Monday 24th of July, 2006
Handy
7:45 - Get up. Shower.
8:15 - Sitting.
8:50 - Breakfast.
Today working on cut-outs for Walker's - the images (very christmassy pop-up) have been provided as drawn silhouettes and I have to convert them to vector drawings and then go through and make sure that the lines are smooth enough to be made into a cutter. Also receive a lot of calls throughout the day and download the files for tomorrow's job.
Haruko goes out at about 13:00 and returns at about 17:00 - Job interview.
I between I work, eat too much bread and iron a couple of shirts. I lose an hour somewhere in here as well. Scary.
As I'm going out, one of the neighbours asks why the electricity bill isn't addressed to me. I'm not sure that it's any of his business.
Continue working.
Dinner - Soup and salad by H.
In the evening I play the guitar for a while. Handy, the way a 6th chord is also a minor 7th chord, isn't it?
23:47 - Posting this. Very soon to bed.
Sunday 24th of July, 2005
And bad stuff I'd also forgotten
Not a day that lends itself to timetabling, really, and even vaguer than yesterday.
7:00 - Rise, shower.
7:30 - Tai Chi.
8:00 - Sitting.
8:30 - Breakfast. I had two pieces of wholemeal bread and no coffee, so I had two pieces of toast with marmite and a cup of tea.
9:50 - To the supermarket. When I return I have a bowl of muesli.
12:30 - Lunch.
13:16 - Call Haru, who's now back from visiting relatives.
Vague afternoon. I watch a bunch of episodes of The Simpsons and the Making of Kill Bill extra. Then I begin to play with Logic - I try the lyrics I wrote yesterday along with the appropriate track (clunky, not quite right yet, but including good stuff I'd forgotten. And bad stuff I'd also forgotten). Then I open old tracks I'd made with Logic 5 on OS9 and reassign the software instruments. This makes a bunch of new, and on occasion rather groovy tracks, or at least loops. I should do something with these, but I don't really know what.
This actually takes me until half past ten...
22:46 - Begin writing this.
22:54 - Complete and post.
Saturday 24th of July, 2004
Kurt Schwitters and exciteable friends
As yesterday, except this time I catch a 43 from London Bridge. I still get to Ben's late, but no matter, as it's given them time to sort out some vocals (including the 7/8 against 4/4 riff song, which doesn't really hang together, which is a shame because it's a good riff) and make a whole new track which is waiting for a guitar track - I immediately do three tracks of sparse guitar solo, one of which is obviously the star, the other two running alongside in support roles; then three tracks of slide over one of the verses. And that one's completed. In all three or possibly four tracks are finalised, including one that sounds like Kurt Schwitters and exciteable friends - Gerard was doing the Ur-poem-isms, I was responding with jumpy slide guitar and another that's stitched together from takes I did yesterday. So a good weekend. We complete at around six and I carry all mys stuff back on the 43, then change and get home.
Evening in, with very little to report.
Wednesday 24th of July, 2002
heaven forfend
Into Walker's in the morning with my gear to straight off to Holloway at lunchtime and then go to the Joan Coffey rehearsal. The last one before the gig on Sunday. We run through the set a few times. I feel that I'm going to have to refine the patches on the VG-88 and do some heavy with-the-CD practise. Very hot and moist in that room. Sauna-esque in fact.
Coming out of the tube, the SWP are out in force trying to get people to sign a petition (with prominent SWP letterhead, natch) saying that the Israeli bombing of a Palestinian residential building is a Bad Thing and possibly to buy their wretched paper. Not that they are exploiting an international outrage to promote their agenda, heaven forfend.
I complete my relationship with Donnie Darko by watching
it with the second commentary, which features the director and the main cast
members and is lovely. The side of film-making which is like being in a gang
(cf Truffaut's La Nuit Americaine) comes out, and must be exacerbated
by the fact that many people were working unpaid to get the film made. Some
wonderfully candid remarks from Drew Barrymore as well.
Tuesday 24th of July, 2001
8.1240384
Graduation time for the South Bank University. Sporadically from now on, hundreds of students in gowns and mortar boards will congregate around St George's Cathedral and be photographed by their families. Not having been through this process myself, I wonder whether all these people own the gowns and hats and intend to keep them or whether they just rent them for the day from the academic equivalent of Moss Bros. The dangly bits at the back are apparantly colour-coded. You never see shops for these things, outside Oxford at least. Even the Freemasons have shops (opposite the big Freemason temple near Covent Garden - you can buy gowns and books and gavels and cufflinks and everything).
And who owns that green-and-white tent thing? The Cathedral or the University? They only break it out for the graduations.
Everything is showbiz if you look carefully.
Another Walkers day in the day, then back to sucking the internet dry of Goon Shows at night, Tonight I find the first Show I ever heard, King Solomons' Mines, which features Ray Ellington singing Route 66. Or as we mathematical pedants call it 8.1240384.