You are allowed to enjoy this…

Woah! Apparently there’s some mystery surrounding the recent death of the wife of the Nigerian President. Mr Ralph Idoko wants to fill me in with the details if I contact him. Should I? Should?
Here’s the email:

Dear Sir/Madam
I am Mr.Ralph idoko The very close Aid to wife of nigerain president who died on sunday 23 october 2005 shotly After she undergoing surgery in spanish hospital
The storry behind the death of The Nigerian first lady Stella Olusegun Obasanjo is yet made known to the puplic because of the sin behind it. But right now, If you can assure me that no one will know about this sin behind it i am ready to tell you the full storry.Because right now am scared of whom am contacting.
If you are interested to hear me out.Please feel free to contact me on the above Email address as am still in Spain. I have less than 14 days to fly back to nigeria.
What I really need is your trust, honest ,and Confidential so that I will Tell you the full storry of her death and the opportunity her death has create to me as her very close Aids.
Please our correspondence should be on email only. for confidential reasons.Once i hear from you i will give you a telephone number to reach me here in spain.Please is very Urgent. Ralphidoko@excite.com
Thanks
Mr ralph idoko

Remember kids, never trust emails from friendly Nigerians, no matter how friendly they appear to be!

A while ago we decided to invest in a shredder. This was as a result of all those scare stories going around telling us how easy it is for identity theft to occur and so we could shred all our sensitive information into homemade confetti. Our first shredder stopped working after 10 minutes of use. I got the blame for the malfunction. I had been cramming too much paper into the shredder with gay abandon and boyish excitement. Not true, I protest, but the Missus is insistent that I knackered the shredder. So we returned the faulty item and got a replacement. Lo and behold this unit did the same thing and burnt-out in about 10 minutes. Proving my innocence, I did a little victory dance until the Missus had apologised for the slur on my character.
Anyway, the upshot of this was that I ordered a new shredder at the weekend. In fact, in the same order I’d ordered some padded envelopes to ship off all the DVDs I sold on eBay recently. Well today the delivery man arrived with the order and there were my envelopes, but duh…duh…duh…there was NO SHREDDER. The curse of the shredder has struck again. Three times we’ve been denied a shredder…three times the curse has struck. How can we break the spell? How can we end this nightmare. Hopefully the shredder will arrive tomorrow.
In the post: KTU – 8 Armed Monkey purchased from Riverman. Thanks, Geno!

Phil Spector in court on a murder charge.
In that position, I guess the last thing you worry about is your hair!

While reading the newspaper this morning, the Missus alerted me to the fact that the heron had landed in a tree in the neighbour’s back garden. While I say “the heron”, I am sure it could be a different heron, but the fact that the same species of bird keeps landing in our vacinity makes me believe that this is the very same animal and so therefore I will continue to call him “the heron” as if he is an old friend of sorts. Anyway, I didn’t have my camera to hand so I darted upstairs to fetch it and hurtled back down again. As I just lined up the camera to take the shot, the heron flew off. I am sure that he saw me and was having fun at my expense. The last time I managed to photograph him was on a neighbour’s roof. The really great thing about the hero is the size of these birds. Most wild birds in the gardens of Great Britain are titchy in comparison. Take the blue tit, which is as bit as my thumb or maybe a wood pigeon which is a little larger. When the heron lands, you notice it because of the size. It’s arrival in the garden is majestic and it’s size intimidating. I’ll get a picture of him, I swear by Ahab’s beard.
In the post: Fission Trip Vol 1 CD and Robert Fripp’s Love Cannot Bear album. One album is not bad, one album is an absolute stinkfest. Can you tell which is which?

Late yesterday afternoon, the Missus called me excitedly from making music. There was a balloon going overhead. Despite there being an airfield a couple of miles down the road, we’d never seen a balloon go over. Plenty of warplanes heading for London for displays, etc, but no balloons. So I grabbed my camera and rattled off some shots. Because the balloon was set against a bright background of the late evening sky, it came out a bit dark. But despite this, I still think the pictures are great!

The balloon in the distance

A close-up view with burners on

Did some recording this afternoon. Found an interesting patch on the keyboard that created a random block arpeggio and so used this as the basis of the track. Not sure if anyone has been paying attention, but I am recording a kind-of sequal to “Textures” in so much as the songs interlink and of a relatively short length. The idea when doing something like this is to get mood over content, I feel. So I am looking for moods rather than creating some wild musical statement. Last week’s “Frog & Toad” is intended as a possible finale for the album. This next section comes after a tray called “Lay Back (and Think of England)” and hovers around the 15 minute mark. As usual, this just a rough mix and it is surely to change. The idea is that two synth guitars are having a duet with each other. Despite owning a guitar synth in some shape or form since late 1994, I’ve never actually recorded a guitar synth lead line, usually reserving the device as an atmosphere device. The tracking is usually far too random for that. But with my Epiphone being particularly stable and my internal pickup that I installed being the best installation I’ve ever seen, it worked out OK. And so I present the track for your humble ears: