It's been the most exhausting couple of days.
Yesterday in particular was manic. I got home from work a few minutes later than usual and so had to walk straight out again over the bridge to collect the car from the garage.
Unfinished, and they weren't entirely happy about letting us have it back with no door trims and the central locking disconnected, but we decided that was better than having to walk to the secondary school with Flo and Nora when the weather is as unpredictable as it has been the last few days.
We also found the 6.30 arrival for presentations and a speech from the head rather too early, so dinner lasted all of about 15 minutes so that we could have the other three at least in the pj's by the time the babysitter arrived.
This was the first time anyone has had to put any of our kids to bed in ten years, and of course it worked out fine, although they were all a bit nervous and silly and apparently had to have at least three stories.

Liked the school. Big. Huge in fact - the biggest in the city with 1900 'students', and according to OFSTED gradings in the top 10% nationally for performance. That's all such bollocks. Choosing a school is so much more intuitive.
Listened to the chair of governors talk about policies and how all that's in place. Of course there are policies, there have to be. Tick the box.
I know from my own experience at our school though that actually implementing those policies on the frontline is a completely different matter.
But the school felt good. Lots of facilities, some amazing working environments and friendly staff and students.
But then it was an Open Day.
St Anne's on Monday night to see how an all girls school compares.

I had promised Mrs Vicar that i would get to cell if we finished at the school before 9, to go over the announcement of the cell's multiplication. So I had another ten minutes at home before rushing off to that, which as usual when it's the last thing you want to do, was uplifting, rewarding and enlightening.
All three of our new members turned up and only one seems a little eccentric so far ;-).

Today's been a little calmer at home but more than crazy in the office.

The car's back and fixed. New brakes, and the locks all working. Fully servcied, valeted and everything. £400.
They are really good to us and its not surprising we have stuck with the same Father and Son business since Trx foound them in a back street when she first moved here.
Old school. Service as it should be.
No cashback. No deals. Just honest prices, good advice and genuine customer care.
That's why we go back.
I think today repeat business is undervalued.

And the programme is done for 'Catch the Spark' tomorrow. I didn't get the running order until 3 o'clock, but somehow mangaed to find pictures and pout something togetehr in an hour, giving me time to print off 50 copies before leaving the office.

Wonde rif the kids have picked up on the crazy atmosphere as they have almost all been quite silly and difficult this evening.
Routines are great, and ours are strong. 99% of the time, the system runs itself.
But the problem with routine sometime sI think is that when it is broken, the children suffer and are not sure how to react.
And therein is the key to lots of behaviour issues as far as I'm concerned.
Kids need to know what is expected of them. Where the lines are and how things work. People mis-understand the word 'discipline'. It doesn't mean being strict, having punishments, pointy sticks and loud shouting or anything like that.
It means controlled order, a well-defined system. We all need discipline.
Goes back to what I said before about the work ethic and the 'discipline' of work and a daily routine with a sense of place and purpose.

Around and about lately I've noticed a sad reflection of the times we live in.

Huge banners hanging at major road junctions posted by the constabulary advising us to 'Keep it safe - take it with you' regarding SatNav systems, and similar posters in public places advising us not to leave laptops on the back seat of cars.

Crazy that the police should be paying to put up posters to advise us how to take responsibility for ourselves.
Are people really that dependant on the authorities for common sense?
Do they really blame the police for NOT warning them things might get stolen??

Had a p*ss? Now wash your hands.

Hello??

Listening again to (or should that be 'experiencing'? The Second Annual Report of Throbbing Gristle (which is far and away their most difficult album - and that's saying something!!!) I have at last at last at last hit on the track I think that the introduction to "No-one Driving" comes from. It's their 1977 single 'United'. Either that or its double A side partner the wonderful "Zyclon B Zombie".
As soon as I heard it I saw the connection.

Which ties in beautifully of course with John's comment to In The City when he talks of his influences during the Metamatic period.
Asked about how punk affected and influnced the sound of Ultravox, and why he hadn't taken that further, he talks about 'far more interesting things that other people are doing, like Throbbing Gristle and Thomas Leer. In this respect, TG are the perfect example of the counter-punk industrial/electro era of the late 70s and early 80s.
In essence, punk was 'gang' music (based in London), all about being a bunch of lads and kicking off with your mates in a violent, reactionary way. This isolated all the friendless youth of the grey suburbs, the loners, the misfits, the social 'outcasts' if you like. The Billy-no-mates crowd of the soulless concrete suburbs from the Northern cities of Manchester and Sheffield. Ian Curtis. Marc Almond. Genesis P.Orridge. John Foxx. Phil Oakey. Many others.
Go on - someone tell me POrridge was from London....
But you know what I mean.

There's also a striking resemblance between the introduction to "Hiroshima Mon Amour" (and subsequently Blurred Girl) and a song by Can from 1969 called "Spoon" which I only heard today for the first time.
Makes sense again - John has often cited Can as an influence, epitomising his love of psychedelia and the very early emergent prog rock scene which spawned Floyd, Kraftwerk and Neu. That whole Dusseldorf too-cool-to-be- hippies thing with Conrad Plank.

Does this expalin why I otherwise I have no idea what the appeal of Captain Beefheart is?
And have hitherto been unable to justify my love of Trout Mask Replica?

After much prayer, a few disagreements and almost two bottles of wine, Mrs Vicar and I last night finally came up with the plan to 'multiply' our Cell into two.
Since three more people joined a couple of weeks ago it has been unmanageable at 15 and only one or two houses can host this many people. The intimacy has gone, people only read two verses each and it takes a year to get through the prayer requests.
Splitting into two groups was always going to be hard and we put it off over Easter, but in His presence last night we think we have come up with two groups of people that have the dynamics of the larger group and the capacity to grow and mature.
Unfortuantely I can't go until late tomorrow (after the school visit) but she is going to offer our ideas to the group for them to take away and consider for discussion next time we meet in a fortnight.

I thank God for his patience with us, and his guidance.

Inspired this evening, I have at last trawled through a sufficient number of albums to put together the compilation that Mike challenged me to do over the summer.
Throwing a dozen or so albums onto a CD in mp3 format (the tradition running since 2003) is easy, he said. And as neither of us has done a compilation properly since the days of tapes and vinyl it's been quite fun.
VERY hard tho, and I havent settled on a running order yet.

The compilation, which has the working titled "Play:List" is as follows:

Her Second Winter - Metamatics
Monk Rock - Justice
Shady O'Grady - Louis Gordon
Tomorrow Never Knows - The Beatles
United - Throbbing Gristle
Half Past One - Can
Pale - Robin Guthrie
Triple Vision - Doctors of Madness
Bouncer see Bouncer - Scott Walker
The Projectionist - John Foxx
Secular Delusion - Astrea Redux
Credo - Pentatonik
Weissence - Neu!
Pyrex My Cuisine - Soft Cell
Ant Man Bee - Captain Beefheart

Looks pretty good written out. I'm pleased with that.

Launched my new sign-in name at the new forum earlier. Mrs X has done well to set one up so quickly in the wake of the ultravox one closing over the weekend.
Shit happens guys, get over it.
I decided this was a good opportunity to play around with a few names before joining RH later in the year when I would like to have this second anonymous persona to help him out. So 'birdsong' is temporarily unavailable for comment. All future correspondence should be made to TheBlueBlaze at the same address. Mystic Comics, March 1940.

Shame I can't get the fekking avatar to work...

The 'deal' on the new office is signed and we can move in whenever we like! Officially it's ours from 1st November and D paid rent for that month this morning - which they said would be fine and required NO deposit!!
The arrangeemnt just seems to get better and better - my sceptical side has already expressed concern that it's too good to be true, but at the moment I can't see anything wrong with it.
The paln to move down the corridor into Room 5 hasn't worked out because the landlord hasn't got back to us with a price yet to rent it. Meanwhile though all our stuff just sits there waiting, as it turns out, to be moved to the Bargate site.
Only found out about the vacancy on Friday I think, when D met someone in Fareham who knows someone who knows someone else who knows the Shopping Centre manager.
Up above all the shop units are some stoerooms and three offices. One for the management and one for security, and a third which, until two weeks ago, was used as a training suite by 'JustNailz'. Notice the spelling with a 'z' - that tells you the kind of company they were.
And 'were' too of course. Does nobody do any research before opening something like this?? How many nail parlours are there in the city now??

So they went bust and did the customary 'runner' leaving, stock, desks, shelving, chairs, posters clocks, mugs, kettle etc etc (how do they afford to leave all this stuff behind? They don't own it I suppose, that must be the answer...) and the opportunity has fallen into our laps.
700 sq ft over two rooms - one 450, one 250. For LESS rent than we are paying where we are now. I can hardly believe it.
There are also numerous 'stock rooms' up there, and just today one became vacant. It's 600sq ft - which is three times as big as the two units we rent from Keepsafe. These each cost £180 pcm - that's £360.
These guys are going to let us rent one from them for £100 pcm!
Plus we can put up as much signage as we want AND there are no rates either!!!

Negatives? The kitchen and toilets are crappy (worse than at present) and MILES away from the office down concrete corridors lined with pipes that wind around like the inside underbelly of a Vogon spaceship.
It's all very exciting, despite being rather awkward to find.
Our nearest door into the building is in the top cornet of a public carpark behnd the bins. You know those weird unmarked doors you always see in these places.

Already we are itching to move and its great that we have so much time to get ourselves organised. Starting next week the room will be empty (except for the stuff we've asked to keep) so we will be going in to paint and measure up. The saving in the short term gives us more money to buy new furniture and racking for the stock room, and in the longer term convinces me more that the rise to a living wage will indeed be possible come the new year.
And the lease is for only one year at a time, which suits us as we are loooking for somewhere long term, more expensive and more 'professional' later, probably now abot two years hence.

Forgive me, but it feels good not having Kink visit us this evening for her session at the Gallery tomorrow.
I have to go back to work, I have a million phone calls to make and after dinner tomorrow we have the first Open Evening at the catchment Secondary School. Not one of our favoured options, but worth a look see to have a baseline for comparison with the others over the next few weeks.

Two weeks ago I let myself get talked into modelling at this evening's Fashion Show in the Old Church, part of an evening's focus on Fair Trade which included a buffet and a selection of stalls in the hall selling clothing, crafts, jewellery and food after the show.
It's been a nerve-wwrenching afternoon and the rehearsals between 2 and 4pm, were, to put it politely, absolutely shambolic.
None of us was really comfortable in our roles, including the children and the choreography and direction seemed all very hit and miss.
Came away at 4 praying for some inspirationa nd some gidance becasue really didn't seem to be happening.
And only a handful of tickets were known to have been sold by the organisers.

But of course, the grace of God shone down on us and the whole event (which only actually lasted twenty minutes) was a complete success and the 40-odd people in the audience all cheered at the end.
Me Flo and Alice all thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's a real buzz takingpart in something like this, and in the end we all got inspriation from each other. The timing was perfect, everyone did everything right and the improvisations we each added sparked off similar in someone else so even the minutest of improvistaions worked a treat.
It feels good to have done this solely in support of someone else and a cause I believe in, despite being very uncomfortable about and knowing that I would never normally consider parading round on a catwalk in front of peope to the f*kking Lamabada, for Goodness Sake!!!

Yesterday, I put together for a poster for the Concert in the building next weekend and came up with the title "Catch the Spark" for this event, a celebration of the musical and performance art capabilities of our congregation.
It seems such a perfect title now in the light of this evening's success.
There really is a spark there, flickering and bright.
If we can catch it, we can really bring warmth and light to the place and the hearts of those involved.

Knackered now to, so rather hoping that sleep will come this evening, having evaded me for a few nights this week.
Took all five kids out on my own this morning for the first time, for the scintiallting excitement of a trip round Sainsbury's to restock the freezer. Worke dout OK. Tiring, and the help wasn't perhaps quite as 'helpful' as it might have been from the older girls no doubt due to their own nerves about the Show.

But Stan is priceless. He makes me die when comes out with lines like this, with his twinkling eyes and a smile that knows he's being funny:-

"Are Sains-berries like black-berries, daddy.
Can you pick them at Tesco?"

There are skyfull rain holes
We collide
Watching the moonlight
Listen dancing
Listen dancing
Standing shadows
Moving unlike stone
But standing
Still
After so long

Dancing

Told you my stuff didn't scan properly....

Seems ther's hardly time to breathe these days, especially at the office.
We have taken the decision to move rooms and increase our humble 300 sq ft to 750, sacrificing one of the storage units to help with the increase in rent.
STill cheap as chips and we know it. Any where else in the city remotely suitable would be double that, so we"re grateful the opportunity has come up. November 1st is to be the 'official' move over, but the room's full of our Room Folder remnants so we could really start any time.
If any of us had any time!!
The World Atlas has really kicked off this week and the Indians are supply stuff back at three pages a day as promised. Given that the input data is slow getting to me I'm impressed with their efforts. And I have successfully negotiated another month so the deadline is now 1st December - haven't told them yet to keep the pace up for this week and the next two so we can get well ahead with it.

Done the poster to advertise our forthcoming concert, which I have called 'Catch the Spark'. A couple of people have dropped out of the line-up so its not ready to do a programme yet - and we have to get this 'Fair Trade Fiesta' over first. Seems crazy to me that we have two events on consecutive weekends and the same committee of people organising both!!
How come that was allowed to happen.

And Commitment Week begins on Thursday.
No - tonight - with an evening of pizza and prayer at the vicarage.
I'd like to go to at least two nights this year, but it won't be the one that we are hosting tomorrow because I'm simply too busy. Hopefully Friday and Monday.
No Tx is going on Monday, so I can't do that. It will have to be next Tuesday - the last night.
Over too quickly again.

Kink will be here in half an hour for her weekly fix.
How long I wonder will this go on. It's dark now when she drives here and it all seems rather a lot of faff to me.

Have been willing RH to call me for the last couple of days but it hasn't worked yet.
Had an email today from the Duke of York in Brighton confirming that Foxx is going to premier 'Tiny Colour Movies' there on November 18th.
Passe dthe news on to those that need to know, but it's not up to me to put that kind of information out to fans.

I think also its a couple of weeks since I decided that 'War Games with Katherine' really had to stop.
I wrote that song in 1984 - and that really is a scary thought.
It's very easy to atribute the Dark Mood of Monday and Tuesday to this, but I'm sure that's only one secondary element.
Somewhre I have the song on tape, recorded by Kindred Spirit in Mike's room at Cheny Hall. They performed it at one of only two gigs they ever did - which I suppose counts as a Moment of Pleasure - one that I had completely forgotten.
The second I recall with fondness when Mike and Graeme played 'Mishka' fo rtwo hours. I can see the people walking out now.
Must revist that again and work out how to transfer the 'live' cassette recording onto CD.

I have bundles and bundles of lyrics from this period which I have only added to with one or two pieces a year since.
Three songs I think were 'recorded'
War Games with Katherine
Jane's Green Dress and... what was it?

Shallow

I remember Katherine (of course - how could I forget. She lived in the village where Dave and Kerstie got married earlier this year! Hambledon, is it??. felt so so weird being back in that pub.
Hard to make her out in the shadows, but her laughter still echoed on the water.)
It was the only song they played.
Most of the other lyrics didn't 'scan' properly or some such nonsense.

Of course two weeks is absolutely diddly squit.
I've gone months and months at a time before.
Scott Walker has a beautiful song called 'Always Coming Back To You'.
Mind you - he has many many beautiful songs.
For dark times.
People always say his stuff is depressing - like Morrissey - but I find it emotional, challenging and deeply moving.
Which brings me back to Marc.
There we are - that's a song for me about Marc Almond.

Always Coming Back to You.

Little Rough Rhinestones, Part 2 is finally available, and the cover versions album should be released in January. Hopefully before that I'll ahve some funds to get the CD/DVD package 'All the A's" which come sou tin November. His videos are soooooo good.
Then there's the news that he has just started writing songs for what will be his last album, expected to be available in the autumn of 2008.
That will indeed be a sad day.

Had 'heart on Snow' on again a few times recently.

Is this the Best Album Of All Time?
Discuss

So Long the Path
So Hard the Journey
When I will return
I cannot say for sure
Till then the nights will be long
And sleep will be full of dark dreams and sadness
But don't weep for me..."
etc

Rumours are starting to emerge that John is currently in America working on yet another new album!
I suspect this is in Los Angeles with Harold Budd as he discussed an unfinished project witht he great man earlier in the year, but until I make a few phone calls I can't confirm this.
I suspect he has two more weeks before the term starts again at TVU.
"From Trash" (previously referred to as "Impossible" is now due for release on 6th November, which seems a long way off given that promo copies are already being circulated.

There are now SIX dates announced for a mini tour at the end of November, and a unique showcase for Tiny Colour Movies at this year's Brighton Film Festival. I'll be there for that (at which he said yesterday there will be new material played as well!!) but can't say I'm very excited at the idea of seeing him and Louis again this year.
Specially not as I am now in possession of two boots from the recent tour - Scala and one labelled 'Birmingham'. How can it be Brirmingham when they never played there. I heard initially it was Sheffield, but perhaps Birmingham means Wolverhampton??
Either way, the sound quality is only average, but seems to improve towrds the end. Shifting City is awesome as always and - at last - we have "The Man Who Dies Every day" as an audio file.
Once I've finished editing it down.

it was a major Foxx day on friday. I gotr not only these two boots, but also finished my copy of "City of Endless Stairways" which is the new preview of the CO3 DVD we are eagerly awaiitng in a matter of weeks.
Beautiful stuff - tho I did notice some of the images are repeated from Oceanic.
Strange that no-one else has picked up on this yet - they've been online since May I think!!!
Also put together a CD with the two new promo tracks for From Trash ('Friendly Fire' and 'Never Let Me Go' which I have worked into the two Echoes interviews from August.
These are a bit disappointing and seem to use comments and soundbites cut and psted from other times. I know they interviewed John in 1982 (which no-one seems to know anything about???) but was the interview JDeL made in August really that bad that they couldn't use all of that.

So four CDS added to the arcchive this weekend, as well as a copy of the Can Anthology from Fopp which I picked up on friday.
Only played a couple of tracks so far but it sounds intriguing - and good to be able to explore such a massively influential band at last.

Its been a MAD year by John's standards.
He's finished an album with Robin Guthrie and wroked on material with Steve Jansen and Theo travis (and possibly now Harold Budd)
released four albums
Tiny Colour Movies
The Hidden man
Live from a Room as Big as a City
From trash (soon)
Played live on a twelve date tour.
Six more dates forthcoming.

Updated his Cathedraloceans website with artwork.
Finished the DVD (soon)
Exhibited Tiny Colour Movies in Brighton (soon)
Become a part of the 'arthertz' movement

A busy and inspiring man.
Long may it continue

…my father-in-law is beginning to look tired, thin and struggling to stay cheerful.
Fortunately, D was with him on the golfcourse Thursday afternoon and got him to hospital quickly where he satyed overnight.
Discharged Friday, and D advised us that we should visit as planned, which we did today.
Good to see him again of course, and introdcue him to Nora, but he was hopelssly confused, as deaf as a post and rather upset Stanley and Alice in particular with his lack of coherence and random coments.
Trx is very quiet now, its been a long day,a nd I think we are all getting concerned about his ability to keep looking after himself. The (admittedly very minor) stroke was the result of him forgetting his medication for two days in a row and then overdoing the exercise.
How much longer can he be trusted to take his own pills every day?

Otherwise though, wonderful to be at the farm again, which represents a very special place for all of us.'
The kids obviously love the space and the country 'things' associated with it. Like picking skwillions of blackberries, climbing up and harvesting three different kinds of apples, being stung by nettles and rubbing juicy dockleaves on the spots, fighting with sticks, nuzzling, patting and feeding the horses, watching the kestrel in the barn, listening to the throstles in the larches, laughing at the pheasants trying to run across the newly ploughed field.
Still a handful of swallows overhead, a "hepperplopper" or two from the nearby airbase and rapidly shape-shifting clouds.

Took us over 3 hours to get there tho.
The M1 widening between the M25 and Luton airport is ridiculously jam-making, and will apparently be so until Dec 2008?
And for what??

To cope with increasing numbers of air travellers.
Cheap flights cost the earth.
The economics of this really sucks...
Someone's paying for the £5 flights to Spain, but as long as it isn't the person actually flying, I suppose that makes it OK.

And then people complain about increased security and threats from terrorists?
It's not that hard to work it out...
You get what you pay for.
The cost is written in invisible ink behind the price tag.

More people need to think of money as a resource, like or water, or air, or the environment.
It flows around us all, sometimes in streams, sometimes in oceans.
It belongs to us all and we need to think of the cost to others of wanting things cheaper and cheaper.

The less things cost us, the less we value them.

I'm quite new to theis Project AMangement lark on such a grand scale as this World Atlas, and its quite a challenge.

Basically I get map data in from the publisher which has been merged from three or four sources, which I then pass onto a company in India who style it, layer it and tidy it according to a design and methodology that I worked out around Easter time. It's done in India because they charge £3.50p an hour(!!!) and I charge £25.
The Indians then send the map back and we edit the file against a World Atlas, check it for layering and style etc, clean it up a bit and send lovely proofs and a report back to the client.

Easy peasy.

But the data is very slow coming from the publisher so we have fallen behind schedule.
The Indians can literally only do what they are told and have less than no initiative when they encounter problems (busy areas, how to fit big names in little spaces etc) and now htey are faced with data coming in that is impossible to work with.
It is far below the standard of the sample pages we sent them and the publisher is getting a bit crap at looking over what they send me.
So i am spending an hour or so on each page (of which there are 102) checking it before it goes to Indian (not part of the process in the first place) and have had to send half a dozen files back.

What complicates it all is that the Publisher doesn't know that I'm involved at all as I am subcontracting the whole thing from LJ who do absolutely nothing other than receive the proofs from me and post them on in their own branded packages.
So i can't talk direct to the client when there are problems with the input mapping. That query has to go via LJ and the whole process is delayed.

but its Friday - and I only have five pages here to work on. Three MOnday and then Ian's backinto to do soem more editorial work.
Today is a Good Day.
I paid D and I a dividend that amounts to THREE MONTHS wages this afternoon!!!
Hurrah

The long term plan is to increase the salaries to a more realistic level from January, but we have to be sure the company can sustain that long term.
At the moment its fine with this job and a couple of other higher paying jobs in-house, but after November it could quieten down again and I don't want to have to go back to a lower wage bill.
But according to the forecasts and analyses we've just done, it looks very manageable.
That's quite a scary thought.

By the end of this year the business loan I took out 5 years ago will be paid off (£150 per month) and the CCBill is now down below £5K for the first time. That's where ALL my salary goes after the mortgage, so once that comes down as well we have more surplus cash each mnth without a pay rise.
Excellent prospect.
Reminded yesterday too of how small and cheap our mortgage is, so for a few years at least I look forward to an upturn in fortune next year.

I haven't mentioned this in the blog since it happened.
Not quite sure why that is, becasue it's not something that I have completely forgotten about.

Nearly, but Not quite. Said Simon.

It is now, I think, eight weeks since The-Son-of-the-Man-Next-Door wrote us that disturbing letter about the alignment of our wall on his (father's) property and demanding that we take it down within seven days.
U remember that?
Really upset us at the time, and has left me with a rather bitter taste in my mouth that has tested my attitude to forgiveness. Still haven't met the man of course, but now have no respect for him at all...

We have heard less than Diddly-Squit since posting our oh-so-polite reply, so we either pitched it just right and he's had a change of heart, or he's quite simpky just forgotten about it.
I've talked about this with friends, and apparently some people are "just like that"??

Excuse me?

There is a part of me that is fighting the temptation ot get in touch with him again and say "Oi, about this letter. Why the f*ck did you write all this crap and then do nothing about it??" but of course that won't help and the whole thing is best left just as it is.
Seems he was just sounding off for the sake of it.
Can people really be that wanky?
Some complex psychology going on there, perhaps...

Som eone suggested that no-one else (esp his father, our neighbour) even knows he wrote the letter in the first place.
This would then give him the opportunity to moan about us to his family for not having finished the wall on his side (left the trench unfilled, incomplete pointing, bits of debris etc) and not fixing the remaining part of his fence to the wall in the corner.
All of which we would have done without question had we not been so unceremoniously shat on in July.
SO he can now moan about this and we look like villains again.
Makes sense in a perverse kind of way I think.

Here's another problem.
His garden is unkept and overgrown, and backs onto a row of garages, including mine. It shouldn't, technically, 'back onto' the garages literally, and both the neighbouring gardens end at a fence about three feet from the baclk of the garages. Just enough room to squeeze down to fetch footballs etc, and for kids to play hide-and-seek.
But the garden of the man in question is such a mess that three-quarters of his fence has fallen down years ago to be overun with creepers, brambles and ivy.
This vegetation is now climbing all over the back of my garage, lifting the roof-felt, causing damp and starting to get in through cracks in the windowsill and under the eaves.
So obviously I want to go behind my garage and cut back the mess, repair the damage and paint the wall with damp proofing stuff.
Not sure if I dare do this, because it will be perceived (in full view of the house - effectively IN his back garden, although technically not) that I am entering his garden without permission and that would cause a whole new can of worms to be opened.

Also from a security point of view, there is absolutely nothing to stop Burglar Bill nipping down behind the garages and into matey's garden. From there, thru the rest of the collapsed fence into the next street and make his getaway into a waiting van with the loot.
Can't get into our garden now - one of the reasons we did the wall in the first place!!

And, to complete the picture, my garage is the first a row of six, starting about six feet from my house. In 1970-something, the owners of this house bought the garage and with it the six feet of land between the garage and the house.
We use this 'gap' to keep firewood in, bags of sand and dustbins.
The fence I mentioned above, which is fallen down and overgrown with ivy, SHOULD extend across behind this six feet 'gap' thus keeping matey's garden safe from invaders from our side. Burglar Betty could, in all honesty, walk up our driveway and down the side of the house to nick our firewood, sand and dustbins - or enter matey's garden that way and from there, thru the rest of the collapsed fence into the next street and make his getaway into a waiting van with the loot.

I have put up a fence panel across the end of this gap (from the garage to the house) which carries the electric cable to my garage, preventing th eabove scenario of anyone getting thru into the nieghbours garden. Not my garden.
Are you following this??
I don't have to maintain this fence at all, or put any kind of boundary up because its not my garden that you could otherwise walk into from the road.
Trx and I tho have discussed making this permanent (we took it down to allow the builder in to the other side before we got The Letter) and cutting the vegetation back from maybe on the garage roof?

I don't really want to upset anything, but otherwise we are looking at some serious structural repairs to the garage over the winter.
Not fun.

At all.

Suggestions on a postcard, please

All too soon
She's gone
The bed is folded
Linen washed
All that remains
A plate of toast
Crusts she never eats
And crumbs
Postcards of artwork I don't understand
To remind me
Of her sexuality
I think she'll come out
Once she can find the way

Kink's visit today has past without a trace almost and was one of the most relaxed, but I have a sadness at our parting that I haven't felt for a while.
At long last she got together with the girl that is causing her so much confusion, and was happier, gigglier and more excited than ever when she came in after the art gallery session this afternoon.
She talks so much of this 'Miss Moppet' - whom as far as I know she has only met twice.
She asked tonight if, when she comes next week for another shift, she could stay two nights to go out with this girl.
Y'kno, clubbin and stuff.
Excellent idea - I'll do whatever I can to help her come out of herself.

And we bought shoes.
For the schoolies.
Poor Stan was disappointed I think that his were declared OK. Half term we'll get some for him and Flo. He's been so tired and grumpy today - the swimming classes really take it out of him.
LC tho chuffed to bits with her new ones - velcro fastenings that she can do herself.

And a timely return to cell.
Much needed,a nd very uplifting, which is unusual in an evening I led myself.
We looked at Exodus 16 (Manna and Quail), and I chose a rousing version of 'Jesus Be The Centre' to accompany the prayer time.
It worlked so well.
I'm not a fan of 'christian' music in general, but hat song really hits the sppot for me.
Reminds us to keep things in focus, to put important things at the centre.
Calm things. Refreshing, enlightening things.
Good to catch up with everyone as well. I wish it didn't have to go so quiet over the summer.
Mind you not surprising when half our congregation are teachers.

I have been persuaded to take part in both the next two events happening in The Building somehow?
Next Saturday, 23rd, is a Fair Trade Fashion Show which th eorganisers want the girls in. And me...

Then the week after that is 'the concert' which is an event open to the public, family and friends, featuring all our musical people doing songs and sketches.
I have been asked to think about reading one of my poems, and everyone tonight seemed very enthusiastic.
I'm not convinced, but have since come home and read "Eleven Eleven" twice. For musical accompaniment, I have chosen 'Film One' as it seems to scan well with soem of the lines, has a dark, industrial undertone and would scare the f*ck out of most people listening.
No-one would understand at all!!!

Tempted to have a go at it (I'm already making the posters and programme) but I'm wondering if I could just read without being seen? That might be fun. I'd like to be lit from backstage so that there is just a shadow on a screen, with the music loud.
Might be fun.

The Things We Do For Life.

I'm cooking th eharvest meal of course, the day after that...

This world atlas I'm working on (currently North America) has some brilliant place names.
Apart from the usual "Big Hill" and "Bendy River" the best one I found this morning is

"Mooselookmeguntic Lake"

Wonder what that means in native Canadian?

Two of my CDs have been missing for ages, so today I am sorting out the 'corner' of the studio that used to be my studio.
It's a disgraceful mess.
Owning over 1000 discs requires far more managerial skills than I possess, particularly when many of them don't even have sleeves, let alone cases!!!
And worse than that (why am I so CRAP???)
loads of them don't even have anything written on them at all??

I don't even have a decent list of what I am supposed to have.
So much music has been blagged from all over the place that I really need to keep a better handle on it.

Most likely they will turn up in the kids Make-and-Do cupboard sometime, but they are certainly NOT HERE.
It's been a valuable exercise tough and I've thrown away several million sheets of paper.

While doing this I am listening to
The Tenement Symphony by Marc Almond

This is the second Almond album that I have played in the last four days - the first being Jacques on the weekend when I copied it for Louis Gordon's Deep Electric Blue Ep. Someone in Devon somewhere I think...

While its not a 'great' album, TS does contain some excellent songs. The standout songs being My Hand Over My Heart, Champagne and the singles Jacky and The Days of Pearly Spencer.
it's perhaps best known as being Almond's pseudo-Soft Cell album as many of the tracks are co-written with Dave Ball and produced by The Grid.
Apart fromt he rather overblown tracks that are typical trevor Horn productions (What is Love, I've Never Seen Your Face etc).
maybe Mister MArc is making a belated comeback into my consiousness.

To counter this, I successfully downloaded the latest two promo tracks from Foxx uploaded to his 'myshite' site over the weekend. these are the very wonderful 'Friendly Fire' (which sounds like Glitter's "Rock 'n' Roll aka Goldfrapps Ooh La La!!!) and the rathe rmysterious and indefinable ballad 'Never Let me Go' which sounds like something Laurie Anderson might have conceived but decided not to go with.
It's a bit like "The Forgotten Years' on Shifting City and will need a lot more listens.
So now I have six tracks off this 'new' album already!!!
Don't quite now what is going on.
Admittedly three of them are on The Hidden Man as extended versions or 'full' versions?? but that means there are only five new songs to buy the disc for?
It's all gone so crappy with his releases lately.

Far more exciting is the announcement that he will appear live at the Brighton Film Festival in November palying the Tiny Colour Movies soundtracks to a DVD od the super-8s! Should be awesome.
I'm going to that in favour of the live gig announced in London a week or so later.
This is part of a three date set which includes two in Manchester.
Why am I not interested in any of those???

Nora 'smiled' today (as much as three week old babies are able to...) and I have also chucked several hundred unwanted images of this ere computer.
They don't even interest me once I've looked at them for a second.
There is no thrill there - its more the 'harvesting' that was fun somehow rather than the owning.
Weird - what the fuck was I thinking?

Anyway, la-di-da.

Trx is out at cell with baby.
The others were in bed as usual by 7.30.
Two of them are reading Jacqueline Wilson like there is not omorrow, and Stan is enjoying the stories of Biff, Chip and Floppy the dog.
He loves reading.
We had 'Where the wild Things Are' for bedtime tonight - probably my own favourite.
LC cracks us up. She also insists n having a skwillion books in her bed and 'reads' then at arms length above her head.
Every night we have to go in and uncover her, or take the pointy corners out of either her cheek or her eye.
Its' a dangerous business, reading in bed...

Went to get nora weighed again today. She is now a very solid 9lb 13oz, which means she's put on a pound in just over a week.
People in church on Sunday who haven't seen her for two weeks noticed a difference and its true. She's already grown out of 'newborn' clothes so we have a big bag of stuff ready to pass on to the next people in the cycle!!
She had her most wakeful day today and before lunch managed to keep her eyes open for nearly an hour. That's quite a record - she sleeps literally ALL the time!!!
Except at night. Up until last night she has been waking up for about quarter of an hour every couple of hours, so poor Tx has been struggling with sleep.
But she's so cheerful, and keep saying how amazingly 'better' she feels compared to how crap everything was just a month or so ago.
But last night, Nora only woke up three times between 8pm and 7 am, which shows again that she is growing and things are beginning to turn around.
Comformng to the pattern of the others already I suppose. Can remember Stan being more of a challenge but LC was sleeping through from about 8 weeks.
Maybe its the swaddling that works?

We wrap her up tightly in a sheet before putting her down, arms tucked in and everything. Makes quite a difference to her security.
And she goes to bed awake of course.
Yes already.
It works. Don't knock it.

Makes me think why I might be such a terrible sleeper and reminds me that I really could get some idea of how mum used to do trhe night-time thing when I was little.

I've joined two parenting forums this weekend and written another piece for the local NCT about our family. thats three times now if they choose to publish.
I joined the forums mainly because I am gettng fed up with these irritating programmes on TV (not that I actaully WATCH many, but there are such a lot these days in all the listings, and it seems EVERYONE goes on about them) about 'Supernanny' and 'The Kids from Hell' and 'I'm a Parent Get me Out of Here' etc.

I've said this before, but it doesn't always have to be like that.
Flying the flag for happy families.
I only say this because everyone says we're lovely.
Starting to think perhaps we are doing something right,a nd if I can pass somethng on to more despairng parents then so much the better.

Had a card from Rob and ANgie today - he is such a 'nice' man! we have asked ourselves exactly what thought processes lie behind it, but its a really touching gesture from someone who hasn't once asked about kids, family or anything personal really.

begins with a single step.
Today has been an inspiration and clear evidence if any were needed that The Church Building project is going to work out.
Arrived on site at 9.30 to set up for the Heritage open Day which we registered for the first time for this year. Spent an hour or so with Flo and a handul of other people putting up notices, litter picking, pruning etc to get the place looking as best we could.
Left just after 11 and returned to clear up at 3.30.
A little disappointing that we had less than 30 visitors, but FG on site all day seemed to think that was good as he was only expecting 100 at Romsey Abbey tomorrow. I think with better publicity and better management we could do better next year.
Good event to be part of tho - shame no-one from SCC felt they could pay us a visit. There were aonly I think six other places open around the city...

Followe dthis evening by our first concert performance in The Building. The very gorgeous and lovely Jay Barron (local music teacher) put on a Flute Forte Concert to showcase the work of her students, 10 - 14 years old.
We offere dher the Building free of charge to see how it worked out, and she donated £75 of the voluntary contributions back to us at the end which was a nice gesture.
The two-hour concert was a great success, and the venue sounded and looked absolutely inspirational.
We could have done with better arrangements for refreshments, signs to the toilets and we will need more flexible, manageable lighting in future but otherwise it was wonderful.

I felt during the morning and all evening that this really is more what I want to do with my life than perhaps anything I felt before.
When I stand for Church Warden next summer (assuming of course that I can sort the Other Thing out well before then...) I know that it will be like fitting a missing piece into the jigsaw and I hope the start of a long relationship.
Already I feel that the building is "mine" somehow, that it wants me there and can give me everything else that I am looking for.
I know we are not a Building-led church, and all that, but this is my point of focus and my inspiration. FG is my mentor in this respect and what he doesn't know about the place isn't worth a squit. Architecture, heritage, maintenance etc etc - all things come from him.
I feel proud of what we have achieved this year, although on paper it may not seem much and there is still of course a Massive Long Way to Go, but things are coming together rather easier so far than I imagined.

And sitting there after the concert tonight (I blagged half an hour from the caretaker before lock up) with just a few candles and Cathedral Oceans playing (for yay - I have been shown and mastered the PA!!!) it was just the most peaceful and inspirational place to be, looking at the marble figures on the altar through the candlelight.

I hear you Lord
I am here
Take my hand Lord
For you fill me with gifts
And I offer them back to you