Life Less Literary |
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A small selection of the many things that have happened to Dan Sumption, his family, friends and colleagues
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Saturday, March 30, 2002
Finished He Kills Coppers by Jake Arnott last night - which, considering I started it pretty late the night before, isn't bad going. For once the "a book that you can't put down" blurb on the front was spot on. And just as interesting were reading the author's comments on Amazon and in The Guardian this morning. It's loosely another crime novel (yeah, I keep telling myself I'm gonna read something different - want to dip into some M John Harrison, but right now it feels too rich - a bit like the chocolate cake I plan on making tomorrow - every sentence is so laden with beauty that I'd be hard pressed to read a whole page at a time). It has a slight feel of Ellroy about it - the spiralling narrative told from the perspective of 3 characters, newspaper clippings to telescope parts of the story (though not with such annoying frequency as Ellroy) and even a Dudley Smith-style bent uber-copper in the person of freemason George Mooney. The 3 (or even 4) character thing is interesting, in that 2 are written in the first person and the others in third person - the kind of thing I never normally notice in a novel but here it worked really well and even contributed to the plot. Anyway, the whole thing, as the title implies, centres around a cop killing. Later on in the novel the killer's name becomes a chant at football games and later anarchist demos used to antagonise the police, and I thought immediately of the Chumbawamba song Happiness Is Just A Chant Away featuring the Krsna-like "Harry Roberts, Harry Roberts, Roberts Roberts, Harry Harry" (wish I knew what happened to my copy of Shhh). As I found out afterwards, the book was based upon the real story of the Travis Bickle-like Harry Roberts (strange, almost all of the search results I got for Harry Roberts were actually reviews of He Kills Coppers), and there was indeed a Roberts chant matching the one in the book not the Chumbawamba version (the chant inspired the title - sung to the tune of London Bridge is Falling Down: "Harry Roberts is our friend, is our friend, is our friend, Harry Roberts is our friend, he kills coppers"). And the documentary side of the book goes much further: I was unsure how "genuine" the bits set in the 60s and early 70s were - they certainly rang true to me, but then I was never around in 1966 and was only 2 in 1971. But the mix of ingredients was intoxicating, as colourful and shiny as a London bus from a 1960s film: the police, sometimes bent, shot through with a masonic streak, but basically a lot more human than today's bunch (the subplot of the entire story is the transformation of the police force from Z-Cars style local bobbies to tactical political units led by theoreticians). The Flying Squad and the SPG. The London gangs and their manors - Maltese-run clip joints in Soho. The hippies in Ladbroke Grove and the start of the alternative press. The World Cup (of course). Pinball-playing mods. Early 70s skinhead football violence, Clockwork Orange bowler-hatted Chelsea fan inciting a riot. Moving forward to 1985 the book entered a world I knew well, and I can't fault any of the detail there. It was like a trip down memory lane for me - CND holding hands around missile bases (I was there!), Class War anarchists and their tabloid view of life from the other side (the bit about the Page 3 Hospitalised Copper fuelled old memories: "BRIXTON PC BASIL BASTARD BASHED ON THE BONCE BY A BOULDER IN THE BLOODY BATTLE OF THE BARRIER BLOCK"). South London squats, anti-everythingism, sinks full of washing up. Stonehenge and the Battle of the Beanfield. It's incredible that Arnott managed to squeeze in so many iconic historical references without them feeling forced or unnecessary. Always makes a book more fun, being able to place yourself somewhere on the periphery of the action. I'm sure there was lots more I intended to say. Bottom line: fucking excellent book. A slight feel of something lacking, a bit of hollowness, but that's not really a handicap; if anything it makes the book easier to read, a breeze. Not sure what it is that's missing though: the history, as I mentioned, is gripping (though as always with semi-fiction I spend more time than I should wondering how much is real and how much invented). The characters are complex and believable (at least the main characters - others can be a bit 2-dimensional, but again I found that stopped me from getting bogged down in detail). And the plot is awesome. Buy it! Add comment | this item Friday, March 29, 2002
Rowan's been busy on the Mic again - recorded a few snippets of her, firstly some Fawlty Towers impressions - as Sybil, as Sybil attacking O'Reilly, and as Basil and Polly talking. Then she started singing some rock song (?) - first take and second take. (She hasn't quite got the art of mic positioning yet - hence the heavy compression and clipping) Add comment | this item Throw open the windows! Spring is truly here! Time to end every sentence with an exclamation mark! Or two if you can get away with it!! Throughout the Northern hemisphere (well, the Sheffield bit of it anyway) plants are breathing out a collective sigh of relief, respite is in sight, and the smell of their exhalations is wonderful. Sod food, I want to go out and eat some air. Currently listening to: Splatter Trio by The Splatter Trio - gutsy, bluesy, splattery, lovely avant-jazz... but sometimes sounds like it needs a few more instruments. Add comment | this item Thursday, March 28, 2002
Was feeding Lola some Sabrina the Teenage Witch pasta (which is ironic, because we have Sabrina the Teenage German staying here right now. Well, OK, maybe not ironic exactly. OK, I'll shut up now) when I spotted this. I was certain that it was a reindeer with a hard-on, although looking again it could well be a cat with a hard-on. I love kids' pasta these days, there's so many pasta shapes out there and they're all so non-intuitive. In my day you just had alphabeti spaghetti and you pretty much knew where you stood, but nowadays... it seems that every walk-on character in every kids' TV series gets their own line of pasta shapes. Secretly, I think they're all the same shapes but stuck into different tins. I'm sure nobody would ever know the difference anyway (well, actually, scrub that, the kids would notice).
1 comment Add comment | this item Monday, March 25, 2002
Oh, and speaking of food, and desserts in particular, and also in the spirit of good time wasting... my sister Hannah came to stay for the weekend, accompanied by her 6-month-old bump (baby's due early July). Fairly chilled weekend - stayed at home most of the time, did the tour of the local parks and museums. But Saturday night, we decided to do some cooking together. I rustled up a few experiments for the main course, nothing worth writing home about (or indeed writing to the net about) although the steamed broccolli, tossed in a bit of shallot, wild garlic leaf and butter-toasted cashews was quite nice. But Hannah's dessert.... mmmmmmMMMM! Well, we went to Beanies for the shopping, and as with every trip to Beanies recently, I left with a big bunch of rhubarb. I still haven't worked my way through Nigella's many, many rhubarb recipes, so we got the 2 books out and flicked through - and found something in How To Eat that sounded promising, a recipe for apple butterscotch tart which could be easily adapted for rhubarb. Simple as hell stuff - a pie crust, filled with slices of raw rhubarb, and then topped with a gloopy mixture of double cream, sugar, flour and eggs. Stick it in the over for 10 minutes on hot and then another 20 slightly cooler, and the results are awesome (OK, so it looked kinda... brown and uninspiring, but who cares about first impressions). The sweet butterscotch cosied itself around the sour rhubarb and just matched perfectly - I mean, rhubarb crumble is great stuff, but somehow the rhubarb usually seems a bit too bitter, unless you smother it in sugar and then the whole thing becomes far too icky. But this was.... mmmmmMMMMMMMMMMMMM! Add comment | this item Mmmmmm... custard flavoured with Mirto. Right, I ought to stop this silliness right now. I know I'm only wasting time that I should be spending building DATABASE APPS!!! (Yay. Whoop-di-doop. I'm in the middle of doing an online voting poll thingy for the UDV Guinness intranet. Hurrah) Add comment | this item Was just sitting at my computer with the TV talking to itself in the background, when I noticed some holiday program was sending Graham Le Saux and his family to Sardinia. A little voice in me said "wonder if they go for a meal and get offered Mirto", but I thought it unlikely. Still, I couldn't help watching. And they didn't go for a meal - they went self-catering. But then... his wife, shopping around for things to go with the evening meal, there was a brief shot of her pulling a bottle off a shelf and saying "apparently this is a very popular local liqueur". I'd recognise that label anywhere, even if the bottle did look a little different. I love it when things suddenly start coming into your life like that, and I can't help wondering about it... was I exposed to references to Mirto de Sardegna on a weekly basis before, and I just plain didn't notice any of them, or has it suddenly decided to make its presence felt in my life. And if the former of the two... how many millions of things am I missing out on every day just because I haven't yet been "introduced" to them. I'll just have to pay more attention in future. Also while searching for info on Mirto (which is fairly thin on the ground, certainly stuff in English), I found these tasting notes (written on my 29th birthday too!) which vindicated my "cough medicine" claims (so there Guy ;-)) (and, hey, whoever wrote this can't spell liqueur either! Nightmare kind of a word): Zedda-Piras Mirto di Sardegna NV: A Sardinian liquer made with mytrle berries macerated in alcohol with sugar syrup added: Strong complex piney/ rosemary alcoholic nose; complex rosemary/pungent/piney sweet flavor; very interesting stuff not unlike some cough syrups.(meanwhile, this site says that it "smells and tastes of Mediterranean scrub land" - not sure whether I'd take that as a compliment) Add comment | this item Sunday, March 24, 2002
Saturday, March 23, 2002
Sign of the times Hannah has a friend who teaches at a school in Liverpool, same class as Rowan is in at the moment, 5-6 year olds. A while ago she was on playground duty, standing outside the wendy house. 2 of her class inside playing mummies and daddies. She overhears them: "You put the kettle on and I'll skin up". Add comment | this item I've become obsessed with ginger in drinks lately. I think it started when I bought a can of organic ginger beer from Beanies about a year ago. Now I can't help buying one almost every time I go there. Then I started on Fentiman's Ginger Beer - all their other drinks seem to contain a bit of fermented ginger as well. And when I'm hung over (which is most of the time when I'm in London), I like nothing more to invigorate me in the morning than a huge glass of freshly squeezed carrot and ginger juice (with perhaps a little apple in the mix) - the Juggler Café in Hoxton does an excellent one on the spot, perfect for when I stagger out of Jan's flat and around the corner. And then at Christmas, Nic bought some ginger cordial, and left it behind when he went home, so now I'm sipping gently on that and feeling invigorated. Every drink needs a bit of ginger! Add comment | this item Must write something about the incredible Martin Parr exhibition I saw at the Barbican, before it slips from my mind. Not now though... there's a wild baby loose and I gotta round her up. Add comment | this item Friday, March 22, 2002
Bummer. Blogger has screwed up on the archive doobry again, and left me with a link to just February 2001 (my first blog). I hate it when that happens. I hate it even more when I don't notice and it stays that way for weeks. Add comment | this item Heard back from the police about our little incident the other week. Apparently the car that hit us had been registered as scrapped, so looks like there's no way of tracing the driver. Ah well. Add comment | this item Mmmmm.... just invented my own variation on the Lemon Drop cocktail. A shot of Absolut Citron, a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, and a dash of Lemon Genever to sweeten it up. All shaken and filtered through oodles of ice. Tastes great. Now... what about a name? Lemon Pop? Lemon Slop? Lemon Grep? Flemish Lemon? Citron Phlegm? Yellow Fairy? Who cares? 1 comment Add comment | this item Thursday, March 21, 2002
Spring has finally come to Sheffield (and...wow... indeed it is, first day of Spring - I think). Our bed is on a raised platform, our heads right alongside the window half-way up, so when we pulled back the heavy curtain.... gorgeous warming rays flowing over our heads. So hard not to stay in bed toasting all morning. And then coming upstairs - the hall has windows on 3 sides, the sun tracks around 2 of them through the day. Loads of huge wooden window-frames' shadows dancing on the dance-floor, sunlight enough to warm the room up. Throw some windows open and let spring inside - so cool and clear and revitalising. And then put some music on - something I forget to do far too often. Blast it out good and loud, clear off the cobwebs. Add comment | this item Have an uncontrollable urge to keep editing my Antwerp blog to include more bands. Forgot Peter Brötzmann, Caspar Brötzmann, Last Exit (, Sonny Sharrock, Ronald Shannon Jackson, ....) 1 comment Add comment | this item Wednesday, March 20, 2002
I so love my family. It's great to travel, but even better to return home. Lola has turned into another creature entirely since I've been away - looking older, wiser, wilder, she now crawls with bum up (i.e. feet on the ground rather than knees on the ground) and can do so at an alarming rate, covering almost the entirety of our 10-metre+ living room in about 10 seconds. She's pretty near walking too, just needs the reassurance of something to hold onto. And she is so communicative, pointing to anything mentioned, singing along when there's singing going on, dancing and swaying on demand. Rowan has matured too - of course at 6-and-a-half you don't notice that kind of thing so much or so often, but I'm sure there's something there, in the way she talks to me, in the fact that she's growing two new teeth at the back of her mouth (I didn't think that happened until way later) and doesn't even moan when I crane a toothbrush in there to brush them, in sitting silent through a chapter of the Hobbit and then putting parts of it in her own unique and brilliant terms. And in... just continually getting taller (funny to see her wearing party dresses from what seem like yesterday, probably actually 1 or 2 years ago, and the things barely cover her knickers). And Gill... I love Gill. So good to be reminded of that once in a while. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and everything. Add comment | this item Good news for stoned drivers! ("motorists on cannabis tended to drive cautiously" - yeah, too right - like at about 2mph usually) Add comment | this item Fixated by music. On my MP3 player right now is Manhoo by the Cardiacs. There's lots more there, of course, but I find myself reaching the end of the track and desperate to hear more and pressing "previous track" and going through the whole thing again. Then switching it off and walking around with the track still looping endlessly. Must've listened to it 15 times already today - I can't remember such devotion to a single track since Thomas Dolby singing Europa and the Pirate Twins on my first walkman, 19 years ago. It's a wonderful piece of music, on so many levels, and like many things that have touched my heart as well as my mind lately, there's an element of melancholy to it, and an element of triumph, and an element of life will be life and the only way is forward and let melancholy and triumph fall either side as you make your own progress. Hmm... probably reading rather too much into it, but that's how it seems to me. The song also relates to some stuff (musical) I was mentioning to Guy. I think that Blur, particularly their last 2 albums, pull off the whole Beatles influence thing amazingly, by which I mean that they take on board a bit of the spirit of the Beatles and use it to create new works (as opposed to Oasis, who just jumble up second hand pieces of Beatlealia). Well, Damon Albarn has also paid a fair bit of lip service to the Cardiacs in his time, including inviting them to support Blur at the Mile End Stadium (for which privilege the Cardiacs got pretty much bottled off the stage). I reckon that Manhoo is the Cardicas repaying their gratitudes - there's definitely something Beatley about it (although this site calls it a bastard child of Frank Zappa and Ray Davis), from the Strawberry Fields steam-organ offbeats to the I Am The Walrus-chugga chugga-I'm-sure-there's-somebody-in-the -background-singing-Oompah-Oompah-Stick-it-up-your-Jumper ending. All backed up by two basslines - rumbly rolling perpetual-motion rickenbacker, like a rolling grindstone, no moss, no green, no gold. And farty parpy tuba, oompah-oompahing far too happily. And the vocals... words cannot.... layer upon layer, upon layer upon layer, million-part vocal harmonies with supra-sopranino-thingy perfect pinky-perky squeaks backing everything up with urgency. A middle eight of operatic howling, followed by a nod-to-prog bridge, accoustic guitar and synths swirling down the plughole, as if Yes got too close to the river. And such gorgeous resolution, and chugga-chugga-downshifting-la-las. Hmmm.... sorry, this is getting more and more pointless. You'll just have to listen to it yourself and make up your own superlatives. Add comment | this item Needed to get Hmmm... that's as far as I got with my last entry while sitting in Guy's flat. Wonder what I was going to say? Ah yes, it's coming back to me now. Needed to get a ticket to Belgium sharpish. Spent Friday morning combing the net for fares - not easy, as most sites only gave details 24 hours in advance. I rang up a few people - e-Bookers, British Midland, Sabena (or rather SN Brussels airlines). I even popped into a real (offline) travel agents. Was originally misled by Sabena - they got my hopes up, telling me that there was a 6.30pm flight which I could get on for €250, but when I called them again I discovered that they'd given me details of a Brussels to Manchester flight, not the other way. In the end I had to settle for British Airways (expensive at £255, but still... my favourite airline. And it would have been £150 cheaper if I'd left it another day - and the man I booked my ticket through was exceptionally helpful) Manchester to Brussels, leaving at 6.55pm and taking 1 hour to get there. I left home around 3pm, taxi to Sheffield station (after the bus drove straight past me without stopping) and train across the Pennines to Manchester airport. e-check in: a good thing. Inserted my credit card into a machine, got a boarding pass, dropped my bag off at a nearby gate without queueing, and was on course for the flight. Resisted the temptation of duty-free (or rather duty paid) and just grabbed a sarnie from Starbucks before boarding. Climbed the steps onto the small (54-seater?) aircraft, whoosh take-off into the night sky, lights of Manchester recede and into the clouds. No hassle flight and I'm in a different country - how easy was that? Excited to be alone somewhere new, pissed off because my phone doesn't seem to be working (turned out Vodafone had screwed things up... but that's another fairly long story). Felt proud of myself finding the station, booking tickets, finding my connection, correctly calculating delayed trains and correct platforms. Finally on a train to Antwerp (the guy I talked to on the station - strange - from Antwerp, and very pleased to hear that I love the city - but his accent was far too English, with a hint of West-Midlands). Pulled out of the Brussels North alongside the whores in their candy-neon windows. Pulled into Antwerp Central 30 minutes later. Not having a phone becomes a problem - How do I contact Guy, find where he lives, arrange a taxi. Found a phone box, hoped that my €4 would connect to his mobile long enough to get what I needed to know down on paper. It did (and left time to chat). Found the taxi exit, walked and walked round 3 sides of a gaping hole in the ground, 100m each side, until I was almost back at the main exit before I tracked down a taxi. Guy was right - the driver didn't know Coqhuil Straat. He didn't even know Marnix Plaats. Or, it seems, the museum. (And, according to Guy, neither did he speak Flemish). Still, we got there, after a brief detour to criss-cross backwards and forwards across Marnix Plaats, during which he said he'd stop his meter, but didn't. So good to see Guy - looking much thinner than the Guy I knew, a little greyer, sleepless worried eyes. Confusing, a little intimidating, being here for support but not knowing how or what to give, but relaxed in knowing that even a presence is better than nothing. S'funny, there were quite a few silences this weekend (or at least it seemed that way), but for perhaps the first time in my life I wasn't nervous about this, I just let the silence form part of the conversation. It felt like the right thing. But despite the silences, we did get a lot of talking in. Not enough perhaps - I left feeling that there were doubtless things unsaid, but also that we had covered about as much ground as was healthy and helpful in one weekend. Again that feeling of things unsaid - takes me back 13 years, when my whole life was as a walking head full of unsaid sentences, practised and honed to perfection (god I was so witty when I was in my own company) but in truth never destined for another's ears. So after a welcoming Caipirinha, we cycled to Las Margaritas in the Mechelsesteenweg, for some professionally served booze (which ended up being cheap Spanish brandy) and human contact. Wasn't sure about the quality of the human contact though. We sat down with a guy (Sam?) and two girls. I talked a bit. Guy talked a bit and went off to the bar to talk to Lucas a bit too. Felt strange being plonked on my own with a conversation going on alongside me in a foreign language. Sam(?) involved me a couple of times, though I felt a bit of an aura about him that I didn't like. I was, of course, far too shy to talk to girls. Anyway, sitting with other people not joining in the conversation was something else I got to feel quite comfortable about over the weekend - I was happy just existing. Wasn't sure whether Guy would be happy putting me up in his flat, or indeed whether there was room to do so, but things turned out pretty good on that front, even if I did evict Guy from his bed and condemn him to nights harassed by cats. I tried to force myself to lie in, knowing how rare it is for me to find much time to sleep in, and had some success on that front. We woke up leisurely the next morning, and strolled also leisurely across town to the Witzli Poetzli for a morning coffee and a coke. The whole weekend took the form mainly of strolls from one side of town to the other, peering into shops and stopping off at cafes and bars, talking, staying silent, being at ease. From the Witzli we headed for lunch (a gorgeous walnut and gorgonzola salad, albeit somewhat swimming in oil, in a cafe surrounded by mirrors where I sat next to a baby around Lola's age and tried to talk Flemish baby-sounds), stopped off at an off license (to buy some Lemon Genever - preferred poison of the artist Anselm Verdigris in one of my favourite books, In Viriconium by M John Harrison), went back home for a rest, then out to find our Saturday night dinner. We tried a new groovily decorated Tapas restaurant, Soeki's Tapas, but they were fully booked. I offered to buy dinner anywhere in Antwerp - well, almost anywhere - Guy to name the venue. Had to fight off some protestation - so hard to get Guy to accept any kind of gift, so much work to make him accept that I would enjoy paying. Luckily I managed, and he nominated Café de la Gare, in the old centre, where Annick & he liked to go on special occasions. Of course there was a but... this place is probably the best restaurant in Antwerp, is very small, and is 99.99% likely to be fully booked. Luckily, or fatefully, we got there on a 0.01% Saturday night. We met the chef Bart (ex-experimental musician friend of Guy's), he showed us to a table for two which just happened to be free, and we sat down to make our choices. Guy started the customary menu-translation ceremony (lots of meat dishes and a few fish - not exactly a place for vegetarians, but fish sounded good to me) as we ate slices of bread (the most incredibly nutty and tender granary slices I have ever eaten) dunked in olive oil and sea salt (incredible. Simple but inspired). Meanwhile we sipped on some of the smoothest velvety champagne I have tasted. I plumped for a tuna carpaccio to start and brill for main course. Bart chose our wine for us - something Italian, I recall trying to commit the name to memory, but all I can remember now is that it had a blue label. The name may have began with a C. It was, of course, superlative. We luxuriated in it, savouring every odour and drop. Unfortunatly I wasted half a glass when I swept my arm across the table, trying to draw attention from some half-embarrasing line that I was uttering at the time (I think it had something to do with a past girlfriend). For the rest of the meal we periodically piled on more napkins to soak up the excess from the tablecloth. My tuna arrived, topped with slices of raw peeled asparagus (how come asparagus never tasted this good before?) and flecks of parsley. Guy had a beef carpaccio. The tuna melted in my mouth all too easily. The main course came after a long wait (we got here about 7 or 8 - by now it was after 10) but we had no agenda and plenty of talking to get through, so time wasn't an issue (although my elbows were wearing themselves thin on the tablecloth). My brill was floated in a patina of champagne sauce, a bale of spinach stacked against it and 3 oysters peering from the top of the plate. The whole arrangement looked something like a 3-eyed smiley face. It goes without saying that the fish was cooked to perfection, everything was incredibly simple but superlative. Even the scattered grinding of white pepper that I added tasted like no pepper that I'd previously encountered. Finally we'd finished up and were ready to go. But Bart's offer of "something sweet" to go with our meal sounded just too tempting. I was expecting a sweet dish, but he'd actually meant a digestif. And... wow! It was perfect. A glass each of Mirto de Sardegna, made from (I believe) blueberries, but the look and smell of it gave no hint of this - it is a thick translucent brown liquid with a eucalyptus aroma, in fact it looks and smells somewhat like cough medicine. It was incredible. I could feel it invigorating my veins, spreading downwards and outwards from my mouth, until any weight from the recent meal dropped away from me and I was ready to spring up and go outside. I was eager to try it again, to introduce others to it, so I asked Bart where I could buy some. His answer was simple: "Sardinia". I resolved myself to the fact that I wouldn't get any, but then was amazed when Bart asked his waiter to fetch something from the kitchen, then proceeded to wrap a fresh bottle of the stuff inside a carrier bag and hand it to me as a gift. The kind of service that you simply cannot forget, and a perfect ending to a perfect meal. I walked out of the restaurant with an inch of air under my feet, and I think that Guy felt the same - certainly it had cheered him up a lot, reminded us both that life throws up some amazing surprises when it chooses to. After a quick stop at the Soeki's again (1 cocktail each - mojitos), we met up with Lucas for late drinks - a noisy bar packed with young people. I foolishly started with Jack Daniels and Coke - made me far too drunk, and the tequilas I had afterwards were far nicer. Lucas and Guy chatted while I just surveyed the crowd and let the Mirto infuse me with a warm glow from inside. Latin music played, pumping basslines dancing around the timing of the piece, wonderful life-affirming stuff, followed by a bit of Marc Ribot y Los Cubos Postizos... "I've got this CD!!! I've got this!!". Home. Drunk. Sleep (hard work just to guide myself into bed). Hangover @ 7am. 2 Neurofen capsules. More sleep. And more. And more. Sunday proceeded at a much slower pace. Two nights of late drinking had taken it out of me. I spent the entire morning in bed, not that that helped much. The police came to check out the front and inner doors which had been broken down by mystery intruders the night before. Annick arrived mid-afternoon, amid banging from the door-fixers downstairs. The atmosphere was strange - although I felt my way back inside to 13 years and 1 month ago - "amicable" break up - nothing to be done, nothing can be done - deep pain, deep pity, want to help, she wants to help but... nothing can be done. Deep pity. Deep looks. Longing looks. Pained looks. Ineffectual looks. And on with the business of living our lives in whatever way is possible. I offered what little help I could - carrying a few of Annick's belongings out to her brother's car. Tried to stay out of everyone's way. And then Annick left and Guy sat at the table and I came and sat opposite him and we sat and we sat and we sat and I felt the pain and heavy heart of every short struggled breath but had no words to help and then 10 minutes later Guy spoke and life returned to normal but not normal. The evening was more subdued - it had to be, I had used up all my energy, and I think Guy had lost a little of what he regained on Saturday night. Our slow walk to the Witzli came late, we passed a coffee there and then walked back. It was already 6.30pm - time to go to Las Margaritas for a meal and to see Lucas again. We took the last remaining table, drank caipirinhas, and ate - cactus salad then bean enchiladas with mole (chocolate) sauce for me, soup and chicken fajitas or somesuch for Guy. Lucas was not in the mood - caught up with the pressures of running a restaurant. I didn't get to speak to him, and Guy only briefly. One final drink across town at De Muze bar, jazz in the background, fruity-sickly Gueuze beer on the table, music the topic of conversation - classical and jazz covered off quickly (one is easy, the other difficult, just depends which) and on to trading names of experimentalists and prog-rockers. Frank Zappa is a classical genius. So was Stravinsky. And a funny guy - that business with the American national anthem - man, was he ever pissed. Who else? Yes. King Crimson. Hawkwind got a look in somewhere. Tangerine Dream. Eno (with Basil Kirchin, and others). Some band who carried on where the Beatles left off. Blur, who carried on who the Beatles left off as well, as opposed to Oasis who carry on regardless. Radiohead - yes, they are good too. you sure? Yes. Erm... Marvin Pontiac and his alter ego John must've been in there too. A few jazz greats? (Anyone for Mingus? Tijuana Moods?) - the Cardiacs merging backwards into Gentle Giant. Bill Laswell. John Zorn at the Barbican three years running. Bill Laswell not being good when playing with John Zorn at the Barbican. Fred Frith being extremely good when playing with John Zorn at the Barbican. Tom Cora, whose obituary I read recently on the LMC site - never knew he was dead... (or Gareth Williams... sounds like an amazing bloke. Both of them). ... The Ex ... ... Harry Partch instruments, as played by the man himself and in the Hal Wilner-co-ordinated Wierd Nightmare meditation on Mingus. Zappa played by a Finnish chamber ensemble with centuries-old instruments, Zappa/Boulez...Varese!!!Ligeti***Debussy***Debussy***Debussy.... ... .. . ... ... . .... . . ..... .. and that was just my contributions. Probably some Morton Subotnick in there too somewhere. We'd intended an early night, but already time had slipped past 1am, so we trekked home through light drizzle to a quick bed. 7.30am alarm - bags packed, tea drunk, cab arrived early and it's all over far too soon, though also just on time. Emotional saying goodbye, but I feel I've been useful for a change. Drag my heavy bag, with Mirto and Citronjenever for extra ballast, from cab to station to platform to Brussels to airport. Mum and dad are both there to meet me from Heathrow, I reward them with Belgian beer and chocolate, and gradually I slip back into London life and England life and work and forgetfulness and hustle and bustle and music and pleasure and sleep. 2 comments Add comment | this item Thursday, March 14, 2002
One step further away from being a Linux virgin! I finally managed to get my old workhorse HP Scanjet IIcx (which must be at least 10 years old by now) working under Redhat 7.0. I would be lying if I said it was plain sailing, but it was at least relatively easy - every time I hit upon a problem, a few trawls of websites and newsgroups came up with an answer. There are still a few niggling error messages cropping up here and there, but none that seem to prevent the thing from working. I started by downloading and installing RPM (Redhat Package Manager) files, as I thought that would automate things and make it nice'n'easy - WRONG! I ended up having to try and remove the installed files (which wasn't so easy - I think there are still vestiges left which confuse the system from time to time), download the source files and compile (yes, compile) and make my own binaries. Woo. That'll put hairs on my chest. Don't think I've compiled anything from the command line since Borland C days in about 1993. Actually, I'm making it sound a lot more macho than it is - all I had to do was type ./config and then make and then make install and there the bloody thing was! Well, more or less. Other stuff I had to do was add the library path to my /etc/ld.so.conf file, run /sbin/ldconfig to make the changes take effect, find the SCSI ID that my scanner was sitting on and run chmod a+rw /dev/sg1 to make that port read-writable for users other than root. Easy when you know how (I didn't). And now I have SANE and XSANE ticking along nicely. Just need to get the Linux machine talking to my rather more graphics-friendly Windows machines and the cycle will be complete. Oh, I was also rather surprised at what was underneath the cover of the scanner - this mess - which means that I haven't used it in over 6 months (been using Gill's little HP 2100C instead, but it's only A4 and HP don't make and don't plan to make drivers for Win2k, so I've had to abandon that). 1 comment Add comment | this item Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Yeah, like, sorry to bang on about John Lurie, but the book he's writing has the best title I've heard in a long time: "What do you know about music, you're not a lawyer." There. I'll lay off any more Lurie-related subjects for at least another 6 months now. Add comment | this item After all my John Lurie excitement of the last couple of days (the Marvin Pontiac CD is, I have to say, even better than I first though. Top class, A-mazing) I'm absolutely desperate to get my hands on this DVD, but it seems to be a US-only thing. Huge shame. 2 comments Add comment | this item As I type this, there are 2 cans of insects on the desk next to me, with their labels removed. Kinda gives me the creeps. Yesterday we opened one for the first time and, despite not being squeamish, I nearly hurled. They're quite horrible looking (and smelling) - the crickets are like cockroaches. Now I understand why several people haven't talked to us since Christmas. Still, glad we didn't send all of them out (but, like, I'd rather they weren't still here). Add comment | this item Tuesday, March 12, 2002
Amazon Delivers! Or at least, it did today. Albeit not all of the things I'd ordered (they're still waiting on the 2 Material CDs, which they've been trying to get hold of for 2 months now, but they were good enough to send me everything else on the order). Got to listen, at last, to Greatest Hits by Marvin Pontiac. Allegedly. Or, to quote Amazon: You might not remember these Greatest Hits by the so-called Legendary Marvin Pontiac. That's because Pontiac is the alter ego of alternative movie star and Lounge Lizards saxophonist John Lurie. We're told that Pontiac was an itinerant bluesman who spent his last years in the Esmereld, a State Mental Institution, and ended up being hit by a bus in 1977. However, his backing musicians are clearly planted in today's New York and include Marc Ribot, John Medeski, members of Sex Mob and Lurie's own Lizards. These concise cuts don't even attempt to evoke the sound of the 1950s, 1960s or 1970s: Luriac also blows contaminated mouth-harp, chops funky wah-wah guitar or noodles on cheap keyboards, rarely picking up the alto when he's got sitar or banjo to hand. He also concentrates on a new vocal expression, oozing like a deep-sleaze Frank Zappa on the opening "I'm a Doggy", his lyrics invariably profound via the route of absurd triviality. He's the urbane brother of Wild Man Fischer, his key phrases always snagged by an infectiously childlike backing chorus.It is absolutely wonderful - best thing I've heard from John Lurie since the Lounge Lizards first album (and, in many ways, better). Awesome. Gotta go listen to I'm a Doggy again... ("I've got a bone for you... I've got a bone for you... I've got a little bone for you... 'cause I'm a doggy, and I make it, almost all the time. Y'know I stink when I'm wet..." fucking awesome slower-than-slow-blues-crumble inverted harmonica ambulance sounds) ...Right, I'm back now. Second out of the box was Archive Cardiacs (hmm... one of those many Amazon pages with the wrong picture on them) by The Cardiacs - I've had this on tape for many years, but so SOOOoooo happy to hear it again. Too much hassle getting MP3s offa tapes, so I bought the CD. I love it. Amazing to think that Tim Smith was only about 16 when he wrote some of this zappa-esque stuff like Piffol 3 Times. Hmm... must go and listen to Piffol 4 Times again... ...back again. OK, the other thing in the box was The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding. Hmmm. Well, Mark wanted me to read more stuff on branding. Think I'll leave that one a bit (besides, I'm already reading The Internet Weather, which I have to review for Brand Republic). Add comment | this item Had a shock coming down Oxford Street (no not that one, the Sheffield one) today. Was driving the car with Lola in the back. The car in front stopped to wait to turn right. I stopped behind it. Tum te tum. A few cars coming the other way - we're there 10 or 15 seconds. CRUUUNCH!! A car squashes into the back of me. Took me a while to work out what it was, I was hardly expecting it. Lola and I were both fine - the car hardly moved. Switched off the engine and got out to speak to the driver of the other car - a youngish bloke with a moustache and a car full of mates (5 of them, I think). He wound down his window and said "sorry mate, I'm just on the way to get me brakes fixed". I'm fairly mellow at the time, though my thoughts are a bit rushed. My car is sitting there looking almost pristine (in fact there was one scuff on the back bumper, and a tiny scratch on one of the lights) - thank Swedish engineering once again for the bumpers of a Saab 900. The car that hit me, on the other hand, is a sorry sight. Bits of headlight everywhere, crumbled bodywork on his D-Reg Peugot 305. So I say to him "Can I get your details?" ... "Have you got a pen & paper" "No I haven't. Shall we pull up round the corner here and get one in the shop?" Sounds like a sensible suggestion, after all we are still parked in the middle of the road. So I turn towards my car, thinking for a moment that he may double cross me and drive off, not minding too much if he does as our car is clearly fine and so are we, and snatching a view at half of his number plate as I do. I start the car and roll around the corner. Then watch first in the mirror and then through the back window as he drives off down the road. Two women instantly run over to me "I got a bit of his number", "I think I saw some of it too". As it turns out, one remembered that it was D-something-SHE (possibly 899?), the other just saw the SHE part... and I was 90% certain that it was D952(or 6?)SHE. Bemused I called 999 and reported the whole incident. I was told to report to the local police station - trundled along there cautiously and took Lolly in to report what had happened. We spent far too long looking at a map (which Lolly wanted to grab) trying to work out what junction I'd been at. But although I knew precisely the geography of the area, somehow when it was on a map it wasn't quite the same. So we gave up and went into the details. Halfway through my story a thought dawned on the desk clerk. "Hang on... on my way into work just now, I saw 5 lads in a white car, the front looked a real mess. I thought it looked strange". She had seen my 5 hit-and-run perps driving away from the scene. Anyway, let's see what happened. Apparently the car's registered in a woman's name, but I shouldn't have thought the police'd have too much problem tracking the blokes down if they want to. Bloody stupid of them to drive off - I just wanted their details on the offchance, but there's very little chance I'd ever have done anything with them. But now, because of the sheer rudeness of it as much as anything, I feel justified in reporting them to the police. So now the guy's gonna get done for hit-and-run and dangerous driving as well as whatever insurance and road tax scam he was worried about revealing. C'est la vie-less. 1 comment Add comment | this item Monday, March 11, 2002
The other night, I dreamt two entirely different television adaptations of the Lord of the Rings. One on BBC1 and then one on ITV. Fascinating. Add comment | this item I finally managed to solve my ASF encoding problem. Turns out that Microsoft had a free utility to do the batch encode for me all along. It's just that it was pretty well obscured in the documentation (under Media Services rather than Media Encoder). Ah well, that's life. Add comment | this item London was mostly fun this week - walking down from Kings Cross to Old Street, blazing sun, blue sky, puffy clouds, pink blossom trees - Spring must be here! Jesus, I'm schweatin' with all these clothes and my ever-heavy laptop/camera/books/clothing bag. Was meant to have an art experience - but cut it short. Went to a private view but soon got bored - on to the Watermark instead for serious drinking. Ended up walking the streets confused with Mitch & his new date before stopping for falafel & chips then crashing at Jan's (lots more musical talk, 99% of which I forgot, but he did introduce me to Robert Randolph (the king of sacred steel), a collaboration between Randolph and John Medeski + The North Mississippi All-Stars, and KCRW radio station (actually, I have a tape of KCRW's "morning becomes eclectic" program which I bought at a roadside stall in India 8 years ago). Also got to meet FAD-mag's new art contributor, Therese Stowell. Love her work! Add comment | this item Sunday, March 10, 2002
Rediscovered the magnificence of Robert Wyatt's "A Short Break" yesterday. Lola enjoyed it too, and sang along. Beautiful, soothing, perfect rainy afternoon Sunday music. Soft piano and organ washing backwards and forwards hypnotically, Wyatt's voice, none of the words more complicated than "ya da da dun da - daa - da", unsure whether to be happy or depressed. I want more. Add comment | this item Saturday, March 09, 2002
Hey - the Evening Standard had a little snippet on the Watermark Club yesterday. Apparently the place to be during London Fashion Week, host to Jarvis & his fiancee and DJed to by Beth Orton. Called it "so trendy nobody's heard of it. Until now, that is". Can't say I've seen Jarvis there, or any of the celebs they mentioned (but Les McKeown always seems to be down there, and apparently the Chapman brothers are regulars) yet but it's certainly pretty unheard of... only a couple of mentions in Google. Have to make Sean a website for it (once we've finished the Sonic Mook one) Add comment | this item Thank heavens for long, hung-over, completely brain-dead train journeys. I have for your delectation, 3 entirely new (well, some not so new... or at least not recent) lifes (lives?):
Add comment | this item Fright of my life time going into a cyber-cafe yesterday. They had network sockets that you could plug your laptop into, so I plonked myself down by one, tried to switch my Vaio out of hibernate mode, sat there staring at a Sony logo onscreen for about 20 seconds (it normally disappears after about 1) and then saw the message "Missing operating system"... which usually means the machine can't find the hard disk. Fuck... gave the machine a little shake (well, you never know...), checked all the wierdy port bits where hard disks might get plugged in, in case it had worked its way loose, switched off, switched on again, etc. etc... all to no avail. Shit. Although I've got most of my work backed up, there's enough that isn't - like the two articles I wrote on the train on the way down to London - and I hate ever re-writing anything. Also, since I switched from Outlook Express to Outlook a couple of weeks ago, I'm not sure that my emails are backed up. Couldn't bear to lose even a days worth. Anyway, I gave up... but once I got to Jan's I thought of checking the BIOS. Well, the BIOS definitely said there's a hard disk in there, so it can't have come unplugged... reload default settings and try again and... HEY! There's my operating system again! And it woke up from its previous hibernation, didn't even restart Windows. Isn't life strange sometimes. When I did finally get to check my emails, more frights. 2 very depressing emails from Annick & Guy within a few minutes of one another :-( Add comment | this item Saturday, March 02, 2002
Of course, one more hell to deal with in this whole switch-over business (well, several more really - I still haven't put the kibosh on those Perl problems). Windows is case-insensitive. Unix isn't. Suddenly hundreds of those pictures which I saved (or my software saved for me) as .JPG and I linked to as .jpg no longer work. There's gotta be a Perl solution, but my mind's too cluttered to think of it. So for now, it's gonna mean regular checking of the error logs - thank god for spiders and crawlers, unearthing the errors in deep-hidden parts of my website where I rarely go. 4 comments Add comment | this item Friday, March 01, 2002
Like Need to Know, not sure what Panasonic are selling but it's got to be worth getting: http://newtown.hi-ho.ne.jp/raibo/raidersei/image/agency/cm/mail.swf Add comment | this item In case you were wondering what happened - I've just moved servers. My website (and email) have been squatting on Leonardo's (formerly Hard Reality's) servers since I left there in October. They've been dropping less and less subtle hints that I needed to get off there ever since. Fortunately I don't think any of the senior management were aware of my lingering presence, otherwise I would have been evicted pretty damn sharpish, no notice to quit or other pleasantries. So ever since October I have been searching for a new home. I was going to run things over my ADSL here, but what with the odd ADSL outage plus my server failing from time-to-time due to a dodgy video-card connection, I thought it perhaps unwise. Then I thought I might get my own hosting setup, perhaps a DSVR, or sharing JCs, or somesuch other $10-a-month type thing. Anyway, eventually our burgeoning relationship with Liv4now came to the rescue. I've been helping Ewan out on the technical side, and he very kindly allowed me to make myself at home on their shiny new Rackshack server. So I moved not only sumption.org, but our miscallaneous new domains including bradonpace.com, fad-mag.com, fadwebsite.com and wavepeople.com too. Only problem was... well, there were lots of problems. First, I informed Ralph at Leonardo that I was in the process of moving, and he jumped the gun a bit and took my website down (thank god he left the email running). So I had a couple of days of Leonardocompany that I could do nothing about, while management of my domain passed over from the god-awful and horrendously expensive Netnames to the much nicer cheap-and-very-cheerful UKReg. I finally got that sorted, and DNS setup through Rackshack, when more problems reared their heads. During the cross-over, I'd tried to set up FTP access on my server for Ralph to log in. Unfortunately, it proved to be impossible. I made him an account, but it kept telling me that it didn't have permission to FTP in. A bit of searching found some articles saying that an account needed "logon locally" permissions to be able to use FTP - well, it looked to me like Ralph's account already had that, but I fiddled with Active Directory to try and make certain. Unfortunately, and quite without realising it, in doing so I denied logon locally permissions to every other user. I didn't find out until I came down to London with my laptop, tried to a reboot, and was told that "this system does not allow you to logon interactively". Huh? Basically, I couldn't get into the laptop, even the local administrator account was barred. Some hair-tearing and nightmare-scenario-imagining followed - what if I couldn't ever get in again, and I had to reinstall everything - would take me weeks to get back to normal. I couldn't do anything until I returned to Sheffield (and meanwhile Gill called me to say that she had the same problem with her computer). When I did get back I had a brainwave - managed to get into my laptop by rebooting with F8 down and selecting "last known good configuration". All well and good, although I was very loathe to reboot again in case I never got in. So I got to work on Gill's PC instead - managed to logon to the server directly, played again with the Active Directory permissions, rebooted and retried Gill's maching all to no avail. In the end I gave up for the night - it wasn't until next morning that I noticed that I'd borrowed Gill's network cable to stick into my new Linux box, so there was no way her machine could pick up the new settings from the server, it was just running on cached details. I plugged in the network cable, tried again and... joy of joys... it worked. I still didn't risk rebooting the laptop for another few days, but in the event that worked too. Anyway, all this messing had seriously detracted from sorting out my website problems. And by the time I got this far, I had more stuff to keep me busy. Apart from the usual ever-mounting pile of work, 52 CDs had arrived in the post (individually parcelled from Hong Kong - think the postman had a field day!) which Keld wanted me to rip for his new online music service, Iced Mango. I set about getting Easy CD-DA Extractor on all 3 machines, trying for the life of me to figure out Windows Media Encoder (turns out I needed a very old version, as the latest one doesn't do ASFs), etc etc etc. For some bizarre reason, Easy CD-DA, which I have always found to be a most wonderful program, started to misbehave, crashing part-way through extracting CDs. Bummer. More time trying to figure that out. Still no solution as yet. Oh yeah, the other thing I had to do to in the midst of all this was convert my entire site to run on the new server (remember, that was what we were talking about). ASPs to PHP (used ASP2PHP for some of this, but mostly good old blood2sweat2tears), NT Perl to Unix Perl (apart from changing Mail::Sender calls to straight sendmail, mainly all down to file permissions, file permissions, file permissions. God, it's years since I had to get to grips with chmod, and its so easy to screw something up with it and blame the code. I didn't realise that to read in a text file with a Perl script, the directory it's in has to have execute permissions set. Bizarre. And it all brings back reverse memories, as this time 5 years ago I was busy converting all my Unix Perl scripts to run on NT). Anyway, I thought I had it all ready, but had no time to upload the bloody great thing (it was 64Mb zipped, although I've since been through it and weeded out lots of files I'd uploaded temporarily to show friends, and lots of fucking Frontpage _vti_bollocks too, something which has always annoyed me as I've never used Frontpage and it just makes things messy and awkward. Now the whole site weighs in at 60Mb uncompressed). But I was dashing off to London again... no problem, I thought. I'll just upload it all when I get in to Liv4now. So along comes the next problem - and one I still can't get to the bottom of. I plugged into their network, switched IP configuration (using IP Changer) and... couldn't see the network. Or anything. Couldn't even ping or tracert to the gateway. Completely fucked. Spent hours fiddling, disabling bits of software, shutting off services, all to no avail. Wierd thing is, this happened before - I used to have a Xircom card installed as well as my Vaio's built-in RJ45 port, because pre-IP Changer that seemed the easiest way to keep the 2 network settings on the machine without constantly switching. One day the Xircom just gave up the ghost on the Liv4now network, just like that, and I assumed that the card was fucked because when I moved to the built-in port it worked OK. But now I'm not so sure... as soon as I got back home yesterday I plugged in to my network to see whether the built-in socket was screwed up too, but after a 2-second delay it worked fine. So... anyone have any idea whassup? Anyway, the upshot was I had to wait until yesterday when I got home and everything finally more-or-less worked before I could start uploading my 60Mb. And then I had to do my little bit of chmodding and tweaking the CGIs (still have to get the comments working on this thing... but that should take a matter of minutes) and... I HAVE MY WEBSITE BACK AGAIN! YAY!!! 1 comment Add comment | this item |
