Today I did get a bit of the NaNovel done, then in the evening over to the Hammersmith Apollo for Deep Purple, who seem to be self-parodying some of the time. Ending on an understandably audience-participation 'Smoke on the Water'. And there isn't even any decent beer in the venue.

Tags: music, writing
Current Mood: thoughtful
Current Music: none

So I'm back at work after two weeks in Greece. The first week it rained and people were forced to evacuate their huts and take shelter in the big house. Week 2 was much better but the group didn't seem to 'gel' the way last year's did. Highlights: learning to sing and being on stage with a choir; sitting on the rocks by the sea in the early morning and writing automatic writing; paddling on a surfboard; snorkelling and being attacked by a pelican. Lowlights, anything involving the bar and beer that wasn't even nice.

I've signed up to do a residential weekend singing and guitar course in Norfolk in November.

Last week I was dreading going back to work but it's been ok so far.

Last night I broke the two-month fast of performed music - apart from buskers, and songs at Skyros over the fortnight, I'd heard no live music since Nine Black Alps in July until I went to Camden in the company of Laura, Jon, Liz and Greg, and heard Circulus. Not the first time I'd heard them but this was better from what I remember. Back by night buses and arrived home at 2.30.

Listening to Muse's new album as suggested by Jon - yes, bits do sound like Queen!

Tags: holidays, home, music
Current Location: United Kingdom, Kingston Upon Thames
Current Music: Muse, "United States of Eurasia"

But I thought it was appropriate that Ama$on.co.uk's reply to my email inquiring about the whereabouts of a missing David Gilmour DVD should contain the line,
"we will need a little more information first."
Just the basic facts? Can I tell them where it hurts?

It seems I missed the Mars Volta at the ICA, but they are playing Somerset House on Monday 13 July. Tickets £25 and I have no money. But still.

Tags: music, pink floyd
Current Music: Show of Hands: Ink Devil

A variation on the 'Canadian musicians' game is 'Welsh bands'. Catatonia, Stereophonics, Manic Street Preachers, Magenta, GLC, Feeder, Super Furry Animals ... this was kicked off by going to see Magenta on Saturday night and a rendition (not by me!) of the Stereophonics' 'Dakota' on Friday night.

But today started off very badly. During the journey into work:
- someone kicked my takeaway coffee over me
- I tried to get off the train and a very large man tried to shove his way in before I could get off
- I nearly tripped someone up at the station on the way out

when I finally got to work I had to find someone (anyone) I knew and tell that unfortunate person that I had had it and was going to have a cup of tea for an hour.
Curiously my manager was also feeling crook and went home. Maybe it's the day.

Before all this started I was drawing up an ad for renting of the front bedroom, which could bring in some much-needed money. I've renewed my season ticket but only for a month - the annual season ticket was £1300 and I don't know where I'd find that just now. Besides, may be going to Brum for a while even though I didn't even get an interview for the latest job I applied for (and neither did the current incumbent. Makes me wonder what they're looking for).

Not that I don't like this place (I do) but I was wondering why, as I used to commute by bike every day, I moved somewhere too far to do that easily from. I was back in West Ken on Friday and remarked, "I don't know why I moved. Not that I have a great attachment to W14 - though in a way I do - but why move anyway?" "True," she said; "if you're used to Central London you don't want to move out." I do say that I only regret having moved when I have to get home from the centre of town, but that's regularly twice a week and often more. Friday night was so pretty damn good that it carried over all the way through Saturday, and I got some work done on the Work In Progress. Not like last weekend at all. And today of course it has been warm and sunny and I walked up Vauxhall Bridge Road at lunchtime.

It's just a shame about this morning.

Tags: cycling, home, music
Current Location: Living room
Current Music: Stereophonics: Dakota (Decade In the Sun Version)

I've just been to the Peel to hear the progressive group Magenta. You can tell they're prog because they do very long songs and there is clever musicianship going on there (and all stopping on the same note a la King Crimson at least once). Backdrops of war when they're not of the lead singer in religious pose (can I see her on a cross with a pointy green face? Almost) recall Pink Floyd but there isn't that much similarity though I think the lead guitarist can sound like Gilmour at times. My friend backed out so I was propping up the bar and listening to the band all on my own. They are good though. I'm very glad I went. The House of Progression (the ongoing set of prog gigs) will get my custom again even if tickets were £12 a time.
Back up the Cambridge Road which is therefore the local equivalent of Fulham Palace Road - it has the cheap kebab shops and the prog rock venue (though that in FPR's case was the Greyhound, a long time ago, when Paul Brett of the progressive group Sage led a petition to keep the place open).

Now I'm in the front bedroom and there is a lot of noise from the former Six Bells. It's 11:59 (and I want to stay alive).

Tags: music
Current Location: Kingston Town
Current Mood: tired

Wretched Victoria Line, terminating at Green Park when I needed to get to Vauxhall ... luckily Plan B was go to Colliers Wood and get the 57. As it turns out not only that but also the 131 goes from there to Kingston, which gives me a whole different route for getting into/back from London.
Apart from that, the Bull and Gate (or as it styles itself bull and gate - lower case obligatory like bath ales, whose orthography suggests that they really are ales to be drunk in the bath (the city is Bath)). Autorotation and two other bands, in the company of Liz, Ittai and Dave. Not too much beer was had (two capital pints of Bass followed by a lemonade and lime.). Music good. Now today I may get on the bike and go to Isleworth.

Tags: music, trains
Current Location: Home
Current Music: "Running in the City" - Space

Last night, heard Narration and Our Lost Infantry in a church basement in Richmond. It was Narration I'd gone to see - have never actually heard them live despite meeting them in the Marlborough in mid-2007. Got talking to a young woman who seems to be following Narration's gigs - she'd got to the Half Moon Putney one last night just too late. Her relation to Narration :: mine to the Silver Wizard Project? In which case her Pink Floyd is Oasis, she is much into them as well. Both bands good, OLI perhaps more unusual (was that a guitar or a ukulele? I though the keyboard player was going to sprout a theremin, and yes they do have a violinist (female)).

The basement itself - called the Basement Door - is a curious place more like a large front room, though I was told small venues like that are quite common in the US. Not so here, where it tends to be pubs, and here there was no alcohol on sale at all though you could get tea and coffee (not sure if this limited the audience; it was fairly well attended though not packed). I do not mind the lack of booze in the slightest, even at the Grey Horse I'm quite likely to sip a soft drink instead of beer, after all I've paid £5 or so to get in. No repeat of Pickwick's in Chiswick where I was once told off by the owner for not drinking enough. But if that is their issue why not ask people if they want a refill? Rather than letting it happen and then complaining about afterwards. Anyway I might see my Narration fan pal again if I turn up to the next one.

If I'd known about the Putney gig I might have been there instead, instead of wandering around Chiswick having convinced myself that I do not want to move back to W.14, thank you.
The path by the summerhouse is done apart from the slabs needing to be levelled a bit.

Next week I should hear about the OFWAT job, though I think the common problem with all these webmaster jobs I'm going for is that I've just done Intranet for years, no external-facing website.

Shortly I shall get on the Brompton and whiz off to Homebase.

Tags: job, music
Current Location: front room

Well, the path material was delivered, but there is not enough of it! My original order was for twenty bags which would have been the right amount but I cut it back. I have had to reorder, which means paying another delivery charge.
Yesterday afternoon, over to Ealing, food and drink and good conversation; then a crosstown thrash to Old Street where I find my way down to the basement of the El Paso restaurant at about ten p.m. to find a band playing and several people I havent' seen for a while (=the entire lineup of the Silver Wizard Project and
euphoric_stimuli). What a relief? Unfortunately this living-way-out-of-town means I have to leave by midnight, get the 0046 train from Vauxhall and be home at half past one (that late train is slower than the daytime ones). As I am approaching home I see the N87 bus and reckon that if I'd gone for it instead of the train that is the very bus I would have taken. So maybe no real difference in time (except that I waited fifteen minutes for the train, which I would have spent on the bus).

Today, have been on the Dawes bike to Hampton Court, along the river, into the sun, too many walkers and cyclists, all enjoying the spring day ... there is a hotel by the river, close to the bridge and I dodge into there and have coffee and a pleasantly small slice of cake by the river. Everyone is very nice. Except on the way home where I am called all sorts of things for not stopping and getting off my bike to retrieve someone's football. Perhaps I was in the wrong, but would you expect a car driver to do same? I also swing by the Honest Cabbage and see Alan who is often in there but is just then outside having a cigarette. He remarks on the henna tattoo. I consider that I haven't been in a pub all weekend - in fact the last time I went into a pub was the previous Saturday, up in Holloway Road. I cannot watch television either!!

This week I have a job interview to prepare for, and have to be up at six tomorrow - an early start as we're shifting display equipment across town for an event that starts at nine.

Tags: cycling, music
Current Location: home
Current Mood: crepuscular
Current Music: Weather Report: Fast City