Brrr…
You can feel the change in the air as we slip from Summer to Autumn. I went to take Alex the Wonderdog for a limp this morning and as I stepped out into the mid-morning air, I noticed that it was a lot “fresher” than yesterday. Normally, I do the trip in a T-shirt and jeans, but today I put my leather jacket on to keep out the chill. I’ve also noticed that I’m finding it harder to leave my bed in the mornings. In the summer, I can usually get up with no problems, but once it starts to get a little darker, I just pull the covers back over my head when the alarm signals.
Really enjoyed last night “49 Up” TV show – a documentary series that has followed a dozen people from all walks of life in England as they grow from 7 years to the present day. The documentary team films them every seven years and documents what has happened to these characters. When you see something like this, you realise that TV is worthwhile and there is a wealth of humanity to experience through these programmes. It’s frightening to see how time flies so quickly for these people (and I’ve been following this since the mid-80s) but it is also reassuring that we all go through the same transformative process. Faces change, opinions change, politics change, fashions change and all this is documented. One thing that made me laugh was the guy “Tony” who is an archetypal Eastender, who is quitting London because the East End has changed and he is tired of his culture being eroded away by foreign, immigrant cultures. So what’s he to do? He’s moving to spain to open up a British “Sports Bar”. Does anyone see the irony in this or is it just me? And what annoys me about this fuckwits is that the East End has always been home to the immigrant. When my grandmother lived there it was the influx of Poles and Jews that caused offence (she was a decendent from the French Hugenot immigrants herself) – so it makes me laugh so hard that I hurt whenever I hear these people bleating. I said to The Missus, in 25 years time, we’ll hear Bengalis complaining about the current immigrants diluting their culture that they’ve established in the East End.
Back to “Dead Rock Star” – sitting down to bang out chapter six. This is an important chapter for the protagonist and now I hope I can start to stretch out with it. The opening chapters have all been about the characters coming to terms with their change of circumstances and hopefully after chapter six I can begin to open up the story a bit. Coming up we’ve got some good shit – there’s goth rocker Daniel De’ath suffering from writer’s block, there’s the ghosts of Abbey Road and the race to put the first spirt on Mars. Oh yeah, crazy shit.
In the post: yesterday, I took delivery of a compressor unit for my rack FX. Been having trouble getting a nice loud, clean signal from my gear and I was hoping this will fix it. My bass sounds a lot fuller without the disortion I was getting, so maybe it is working out. It lights up like a Christmas tree when it is in full effect.
In the post: today, a cheque from the tower of evil. I think this will probably be my last paycheck for this particular publisher. It was good while it lasted and I tried my best to keep them happy, but when push comes to shove, some writers are more popular than others (and these ones seem to get ALL the work). Oh the bitter resentment, oh how wicked and twisted it makes me feel. This is why I am trying with my creative writings because I feel that I’ve totally failed with the freelance writer path. There needs to be a cull of writers or something. Give me the club and I’ll smash some brains like a randy Norwegian at the height of seal culling season. Grrrr…smash…destroy…kill…

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