Sunday 10 August 2014

The bleak truth: summer here in Britain is over. It might drag on for a week or two but… Meanwhile, Hamas 1 - Israel 0, but what about the Isis psychos?

I left work this evening and realised that today, August 11, summer here in Britain is already over. Although this is not at all unusual – in some years we don’t even have a summer, but this year there have been some remarkably hot weeks – but still it is disappointing. I like autumn, in fact it’s my favourite season, but I don’t really want it beginning before August is not even half over. There are no particular signs that summer has now been concluded in Old Blighty, but it is, to me at least, unmistakable. I went to the basement to get my car, drove onto Young Street and stopped outside the Nat West branch at the junction with Kensington High Street and a wind was blowing fiercely. And it was not a warm wind, but the chilly kind we get towards the end of September. Yet today is August 11.

Certainly, winds blow in June and July, and certainly we have, every year, days which, if not exactly chilly, are most definitely not warm. But there was more to it, that indefinable something you can’t ignore even if you want to. It is nothing physical, but a sensation. Without being too fanciful it is akin to ‘regret’.

 Most of you reading this will have experienced something similar when days, weeks, months, even years before a relationship reaches a sorry end, you know it has ended. You know it and can’t ignore it. Well, that’s what I felt – and feel, sitting here in the smoking area outside the Prince of Wales on the border of Kensington and Fulham. Shame really, but there you go.

As a rule we Brits are all pretty much ‘glass half full’ people when it comes to the weather. We always look on the bright side, we value the bright sunny days because for us they are comparatively rare compared to folk living in the South of France or Italy or Spain. And because we are almost pathologically positive and upbeat about what the weather might be like ‘tomorrow’ even though ‘today’ has been something of a washout, any Brits reading this might well tell themselves ‘he’s talking out of his arse. Summer ended? Before August is even halfway over? Nonsense. It’s just a bad day’.

Well, they are wrong and I am right. At least, fingers crossed and all that, there might be a longer summer next year. And if there isn’t, well, the year after then. Or the year after that. Who knows? But the Brits are still in shorts, despite the so-so weather. It’s a point of pride.
. . .

I wasn’t in London yesterday, but I gather there was a demonstration of several million people expressing their outrage over ‘Israel’s brutal attack on Gaza’. Well, you have your views on the conflict in and around Gaza and I have mine.

I have made mine clear in previous entries, but I shall add again that the one war which Hamas is winning hands-down is the public relations war. Irrespective of the cynicism with which they ensured there had to be Palestinian deaths by launching their missiles into Israel from schools and hospitals (the UN confirmed that weeks ago) and that every dead Palestinian woman and child is a winner as far as they are concerned in the conflict the are fighting, and irrespective of the dismay of ordinary Palestinians who would like to be shot of Hamas and their brutal methods, their opponents, Israel are the demons in the popular view and they are seen as the plucky freedom fighters battling bravely against the assumed brutality of the Israeli state maching. Oh, if only things were that simple.

This occurred to me – again – when I read the news that 500 Yazidis have been executed by the psychos who make up ‘the Islamic State’ (formerly Isis) and that many more men, women and children were buried alive for refusing to convert to Islam. And where is the demo here in London by all those with a conscience urging the British government and the Weset in general to do something about it? And where is the action from neighbouring Islamic states, outraged that innocents should be butchered, to get something, anything, done to try to put and early end to it all?

The whole Isis business (I’ll stick to that name for the sake of convenience) has brought together some odd, very, very odd alliances. The US, Iraq (run by that arch-crook al-Maliki whose policies of shutting the Sunnis out of government were part of the cause of the rise of Isis), Iran and its clients Hizbollah are all strangely ‘united’ in opposition to Isis. And with the Assad also – to put it mildly – dead against Isis, it gets stranger by the hour. But I’m sure the UN will come up with some resolution or other. They are always very good at coming up with resolutions. But where is the expression of popular anger against Isis we have seen expressed as it was against ‘those brutal Jews’.

Don’t hold your breath.

. . .

And just for the craic . . .


Friday 8 August 2014

READ ALL ABOUT IT! Idealist in Cumbria bids to solve newspaper TRUTH CRISIS by BUYING The Times and The Sunday Times! Full details pages 5 to 9. PLUS what to wear if you are carted off to the funny farm, a cheat’s guide to toasting bread, AND does Kate eat? We reveal all!

I’ve come across a rather touching, though wholly naive, attempt to ‘solve’ that ongoing crisis in British print journalism, the ‘phone hacking scandal’.

I say ‘ongoing’, but in fact it’s all gone rather quiet what with more recent news stories such as Boris Johnson’s revelation that despite the impression he might once have given that he was all for a quiet life and could well be retiring to Mid-Wales to open an arts and crafts shop in Brecon, he is, in fact, quite keen to re-enter the House of Commons with a view eventually to accepting the Crown of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, (although, to be fair, he described that as an ‘aspiration’ rather than a plan).

Then there’s Vladimir Putin’s quiet, but determined and very brave drive to extend the boundaries of Russia to Hounslow (which has caused quite some consternation in the Civic Centre, Lampton Road, because staff there are concerned Russia will renege on the promised moratorium on canteen price rises). The ‘onging phone hacking crisis’ was, however, top of the ‘news agenda’ for several years until recently. (‘Agenda’ does add a certain gravitas to whatever other word or phrase it’s attached to, so when I speak of my nightly ‘drinking agenda’, it does seem to soften the impression that I am, in fact, no more than a raging alky who’s well on his way to Hell in a handcart.)

Everyone living in Britain over these past three or four years will have been very much aware at the public’s sheer fury with Her Majesty’s print journalists over their practice of listening to the messages left on the mobile phones (‘cellphones’, ‘handys’) of ‘celebrities’ with a view to coming up with more ‘stories’. Outrageous or what?

Describing it as ‘hacking’ does rather over-egg the pudding a little in as far as the ‘hacking’ merely consisted of the hack who was ‘hacking’ (yes, I know it gets a little confusing, which is why they had to launch a public inquiry into it all) merely ringing the phone, and once he or, I suppose, she had reached the mailbox, he or she would merely input the relevant pin to access the messages. And as almost all of us (but especially our ‘celebrities’) couldn’t be arsed to come up with a more secure pin only they knew, the pin was usually, 12345 or 000000. So not much coding or programming expertise needed there, then.

Still, it was an outrageous invasion of privacy - far, far more outrageous, for example, than the new power recently granted to Her Majesty Revenue and Customs (‘the taxman’) to dip into our bank accounts if they felt like it and take money they felt we owed them - and the hacks got to hear all kind of dirty secrets the celebrities would rather have kept quiet.

With an immense stroke of luck the ‘scandal’ exploded just after our British MPs, or, at least, a great many of them, had been exposed as a gang of fiddling crooks who were manipulating the House of Commons expenses system to feather their nest very nicely indeed. (Incidentally, our MPs are in no danger of imminently starving to death: last December they voted themselves - that’s right, voted themselves - an 11pc pay rise, while the rest of us poor saps were obliged - in view of the ‘ongoing financial crisis’ - to settle for a .5pc rise or even just a sweet letter from management informing us that there was still no money in the kitty for a pay rise, but that we were all doing a smashing job which was much appreciated.)

So at a stroke the MPs were able to take their revenge rather sooner then they will have expected by launching what the British nation, with its customary irreverent wit, has come to call the ‘Leveson Inquiry’ with a view to fucking up the print press industry and stalwart souls who work in it in whatever way possible as often as possible and whenever possible.

Unsurprisingly, every last scam the MPs got up to was gleefully recorded by the newspapers, who know all about fiddling expenses — for several years when working in the South Wales Valleys, I made more on my expenses and ‘lineage’ (re-writing court and council stories I had done for my paper at greater length for an assoicated weekly paper than I took home every week in my regular pay) — but at least it isn’t public money.

One MP claimed for a ‘duck house’ on expenses, while a great many more managed to manipulate their housing allowances to — i.e. stipulating whether their London address or their constituency address was their ‘main home’ — to ensure their mortgage was paid off on expenses, then after some more fancy footwork, the house would be sold off at great profit and a new round of screw the taxpayer could begin. There are around 625 MPs and not all were up to it by any means, but a rather dishearening number were. Only two have been jailed, which compares rather badly with the number of fold regularly banged up for fiddling their benefits, but then, of course, such saps aren’t nearly as important as our MPs.

Being lumped together with redtop hacks has, of course, upset the hacks employed at the ‘serious’ end of print journalism, such as those on the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Times and something called ‘The Independent’, who insist they were far too moral to do anything as scruffy as listening to someone’s private phone messages, and so why should the get their nuts kicked in as well? To which the obvious answer is that if they weren’t doing any hacking, well, they missed a trick, didn’t they and only have themselves to blame. And that’s why they, too must also be scragged. Simple, really.

I have no idea what punitive measures Brian Leveson (pictured, who is, incidentally a Scouser, though whether he supports Liverpool of Everton I don’t know) has come up with, but you can read an account of his inquiry and his conclusions here (if that’s your bag).

As far as I know it’s a stalemate at the moment, a stand-off between Parliament, i.e. the MPs who were caught with their hands in the till, who want every last word newspapers intend to publish to be submitted to them for scrutiny at least a week in advance of publication, and newspaper circulations to be restricted to just 1,000 copies a day and only to be read by nobility and ‘persons of, or pertaining to, or by birth assumed to be, or intended for a position of prominence in the Shires of Her Majesty’s realm at home and overseas (as defined in the Land Belonging to The Queen Acts 1907, 1912 and 1971)’.

You won’t be surprised that the newspapers, who relish a fight if it boosts circulation, want none of that, no sir! They admit that their methods have, on occasion, you know once or twice perhaps been a little over-zealous and that once or twice rogue reports and executives (who have since been dealt with) overstepped the mark, but that Britain is a democracy with an enviably free press and should be proud of its free press and that quite apart from curtailing the freedoms the press enjoys in the public’s interest, they should be extended even further.

So for their part they propose that by law everyone in Britain over the age of 18 should be obliged to buy two papers a day (a ‘serious’ one and a ‘not-so-serious one’), although they will not necessarily be required to read them; that all all those employed by them in an editorial capacity should be exempt from parking charges of any kind while in pursuit of their professional activities; and that monies invested by the industry in industry-related enterprises should no longer attract Vat. We await the outcome of this particular tussle with interest.

You’d assume, given the fact that I have served before the mast in the newspaper industry man and boy since June 4, 1974, that my loyalties would be with the Lords Copper and Zinc of this world, but, unfortunately, it’s not quite that straightforward as I have plans (coming along quite nicely as it happens) to become a ‘person of prominence’ here in Cornwall, which does rather complicate matters.

. . .

But what about the rather touching, though wholly naive, attempt to ‘solve’ that ongoing crisis in British print journalism? Well, it is a novel, though from where I sit, quite daft solution: a group which calls itself Let’s Own The News has launched an attempt to raise enough cash from the public to buy The Times and The Sunday Times. Think I’m joking? Well, take a look. It all has to do with the latest fad known as ‘crowd sourcing’ or ‘crowd funding’. I don’t know whether they are just


two different words for the same new and exciting activity, although I gather that etiquette is demanding that only gays call it ‘crowd sourcing’ and the rest of us must call it ‘crowd funding’ (or the other way round - if are interested in following that up, you’ll have to do your own research. Sorry.)

The enterprise is so charmingly naive and ludicrous and as close to a spoof as you might get (though I am pretty certain it isn’t one) that I am finding it difficult even to say something facetious about it. So I shan’t. In brief, the group behind this particular wacky proposal is fired up by the idea that if loads and loads and loads of folk have a small financial stake in The Times and The Sunday Times (and, in their tiny minds, I should imagine bit by bloody bit the rest of the stable of papers which make up Her Majesty’s Press) rather than, as they claim, Britain’s newspapers being owned by just five families, the ‘voters can control the source of information we rely on for our votes’. Fancy! And I’m still finding it almost extremely difficult to come up with anything facetious.

So far (as of now, 9.45am on August 8, 2104) 655 folk have ‘pledged’ a total of £212,569.50. The ‘pledged’ implies that they haven’t - thank God - parted with any moolah yet. The site goes on to suggest that buying the papers is achievable because News Corp might well be willing to sell to the group if it can come up with the money as it has been willing to sell before and both papers are making a loss. It then outlines why buying the papers - despite the losses they are making - is ‘an attractive investment’: ‘[the papers are] already close to profitability. The Times and The Sunday Times are already close to profitability with a £6m loss last year on £348m of revenue. The loss is down from £72m in 2009’.

Explaining why the group would make a financial success of the papers where News Corp has so far failed (although by its own admission losses have been reduced from £72m in 2009 to just £6m last year), it says that Murdoch had previously promised not to merge the two papers, but once the group had its hands on them, that promise need no longer be kept, the papers could be merged, savings could be made and Bob’s your uncle! Easy really. Look, I think I’ve got to find a dark room and lie down. Take a look at the site, have a laugh, then go and do something more useful. But I shall book mark the website and keep an eye on it.

Incidentally, it is ‘backed’ by The Young Foundation whose mission is to ‘... harness the power of social innovation to a tackle the root cause of inequality’. Well, I’m all for people not being treated like shit (and as I grow older feel more and more and more inclined to drift to the left), but when I read vacuous, woolly statements such as the above I have even more reason to find that dark room and lie down for a few hours. NB Actually, on reflection that last jibe might be a little harsh but I do find many such groups do tend to waffle rather too much. It’s as though if you’ve got the jargon down and can spout it when and wherever, you feel you have done something, rather as activity is all too often mistaken for action.

It does occur to me that I might look into crowd funding as a way of lightening the financial burden of my nightly drinking agenda. You never know.

. . .
 
Finally, a picture I took yesterday because it was so nice and sunny of Wenfordbridge just down the road from where I live and where the potter



Michael Cardew used to have his workshop, which was then taken over by his son Seth. That cottage us now up for sale. I don’t think the workshop and kiln were kept up, though I might be wrong. So if you got £750,000 handy ...

Pip, pip.

Wednesday 6 August 2014

An old fart asks: Is Israel’s ‘shock and awe’ so much more morally reprehensible than that of George Dubya and Tony Blair? Discuss and digress. And beware anti-semitism: it hasn’t died, you know

It strikes me as sadly ironic that as Western Europe commemorates the several million of soldiers and civilians who lost their lives in World War I – ‘The Great War’ is was and still is called, though I can’t for the life of me think why – things are shaping up rather badly for a sequel. And things are shaping up rahter badly for a sequel even as we still here the echoes of all the fine speeches about ‘lessons being learnt’ and ‘this must never happen again’.

I am still dubious about whether increasing age makes you more pessimistic or whether you just happen to notice more. Certainly, when I was my son’s age, 15, in 1965 things did not, at times, look good, but I was not aware, as he most certainly isn’t, of impending doom, disasater and catastrophe. To put it another way: is it the case that there there isn’t more doom, disaster and catastrophe about now than there was then, but that it just seems that way to me. Frustratingly, the world will not know until we are able to look back more objectively on these years in 70 years - frustratingly because I will most certainly no longer be around to benefit from those more objective judgments from the historians of the future.

Take Ukraine (and I must resist the almost automatic tendency to call it The Ukraine as I gather Ukrainians get rather upset if you do as it simply means ‘the Borderlands). I read today somewhere that Russia is massing ever more troops on the border with Ukraine. Now why would they be doing that? I think there is no doubt that the West’s spineless reaction to Putin’s adventurism have certainly encouraged him. For if he felt he was risking real war, why would he bother.

We assume he is, whatever else he is, a rational man who knows he is risking a great deal, so we must also assume that he reasons he can get away with whatever he is planning. Certainly, there has been no kind of co-ordinated response from the West: the EU is about as useless as a chocolate teapot in that now push might come to shove, each member state is most certainly first looking to their individual national interests and stuff the previously lauded ideals of ‘the project’. Germany is heavily dependent upon Russian oil and will think more than twice before agreeing to sanction any action which could see the country plunged into an energy crisis. Oh, and it is also further in the front line than many other EU states.

I heard today (though I have no way of verifying the claim) that Russia has quietly been cosying up to Greece and Cyprus by being financially generous. If it came to an EU vote on any matter intended to disadvantage Russia, one must ask just who loyally those to nations would toe the EU line. Most certainly it is on. Another question which has been nagging me is what exactly happened to all those ‘extreme-right’ types who came to prominence in Ukraine during the interregnum of Yanukoych’s departure and Peroshenko’s arrival. Have they all handed in whatever weapons they had and returned home to take up origami? I rather doubt it. Yet there has been little reported of their activities these past few months. And I remember at the time (and mentioned as much in this blog) that I was extremely sceptical about their bona fides. They must be up to something, but what?

So could there be some kind of conflict in Eastern Europe between Russia and Nato? Who knows? But it seems to me rather obvious that Putin is once again relying on Western pusillanimity and the usual ‘hard-hitting’ ban on the importation of caviar and Russian dolls to show the Russian bear that the West is not to be toyed with.

Then there is the ongoing fuck-up in the Middle East where all dreams of an ‘Arab spring’ are comprehensively being shown up for the pie in the sky they always were. Egypt once more has a military dictator with whom we will be obliged to do business despite the unsavoury nature of his regime; Libya is descending into chaos; the cutthroats who call themselves Isis who are trying to establish an Islamic caliphate in parts of Syria and northern Iraq are going from strength to strength; and, as usual, the knive ares out for Israel, the one country with (in my view) the backbone to stand up for itself in the face of murderous action by Hamas.

Yes, I know that at least 1,200 innocents have died because of Israel’s resolute action, to which I respond: why are the critics not equally castigating Hamas for the cowardly way it used those people as human shields? And, despite the intermittent protest over the invasion of Iraq by those to worthless saps George Dubya and Tony






Shock and awe: Gaza or Baghdad? You decide


Blair, I don’t seem to remember much hand-wringing over the many, many more civilian deaths caused by the heroic Allied ‘shock and awe’ bombing of Baghdad or the subsequent murderous internecine bombings which resulted and are still resulting in many, many deaths.

As far as I know, more than 200,000 non-combatant men, women and children have been killed in Iraq since 2003, but all we got from the various Western government departments set up to ‘express regret’ were expressions of regret and the observation that ‘these things happen in war’.

So here’s a question: isn’t Israel entitled to give the same explanation? Apparently not. And as far as I am concerned the once crucial fact which distinguishes Bush’s and Blair’s actions from those of Israel recently is that Blair and Bush aren’t


 Jewish, but the Israelis are. Anyone who thinks anti-semitism is a thing of the past also passionately believes in the tooth fairy. I do so loathe hypocrisy. But are things worse now when my son is 15 than they were when I was 15. No, not really. They always were bloody shitty.

But never mind, our very own British Coco the Clown, also known as Boris Johnson, today revealed that he will be seeking a seat at the coming 2015 general election to get back into Britain’s parliament. So that’s all right then. There always is a silver lining as long as you look hard enough.

Tuesday 5 August 2014

Join me and Say No To Brits In Shorts! And a hearty hello once again to readers (or just a reader?) in Ukraine and Turkey. What is it that brings you back again and again?

I have taken it into my head to do something worthwhile for a change, and once you have read this blog, I’m sure you’ll agree that what I hope to achieve is, perhaps, challenging, but eminently use-ful. It is quite simply this: to stop British men wearing shorts.

We don’t necessarily get good summers in Britain, and as all too often they are closer to a washout than not, we tend to remember the good days. It might sound daft to foreign readers, but get a group of British men and women together and you’ll find that when conversation flags a little, as it usually does in the hiatus between the booze running out and the chap sent to the off-licence to get some more not yet being back, talk will often turn to a trip down memory lane of all good weather we had. The afternoon of Tuesday, of June 23, 1998, and the weekend of September 18/19, 2004, are particular favourites and are fondly remembered. The fact that the French, Span-ish, Italians, Germans and the sorry rest of them don’t talk incessantly about the weather tells you that, on balance, summers are warm and sunny. Here in Britain they are not. But that makes no difference to the British men’s obsession with wearing shorts.

As soon as the really cold weather ends (although it doesn’t ever get ‘really cold’ in Britain in a great many parts of the country, despite the war stories folk like tell each other every winter and the excuses they make for ‘not being able to get to work, sorry, but it was totally, totally impossible, I mean I’ve never known anything like it’) it’s on with the shorts. (Incidentally, a light dusting of snow can’t of-ten count as a blizzard if it falls in Central London – I think I have previously reported – but the several metres of the stuff which do fall on the Peak District annually don’t count as ‘bad weather’ be-cause, well, the Peak District is some distance from Central London and not really deemed very important.)

Those shorts then stay on until well into October for the simple reason that it isn’t cold enough to take them off and replace them with something warmer, and the fool who finally gives in first is mercilessly teased by his friends, even though they are bloody glad he gave in because they can now, too. There is, of course, nothing


wrong with shorts themselves, it’s just that to date no Brit has ever – ever – had the legs to carry them off. I have no idea why, but your average Italian, German, Frenchman or Spaniard can be as ugly, fat and paunchy as you like, but the one distinct advantage they have over Brits is that the can wear shorts day in, day out with looking ineffably stupid.

We British excel at many things and lead the world in all kinds of areas: our lady folk are by far the easi-est lays in the world, I read yesterday that every last single Formula 1 team – Ferrari, Team Benet-ton, Red Bull, Mercedes – is staffed exclusively by British engineers even though the drivers might be foreign, and there’s absolutely no equal if you are looking for an in expensive, natural laxative than British cooking. But legs? Forget it? British legs are a joke. In colour they range from the traditional lily-white, through magnolia to deepest lobster pink.

When, as is the case with our New British, those who have arrived since the Sixties, that colour is a somewhat healthier mahogany to dark brown, they are still let down by shape, with those belonging to our New British of Asian descent often being especially spindly. The one exception to this rule, the legs of our New British of West Indian and African descent, sadly doesn’t come into play.

I suspect that not only would their legs would not only be more pleasing in colour than those of your average white, but they might also be less spindly. Unfortunately, it is my experience that to a man these gentlemen have far too much fashion and wouldn’t be seen dead in shorts. (Is that racist? I hope not. I was once accused of being racist (inevitably by a white honky) because I suggested that, on the whole, our blacks can dance better than our whites. I was only able to escape a criminal charge when I remembered and reapeatd Lenny Henry’s old joke about ecstasy: it’s a drug so strong that it make white people think they can dance.)

So there you have it, my campaign: Say No To Brits In Shorts!

. . .

I am still puzzled by the number of viewings of my blog I am getting from the Ukraine and Turkey, and the continuing popularity of my comments about one Francois Hollande and his dick. Perhaps the mystery will one day be explained.

Sunday 3 August 2014

Songs without words Part I (but thankfully no pretentious post-modern Mahleriana, but exactly what it says on the tin: songs without words)

These tracks will not play in Opera. I don’t know why, but they won’t. And please turn up your bass. These tracks need it.

As the title, and the simple reasons these songs are without words are several. In no particular order: not only do I lack the confidence to sing, but even when I am alone I get peculiarly self-conscious trying to sing. Then there is the question of key: you, I and everyone else will suddenly find it far easier to sing a song if the music is in the right key for your voice. The trouble is that when these pieces were ‘composed’, establishing the right key for my voice wasn’t only not one of my priorities, it never even occurred to me.

Whenever you (or I, of course) sing along to a tune and what comes out is crap is not necessarily down to the fact that you have a crap voice and can’t sing, it is also because the music is in the wrong key for your voice. So you strain along, unable to hit the higher notes (or the lower) notes and the result is a dog’s dinner. Each of the following tunes is, in fact, most definitely a song, and although I haven’t written, let alone added lyrics, is in a sense, neither here nor there. I know exactly what each song is about and how I should like to sing it were I ever to get that far (note the pertinent conditional tense).

For years and years and years I have buggered around on guitar and the result was never, ever very good, although I have always had ideas for songs, knowing what kind of drumming I wanted and what other instruments I should like to have as well as the guitar. Only latterly have I put a little bit more effort into my guitar playing by learning scales and, by playing those scales, gaining a certain dexterity (though not much).

Then along came computers and recording software, and that’s how I started. But first another admission: each of the three ‘songs’ below is at least five years old, and I have done very little since, although that is for several quite practical reasons. They were – I won’t say ‘composed’ but will describe it as ‘constructed’ as that is a little more honest – on an desktop Apple Mac runing OS 9.1. The software was Steinberg’s Cubase 5. Well, things have moved on since then, I no longer use that old Apple Mac, and although I still have the Cubase on a hard drive since added to a Power Mac, other circumstances have changed so that I don’t really any more have the facilities to ‘record’.

These songs were all constructed on a set-up on what was then the utility room which my very basic ‘recording studio’ shared with the central heating boiler, a chest deep freeze a fridge and loads and loads of other shite. The advantage was that as it was all at the end of the cottage I live in, no one could hear me and I could sit there till I don’t know when in the early morning piddling around, always, not usually, polishing off at least one bottle of wine. That uitility room is now my teenage son’s bedroom, the computer set-up has been shifted to the living room at the other end of the cottage (which is by no means big) and I simply can’t do what I then did.

The ‘construction’, by which I modestly mean ‘composition’ almost always followed the same routine. Cubase allows you to ‘play’ drums and add bass, keyboards, strings, synths and the rest. The, very limited, guitar playing is live, but there again it isn’t in so far as Thank God For Copy And Paste (which should be immediately apparent to everyone who has done something similar). That meant that I could edit whatever unmitigated crap I played, deleting forever the really bad bits, and using the useful usable bits judiciously. Once I had a rhythm going and almost immediately a bass line (I love bass lines, which we rarely hear but which can make a break a track), I would get an idea and, crucially, very crucially, stick to it and develop it.

All the keyboard parts – all except the sequence on a track called I Fucked It which I shall post in a few days time – were labouriously input not by bloody note, until I got what I wanted. But for that reason they, I’m sorry to say, lack dynamics and personality. They are horribly artificial in a sense, and you will know what I mean. After that it was honing, adding, taking away, editing, till I got what I wanted. Then it was: stop. Don’t fuck around any more and ruin it (more modestly, make it worse than it is now).

As I say, once I had, very early on, decided what kind of track – song – I was going to attempt to do, I focused on that and stuck with it. Oddly, keeping things simple in that way made it easier. I was hopeless at wiring up the guitar. I used an effect box, a very useful one, but even then it all went into the computer via a tiny 1/4in jack and the sound quality suffers. Boy does it suffer. But I do believe that it is the final result which counts.

NB These tracks need to have the bass on your desktop or laptop turned UP. They will sound rather tinny without good bass, and as I said, I like bass. I do have a bass, though I bought one several years after these tracks were made, and none contains any live bass, but if I were ever in a band, any band, bass would be my instrument. Oh, and I shall post another four tracks in the next few days.

. . .

This first track is called The Little Bugger. The singer is reflecting on an abortion a girl had of the foetus he and she created and, many years on, thinks that the child, whether man or woman would now by grown-up. There is a certain amount of guilt involved in – well, I know this is contentious, but it is my view – taking a life. The singing, were it ever to be added, would – should – be anguished in the way many black gospel singers can achieve, and one or two white ones.

Here it is:



The Little Bugger

. . .

The next one is called Let’s Split Up. It’s about a mindless, well-off yuppy couple (I always imagined them having a ‘weekend place’ in The Hamptons, though I’ve never been there) who are both having affairs and decide it it time to go their separate ways. The song is about them discussing what of their various possessions – the Volvo, the Porsche, the various properties they have – should go to whom and to decide amicably to save as much money as possible. (‘We don’t want the lawyers to get all our fucking dough’.) The sticking point is: who will get the young childre, about six and four, because both want to start new, unencumbered lives and neither wants them.

Here it is:



Let’s Split Up

. . .

The last one in this particular blog post is called Jesus Loves Bush. It started life as a rolling, blues format piece, but while I was doing it, I remembered George Dubya’s road to nowhere and reflected yet again what a complete prat he was (is). And then I remembered how much of a song and dance he makes about ‘Jesus’ and how he would challenge folk to ‘pray with him’. The guitar is unadorned:



Jesus Loves Bush

Incidentally, if I have one gift, it’s an ear for cliché. Must be all the years I spent, man and boy, before the mast toiling for our wonderful free press. (In fact, the umbilical cord is still so much intact, I am tempted to refer to our free Press. But only you, Pete, will get that particular joke.)