Scott Walker, of course. Brilliant.
As usual, the return to GMT brings with it one of the longest days of the year. Far from an extra hour in bed, the children awake instead at their customary hour of 7am, though this morning of course that meant six. To great excitement, with sunshine pouring through the windows and a huge column of smoke rising from the University campus and filling the morning sky. We all watched out of the windows as two helicopters and a twin otter circled the fire, twelve engines and numerous ambulances rushing to the site. The computer suite at the HIghfield completely gutted and all roads in the vicinity closed all day. Pray God no-one was hurt - perhaps the early hours of a Sunday morning is the safest tiem for such a disaster.

It seemed an age till church at 11, but a time I spent with Flo and Biscuit mainly cooking. We prepared a pumpkin soup for lunch and a pie for tonight's meal. Sadly once again the service was disjointed and disorganised, falling far short of any spiritual challenge or fulfillment. It seems I forget completely about cell on Thursday evening, engrossed as I was in conversations with the girls about existentialism and A level chemistry! Sartre has always irritated me, his teachings seem arrogant and antagonistic for no good reason. Rallying against the system has its place and I'm all for intelligent questioning of the way things are, but to deliberately challenge everything and take on "the system" in all its form purely for the sake of argument seems to me to result only in a constant sate of unhappiness , dissatisfaction and distrust.
A position Kink's mother has adopted most of her life to the extent that she now lives a sad life alone and friendless in a house full of bags of old rubbish with newspapers and bin bags covering the windows. Hardly existential I know if life is measured in terms of one's achievements, but somehow I equate this with a constant barrage of mistrust of other people and the ways of the world.
The more time I spend with Kink of late, the more I fear for her and grow to dislike those aspects of her personality that bring memories of her mother to mind all too readily. She is quick to critise and challenge, argues black is white from a point of view that is often quite simply factually wrong; more often than not refusing to go out and seldom interacting with anyone. Particularly public figures - shop assistants, bank tellers, barmen and the like,preffering instead to shop and bank on ebay and converse with her 'friends' purely on MSN.
She said yesterday though that she feels she "comes alive" in Southampton, where no-one knows her and she feels she can relax. Ceratinly these last two days have brought her out of herself a lot - there has been laughter, baby-carrying, swing-pushing and conversation with Trx, all of which happen but rarely yet truly sparkle and are encouraging to behold.

My mind rattles now like a pinball machine. Tx has set in motion the idea that, perhaps after Christmas, we consider having her come and live with us. I'm not sure yet quite where it has come from, but she suggests it might be in the longterm good for the girl, who turns 19 at the end of November. She is already looking for reasons to put off her second driving test and will be spending £300 extending her web-design course to May simply because she hasn't been motivated enought to finish next month in time for this round of exams. It is all symptomatic of a fear of what to do next, where the future lies and what direction she should take. The talk now and all the plans (on the web and scribblings on paper) are of buying a house! She has tthe ridiculous notion that in six months time "when I get my job" that she will be able to get a mortgage and buy somewhere. It won't just happen, I know it. She will no doubt pass the course but her grade will be lower than her expectations, and she will only be put forward as a suitable candidate for any jobs that are on offer. There will still be travelling involved, portfolios to prepare and interview panels to face - none of which she will feel confident about and each of which will cause unease and internal traumas.
Is it not therefore in her best interests that she comes to stay with us? becomes part of a structured, disciplined household, and receive gentle encouragement, motivation and persuasion during a difficult time.
There is so much to think about and I pray for guidance and the strength,as her father, to do the right thing. I will put in motion the search for a part time job for her here, perhaps with aspace?, and Trx and I will talk the idea thru at length.

She sleeps now with such beauty and grace, exhausted by an evening with the tired and excited children in her care. I left the house at 5.30 to take the girls back to Oxford (in the dark) not returning until after 9. Would that I could stay longer in this fair place, to walk the cobbled streets and breath the walls… This leaves her to bath and put them all to bed well in time for a good sleep before they start school again in the morning. And she has also washed up in that time, tidied the lounge of toys and the loft of bedding and washing, put out the fire and cleaned the grate, fed the cats. A lot of which she doesn't need to do, but takes on in order that I can return to tea and toast in a quite, glowing house of peace and love.

Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses…
Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us

They are all eating SO much - I wonder sometimes if the girls don't get fed at home. We've had to go and buy extra food in twice already int he last few days!! It's proving as stressful as ever having them here. Six is too many for anyone all at the same time.
And they eat such crap as well, it's becoming quite embarassing. Rather like the tv they watch.
I suppose from someone who doesn't watch TV at all its hard to understand, but the rubbish we've had to endure this evening has really p*ssed me off. bright colours, loud music, shallow presenters, false laughter, "quizzes" that are all multiple choice…it's dumbed down so far its now just dumb! Eamonn Holmes probably sums up super wanky bollockness quite well. An unbelievably arrogant, patronizing TWAT. What is it with people who have to laugh at themselves?
And wny do we have to be told when to laugh, and which bits of a show are funny? I caught a few minutes of Grace & Will last night and there was canned laughter every couple of lines.
One of the reasons I don't watch TV anymore.

Had a great long chat with RH again last night on the subject of this new Nation 12 album. Release has been brought forward to November 5th but I won't be able to afford it by then, so hopefully the rumour circulating that it is a 500copy only limited edition is no more than a rumour. Things are moving on in all sorts of other ways too: it's more than a little bit surprising that CR has hinted about the Island re-masters on the Forum. An old chestnut that comes around every year or so. Being in this position is awesome now, and its great that R has someone to rant at now and share all his 'secret information' with. I feel burdened with one or two things, so I can imagine how he must feel and having someone to share things with surely helps with that. Does mean tho that I have to be careful with what I say to people, especially when I let CC and others wind me up with their pedantic nonsense about recordings that don't exist. I want to scream the actual situation back at them, tell them what crap they speak and how it is really like this or that, but of course that would mean a) breaking a confidence and b) declaring my hand which I am not ready to do yet.
Perhaps this explains why I am so keen for Rob to upload metamatic.com and follow through with some of the things we have talked about. Perhaps then I will create a new persona for any forum that appears on there? Or just step back a little from the debates? I think that would be the best option, for me to "just dissolve". Great to be able to read the sleeve notes of "Electrofear" on ebay (!!!) which I can build in to the timeline now and fill in The Forgotten Years a bit more comprehensively.

Itchen Valley Crunchy Park this afternoon, running around in the cheese following their Hallowe'en trail. Stan came alive - he's been more lethargic than ever recently. His constipation 'problem' is back again. No doubt something to do with getting lost twice at school when he can't find his way back from the toilets, so now he daren't go while he's there anymore. He starts full time within two weeks, so it wioll only get worse. He was in tears this evening too poor thing, so we really do need to find a solution.

Pumpkins carved - tomorrow morning I make the soup and hopefully pick up a recipe from Jan after the service for a pumpkin dessert.

Many fireworks tonight, even though its raining. Again. Roll on the winter, lets have some serious COLD this year please instead of just all this mundane, mild, miserbale nonsense.

Tides of time pass and oceans of memories come and go, but it seems there will always be a corner of Oxford in my heart. I feel so at home there.
Walking along the canal from Hythe bridge to Isis Lock this morning the narrowboats triggered all kinds of recollections, and once again I could hear Katherine's laughter on the rising mist and Steve's obscenties echoing on the still water. A boat called Kimberley. A kingfisher.
The tranquility is something almost tangible in that place, just yards from the early morning traffic that clogs up the roads after 8 o'clock.Returning to Oxford was meant to be, I will be forever drawn. The convenience of meeting the girls from a coach that arrives at Gloucester Green direct from Northampton is a divine plan, and today for once I made ceratin that I arrived in plenty of time to meet them. Coffee and croissants watching the travellers from Harveys, and then an hour browsing the Antique and Collectors market.
I am fearful that these moments too will be fleeting. That once K passes her test, or whatever else happens to give them more independence, we will no longer have the opportunity to meet in this most wonderful of cities.
Maybe my relationship with Rob will extent this period of re-acquaintance. I certainly pray for that to be so...

Took the kids over to Mayflower Park this morning, and realised that it is as shabby as people suggest. But the neglect has at least prompted the council to set up a survey and website for suggestions.
The problem is that the park (at least the play area) is public open space and has to remain open right in the middle of the Boat Show which takes over the area for ten days every September. Though not widely known, the public still have access to the park during the BoatShow and anyone wanting to use it has the right to do so. They are escorted and watched over by BoatShow staff all the time...
So not surprisingly, the BoatShow is putting pressure on the Council to move the park - although I'm not entirely sure what reasons the Council is offering to the public.
My suggestion would be telling the BoatShow to f*ck off and find another council to leech on, leaving Southampton free to rebuild the area with a new park, landscape and a "world class seafront". The council owns the site and coulld easily put it up for redevelopment.
I know there's massive revenue for certain sectors of the city (accommodation providers and restuarant/pubs mostly) but I can't see how the council directly benefits from this?
Hmmm - that's about as political as I ever get. Suffice to say we had a great time and wore everyone out.
Spent the afternoon making Halloween crafts - pumpkin masks, pop-up witches and ghosts etc etc. The kids won't be Trick or Treating themselves, but they like to get into the spirit of it.

At last I have had a text from Biscuit, explaining that she left her mobile at home while camping last weekend. Safe and sound and had a great time, so thanks be to God for overseeing that adventure and bringing no harm to her. Looking forward to seeing them tomorrow with the usual nervous excitement that precedes their visit

Been sitting in the South Western tonight discussing - among other things - the place (or not) of text in art. I'm all for it - in fact, were I to be an artist in the visual arena, I would almost certainly make a piece of text an integral part of any image I create. I'd go so far as to suggest that a piece of text is in itself a piece of art. The word "FEAR" for instance, conjures images in the reader in the same way that a scary pixture or sculpture would do. Lori argues entirely the opposite, that text in a piece of art is a cop out and shows only the inability of the artist to convey his message visually. He has a point, but I'm not really talking about using the text to make the point, rather to enhance or perhaps even distract from the visual context in which it is placed. An interesting argument. I'll come back to it.
definitley need to try and work up a piece of "art" somehow. I am writing everyday day now, but I feel challenged to create someting visual. Wonder what sort of thing I would come up with...
Talking of art, had an MSN chat with Kink today who has recently set up her own mini gallery. Some of her stuff really works well - especially those pieces with text in! More convinced than ever tho that her relationship is going nowhere...
J was online today which inspired the last hour of my day at the office. Great to catch up with her, but all to brief. Why is that? Explore. Explain. Use visual art...

grey and raining traffic thunder clouds
in darkness i can hear the
lighting spears of thrushes call
across the silence in between
the thoughts I have of you

Owen then brought in the concept of music vs song. A similar argument, and a fine point well made. I'm for lyrics every time, but value the soundtrack too. THAT I have just realised is why Cathedral Oceans works so beautifully. It's that merging of edges between what is vocal and what is music. At which point does the resonance and reverberation of the human voice take on the frequency of "sound". The edges are blurred. It is perfect - the whole point perhaps being that it is actually neither one thing or another, and neither is it either of those things. I know in legal terms, a song has two copyrights "musical works " (the chord sequences and lyrics) and "sound recordings" (the work of the producers and musicians). An example of Dualizm of course (get that album - NOW), and an example of the way that concept prevents us identifying and relating to the WHOLE of an entity. By merging the vocal with the music so that the vocal BECOMES the music (rather similar to the way Liz Fraser worked in the Cocteau Twins) Foxx is asking us to perceive his work differently, to think outside the box. It is really definitive stuff. And when the rest of us catch up, he will have moved on to something else. Which leads me nicely to the working title I have now found for my biography. "Someone Almost There".
The title comes from one of the pieces on Drift Music which I am listening to right now. It's probably one of the shortest and most 'incidental' pieces on the album, but so fragile and magnificent in its understatement
"The Quiet Man" was always to obvious and would introduce copyright issues, and I've always favoured "A new Kind of Man" instead. I wonder now to if this isn't too 'time specific' pertaining of course to the emergence of Foxx as a solo artist and his seminal Metamatic album. So I'm using that title for a Part of the work (of which there will be five) and then particular lyrics or song titles that sum up contemporary periods.
Someone Almost There describes for me exactly what Foxx has been throughout his recording career. A man of shadows; a figure on the outside - standing so close, but never quite touching. Commercially too he was never quite "there". He's always been ahead and his presence and influence is felt in so many spheres of music - but more like a glance and a glimmer, a reflection on the water rather than something you can reach out and touch. Dust and Light works in a similar way. I fear that Drift Music is all too often ioverlooked in his catalogue too, so using a title from that album brings the work more into the focus it deserves. And the sonic signature of Harold Budd runs through it too, the importance of which can never be overstated. One day we will wake up and realise the magnitude of what this Hidden Man is doing

We started with a great list of things to do yesterday afternoon, as usual with a Sunday, and then poor old Stan threw up in Church! What a nightmare!! everyone was good about it but it was still acutely embarassing and he was really upset.
So instead, Trx took him over to the Drop-in-wait-two-hours-and-share-some-more-germs Health Clinic at Bitterne and I stayed home with the girls and ended up playing Lego all afternoon! How cool is that!
Well, they played nicely together at least.
Elsi got very bored very quickly, and so she preferred to "help" me start to lay the new underflooring in the kitchen and generally clear up all the crap I've left laying around over the past six weeks. And Saturday we all sorted the garage out too, so things are beginning to get back on track.

Beers organised for Tuesday night,provided of course the Money Pixie visits the office in the next couple of days. I'm losing inspiration at the moment because of this ridiculous cash-less void we're in at the moment. It's amazing how long you can survive without ANY cash at all, but its beginning to get on my nerves.
Christmas is looming, and I'm worried that it will be difficult unless things improve drastically in the next few weeks.

Phoned Northampton last night, but as I suspected both Kink and Biscuit were out. K is in Eastbourne with Matt and B is camping with Scott. Camping? It's p*ssing down here and forecast to do so all week.
Not convincd about Kink's relationship now that Matt has started at uni - it'llneverwork.com…
Wish she'd sort herself too and get some direction in her life. All things hang on the imminent Driving Test and finishing the web design course,but we know, don't we that things aren't always as simple as that.
And Mum told me yesterday that she is beginning to worry about Dad since he appears to have nothing to do. He's never been desperately sociable, but she's trying to get him involved in new things and particularly something that involves other people.

Funny that - I am thinking about trying to do exactly the opposite...

The addition of some "seasonal graphics" to the 3rd edition of pageone has really lifted it and its the best one so far. Goes to print Monday - all the ads came in easily this time.
Took delivery today of 10,000 copies of the latest City map too, which has been printed beautifully and looks superb. Selling at a rate of arounfd 300 ciopies a month lately, which we hope to get up to 500 in the New year now that we have extended coverage to take in the whole city.
Very exciting project now that we have this data - selling to the council for all their other mapwork shouldn't be too difficult.
Looks like the University site plan is going to come our way too - had an emial today arranging for me to go and have a look at their aerial photography on Tuesday.
Night off now I think. Need to relax a bit. Actually, I need to work up some ideas for the Christmas Bazaar publicity before church on Sunday but that can wait until tomorrow.
Going to play "Lovely Thunder" again tonight. Not the best of Budd's albums, but I don't have those. Maybe Avalon Sutra would be more approriate this evening?? Hmmm
The house smells of bread. Now the kitchen is sorted we have a permanent home for the breadmaker and are beginning to use it more regularly.

Sat next to two mums in the playgraaaand today moaning about their kids and Christmas coming. Ent got a fekkin clue what to get em this year. I sed to him, I sed, thassit right. I ent spending more than £250 each on um this year.
Each??£250 EACH???
We spend more or less that figure on Christmas ALL TOGETHER? Food, presents - the whole lot. Lucky if the children get more than about £20 each spending on them.
It's because we don't love them enough. The more you love your kids, the more money you spend on them, right? So that everyone else can see how much money you've got, and how much you love your kids.
Shit, we are such neglectful, inconsiderate parents. We still eat together as well. F*ck me, no wonder our kids have such twisted minds.

Well, its about time I did this. For three weeks now I have missed blogging and left where I was sitting at Revolution Orphans. Nothing personal Tara, but I think the whole Forum thing doesn't work for me.
I've kept writing of course, and will probably publish the back dates here too one day.
Standing in the dark
Watching you glow
Third late night in a row working on the Foxx timeline and I'm knackered. And I've spent another hour and a half on the phone to RH again this evening discussing all manner of things. He's a little disappointed that his posting recently announcing the Nation 12 album's release in November hasn't been met with more enthusiasm. I'm surprised about that too, given that scarcely a week goes by without somewhere emailing asking about the project. Having said that though, my posting about the Radiation mix of Underpass didn't get much of a response either. Wiretap is brilliant, and I can now distribute copies of the track to ShadowMan, Peter, Rob and others. Odd that he didn't know of its existence (or that od Parisonic) but he has enthused about getting a copy. Clashcorner has done a reasonable job of it too, over seven and a half minutes of it.
We are going to run with the timeline once the website's up, but he's still dithering about with that. two weeks now. Again. Where have I heard that before...
Seems we could be on for meeting in Oxford on 19th Nov after all, but he's had to back out of Guthrie's show in London on 2nd Dec. I should really mention this to Mike next time we actually do get round to having a beer together. Have a sneaky feeling that John will be there, as if I needed any more incentive.
Email from Phil Glanville today which has come at a great time. His anecdote about recording This City is funny and he recalls it fondly, as well as doing a version of Burning Car with lemonade bottles and a sofa cushion!
Then I looked at my watch face
I remember the time and place

Pirates. Flo's latest drama project at school. Cringemakingly bad because only one of her friends (out of six) spoke clearly and remembered their lines correctly. Always fun to be in the school tho, and it gave me a chance to catch up with the Head.
Means that I didn't get into the office till after ten. Good.
pageone goes to print tomorrow, and we take delivery of the new Southampton City map. How on Earth we are going to pay the printers is beyond me. Now is a good time to talk about seriously looking for some investment.