Time & I...

Location Change

2009-07-16T13:09:00.003+01:00

Greetings and welcome,
I'm not posting on this blog anymore. I've moved everything over to my own server, and Wordpress.

If you're still interested, go here: timetravelopps.co.uk/blog

Turrah,

x

Pieces Of Eight (4)

2008-08-14T20:08:00.001+01:00

Eight: probably the best number in the world...

Pieces Of Eight (3)

2008-08-14T19:44:00.009+01:00

Eight photos from the walk to work. 8 AM.

1) Jenny driving away.

2) Dark tower of Central Library.

3) St. Werburghs

4) Broken clock on Friargate.

5) Another clock, just before the bridge.

6) Window owl.
7) Faceless clock.

8) The Vinegar Stone (edge of quarantine zone during The Plague. This is as far as traders came, and collected money left soaked in vinegar to decontaminate.)

Pieces Of Eight (2)

2008-08-14T19:43:00.001+01:00

Pieces Of Eight (1)

2008-08-08T14:41:00.003+01:00

Here is a link to a muxtape I have made.
There are eight songs on the muxtape.
These eight songs are some of my favourite songs. And they are the songs that I wanted to listen to this morning when I woke up.

http://biff.muxtape.com

8 Things On The 8th Day Of The 8th Month Of The 8th Year Of This, The 21st Century

2008-08-04T17:11:00.004+01:00

That's what I'm thinking of doing. Eight is my favourite number. When it falls over it is infinite. When it is multiplied by eleven you can travel through time.

I got to work and started writing on the board on the wall with the pen that you can do that with. I like having the room to do this. I could never do this when I worked from home, and there was never a board on a wall at the office where I used to sometimes work when I wasn't working from home. It's better than notepads and .txt files. It's better than recycled paper or post-it notes. So I wrote down a note about Friday and the eights all started rolling out.

I went and put the kettle on, and thought about it being ages before that date comes along again. 8/8/2108 it will be. The other lining up of eights will be in 8/8/2088 but, unless I live past one-hundred and six years old I won't be around. If I am I either won't be able to see, or will be more machine than man and have no feelings...unless the sight of all those eights together triggers a flood of emotions in my circuit board brain and sends waves of electrons to blow my flux capacitor heart to smithereens with the vastness of it all.

Either way, Friday is the eighth day of the eighth month of the eighth year in this century. And at eight minutes past the eighth hour on that day, I'm going to do something that involves eight things. I might write about it here, I might even have pictures, but I might not as, after all, they're only numbers, but they're my favourite ones...

Oink Is Well Safe

2008-07-08T10:35:00.003+01:00

Bloody buggers been bullying the buffalo. Bar Stards.
Man with spare CCTV cameras donates to OINK. Security light as well.
No more messing with the moo.
Good.

(I might cycle up there today and take Oink a watermelon.)

Education/Sadism

2008-06-26T12:18:00.004+01:00

Okay.
I've been sitting on this one for a few days but now I want in.

Jenn Ashworth is running an MA in creative writing. I went to university for a bit and did most of a degree in English Literature with a few Creative Writing modules thrown in. It was alright, in hindsight, but I always wondered if it was really preparing me for the world outside. Arturo Bandini seemed to be having a hard time getting published, as did Buckowski.

It's alright working in a post office and getting really drunk and getting into fights and beating your wife, or flim flamming around LA eating oranges and complaining all the time about everything other than your implied toilet difficulties. Those things are alright if it's the fifties and if it's America. What we need now, and here, is a good old school of Hard Knocks.

Enter Ashworth University. The criteria and learning modules are explained in no uncertain terms here.

I'm going for it. I'm going for the torture, the self doubt, the loneliness, the endless repetition in the hope that, in the very least, I'll finish some stories. If I get published, that'll be a bonus, for I'll have Been Through It and Come Out The Other End a better writer, and a better person. Maybe.

Here is my 'author photo' what I took using the camera on my computer:

1. Black and white - CHECK
2. Arty - CHECK
3. Stroking of top lip - GETTING THERE
4. Glasses - CHECK
5. No smiling - CHECK
6. No teeth - CHECK

Apart from looking like I'm on my way to picking my nose, I think that'll pass. I don't wear glasses anymore. That must count for something.

Love Song For Nutella (or Sorry About The Marmalade)

2008-06-24T12:06:00.002+01:00

Oh Nutella, how I have missed thee
You're back and I wish you would never leave again
I'm sorry about the Marmalade
She was just a hussy
That I picked up at Wirksworth Fayre
Now she's gone and she won't be back
(Until next year)
Oh Nutella, you never knew
How I saved the butter knife just for you
Oh Nutella, I love you the most
Man singing Jaques Brel at dry toast

I bought some Sunblest bread and it was less than a pound and that made me think of Dispatches and I walked out of the shop and there was a police helicopter overhead and the words "Wheat Crime" and "Grow Bag" flashed up in my head and I thought "Sunblest is only really any good for toast, I wonder what percentage of reconstituted cardboard there is in the average Sunblest loaf" so I went home and ate some toast and wrote a poem and now I'm going to read Joseph Heller to make myself feel better about ALL THE INSANITY IN THE WORLD TODAY.

Idea For Jenn Ashworth Book Launch

2008-06-15T20:04:00.003+01:00

You know those lovely cinnamon-y biscuits you get with coffee at high class coffee shops? Those really nice ones that you could eat about a million and a half of. Yeah, them. It's them turned into butter.

Check it y'all.

On the side of the jar there's a logo that says 'de bedenkers' which I think means 'The Inventors'. Apparently it's this program that invented it. Then the company, 'Lotus', made it real. Now that's cool.

What I didn't know, but which is as cool if not cooler than all things mentioned previously in this post,is that Belgian people don't just dunk and scoff with these cinnamon-y biscuits that you get at high class coffee chops here, but are probably available free in hanging baskets hanging from every lampost in Belgium. No, they don't stop there. They wrap the dunked cinnamon-y biscuit in bread. Then they eat that. I'd probably add a swill of coffee for good measure.

I can't wait for breakfast.

Spreadable biscuits!!!

SPREADABLE BISCUITS!

I'm thinking about setting up my own TV show to popularise the concept of spreadable Bourbons, and see if UK biscuit manufacturer UK Biscuits is as on the ball as their Belgian counterpart, The Lotus.

Fin.

I Was Not Making It Up, It Is Real, I Am Not Weird.

2008-06-09T09:11:00.002+01:00

I decided, this morning, having woken up really really early and getting most things I'd expect to do before lunch done by nine, I found this. It is a thing that I have been talking about for ages. Nine years actually. It is a thing that no-one else has seen and very few people believe I actually saw.

It is called 'Either/Or' and, as Wikipedia will tell you, "a surreal 1999 television comedy game show, which was broadcast on the digital channel UK Play. The show takes its name from the book Either/Or by Søren Kierkegaard. It starred Simon Munnery as his League Against Tedium character and was a precursor to his BBC series Attention Scum!. The show was largely a launchpad for Munnery's unusual comic monologues."

I couldn't find a clip from it. However, while looking for it, I found this by Munnery:

Des

2008-05-15T10:13:00.000+01:00

It Is Not Yet Ten O'Clock...

2008-05-15T09:55:00.004+01:00

...and I've already written one story and started another. The one I've finished is called The Russian (A Nightmare) and it's horrible. I won't post it here because it's horrible. The second one is nicer, though not yet finished. I think it's going to be called 'Fe'.

I now have a cup of tea and a fresh pack of Digestives to bring the morning in with true style. I've just cleaned out the fridge as well.

Actually, being in the shop looking at the biscuits reminded me of an incident. There was one particular biscuit in fact. That biscuit was a 'bourbon.' I have been meaning to get this off my chest for quite some time.

Paul came to our house to do a write up on Time Travel Opportunists for a new zine that's coming out in Derby. He e-mailed ahead, like a true millennium gent, with the promise of a nice packet of bourbons as a gift.

I heard the knock and opened the door. I was the first to look upon the travesty that was Paul Hammond holding Londis own-brand Bourbons. The latter part was where the travesty began, but it leaked all over Paul. I had a mixture of feelings. Pity, hurt, distress, disappointment.

He knows about it now. We were honest. You could see it on people's faces after the first bite. The disappointment, the hurt, the despair. Emma didn't have one because Londis own-brand poor-bons aren't vegan. I didn't have one because I've had them before. I knew what was coming. A dry and tasteless, custard cream shaped Bour-wrong.

Paul, if you're reading this, I like you. I honestly do.
I like doing number puzzles with you. I like the way you talk, and what you talk about.
I think you are funny as well.
If I was a lady, I might go so far as to say I might 'date' you.
But next time, and I think by now you know this, next time you're in Londis, walk past the own-brand bourbons, walk past the 'Best-In' bottom shelf four for a pound brown-custard-cream (that even has the adornments of that acceptable blond square of cream filled biscuit) 'long' pack. Walk past them, and walk to the door. Walk out of Londis and walk past our house. Walk past our house all the way to the Spar shop, where they have Bourbon sense. Buy their bourbons.
Vote with your feet Paul.
Vote Crawford's. Vote anything.
Then come back and I will make us all something to dunk them in.

Something Else That Happened Already Today

2008-05-09T11:50:00.000+01:00

Some Things That Have Happened Already Today

2008-05-09T11:33:00.003+01:00

1. My brother got the job he's been after at Derby Evening Telegraph. My brother is a fine writer. That makes it sound like he writes 'fines' but it was meant as a gentlemanly complement. (I'm feeling quite gentlemanly today).

My brother's name is Jonny and he got the job the good old way...getting in there under the premise of 'work experience' and then letting rip with his natural journalistic abilities and wowing them all into taking him in and paying him proper.

I am feeling very proud. There is an inflation in my chest. It is nothing medical.

Another thing that has happened already today:

2. Fine Before You Came are an Italian band. They are one of my favourite bands, and have been since I first laid eyes and ears on them years ago at The Victoria Inn. After that day they stayed at my house and their Manchester show was cancelled. So we put on another Derby gig the night after, and we (The Little Explorer) played with them. They really liked us as well, and when they came back we did a tour with them.

Then we went to Italy and played with them there.
I have shared some of my favourite experiences with these guys.
We are the definition of kindred spirits I think.

Anyway, we (The Little Explorer) are calling it a day, and they (Fine Before You Came) are going to travel to England all the way from Milan to play with us.

I am feeling very honoured. There is a smile on my face. It is not being held up by anything.

3. I got my redundancy papers through today. It basically confirmed my earliest suspicions that I'm quite...well not even quite...I'm proper fucked. I have lots of working things out to do for my application for remuneration, and I have a holiday booked for four days after the liquidation of the company starts.

Still, numbers one through two of this post make that pesky number three seem pretty insignificant.

The sky was grey.
Then when I typed that last bit the sun came out.

Some things that haven't happened yet today:

1. Job Centre interview.
2. Meeting with new landlord's agents. They sound nicer than the old ones on the phone at least. Let's hope they understand our seemingly 'different' way of life in our lovely house better than the last ones.
3. Jacket Potato and salad with Jenny.
4. Practicing shuffling cards.
5. Maybe watching 'The Counterfeiters'

Quantum Leap: Al At The Game

2008-03-12T12:41:00.007Z

Beal's at work. I'm guessing he's bopping around Wikipedia on his lunch. Whatever he's doing, he sent me this just before I'm going for mine:

Strange Fact About Quantum Leap:

"In the second season episode "All Americans", Al notes that he is watching Super Bowl XXX and that the Steelers are three points behind. The game did in fact feature the Steelers, who trailed the Dallas Cowboys by exactly three points at two different points in the game. This is notable because the episode was filmed over six years before the game actually took place."

This doesn't surprise me since Quantum Leap could only have been real. I've never woken up in a white room, leading me to believe I've never been 'inhabited' by Dr. Sam Beckett. Since the year when Dr. Sam Beckett stepped into the Quantum Leap Accelerator (and vanished, I might add) is now past, I no longer will be (he can't travel forward in time, only backwards and forwards within his own lifetime from the point of being born until the point of stepping into the Quantum Leap Accelerator (and vanishing.))

This 'rule' was broken a couple of times in the televised representation of Quantum Leap, but they were really important times. I don't think that would apply to anything that could happen in Derby, to me, now. However, it is important to note that although the 'episodes' in the series were only ever (in my recollection (swiss cheese memory? it could be...)) set in America or Vietnam, this is only down to the bias of American Television Stations and/or American Television Executive Producers. This doesn't mean that a person in Derby could not have been affected in some life-affirming/heart-warming way by the real Dr. Sam Beckett, at some point between the fifties and 1995-ish.

Do you remember waking up in a white room?
Were you ever approached by a man with a rainbow calculator and a cigar?
Have you ever suspected someone close to you to be acting 'strange' and making pets and small children act equally 'strange'?
At any point in your life, have you, or someone you know, ever walked into a room wide-eyed and muttered "Oh Boy!"

Please write to:

Time Travel Opportunists
The Statue Of the Boy on the Ram
Main Centre in Derby
Wednesday 12/3/1992
Anytime between 12:01PM and 12:02PM.

Knight Rider In Derby On A Leap Year Friday

2008-02-29T12:45:00.003Z

This week I passed my driving test. I continue to be very happy about it, even now, five days hence.

Today it is raining, and it is cold. I need to go to the Post Office. Not the one five minutes walk away, but the one on the other side of town near the train station where all your parcels end up when they inevitably don't fit through your nostril of a letterbox and the postman still hasn't figured out that your front door bell doesn't work. That one. And it's raining. And it's really cold. Siberia cold.
Northern Norway (recently inaugurated) Seed Bank cold.
Ice sculpture of Jack Nicholson in the maze at the end of The Shining cold.

The car is parked about five minutes (walk) away in the opposite direction of the train station. It occurs to me now that Knight Rider really had no clear domestic application in Los Angeles (is that where it was set? Well, if not, this applies to anywhere where one could wear an open leather jacket with nothing underneath and not get a cough) beyond showing off, and the novelty of having a car with good old dry English charisma to keep you awake on long journeys, or break the tension when your adrenaline level and chance of dying is high.

Were one to have Kit (the name of the car in Knight Rider) in Derby, on a rainy Friday in February on a day that only exists once every four years, one could use the small 'fob' that comes with your keys to request Kit to come and pick you the hell up. Then you could vent spleen on how cold it is:

Me: "Blimey it's cold."
Kit the car from Knight Rider: "Good afternoon Biff. I can confirm that it is indeed 'cold'."
Me: "It's flipping deep space cold."
Kit: "The current temperature in deep space is -500 degrees centigrade. The correct term for this level of cold would be 'sub-zero'. It would be incorrect to compare the outside temperature here with that of deep space."
Me: "Right."
Kit: "Where would you like to go today Biff?"
Me: "Post Office please."
Kit: "The Wardwick or Midland Road?"
Me: "Midland Road please, Kit."
Kit: "Has the postman still not figured out that the bell doesn't work?"
Me: "No, not yet."
Kit: "What an absolute tool."

Brand Name Dilemma

2008-02-06T14:36:00.001Z

15:01

2008-02-01T15:01:00.000Z

It is Friday at one minute past three in the afternoon.
I am working in the internet in my front room.
It has started raining. It's gone dark. Like there's been a powercut in the sky. I didn't have the light on, but now I can't see anything.
It's snowing as well.
I am moving the laptop monitor towards my notebook to read my list of things to do. I really can't see a thing.
I hope this isn't permanent.
I'm putting the light on.

365 Films: January

2008-02-01T13:00:00.000Z

I made some resolutions when 2007 became 2008 (this took approximately two days).
Looking at the list, most of them are actually tasks. Not tasks...more like projects. Definitely not targets.
One of these projects is this one: to watch 365 films in 2008.

I like films. That's one of my reasons for doing it. If I didn't like films I probably wouldn't bother, unless I really wanted to like films. Even then 365 of them is not a little extreme (that's one a day).

I don't think I saw enough films in 2007. That's another reason. I am a hoarder. I hoard and collect things. This isn't exclusive to objects. It applies also to things like 'knowledge' and 'culture'. I wouldn't mind staying in a bit more in 2008. I was out a lot in 2007. There are many reasons.

Here are the films I watched in January (there are 31 days in January and there are 31 films in this list, which means I'm on target.) I enjoyed every single one of these films:

1. Dirty Dancing, 2. Before Sunrise, 3. Before Sunset, 4. Sense & Sensibility, 5. Twenty-Four Seven, 6. Blade Runner, 7. Meet The Fockers, 8. All Quiet On The Western Front, 9. The Great Train Robbery, 10. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 11. Who's That Knocking At My Door, 12. Survive Style 5+, 13. Primer, 14. Zodiac, 15. I'm Not There, 16. Tideland, 17. Elf, 18. Spellbound, 19. The Beat That My Heart Skipped, 20. Rain Man, 21. Falcons, 22. Helvetica, 23. Inner Space, 24. The Last Kiss, 25. Spiderman Three, 26. Zeitgeist, 27. Cinema Paradiso, 28. Lives Of Others, 29. Bubba Ho-Tep, 30. Shopgirl, 31. Hallam Foe.

Some of these films I had seen before, but that isn't an issue. But if I watch any of them again in 2008 they won't count. That's the rules.

This CD

2008-01-23T10:32:00.000Z

I cannot work, for this CD is too beautiful.
I am at home. I am working from home. I should probably turn the CD off...
This CD is too beautiful to turn off.
I will probably just sit here and let it finish being beautiful by itself.
I am staring at the screen of my computer where I am 'working'
But I am not using my eyes
Because this CD is too beautiful.

Thankyou ( or On The Enjoyment Of 'Elf')

2008-01-16T21:33:00.000Z

Thankyou John Favreau for directing the film 'Elf'.
Thankyou David Berenbaum for writing the film 'Elf'.
I would also like to thank Susie Farris for casting Will Ferrell as Buddy (the Elf) who I found very funny, and Zooey Deschanel who is an angel.
Zooey Deschanel is also a very good singer, as well as being an angel, and also a fine actress. She was in another film called 'All The Real Girls' that I enjoyed and watched twice.
I also liked the fact that Peter Dinklage was in it who I saw in the film 'The Station Agent' (which I also enjoyed).

Thankyou also to Beal for lending me the DVD.
Elf.

Plain Chocolate Hobnobs

2008-01-10T11:18:00.000Z

The other day I wrote about Dark Chocolate Digestives. Emma commented about Plain Chocolate Hobnobs. They are but a memory in biscuit history, but a good one (number 7 in a Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down survey).

Emma asked me if I could find some. I looked in ebay and there were none. I looked in Google and there were only people talking about them. So I used my telephone to speak to McVities.

I spoke to a lovely lady. The conversation:

Me: Hello, I'd like to inquire about a particular kind of biscuit.
Lady at McVities: Right, what kind?
Me: The Plain Chocolate Hobnob, also known as The Dark Chocolate Hobnob. I would like to know if they are still available.
Lady: I'm afraid that they were discontinued.
Me: Oh.
Lady: Yes.
(silence, phone crackle)
Me: That is a shame.
Lady: Yes. But hang on. Bear with me a moment.
(a moment passes)
Lady: I thought so. They are actually working on a new product based on The Plain Chocolate Hobnob that is planned for release around Springtime. It is called The Dark Chocolate Hobnob.
Me: Wow!
Lady: Yes!
Me: That is good news!
Lady: Yes. Look out for it in the springtime.
Me: I will!
Lady: Wonderful.
Me: Wonderful.
Lady: Ok then...
Me: Splendid!
Lady: Yes...
Me: Thankyou for that wonderful news. I am pleased.
Lady: Good.
Me: Have a wonderful day. Bye bye.
Lady: Bye bye.
We both hang up. I think she is smiling. I am smiling.

So there we are. I put my phone on the table and it was so happy it switched itself off and on again. Here's to McVities for giving us the icing on the cake of longer days and warmer weather!

Thursday Facts

2008-01-10T11:02:00.000Z

The wind is blowing.
Chili olives are nice.
There are ghosts in my house.
Nutella jars, once emptied, can be washed out and used as stylish glass tumblers in the same way that jam jars can for pickles, pencils, or buttons.
It is cold outside.
It is cold inside.
My knee hurts.

Dark Chocolate Digestives

2008-01-09T15:34:00.000Z

They're proper nice. I don't like dark chocolate, but put it on the back of a digestive biscuit and I'm there.

Le Cine de la Petite Lune (two)

2008-01-07T21:31:00.000Z

Running Order:

Chaos Theory (Gergely Szelei, Barna Buza, Zoltan Szabo)
Filmachine (Keiichiro Shibuya & Takashi Ikegami)
Sync (Marco Brambrilla)
Strasse Der Spezialisten (Saschka Unseld & Jakob Schuh)
Squarepusher - My Red Hot Car (Nendo Graphics)

Curated by Aaron S. Bradbury & Garrick M. Smith
Garrick's Room
January 7th 2008

The First Monday Of The Year

2008-01-07T15:37:00.001Z

Derby today is concrete grey
It's work and worry
It's terraces and rain
It's cold toes and neck pain
It's bad driving and slow trains
It's Wiltshire Ham and French Mustard
It's Do Make Say Think by the fire
It's hot coffee and chocolate toffee
It's talking to oneself up the stairs and singing loudly down them
It's reading on the toilet
It's folding clothes
It's the feeling coming back to those toes.

Christmas Day, pre-prawn cocktail

2007-12-25T16:48:00.000Z

Ingredients:

One slice bread (nicely toasted)
Pate
One mother creating a Christmas Dinner featuring a turkey cooked while wrapped in bacon.

Simply spread the pate on the toast, then as the mother transfers the bird to the sideboard to slice, grab some of that crispy greasy meaty bacon and whack it on your slice.
Place in mouth.
Wonder why this isn't a staple part of every meal.

Le Cine de la Petite Lune (one)

2007-12-03T22:21:00.000Z

Running Order:

J.S Bach Fantasy in G minor (Jan Svankmajer)
Katedra (Tomek Baginski)
Meat Love (Jan Svankmajer)
The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (The Quay Brothers)

Curated by Aaron S. Bradbury
Garrick's Room
December 3rd 2007

Knitted Robots

2007-11-21T15:27:00.000Z

These things just seem so right.
Emma, Danny, Libby, everyone...click here!

Excess Distress

2007-11-21T15:17:00.000Z

An afternoon brain/conscience tickler:

Say you have a packet of biscuits (e.g. Bourbons) and you're happily dunking away. Maybe you're dunking the first half and eating the second half dry. Maybe you're going in dry then adding the coffee dans la bouche. Whatever you're doing, you end up devouring two thirds of a pack. You have two choices:

1. Risk someone coming in and going "Bloody hell have you eaten ALL THOSE bourbons by yourself? You eat biscuits like crisps you do."

2. Finish the pack and feel a bit bloated.

You tell me. I often deal with both. Often on the same day.

Autumn/Bibio

2007-11-14T20:27:00.000Z

Bibio should do the soundtrack for the BBC's Autumn Watch.

I can easily imagine Bill Oddie listening to Bibio on a giant tape Walkman, feeling fine in the chill air kicking his feet through red and golden leaves. I hope Mush chuck Bill a promo or two.

To Be Told You Were Just Unlucky

2007-11-12T15:36:00.000Z

It's not got the medicinal quality to the listener that the speaker imagined when thinking of something to say to break the silence you're focusing all your attention on keeping, as any break in this wall will certainly result in all the pent up adrenalin of frustration gushing from your lowered and sun sore eyes.

Walking across the car park to my home I thought briefly of beating the crap out of a Pay and Display machine. I sensed there might be a karmic irony somewhere in it, but decided that the Pay and Display machine hadn't done anything wrong. It was just doing its job. Just like the DSA examiner I'd had sat next to me for the last forty minutes.

Crossing the road I breath the crisp November afternoon air and imagine myself calm as a Hindu cow. It's not working. I think of going near my chakras, but from the outside they look like the lifts in The Shining. Torrents of blood. Shock horror. Twins holding hands in a corridor.

Somewhere in Derbyshire there is an old couple driving a silver shopping car. They've cost me eight weeks of driving lessons and about three hundred quid. They weren't looking. I looked and they weren't there. I pulled out and they were. They didn't notice the BSM marked Corsa sticking out into the road. I sincerely hope they get back safely from wherever they were going. Me, I failed my test because of them. Driving back to the test centre, a lady in a Volkswagen straddled two lanes all the way up the dual carriageway. I'm glad she is allowed to drive like that. If I hadn't failed before then, I may have failed for getting to close as she slowed to 15mph in a 40 zone for no other reason than to keep straddling.

Dennis

2007-10-27T13:23:00.000+01:00

7 days ago I fell in love. His name was Dennis. I wasn't supposed to fall in love. In fact I'd told Jenny, just before we went, not to fall in love as it would surely end in tears.

5 days ago I went back and put my name down to adopt Dennis. I met him, we spent a minute or two alone together. Dennis is ace. I filled in a form. Then they told me that I'd need a landlord's letter and a house inspection. I had always known that this would happen, but love had it's way and closed the door to things known in favor of things desired.

4 days ago I considered chasing the landlord to let me and Dennis be together.

3 days ago I realised that the stairs were probably too much for Dennis to handle. You see, Dennis only has three legs. He'd been sent there by a vet who'd had to amputate his right hind after a fracture in an accident. The description was right, and I'd seen it with my own eyes, he could still get about no problem...but I live on the second floor of a big old house with big old stairs.

2 days ago I made plans to go back and tell them to let Dennis go to another home. I left that until today, I don't know why. I thought about going to see Dennis to say goodbye. I didn't. I just said to the girl there that the landlord probably wouldn't let Dennis and I be together, and anyway he'd probably be better off living in a bungalow with a big garden.

...now, one hour hence, watching Megastructures on National Geographic, dunking Bourbons, thinking of Dennis.

Westfield & I

2007-10-25T19:50:00.000+01:00

1. The more shops I can go into, the happier I'll be.
2. It is possible to have your soul sucked out by lighting (like in Joe Versus The Volcano)
3. I have super powers: I have the patience of an old oak, and am invisible to other pedestrians. See how they walk straight into me and carry on as if nothing has happened! See how I go on my way, having not committed murder! I am The Invisible Patience! My mission: to get out alive.
4. The Guildhall Market is Sarah Conner, Westfield is The Terminator.

These are the things I learned today, on my way to catch a bus. Thankyou Westfield.

A conversation that could happen in approx. 2028:

Interior. A bar in London. Biff is propping up the bar.

Bartender: What'll it be?
Biff: Your finest Columbo.
Bartender: What's a Columbo man?
Biff: A Columbo, man, is a Jameson's and soda, no ice, just a bit of soda.
Bartender: And why-
Biff: Because that's what the great TV detective drank.
Bartender: Columbo had Jameson's?
Biff: I don't know, whatever, that doesn't matter...
Bartender: There you go.
Biff: Cheers man. I'm sorry I got annoyed, I've lost my superpowers since being down here.
Bartender: Right. Where're you from?
Biff: Derby.
Bartender: Derby? Where's that?
Biff: It's up near Nottingham and Leicester...
Bartender: Ah, I gotcha, you mean that council estate on the outskirts of Westfield?

Slug Tape

2007-10-25T19:24:00.000+01:00

Slugs don't often have much business inside guitars. I know this, but most of the people I've asked for the item over the last few days have looked at me strangely, then watched me leave.

I need slug tape to line the inside of my guitars so that they don't go 'hmmmmmmm' by default. Slug tape is like copper cellotape and stops RF noise from getting in. I wish I knew what that meant, but I know it happens. I also don't know why slugs don't like copper...but I imagine for them it's like chewing tin foil if you've got fillings.

Wilko's should've had it, but they've got rid of all their gardening apparel in favour of a singing Santa, barbershop reindeer, and a crooning snowman. When you walk past they start up, all singing in tune, but not with each other. The resulting din is somewhere between that bit in a tape walkman when a battery is dying in the middle of a song, and an ambulance going by as you yourself lie dying smashed tape player in hand, after being mugged and trampled by hoodlum carol singers. Doppler shift. Blood filled ears. It's not nice.

Bennett's. DIY shops. B&Q. Homebase. Hardware stalls in the market. Both markets. Electrical shops. I know slug tape exists, I'm sure of it. After a whole day of looking around for this stuff I considered giving in and just using tin foil...but I can't. Not now. I've come too far. I won't be beaten by a dancing tree with an 8-bit Christmas medley repertoire...in October.

At Home In Derby

2007-10-25T12:53:00.000+01:00

Today, I awoke from the two-seater with a bent back and shrunken lungs. Breakfast would have to be bought, and followed by caffeine. ('i' before 'e', except in 'caffeine'.)

Recently, the chill autumn air has been accentuated by a breeze blowing down from the arctic. It's a nice kind of cold. The kind that needs days of darkness and lights in the sky. We're planning a trip to Iceland in April.

My love of Iceland began with a documentary about northern most Manitoba. That sealed the idea of 'wilderness' into my brain as something to be experienced. I still feel that. At about the same time, aged seventeen (and in the early hours of the morning, on channel 4), I saw a troupe of dancers dressed as angels dancing in slow motion to the most beautiful music I thought I'd ever heard. That was the video to 'Svefn-g-englar' as part of a 4music fifteen minute expo of Sigur Ros. Ever since, I've been seeking out and collecting Icelandic music.

It feels good to know that you will soon experience something you've been preparing yourself for for eight years.

Derby is my home. I feel attached to it, not by sentiment (although that plays a natural part) so much as by something historically umbilical. I'll go into that another time, or not at all. Or maybe I'll just say that it's in that small pocket of time...like in If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things' , the city takes a breath, and on more than one occasion I have found myself awake and breathing with it. Conversely, the concept of home occupies that same part of my brain as the one of wilderness, so when Sigur Ros announced that their feature length film would be called 'Heima' (meaning 'at home') and be about their homeland Iceland someone somewhere threw a stone, and two birds fell from the sky.

Like today, I'm feeling frail and walking through the brittle October weekday afternoon streets and I am in more ways than one at home.
And on the big LCD screen Sigur Ros are playing at the Electric Proms.
And the bleak bare market square echoes strings and falsetto notes.
And I breathe in.
And I breathe out.
Then I buy breakfast.