Tues midday. Oppressively grey and wet today. Not very cold. Funny kinda winter. Right at the end of Feb and nearly in March now. Still poddin' it pretty heavy and there aint no sign of a break on the horizon. Just too into it I guess. Now got an XTC playlist together, as threatened in my last post. Trax are -
Making Plans for Nigel
Wake Up
All You Pretty Girls
In Loving Memory of a Name
Wonderland
Towers of London
Sgt. Rock
Respectable Street
Rocket in a Bottle
Senses Working Overtime
Jason and the Argonauts
Down in the Cockpit
Runaways
Dear God
The Meeting Place
Scissor Man
Helicopter
Ten Feet Tall
Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
The Disappointed
Greenman
Mayor of Simpleton
King for a Day
Scarecrow People
Grass
Everyday Story of Small Town
The Loving
My Brown Guitar
Love on a Farmboy's Wages
Smartest Monkeys
That's Really Super, Supergirl
Books are Burning
Harvest Festival
Another Satellite
Altogether 36 trax in honour of what is without any shadow of a doubt the most neglected group in English rock history. Words can't begin to describe the pleasure the music of XTC has given me over the years. Hey, in the dim and distant past there was simply nothing like getting into a new XTC release for the first time. I say was because they really don't release any stuff anymore, or haven't for a good few years. Given up on us I guess and who can blame them? What a waste, especially when you consider so much shit has been allowed to survive on much higher degrees of collective consciousness. Maybe it was because they were from Swindon and shy enough to give up playing live after only a couple of years. Who knows? Who really knows why some don't make the cut as far as fame and fortune are concerned? There are rules that lie in the realms above us, let's leave it at that. Suffice to say however that the XTC playlist I have listed here and which is on my ipod, is cool, shit fuckin' hot, second ta none.
Grey day, weather oppressive. Not cold. Wrote those words more or less when I began this post. Wind blowin' as well. Do you ever get the feeling the weather is brewing up into an event that will be totally and completely utterly monumental? I do. I mean, really, how long can we go on livin' the lives that we do and not get the payback from Mother Nature? With our continuous, relentless use of motor transport in all it's shapes and forms, how can we possibly complain when the weather bites back because of the effect of the man made pollution on whole rollin' system? Yeah, the clock is ticking. Aint no doubt about that. But then again, some will always pull through whatever it might be that comes over the horizon. Nature innit? Natural.
So, anyway, walking back from the Chinese Restaurant tonight (the White Swan, where I went to get some take away ribs for me and Tamdin) I felt it, if only for just a couple of seconds. Felt the feeling that the weather sometime in the not too distant future is likely to get pretty damn wild an' choppy and there is not going to be much that we can do about it. Batten down the hatches, lay low. Let it all wash over us. Something like that. Pessimistic? Yeah, maybe. We shall see.
Could simply be that I'm an ignorant, that I just simply don't know what is what and that I react with fear when anything comes along that is potentially spooky. Yeah, could just easily be that. Other people with a little more knowledge might not be so freaked out. They might have access to rational explanations for these things. Information that I am not privy too. So I go on, stumbling around in the darkness of my own ignorance. Believing in the superstitions and fears created in my mind.
What am I? What the hell am I? Why should I not be punished by my own fears? Punish, is that right word? But whatever it is the question still remains, what have I ever done to think I could get off lightly? Really, really very little. Ain't dedicated my life to anything good in any way. Like sacrifice. Like only livin' for the welfare of others. Quite simply done nothing like that. So why should I have any possible complaint when things don't go the way I want them? No reason for bitterness there. Just don't understand why I should be upset. I get what I get and I get what I get because of what I have done. Simple as that.
Aint no people, aint no gods, aint no invisible systems conspiring against me. It is all down to me. With a little more vision from my side it would all become so damn obvious. Fact is I just can't see the connections and in my confusion, in my bewilderment at the turns life takes, I get angry and upset. All those little experiences throughout the course of the day, the week, the month of closing my heart to being open, to relaxing and just being a little bit nicer. It is all those things which earn payback in nasty and unexpected ways. But it is important to understand it is not because the world is mean or malevolent or anything like that. The nasties that come along are only my own self-created nasties and nuthin' more than that. There are plenty of people around who make the mistake of not seeing things that way and they are the ones who are prone to repeat like a squalid mantra, "I hate life, life is shit". Well, all that is the food of suckers because it simply aint true. The only thing that is true is that they just can't see the reasons why they are suffering and so they lash out at life and whoever might be in their way. All that is visited upon us is our own responsibility. The buck stops with us and difficult as it might be to see it, it is still the indisputable fact.
We need to loosen up. OK, OK, less of the genera,l less of the plural...what I mean is, I need to loosen up. Try not to be so controlling because being in control of the feeling of being in control is the biggest illusion going. At the end of the day we all have to walk through the Valley of the Dead, and when we're in the kinda landscape all control for the vast majority of us will go right out da window. Yeah, we all have to take a bow to Lords of Futurelife and fly out of our warm bodies like we're heading to the moon. Don't be so vulnerable. Tryin' to stay in control is an expression of intense vulnerability. Simple as that.
Underneath when things don't quite go as planned there is often a hot river of anger runnin' and then it can be devilishly difficult to do much about that. To stop it burnin' ya. So yeah, balance is the key. And that can only come from an open heart. Being willing to take the rough with the smooth because you know you have to have a bit of the rough comin' to you. It's all in the nature of the game. So try to stay sober. Not as drunk, sober, drunk. I mean the sobriety of a warrior, as Captain Carlos said all those years ago. Then you just rock along. Days are days and one day it will all be over. Last thing you wanna do is sway from the extremes of waking in the mornin' grinnin' like a Cheshire cat then going to bed at night same day cursing the whole dirty doggin' deal.
Stability an' a love of life. Think those things will take you a long way. It's like when I write about the weather on these blogs. Dirty weather, grey days and lots of rain. What there is underneath all this observation is a deep love for the world, or so I hope. A feelin' of wonder of just havin' the chance to wake up each day and experience it. A feelin' of not wanting to be anywhere else. You know that is the important thing. Waking up each day in grey old London, busy old London, dirty ole town, with it's constant stream of traffic and noise, but being happy with it. Lovin' it. Being delighted to just have been given the chance just to experience it for however many months, years, decades it is. Yeah. Sounds good ta me. In the end all will be dust anyway so don't go to extremes. High n' low, all that kinda rap.
No point in pushing too hard, wanting things to be different from the way they are, wanting things to be better. Oh yeah sure you don't have to be too fatalistic an' lie down in the middle of the road of life and let it all roll over you but at the same time it is good if we can learn just to take the rough with the smooth. To let go of the obsessive desire to want things to go our own way and no other. To accept no other possibilities. That will only lead to trouble because underneath it all the effort to control things, to twist things so that they fit your your narrow vision, there will be rollin' a hot river of anger and frustration that things just don't shake up the way you think they should. Let go. The world is immense, the world is awesome and rolls along according to rules that are difficult to understand but ultimately just and extremely fair.
Guru Padmasambhava Invocation Hill
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Friday, February 23, 2007
False Horizons
Been poddin' it quite a bit lately. Getting stuff onto the pod.
Problem with the Kraftwerk's Minimum-Maximum (which I downloaded the other night from itunes for a good at the time looking bargain price of £7.99) is the fact that the sequenced tracks have been chopped to pieces. This is because itunes sell the tracks individually for 79p a throw and therefore chop 'em up despite the fact that with a group like Kraftwerk a lot of their tracks are programmed to run seamlessly run into each other. Listening to the download on my pod, this has come as a very unpleasant surprise. It means that for a couple of seconds the music disappears only to come back again in what the pod thinks is the following track. Irritating beyond words and if I had known that was what it was going to be like then there is no way I would have downloaded it. That is why it is available at £7.99 I guess.
The only plus about the whole damn experience had been the fact that Minimum-Maximum is a great album and one that I would probably have never got round to ever buying on cd so in that way at least it has been good to listen to. Not that I want to now go out and buy the cd as that would mean I would be spending over £20 on it when the download is taken into consideration. There is little chance that an album like Minimum-Maximum will end up at a bargain price in the cd stores, those kind of ones never do.
No, I'll just have to learn to live with the chopped to pieces download version. It is annoying that on fuckin' itunes no mention of this is made to the would be customer before they press the magic button. In fact I feel like letting itunes know exactly how I feel about it which is saying something as when all is said and done I don't really think I am the kind of person who goes and complains about things like that. Usually I just kinda sit back an' shrug my shoulders; take it like a sucker in other words. On this occasion however I really feel strongly about it. Yeah, itunes should at least tell people that although they will be getting Minimum -Maximum as a download at a very good price they will not in fact be getting it in the way that it was intended. Takin' liberties, that's what it is. Butchery. If I knew before...then I would have never, never, never. If ya know what I mean.
But aint life great though when my only worries are the state of my downloads. Yeah well, I know things aint quite as simple as that but let's face it, life is good.
Started writing this blog edition on Fri I think. Sunday now. Sun pm. Showery kind of day. Nice when the sun is out but when not then full of dark cloud and frequent bursts of rain. Temps a little above average for this time of year which is now coming up to end of Feb. Winter just hasn't happened this year. No prolonged cold. Might as well get used to it, that is how it is going to be. Summer should be a hot one which is OK with me.
Dropped Tamdin off in Islington earlier on for her Tibetan Community dance practice. I then carried on into town and parked just off Holborn. There were a couple of cds I was after, just for completion's sake you understand. Skylarking by XTC and Speaking in Tongues by Talking Heads. Was tempted to download them but after my Minimum-Maximum experience I am rather put off for the moment. The Heads cd was £10.99 at the Virgin Meg which was 2 & 1/2 quid more than the download but you get the artwork of course and a DVD as well. A DVD which I will probably never play but the hell. Got a few other Heads albums as they all came out remastered a year or so ago. Seriously remastered. But I think I will stop with the ones I've got now as they are the best of the bunch in my 'umble opinion, and for the record they are -
More Songs About Buildings and Food
Fear of Music
Remain in Light
Speaking in Tongues
Roughly they cover the period '78 - '82 or '83 and for the Heads these were their golden years. Four great albums and of course I'm already making plans in my head for what their playlist is gonna shape up like, when I get round ta poddin' it with them, which of course I will. Aint no doubt about that.
Got XTC's Skylarking for pretty much the same reasons. Have a number of the XTC remasters and that was the main one I hadn't got round to getting but now I have and I have to say I did quite well as it was £6.99 at the Virgin Meg which was cheaper than the download and cheaper than Amazon. Chuffed about that. So my XTC collection runs like this with the releases listed in chronological order of course.
Drums and Wires
Black Sea
English Settlement
Mummer
The Big Express
Skylarking
Oranges and Lemons
Mummer
Apple Venus
Wasp Star
Still aint got the first albums White Music and Go2 and I guess we shall just have to see about whether I ever get round to buying them. The price is gonna have to be right. Just can't imagine I would listen to them that much, both being raw late '70s new wave generation XTC but then again sometimes whether they get listened to or not is hardly the point when you talking about having an' maintaining a collection.
Town was wrapped in grey when I was there soI only hung round long enough to make my purchases from the Virgin Meg and to check out the Bose ipod docking sound system which, for a cool £249 quid, I am seriously tempted to buy at the moment. Why not eh? I've got the money and who knows I might be dead by this time next week so why hang back? Seems to be the next step. Sounded good I have to say and although I didn't bite today I think it is only going to be a matter of time before I get one. The offer is just too good to miss. The one I saw in Tottenham Court Road came with a free carry back whilst if you order online from the Bose website you get 20 free itunes downloads worth 79p a pop.Decisions, decisions. The online option sounds best I think. But then again maybe not if things ever get mobile and I want to pack all the kit away with me and take someplace down the road in a handy little bag.
Headed back east after ponderin' whether or not to go for the Bose outside the hi-fi shop on Totty Crt Rd. Back east through the City, round Minories and on to the Highway through the Limehouse Link Tunnel and onto the A13. Went that way 'coz I wanted to check out some ladders at B&Q in Beckton. Need to paint the landing and am looking for ladders you can use on stairs. Multi-purpose combination ones are the ones I need to go for. I found them but they ain't cheap coming in at £89. Tamdin suggested the other day it would be better to hire one and I think she's right. When I got back to Woodford I checked on the Net and they are available at HSS Hire Shops for around 20 quid a day and I think a day is all I'm probably gonna need. So I think I'll hire when the time comes. Guess the time will come around Spring time when giving things a fresh lick of paint is well in order and fundamentally the right thing to do... to herald the stretching out of the daylight hours and decent level temperatures.
Need to know I have to get a grip on this poddin'. Been burning a lot of wedge and I think it would for me good just to take a step back and have a six month break from buying any new music whatsoever. Discipline. Easier said than down I know but at the end of the day it is only music we are talking about. Enlightened people can live their whole lives without ever having to go out and buy a single tune. Seems like all I've done for years now is worry about music. Worry about gettin' this or gettin' that. Need to give it a rest. Move on to other things. Expand my mind. Try something different.
Guess we need to have a hobby, have an interest, something to keep us still connected to the wheel but all the same there has to come a time when you can put your hands up and say "OK enough is enough, think I've mined this one as far as it can go." Hope so anyway. Think I'll just hang on and get this Bose docking station then I'll be satisfied. No more desire for music. Maybe or two, but not much.
Yeah, this has to be my resolution. To take a break from spending money on music for a while. I've got more than enough to keep me going. Just use what I have. Got so much to be getting on with. Don't need any more. Guess the nagging question I always have when I look at my music cds is that someone will come along and say "Oh, don't you have that one?" That one of course, the one that I don't have, being the most vital of the lot. That is the feeling I get. So there is always that feeling of incompleteness. I continually buy into the illusion that the next one I buy will satiate my desire to ever buy another one again. Somehow all those things are just false horizons. Never in reality works like that. I buy, I try and then you see something else that I want. So it goes on.
Problem with the Kraftwerk's Minimum-Maximum (which I downloaded the other night from itunes for a good at the time looking bargain price of £7.99) is the fact that the sequenced tracks have been chopped to pieces. This is because itunes sell the tracks individually for 79p a throw and therefore chop 'em up despite the fact that with a group like Kraftwerk a lot of their tracks are programmed to run seamlessly run into each other. Listening to the download on my pod, this has come as a very unpleasant surprise. It means that for a couple of seconds the music disappears only to come back again in what the pod thinks is the following track. Irritating beyond words and if I had known that was what it was going to be like then there is no way I would have downloaded it. That is why it is available at £7.99 I guess.
The only plus about the whole damn experience had been the fact that Minimum-Maximum is a great album and one that I would probably have never got round to ever buying on cd so in that way at least it has been good to listen to. Not that I want to now go out and buy the cd as that would mean I would be spending over £20 on it when the download is taken into consideration. There is little chance that an album like Minimum-Maximum will end up at a bargain price in the cd stores, those kind of ones never do.
No, I'll just have to learn to live with the chopped to pieces download version. It is annoying that on fuckin' itunes no mention of this is made to the would be customer before they press the magic button. In fact I feel like letting itunes know exactly how I feel about it which is saying something as when all is said and done I don't really think I am the kind of person who goes and complains about things like that. Usually I just kinda sit back an' shrug my shoulders; take it like a sucker in other words. On this occasion however I really feel strongly about it. Yeah, itunes should at least tell people that although they will be getting Minimum -Maximum as a download at a very good price they will not in fact be getting it in the way that it was intended. Takin' liberties, that's what it is. Butchery. If I knew before...then I would have never, never, never. If ya know what I mean.
But aint life great though when my only worries are the state of my downloads. Yeah well, I know things aint quite as simple as that but let's face it, life is good.
Started writing this blog edition on Fri I think. Sunday now. Sun pm. Showery kind of day. Nice when the sun is out but when not then full of dark cloud and frequent bursts of rain. Temps a little above average for this time of year which is now coming up to end of Feb. Winter just hasn't happened this year. No prolonged cold. Might as well get used to it, that is how it is going to be. Summer should be a hot one which is OK with me.
Dropped Tamdin off in Islington earlier on for her Tibetan Community dance practice. I then carried on into town and parked just off Holborn. There were a couple of cds I was after, just for completion's sake you understand. Skylarking by XTC and Speaking in Tongues by Talking Heads. Was tempted to download them but after my Minimum-Maximum experience I am rather put off for the moment. The Heads cd was £10.99 at the Virgin Meg which was 2 & 1/2 quid more than the download but you get the artwork of course and a DVD as well. A DVD which I will probably never play but the hell. Got a few other Heads albums as they all came out remastered a year or so ago. Seriously remastered. But I think I will stop with the ones I've got now as they are the best of the bunch in my 'umble opinion, and for the record they are -
More Songs About Buildings and Food
Fear of Music
Remain in Light
Speaking in Tongues
Roughly they cover the period '78 - '82 or '83 and for the Heads these were their golden years. Four great albums and of course I'm already making plans in my head for what their playlist is gonna shape up like, when I get round ta poddin' it with them, which of course I will. Aint no doubt about that.
Got XTC's Skylarking for pretty much the same reasons. Have a number of the XTC remasters and that was the main one I hadn't got round to getting but now I have and I have to say I did quite well as it was £6.99 at the Virgin Meg which was cheaper than the download and cheaper than Amazon. Chuffed about that. So my XTC collection runs like this with the releases listed in chronological order of course.
Drums and Wires
Black Sea
English Settlement
Mummer
The Big Express
Skylarking
Oranges and Lemons
Mummer
Apple Venus
Wasp Star
Still aint got the first albums White Music and Go2 and I guess we shall just have to see about whether I ever get round to buying them. The price is gonna have to be right. Just can't imagine I would listen to them that much, both being raw late '70s new wave generation XTC but then again sometimes whether they get listened to or not is hardly the point when you talking about having an' maintaining a collection.
Town was wrapped in grey when I was there soI only hung round long enough to make my purchases from the Virgin Meg and to check out the Bose ipod docking sound system which, for a cool £249 quid, I am seriously tempted to buy at the moment. Why not eh? I've got the money and who knows I might be dead by this time next week so why hang back? Seems to be the next step. Sounded good I have to say and although I didn't bite today I think it is only going to be a matter of time before I get one. The offer is just too good to miss. The one I saw in Tottenham Court Road came with a free carry back whilst if you order online from the Bose website you get 20 free itunes downloads worth 79p a pop.Decisions, decisions. The online option sounds best I think. But then again maybe not if things ever get mobile and I want to pack all the kit away with me and take someplace down the road in a handy little bag.
Headed back east after ponderin' whether or not to go for the Bose outside the hi-fi shop on Totty Crt Rd. Back east through the City, round Minories and on to the Highway through the Limehouse Link Tunnel and onto the A13. Went that way 'coz I wanted to check out some ladders at B&Q in Beckton. Need to paint the landing and am looking for ladders you can use on stairs. Multi-purpose combination ones are the ones I need to go for. I found them but they ain't cheap coming in at £89. Tamdin suggested the other day it would be better to hire one and I think she's right. When I got back to Woodford I checked on the Net and they are available at HSS Hire Shops for around 20 quid a day and I think a day is all I'm probably gonna need. So I think I'll hire when the time comes. Guess the time will come around Spring time when giving things a fresh lick of paint is well in order and fundamentally the right thing to do... to herald the stretching out of the daylight hours and decent level temperatures.
Need to know I have to get a grip on this poddin'. Been burning a lot of wedge and I think it would for me good just to take a step back and have a six month break from buying any new music whatsoever. Discipline. Easier said than down I know but at the end of the day it is only music we are talking about. Enlightened people can live their whole lives without ever having to go out and buy a single tune. Seems like all I've done for years now is worry about music. Worry about gettin' this or gettin' that. Need to give it a rest. Move on to other things. Expand my mind. Try something different.
Guess we need to have a hobby, have an interest, something to keep us still connected to the wheel but all the same there has to come a time when you can put your hands up and say "OK enough is enough, think I've mined this one as far as it can go." Hope so anyway. Think I'll just hang on and get this Bose docking station then I'll be satisfied. No more desire for music. Maybe or two, but not much.
Yeah, this has to be my resolution. To take a break from spending money on music for a while. I've got more than enough to keep me going. Just use what I have. Got so much to be getting on with. Don't need any more. Guess the nagging question I always have when I look at my music cds is that someone will come along and say "Oh, don't you have that one?" That one of course, the one that I don't have, being the most vital of the lot. That is the feeling I get. So there is always that feeling of incompleteness. I continually buy into the illusion that the next one I buy will satiate my desire to ever buy another one again. Somehow all those things are just false horizons. Never in reality works like that. I buy, I try and then you see something else that I want. So it goes on.
Monday, February 19, 2007
Boiler Blues an' More
Early afternoon, Monday. At work, third week of Feb. Grey day and cold-ish. My eyes are sore and I don't know why. Possibly to do with having a little less sleep than usual, but then again maybe not. Busy weekend because it was the Tibetan new year and since Tamdin is Tibetan it meant a party on Saturday for the Tibetan Community in Britain at a hall in Islington, North London. Then we were out to dinner yesterday evening to our Tibetan neighbours. The East London Tibetans. Lots of eating, not so much drinking because I was behind the wheel. Driving duty in other words. Keepin' us safe. On Saturday I managed to have a couple of large whiskies at the end of the night around 1 am-ish after we had got back from the Tibetan Community party. Jamesons. Lots of ice. Big gulps so that that effect of the spirit went straight down the back of my throat. Big swallow then a burning in the ears. Nice. As the Damned used to say, it is better taken neat, neat, neat.
Pressure at work over having to replace the boiler. Think I may have written about the boiler situation vis a viz our landlords before, but what the hell, a little bit of repetition aint gonna do any harm within the realm of Ghost Eternal so here we go (again).
Facts of the situation are as follows. We signed a repairing lease which means that if any fixtures or plant pack in during our time in the building we have to replace them. Fair enough. The boiler has gone so now we have to get a new one. Problem is the landlord wants us virtually replace the whole heating system - new boiler, new radiators, new valves and who knows what else. All new, and all to be paid for by us. They have put in a quote for the job that comes out at a cool £14,000. A lot of money. Not only that but we only have just over 2 & half years left on the lease anyway which means we could very likely be handing over all this bread and not sticking around for very long to enjoy the benefits. We have begun to get in other quotes but whatever happens it is going to cost.
Difficult to see at the moment what the landlord wants from us. They have said they would like to see the other quotes we get in order to make sure that the terms of the lease are not going to be broken by any works which might be undertaken by whoever we finally decide to go for to do the job. Don't know if they want to throw up unnecessary difficulties for us or not. Maybe they would just like to get us out of the building and the way they might be able to do it is to get us to fall foul of the lease, then they can just chuck us out (and sue the arses out of us as well). Possible. Or maybe they are just being fussy. That is also possible.
Decided to just give the landlords copies of the quotes that we have got in so far, prices and all. No point in hiding anything. If they turn around and say that the quotes are not acceptable the very least we can ask of them is that they give their reasons as to why they are no good and what it is they are or are not doing with respect to complying with the lease. Yes, at least when we see their response to these 2 quotes we might get a better picture of where it is they are coming from.
If their response is negative we can ask them what it is they do not like about them, in fact we can ask them to put their reasons in writing. This seems fair enough to me. They have to clearly state to us what it is that is required in order for a new boiler to be installed in compliance with the terms of the lease. If they refuse to do this then surely they are then just going to look stupid...then as far as I can work out we will be in a good position if things get heavy later on. We can state that we got quotes for the job, we submitted those quotes to the landlord but they were rejected as they landlord told us that if the works were undertaken as per the quotes we have received we would be in non-compliance of the terms of the lease. However the landlord refused to give us their reasons as to why the works would be in non-compliance. Left us in the dark in other words.
The other possibility is they return the quotes to us along with an extensive explanation as to why they are not acceptable. In other words they give us a full breakdown of what it is that has to be done by whoever we choose to replace the boiler.
Got to get these thoughts down despite the fact they no doubt look extremely mundane and boring. Just can't get away from the fact that I feel out of my depth trying to deal with all this. Best policy is to keep things honest and simple. Just do that and see how far it manages to get us. After that we will have to call in the lawyers if it looks like there is not going to be any solution. Hope it don't come to that but it might. In fact it very well might. Landlords. Lords of the land is what they are there is no doubt about that. Feels like the fuckin' middle ages.
Compared to them what I do is peanuts i terms of income generation. Just working away at trying to sell a few books. Well the fact of the matter is that I have to now sell quite a few books in order to be able to pay the bills we are going to get for boiler...whoever does it. Work, work, work and then sit back and see it all taken away from you. Is that really how it is supposed to be?
All the above was wrote last night. Now it is Tues morn and the weather just as grey and dull as yesterday. Cloud covered sky, we all labour under it. Well we do if we happen to live in England. All the time carrying around in our minds our little trials and tribulations. Things which to us can loom large on the horizon of our own consciousness, stuff which may not mean much to anyone else but which is our burden and ours alone.
Early afternoon now. Will write a few lines. No word from the landlord regarding the boiler quotes as yet. Been half expecting something to drop through the letterbox, some tersely worded document. Got another boiler installer coming round on Thursday so hopefully that will mean another a couple more quotes will soon by winging their way to the landlords. That should give them something to chew on.
Guess I need to stop going over it in my mind all the time. Chewing on it is only going to be any good if it leads to solutions, otherwise letting the whole situation go around and around in my mind is no good. Shows a lack of self-control when I chase after it, an inability to move on and concentrate on other things. Run the danger of things getting so bogged down and stale that I don't see the wood from the trees. Need to break out of such a cycle. Only think about what to do next when the time is right. Don't try to anticipate, don't make the mistake of thinking that I can control the situation.
Weds morn now. Clearer weather today after two days of solid cloud. A few breaks above with patches of light blue way up high. Not that cold. Ain't been cold at all this winter I have to say. Rain in the night as well. At home today working with Tamdin on sending out medicine. Quite a bit to do. No more news on the boiler so I will forget about that now. Or try to. The firm A One Solo from Walthamstow are calling round tomorrow morning to have a look at it and give it a quote so hopefully the picture will be clearer by then, well it probably wont be but don't know what else to say about it at the moment really.
Woke up this mornin' after dreaming about New York. I was there with my friend Richard, in fact I was his guest. He was livin' there. Funny dream. In it I was there for the second time and we were waiting to go on a big slide in the middle of the city between the skyscrapers. Stuff kept getting in the way to make it difficult for us to ever get there. By the end we were in a pizza parlour, having a meal before finally getting to go on the ride, but then after that I woke up.
The whole thing about the dream was that it was all so familiar, I was conscious of the fact that I had been in NYC before and I was re-visiting places I had already seen. It therefore lacked the feeling of fresh vitality and wonder that you can sometimes have when see a place for the first time. Had quite a few other dreams last night as well, about people from the past. Think it was because we were woken up by the phone at 4 am. Sleep was disturbed in other words. Neither Tamdin or I could make it downstairs to answer it and find out who it was. Both of us assumed it was someone calling from India who had got their time zones all mixed up and didn't realise it was still the middle of the night in London. It happens sometimes believe me, especially with Tibetans. Called 1471 this morning and discovered it was a mobile number that was calling us. That meant it was someone in the UK. Mystery. Probably wrong number.
Still enjoying playing around with the old ipod. Playing being the operative word. Playlists abound, with there being a bit of an obsessive focus on nailing down the ultimate Rolling Stones playlist. Fact of the matter is that it is impossible to do them justice with just one list, unless you make it about 6 hours long. So at the moment I am on about my fourth major Stones playlist. Each one pretty chunky. Let's see...there is is Right Stones playlist that had 30 trax, Rampant Stones with 40, Roaming Stones with 24 and Rocky Stones with 17. Clearly the last one needs beefing up a bit.
Such a great group the Stones, though, probably the greatest. Don't know what it is about them but I have a pretty good idea. All stems down watertight rhythm thanks to the incredible Charlie Watts on the skins and then the master of riffology Sir Keith Richards laying down truly memorable, truly addictive riffs and licks over the rest of the music. As with all truly classic rock and roll there is more than a hint of hard drugs and more than a hint of the devil about them. That is just the way it has to be for the music to be any good. Can't remember where I read it, but I remember someone saying the only person in the world who doesn't look stupid with a guitar round his neck is Keith Richards. That might just be right. And now he's gonna be in the new Pirates of the Caribbean. Top geezer.
Evenin' now, still Wednesday. Just been scanning itunes thinking of buying stuff on download but haven't quite found anything to fit the bill. Only a question of time though. Maybe I'll go for the Keith Richards debut "Talk is Cheap" or maybe even Kraftwerk's "Minimum-Maximum", their double live album which is available at what seems to be a very reasonable £7.99.
Mornin' now. Thursday. Another grey day. Back to the grey after a yesterday's sun which served as a respite from the consistently gloomy skies. Well, I have downloaded the Kraftwerk live effort and for £7.99 I think it is a bit of a bargain. Poddin' it right now and sounds as mightily electronic as I was expecting. Travel, speed and visions; all inhabiting the deeply nocturnal...the landscape of Kraftwerk in other words. They just wouldn't have it any other way. Nice to have on low and in the background to this.
Back to work soon. Hopefully will write a bit more on here when I am there. First I have the usual commute from Ilford to Woodford to look forward to. In the car. In the Toyota Avensis. Gettin' out of Woodford is usually the biggest problem due to the fact it has a lot of schools (mostly private) and the time that I leave is almost bang in the middle of their rush hour. Mother after mother in 4 x 4 s with brats either in the front or the back. What a fuckin' mess. The scramble to get on. To get on down the road, to get on in life with a good education. Runnin' round on the wheel. And me in the midst of it, a ghost behind the wheel, quietly tryin' not to lose my cool as I flick from silence in the cabin, to radio 4, to the CD player which at the moment of course is dominated by the Stones. All I an say is when the holidays come around gettin' out of Woodford and goin' to work is heaven. Clear roads, sunlight on the horizon. Bright sunlight, bursting out beneath the clouds. Intimations of eternity suddenly breakin' thru'.
Evenin' now. A crappy day as far as the weather has been concerned, a really crappy day. Cloud, plenty of it, rain and a cold wind rattling down the streets. Bleak. Slow day for business, little bits of this and that but nothing to get excited about. That's the working life I lead, lots of grinding away at the little things and not too many thrills. And all in the wonderful environs of Ilford. Well actually Ilford is not that bad, plenty of worse laces around that's for sure...along with plenty of better ones as well of course but I'll try not to dwell too much on that.
Writing this with Kraftwerk on the ipod. Sounds good but maybe I was expecting more, I dunno.
Keep thinkin' about the business and whether or not there is more we can try to do to move things along. By move things along I mean create more business. What is that is required?
Investment? In what? Maybe in stock, then we sell the stock on the site.
Advertising? What kind? To customers we have already got? To people already on our mailing lists? Do some deep mailing? Try to get the word as to what we are about these days to people who contacted us years ago? We have thousands of people on our mailing lists, maybe send a card to those who we haven't been in touch with us for years and years and see what comes back. Use it as an opportunity to clean things up a bit. Could be expensive.
Bringing people onto the site. Try to do that already, but maybe could do more.
Thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts.
Pressure at work over having to replace the boiler. Think I may have written about the boiler situation vis a viz our landlords before, but what the hell, a little bit of repetition aint gonna do any harm within the realm of Ghost Eternal so here we go (again).
Facts of the situation are as follows. We signed a repairing lease which means that if any fixtures or plant pack in during our time in the building we have to replace them. Fair enough. The boiler has gone so now we have to get a new one. Problem is the landlord wants us virtually replace the whole heating system - new boiler, new radiators, new valves and who knows what else. All new, and all to be paid for by us. They have put in a quote for the job that comes out at a cool £14,000. A lot of money. Not only that but we only have just over 2 & half years left on the lease anyway which means we could very likely be handing over all this bread and not sticking around for very long to enjoy the benefits. We have begun to get in other quotes but whatever happens it is going to cost.
Difficult to see at the moment what the landlord wants from us. They have said they would like to see the other quotes we get in order to make sure that the terms of the lease are not going to be broken by any works which might be undertaken by whoever we finally decide to go for to do the job. Don't know if they want to throw up unnecessary difficulties for us or not. Maybe they would just like to get us out of the building and the way they might be able to do it is to get us to fall foul of the lease, then they can just chuck us out (and sue the arses out of us as well). Possible. Or maybe they are just being fussy. That is also possible.
Decided to just give the landlords copies of the quotes that we have got in so far, prices and all. No point in hiding anything. If they turn around and say that the quotes are not acceptable the very least we can ask of them is that they give their reasons as to why they are no good and what it is they are or are not doing with respect to complying with the lease. Yes, at least when we see their response to these 2 quotes we might get a better picture of where it is they are coming from.
If their response is negative we can ask them what it is they do not like about them, in fact we can ask them to put their reasons in writing. This seems fair enough to me. They have to clearly state to us what it is that is required in order for a new boiler to be installed in compliance with the terms of the lease. If they refuse to do this then surely they are then just going to look stupid...then as far as I can work out we will be in a good position if things get heavy later on. We can state that we got quotes for the job, we submitted those quotes to the landlord but they were rejected as they landlord told us that if the works were undertaken as per the quotes we have received we would be in non-compliance of the terms of the lease. However the landlord refused to give us their reasons as to why the works would be in non-compliance. Left us in the dark in other words.
The other possibility is they return the quotes to us along with an extensive explanation as to why they are not acceptable. In other words they give us a full breakdown of what it is that has to be done by whoever we choose to replace the boiler.
Got to get these thoughts down despite the fact they no doubt look extremely mundane and boring. Just can't get away from the fact that I feel out of my depth trying to deal with all this. Best policy is to keep things honest and simple. Just do that and see how far it manages to get us. After that we will have to call in the lawyers if it looks like there is not going to be any solution. Hope it don't come to that but it might. In fact it very well might. Landlords. Lords of the land is what they are there is no doubt about that. Feels like the fuckin' middle ages.
Compared to them what I do is peanuts i terms of income generation. Just working away at trying to sell a few books. Well the fact of the matter is that I have to now sell quite a few books in order to be able to pay the bills we are going to get for boiler...whoever does it. Work, work, work and then sit back and see it all taken away from you. Is that really how it is supposed to be?
All the above was wrote last night. Now it is Tues morn and the weather just as grey and dull as yesterday. Cloud covered sky, we all labour under it. Well we do if we happen to live in England. All the time carrying around in our minds our little trials and tribulations. Things which to us can loom large on the horizon of our own consciousness, stuff which may not mean much to anyone else but which is our burden and ours alone.
Early afternoon now. Will write a few lines. No word from the landlord regarding the boiler quotes as yet. Been half expecting something to drop through the letterbox, some tersely worded document. Got another boiler installer coming round on Thursday so hopefully that will mean another a couple more quotes will soon by winging their way to the landlords. That should give them something to chew on.
Guess I need to stop going over it in my mind all the time. Chewing on it is only going to be any good if it leads to solutions, otherwise letting the whole situation go around and around in my mind is no good. Shows a lack of self-control when I chase after it, an inability to move on and concentrate on other things. Run the danger of things getting so bogged down and stale that I don't see the wood from the trees. Need to break out of such a cycle. Only think about what to do next when the time is right. Don't try to anticipate, don't make the mistake of thinking that I can control the situation.
Weds morn now. Clearer weather today after two days of solid cloud. A few breaks above with patches of light blue way up high. Not that cold. Ain't been cold at all this winter I have to say. Rain in the night as well. At home today working with Tamdin on sending out medicine. Quite a bit to do. No more news on the boiler so I will forget about that now. Or try to. The firm A One Solo from Walthamstow are calling round tomorrow morning to have a look at it and give it a quote so hopefully the picture will be clearer by then, well it probably wont be but don't know what else to say about it at the moment really.
Woke up this mornin' after dreaming about New York. I was there with my friend Richard, in fact I was his guest. He was livin' there. Funny dream. In it I was there for the second time and we were waiting to go on a big slide in the middle of the city between the skyscrapers. Stuff kept getting in the way to make it difficult for us to ever get there. By the end we were in a pizza parlour, having a meal before finally getting to go on the ride, but then after that I woke up.
The whole thing about the dream was that it was all so familiar, I was conscious of the fact that I had been in NYC before and I was re-visiting places I had already seen. It therefore lacked the feeling of fresh vitality and wonder that you can sometimes have when see a place for the first time. Had quite a few other dreams last night as well, about people from the past. Think it was because we were woken up by the phone at 4 am. Sleep was disturbed in other words. Neither Tamdin or I could make it downstairs to answer it and find out who it was. Both of us assumed it was someone calling from India who had got their time zones all mixed up and didn't realise it was still the middle of the night in London. It happens sometimes believe me, especially with Tibetans. Called 1471 this morning and discovered it was a mobile number that was calling us. That meant it was someone in the UK. Mystery. Probably wrong number.
Still enjoying playing around with the old ipod. Playing being the operative word. Playlists abound, with there being a bit of an obsessive focus on nailing down the ultimate Rolling Stones playlist. Fact of the matter is that it is impossible to do them justice with just one list, unless you make it about 6 hours long. So at the moment I am on about my fourth major Stones playlist. Each one pretty chunky. Let's see...there is is Right Stones playlist that had 30 trax, Rampant Stones with 40, Roaming Stones with 24 and Rocky Stones with 17. Clearly the last one needs beefing up a bit.
Such a great group the Stones, though, probably the greatest. Don't know what it is about them but I have a pretty good idea. All stems down watertight rhythm thanks to the incredible Charlie Watts on the skins and then the master of riffology Sir Keith Richards laying down truly memorable, truly addictive riffs and licks over the rest of the music. As with all truly classic rock and roll there is more than a hint of hard drugs and more than a hint of the devil about them. That is just the way it has to be for the music to be any good. Can't remember where I read it, but I remember someone saying the only person in the world who doesn't look stupid with a guitar round his neck is Keith Richards. That might just be right. And now he's gonna be in the new Pirates of the Caribbean. Top geezer.
Evenin' now, still Wednesday. Just been scanning itunes thinking of buying stuff on download but haven't quite found anything to fit the bill. Only a question of time though. Maybe I'll go for the Keith Richards debut "Talk is Cheap" or maybe even Kraftwerk's "Minimum-Maximum", their double live album which is available at what seems to be a very reasonable £7.99.
Mornin' now. Thursday. Another grey day. Back to the grey after a yesterday's sun which served as a respite from the consistently gloomy skies. Well, I have downloaded the Kraftwerk live effort and for £7.99 I think it is a bit of a bargain. Poddin' it right now and sounds as mightily electronic as I was expecting. Travel, speed and visions; all inhabiting the deeply nocturnal...the landscape of Kraftwerk in other words. They just wouldn't have it any other way. Nice to have on low and in the background to this.
Back to work soon. Hopefully will write a bit more on here when I am there. First I have the usual commute from Ilford to Woodford to look forward to. In the car. In the Toyota Avensis. Gettin' out of Woodford is usually the biggest problem due to the fact it has a lot of schools (mostly private) and the time that I leave is almost bang in the middle of their rush hour. Mother after mother in 4 x 4 s with brats either in the front or the back. What a fuckin' mess. The scramble to get on. To get on down the road, to get on in life with a good education. Runnin' round on the wheel. And me in the midst of it, a ghost behind the wheel, quietly tryin' not to lose my cool as I flick from silence in the cabin, to radio 4, to the CD player which at the moment of course is dominated by the Stones. All I an say is when the holidays come around gettin' out of Woodford and goin' to work is heaven. Clear roads, sunlight on the horizon. Bright sunlight, bursting out beneath the clouds. Intimations of eternity suddenly breakin' thru'.
Evenin' now. A crappy day as far as the weather has been concerned, a really crappy day. Cloud, plenty of it, rain and a cold wind rattling down the streets. Bleak. Slow day for business, little bits of this and that but nothing to get excited about. That's the working life I lead, lots of grinding away at the little things and not too many thrills. And all in the wonderful environs of Ilford. Well actually Ilford is not that bad, plenty of worse laces around that's for sure...along with plenty of better ones as well of course but I'll try not to dwell too much on that.
Writing this with Kraftwerk on the ipod. Sounds good but maybe I was expecting more, I dunno.
Keep thinkin' about the business and whether or not there is more we can try to do to move things along. By move things along I mean create more business. What is that is required?
Investment? In what? Maybe in stock, then we sell the stock on the site.
Advertising? What kind? To customers we have already got? To people already on our mailing lists? Do some deep mailing? Try to get the word as to what we are about these days to people who contacted us years ago? We have thousands of people on our mailing lists, maybe send a card to those who we haven't been in touch with us for years and years and see what comes back. Use it as an opportunity to clean things up a bit. Could be expensive.
Bringing people onto the site. Try to do that already, but maybe could do more.
Thoughts. Thoughts. Thoughts.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Stones an' Meditation
1 pm Tuesday. In the office. Carrying on from yesterday where I will now try to write a few words each day from work. Well, I guess we'll just have to see exactly how long I will be able to keep it for. Not long probably. Pretty dead at work today business wise, anyway who is there to really give a fuck about us if we sink or swim? And really there shouldn't be anyone besides those of us who get a crust out of it anyway. What fuckin' right have I to expect people to suddenly for sorry for us? As if the rest of humanity hasn't got enough on it's plate as it is! Jesus! We can moan and blather till kingdom about not getting enough orders, being a bunch of small guys up against the big cheeses of the book business world but there ain't gonna make many people shedding any tears because of that are there? And nor should they! I am sure they have more than plenty to occupy their minds with when it comes to running down Worry Avenue and knocking at all those doom an' gloom stakes poking outta da ground.
Evenin' now, back after another day at work. Cookin' up some potatoes to have with the remaining rice and dhal from last night. Got the Stones on the system, courtesy o' one of my playlists. This one's called the Roaming Stones and it collects together a load of their less well known but nevertheless pleasingly melodic compositions. Again concentrating on the latter period albums, just like the other Stones playlist I compiled of their harder numbers that goes by the name of Rocky Stones, something I'm pretty sure I mentioned in a previous post. Think I'll do one more Stones list, call it Rampant Stones, and that will bring together a little bit of everything from their vast and sprawling catalogue.
Really, I think the Stones are pretty damn tremendous and a lot of their stuff over the last 20-25 years has been severely underrated. And for what reason? Well I guess because they are rich enough, famous enough and old enough for any dumb fucker with a pen in their hand to come along and have a pop at 'em. But I have to say that by and large the endless critics are severely mistaken in their analysis of a lot of the later Stones material. Seriously and severely mistaken. Then again, that is just my opinion. Others might want to just tell me to shut up, to shut up and go away because as far as they are concerned I simply do not know what it is I am talking about. Yeah, they might just wanna do that.
As yet this evenin' I haven't done any meditation. Somehow I feel a late nite session comin' on. Probably will be knackered when I make it down onto the cushion but I will give it a try nevertheless. What usually happens when I meditate anytime after 9pm is that my back gets tight and painful - and serves to be a major distraction. It is important at those times not to push the pain away, better to embrace and face up to the reality that that is what is happening. Stems from the fact that my legs are so stiff I can barely sit cross-legged on the cushion which means my lower back has little in the way of support since my legs are unable to stay flat on the ground. Yep, that is the physical state of my meditation when I get down to it way after dark.
All these hopeful visions I can still so effortlessly entertain myself with about slipping into some kind of deep an' enlightening meditative trance in which all great secrets will be revealed are little more than traces of a sad fantasy. The stark reality is that more often than not when I sit down to meditate mid to late evenin' time it is as much as I can do to get through a halfway decent session. That is the way it is. Yes, I'll keeping working on it, chipping away at the old block so to speak, but to be honest with ya I ain't holding out on stumblin' across any wonderful surprises.
Writing this the morning after the nite before. As expected, or as predicted, the meditation session I did last night was brief, to say the least...not more than 15 minutes. Only thing it resulted in was me going to bed almost immediately afterwards. That happens sometimes. You sit down to meditate and all it does is indicate to you just how tremendously tired you are. That meant I was in the sack before 11 and after reading a few pages of Rubicon (an excellent history of the Roman Republic) and podding a couple of trax from Voodoo Lounge by the Stones I was dead to the world.
Had a few strange dreams. At work we are in the process of getting a shipment of statues and other stuff from Nepal and I dreamt that all the product arrived and the quality of the workmanship was terrible and instead of there being the Buddha statues that we ordered there was a whole bunch of Hindu stuff mixed in as well. Guess you could say it was a tension dream, ain't no doubt about that. Another one I had was waking up and there being no power in the house. When I went to the fusebox there was just a whole load of junk in there and it took a long time to flip the switch and get the juice back on. Don't in any kind of way know what that was about. Dreams...what to say about them? Well some people have got a hell of a lot to say about them but at the end of the day, in the final analysis, in my humble opinion, the contents of dreams are best kept to oneself. Despite the fact I have just burbled on about what mine were about...oh well, guess you could say my mind-body embraces a whole host of contradictions.
Dreams. Yes. Often with me it is the emotional feeling in which they are embedded that is the important thing to remember and not so much the action which is probably just an expression of how I am feeling- at a normally inaccessible level. Dreams go in phases as well. You can have a run of dreams of wildly different experiences but the underlying feel to them is more or less the same. Then they shift onto something else. Like a rollin' river. Yeah boy, like a rollin' river and there ain't nuthin' you can do to stop the flow.
End of day now. Been into town to get Tamdin something special for Tibetan New Year which is on Saturday. Losar Tashi Delek - to everyone! Don't worry, if you are unfamiliar with Tibetan culture you are not expected to know what that is supposed to mean. London was busier than I expected I have to say. Enjoyable up to a point but then I got tired and couldn't get back to Woodford fast enough. Took in my grandfather's walking stick hoping to get a tip for it but the only walking stick shop I had ever seen in London was closed as in closed permanently when I got there. Typical that. For years and years I had seen it on New Oxford street and had always said to myself whenever I saw it that one day I would have to take the walking stick there and get the tip sorted out. Then, when I finally do manage to get it together the place has ceased to exist. Kaput. Fuckin' typical. So anyway by the end of a couple of hours walking round town it got tiring carrying this walking stick around and making sure it didn't poke people on the pavement and in the shops. Guess I should have pretended to have a hobble and then have been able to use it in the way it was supposed to be.
Managed to get a nice present for Tamdin anyway, and that after all was the whole point of going in, well that and getting the stick sorted. Ended up in Selfridges at one point and got a stack of beef jerky from the foodhall as it was on special offer with50% off. Thought it would be good to have something like that for Tibetan New Year. Mmmm beef jerky. Hope it tastes good, it's Scottish jerky, Scottish beef jerky. Never really been into Selfridges foodhall before, apart from once I think a few years ago. It was busy. It is the place where posh people come to buy their pies and Italian ham at fantastic prices. Nevertheless it all ends up as shit in the end.
The part that made me tired was walking back down from Selfridges all the way to Tottenham Court Road along the crowded pavements of Oxford Street west to east. By this stage I was carrying Tamdin's present as well, which happened to be quite heavy. That and a few other things as like the jerky. Also having to negotiate the crowds with my walking stick. I guess I could have just got on the tube at Bond St but the point was I was after a Stones CD, a live album from the early '90s called Flashpoint. Finally I found it at a price I was prepared to pay which was £6.99 in the Virgin Megastore right by Tottenham Court Road. I'd seen it further back up the road in HMV but there they were selling it for a tenner which was a little bit pricey for what it was.
That's the problem I have with CDs; if there is one that I really wanna get my hands on then I will put myself through quite a lot in order to get it. Certain rules usually have to be followed, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The rule in this case was that I could have it as long as I did not have to pay too much for it. That meant that if I saw it on the racks for 13 quid or something like that then there was no way that I would allow myself to get it. £6.99 however was a different proposition altogether. Guess I wanted to get it to beef up the number of live Stones CDs I have in my collection which is not that many to be honest, in fact the only other one I have is the poorly regarded No Security from the post '97 Bridges to Babylon tour. Flashpoint by contrast concentrates on material from the late '80s minor Stones classic Steel Wheels. So, £6.99 was OK and from what I have heard of it so far it is unlikely to ever be a purchase that I am going to regret.
Got back to Woodford by 3.30 and then after a cup of tea and a bit of this an' that I was out again in the car this time going to the launderette to pick up some stuff I had put in for a service wash earlier in the morning. Basically stuff that I am too lazy to wash at home, like duvets, towels and all that shit. Then after that it was down the road to South Woodford and to Waitrose for some food shopping, at the end of which I was 50 quid poorer on my credit card. The main plus of going there was that I found they sold six packs of Heineken Export for £4.29 which as far as I'm concerned is really good value, due to the simple fact that it is one of the most delicious lagers I have tasted in ages. This is the real Heineken, the stuff brewed in Amsterdam, not the brewed under license shit you can pick up for a lot less. The export edition weighs in at a level of 5% alcohol whilst the usual UK Heineken brew is barely 4%. So there you go. If ya ever fancy a nice cold glass of beer go and grab yourself a pack of Heineken Export. You aint gonna regret it. And then, to make a night of it, put on a selection of classic Stones.
Evenin' now, back after another day at work. Cookin' up some potatoes to have with the remaining rice and dhal from last night. Got the Stones on the system, courtesy o' one of my playlists. This one's called the Roaming Stones and it collects together a load of their less well known but nevertheless pleasingly melodic compositions. Again concentrating on the latter period albums, just like the other Stones playlist I compiled of their harder numbers that goes by the name of Rocky Stones, something I'm pretty sure I mentioned in a previous post. Think I'll do one more Stones list, call it Rampant Stones, and that will bring together a little bit of everything from their vast and sprawling catalogue.
Really, I think the Stones are pretty damn tremendous and a lot of their stuff over the last 20-25 years has been severely underrated. And for what reason? Well I guess because they are rich enough, famous enough and old enough for any dumb fucker with a pen in their hand to come along and have a pop at 'em. But I have to say that by and large the endless critics are severely mistaken in their analysis of a lot of the later Stones material. Seriously and severely mistaken. Then again, that is just my opinion. Others might want to just tell me to shut up, to shut up and go away because as far as they are concerned I simply do not know what it is I am talking about. Yeah, they might just wanna do that.
As yet this evenin' I haven't done any meditation. Somehow I feel a late nite session comin' on. Probably will be knackered when I make it down onto the cushion but I will give it a try nevertheless. What usually happens when I meditate anytime after 9pm is that my back gets tight and painful - and serves to be a major distraction. It is important at those times not to push the pain away, better to embrace and face up to the reality that that is what is happening. Stems from the fact that my legs are so stiff I can barely sit cross-legged on the cushion which means my lower back has little in the way of support since my legs are unable to stay flat on the ground. Yep, that is the physical state of my meditation when I get down to it way after dark.
All these hopeful visions I can still so effortlessly entertain myself with about slipping into some kind of deep an' enlightening meditative trance in which all great secrets will be revealed are little more than traces of a sad fantasy. The stark reality is that more often than not when I sit down to meditate mid to late evenin' time it is as much as I can do to get through a halfway decent session. That is the way it is. Yes, I'll keeping working on it, chipping away at the old block so to speak, but to be honest with ya I ain't holding out on stumblin' across any wonderful surprises.
Writing this the morning after the nite before. As expected, or as predicted, the meditation session I did last night was brief, to say the least...not more than 15 minutes. Only thing it resulted in was me going to bed almost immediately afterwards. That happens sometimes. You sit down to meditate and all it does is indicate to you just how tremendously tired you are. That meant I was in the sack before 11 and after reading a few pages of Rubicon (an excellent history of the Roman Republic) and podding a couple of trax from Voodoo Lounge by the Stones I was dead to the world.
Had a few strange dreams. At work we are in the process of getting a shipment of statues and other stuff from Nepal and I dreamt that all the product arrived and the quality of the workmanship was terrible and instead of there being the Buddha statues that we ordered there was a whole bunch of Hindu stuff mixed in as well. Guess you could say it was a tension dream, ain't no doubt about that. Another one I had was waking up and there being no power in the house. When I went to the fusebox there was just a whole load of junk in there and it took a long time to flip the switch and get the juice back on. Don't in any kind of way know what that was about. Dreams...what to say about them? Well some people have got a hell of a lot to say about them but at the end of the day, in the final analysis, in my humble opinion, the contents of dreams are best kept to oneself. Despite the fact I have just burbled on about what mine were about...oh well, guess you could say my mind-body embraces a whole host of contradictions.
Dreams. Yes. Often with me it is the emotional feeling in which they are embedded that is the important thing to remember and not so much the action which is probably just an expression of how I am feeling- at a normally inaccessible level. Dreams go in phases as well. You can have a run of dreams of wildly different experiences but the underlying feel to them is more or less the same. Then they shift onto something else. Like a rollin' river. Yeah boy, like a rollin' river and there ain't nuthin' you can do to stop the flow.
End of day now. Been into town to get Tamdin something special for Tibetan New Year which is on Saturday. Losar Tashi Delek - to everyone! Don't worry, if you are unfamiliar with Tibetan culture you are not expected to know what that is supposed to mean. London was busier than I expected I have to say. Enjoyable up to a point but then I got tired and couldn't get back to Woodford fast enough. Took in my grandfather's walking stick hoping to get a tip for it but the only walking stick shop I had ever seen in London was closed as in closed permanently when I got there. Typical that. For years and years I had seen it on New Oxford street and had always said to myself whenever I saw it that one day I would have to take the walking stick there and get the tip sorted out. Then, when I finally do manage to get it together the place has ceased to exist. Kaput. Fuckin' typical. So anyway by the end of a couple of hours walking round town it got tiring carrying this walking stick around and making sure it didn't poke people on the pavement and in the shops. Guess I should have pretended to have a hobble and then have been able to use it in the way it was supposed to be.
Managed to get a nice present for Tamdin anyway, and that after all was the whole point of going in, well that and getting the stick sorted. Ended up in Selfridges at one point and got a stack of beef jerky from the foodhall as it was on special offer with50% off. Thought it would be good to have something like that for Tibetan New Year. Mmmm beef jerky. Hope it tastes good, it's Scottish jerky, Scottish beef jerky. Never really been into Selfridges foodhall before, apart from once I think a few years ago. It was busy. It is the place where posh people come to buy their pies and Italian ham at fantastic prices. Nevertheless it all ends up as shit in the end.
The part that made me tired was walking back down from Selfridges all the way to Tottenham Court Road along the crowded pavements of Oxford Street west to east. By this stage I was carrying Tamdin's present as well, which happened to be quite heavy. That and a few other things as like the jerky. Also having to negotiate the crowds with my walking stick. I guess I could have just got on the tube at Bond St but the point was I was after a Stones CD, a live album from the early '90s called Flashpoint. Finally I found it at a price I was prepared to pay which was £6.99 in the Virgin Megastore right by Tottenham Court Road. I'd seen it further back up the road in HMV but there they were selling it for a tenner which was a little bit pricey for what it was.
That's the problem I have with CDs; if there is one that I really wanna get my hands on then I will put myself through quite a lot in order to get it. Certain rules usually have to be followed, unless there are exceptional circumstances. The rule in this case was that I could have it as long as I did not have to pay too much for it. That meant that if I saw it on the racks for 13 quid or something like that then there was no way that I would allow myself to get it. £6.99 however was a different proposition altogether. Guess I wanted to get it to beef up the number of live Stones CDs I have in my collection which is not that many to be honest, in fact the only other one I have is the poorly regarded No Security from the post '97 Bridges to Babylon tour. Flashpoint by contrast concentrates on material from the late '80s minor Stones classic Steel Wheels. So, £6.99 was OK and from what I have heard of it so far it is unlikely to ever be a purchase that I am going to regret.
Got back to Woodford by 3.30 and then after a cup of tea and a bit of this an' that I was out again in the car this time going to the launderette to pick up some stuff I had put in for a service wash earlier in the morning. Basically stuff that I am too lazy to wash at home, like duvets, towels and all that shit. Then after that it was down the road to South Woodford and to Waitrose for some food shopping, at the end of which I was 50 quid poorer on my credit card. The main plus of going there was that I found they sold six packs of Heineken Export for £4.29 which as far as I'm concerned is really good value, due to the simple fact that it is one of the most delicious lagers I have tasted in ages. This is the real Heineken, the stuff brewed in Amsterdam, not the brewed under license shit you can pick up for a lot less. The export edition weighs in at a level of 5% alcohol whilst the usual UK Heineken brew is barely 4%. So there you go. If ya ever fancy a nice cold glass of beer go and grab yourself a pack of Heineken Export. You aint gonna regret it. And then, to make a night of it, put on a selection of classic Stones.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Thunder Monday
Middle of the day, Monday. In the office. Rain outside but there is a breeze about that is pushing the clouds through the sky at pace, letting in the possibility of the odd blue patch. Don't usually blog from the office but since I have managed a couple of posts in the last few days I thought what the hell. Might as well give it a try. Don't worry about it being too constrictive. Work is OK today at the moment, no major crises as far as I can work out, no huge unexpected bills to pay that have suddenly landed on my desk or anything like. But you can never be too sure. Everyone seems in reasonably good humour as well which is good considering it is a Monday.
Went up to my folks yesterday and gave my dad his bottle of whiskey and pork pie. Think it went down well. He didn't have a bottle of that particular malt in his collection so that was good. He was a bit down as he was shaking off a nasty chest cold, my mum was fine however, and that was mainly because she's been dosing herself up with this anti-flu herbal medicine. Something Tamdin recommended to her apparently. The parents are both in their early 70s now and generally they are in pretty good shape. Way things are going with longevity and all that I don't see any reason why they won't be able to stick around for another 20 years or so. Hope so anyway. Funny ain't it? Here I am 45 this year and still with healthy folks alive. Wasn't so long ago that the life expectancy for anyone was barely 40 years. How far we have come! How easy it is in these times to keep on living...so long as bad luck don't befall ya and you don't engage in anything too over the top, like drinking 10 cans of lager and smoking 40 fags a day. Yeah, if ya stay on the straight an' narrow as far as yer 'abits are concerned then there ain't no reason why ya won't just keep rockin' on for decades and decades.
Think I need to buy some moisturiser for my face. Not to put to fine a point on it, but sometimes when I look in the mirror all I see staring back at me is a spotty faced git. Don't why it is like it is. Me old mush that is. Must something to do with my diet. Tamdin always has a go at me for not drinking enough water so maybe it is something to do with that. Anyway whatever it is it's a bit of a pisser since like I said in the paragraph above I'm nearly 45 and surely a bit old to still be worrying about zits. Seems to have got worse since coming back from India this time around. Problem is that over there you can end up taking in a lot of sugar what with the ultra sweet Indian sweets and the frequent cups of hot chai and hot sweet coffee. That and maybe the stress of just being over there I suppose. Forcing my way through the heat and ever growing scenes of unforgetability that comprise the India experience. The fact is that when you are in one of the big Indian cities everything can seem like one big battle to make sure the gods don't deal ya a sucker punch. It only takes a couple of rolls of the dice to go against you in India and you can quite pretty damn agitated and wound up that is certainly for sure.
I had one of those Indian incidents this year when I had to make the transfer from Delhi International airport to the Delhi Domestic. Coming out of the Int I went out the wrong entrance and missed the place where you're supposed to wait for the transfer bus. I immediately got angry as I then had to fight my way back into the airport and past a couple of guards who were unwilling to let me back in because as far as they were concerned I had left the airport despite the fact that I had only walked out the entrance as matter of seconds before. Eventually common sense prevailed and I was allowed back to find out where it was I was supposed to go but by then my feathers were ruffled. When I got to the place I was originally supposed to go I found out that the next bus over to the domestic wasn't going to be for another 40 mins. That was too long for me. I didn't have the patience to wait for that so I stormed back out again and got a taxi. Sent my head spinning that, the whole little episode. But that is what can happen in India so damn quickly if you let down your guard. Your guard against lack of self-awareness that is. After all, who was there to blame for the whole thing but myself? In my eagerness to get out of the international and make it over to the domestic I had not seen the signs I was supposed to be looking and from that point on I was lost.
Evenin' now. What was wrote above was done in the office in the day so maybe what I write now will have a different feel to it. Just waiting for my food to cook, then I'll eat and come back to this later. Feelin' a bit tired but not too bad. Just done the best part of an hour meditation which was good, sometimes it can take you by surprise. I had been feeling angry and irritated before I went up to sit so in a way I was reluctant to go, fearing the negative mood I was in would dominate the session. But as it turned out the negativity provided the energy I needed to gain a bit of focus and attention and after a while things seemed to move along quite nicely. Guess it always important to remember how unpredictable things can be. Don't assume things are always going to turn out the way you think they will, the mind is unreliable, especially when it comes to seeing things in a less than positive light.
Think a lot of the anger and irritation I felt at the end of the afternoon was down to the fact we had a letter from the landlord pushed through the letterbox at work demanding that a bill from January be paid immediately with interest. Ironic that, considering that I began this blog by saying how stress free things were at the moment in department. Spoke too fucking soon as far as that was concerned.
Fact of the matter is I didn't see the original invoice because when it came in I was away in India. It just pissed me off that despite the fact we have been tenants for the last 7 1/2 years and always without fail paid our rent on time the landlord should still see fit to charge us interest on something that was only days overdue. Landlords and tenants...the whole lousy stinkin' deal goes right back to the middle ages and beyond... and at the end of the day it is still just as feudal as it ever was. Feudal and futile in the fact that landlord and tenant can never be friends.
All this is amplified by the fact that under the terms of our lease we have to replace our boiler at work because the old has packed up. If the landlord had their way they would charge us a hell of a lot of money to fit the replacement boiler that is for sure, irrespective of the fact that we are unlikely to be there more than another 2 & half years. It has been like a kick in the teeth since we found out what shit we were in. All the work we have done day in day out is all going to be for nothing... someone can come along and take it all away from you in the flick of an eye.
Maybe the point is this though - the real point of my anger and frustration - that the fact the job I do is only worth so much and when compared to people such as our landlord it is clearly worth not very much at all. I just have never got it together to acquire any valuable skills to make my labours a precious commodity in the eyes of others. And so this is the result: working away day after day for hours and hours just to put clothes onto someone else's back. It is sad, it is pathetic but no matter how much I rage about it I really do have only myself to blame.
I have no skills that either are worth paying that much money for or are capable of earning a decent amount of money. That is the fact. Simple as that. The kind of problems that I will only ever be called to solve are going to be relatively simple ones which any fucker with half a brain between their ears will be able to figure out.
There ain't nothing I got that would take very much time to pass on to someone else. No great skills, no in depth knowledge...of anything. OK I might not have to wear a suit to work and to really answer to anyone, and we all might have a laugh in our own cocoon like worlds as we sit there day after day in the office, but that is as far as it goes. I really have not got that much in terms of real value in the capitalist labour market economy that we exist in. Some people such as our landlord exist and thrive, we merely exist. They have done the groundwork, they have ensured that they are well protected.
And no matter how we might rant and rave about it and think the landlord is being a total bastard it simply is not going to make a blind bit of different. We might console ourselves with some vain attempt at feeling a moral superiority by saying to ourselves that we would never behave in the way that our landlord is behaving but that is a load of old bullshit because the fact of the matter is that we just have not had the opportunity. And never will. We are what we are and in this context what we are is just a small little book company trying our best to sell a few books and take our cut from it, anything more than that and we are simply at the mercy of forces that we cannot control. That is a fact. There is no use getting angry with other people about it.
When something comes along that might call our whole existence as a small book company into question it is nothing personal. People are just doing what they have to do with the means they have before them. In this case the landlord knows that under the lease we have to replace the boiler and as far as they are concerned replace the the boiler we will. No favours necessary, it is all there in black and white. Protected by law. Rage and frustration on my part is more to do with seething irritation over my impotence to effect things of any weight in this world. I should get over it, take what comes with dignity and do whatever it is I have to do to ensure that I do not end up behaving in way I might think is perfectly justified and correct at the time but which years later will only stand as something over which I will feel little more than acute embarrassment and regret.
Went up to my folks yesterday and gave my dad his bottle of whiskey and pork pie. Think it went down well. He didn't have a bottle of that particular malt in his collection so that was good. He was a bit down as he was shaking off a nasty chest cold, my mum was fine however, and that was mainly because she's been dosing herself up with this anti-flu herbal medicine. Something Tamdin recommended to her apparently. The parents are both in their early 70s now and generally they are in pretty good shape. Way things are going with longevity and all that I don't see any reason why they won't be able to stick around for another 20 years or so. Hope so anyway. Funny ain't it? Here I am 45 this year and still with healthy folks alive. Wasn't so long ago that the life expectancy for anyone was barely 40 years. How far we have come! How easy it is in these times to keep on living...so long as bad luck don't befall ya and you don't engage in anything too over the top, like drinking 10 cans of lager and smoking 40 fags a day. Yeah, if ya stay on the straight an' narrow as far as yer 'abits are concerned then there ain't no reason why ya won't just keep rockin' on for decades and decades.
Think I need to buy some moisturiser for my face. Not to put to fine a point on it, but sometimes when I look in the mirror all I see staring back at me is a spotty faced git. Don't why it is like it is. Me old mush that is. Must something to do with my diet. Tamdin always has a go at me for not drinking enough water so maybe it is something to do with that. Anyway whatever it is it's a bit of a pisser since like I said in the paragraph above I'm nearly 45 and surely a bit old to still be worrying about zits. Seems to have got worse since coming back from India this time around. Problem is that over there you can end up taking in a lot of sugar what with the ultra sweet Indian sweets and the frequent cups of hot chai and hot sweet coffee. That and maybe the stress of just being over there I suppose. Forcing my way through the heat and ever growing scenes of unforgetability that comprise the India experience. The fact is that when you are in one of the big Indian cities everything can seem like one big battle to make sure the gods don't deal ya a sucker punch. It only takes a couple of rolls of the dice to go against you in India and you can quite pretty damn agitated and wound up that is certainly for sure.
I had one of those Indian incidents this year when I had to make the transfer from Delhi International airport to the Delhi Domestic. Coming out of the Int I went out the wrong entrance and missed the place where you're supposed to wait for the transfer bus. I immediately got angry as I then had to fight my way back into the airport and past a couple of guards who were unwilling to let me back in because as far as they were concerned I had left the airport despite the fact that I had only walked out the entrance as matter of seconds before. Eventually common sense prevailed and I was allowed back to find out where it was I was supposed to go but by then my feathers were ruffled. When I got to the place I was originally supposed to go I found out that the next bus over to the domestic wasn't going to be for another 40 mins. That was too long for me. I didn't have the patience to wait for that so I stormed back out again and got a taxi. Sent my head spinning that, the whole little episode. But that is what can happen in India so damn quickly if you let down your guard. Your guard against lack of self-awareness that is. After all, who was there to blame for the whole thing but myself? In my eagerness to get out of the international and make it over to the domestic I had not seen the signs I was supposed to be looking and from that point on I was lost.
Evenin' now. What was wrote above was done in the office in the day so maybe what I write now will have a different feel to it. Just waiting for my food to cook, then I'll eat and come back to this later. Feelin' a bit tired but not too bad. Just done the best part of an hour meditation which was good, sometimes it can take you by surprise. I had been feeling angry and irritated before I went up to sit so in a way I was reluctant to go, fearing the negative mood I was in would dominate the session. But as it turned out the negativity provided the energy I needed to gain a bit of focus and attention and after a while things seemed to move along quite nicely. Guess it always important to remember how unpredictable things can be. Don't assume things are always going to turn out the way you think they will, the mind is unreliable, especially when it comes to seeing things in a less than positive light.
Think a lot of the anger and irritation I felt at the end of the afternoon was down to the fact we had a letter from the landlord pushed through the letterbox at work demanding that a bill from January be paid immediately with interest. Ironic that, considering that I began this blog by saying how stress free things were at the moment in department. Spoke too fucking soon as far as that was concerned.
Fact of the matter is I didn't see the original invoice because when it came in I was away in India. It just pissed me off that despite the fact we have been tenants for the last 7 1/2 years and always without fail paid our rent on time the landlord should still see fit to charge us interest on something that was only days overdue. Landlords and tenants...the whole lousy stinkin' deal goes right back to the middle ages and beyond... and at the end of the day it is still just as feudal as it ever was. Feudal and futile in the fact that landlord and tenant can never be friends.
All this is amplified by the fact that under the terms of our lease we have to replace our boiler at work because the old has packed up. If the landlord had their way they would charge us a hell of a lot of money to fit the replacement boiler that is for sure, irrespective of the fact that we are unlikely to be there more than another 2 & half years. It has been like a kick in the teeth since we found out what shit we were in. All the work we have done day in day out is all going to be for nothing... someone can come along and take it all away from you in the flick of an eye.
Maybe the point is this though - the real point of my anger and frustration - that the fact the job I do is only worth so much and when compared to people such as our landlord it is clearly worth not very much at all. I just have never got it together to acquire any valuable skills to make my labours a precious commodity in the eyes of others. And so this is the result: working away day after day for hours and hours just to put clothes onto someone else's back. It is sad, it is pathetic but no matter how much I rage about it I really do have only myself to blame.
I have no skills that either are worth paying that much money for or are capable of earning a decent amount of money. That is the fact. Simple as that. The kind of problems that I will only ever be called to solve are going to be relatively simple ones which any fucker with half a brain between their ears will be able to figure out.
There ain't nothing I got that would take very much time to pass on to someone else. No great skills, no in depth knowledge...of anything. OK I might not have to wear a suit to work and to really answer to anyone, and we all might have a laugh in our own cocoon like worlds as we sit there day after day in the office, but that is as far as it goes. I really have not got that much in terms of real value in the capitalist labour market economy that we exist in. Some people such as our landlord exist and thrive, we merely exist. They have done the groundwork, they have ensured that they are well protected.
And no matter how we might rant and rave about it and think the landlord is being a total bastard it simply is not going to make a blind bit of different. We might console ourselves with some vain attempt at feeling a moral superiority by saying to ourselves that we would never behave in the way that our landlord is behaving but that is a load of old bullshit because the fact of the matter is that we just have not had the opportunity. And never will. We are what we are and in this context what we are is just a small little book company trying our best to sell a few books and take our cut from it, anything more than that and we are simply at the mercy of forces that we cannot control. That is a fact. There is no use getting angry with other people about it.
When something comes along that might call our whole existence as a small book company into question it is nothing personal. People are just doing what they have to do with the means they have before them. In this case the landlord knows that under the lease we have to replace the boiler and as far as they are concerned replace the the boiler we will. No favours necessary, it is all there in black and white. Protected by law. Rage and frustration on my part is more to do with seething irritation over my impotence to effect things of any weight in this world. I should get over it, take what comes with dignity and do whatever it is I have to do to ensure that I do not end up behaving in way I might think is perfectly justified and correct at the time but which years later will only stand as something over which I will feel little more than acute embarrassment and regret.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Staring at the Wet Green Grass
Here we are, 8.30 on a Saturday mornin'. Grey skies and plenty of rain falling down. Pretty cold but not too bad. London livin'. There aint much chance of there being any sun today that's for sure- it's gonna be pretty relentless as far as shit weather is concerned. Don't think it matters much though, got Maria Muldaur on the system and her Dylan covers album is a pretty damn fine release I have to say. Something about it which makes me think she understands these Dylan songs on quite a deep level, maybe even better than Bob himself. After all even though Bob wrote them at the end of the day he is only a conduit, as I am sure he will be the first to admit. Her interpretations of them feel live, like the way Bob would play a la Never Ending Tour and there can be no better compliment than that.
Think it's gonna be a bits an' pieces kind of today with nothing big on the horizon. There had been the faint possibility of me going down to Wales this weekend with my old friends Richard & Bruce (who was coming over from Greece for the weekend to see his sick mother) but they haven't called so that means that either they haven't got it together or they have decided they would prefer to go down without me. Kind of relieved really. Thinking about the prospect of going down to Wales in the week only brought on feelings of tension. And let's face it, when the weather is like this the last people who are going to cheer you up are the Welsh. Not that I can complain about them too much of course since I was born in Cardiff way back when in the distant yonder. '62 to be exact. My Daddy's Welsh born as well but as far as me Ma is concerned she comes from Cumbria, land of the lakes and the ancient rocks.
If we had made the trip then me and Rick would have visited old friends who still live down there in South Wales, whilst Brustus visited his mum, but to be honest (and it is painful I know) I just don't think I would have had that much to say to them. The old friends that is. They have their opinions about things and in many respects they regard a place like London as little more than a big city of evil. Which of course it is, but the point is that it is also so much more besides...so very much more. Yeah, it would have just been a couple of days sittin' there and listening to other people speak, voicing their opinions about this and that. Opinions I am familiar with and which I can safely predict will not have changed much since when I last them which was a few years ago now. Could be wrong of course, no one is always right that's for sure. But I don't think so.
Anyway all that was wrote above was done this morning. When it was raining. Mid-afternoon now and the weather has cleared up, even a bit of blue sky. So much for my earlier certainty that the rain was going to be here all day. Done a few things since this morning. Went down to Borough Market pretty much right after I finished writing those paragraphs above. Tamdin had asked me to get some belly pork from our favourite butchers down there. So I took the tube and got off at Bank and walked through subway that connects Bank and Monument stations. Love that piece of enginnering I have to say, the labyrinth walkways, escalators, platforms and stairs lurking beneath the ground. You could stay down there for hours. Just wanderin'. It was still raining when I walked across London Bridge and descended into Borough Market. Not as busy as usual because of the shitty weather. Bought the belly pork and also bought a pork pie which I thought would be nice to give to my dad as a belated birthday present, I'll get him a nice bottle of whiskey from Oddbins later so hopefully that and the pie will go down well when I see him tomorrow. His birthday was back in Jan when I was in Asia.
After I bought the meat I thought briefly of walking along the South Bank and into town but then decided against it. No point really, had nothing that I wanted and I would have only ended up feeling tired. Just went back across the bridge and up King William Street to get the tube back to Woodford from Bank. Whilst I was on the tube Richard called me on my mobile to see if I was still up for going down to Wales. Apparently Brustus had only arrived from Greece at 4am so they were running late. On top of that he himself had only just returned to London from a week in Portugal the day before. Told him that I wasn't up to it. Told him I had thought about it earlier in the week and had realised that the fires of enthusiasm for a trip down to Wales were not burning brightly enough for me to make the effort to actually go. Guess it looked good from a distance but then the closer it got the less attractive the whole thing apeared to be. Rick didn't seem to mind, in fact he might even have been quite happy that I wasn't going to be around. We left it that we would meet up town sometime in the next few weeks. Drop eachother an e and go from there. That usually translates into it being a couple of months before we get it together. Told him to say hello to Brustus for me and that was that.
Late morning by the time I got back to the house. Came in and made myself a cup of tea then did a bit of messing about on the laptop for an hour or so before heading out again. This time I took the car and I was out on the search for a replacement plug for the sink in the bathroom, that and the fact I and also looking for a plastic container with a screw cap that would be able to contain around 20-25 litres of liquid. Tamdin was after one of these in which to put some Tibetan chang that she was in the process of brewing up for the Tibetan new year part next weekend.
First I went down to B&Q in Beckton to try my luck there but completely drew a blank. No plugs, no containers. I was suprised that they didn;t even have a plug replacment for the sink, and more than a little a disappointed as well I have to admit. But that was how it was. Then I came back along the North Circular to Halfords in Chingford thinking they might sell plastic containers but apart from 5 litre plastic petrol cans they had fuck all. Turning out to be not as simple as I thought it was gonna be. By this time it was past one o'clock and I was beginning to feel pretty hungry. I'd only had a couple of pieces of toast all mornin'.
Decided to next try Homebase in Walthamstow and there I was able to find the right kind of sink plug that I was looking for. Relief! Cost a tenner which I paid for on my credito card, feeling pretty happy that I found it as I was beginning to worry it was going to be one of those fuckin' things that would prove to be incredibly difficult to find for some weird inexplicable reason. No water containers in Homebase though. Ended walking down Wood Street in Walthamstow and trying a couple of hardware shops there. and was finally pointed in the direction of Briggs, a camping shop further down Forest Road. First shop I went to on Wood Street had nothing like what I was lookin' for but the woman in there was kind and helpful. From her I went to another store further down the road and it was from there that I got the advice to go to Briggs. Walking down Wood Street and lookin' about me made me wonder how those businesses survived. It looked kind of dead, thoroughly dead in fact, but then again I guess that looks can be deceptive. Quite a few places I remembered from years ago were now deserted and shut up. The whole scene made me worry for the people who still had to try and cut a livin' there. Those folks were a thousand miles from the City and the riches it was possible to earn there that was for sure. That was London for ya.
Got a couple of rank tasting veggie pastys from Percy Ingles (a notorious east London baker) which I ate in the car before driving down to Briggs on Forest Road. Walking into Briggs I had one of those rare magic moments where I found exactly what I was looking for. The place was a bit throwback to a different time but the important point was that it had what I wanted when no place under the sun looked like coming up with the goods. A few minutes later I was ten quid poorer but nevertheless I was very happy. Tamdin was going to be impressed I was confident of that. She was not going to have more problems as far as the chang was concerned that was for sure.
So done all that today as wrote above and now it is 3.30 pm. Afternoon weather still bright but not as much blue sky as there was before. Think I need to go out and buy my dad's whiskey and then maybe walk down to Waitrose to get some food to eat tonight. Easy night tonight as far as the old cooking is concerned. Pizza in other words.
Early evenin' now. Been out got my pizza and the whiskey for my dad. Pizza: Waitrose pepperoni. Whiskey: Arran 10 yr old malt. It's good sometimes to walk down to South Woodford from Woodford rather than always just going in the car. Get to see things from a different perspective. Exercise as well. Walking down there I looked out across to the east over the bottom of the Roding Valley towards Chigwell and I kind of got a hint of the longer, lighter days coming along. Don't know what it was, just an intimation in the way the clouds had aligned themselves on the horizon I guess, well something like that. Love that walk, Woodford to South Woodford and then back again.
Drizzling again and I think that weather wise it is going to be a pretty shitty evenin'. Just as well I'm staying in. Think I'll do some meditation soon and then have a couple of beers before my pizza. What a life! What a wonderful dream life! Really, I feel so lucky to be able to live the life I do. So precious. So wonderful. Ok, maybe not all the time am I able to think like that but when I do I know it is right. Fuckin' right on. All things must pass however and time relentlessly moves forward...
Thinking about time now because I'm reading a book called "Rubicon" which is basically a history of the Roman Republic when the Roman Empire was at it's height. Quite amazing stuff. A formidable bunch of total bastards is what the Romans were there ain't no mistake about that. Now they are just an echo in history, a distant echo, albeit a pretty damn loud one. So much of them that was flesh and blood and of extreme importance at the time is now simply not known and even the most skillful of scholars and historians of today can only try and piece things together.
Late evenin' and this is the last that is going to get wrote before it is all posted up. Writing this whilst casting my ear over my latest playlist which happens to be a compilation of Led Zeppelin's greatest moments and of course in that regard there are many! Oh yeah, hammer of the gods and all that. Hey, here is the tracklist so you can see what your missing -
Nobody's Fault But Mine from Unledded - Page & Plant
29 Palms from Fate of Nations - Robert Plant
Nobody's Fault But Mine from Presence - Led Zeppelin
Mighty Rearranger from Mighty Rearranger - Robert Plant & Strange Sensation
Bron-Yr-Aur from Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin
Blue Train from Walking Into Clarksdale - Page & Plant
- well those are the first six but there are 14 in total which I think is a pretty good number to have on any playlist. I'm sure that if you are familiar with the material you will get my drift, you will see how utterly brilliant the music is and how if you have any sense at all you will just want to go out and get it, or if you have the cds..burn one for yourself. Not convinced? well how about the next haf doz for ya -
That's the Way from Unledded - Page & Plant
What is What Should Never Be from Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
Mornin' Dew from Dreamland - Robert Plant
- and on it goes...
Think it's gonna be a bits an' pieces kind of today with nothing big on the horizon. There had been the faint possibility of me going down to Wales this weekend with my old friends Richard & Bruce (who was coming over from Greece for the weekend to see his sick mother) but they haven't called so that means that either they haven't got it together or they have decided they would prefer to go down without me. Kind of relieved really. Thinking about the prospect of going down to Wales in the week only brought on feelings of tension. And let's face it, when the weather is like this the last people who are going to cheer you up are the Welsh. Not that I can complain about them too much of course since I was born in Cardiff way back when in the distant yonder. '62 to be exact. My Daddy's Welsh born as well but as far as me Ma is concerned she comes from Cumbria, land of the lakes and the ancient rocks.
If we had made the trip then me and Rick would have visited old friends who still live down there in South Wales, whilst Brustus visited his mum, but to be honest (and it is painful I know) I just don't think I would have had that much to say to them. The old friends that is. They have their opinions about things and in many respects they regard a place like London as little more than a big city of evil. Which of course it is, but the point is that it is also so much more besides...so very much more. Yeah, it would have just been a couple of days sittin' there and listening to other people speak, voicing their opinions about this and that. Opinions I am familiar with and which I can safely predict will not have changed much since when I last them which was a few years ago now. Could be wrong of course, no one is always right that's for sure. But I don't think so.
Anyway all that was wrote above was done this morning. When it was raining. Mid-afternoon now and the weather has cleared up, even a bit of blue sky. So much for my earlier certainty that the rain was going to be here all day. Done a few things since this morning. Went down to Borough Market pretty much right after I finished writing those paragraphs above. Tamdin had asked me to get some belly pork from our favourite butchers down there. So I took the tube and got off at Bank and walked through subway that connects Bank and Monument stations. Love that piece of enginnering I have to say, the labyrinth walkways, escalators, platforms and stairs lurking beneath the ground. You could stay down there for hours. Just wanderin'. It was still raining when I walked across London Bridge and descended into Borough Market. Not as busy as usual because of the shitty weather. Bought the belly pork and also bought a pork pie which I thought would be nice to give to my dad as a belated birthday present, I'll get him a nice bottle of whiskey from Oddbins later so hopefully that and the pie will go down well when I see him tomorrow. His birthday was back in Jan when I was in Asia.
After I bought the meat I thought briefly of walking along the South Bank and into town but then decided against it. No point really, had nothing that I wanted and I would have only ended up feeling tired. Just went back across the bridge and up King William Street to get the tube back to Woodford from Bank. Whilst I was on the tube Richard called me on my mobile to see if I was still up for going down to Wales. Apparently Brustus had only arrived from Greece at 4am so they were running late. On top of that he himself had only just returned to London from a week in Portugal the day before. Told him that I wasn't up to it. Told him I had thought about it earlier in the week and had realised that the fires of enthusiasm for a trip down to Wales were not burning brightly enough for me to make the effort to actually go. Guess it looked good from a distance but then the closer it got the less attractive the whole thing apeared to be. Rick didn't seem to mind, in fact he might even have been quite happy that I wasn't going to be around. We left it that we would meet up town sometime in the next few weeks. Drop eachother an e and go from there. That usually translates into it being a couple of months before we get it together. Told him to say hello to Brustus for me and that was that.
Late morning by the time I got back to the house. Came in and made myself a cup of tea then did a bit of messing about on the laptop for an hour or so before heading out again. This time I took the car and I was out on the search for a replacement plug for the sink in the bathroom, that and the fact I and also looking for a plastic container with a screw cap that would be able to contain around 20-25 litres of liquid. Tamdin was after one of these in which to put some Tibetan chang that she was in the process of brewing up for the Tibetan new year part next weekend.
First I went down to B&Q in Beckton to try my luck there but completely drew a blank. No plugs, no containers. I was suprised that they didn;t even have a plug replacment for the sink, and more than a little a disappointed as well I have to admit. But that was how it was. Then I came back along the North Circular to Halfords in Chingford thinking they might sell plastic containers but apart from 5 litre plastic petrol cans they had fuck all. Turning out to be not as simple as I thought it was gonna be. By this time it was past one o'clock and I was beginning to feel pretty hungry. I'd only had a couple of pieces of toast all mornin'.
Decided to next try Homebase in Walthamstow and there I was able to find the right kind of sink plug that I was looking for. Relief! Cost a tenner which I paid for on my credito card, feeling pretty happy that I found it as I was beginning to worry it was going to be one of those fuckin' things that would prove to be incredibly difficult to find for some weird inexplicable reason. No water containers in Homebase though. Ended walking down Wood Street in Walthamstow and trying a couple of hardware shops there. and was finally pointed in the direction of Briggs, a camping shop further down Forest Road. First shop I went to on Wood Street had nothing like what I was lookin' for but the woman in there was kind and helpful. From her I went to another store further down the road and it was from there that I got the advice to go to Briggs. Walking down Wood Street and lookin' about me made me wonder how those businesses survived. It looked kind of dead, thoroughly dead in fact, but then again I guess that looks can be deceptive. Quite a few places I remembered from years ago were now deserted and shut up. The whole scene made me worry for the people who still had to try and cut a livin' there. Those folks were a thousand miles from the City and the riches it was possible to earn there that was for sure. That was London for ya.
Got a couple of rank tasting veggie pastys from Percy Ingles (a notorious east London baker) which I ate in the car before driving down to Briggs on Forest Road. Walking into Briggs I had one of those rare magic moments where I found exactly what I was looking for. The place was a bit throwback to a different time but the important point was that it had what I wanted when no place under the sun looked like coming up with the goods. A few minutes later I was ten quid poorer but nevertheless I was very happy. Tamdin was going to be impressed I was confident of that. She was not going to have more problems as far as the chang was concerned that was for sure.
So done all that today as wrote above and now it is 3.30 pm. Afternoon weather still bright but not as much blue sky as there was before. Think I need to go out and buy my dad's whiskey and then maybe walk down to Waitrose to get some food to eat tonight. Easy night tonight as far as the old cooking is concerned. Pizza in other words.
Early evenin' now. Been out got my pizza and the whiskey for my dad. Pizza: Waitrose pepperoni. Whiskey: Arran 10 yr old malt. It's good sometimes to walk down to South Woodford from Woodford rather than always just going in the car. Get to see things from a different perspective. Exercise as well. Walking down there I looked out across to the east over the bottom of the Roding Valley towards Chigwell and I kind of got a hint of the longer, lighter days coming along. Don't know what it was, just an intimation in the way the clouds had aligned themselves on the horizon I guess, well something like that. Love that walk, Woodford to South Woodford and then back again.
Drizzling again and I think that weather wise it is going to be a pretty shitty evenin'. Just as well I'm staying in. Think I'll do some meditation soon and then have a couple of beers before my pizza. What a life! What a wonderful dream life! Really, I feel so lucky to be able to live the life I do. So precious. So wonderful. Ok, maybe not all the time am I able to think like that but when I do I know it is right. Fuckin' right on. All things must pass however and time relentlessly moves forward...
Thinking about time now because I'm reading a book called "Rubicon" which is basically a history of the Roman Republic when the Roman Empire was at it's height. Quite amazing stuff. A formidable bunch of total bastards is what the Romans were there ain't no mistake about that. Now they are just an echo in history, a distant echo, albeit a pretty damn loud one. So much of them that was flesh and blood and of extreme importance at the time is now simply not known and even the most skillful of scholars and historians of today can only try and piece things together.
Late evenin' and this is the last that is going to get wrote before it is all posted up. Writing this whilst casting my ear over my latest playlist which happens to be a compilation of Led Zeppelin's greatest moments and of course in that regard there are many! Oh yeah, hammer of the gods and all that. Hey, here is the tracklist so you can see what your missing -
Nobody's Fault But Mine from Unledded - Page & Plant
29 Palms from Fate of Nations - Robert Plant
Nobody's Fault But Mine from Presence - Led Zeppelin
Mighty Rearranger from Mighty Rearranger - Robert Plant & Strange Sensation
Bron-Yr-Aur from Physical Graffiti - Led Zeppelin
Blue Train from Walking Into Clarksdale - Page & Plant
- well those are the first six but there are 14 in total which I think is a pretty good number to have on any playlist. I'm sure that if you are familiar with the material you will get my drift, you will see how utterly brilliant the music is and how if you have any sense at all you will just want to go out and get it, or if you have the cds..burn one for yourself. Not convinced? well how about the next haf doz for ya -
That's the Way from Unledded - Page & Plant
What is What Should Never Be from Led Zeppelin II - Led Zeppelin
Mornin' Dew from Dreamland - Robert Plant
- and on it goes...
Friday, February 09, 2007
Early Mornin' / Middle Evenin'
6.40 am London time. A poor night's sleep. Again. Second night in a row. Funny how things go in phases. Nothing quite like lying in bed in the dark with thoughts swimming around your head, repetitive thoughts that get sillier and sillier every time they re-present themselves. All this began today at 5.10 am when I opened my eyes, and after an hour or so of it I'd had enough. And so here I am. Actually I think the reason why I got up is because of indigestion. Last night I had a mix of kidney beans and chickpeas in a kind of spinach curry soup, and boy have they made their presence felt over the last few hours! Things have been a bit blowy to say the least. Have to watch that recipe in future. No repeats.
Well, the short trip I made out to India and Nepal seems quite far away now I have to say. In fact we are still within the first 10 days of Feb and it feels like the dark weather has gone on forever. Don't know what we can do about this. Think I have mentioned before that sometimes it feels that pushing down the barriers in life and making things change requires daunting effort. And anyway, what is it exactly I want to change? Well sometimes it would be nice to live somewhere warmer and nicer than London at least. But where I have no idea. In general those thoughts don't last that long anyway. London is great for me most of the time. The Capitol. Awesome city, make no mistake.
Need to do things to the house. Keep it all in order. Those kind of things always make me feel stressful. Maybe because I am useless when it comes to fixing things. I put it down to having a small pair of hands and the fact that when I was a kid and watched my dad have a crack at odd jobs there was always an overriding tension that he was going to cock it up and therefore everything was directed soley towards getting the job done and out of the way as quickly as possible so that he could then forget about it. There was no joy in the process for him in other words, no space created in his mind to try to take it in and learn. And all that anxiety when it comes to doing anything remotely useful and practical has certainly been passed down to me. I know how to change a lightbulb but much else beyond that can become a bit challenging. Unless it is a flat pack from Ikea of course. For some reason I have always scored a high success rate with those kind of things, mainly because I know that to have any chance of doing it right you have to follow the instructions exactly, without any deviation from the diagrams whatsoever. No, it is more when it comes to creativity and imagination with things practical that I have a problem. If things go wrong I would far rather adapt and live with them rather than spend the time working out what it is that needs to be put right. This is because I have almost no doubt in my mind that whatever I try to do to try to solve it will only end in failure. Depressing. Defeatist. I know.
Anyway at the moment there is a small leak under a couple of tiles in the kitchen which I think is coming from the dishwasher. The best way for me to find whether this is correct or not is to look under the boards when I trurn the dishwasher on. If it is then I guess it is just a simple case of calling up the insurance and getting someone around to fix it. That's what we pay the money for after all. There is probably going to be no chance of me figuring it out myself so I might as well not even try. That is just a small example of what I mean from what I wrote above.
There are other things as well, things I can't necessarily think of at the moment but believe they are lurking around somewhere. Guess in general the place needs a bit of a face lift. The house that is. We have been thinking for a while of ripping out the bolier and hot air heating system and putting in central heating, but that is major major job and will costs thousands of pounds. Certainly there will be nothing I would be able to contribute besides helping to bank roll it. But so what? We ain't got debts, we ain't got kids or nuthin' like that. It might be good though, to clear out the old heating system, knock down the shaft, thus creating more living space, and then filling it with a new load of furniture! Stuff we can go out and buy! Spend hours in places like Bluewater and Lakeside checking out what we want. Don't sound too bad at all actually.
That will make me feel that I am getting things done, moving along in life. Otherwise I hate that feeling of living day in day out with the same old things around, in the same old arrangements. Don't know what it is about it that gets to me. Need to shake things about it. Fear it might be. Mabye it is because I am so ill equipped to tinker with things and make minor adjustments. I just sit there instead and worry that I am about to let things go...something like that anyway. Probably not explaining it that well. It is a tricky one for me to describe with any degree of coherence as it is close to trying to my describe creature habits. The shell of living, the shell of life. Gettin' inside my shell, having a poke around and seeing what it is that makes me tick.
Guess I could have got up and done some meditation this morning but I have not been in the mood to meditate for a while now. Just got no inspiration. I know I should and that it probably will at the very least not do me any harm but I just can't bring myself to the cushion. Even when I am lying there in bed in the dark with my eyes wide open I still find it almost impossible to break out of it and go and sit in the meditation room. Maybe it is because even if sleep has disappeared the bed is still nice and warm. Lazy in other words. I'm getting lazy. Maybe always have been. If that is the case there can never be any comeback if later in life I end up walking through the valley of regrets. No comeback at all. The opportunity was there and I just didn't take it. Only myself to blame in such situations. Well it all might just come back. The inspiration to sit that is. After all it was not so long ago that I was enjoyed an extended spell of good sits on the cushion, maybe once the lighter, warmer weather comes along so will my enthusiasm for meditation return. And I don't think there is any doubt that the warmer weather will appear at some point as 2007 is predicted to be another warm year.
Seems to be a western obsession: global warming and what to do about it. Personally I don't see many people in the east being that unduly worried about it. They just get on with doing things. Livin' life. At the end of the day, whenever the shake out happens there will be some who make it and some who won't. It is not as if there are not enough people in the world anyway. It is quite probable that something mighty is rumbling away in the distance but I think it is safe to say there is not much we can do about it now. Maybe there would have been a couple of hundred years ago if we had thought things through before the industrial revolution and been fully aware of the potential consequences of our new found power over nature. But we didn't, we just got on with it. And that is simply because people at that time did not have the luxury to wait around. That is the story of mankind really, battling for comfort on this planet in virtually the middle of nowehere, so what do you expect if we fuck things up? Big deal. We are not gods, we are not enlightened. Sure with hindsight we might have done things different but the fact it we didn't and so here we are, in this current position, whatever it is.
Wow, what a rant above! Must have had the early mornin' blues I guess. Anyway it is evening now so what was wrote up till this paragraph now seems a long way behind me. Just downloaded an album I nearly bought today on CD when I was in HMV on Oxford Street. Better going for the download though as it has turned out to half the price. Album in question? "Heart of Mine: The Love Songs of Bob Dylan" by Maria Muldaur. Good? You bet. Since I'm a big Bob Dylan fan I've have had my eyes on this release for a couple of months now. Just getting into all this download stuff and I think that if I ain't careful I could end up spending quite a bit of dough. It's just so damn easy to buy stuff on itunes, especially once they have your credit card.
This afternoon ended going into town. Well I had to go to Waterloo to see off Tamdin who has now gone to Brussels for six days work. After that I walked into the West End where after a bit of searching I bought "No Quarter" by Page & Plant (surprisingly difficult to find and I guess in retrospect it would have been easier to download it, but there you go), "Fate of Nations" by Robert Plant (there was some indecision over this particular purchase on my part as I know it is coming out in a couple of months in a remastered edition with extra tracks, but it was only 8 quid so what the fuck) and finally the remastered, expanded edition of John Martyn's "Inside Out" (now this one I do have the old edition but that can now go down the charity shop first thing tomorrow mornin'). So there you go, another successful top-up for my music habit.
London was cold and grey today that there was no doubt about. People had their heads down most of the time but that didn't stop me from seeing a few people in need of help as well. Seeing them as in observing them as I was walking past. There was the young man in HMV who was walking down the ailes and taking to himself for a start. Where was his head at? At first I just assumed he was talkin' on his mobile, having a rant at someone until I realised that just was not the case at all. Poor guy. And another chap talking to himself on Waterloo station. Trying to light a fag, he looked like he was 100 years old. So many people in London that make you think the whole thing is just gonna come crashing down. And yet...what do I do, what can I do to help them? Not much, really not much. It is all so fast, people walk fast and I walk fast also, up and down the stairs and into the tube barely getting to look at the people as they pass me by. It's a race. Only the strong will survive. That is London. Somewhere in the city people are making millions but they will never come close to the life the vast majority have to live in order to get by. Extremes. Too many have too little and a fair number just fall right out the bottom.
Got out of town as soon as could really. Didn't fancy hanging around so after picking up the music I wanted I was on my way back east again. Returned by 5 and set about clearing things and putting a few things in order. Compulsive cleaner is what I guess you could call me despite the fact I know nothing of general fix-it things as mentioned in quite some detail above.
Now getting on into the evening. Got Page & Plant playing next to me. Good stuff, the unledded version of the "Physical Graffiti" classic "Kashmir". Spent a lot of time over the last two or three weeks or so playing around with my ipod. Creating and then tweaking no end of playlists. Latest one is a compilation of some latter Rolling Stones tracks called "Rocky Stones". S'ppose the title speaks for itself. Main albums I have mined being "A Bigger Bang", "Steel Wheels", "Voodoo Lounge", "Bridges to Babylon" and pits and pieces from some of their other stuff as well. Funny thing, playlists. Brings me right back to the early days of tape compilations in many respects I have to admit, although of course with ipods things are infinitely more flexible. Still, guess I need to get a grip on things at some point though and stop spending so much time and money on the whole damn business.
That's it. Time to post an' end this blog...well, for today at least.
Well, the short trip I made out to India and Nepal seems quite far away now I have to say. In fact we are still within the first 10 days of Feb and it feels like the dark weather has gone on forever. Don't know what we can do about this. Think I have mentioned before that sometimes it feels that pushing down the barriers in life and making things change requires daunting effort. And anyway, what is it exactly I want to change? Well sometimes it would be nice to live somewhere warmer and nicer than London at least. But where I have no idea. In general those thoughts don't last that long anyway. London is great for me most of the time. The Capitol. Awesome city, make no mistake.
Need to do things to the house. Keep it all in order. Those kind of things always make me feel stressful. Maybe because I am useless when it comes to fixing things. I put it down to having a small pair of hands and the fact that when I was a kid and watched my dad have a crack at odd jobs there was always an overriding tension that he was going to cock it up and therefore everything was directed soley towards getting the job done and out of the way as quickly as possible so that he could then forget about it. There was no joy in the process for him in other words, no space created in his mind to try to take it in and learn. And all that anxiety when it comes to doing anything remotely useful and practical has certainly been passed down to me. I know how to change a lightbulb but much else beyond that can become a bit challenging. Unless it is a flat pack from Ikea of course. For some reason I have always scored a high success rate with those kind of things, mainly because I know that to have any chance of doing it right you have to follow the instructions exactly, without any deviation from the diagrams whatsoever. No, it is more when it comes to creativity and imagination with things practical that I have a problem. If things go wrong I would far rather adapt and live with them rather than spend the time working out what it is that needs to be put right. This is because I have almost no doubt in my mind that whatever I try to do to try to solve it will only end in failure. Depressing. Defeatist. I know.
Anyway at the moment there is a small leak under a couple of tiles in the kitchen which I think is coming from the dishwasher. The best way for me to find whether this is correct or not is to look under the boards when I trurn the dishwasher on. If it is then I guess it is just a simple case of calling up the insurance and getting someone around to fix it. That's what we pay the money for after all. There is probably going to be no chance of me figuring it out myself so I might as well not even try. That is just a small example of what I mean from what I wrote above.
There are other things as well, things I can't necessarily think of at the moment but believe they are lurking around somewhere. Guess in general the place needs a bit of a face lift. The house that is. We have been thinking for a while of ripping out the bolier and hot air heating system and putting in central heating, but that is major major job and will costs thousands of pounds. Certainly there will be nothing I would be able to contribute besides helping to bank roll it. But so what? We ain't got debts, we ain't got kids or nuthin' like that. It might be good though, to clear out the old heating system, knock down the shaft, thus creating more living space, and then filling it with a new load of furniture! Stuff we can go out and buy! Spend hours in places like Bluewater and Lakeside checking out what we want. Don't sound too bad at all actually.
That will make me feel that I am getting things done, moving along in life. Otherwise I hate that feeling of living day in day out with the same old things around, in the same old arrangements. Don't know what it is about it that gets to me. Need to shake things about it. Fear it might be. Mabye it is because I am so ill equipped to tinker with things and make minor adjustments. I just sit there instead and worry that I am about to let things go...something like that anyway. Probably not explaining it that well. It is a tricky one for me to describe with any degree of coherence as it is close to trying to my describe creature habits. The shell of living, the shell of life. Gettin' inside my shell, having a poke around and seeing what it is that makes me tick.
Guess I could have got up and done some meditation this morning but I have not been in the mood to meditate for a while now. Just got no inspiration. I know I should and that it probably will at the very least not do me any harm but I just can't bring myself to the cushion. Even when I am lying there in bed in the dark with my eyes wide open I still find it almost impossible to break out of it and go and sit in the meditation room. Maybe it is because even if sleep has disappeared the bed is still nice and warm. Lazy in other words. I'm getting lazy. Maybe always have been. If that is the case there can never be any comeback if later in life I end up walking through the valley of regrets. No comeback at all. The opportunity was there and I just didn't take it. Only myself to blame in such situations. Well it all might just come back. The inspiration to sit that is. After all it was not so long ago that I was enjoyed an extended spell of good sits on the cushion, maybe once the lighter, warmer weather comes along so will my enthusiasm for meditation return. And I don't think there is any doubt that the warmer weather will appear at some point as 2007 is predicted to be another warm year.
Seems to be a western obsession: global warming and what to do about it. Personally I don't see many people in the east being that unduly worried about it. They just get on with doing things. Livin' life. At the end of the day, whenever the shake out happens there will be some who make it and some who won't. It is not as if there are not enough people in the world anyway. It is quite probable that something mighty is rumbling away in the distance but I think it is safe to say there is not much we can do about it now. Maybe there would have been a couple of hundred years ago if we had thought things through before the industrial revolution and been fully aware of the potential consequences of our new found power over nature. But we didn't, we just got on with it. And that is simply because people at that time did not have the luxury to wait around. That is the story of mankind really, battling for comfort on this planet in virtually the middle of nowehere, so what do you expect if we fuck things up? Big deal. We are not gods, we are not enlightened. Sure with hindsight we might have done things different but the fact it we didn't and so here we are, in this current position, whatever it is.
Wow, what a rant above! Must have had the early mornin' blues I guess. Anyway it is evening now so what was wrote up till this paragraph now seems a long way behind me. Just downloaded an album I nearly bought today on CD when I was in HMV on Oxford Street. Better going for the download though as it has turned out to half the price. Album in question? "Heart of Mine: The Love Songs of Bob Dylan" by Maria Muldaur. Good? You bet. Since I'm a big Bob Dylan fan I've have had my eyes on this release for a couple of months now. Just getting into all this download stuff and I think that if I ain't careful I could end up spending quite a bit of dough. It's just so damn easy to buy stuff on itunes, especially once they have your credit card.
This afternoon ended going into town. Well I had to go to Waterloo to see off Tamdin who has now gone to Brussels for six days work. After that I walked into the West End where after a bit of searching I bought "No Quarter" by Page & Plant (surprisingly difficult to find and I guess in retrospect it would have been easier to download it, but there you go), "Fate of Nations" by Robert Plant (there was some indecision over this particular purchase on my part as I know it is coming out in a couple of months in a remastered edition with extra tracks, but it was only 8 quid so what the fuck) and finally the remastered, expanded edition of John Martyn's "Inside Out" (now this one I do have the old edition but that can now go down the charity shop first thing tomorrow mornin'). So there you go, another successful top-up for my music habit.
London was cold and grey today that there was no doubt about. People had their heads down most of the time but that didn't stop me from seeing a few people in need of help as well. Seeing them as in observing them as I was walking past. There was the young man in HMV who was walking down the ailes and taking to himself for a start. Where was his head at? At first I just assumed he was talkin' on his mobile, having a rant at someone until I realised that just was not the case at all. Poor guy. And another chap talking to himself on Waterloo station. Trying to light a fag, he looked like he was 100 years old. So many people in London that make you think the whole thing is just gonna come crashing down. And yet...what do I do, what can I do to help them? Not much, really not much. It is all so fast, people walk fast and I walk fast also, up and down the stairs and into the tube barely getting to look at the people as they pass me by. It's a race. Only the strong will survive. That is London. Somewhere in the city people are making millions but they will never come close to the life the vast majority have to live in order to get by. Extremes. Too many have too little and a fair number just fall right out the bottom.
Got out of town as soon as could really. Didn't fancy hanging around so after picking up the music I wanted I was on my way back east again. Returned by 5 and set about clearing things and putting a few things in order. Compulsive cleaner is what I guess you could call me despite the fact I know nothing of general fix-it things as mentioned in quite some detail above.
Now getting on into the evening. Got Page & Plant playing next to me. Good stuff, the unledded version of the "Physical Graffiti" classic "Kashmir". Spent a lot of time over the last two or three weeks or so playing around with my ipod. Creating and then tweaking no end of playlists. Latest one is a compilation of some latter Rolling Stones tracks called "Rocky Stones". S'ppose the title speaks for itself. Main albums I have mined being "A Bigger Bang", "Steel Wheels", "Voodoo Lounge", "Bridges to Babylon" and pits and pieces from some of their other stuff as well. Funny thing, playlists. Brings me right back to the early days of tape compilations in many respects I have to admit, although of course with ipods things are infinitely more flexible. Still, guess I need to get a grip on things at some point though and stop spending so much time and money on the whole damn business.
That's it. Time to post an' end this blog...well, for today at least.
Friday, February 02, 2007
February Friday
Late friday afternoon. Just been for a swim and fought my way back through the pre-weekend traffic London style. Never gets any easier that's for sure, the traffic that is. First swim I've had for quite a long while, years in fact as far as going to the local pool is concerned. Le piscine. Don't know what it was but I was just sitting in the office this morning, looking out at the blue sky and thinkin' to myself that it would be good to go and have a swim this afternoon. An' lo and behold that is eactly what I've done. Stayed in the pool for around 45 mins and when I came out there was only one other person in there. Empty. Water, smooth as a millpond and lifeguards sitting around looking bored witless. Maybe Friday afternoon is a good time to go for a dip. Guess that kids these days don't hang around the pool like they did when I was a kid. Just ain't cool anymore. Plenty of other things to do...like lurking round in da shadows practising being thugs an' shit like that. Not true of course, they're all in front of a 'puter doin this an' that in a different reality. The windows of the pool had bullet holes in them, clearly someone had used the building for a bit of late night shooting practice. Boom baba boom. Sign of the times. One more step on the road to disintegration. Or maybe not. Otherwise it all looked OK though, so not all doom and gloom. Feeling the effects now though. Really it is the first bit of exercise I have done in quite a while, apart from walking but I guess for a lot of people that doesn't really count. For me it half counts. Maybe I will try to make it a regular thing again, get Tamdin to come along as well every time I wanna splash. We shall see.
Weather quite mild. No winter at all this year and they say it is gonna be the mildest winter on record. It is now patently obvious that things are changing weatherwise and the only question is just how far things might go. The whole thing is really too big to worry about and whatever happens there will probably be some who will survive, whenever the big shakedown comes along. I like the attitude of Mr Bhopal who comes to collect our parcels at work in his Parcelforce van. The lads in the warehouse were having a conversation with him the other day about the weather and it seemed like it was the first time that Mr Bhopal had ever heard that there was such a thing a global warming going on. His answer was that it was best not to worry and that "they will fix it", whoever they might be. Some bunch of benevolent government guys maybe, who are only out there looking after our own good. Oh yeah...like fuck. As we know the whole goddman thing is totally and utterly within the claws of the relentlessly huge and ever devouring capitalist machine and it will only stop if it ever makes sound economic sense to do so. Otherwise just forget it baby. We're in for the illusory chase after materialism ride all the way and there are powerful forces in place and upheld constantly to make sure that nothing is gonna stop us. Unless the world happens to slowly and then quickly become all but uninhabitable.
Getting back to London and I soon fall back into my old ways of thinking. And those ways go something like...oh my god it is really not going to be long before the world is going to end. Don't know why I end up feeling like this, thinking like this in London Town. It is not necessarily a negative state of mind I have to say, no, far from it in fact. It is just particular to London though, there is no doubt about that. Kind of apocalyptic I guess, but not bad! It must be because everything always seem to be travelling at maximum velocity as far as London is concerned. Traffic, people trying to cut a deal and going this and that in the process. So far that you just end up thinking that the wheels are going to fall off. Maybe it is just the part of town that I live and work in...down the old East End. I dunno. The feeling rarely goes away though. Think Peter Ackroyd said something similar in his book about the city.
Guess I need to try and get back in the routine of doing a bit more meditation, that might take some of the edge off it if I so desire the edge to be taken. Yes, meditation should bring some focus. Not that I want to make a dull routine of it of course, something that merely becomes contrived and forced. Reduced to something that I do because a voice inside my head tells me that it is something that I have to do, and so I go scampering upstairs to sit on my cushion like a good little meditator. Irrespective of the fact that I might be engaged in an activity that is little more than a complete waste of time. Need a bit more creativity than that. I'll put my hands together and rock n' roll when I know in my heart that it is now or never.
Sitting here writing... and feeling kind of hungry. Must be the effect of the swim. You know the feeling, when there is a lot of saliva in your mouth although your stomach is not necessarily empty. But you still have the craving to eat, and to eat a lot. Various things keep passing through my mind, repeating themselves in fact. Crackers, fruit, chocolate. Got up once or twice from writing all this and had a poke around to see if I can come up with anything. I have already had an apple and a cracker, a Dr Karg's organic three seed biscuit, but somehow they don't seem to have been enough. Nowhere near enough and I think I wll be up again soon to try my luck. Pitta and humous. That is it.
Gonna read thru' and post this now. It's not the best thing I've written, not by a long way, in fact quite a few people if they ever bother to wade their way through all might be quietly staggered at how shit it is, but the point is that I ain't gonna leave my blogs hanging round for weeks and weeks in the edit room as I have done throughout the course of '06. Best just to say what it is you wanna say, get it off your chest, and fire it up! Really, it don't matter much either way in the land of the Ghost Eternal where it is just me quietly hoping that I'm gonna live forever.
Weather quite mild. No winter at all this year and they say it is gonna be the mildest winter on record. It is now patently obvious that things are changing weatherwise and the only question is just how far things might go. The whole thing is really too big to worry about and whatever happens there will probably be some who will survive, whenever the big shakedown comes along. I like the attitude of Mr Bhopal who comes to collect our parcels at work in his Parcelforce van. The lads in the warehouse were having a conversation with him the other day about the weather and it seemed like it was the first time that Mr Bhopal had ever heard that there was such a thing a global warming going on. His answer was that it was best not to worry and that "they will fix it", whoever they might be. Some bunch of benevolent government guys maybe, who are only out there looking after our own good. Oh yeah...like fuck. As we know the whole goddman thing is totally and utterly within the claws of the relentlessly huge and ever devouring capitalist machine and it will only stop if it ever makes sound economic sense to do so. Otherwise just forget it baby. We're in for the illusory chase after materialism ride all the way and there are powerful forces in place and upheld constantly to make sure that nothing is gonna stop us. Unless the world happens to slowly and then quickly become all but uninhabitable.
Getting back to London and I soon fall back into my old ways of thinking. And those ways go something like...oh my god it is really not going to be long before the world is going to end. Don't know why I end up feeling like this, thinking like this in London Town. It is not necessarily a negative state of mind I have to say, no, far from it in fact. It is just particular to London though, there is no doubt about that. Kind of apocalyptic I guess, but not bad! It must be because everything always seem to be travelling at maximum velocity as far as London is concerned. Traffic, people trying to cut a deal and going this and that in the process. So far that you just end up thinking that the wheels are going to fall off. Maybe it is just the part of town that I live and work in...down the old East End. I dunno. The feeling rarely goes away though. Think Peter Ackroyd said something similar in his book about the city.
Guess I need to try and get back in the routine of doing a bit more meditation, that might take some of the edge off it if I so desire the edge to be taken. Yes, meditation should bring some focus. Not that I want to make a dull routine of it of course, something that merely becomes contrived and forced. Reduced to something that I do because a voice inside my head tells me that it is something that I have to do, and so I go scampering upstairs to sit on my cushion like a good little meditator. Irrespective of the fact that I might be engaged in an activity that is little more than a complete waste of time. Need a bit more creativity than that. I'll put my hands together and rock n' roll when I know in my heart that it is now or never.
Sitting here writing... and feeling kind of hungry. Must be the effect of the swim. You know the feeling, when there is a lot of saliva in your mouth although your stomach is not necessarily empty. But you still have the craving to eat, and to eat a lot. Various things keep passing through my mind, repeating themselves in fact. Crackers, fruit, chocolate. Got up once or twice from writing all this and had a poke around to see if I can come up with anything. I have already had an apple and a cracker, a Dr Karg's organic three seed biscuit, but somehow they don't seem to have been enough. Nowhere near enough and I think I wll be up again soon to try my luck. Pitta and humous. That is it.
Gonna read thru' and post this now. It's not the best thing I've written, not by a long way, in fact quite a few people if they ever bother to wade their way through all might be quietly staggered at how shit it is, but the point is that I ain't gonna leave my blogs hanging round for weeks and weeks in the edit room as I have done throughout the course of '06. Best just to say what it is you wanna say, get it off your chest, and fire it up! Really, it don't matter much either way in the land of the Ghost Eternal where it is just me quietly hoping that I'm gonna live forever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)