You are allowed to enjoy this…

For the first time in a fortnight, I had a lovely undisturbed sleep last night. Knowing that the new fitted carpet would keep away any nasty fumes from the neighbours, my subconsciousness allowed me to comfortably slumber in the coils of sleep. I had a dream and I don’t remember much of it, but I was fourteen or fifteen again and I was out with my grandparents at the social club they used to attend. I kept fiddling with my watch and got into an argument with my grandfather about it. He forbid from ever wearing a watch again. It was a strange uncomfortable and aggressive dream and my grandfather was never like that. I only saw him lose his temper twice when he was alive.
When I awoke my right shoulder and centre of my back was totally rigid, obviously from pushing the double matress up the stairs yesterday afternoon. I’m not as strong as I used to be. Ouch! I was planning on doing more decorating today but after painting the ceiling tiles, I had to retire because my shoulder was just too painful. I have a high pain threshold but the twinges were off-putting and I was scared of falling from the ladder. Total concentration is key to ladder work and I didn’t want to fall off and get my head stuck down the toilet bowl or anything.
In the post: the new album from Steve Hackett “Wild Orchids”. Listened to it a couple of times. While some of the songs are fine, it hasn’t gripped me like the previous album. I might write a proper review if I can be bothered.
Daniel Double-Barrelled Name, lottery millionaire, political conspiracy theorist and thespian bar-none commented:

I’ve been reading your personal blog entries concerning your father and have been absolutely gripped by them and not felt liek commenting because what can I add?
But I’d just thought I’d leave you a note.
Peace.

Yes, it has been strangely cathartic to put it all on the page. I don’t know about it all. They leave me blinking well baffled. You give someone your number and say: call me. It’s as simple a process as that, so when someone is reluctant to lift the phone and dial the number, you begin to question things. With regards to my father, his reluctance to contact me could be a multitude of things. It could be that he doesn’t actually like me, feels awkward, he could be away on business or having a technical problem, or maybe he’s lost all his dialling fingers in a freak gardening accident? Who knows? Not me. If you ever want to meet for a pint sometime, drop me a line, HG, and I’ll tell you more stories. 😉

In his diary, Robert Fripp wrote:

Benevolence is constantly available.
But, we are not constantly available to Benevolence.
To be available to Benevolence, we have to do a little to move towards it.
But, rather than do the little we have to do, we do lot that we don’t have to do.
Rather than do the little that is possible for us, we seek Big Things beyond our reach.
This is the tragedy of the human condition.

This seems quite apt with what’s happening at the moment.
On seperate matters, today the new carpet was laid in the bedroom and it looks very snazzy. I am very impressed with the job. The main part of my morning was moving all the stuff out of the bedroom so that the carpet fitter had full access to the room. Moving the mattress down the stairs illicited a few swear words – after the job was done, moving the mattress back upstairs eliciting a fast-flowing cascade of verbal abuse. Luckily, I had warned my mother in advance who offered her help in moving the heavy item up the stairs. Of course, I didn’t ask her to lift it – her job was to loosen the mattress whenever it got stuck on a stair, with me at the bottom, huffing and puffing, weight fully behind it, like a modern-day and out-of-condition Samson moving the pillars (or as this is bed-related, maybe it should be pillows?).
Anyway, job done and the Missus will be mightily impressed. I feel shagged out, but did spend yesterday stripping the wallpaper in the toilet and painting all the woodwork, pipework and cistern. Everything is lookng zingey already and it will better when I wallpaper it tomorrow. I even have some spare carpet from the bedroom to use in the bog – schweet!

Yesterday was our 18th anniversary of meeting up, so me and The Missus tootled off to Brighton for the day. We had never been to this particular seaside resort before, so it was a bit of an adventure. A number of The Missus’s chums live there and are always raving about the area and now we know why. We were impressed by the open spaces, the abundance of trees and the general cosmopolitan air. Even we thought it would be nice to live there. So my search for a commercial concern shifts geographically…

Not as big as Southend Pier or as nice as Santa Monica pier…
This evening, we spent what seemed like an eternity searching online for some bedroom furniture to repace the G-Plan wardrobes we dumped at the weekend. The only problem with this is that you can’t get a good sense of what the actual furniture is like. The only way to do this is to trudge around the stores and to bang the wood with your fists. So we gave up and proposed to visit some more furniture outlets at the weekend. In the meantime, I am living out of a suitcase. This isn’t a problem as I don’t have that many clothes. I am of the “wear ’em and throw ’em away” mentality – so I keep the contents of my wardrobe fairly svelte.
Yeah, basically I dress like a tramp. It’s OK. I can take it.

I said cult, OK? Anyway, “Sow’s Ears” has been literally flying off the shelves in the past seven days and I am almost out of stock. Combine this with the fact that I sold out of “Without Words” last month and we are looking at a major CD-burning crisis. This means I’ll have to get some more discs made up and I have neither the time nor the inclination to do this.
The worrying thing is that when I finally get around to releasing my next box-set, I was planning on doing a mailshot to everyone who has even purchased a tangible version of my albums. Now I am beginning to think that if I do that, I might actually be creating a demand I can’t keep up with. Oh well, I’ll figure something out.
Felt really weak late yesterday like I was sickening for something. Today though, I am feeling a lot better – mind you, we had a night without toxic fumes – methinks the Housing Officer might be paying a visit today and that Brian the Liar and Idiot Bastard Son are trying to clean up their act before she arrives. We wait with baited breath…
While going through some old files on my PC the other day, I discovered a mix of a song called “Compression Sickness”. This was recorded back in 2002 with recording chum Andrew Osborne. Throughout that year, we worked on an off on some tunes and managed to produce enough music for a CD, which was released briefly through the now-defunct MP3.com website. It wasn’t easy recording with someone else, but it did drag me in directions I didn’t always want to go, which is a good thing creatively. The problem working with the LOAD setup (the band name was made from our initials) was that I had to work hard on the production side and basically make Andrew’s performances fit. This was the challenge. This track is one of my favourites and I play most things on it, except the acoustic guitar and lead distorted guitar, which are Andrew’s and he came up with the melody after jamming to the bassline that I’d put down as a guide track for him. This time around I remastered the track using some clever remasterign software, so it has some extra “zing”. It’s a shame things didn’t quite work out for LOAD as the second CD would have sounded a lot better. Anyway, here’s the track. Enjoy!

Of course, MySpace allows stereo videos to be uploaded and so this is what that tune sounds like using the power of both your ears. Enjoy!

This is a short improv I recorded “on the fly”. Not sure exactly what I was trying to achieve but I am pleased it didn’t turn out too much of a mess…

So what to report? Well if I told you what was really going on, I’d have to kill you. Or at least make sure that you didn’t squeal on me…
Of course, I am just being deliberately oblique in a sad attempt to make my life sound much more interesting than it actually is. Recent events began last week when the Missus dared me. You should never dare me to do anything because I might just call your bluff. And so as a result of this dare, we drove down to Plymouth and checked out a place. I am torn. Parts of it I like, parts of it make me recoil in horror, while the businessman in me sees the potential. I see it as a way of turning the two properties I own into a comfortable business. The future is very different to how I planned it, but if we decide to take this path it could be a very comfortable, if quiet, life. Oh what to do?
Plus the fact that the fumes from next door continue and despite the warning from the council no car parts have left the house this week. They have another seven days to sort their shit out, apparently. Again, if nothing comes of it and we are stuck with those ingrates using industrial solvents during the wee hours and the fumes seeping through our floorboards, then there’s few options left. Run away while I can still breathe…? Yup. What a cowardly fuck, I am.
So on the way to Plymouth I needed a pee and we were between services. So the Missus duly turned off into a field and let me get some air to my nether regions. This was about 9am in the morning and I am in the middle of nowhere (about 30 minutes from Exeter, maybe) and I am just in mid-stream, when a car appears from nowhere. Now it is almost impossible to stop when you are going with the flow, but with a gargantuan effort I stopped and adjusted myself and pretended I was just taking the air, just in time for the car to pass and some middle-aged woman to stare at me. After the car disappeared, I returned to the job at hand, but it is difficult to pee when you stopped yourself with such force. But I knew it was now or never, so I focused my mind and managed to empty my aching bladder. This type of thing has happened before when I needed a pee. You can bet that in a deserted side street or country lane, I’ll think the coast is clear and some old bloke will appear from nowhere, scuppering my plan for a crafty whizzle. C’est la pee, as they say in France.
Over the weekend, we bought the supplies for decorating the bedroom. The plan is that if we decide to sell up the house will look nice and my decorating efforts will add some value to the properties. If we stay, we’ll have a nicer looking house – so it is a win-win situation all-round. So I have been painting wainscotting (I love that word) and slapping my roller on the ceiling. Tomorrow, after finishing some writing work, I am hoping to wallpaper the bedroom. This fills me with excitement and trepidation. I am not too bad at decorating, but I pretend to be useless so that The Missus will leave me alone.
On the way down to the Westcountry, I spied Stonehenge. It looks much smaller in real life…

“Stonehenge, where the demons dwell
Where the banshees live and they do live well
Stonehenge
Where a man is a man and the children dance to
the pipes of pan”