Green space

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.