I can't remember exactly who pointed me in the direction of this rather clever piece of software, but I was reminded of it when I caught the last ten minutes or so of this week's Gadget Show. For many months now I have been struggling with various copies of Snapz, downloaded for 30-days at a time to different computers, faffing about with marquee tool in order to capture the videos etc up on youTube for the F*xx archive.
Last nights 'discovery' is a revelation.
Though Miro stores video in mp4 format and can therefore realistically only be read by itself, it is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. I have managed to record another 30 or so films of John and Lou*s doing their thing at various gigs, including two pieces from the recent Austral*an Tour.
Successful, by all accounts, despite playing to probably less than 500 people across the four shows. That' snot including the Melbourne performance of TCM at ACMI. Its brought a handful of new fans to the forum, and a sense of enthusiasm and excitement which will justify the re-release of The Graden this summer.
I've never been entirely convinced of the need for this, but there is something of a renaissance going on, so a return to the neo-romanticism of this project should, finally, put the bleak techno trash of Metamat*c back into the dust. I'm looking forward ot it now, and playing the album again just to work myself up a bit.

This is in stark contrast to the album which finally arrived today, though I bought it online over a month ago. My Favourite Kind of Irrelevance is a retrospective collections form the 10-year catalogue of Norris and Norken - IDM with an ambient glow. Great stuff.
And I particularly enjoyed Bjork's Medulla again last night. Its probably the only album of hers I can still enjoy. As I've said before, Bjork and Morrissey are unique in my experience. I look forward to each album, buy them all, and never fail to be spectacularly disappointed.

Inspired last night. Ghosts on water and all that. She came through.
A hint of laughter and a cool perfume
A laughing shadow in a long lost room
A sudden longing so bittersweet
It makes me turn around in crowded streets

Invisible (invisible)
Women (women)

At last we managed to get a walk in the New Forest Sunday afternoon.

Well, most of us. I admit to more than a handful of frustration when Biscuit phoned at one and invited herself over for the afternoon. Again. Serves me right fro strategically trying to avoid her texts last weekend, although we were at mum's. I do seriously wish now that she would get out of her room and really do the whole student thing, instead of complaining about things like a music festival in the grounds of the halls - which distracted her from revising and shouldn't be allowed the week before exams - or the Hawaiian party at the campus on Sunday night which they were charging to get into.

????

I'm at a loss. There is always "no" but I haven't quite worked out how to play that card yet...

So as it turned out, her coming round gave Tx a welcome opportunity to stay home and rest while Baggins had her afternoon sleep after all. Just meant that again we miss out on time together at the expense of... well, anyway.

Chose The Kings Hat this time, a couple of miles north of Beaulieu. I have had this crazy idea of talking to the Forestry Commission about a booklet or something describing all the 70-odd car parks in the Forest and the habitat/natural history etc you can find around each one.
This one is a very good all round starting point, which explains why it was busy.
Very hot today (23-25°??) which made me uncomfortable, but most of the kids seemed OK with it. Unfortunately, when I go to the Forest I prefer to be away from the holiday makers - its quite easy to do this most of the time as people tend to stay within about five seconds of their cars – so The Kings Hat wasn't great for this as it was packed (20+ cars)

But, on arrival we had a pony in the car park with a foal that looked only a few days old.
Took the main track southwards (which looks as if it is some kind of ancient road (it has some kind of brickwork set in it?) through beautiful oak and beech woodland, which is open and grazed (not enclosed) and within a few hundred metres came upon a well-made, quite modern bridge over the Beaulieu River.
It's very slow moving here, and only a couple of feet deep - and a little smelly in the heat) but exactly the right width across to be a challenge for a six year old boy with sticks and stones to throw. Commonest woodland birds and a couple of Willow Wobblers, but nothing of note due to numbers of people I presume.
Plenty of damselflies, mostly of two sorts which I presume to be small red and common blue. Made me realise that there are several species of damselfly and darter in the Forest that i can't identify. need to put that right - it is endlessly frustrating.
Not far past the bridge the path leaves the woodland and proceeds south across the open heathland. Too too hot,so we chose to follow the woodland edge to the west, the river to our right, keeping in the trees for shade. The river breaks up into lots of streams and channels around here, and after about fifteen minutes we came across one about a metre wide that ran right across our path. Crystal clear, only an inch or two deep and brimming with tadpoles!
Amazingly, we passed an hour here, catching them in our cupped hands and screaming at their squirmy wrigglingness. None were sacrificed, care was taken and they all had a great time. We dammed the stream with a few sticks and made a little bridge - dismantled immediately afterwards etc etc - all I'm sure very irresponsible but exactly the kind of thing that children should be allowed to do and doesn't really involve anything other than time, a bit of imagination and some freedom. They got muddy, soaked, and bitten by a million midges. Excellent.
Met other folks who joined in with us, and several dogs.
Walked off for ten minutes or so, and found The Bastard Chavs at the spot, filling 2-litre Coke bottles with tadpoles. Have you NO brains? Lids too. Incredible. Why do people have to drink lager in cans at three in the afternoon in the woods in a National Park.
I do hope he didn't get his lovely white trainers dirty.

First people we met though were great. Three girls, all keen to play and chat and chase around. Great horse poo chucking fight.
And we heard a cuckoo (TWO actually) which it gave me great pleasure to point out. Luckily, it gave them all great pleasure to hear as well.

Then, as I don't really do being prepared very well and had no drinks, hats or sun cream they all got a bit hot and tired all of a sudden.
So we zipped back in the car and headed to Beaulieu for ice creams and baby donkeys by the lake.
I'm not sure I have seen much that is cuter than these, and quite happy to be stroked, photographed and generally coo-ed over by the passing skwilllions. Hideously busy and I have no excuse for going there on a Sunday in spring. really should have learned better you'd think.

Good start, and a good rating for this car-park. The Kings Hat in early May.
Easy walk - ancient woodland, river, bridge, stream, birds, heathland, butterflies and damselflies, paths, dry, circular.
Popular, prone to midges. A good seven

Big day out for everyone on Friday when we went on the Go Ape 'adventure' at Moors Valley. Five challenges in the treetops, involving rope bridges, high wires, Tarzan swings etc - all around 50ft up in the tree tops.
First time I've ever experienced a 'team building' exercise and it went really well.

I was dead scared, and some of the bridges really required a serious leap of faith to complete. I enjoyed the zip slides of course, but absolutely hated every second of the rail bridges, swinging about etc.
Everyone was very supportive of one another (well, there was one noticeable exception who didn't seem to get perhaps quite the mutual encouragement that everyone else shared) and the whole thing was very well received and exhilarating fun.

With hindsight, I perhaps should have done the Tarzan swing into the rope wall, but I couldn't face it at the time and chose instead to complete the last challenge via the high wire. In the end, this proved even more scary and I froze in the middle. JC was great and very supportive.

We all shared a massive lunch afterwards, which I left them all finishing off when I had to leave for the 'swimming and gymming' that goes on every Friday.

A face is forming from the pixelated blur.
Sally Three has a son called Elijah. Now that's unusual. Cool, but unusual. And considerably better than the 'Piper' and 'Willow' I met today, or any one of those bizarre acronyms that people use that seem to be popular, usually beginning with the letter 'K'...

Why is that?

Wow. I think I have just discovered Laurie Anderson.
Again. I have the BIg Science album. Counts for nothing.

Only an Expert. Counts in thousands.

YouTube has some good bits

When you are chipping away at a rock from one side, its very easy to remain unaware of how thin it has become and how close you are to the other side.

It has only just dawned on me that our credit card debt (which is now only on two of the five cards) is now less than a month's salary. Four years ago, at the worst point, it was equivalent to about 9 months salary, and spread over five cards.
So we are really getting there, and its a good feeling. As my salary has now increased and the interest and debt has come down, its all got a lot easier. The money put aside each month for chipping away at the mountain quickly begins to go a whole lot further. Three of the cards weren't even active and have never been used - I just opened the accounts to get the 0% interest offer - which doesn't seem to be available any more??

Interesting watching the reaction of the card companies. Since I cleared my Abbey account last month, I have had THREE phone calls from them making loads of offers, and letters galore with all kinds of strings attached to fantastic deals as a favoured customer. There are clearly some 'balance thresholds' that trigger different letters.
Within £250 of your credit limit? Letter A. We are pleased to be able to offer you an increased credit limit...
Less than £500 on your card? Letter Z. Transfer other card balances to us. Use theses cheques. Take advantage of some stuff...
Nothing at all on your card? Zero balance? You're one of our best customers you are. We love you. Have a free pen...
I can't imagine how they would treat a really bad customer with any less respect

ALWAYS close the account. Don't just hide or cut up the card.
I understand that closing the account wipes out your credit history and defaults. Also means that you have the option to take out new customer deals in the future should you feel the urge. Don't do it

So I've closed the account. Which is also ridiculously hard to do, because you have to ring to find out who to write to...

Three down. One to go. We will be keeping one account just for fun and in case of emergencies...

Pay now - don't pay later.

Little Annie and Paul Wallfisch Bad Pianos

SInce the surgery on Thursday, things have been difficult. That's when I can get a handle on any kind of description. I'm not really sure that I've been entirely here or there since the weekend passed, and things have been dark and vague at home.
Six months ago she went for a routine smear test, which has to happen annually since some abnormal cells were detected about ten years ago. Invasive and uncomfortable enough. A biopsy at the time detected some cancerous cells.
The doctors then found that the 'abnormality' had re-appeared and wanted to do a colposcopy to investigate further. Thus they arranged for her to come back in six months time. Last Thursday.
It was during that investigation that they discovered the cells had spread and were looking particularly nasty enough to involve surgery. The diagnostic test was valuable and exposed an immediate need for surgery to remove a large part of the cervix with lasers and scalpels and all that malarky.
Ouch indeed.
Since then,she has been in so much pain and discomfort that she went back to the hospital today (bypassing the GP) only to discover an infection that has spread up inside.
Poor thing has been in tears almost every day since Monday night, can't sleep, is bleeding continually and has agonising stomach cramps.
She's totally exhausted.

I'm not great at being nurse, and she's not very forthcoming with complaints a s a patient, so its all got a bit awkward. Hence the long chat over several hours going into all the intimate details and exchanging how each of us feels about the other's response to the situation.
Helped talking to others too, especially Mum on Monday. Tx refused to stay home and rest, insisting that the kids all day on mu own is too much. She's a martyr to it sometimes, and that can be equally frustrating.
And of course I then find the lack of trust in me annoying, and feel that my offers of help are misguided!

Hey ho

Tonight's the first that I've not retired to bed at the same time, simply because I don't sleep anyway and its a nightmare for her with me fidgeting around.
So I stay up and get morose, or busy, or self pitying. Which is all wrong of course, but you can't help the way you feel sometimes. And I have so much to do with all the 'stuff'
But we feel much better for talking (as is always the way) and now we have cleared the air things are a lot more optimistic.

All my motivation for work has gone though, not least because of the tension in the office over the last couple of weeks. And now today there is more confusing and frustrating news. The p*rt authority have come out and explained that another, much bigger and national, agency has contacted them with an offer of significantly higher revenue that we can supply.
We can't compete with a national company offering £100K a year in commission!!! That's our targeted turnover for the project in this whole year.

Everything rides on someone else's decision, and of course that's not a great business strategy, which is why the rest of the company is so much more stable. And could be so much more viable.
It's a double edged sword that needs careful handling.

And I ever wanted to do was draw maps...

Can't keep going forward
If you don't know what's behind
Gotta learn learn your lesson from it
Gotta treat those mem'ries kind
Cos you never know when they'll get ya
If you don't give them respect
It's what you were before that's made you
What you are today
It's the mistakes that'll teach ya
That you're better off this way

Retro...
Future
Retro...
Future

:eek:

My heart's come home to me
That robin from a world away
Has come like first warm rain
My heart's come home to me...© Baby Dee

Saturday night's show takes my experience of live music to a whole new level.
The combination of venue, artists, nostalgia and affection is unprecedented in my experience. I have never before been to a gig where the place mattered so much to the show, and where everything involved gelled together so perfectly.

To mingle like a robin's song with night
And make night seem as good as day
My Heart's come home to me
That robin from a world away
Has come like first warm rain
My hearts come home to me

Wilton's Music Hall is neglected and is semi-derelict. At the current state of decline it will cease to be accessible in the next two to three years. It is London's most beautiful lost theatre, rightly describing itself as the city's 'hidden stage'. Entered through the paved lobby, off Grace's Alley just a few hundred yards from the Tower, Wilton's is an astonishing survival. A big, rectangular room with an apse at the back and a high stage. Single balcony on three sides with bombe carton pierre front, supported on unusual helical-twist (‘barley sugar’) cast-iron columns, whose bases are progressively overtaken by the rake of the floor. How have these survived 150 years?
Side walls with paired arched recesses above the balcony, the arches supported on alternating piers and ornamental brackets. Elliptical vaulted ceiling with ornamental fretted ribs, originally with a lantern skylight and gas chandeliers. The former presence of a hot sunburner flue has left charring on some of the roof timbers. There is staining on the walls and the paper is peeling and decayed.

To make men seem as good as gods
That God himself look down and say
My heart's come home to me
That robin from a world away
Has come like first warm rain
My heart's come home to me

After a couple of numbers form the raucous and loud (but utterly charming Celine)

we were treated to a half hour set from Little Annie, with guest pianist the very wonderful Paul Wallfisch.
A delightful act,combining Judy Garland, Amy Winehouse, Tom Waits, Nick Cave... superb cabaret and very clever interpretations of songs including a unbelievably tear-jerking arrangement of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm looking For". Anxiety rules. Talk about a bleeding piano.
Already I'm stunned, my eyes bathing in the glory of the atmosphere and the spectacle. A flickering, grainy film projected onto the curtain behind the performers, lamps on tables. A birdcage beside a huge golden harp.
A cello propped up against a couple of packing cases. Some roses pile don the top of the grand piano. I have a weakness for roses.

Oh yes, I remember now
Those ancient lovers I and Thou
Have come like first warm rain
My heart's come home
My heart's come home
My heart's come home to me

This is even before the main act!!
Baby Dee opened the set with the title track of her latest album 'Safe Inside The Day'. I watched in smugness as my friend beside me stared open-mouthed in utter disbelief at the sheer weirdness of Dee. Tiny, tiny voice. Of a Robin. Unbelievably, I was disappointed when Marc walked quietly on backstage and took over the vocal!!!! He delivered it well though - so I had to let him off!
So much of the material he went on to perform was new to me - I suspect the 'last album' is well on the way to being finished. Tracks from the lost Russian album 'Orpheus' and stuff from all over his catalogue. Weakness For Roses nearly had me in tears, and songs like 'Lavender' were truly heartbreaking.
Marc is absolutely unashamedly back, and belongs at Wilton's Music Hall. It's as if they were made for each other, such was the unique affinity between artist and performer. He duetted with Dee, with Annie and with Celine on a hilarious music hall song from 1926 called 'Masculine Women and Feminine Men'.

After the show, I got ten minutes alone upstairs in the gallery, savouring the atmosphere of this place. It cannot be allowed to collapse. Joined the Friends in the foyer afterwards, committing a ridiculous one hundred pounds to the cause.
Then purchased 'Gabriel and The Lunatic Lover', Marc's interpretation of two Stenbock poems from the 1880s. Set to music by Neal Whitmore and played by Michael Cashmore of Durtro. I am beginning to love all things Durtro
Only played it twice. Takes a lot of effort and is completely absorbing.

One of Britain's most original performers, alive again, performing in harmony with Britain's most unique theatre. Closest thing to perfect in my experience. Oh, England, my Lionheart.

I feel fundamentally altered by the experience, coming as it does on such a wave of emotional insecurity at home. Doubts now cast aside. Optimism restored.
There is a God, and if he does needs another angel to do his bidding, let him look no further than first left off Stardom Road...

Marc Almond & Michael Cashmore Gabriel and The Lunatic Lover

First screeching party over the garden on Saturday morning. Very welcome.
Unusual to get this before Swallow which I didn't pick up until we went to Northampton yesterday.

Should be some sunshine about soon then, especially as Tx and I have had a Big Long Chat about the Thing and cleared the dark clouds that have been hanging over us the last few days.
Tonight is the first real chance we've had to slow things down.

The timing was unfortunate, given that she had surgery on Thursday morning and then launched into another huge weekend.
Tired doesn't even begin to describe it...

There are two musicians whose work means more to me than any other,and yet they are so different to each other it is very difficult to explain why they are both so important. Both have become an intrinsic par tof me over the last 30 years...

Since 2001 I have not seen Marc Almond live, although I'd been to 19 shows before then. And in that time I have seen John F*xx seven times.
None of those shows comes anywhere near close to the enjoyment of Marc's performance tonight at Wilton's.
Makes me wonder what I can have been thinking of.

And yet of course they have all been fantastic for different reasons, bringing a totally different kind of music and fitting a different need.
We should all be so much more grateful that performers like these exist, performers like tonight's venue. There, or thereabouts, for many years, part of the grammar of British contemporary music, and yet keeping to the shadows, doing their own uncompromising thing.

I am too tired to review now, but I have been profoundly moved by the experience. I feel humbled, drained, proud, enthusiastic, indebted, lifted. his rendition of Dee's 'Weakness for Roses was a particular highlight and moved me to tears.
Wilton's is as magical and unearthly as everyone says it is, breathing atmosphere from every crumbling brick.
I have discovered Little Annie too - the whole show was brilliant from every angle.

I feel I owe a debt to Marc Almond for not listening to his music as much as I should over the past couple of years, especially as Heart on Snow is probably my favourite album of all time.

I just sat in the pub locally for a couple of hours talking to a friend of mine who has become the father of someone else's children.
Fascinating. He is totally committed to the four kids in his care (only one his 'own' biologically). It is not an experience as I have ever had, as my children have no step father. He and I get on so well, and have this kind of undisclosed understanding.

How different things could have been if the mother of my two oldest girls had a relationship with someone else. There is a brother - a half brother - but his dad has no relationship with the girls, even though I delivered his son into the world.
Life's weird.

My wife has just been diagnosed with cervical cancer, and I'm off to see Marc Almond AND Baby Dee at Wilton's tomorrow.

Who is to say what is what...