now the hours, the thoughts, the hopes of my youth."

Reason to Smile

2008-06-20T20:42:00.001+01:00

Reprinted here from Karen McVeigh's piece in the Guardian. Cheered me up no end:

The son of an elderly widower who could not find a drinking buddy has provided him with two new companions after advertising the post at a rate of £7 an hour, plus expenses.

When he moved from a flat to a care home 20 miles from his old stomping ground of Barton-on-Sea, Hampshire, Jack Hammond, 88, a radar technician during the second world war, struggled to find someone suitable to have a beer with.

As a last resort his son Mike, 56, put a notice in the post office asking for someone with similar interests or background to accompany his dad, a former charge engineer at a Lancashire power station, to the Compass Inn in Winsor, twice a week for a couple of hours.

He was so inundated with offers - including one from a 16-year-old - that he interviewed candidates by phone before asking a shortlist of three to join him and Jack for a trial drink. The successful pair, Trevor Pugh, 78, a retired kitchen fitter from Southampton with a military background, and Henry Rosenvinge, 58, a former doctor, will now spend several nights a week with Jack chatting about military history and current affairs.

Pugh said: "I like having topical discussions and meeting new people and I'd be happy to take him down the pub and enjoy a chat ... we are both ex-army so we have that in common."

He will accept the £7 an hour to boost his pension, but will not claim the expenses.

Rosenvinge, from Lyndhurst, Hants, will do the job for free. He said: "He has a lot of stories and we are both from Lancashire so we have a lot we can argue about. I'm looking to come once a week for a couple of hours but we will be careful - we know what our limits are with alcohol."

Jack's son Mike, a chef in Brockenhurst, has no regrets. "He would rather have found his own friends, but he is limited in what he can do. It has opened a Pandora's box about what happens when you lose your independence ... care homes offer trips to garden centres but don't really cater for individual needs."

He said his dad was too old-fashioned to consider going to the pub with other residents because all but one were women.

"Ideally, he wanted me to take him out seven nights a week, but as much as I love going for a pint with him I can only manage a couple of nights. He'll now be going several times a week - three with his new friends and twice with me."

When asked if his dad was happy, he said: "As people get older, they don't show their emotions as much. He's not showing he's happy, but before he was showing me he was miserable. He's not doing that any more and to me, that's well worth it."

Green

2008-05-27T14:40:00.002+01:00

I'm aware of my breathing, fast and shallow as I recline on the settee. There's a slight but uncomfortable heat where the back of my bare legs are in contact with the warm leather. My head is tilted to one side, the closeness of my ear to the seat-back allowing every tiny movement of my body to be amplified. I can hear my hair rustling, and think how strange that is. It feels like my senses are both heightened and dulled all at the same time.

With my head like this, all I can see, my entire vision, is on the other side of glass. Summer is approaching fast, and countless shades of green ripple gently as everything strains forward for the Sun's attention. A deep parallax of verdancy, from the cropped grass on the ground, through dirty nettles and tight shrubs, to streamlined conifers and taller trees, with the gaps of sky inbetween sometimes being obscured by even more trees behind.The overhang of the taller trees creates a darkened thicket nearer the ground, and it is this shrouded backdrop that highlights the activity in the air. Hundreds of gnats and other insects can be seen going about their business, reflected brightly in the sunshine. Tiny leaves swing to and fro, caught in long-abandoned cobwebs, and ever-nervous birds survey the goings-on from a bough.

If all of this activity has a soundtrack, I am oblivious to it, hearing only the sound of blood rushing in my head, and still the rustling of my hair.

Rest Stop

2008-05-07T14:28:00.003+01:00

The fire escape is old, but has been repainted in dull primer, hiding the rust. She steps out of the window onto the metal platform, dressed for the sudden onset of hot weather in a short denim skirt and brown vest. Work is dispatched first, with an array of humdrum washing being arranged carefully on a drying rack. Then comes the reward; five short minutes spent in the warm sunshine. She sits on a step of the metal stairs, attempting to light a cigarette in the gentle breeze with a rhythmic click click of her failing lighter. Eventually the end glows satisfyingly and she pockets the lighter. With the nicotine comfort coursing through her she relaxes further, and sliding down an extra step her feet are now propped against the lip of the platform. A lovely posture. The cigarette is finished and she dreams she were far away from here. Far away from terraced housing and a weed-strewn garden. She tilts her head back and the sun tickles her throat. She wishes it was soft water from an azure sea. A thoughtful smile brightens her hard-working face for just those last few moments. She stands up suddenly and steps back through the window opening. A soft click of the latch, and she is gone.

Reflections

2008-05-06T17:58:00.003+01:00

I'm sitting here, plain T and jeans. Johnny Cash is looking at me in craggy black and white. So is George Harrison, and Kathryn Williams too. A stag party from last year (me included), sits next to a school photo from 20-odd years ago (me included). James Stewart peers at me through binoculars. Dido sits in a taxi wearing a military jacket, whilst Margaret Lockwood, looking cute as a button, enjoys a joke with Alfred Hitchcock. Keith Moon clutches a champagne bottle, and I get to eat beans on toast. With grated cheese.

Celebrity

2008-03-18T13:36:00.003+01:00

Condensed from today's Guardian, by Polly Curtis. There's a link to the original piece at the end.

Adults are to blame for a decline in children's happiness because they control a commercial world which "rams celebrity down children's throats", according to the head of an inquiry into primary education.

There is widespread anxiety among adults about a perceived loss of innocence among children, but most children have a more optimistic outlook on their lives, Cambridge university professor of education Robin Alexander told a conference yesterday. Fears about the condition of childhood were being fuelled by adults' own sense of guilt about the social and environmental legacy - as well as the commercial pressures - they had created for their children, he said.

Alexander said people should not be nostalgic for a 1950s idea of childhood and called for less "alarmist talk" about children's lives, which he blamed on the "projection onto children of adult fears and anxieties, not least about the kind of society and world which adults have created". Instead adults should look at their own influence on children's lives, he told the Childhood, Wellbeing and Primary Education conference, hosted by the General Teaching Council.

"It's adults who, via the media and advertising, daily ram celebrity down children's throats; it's adult commercial values which create the junk food which contributes to obesity, and the alcohol ocean which fuels teenage binge drinking; it's adults who vote into power governments whose policies exacerbate rather than reduce inequality; it's adults who take nations into wars in which children are among the most prominent and tragic victims; and I guess - though I've not seen any analysis along these lines - that the carbon footprint of adults is far greater than that of children," he said.

"On this basis, adults may well feel not just anxiety about the society and world in which today's children are growing up, but also a degree of guilt about the social and environmental legacy which today's children have no choice but to inherit."

Original article HERE.

Gallery 00001

2007-12-20T15:38:00.000+01:00

Just a few photographs taken through 2007. Click on each one for a larger version.

Sounds

2007-11-28T18:35:00.002+01:00

I await the sound of your footsteps with jittery excitement. First I hear the faint, reverberating echo of the metal steps being ascended, and then the hollow clack of your flat shoes across my rooftop garden. I then listen for the final soft swoosh of the door opening before your voice bursts my senses. Always.

What a sweet blissful anticipation it is. A skittery feeling that builds up throughout the day, and one that can only be quelled by your embrace. The order of sounds announcing your arrival like a miniature countdown, one which only I am privileged to hear. Always.

Wherever else I might inhabit in the years to come, it will be these sounds I remember. A sequence invoking a Pavlovian response. An inward smile, an outward smile, and then a rush to greet you, to investigate your day. To love you. Always.

Snow

2007-11-19T18:57:00.000+01:00

You never lose the childhood wonder of snow. You remember that first morning view from your bedroom window, the landscape transformed, everything draped with the cleanest, purest blanket you ever saw. Sleepiness forgotten as an energy fills your soul, you just can't wait to get out there and do snow things. Any things, and every one of them is fun. Very cold, mostly wet, but always fun.

Even though it is still early evening, it is so very dark. I am a long way from any town, and wet snow swirls unevenly, breathlessly, caught in the conical beam of my headlights as I drive through the hills. Each soggy flake is reflected brightly in a mesmerising onrush before fading rapidly to the unknown darkness beyond. It tingles me, and even if this harsh wet sleet is not quite movie-like perfection, it is still a magical special effect that momentarily transforms my windscreen into that childhood window.

As we get older snow becomes a negative thing. An obstacle to the successful completion of our day. Our lives. We once marveled at its alien purity, now it is just an annoying part of the most annoying season. A hindrance. It is something to be removed either by ourselves, or preferably by someone else whilst we stay warm.

And yet children find no annoyance in snow, even if they are cold and wet they won't leave it alone. We are so much happier when our lives are at their simplest, yet we strive to complicate our lives, every day, by chasing happiness. We should think of revisiting simplicity like this more often, and remember how even if a snowball hurt, it didn't really matter.

Takeaway

2007-11-07T18:18:00.000+01:00

What can I say? Simply the most awesome name for a burger van I've ever seen! And I've seen a few...

Height

2007-09-14T20:22:00.000+01:00

Just a few short weeks ago this was the view I had. Nearly 3,500 feet above sea level here I stood, gentle tendrils of cloud hanging in the damp air. How tempting was it to stand with my arms outstretched, feet on tiptoe, as if my body had to somehow attempt to outwardly portray the exhilaration I felt within. I settled for a very big grin, wide as the view.

This was Snowdon. It was as if history itself paved the way for me to enjoy this view, or at least 150 extraordinary men did - building a unique railway to the very peak of the mountain - so that I might see an almost identical vista to that which those early passengers did, nearly 110 years ago.

So here I was, presented with an almost unique pairing of different histories. I thought about how those early patrons must have felt, seeing this most amazing sight for the first time, a view which had previously been available only to those very intrepid few who might venture to climb Snowdon the old-fashioned way. And though even to visualise life 110 years ago requires a ragged-edged black and white imagination, I then thought to imagine the larger scale of history that created this incredible landscape. The millions of years of precipitation guiding the contours of rocks on such a massive scale.

A mischievous wind breathed life into the scene, billowing all around and through my clothes. The sound created by this turbulent fluttering became my only soundtrack to this cinematic panorama, as the damp grass rippled in harmonious waves down the hillside, weaving wherever it could find purchase amongst the jutting rocks and shale, all the way down to the green twinkling copper-tinged lake below.

Echoes

2007-08-10T11:17:00.000+01:00

It always seems so very strange to me how the acoustics of a room are changed so dramatically by removing even the smallest items. A cabinet, a table, sometimes even a poster will do it. I find that the change in the effects of sound within a room genuinely affects me on a personal level. It fills me with a tiny melancholy, mixing up the excitement and unknowingness of impending change in my life with the mournful sadness of an empty room. Of course, any room starts off bare, but as you slowly fill a room with things - with LIFE, you don't notice the echoes leaving. It's only when you deconstruct and remove items that you notice the change as the ghosts return.

I'm leaving the building I've worked in for so many years. Today is the very last day. Slowly the ghosts have surrounded me as everything has been removed until all I have left is a desk and this computer. In ten minutes time even the internet is being switched off, and I will be locking the door for the last time on a place I have laughed and lived and spent so much of my time.

Sunrise

2007-07-19T15:40:00.000+01:00

Sunrise, sunrise.
My whole being jiggles imperceptibly in a lovely shuffle, tuned to the rays of light peeping around the curtain's edges - warm tendrils caressing me awake.
I look at you in this light. Sometimes I find you asleep, lids closed and breathing so softly, but mostly you look right back, an inescapable smile tentatively peeping around the corners of your mouth. We might be like this forever, floating gently as if suspended in amber, each rapt in the other's gaze. There's nowhere else we want to be.
The most tender part of the day. Eyes accustoming themselves to the light, heartbeat increasing oh so slightly at the brush of movement alongside me.
The day ahead has the unknown in store for us. There will be all sorts of unforeseen activities ahead for both of us at work or for friends - but this shared morning light is ours alone to treasure and to think about when we are apart.
Sunrise, sunrise.
It lasts for such a short precious time. The alarm always intrudes. Most people's alarm clocks wake them up, but ours is a last minute warning of impending reality, and that magical feeling fades slowly away - as it does each day - soundtracked by the morning soundtrack of buses and cars drifting through the open window. Inevitably, the day intrudes - it always does.

Green space

2007-06-07T18:08:00.000+01:00

What you see above is what I see each morning (click the picture for a lovely big version). This (sadly) isn't my garden, but I live opposite this lovely park and enjoy it every day. Occasionally, I might choose a long detoured route home just so I can walk through this beautiful green space. A busy road is shrouded directly behind that line of trees but you would hardly know it, with birdsong being the only soundtrack to this peaceful place. Giant green sentinels shutting out the noisy reality of 2007, exchanging a thousand exhaust pipes for a gentle stereo rustle as the breeze meanders through this leafy panorama.
Just like my countryside post of a while back, being in this place allows room for the mind to truly breathe. Away from the stifling world of endless decisions, thoughts made here can meander from one connection to another without intrusion from the pressed-for-time world behind those trees.
You can wonder at the enjoyment which this simple space brings to so many people. Later in the evening a kids football session will take place here, literally with jumpers for goalposts as if to prove the timelessness of this space. But for now it's just me under a damp grey sky, planning nothing in particular and enjoying every precious second.

Blood

2007-06-06T11:11:00.000+01:00

Another "guest post" ahhh. Nice oblique lyric from Editors, soon to release a new album. This song 'Blood', taken from their debut 'The Back Room' shows off a nice descriptive minimalism. Join the road.

---------------------------------------------------

This wicked city just drags you down
You're with the red lights, your side of town

Don't say it's easy to follow a process
There's nothing harder than keeping a promise

Blood runs through your veins, that's where our similarity ends
Blood runs through our veins

There's nothing believable in being honest
So cover your lies up with another promise

Blood runs through your veins, that's where our similarity ends
Blood runs through our veins

If there's hope in your heart
It would flow to every part
If there's hope in your heart

Evening Rain Part 2

2007-06-05T18:14:00.000+01:00

I guess after my rainy post of a few weeks ago, this one seemed impossible to not write about. There I was mesmerised by the visuals of rain without the physical effect. Snug indoors.
Here I was, 3am in Dublin city centre, and it was raining. Rain like I hadn't seen in the UK In years - a thick vertical forest of water reflecting the light from a million pubs as it splashed downwards on its journey to the pavement. There was no time for musing on the beauty of concentric circles when the pursuit of a warm taxi was a far more urgent consideration.
I was told that after taxis were deregulated in Dublin a few years ago, their numbers swelled from 2000 to something like 13,000. This fact didn't help much as it seemed nothing was going to stop for us that night. They were already full or going somewhere else. And it carried on raining - even heavier I thought, or maybe that was just part of my rapidly developing persecution complex.
So we walked home. Clothes and shoes and jackets soon became one sodden squelchy mass as we danced around puddles and precarious pavestones. At the half-way point I started smiling. There was this sudden moment of realising that I could do one of two things. I could be a miserable, conceited and very selfish bastard and bemoan the unfairness of it all in a "why me?" way, or I could enjoy this experience. I enjoyed the rain pouring through my hair and somehow being funneled down the back of my collar. I enjoyed the crazy laughter we all had at this shared misfortune. It felt like freedom, childhood memories of tasting raindrops, and mostly I just enjoyed the sensory rush of being reminded how ace it is to be alive. Or at least, knowing what it is to get thoroughly pissed on in Dublin. It all seems so simple.

Comment posting

2007-06-05T12:59:00.000+01:00

It was only a matter of time. With apologies to those friends and readers who do occasionally post a response here, I am being forced to change the comment posting procedure to enable me to check comments. This is due to my being plagued by a particular sad Russian spammer in the last couple of weeks, who it turned was also spamming the boards of disabled children in a particularly insensitive manner.
I love to hear any and all responses to anything I write (yeah, I know I don't write enough), and I would like to stress that I am not doing this for reasons of censorship.

Charliex

Evening rain

2007-05-11T19:47:00.000+01:00

As long as I am nice and snug indoors, the rain is my favourite kind of weather. Just ordinary rain, the kind where you can't quite see it, it's presence revealed only by the infinite concentric circles each drop forms in puddles. It's nearly silent too. There's none of the drumming or thrumming or pitter patter or any other description of sound evident other than the swoosh of cars driving through it, leaving tiny bow waves of tread pattern on the road that melt away as swiftly as they appeared.
When it's constant and steady, as it has been here for a few hours, those circles seem to become a repeating loop that could last forever. If you watch them long enough you feel you might discern the point at which the patterns begins, as you're otherwise mesmerised as each expanding circumference is swallowed up by another. Sometimes it feels so metronomic that you imagine it might never end.

The Real Deal

2007-04-26T20:52:00.000+01:00

Britain has a new talent. And I'm talking about a genuine talent here, not just a person with a vague ability to not bore you on television, which seems to be the only requirement for celebrity these days. No. I'm talking about a person blessed with a true gift that we can admire. A gift to inspire us to be better in ourselves and reassess our own goals.

I'm talking about Kiran Matharu. She's 18, a girl of Indian heritage, and she plays golf like you would not believe. Basically, she's Britain's ass-kicking answer to Asian-American wunderkind Michelle Wie, but without the attitude. In an interview for this month's Golfpunk magazine, she chats about her iPod playlists, her myspace site and her favourite TV shows. Oh, and the fact that she can consistently shoot 70, 71, 69... At the moment Kiran is the best-kept secret in British sport, being more famous in India than over here, but that can only change. She's at the beginning of her career, but how amazing would it be for her to realise her potential? You're not telling me that British Asian kids aren't crying out for a mainstream hero/heroine to call their own, being stuck year after year with the increasingly nihilistic corporate banality of hip-hop culture or TV celebs. Talking of which, here's a wonderful fly-in-amber snapshot of Kiran's London visit for the Golfpunk article - which seemed to me a real Join The Road moment:

"She's been looking forward to this, but rolling in the studio straight off the train from Leeds, dragging her Puma travel bag behind her and with her mum and dad in tow, she betrays not the merest hint of excitement. Vernon Kay walks past, flanked by the sort of people who would be screaming 'Out of the way! 'A' list British celebrity coming through!' if they weren't trying so hard to be cool. It's a moment - the toothsome ex-model who reads autocue for a living striding purposefully past one of the most naturally gifted young sports people in Britain. Oblivious to it all, Kiran shows us her new pink grips..."

I should link to Golfpunk because I've shamelessly stolen their copy, and it's brilliant. Also, here's Kiran's site. Oh, and a great BBC article about her here.

Wide eyed and helpless

2007-04-15T21:03:00.000+01:00

My finger hung poised over the sunroof button the second I sat in the car, the rays bursting in as the motor whirred the roof backwards, always too slowly, the mechanical creaking evidence of its wintry inertia. That single button press sets in motion a whir of wholesome activity - a season's worth of fun and breathlessness bundled into a single day. A tangle-haired barefoot run in the park transformed us into 2K7 hippies. Daisies were picked and stored carefully for a necklace probably never to be made - we'll just pick more next time, when they're long enough to be tied. It's a learning process! That doesn't matter because there was a slide to climbed again and again and, oh why not, again. Ice-cream vans were chased after and caught (with a special ice-cream van catching net ha!) and oh so difficult choices were made as to which one mummy would like and which one would I like and which one would be the best one of all for Amelia to have. We nibble at twirly coloured ice-pop until brainfreeze sets in and our tongues have turned green, and we rock to and fro on the big swing bench. One of us can touch the ground with our feet. One can't yet. Both of us giggle.

Cars were soaped and rinsed and the high powered mist of the jet-wash made beautiful shimmering miniature rainbows in the sunshine, before making our shoes sopping wet. We practiced our alphabet too, but had trouble with the letters 'm', 'n' and 'o', so we just shouted 'mellow mellow' instead which just summed things up nicely and it seemed the perfectly formed philosophy of any 4 year old.
The Sunday tiredness descended like a blanket, school in the morning, and ice-cold milk was drunk straight from the fridge before lids began to sag too much. The sunroof stayed open for coolness, Norah Jones for lazy smiles and a Wurlitzer tinged soundtrack for the homeward journey of a little day worth being alive for.

Jagged shards of electric guitar

2007-03-17T19:52:00.000+01:00

It is never my intention that Join the Road become a series of gig reviews, but what can I do about these things as they happen? Music is an all-consuming passion for me. It shapes the way I think, it chooses my path in life. For better or for worse, and I never complain.
Wilko Johnson is a bona-fide guitar hero. Four decades into his career, beginning with 'seminal' (for once a use of that word with real resonance) Canvey Island R&B crew Dr. Feelgood, and still up there stronger than ever. And there I was too, been there before, knowing, needing another jolt of what Wilko provides. What only he provides.

No electronic tricks, no pedals or Pro-Tools, Wilko's guitar spits venom. His eyes piercing the gloom of the grimy room and, clad as ever in black, he sprays forth an unending stream of angular chopping stabs and sawed-off shards of notes pouring from the blackest of all Telecasters. Truly guitar as weapon. Sheer musical invective, addictive to behold. It's a purifying, almost binary noise. From hands to strings to pick-up to amp to your ears. You can feel the ching like you're playing it yourself, and you can smell the metal of the strings.

Heroes begat heroes, and Wilko's is Mick Green. The 1960s pioneer of a style where a single guitarist in a band is forced to fill the shoes of both the rhythm and lead playing. Rhythm is the rock solid basis, the lead part is the manifest excitement. Precision timing is required, all at 100mph. Couple this philosophy with Wilko's angular stage strut, once famously described as like a clockwork mouse fixed on a rail, and you have a stage performance to truly behold.

Wilko always did leave in his wake a sea of disbelief and shaking heads as people try in vain to comprehend the man's playing style. Unique and almost impossible to replicate (believe me I'm constantly trying). Your eyes seem to witness the calm rhythmic motion of a hand moving across the strings that does not, surely cannot, correspond with the sputtering, stuttering staccato aural fireworks to which you are listening.

Summer this way comes

2007-03-13T18:35:00.000+01:00

It's definitely coming. I can feel it. I sense the spring in people's step. Perhaps that's just the effect of winter wrappings finally being banished to the back of the wardrobe for another year, but I can definitely sense something. There's a new tingle to be found in stepping out on the newly bright mornings and feeling a crisp warmth from the sunshine. A renewed excitement in another year finally getting interesting.

I say all this as a springtime justification for changing the site layout and taking the chance to add a new picture header. (Sharp eyed fans will recognise the title font!) Very professional, if I do say so myself. I've just moved to the new Blogger, and it makes all of these things so very easy to do now without scurrying through pages of html code.

A Million Smiles An Hour

2007-02-22T17:01:00.000+01:00

I can only straddle a crestywave of positivity today. I'm tinkering around. I'm listening to music very very loud. I'm writing stuff. S'all good.
Earlier on I drank the milkiest frothiest coffee. I ate the crispiest bacon with buttery perfect toast. Now I'm charging batteries. Metaphorically and literally.
It's raining outside, but it's a good rain. The sunshine is waiting around impatiently, occasional rays shooting through the clouds and glinting off passing cars like some secret semaphor.
I'm surrounded by stuff today - hundreds of microjobs that won't do themselves. Washing up, writing, reviews, letters. I want to spread positivity today and clean my plates. Is the world ready? One step at a time, cutlery first.
Every surface in my house seems piled with pulp - paper upon mag stacked high. Football, music, videogames, fiction, politics. My eyeballs cannot deal with it on their own. I'll absorb it all and then go pop! A word that demands an exclamation point.
Every time I stretch in a mini-yawn I do a little move of my head like a Kali-dancer in time to the music. I'm probably on stage somewhere in my head. I sometimes shiver with the thought of the unknown and the undone.
I'm going to go do.
x

Lost In Music Part 2 : The Be Good Tanyas

2007-02-14T21:20:00.000+01:00

It all seems so long ago now, but certainly it was just as cold. Back into the other side of last year, early December maybe. I remember mistakenly parking my car in the staff car park and being chased by a lady for once in my life - wearing a luminous jacket. But we got there in the end, out of breath and shedding layers of clothing, getting comfortable, acclimatising to the warmth.

Oh I had so been looking forward to this concert for an age. We had arranged it months beforehand, having a choice of seating as a reward for booking so early. We chose front, not front row but near enough. If you're sitting in the front it doesn't matter the size of the room - it's always intimate.

The Be Good Tanyas are a trio of Vancouver Canadian women who play what they call 'porch music'. Or that's what I read. Maybe they came up with the term to appease journalists, or perhaps lazy journalists, ever on the lookout for a pigeonhole, coined it for them. Whatever. It's a term that fits them perfectly. Whatever imagery you might think up based on that phrase it's probably correct. Armed with an assortment of stringed instruments; banjos, mandolins, guitars, theirs is a music of drifting lilting beauty. They gather up and distribute gentle swaying motion that gathers momentum through the evening, every strum, every fingerpick motion, every perfect harmony, every note interlocking to form a unique motion drifting sensuously under your seat and moving up your spine. This isn't a cliche, you could feel it.

As I said at the beginning, this is all hindsight. I'm now here in February listening to a Be Good Tanyas album (their first, Blue Horse), lilting my head just like I did those few months ago. The band create such an impression it just all seems so vivid.

If you wanted to instantly point someone in the direction of their sound, you most likely would mention 'O Brother Where Art Thou', the Coen Brothers' love-letter to downhome southern music. But that doesn't do justice to the eerie alien quality the Tanyas possess. The songs may seem simple in structure, but are then layered with a production that renders these songs utterly otherworldly. Deeply resonant, swathed in reverb, the melodies shining through the darkness. They mock supposed progressive rock. You are transported elsewhere.

It can be a very uneasy place to be. Original songs are mixed with traditional ones. These songs should have a familiar air to them, but you are left feeling like you've been missing something all these years of hearing them. They give everything they sing a true dark side.

Live, with a further visual element of seeing these three women, both innocent and all-knowing, the effect is compounded with a hint of unspoken evil, and amplified by their old-fashioned dress.
At the centre of all of this is singer Frazey Ford, commanding the stage. In a floral-print frock, with her hands resting imposingly on her hips for much of the set, she surveys the audience serenely with an unreadable glint in her eye. It can't be nerves but could it be disdain. We sit transfixed, we love it. And don't get me wrong, there is much love here. I've seen Ford and (fellow vocal) Sam Parton's harmonies and singing described as 'buttery', and that too is perfect. It's not a sugary taste, but a lovely warmth. It carries through as another layer, another texture to that spine-touching sensation I mentioned earlier.

Frazey calmly (she does everything calmly) lifts her eyes skywards and informs us that the roof here in this venue reminds her of "a big 'ol gypsy caravan". She's right, I think. I'm glad I was there too.

A cynical new year

2007-01-16T17:04:00.000+01:00

I'm a devout cynic, or so I'm told. If you are of a similar nature then you might notice that no-one ever tells you you're a great cynic, or one of the best cynics they've ever heard - they just call you a cynic, plain and simple. As a cynic you come to relish the negative, pouncing on the slightest encroachment of doom and gloom into your life, until you find joy only in those aspects of it. Human beings have not come this far technologically or socially (if I'm being cynical I would say that we haven't come so very far at all) by being this way. Cynicism is tolerated, not fully accepted as part of human nature, and it is only the fact that here in the UK it is a national past-time does it proliferate so much - but we do not praise it in others, except from fellow cynics.

It would be pretentious of me to suggest that I have deliberately waited so long into the year before posting here on Join The Road, but the vague compunction I felt in NOT writing some sort of 'new year' piece drove me even more to not do one. I just hate those endless feature columns in the newspapers that retread the same tired copy about how hard it is to keep one's resolutions and how the 'post-Christmas blues' are so common. Most of them usually start with some sort of discussion of how the newspapers always talk about such things. What a surprise - yet again the media has nothing interesting to say.
So now here we are, right in the middle of January, hopefully with all the cliches packed away in the attic ready for next year. The unrealistic resolutions have by now already been broken, along with most of the attainable ones too, and we are all now looking to a new year that will most likely resemble the one we have just seen. For my sins, I cleaned my house and bought some new energy-efficient lightbulbs. Rock n roll, or what? 'Practical cynicism' I like to call it.

But, as human beings, we are drawn to the romance of what a new year could bring. Perhaps it is only vaguely defined, but hidden amongst all of the media blather and pub talk surrounding the new year is the tangible thought that things could be different - our lives could be better. - and the blank-canvas of a new year allows us to express it verbally and communally. Most of us, if we admit it, spend the MAJORITY of our time dreaming of goals to be attained, and the new year period is the annual celebration of that. Being cynical, you might therefore describe the new year as being a celebration of pre-determined failure, but only if that is how you choose to look at it.

Personally, I feel conflicted this year. I'm old enough to recognise my own failings, I know that my routine is not without satisfaction and plenty of happiness, but have an underlying sense that I could achieve more - whilst not fully understanding exactly WHY I should feel the need to achieve more, or for that matter know what defines 'more'. If I ever get there, will I know, or is there some part of me, as a human, that always wants something else?
One thing I do know is that a large part of my routine will be irrevocably altered this year, and decisions will have to be made to combat this change. And that is exciting for me. Like many people, I don't so much need a push as a bloody hard shove to get me moving, and it excites me. Nervous for sure, but exciting nonetheless.

The cynicism is still there, like a tiny brake on my progress. Always ready with a constant excuse, blaming the speed at which the world and culture moves for my own limitations, offsetting my positive attributes with a not-so-witty, downbeat riposte. If I could learn to break free of that... attitude, the new year would be TRULY exciting.

Lost In Music Part 1 : Even In Blackouts

2006-12-09T20:42:00.000+01:00

It was one of the first real biting cold evenings we've had so far this winter, not the sort of night where you expect much of anything to happen. Certainly I did not expect to experience something that left me caught in a moment of wonder, an entire hour of that rare time where you think of yourself in the third person and just KNOW that you will treasure this most perfect of moments forever.

I feel like I'm constantly on a journey with music. Just when I think I can no longer be surprised by new songs or new sounds or new styles, just when I feel burdened with cynicism about the industry having no cards left to play, something like this comes along and shows me a way out. And it's got nothing to do with technology or relevance or that strange thing people call 'cool' - it's to do with feeling and with music's unique ability to touch the truth.

A friend of mine with a good few friends and contacts in the punk scene, had arranged for a US band called Even In Blackouts to play at his house. From the moment I first heard the idea I thought it was an unusual but quite brilliant thing to do. In fact the band are veterans of this type of guerilla gig. For a nominal fee they'll come and play at your house, the internet being littered with pictures of similar gigs of theirs in America and Europe. How great is that! For that reason alone they should be crowned the greatest band in the world.
With their name already implying their non-requirement of electricity to perform, Even In Blackouts are 'acoustic punk' - two and three minute blasts of love and anger bursting forth from thrashing acoustic guitars. The room containing this gig was no more than 4 or 5 square metres, an audience of around 20 people close enough to hear the strings buzzing and literally FEEL the vibration of resonating guitar tops. On top of all this fantastic musical physicality are Lizzie's vocals. Without need of a microphone to bolster her, a voice of gorgeous American clarity simultaneously froze and melted everybody present. I felt like I might never hear a voice like that again, and couldn't stop listening to it for a single second. All five of my senses felt alive. I have never been more involved in a gig.

The picture above doesn't do justice to how special this night was, its fly-in-amber staticness depriving you readers of the boundless kinetic energy emanating from every band member and infecting everyone in that tiny room, leaving you only with a visual impression of the glorious hats the band were wearing - which is something I suppose. Perhaps my horrible, stark flash photograph serves only to highlght the ordinariness of the surroundings, (if a Chinese guy dressed as an American Indian chief drinking a can of lager counts as ordinary) and tells you everything you could ever know without having been there. Maybe it is all only there in that moment, to be either half remembered or lost forever.

Before He Cheats

2006-11-30T20:13:00.000+01:00

I try and ensure that whenever I post some great lyrics here on Join The Road, that I at least have a vague link in mind with the mission statement. This time I guess I don't. I just love this song. I heard it on the radio a couple of weeks ago and was instantly enamoured with its directness. The chorus alone couldn't be any more to the point in its cathartic viciousness. I love it!
Singer, Carrie Underwood is clearly a star. However, the fact that this song comes from a winner of the American Idol TV show I find astounding. Why can't the contestants of our own UK X-Factor TV show sing songs with as much ballsy gusto as this?

Before He Cheats
(Chris Tompkins/Josh Kear)

Right now he’s probably slow dancing with that bleach blonde tramp and she’s probably getting frisky
Right now he’s probably buying her some fruity little drink ‘cause she can’t shoot whiskey
Right now he’s probably behind her with a pool stick showing her how to shoot a combo
And he don’t know...

Chorus:
i dug my key into the side
Of his pretty little suped up four wheel drive
Carved my name into his leather seats
Took a Louisville slugger to both headlights
Slashed a hole in all four tires
Maybe next time he’ll think before he cheats

Right now she’s probably up singing some white trash version of Shania karaoke
Right now she’s probably saying I ’m drunk and he’s thinking that he’s gonna get lucky
Right now he’s probably dabbing on three dollars worth of that bathroom polo
And he don’t know...

Repeat chorus:
I mighta saved a little trouble for the next girl
‘Cause the next time that he cheats
You know it won’t be on me

You can listen to the song here at Carrie's official site:

http://www.carrieunderwoodofficial.com/

Your couch my couch

2006-10-26T17:24:00.000+01:00

Sofa, Settee, Couch. So good they named it three times. Oh but it is great isn't it? Your couch I mean. Or my couch at least, because of course it stands to reason that your couch is never going to be better than mine. You probably feel the same way about your own. A couch is a very personal thing. Some people say that your bed is usually the most important piece of furniture in your life, after all you do spend an obscene amount of your life cocooned within its warm folds. But beds are all pretty much the same, more or less, unless you happen to have some crazy four-poster affair - in which case you probably aren't reading this but are either courting royalty or sleeping with a footballer.
But with the couch there are just so many more variables. high arms, short back, cushioning, vallance - all are important things to the couch connoisseur. The couch is the first thing you appraise when walking into someone's living room, and you don't feel comfortable in a house until you've sat down on it.
My couch is great. It's a huge dark blue thing that looks about as lazy as I usually feel. It seats three comfortably, and so is perfect for swinging your legs up onto it completely, or alternatively houses other people or a fanned-out array of channel zappers and DVD remotes with the greatest of ease. It is perfect for either snuggling or more formal occasions. Although my house has very few formal occasions, I will opt for as many opportunities for snuggling as I can get.
How many coins and candy wrappers have worked their way down into the little nooks between the cushions? How many small items have been lost under it?
If anyone takes the time to leave comments on this article, I'd love to hear about your couches. Take a breath when you are about to sit down, savour the moment, and take a seat. Describe how it feels. Could it be better - a little softer maybe - or is it a wondrous feeling to take the weight off your feet for the first time in a day? Do you feel guilty about spending so much time on it? What do you do on it; watch TV, play videogames, kiss?

Tell me about your couch! This is important Join The Road research.

Lost

2006-09-23T19:56:00.000+01:00

Sometimes I'll be in a place or situation and my mind will dwell on the notion that I really should be savouring the moment, remembering the details and so enable me to write about it later. A 'blog moment', perhaps. I imagine other blogging types get that feeling too. As I've said before, I don't want Join The Road to become a diary, but as a bunch of descriptions of happenings in (my) life, what is it but a diary?
Back at the beginning of this week, by a strange set of circumstances going on around me, I found myself out on the south downs walking my friend's dog. He having taken his son to school, and his wife having gone to work, could I take the dog for a walk? I readily agreed and then quickly proceeded to get completely lost. Of course the dog, a pure-bred border collie, wouldn't have cared if we were stranded all day. For him it simply meant a longer trek, complete with more sticks to be thrown and more opportunites to get nice and muddy. It was a Sunday morning, blazing sunshine. Keeping to proper footpaths we walked through open fields full of sheep - and watching the way they parted as we passed through, bleeting as they ran - made me feel like I had somehow travelled back in time. It felt like such an iconic image, the sort that you see on TV whenever they need to stamp 'countryside' in your mind, and there I was right in the middle of it, with a proper sheepdog no less!
Adding to the time travel idea was the noise in the sky, specifically the fiery roar of the Rolls-Royce Merlin engine as Spitfire fighters flew overhead. Somewhere nearby was a Battle of Britain re-enactment, and a few pilots were out on an early morning sortie to thrill me and probably half of Sussex too, wheeling in the sky and making that unmistakable silhouette in the blue morning sky. It was utterly thrilling. It was sobering too, thinking how my walk in this wonderfully contoured countryside was arguably only possible because of the guys who'd flown those machines so bravely so many years ago.
Can you see how this walk was becoming one of 'those' moments? Just lots of little wonderful events conspiring into one great morning, something so inocuous suddenly becoming so essential. I wasn't really lost at all.

Driving through the clouds

2006-09-08T20:03:00.000+01:00

I visited Scotland last week. My first time this far north in Britain, witnessing such delightful scenery from the elevated position afforded by the lofty passenger seat of a Citroen van. Perhaps I had a little travel itch to scratch after that 'Thank You' post recently, but whatever the reason, I readily accepted a friends' request to accompany him on a weekend trip to Kirkcaldy, just across the firth of Forth from Edinburgh.
It was only going to be a short trip with an overnight stay, so why bother with the expense of accomodation when you have your own metal floor to sleep on? If you're going to sleep in a van then you might as well cook in it too, and that philosophy goes some way to explain the above photograph - for there we were setting up a couple of camping chairs and making a lovely brew of tea in a rather windswept lay-by somewhere in the wilds of Northumbria. Without me in that photograph it is perhaps difficult to picture the sight which greeted other motorists as they came along the road, that of two grown men sitting in the late-afternoon mist drinking tea. I honestly don't think I've ever felt so English.
It's not easy to think of Scotland as a foreign country, but upon entering a pub the differences become very clear. I've never made the acquaintance of so many random people as I did that evening, whether being cajoled into karaoke singalongs from the comfort of the bar, or being quizzed in a most friendly fashion by people with the most unfathomable accents. Any preconceptions I had were swiftly confounded by the sight of girls swirling around in 1950s-style pleated skirts (and how pretty they are!), a good few pints, and the mightiest curry Kirkcaldy had to offer.
The journey back was in contrast to the previous day's travel. An ominous sky began to throw rain at us as we opted for the motorway rather than the bendy B-roads in an effort to save time. This time the journey was beautiful in a different way. Here we were dwarfed by mountains on either side of us as we followed the motorway snaking its way towards home. A combination of atmospheric conditions and our elevation meant that at certain times during this part of the journey we actually drifted in and out of the clouds. One moment they were hanging just above the roof of the van, the next moment we were plunged into the swirling mist to suddenly descend out of it again seconds later. It was such a strange detached feeling. The motorway was busy with other traffic but we might as well have been completely alone, allowed to drift skyward for a few precious moments as the road fell away beneath us.

Negative One To Ten

2006-08-22T18:26:00.000+01:00

This isn't a news type of blog, but this news has been bugging me for ages now. My favourite band of recent times, Tsunami Bomb, split up a few months ago. A punk band in the best sense of the word, they stood up fiercely for their independence and freedom of voice. In the end it seemed that business pressures overtook the band as they gained more success, and rather than tow the corporate line like so many others, they split.
With just two albums they imprinted themselves on my mind, a sublime mix of incendiary guitars and intricate yet unfussy arrangements provided the perfect backdrop for singer Agent M's forceful cajoling vocals. Okay, let's stop there before I get washed away in a sea of hyperbole. Let's just say that they were fantastic, and I miss them to bits.
Here's one of their lyrics - 'Negative One To Ten':

So these girls live on my street,
or I guess I live on theirs.
They thought I was showing them,
but really they made me aware
just how momentous music is,
and why we should care.
Songs stay with your your whole life,
remind you of time spent and time gone.
Carry you through dismal days,
and help you to carry on.
I owe so many positive times to my favorite songs.
It can be more than just sounds and words -
it can be something that saves you
from yourself,
your thoughts,
your life,
your world.
It can be more than a favorite line -
it can be something that shapes you when you're young,
but give you freedom at the same time.

(Lyrics by Agent M : From the album 'The Definitive Act')

Thank You

2006-08-17T20:25:00.000+01:00

I might as well come right out and admit that this post is simply paying tribute to my friends around the world. This summer, more than any other in recent years, it seems as if everyone I know and care about is flying to and fro around the world. Whilst a dear friend of mine from Croatia is about to jump on a plane and make the trip of her life to LA, another from here in the UK is currently sitting in a swish hot tub overlooking San Francisco bay - probably on the lookout for a Nandos, knowing her as I do.
A friend from Australia has visited three times so far, once coming back from Scotland (bringing me an edible cow-poo), once coming back from Italy and who knows where from next time. Whilst here we toured around the country to various towns (and cities, sorry Chester), never stopping still for very long, except to indulge in choc milk and vodka in large measures.
Friends from Germany and Holland have also been and gone twice. I've endured the twin assaults of crazy fans of both Scarlett Johansson and Reese Witherspoon, with a little Evi for good measure!
I mustn't of course forget the great people here in the UK, and trips to Coventy, Chester and other places over the course of the summer have all resulted in great times, lots of ice cream, and sad goodbyes.
There are yet more friends I guess I'll have to wait for the next Dido tour to meet again. Football crazy Spanish girls to whom hugs are long overdue, or personal apologies I still have to make to my Swiss friend whom I missed in London a month or so ago. Then there are friends in Brasil and elsewhere in South America who send me such wonderful gifts in the mail.
So to all of you guys, only a few of whom read I know read this blog, I send out my love to all of you for enriching my life and for just... well, being awesome.

Countryside

2006-08-03T18:28:00.000+01:00

Today, I have a lovely picture for you. How could I be anything but inspired having sights like this just a few miles from my house? It's gazing at these rolling views, with the wind bluffing around my ears, that makes me think about things like doing this blog (there you go folks, blame nature, not me). After a time, I can go back there and wonder how many people actually read it.
Walks in the countryside are truly ace though. It must be a combination of the view and the amplified effects of the weather that forces you into feeling both alive and part of some huge organic happening. If this is the place you go to when you are lost, you always come away with hope. As I said, it's ace.
Every time I have friends come to stay there's an obligatory visit, and it always generates such wonderful winning conversations. I guarantee that whatever the topic is on the journey there, it will be an entirely different one on the way back. And by that I mean the whole tone of a conversation will have changed - more positive and more at home with the world.

Chocolate Milk

2006-07-25T17:56:00.000+01:00

Vaguely unsure of whether I'm asleep or awake I lie on my bed, on top of the covers. Every possible window is open to its fullest, yet makes little difference in these nights of such stillness. This is a stillness that allows me to hear the chiming of a tiny clock on the other side of town that I have never heard before, a stillness that carries the lulling rhythm of a railway track over two miles away to my bedside, and a stillness that allows me to measure the slightest, most delicate breeze across my back to the nearest millimetre.
There is only one thing that disturbs me from this posture, forcing my muscles to react against the continuation of this lovely dreamy summery night, and that is the thought of chocolate milk downstairs in the fridge. Suddenly I go from lazy reverie to a point where I'm forcing myself to stand upright and lurch half-asleep to the fridge humming away to itself in the kitchen.
I'm quite serious about this. Every so often throughout any given summer night, I make a trip to the fridge at least every half hour. And there really is nothing like it. Nothing.
After feeling my way downstairs, I open the door and bask in the lovely waft of cold whilst blinking in the light. My fridge is on slightly too high a setting, resulting in a chunk of ice on the back wall, and that is where my chocolate milk is hiding, hugging up against this mini-glacier.
The first big draught from the bottle is heaven, my knees sometimes buckling with pleasure as I feel the icy cold chocolate trickle down into my tummy. TIme stands still. Then I take another big drink. Time stands still again. I wait for the feeling to go away each time before taking another drink. Only after about three or four big glugs do I close the door and head back to bed, only to repeat the process in a half hour's time.
This is such a ridiculously simple pleasure, yet for me such an intense one. Only when I write something like this do I really reflect on how much of a pleasure it really is, yet in the accepted scheme of things it is hardly a footnote.
I'm not saying that we only remember only the 'big' things in life - that isn't true, but it does seem that often we devalue the tiny pleasures that seem to slip between the cracks.

Golf

2006-07-14T19:56:00.000+01:00

What could I possibly write about the sport of golf that hasn't already been said, certainly by better and more distinguished writers than I? I guess it doesn't matter what has gone or been written about before when you're standing there at the tee, nervous anticipation trying its very best to break through your hopefully calm exterior as you address the ball. Or in my case, wild terror, and a vain hope that I don't raise up the mother of all divots and damage my club.
Just very recently I had the round of golf that got me hooked on the sport. I've played before, mostly on holiday or other such excursions, but this was the one. The course itself was nothing special, or at least certainly not exceedingly glamourous, being a little nine hole pay-to-play course hidden away on the south coast, but something about the sport finally grabbed me. A pretty little course, I was taken in by the meeting of chilled relaxation and enormous concentration, such harmonious surroundings existing purely as a backdrop to my ultimate goal - a small cup about 180 yards away.
Even when you're strolling around the course away from the pressure of the tee, the normal trappings of life recede into the distance. An aeroplane can occasionally be heard leaving its jet-trail scar across the sky, and the busy nearby A-road generates a vaguely noticeable hum on certain parts of the course, leaving you to ponder the minds of those people driving to and from one busy thing to another, whilst for you the world has stopped turning, at least for a couple of hours.
The dress-code and other rules of this club are modest, but they instil a wonderful behavioural backbone on the other golfers here. As long as you're here to play golf you're a friend of all others present, and there exists an instant friendly camaraderie - an amazing atmosphere that simply makes me lament the passing of so many social rules in normal life. Without being weak, I sometimes feel lost with so much freedom in normal life - I'm sure others do to, and maybe that is part of the attraction of any sport, with its rules in requirement of a fair playing field. Golf just amplifies this by its heritage, its clubhouse expectations and its very nature.
One day I might even be good at it.

Bricks

2006-06-21T18:09:00.000+01:00

I've been holding off from doing this post so long it hurts. Each day I walk past a demolition site where an old factory is being torn down. It seems such a clichéd and obvious thing to write about that I just didn't bother. I mean, I'm sure anyone reading Join The Road can't wait to hear how such desctruction is symbolic of this or a metaphor for that.
But as I said, I walk past the damn place every day, and now each time I go by all I can think of is how I'm NOT going to write anything about it. Which means I have to, if only for sanity's sake.
Anyway, what is such a big deal about a demolition site anyway? It's more or less a fairly mundane thing really, surely such sites come and go all the time. Is it the child in me lusting after the noisy machinery or just the idea of such fantastic (and legal) destruction?

The signs had been up for ages before the the bulldozers turned up. Huge plastic boards warning passers-by of the impending doom of this particular factory, of how yet another little slice of my town's industrial past was being erased. I'm hardly trying to defend this eyesore though, with it's smashed windows from too much air-gun practice and it's peeling walls daubed with such nuggets of dubious wisdom as "Hitler was right".
After years of dereliction, it was all over in less than a week. It happened so fast it just didn't seem right, only surreal. A swarm of white vans, tabloids slung on their dusty dashboards, surrounded the place whilst the dozers started their work. Rather than one of those wrecking balls that you generally see on TV, these guys had this machine with a huge lobster-like pincer that methodically nibbled at the building and slowly tore it to pieces. There were no Hollywood sound effects either, with only the occasional muted falling of bricks to be heard over the lull of daytime radio. No rending of twisted metal or massive collapsing walls here, this was the health and safety conscious version.

A few days later and a calm carpet of dusty bricks now covers the floor of the entire site. It's strange how it all seems so smooth, even from just across the street, when to actually walk on it would be very difficult. The reinforcing rods from the various concrete parts of the building has all been gathered up into a single giant hairball and placed atop the bricks like an odd piece of abstract artwork.

Seeing all this happen is to witness the evolution of the town. Such demolition is a part of that strange half-remembered intermediary stage between what was there before and what is there now. I know that sounds so ridiculously obvious, but it is something that we always forget about, the inbetween. We seem so obsessed with the end result that we don't take time to appreciate the getting there.

Stephenville TX

2006-06-20T23:44:00.000+01:00

It would be negative of me to say that this post was borne from laziness, so let's just call today's update a 'guest post'.
Hidden away on the new Jewel album, "Goodbye Alice in Wonderland" is this little honey 'Stephenville TX', which is certainly in the spirit of Join The Road, just written by someone a few years younger and much better looking. It seems that we're all on this journey together.

------------------------------------

Housewives trying to recapture their youth
By wearing floral print and suede
Fixing their hairdos with PC, chemical-free hairspray
Martha Stewart taught them to make on TV
I was raised a farmgirl
I'm too far from home, all alone on the road
Trying to figure out who I am now the the stardust has turned to sand
And the sand has turned to stone on the starmaking machine

I'm 31 years old
That ain't the end but it sure ain't where I began

And my daddy, he wrote songs and he broke colts
And he went back to school to get a degree
Now he teachs music to kids, he taught music to me
And this Alaskan girl was living in Stephenville, Texas
Yes, you guessed it, I moved here because I fell in love with a man
And I moved his ex-old lady's things out of the closet
The same closet I had to move my things back in
It didn't make me feel that great, as if to demonstrate
Everything's temporary given enough time
But hey, I've got nothing to lose
I'm a singer for crowds, I'm a writer of songs
Hey Mom, look, I'm an entertainer
I'm a modern day troubadour trying to find justice with six strings
Trying to make the world make sense out of me
Trying to be loved completely, trying to love honestly
Trying to find a decent high noon cup of tea
In another shitty hotel
I'm trying to listen to the leaves speak
Trying to steal secrets from fishes in the creek
Trying to figure out who I am
A singer, a pretty bad cook, maybe a good mom
What will it be?

And I'm 31 years old
That ain't the end but it sure ain't where I began

I'm trying to figure out who I am
But there's no hand to hold, no Doctor Martin Luther King
There's just syncophants
And the mindlessness on TV or in the magazines
On the latest ways to behave
So why not follow me, the blond bombshell deity?
I'll sell you neat ideas without big words
And a little bit of cleavage to help wash it all down
Hey, everybody thought Godard was a clown
And that ain't gonna be me

View from a window

2006-06-13T21:10:00.000+01:00

What is it so relaxing to just sit and watch the traffic go by?
Depending upon how you look at it, I'm either lucky or unlucky enough to live on a busy main road. Although my town isn't the biggest around, I live right on the main artery through the centre. It's just gone 9pm, the light is slowly fading from the sky but the occasional lit cars still seem too bright as their headlights swish by beneath me, leaving trails on my retinas like a long-exposure photograph.
My apartment is two floors above a shop, my third floor eyrie being just great for such casual voyeurism. No-one ever spots me so high, above even the upper deck of the frequent double-decker buses that squeal to a halt at the bus stop opposite every 10 minutes or so, loaded with lounging teenagers busily hiding illicit cigarettes from the driver.
I silently scold the erratic one-handed driving of those with cellphones clamped to their ears. I imagine I'm down there amongst the high-pitched revving of a vintage scooter club out for a midweek evening blast. I wince at the oversized exhaust fitted to an improbably tiny hatchback and think how proud the owner probably is of the fact that the noise can drown out his stereo. Sometimes fate and the road conspire to throw up a fun surprise; tonight an ancient pick-up truck trundles by, its flatbed rear filled containing a fairground dodgem with a mannequin clinging to the wheel, its bright ginger hair wafting crazily in the breeze, framing a rictus grin.
It's great to see such things hurtling past my window. I never wonder, as some might, what their destination may be. It doesn't matter. The few hundred metres I can see in each direction is all that matters, and what I ultimately see is not individuals with lives and cares of their own, but rather a wonderful collage of metallic paintwork and tiny habits. Like a daydream, they are gone almost as soon as they appear; fading from memory before a tangible opinion can be formed, to be replaced by another.

Amelia

2006-06-05T21:53:00.000+01:00

Can you imagine what it would be like to be three years old again? Not a single shred of cynicism to cloud your mind or furrow your brow. Every thing you do is a new experience and it's always, always exciting. Unless it's scary, and then you just refuse to do it, like not eating the funny bits of dinner that you don't like the look of.

Each Sunday I visit friends for lunch and just live for the pleasure of playing with their daughter all day. Usually I'll be subjected to an endless procession of books to read and games to play. Sometimes we'll do both at once. Often we'll play house and I'll endure pretend cups of tea and ice cream cooked in her miniature microwave oven (you try telling her that's not how it works). Sometimes we invent games and also make things too, which means fun with glue and glitter and generally being really messy.

This Sunday we took a trip to the park. Her mum told me that she had been looking forward to this all weekend. I was wearing a t-shirt that read "birth-work-death" in a logo that parodies the recycling symbol, and there I was having my cynicism washed away by a three year old endlessly climbing up the steps of the slide and shouting wheeee in a fit of giggles as she came hurtling down it.
I remember buying that t-shirt. I remember chuckling when I bought it. I just never envisaged myself wearing it a couple of years later whilst making daisy-chains in the sunshine.
I think she must have climbed that slide at least 30 times, and in fact one of the few Sundays where she actually got properly tired. She has enough much energy to put all of us to shame. Her chatter is essentially one question after another, a constant thirst for knowledge for which she doesn't yet have a purpose - she just needs to know. When she looks at me, it is always directly into my eyes. There is no evasion of eye-contact with her, nor any other evidence of the barriers we adults place upon ourselves to protect against our own insecurities. That will come later, and it makes me so sad.

But, each week I learn so much from her. She is the brake on my skewed view of life. It sometimes seems so very strange to me that this won't last forever, as each week she grows up a little more, but right now she is my balance in this crazy world.

Making sense of things

2006-06-02T21:37:00.000+01:00

I still don't have a clear purpose yet. I'm guessing that no-one has read this yet anyway so I'm free to ramble. I don't even know if I can find clarity without writing things down- well that's my excuse anyway.

At this moment, blogging seems like a better idea in the head than on the blank glare of the screen - or maybe its just set myself too abstract a goal? Should I just start again and do one on football or something. Much easier.
It's probably something to do with my hoovering up episodes of 'Lost' at the moment, but I have this vague idea to present readers with seemingly random shots of life and it will all piece together like some gigantic puzzle. Or at least I think that's how readers will perceive it if there's no clear goal from the outset. Of course, life is like that; the puzzle may not fit together at all, or even if it does it might not be worth it. Or it might just look like a pretentious bunch of arse.

And that's part of the point. Is a life worth reading about? If I pretty much tell you right here and now that there is no way this blog, if indeed it ever reaches a conclusion, will ever satisfy like a good TV show or movie can, will anyone still be reading?
I'll admit right now that music, movies, videogames and other aspects of pop-culture will colour my writing. In fact, it was my delving into various videogame-related blogs, and my reaction to what I found there, which initially inspired me to do this.

Actually, that's probably quite a good place to start.

From Little Acorns...

2006-06-01T20:09:00.000+01:00

A clichéd title line for my first post maybe, but it's a line from The Long Good Friday so I'll forgive myself. I'm writing this and I'm feeling worried that I haven't really thought this through. I mean, what have I created this for? Will anyone read it? Do I care if anyone reads it? Maybe this is all an experiment - testing my ego. Are my writing skills good enough to engage a reader, any reader? Will this be a meandering diary like that of a teenage girl? Christ, I hope not - but should I have a specific purpose? Will my posts just reflect my day-to-day interests or have a higher purpose? The title I chose has a purpose, but it's as deliberately ambiguous as the meaning in Dido's song "Stoned" from which it came.
Join the road, and let's see where we go...