(Soundtrack: A lot of mumbling and coughing as I am in the Library) It is dark and pouring down out there. Bridie and I just spent a really nice, quiet Christmas in London having cancelled plans to head North at the last minute due to illness. Probably our last Christmas in London I would guess, but we shall see. It is New Year’s Eve tomorrow and we are pulling together our Top 100 movies of the year, which I will share with you, as I am sure you are interested. Or are you? Si said I may as well text him these entries, as so few people probably read them. But Bridie does, and her folks do (thanks for the t-shirts!). I am not sure whether we should finalise the list straight away as there are some films we still haven’t seen, such as The Informant, Bright Star, The White Ribbon, that are sure to make a dent in it. On the other hand we already have over a hundred great films as it has been such an amazing year for movies. A few years ago I would also have been compiling my Top 100 albums of the year, but not any more. I am sure the great albums are out there, but there are probably only ten or twenty from this year that I have discovered and really rate. I have found this to be the case the last couple of years and assumed this is because I am at an age where I start to listen to more older music and keep up less. I saw the NME’s Top 50 albums of the Noughties listing, and I read it with enthuiasm, thinking that it would lead me to the great albums I have missed recently. It is the first time in those ten years that the NME has held my attention for longer than a minute. I expected to not know most of the records on their list, but in fact I knew them all. A lot of good albums on there, but as a showing for an entire decade it is pretty uninspiring. It got me thinking about “Rock” and its lifespan. I came to the conclusion that Rock is in fact dead. Not just pining for the fjords, but deceased. Think about Classical music. That had its day. I am sure there are still great pieces of Classical music being composed now, but nobody would dispute that it is music of the past. Jazz was alive and kicking and a real movement from the twenties to the sixities. After that, great Jazz albums continued to be made, but they were either meldings with Rock or Funk, or retro takes on previous glories. In other words Jazz had five decades as a real movement, and then it was over. I contend that the same thing happened to Rock. Its five decades were from the fifties to the nineties and it is now over. Don’t get me wrong: people will still make fantastic Rock albums for years to come, but as a vibrant, innovative, living movement, it is over. And Rock was a *movement. *As I grew up, it was how you would express yourself. It could change people’s feelings, set their moral code, it could actually change the world and it was what you did if you had something to say or something to protest about. Different phases inspired new fashions and slang and gave personality to each decade. Of course, The Beatles, Bowie and Punk all happened in a world in which there was no Beatles, Bowie or Punk. After 50 years of this music, artists either have to replicate the past or purposefully steer clear of it – it is hard to just ignore it. We are now making music in a world that has five decades of Rock n Roll. Elvis wasn’t. The albums on the NMEs Top 50 list are a collection of magpie-like refreshes of previous styles. None of them changed the world, or even said anything about the world. This decade, kids with anger, energy and something to say went onto Facebook. Rather than queue up for new release seven inches they queued for Games, which now sell even more than the singles used to. The Noughties has been about technology, reality TV, the internet, social networking and gaming. It was not about music. I am not grumpy about this. Social networking is not my cup of tea, and there is more than enough wonderful music to delve into from those five decades to ever need any more anyway. And there will be more great records. There will be enough of us out there making albums, like those soldiers in the forest who don’t realise the war is over, to guarantee a few corkers. I have always been a passionate defender of what has been happening each year in music. I don’t like it when people say things are not as good as they used to be. They have been saying that all my life and they have always been wrong. If I am now talking like that, the likely explanation is that I have been watching too many movies and not listening to enough albums this year to realise the exciting things that are actually happening. If that is the case, then I look forward to hearing that music. But I stand by my theory – I am not saying things aren’t as good as they used to be, I am just stating that Rock is dead. Speaking of which, we finally met up for our Pop Wishes evening after a couple of postponments. The boys were on good form and there was much toasting – 2009 has been a good year for Spearmint. We are dead proud of the Shirley Lee and Telley abums, our tours of UK and Germany, the “A Week Away” re-issue, the “LIfe In Reverse” EP, the book of graphic interpretations of our songs, and the ICA show. We opened up our Pop Wishes from a couple of years ago and we had achieved seven and a half out of thirteen of them. Not too bad. We then came up with some new ones, only five actually. Along the lines of doing the next Shirley Lee and Andy Lewis albums and getting going on the next Spearmint one. They have been ritually sealed and slipped inside a Burt Bacharach album, to be opened in two years time. This time they are inside “Make It Easy On Yourself” rather than “Hitmaker” to see if Burt can rustle up any extra magic. So here’s to 2010. I hope it is the year you wish for…

(Soundtrack: Traffic and sirens as I am in an Internet Cafe on the Uxbridge Road) I just went to the dentist, well the dental hygenist, for a clean. She asked when I last had one and I said five years, but it is actually at least fifteen. Her objective seemed to be to cause as much pain as possible, and to punish me for not coming for so long. She said I have caused irreparable damage to my gums, and then she really went to town. I started yelping and kicking my feet in the air, with the blood spurting down my chin, and she asked in a matter of fact way, “Are you OK?”, as though she had picked up that I might have a mild headache or something. She says I have to go back in six months. I am not good with pain. Since the last diary entry I have been working pretty hard on writing the next album. I would estimate that I am now about halfway through, but then it is hard to say you are halfway to somewhere when you don’t know where that place is. Or hard to estimate the half when you can’t see the whole. There comes a point when you are writing a big project that you are suddenly “in it”, suddenly inside looking out, rather than outside looking in. I am now at the point, which is good, but not necessarily pleasurable, as it is the point when you start to obsess on ideas for songs, and get frustrated about the things that you know are not working, or are not good enough. I am impatient. I want the songs to just fall into place and for me to love them, but it is actually going to take some effort to get there. And there is no kidding yourself – you know you are being lazy, or untrue, or faking, or stealing. I am a more fulfilled person when I am writing, but not necessarily happier, except when I get the odd big break-through or get close to the end. I set myself a plan for the writing which involves keeping going until Easter. I find that having a plan works for me; deadlines and a schedule encourage me to get on with it. I allow myself to change the plan at any point, and I am sure I will, but I find it a productive way to work. The album still seems to be shaping up to be a solo album, and I feel it would be good to attempt to do the whole thing myself, so that it comes out completely differently to our previous albums. I mean playing everything and producing it myself. Good for me, but not necessarily for you! It occurred to me over the last couple of weeks that this means I am beholden to nobody. Not that we normally get much interference in our music, but I can literally do whatever I want with this one… If I want to try a comedy reggae song or a jazz instrumental there will be no-one around to stop me! Only joking… (at least about the jazz)…So I may take this opportunity to push things a little, and make this one as Shirley Lee as it can possible be. After that I am sure you and I will both be gagging for me to do some stuff with the band again. We didn’t do our Pop Wishes night, hopefully we will get this in before Christmas. Bridie and I did go to see Cliff and The Shadows though and it was fabulous: Hank Marvin confirmed his place as the coolest man in rock and that guitar sounded perfect. They didn’t play any solo Cliff tracks, just the early Cliff and Shadows stuff, but Cliff has great, still for my money the best voice for ballads in Rock’n'Roll. It is hard to communicate how great they are if you don’t get it, but in terms of British music they are right up there with The Beatles, The Clash, The Stone Roses and all. We have also caught some great movies: In The Loop, The Cove, Up and Le Donk spring to mind (”Come on Deirdre Barlow!”). Paddy Considine has become a bit of a hero – everyone knows Dead Man’s Shows is a classic, but try watching him in In America and then Le Donk. Best movie though, and I suspect this will end up being my favourite of the year, is the Michael Jackson film. I was absolutely blown away by it. I think that is the best film about dance ever, beating Shall We Dance, Top Hat, Carefree, An American In Paris, all of them! Also the best film about Soul Music that I can think of. I highly recommend it. After we did the ICA gig, I was feeling “pretty good” about the band and myself and came across a review of the Shirley Lee album on the internet. I usually try not to read reviews as it is pointless, but I thought I would boost my ego a bit more by having a read. Unfortunately it was a rotten review. Clearly if you put records out you are going to get some good reviews and some bad reviews. This was one of those where they put the album on, listen to it for the first time, and make some notes as they go. It really laid into us, saying it was track after track of boring indie and quoted a fragment of a lyric and then said “Wow, that’s deep”. I am quoting from memory – I won’t bother to check the details, as it was also full of inaccuracies about the record. Now clearly this is my own fault for reading the bloody thing (and for making track after track of boring indie obviously). It is always a bad idea, not because good press is likely to go your head, but because they always hurt you and make you angry. People in bands tend to be sensitive types to say the least; the good things that are said go straight past us, we zoom in on the slightest criticism, and see red. I have seen band members read reasonable reviews and act as though their family has been physically attacked. After all these years I am pretty good at dealing with negative stuff, but this hit home. It not only brought me down to earth (probably a good thing), but made me boil with anger. I went to the bottom of the piece to find out who wrote it and there was no name. Definitely a good thing as if I had been able to get hold of them at that moment, I would have physically attacked them. I mean it. I calmed down after a couple of hours, and can now see it in context. I can’t complain – we have always been lucky and got really good reviews, and the Shirley Lee album got more glowing press than anything I have been involved with. Not that I really get the point: did anybody buy the album because they read the review? Though I suppose it at least tells you it’s out if you see a review. Anyway, the same thing happened to Ronan yesterday – he found a long, badly written, luke-warm review of the ICA show that was littered with mistakes about the band and the night, and it made him really really angry. I suppose at our level, the people who write this stuff would like to get into journalism and are practising their craft, including being negative. The person who wrote that got in on the guestlist as “press” too. I’ve had it with that – they can pay next time, in fact they can fuck off! I don’t feel too good about paying to see a band when some wanker has got in for free just to frown all the way through, then write down negative prose and get it circulated! Rant over… but I am serious: no more guest list places for journalists.

(Soundtrack: Public Image Ltd “Public Image”, Ramones “Ramones”) September was a relatively busy month for the band. We did a tour of Germany and then our “A Week Away” show at the ICA. Germany went well, with all but one of the gigs being very good. The one that was less good was our fault for attempting something inappropriate in a town we hadn’t played in before. We started out in Freiburg which is always very welcoming thanks to the continuing support of our friend Papa Chico who promotes the shows there and is a top gent. This was Neil’s 100th Spearmint gig. I find that very hard to believe. I find it surprising that we have even played 100 gigs, let alone that anyone would go to them. Neil now comes along and drives the van for us. This seems more sensible than him making his own way behind in his car. So we wanted to get Neil something to celebrate the occasion. But what do you get someone who literally has everything to do with the band already? We toyed with the idea of a gold disc, but the answer eventually seemed obvious: more Spearmint songs. So we gave Neil three songs which are exclusive to him: “A Large Grey Cat” which is about being solely indoors, “Bachelor Gardens”, about I flat I shared with my friend Graham while we were on the dole in Newcastle, and “Cocker” which concerns being bothered, hounded, tormented, well, stalked by a celebrity. We also gave him a 100 Gigs Of Neil t-shirt and some rare promos. He seemed chuffed and it was our pleasure, as he has been wonderfully encouraging. If you come to 100 gigs then we will give you some songs too. I don’t think I have seen anyone live more than ten times, so a hundred is devotion indeed. There were some issues with the German shows that ultimately were my fault. The gigs was originally booked earlier in the year by our German promoter, as a Shirley Lee tour. I am not sure I made it clear then that it would be the whole band playing. So some of the fees were low, and we were booked into some inappropriate places for a full band to play. Also by the time the tour came round, it was more of a Speamint show than Shirley Lee. It was still good, it just meant that the money wasn’t great, and in the extreme case of Hamburg, we were booked into a bar with no PA or monitors. This was compounded by the fact that the venue we were originally booked into closed down so this bar was confirmed late, but not really advertised. So we had no PA and virtually no crowd. And of course, this turned out to be the best show – there is something about being up against it that always makes you pull out your best, and this one was really special. Thanks to Margaret and Ali, who got married the day we DJd in Brixton and came along to that, then were really supportive at the Hamburg gig and the ICA too. The hotels and hostels we were booked into in Germany seemed to be exercises in how many people you can get into one room at one time. I have had enough of bunk beds and Ronan parading around nude at 5am to last me for a while. In one hostel you don’t get towels, you sleep in your sheets, then use them as towels. This seemed daft to me, but actually worked well, and is pretty sound if you think about it. The drives were slightly less punishing than usual, and we did a pretty good job of eating well and not drinking too much, and not getting ill. I loved the ICA gig, it went pretty much exactly as had hoped. The crowd were lovely and it was great to see some people we hadn’t seen for yonks, including JB, who produced the “A Week Away” album – he was on fine form. It all went by very quickly, and before we knew it we were loading the gear back into the lock-up in Shepherds Bush. We are not planning any shows to do “A Week Away” live again, but it does seem a shame to only play it the once. I really like playing the whole album as one piece. Most of our albums were designed that way anyway, so it feels right to play them live like that. After the gig, Bridie and I slipped away to Cornwall for a week’s holiday, which was fabulous. We stayed in Carbis Bay and spent the week walking the coastal path and beautiful beaches, watching movies, cooking, eating out and drinking plenty. That is said Bridie in the photo an said beach. It was so nice that I am now feeling depressed at the prospect of work tomorrow. London was a bit of a shock to the system too. While we were away we watched one of those crime shows where they follow two policemen round a borough, in this instance our borough. There were all kinds of awful things going on, and we kept recognizing them as being on our street. It solved the puzzle of exactly what happens in the cafe down the road. Made the area look really dangerous. Of course we just cruise through it all, oblivious, as you do in London. We went to the local pub last night and there must have been ten police cars and vans all speeding up and down the street for ages in pursuit of somebody. We wouldn’t normally comment on it, but it was just such a contrast after the peace of Carbis Bay. I am listening to the first Public Image album. I was reminded of it as they are doing thirty year anniversary live shows of the Metal Box, which is an amazing album. I have always been a big admirer of those first three albums, they are so bold and fearless, and Lydon’s lyrics are dazzling. No more band activity for a while. I am looking forward to getting on with writing the next album, which is always the most exciting thing for me. Am trying to get the guys together this week to have a beer and do our regular Pop Wishes thing, where we see how we have measured up to our last set of wishes (about two years ago), and set out some new ones for the year ahead. I need to do some rounding up to get those boys in the same place at the same time. Rounding up; that’s what you do if you form a band, spend your days rounding up. Best of all, Bridie and I are off to see Cliff and the Shadows next week – how good is that?

(Soundtrack: Elvis Costello “King Of America”, Elvis Costello “Blood And Chocolate”) It is now bordering on autumn. I just wandered up to Acton to get some vegetables and as it is quite windy there are conkers all over the pavements. Quite good large ones actually. I am not complaining; I love autumn, it’s just that the seasons seem to come round faster and faster as time goes on. Those seemingly endless summers of childhood are long gone, and were pretty boring at times anyway… Just part of getting older I guess. There are probably paintings cavemen did bemoaning how quickly the seasons pass now. There are still random hot days at the moment and I keep seeing dead bumble bees on the ground, which has been a feature this year. When I walk through to work in the morning I cut through a little park where there is normally a group of dogs being exercised. One of them I call “tall dog”. I don’t know what make he is, but he is whippet-like, except a lot taller. No matter what commotion all the rest of the dogs are creating, this guy just stands there, tangential to the group, staring into the distance. He is completely oblivious and imperious. The others have given up trying to get him to join in and play; he is impervious to everything. His attitude strikes a chord with me – he is my favourite and it cheers me up to see him. Bridie and I were trying to figure out where all the male ducks have gone. They are the ones with the bright green / blue necks. I came up with the theory that the males stay here for spring in order to mate and have kids, then in the late summer fly off to a country where it is spring again. Bridie got to the truth of it though – they are still there, they just shed their bright plumage so that they look very much like the females. The green / blue will gradually re-appear over coming months. As I write this Bridie is talking to Nic Roeg – how cool is that? We went to see “(500) Days Of Summer” the other night with Jim and Andy. Neil and Cheryl came along too, but Si and Arn couldn’t make it: moving house and lack of childcare being the reasons. So we sat there eagerly awaiting the Spearmint dialogue to appear. I had pretty much decided that it had been edited out as it doesn’t come until three quarters of the way through. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character says “It pains me to live in a world where no-one has ever heard of Spearmint”. Zooey Deschanel’s character says she hasn’t heard of them… Gordon explains that he put them on the mix CD he gave her, in fact they (us) were the first track. It was a bit surreal seeing this on the big screen at Odeon Marble Arch. I thought maybe we would give a rousing cheer, but we just shifted about a bit. Jim raised his arms slightly, in celebration. I got a mail from a chap called Michael Leibowitz in the States explaining that the writer of the movie is a friend of his and a big fan of the band, his favourite song being “The Beautiful Things” (cool choice).The best thing is that it is a really good film and some aspects (the dance routine, the split screen, the animation, the numbered days) make it a bit of a classic romantic comedy. Which brings me back to how many great movies are being released at the moment. In fact they are coming too thick and fast to keep up with. We went to “Inglourious Basterds” and absolutely adored it. Same goes for “Funny People”. Again these are films that have attracted bad reviews – further proof to disregard critics. How on earth did Costello make these two albums in the same year? I am awed… Jim really poured heart and soul into getting the artwork finished for the special edition of “A Week Away”. The booklet is lovely, but I think it took a toll on him, with trying to keep things going at home, the day job, our rehearsals and a gig for his own band Telley all falling in the same week. He hasn’t been the same since in fact. So I am trying to divert band work to other people and keep it away from him for the moment. We are heading over to Germany next week to do some shows. These things are always booked way in advance, then suddenly they are upon you and there is no time to get ready or rehearsed, all a bit stressful. We have been learning to play “A Week Away” live, and have even figured out what most of the chords are. These days when I finish a song I write out the lyrics in my book, and include the chords too. But ten years ago, I used to just write the lyrics, thinking “”of course I will remember these chords”. Then coming to the songs ten years later I really struggled on a couple. It’s not just knowing that it is an “A”, it is more exactly how you played that “A”. So I recommend you always make a note of such things. We are pretty much there now on understanding what it is we should be playing; we just need to find a way of actually playing it. We had a good rehearsal on Saturday, then an awful one on Tuesday. Par for the course. After watching “(500) Days Of Summer”, we went and DJd at Ian Watson’s lovely, enduring clubnight “How Does It Feel To Be Loved”. We had a top time, I even enjoyed the DJing, which I sometimes don’t. Got very drunk. Jim sensibly left early as he has so much going on, but then spent hours getting home on the night buses. Andy was on good form and it would be nice to do it again sometime. I have been a good boy and putting aside time for writing over the last few weeks to work on what looks at this early stage to become a big sprawling Shirley Lee album. Which probably means it wil be a concise Spearmint album. We shall see. The photo is of a pavement in San Francisco. Some chap was telling us who the artist is, but we were drunk so I can’t remember the name.

(Soundtrack: Television “Marquee Moon”, Gladys Knight “Anthology”) We had a few days in Oslo last week. I bought Bridie tickets to Madonna there for her birthday, which was back in February. I bought the tickets from a site called Smart Hospitality, not thinking too much of it as it was for an overseas gig. I got an email and postal confirmation from them stating that they would not dispatch tickets until a week before the gig. So I didn’t start chasing them until then. First of all I emailed, but the mails bounced back. Then I tried to ring, and realised the company no longer existed, if it ever had. I found a website where lots of people were saying that they had been conned out of money by this company for tickets to Blur, Springsteen, the Grand Prix etc. I never thought I would get conned like that – I always thought that was something that happened to other people. So we did our best to get tickets via other sites, ebay, but to no avail. Tried contacts in the industry but no joy there either. We then had a few days of deciding whether to go to Oslo or not, whether to just treat it as a sign, and spend the money here instead. Eventually we decided to go as we both wanted to see Oslo anyway. Then when we got there we were in two minds whether or not to go along and try and get into the gig or to not risk the disappointment. We decided to give it a go and were delighted to get tickets at face value at the tube station. First and hopefully the last time I have ever bought tickets from a tout. As we walked up towards the stadium the heavens opened and we were treated to the biggest storm I have been outside in for years: thunder, lightning and driving rain. Pretty soon there were rivers of water running down the pavements as we got shoved along by the crowd. By the time we got near the gates we were standing in a mud bath. We were not dressed for this at all. There was a lot of confusion as the gate numbers were not visible. We found ourselves standing in deep mud in a crowd who insisted on shoving forward even though nobody was moving inside – it was horrible. After twenty minutes of that we had had enough and headed back to the tube just to get away from the crowds and mud. Can you believe that we were then back at the tube trying to sell the tickets after all the palaver to get them? Shirley Lee, ticket tout. Mercifully we did not sell them and after fifteen minutes we made our way back to the stadium. People were now going in through the gates so we went in and watched the show. It was a concrete floor inside and it was still pouring down .We watched the gig standing in about six inches of standing water. We were completely wet through. It felt like a northern premier league football match, everyone around us looking miserable. Thankfully the show was great, a proper show that only Madonna can really do. Jackson used to, I suppose Kylie can do it too. I don’t just mean great lights, I mean a full-on show, and we managed to dance, splashing around So it all worked well in the end. It was fabulous to get out of the wet clothes back at the apartment, and luckily the bar on the corner opens until 3am so we had a few drinks after too. Oslo is lovely, but those drinks are expensive! And the food too. I have always taken the stance that after living in London no other city can seem expensive, and that held true in Tokyo and Reykjavik etc, but Oslo is shocking. All food, drink, clothes and records are two to three times as expensive as London. So ironically we spent less than usual as we had to be so careful. There is an excellent Film museum there and we spent time in there watching a festival of short film, which was fab. The photo is from the museum, it is a recreation of one of a huge number of sculptures by Vigeland in Vigeland Park. There is loads to see, with really interesting Resistance and Modern Art Museums as well as the obvious attractions along the fjord. Gladys Knight is under-rated isn’t she… I am listening to a double-album anthology, which is a bit of a strange selection actually, but she sounds great. She has a truly distinctive voice, nobody else like her. The double album is funny: side 3 is on the reverse on side 1 and side 4 is on the flip of side 2, which always confuses me. I have a few soul double albums like that. I think the idea was that you could have twin decks set up and go straight from side 1 to side 2 without having to turn any record over. I have been doing a bit of reading: “Conversations With Woody Allen” which is the best book about film-making I have read, and “Renegade” by Mark E Smith, which I couldn’t put down. It really does capture how relentlessly hard and lonely it is to have a vision and stick to it. I don’t have a fingernail of his brilliance, but I really identified with the book. He has such sound views on a lot of things too. I also tried a science fiction novel: “Snowcrash” by Neal Stephenson, which I quite enjoyed, but was not exactly what I was looking for. I used to read Sci-Fi as a boy and stopped in my teens. Recently I have had a hankering for it again. It is strange to read Sci-Fi written in the 90s which still manages to completely under-estimate the present day reality of the internet. I am currently on “Greenmantle” by John Buchan which is a sequel to “The Thirty-Nine Steps” and a rip-roaring read, all travelling under-cover across Europe in the snow during World War One. We caught another killer film last week: “Orphan”, which is a mainstream Horror, that is just done brilliantly and is exceptionally entertaining. “Mesrine” is also fab, classic gangster movie-making. Great films just keep coming, from all quarters. I know from work that the market experts were predicting a bad year for cinema as in recession people would want to save money and watch DVDs or play games instead. In fact the opposite has happened this year: cinema is well up on 2008, which was huge anyway, and home entertainment is having a tough time. I suppose a night at the cinema is relatively cheap escapism… but maybe the main reason is just that there are so many great movies around. I moved down to three days a week at work at the start of this month, but after a couple of very stressful weeks, I have moved back to four days, as there is too much work on at the moment. Even one day a week will give me impetus to move forward with writing though. Am in the mood to get on with the next album now…

I veer between “Wayne’s World” levels of confidence and extreme terror about the gig at the ICA. Ronan asked me why anyone would come along, and I said “What? You’re joking – it’s Spearmint! at the ICA! Playing “A Week Away” live! of course they’ll come!” He also asked me why anyone in London would bother coming to see a band from Leicester (The Junipers) and I confidently explained “Listen, when a band is that good, they are going to pull a crowd wherever they go!” At other times I am worried about it though… suppose nobody comes, suppose we are rubbish… I had one of my recurring anxiety dreams last night: the one where I am being tormented by a large bee or wasp. Bridie woke me up because I was crying out and jerking about. My other two regular dreams are being naked in a public place and either having an exam or a gig that I suddenly realised I am totally unprepared for. I suppose the worst that could happen is a handful of people at the ICA watching me sitting an exam naked and unprepared onstage while being tormented by a large bee or wasp. We have been very busy getting the album ready. I have just signed off the master and it sounds great. We decided to lose one of the extra tracks in the end (poor old “A Mild Mannered Man”) as it was getting too long to fit onto one CD. Jim is pulling the artwork together and had designed a very nice postcard which we will use to promote the gig. Still a lot to do for the artwork – we need to compile all the lyrics and images then lay out the booklet. Jim’s friends Jean and James are going to interview each of us for a short film which will show before we play the album live. We went to see The Pretenders the other night at the Shepherds Bush Empire. They were great and I have come to really like that venue. Last week we took my mum to see a 50s show called “Dreamboats And Petticoats” at The Grand Theatre in Leeds. The show was good fun, but the main pleasure for me was going back to the Grand where I used to go to watch bands as a kid. It is a brilliant theatre and I always dreamed of playing there when I grew up. I still do. One of the things about being in a band is that whenever I go to see other bands I find myself wondering whether or not I would want us to play in the venue. Bridie and I went to see Kraftwerk at The Town Hall in Auckland last year. What a great venue! Just the shape of it is enough to dream of playing there. I don’t own any Kraftwerk albums. I have always quite liked them, but avoided seeing them live originally, thinking “it will just be four blokes stood there behind keyboards”. So we went along to give it a try, and when the curtain rose, there they were – four blokes stood there behind laptops. They were great though, and the robots did the encore. I must get the albums. Also went to see “Moon” last week, which is a really great sci-fi movie, an instant classic, on a par with the best from the 70s. And there has already been a classic vampire movie this year: “Let The Right One In”. We also saw “Bruno” last week which was very funny, though I notice people are getting snooty about it, constantly comparing it to his other stuff, and saying it is disappointing. The fact is it is great and the first film this year I have immediately wanted to watch again. I remember when “Fawlty Towers” was first aired, on BBC 2 I think, it got a really bad response, with critics saying what a shame it was that Cleese had gone so mainstream after Monty Python. It was later re-run on BBC1 and suddenly it was a huge success. After a gap, they made series 2, and that got really bad reviews as apparently it was nowhere near as good as the first season. Critics – what is the point of them? “Anti Christ” is a cool film too. Thanks to the fuss about it being a genuinely graphic 18 cert, we were able to watch it on a big screen in town. It is great – proper film-making. Thank you Lars Von Trier. Bridie has a flash new phone. My phone hasn’t even got an apostrophe in it. I get funny about other people adding apostrophes where they are not needed, but I have to leave them out where they are needed. It is the first phone Bridie has had with a built-in camera. So she is taking lots of photos, including those ones that look great but you don’t take, like of your foot or chin or the pavement… She is building up a great collection, but isn’t able to get them onto the computer yet, so I resort to including this shot I took of a laundremat in Innsbruck.

(Soundtrack: Regina Spektor “Far”, Charles Mingus “Oh Yeah”) . We have been busy planning Spearmint activity for September. We are releasing a new version of our first album “A Week Away”. Pete is currently remastering it from debris of mixes and versions sprawled across a sea of DAT tapes – DAT was the industry standard for masters ten years ago when we made it. It was originally mastered at Abbey Road, but I am convinced Pete and do a better job of it. We are re-instating the single version of “A Trip Into Space”, which we feel is superior; it will also have the full unfaded ending. . We have also recorded seven new songs intended for a ten inch EP to be released alongside it. I have been searching for extra tracks to add to “A Week Away”, but of course most of them are already featured on “Songs For The Colour Yellow” which accompanied the album originally. After a sobering financial review, we have decided to add the seven new tracks to the “A Week Away” CD rather than releasing them on a separate EP. I think this will work well, as they do share a theme with the original album. . In addition to that, there are five b-sides from the time which did not fit onto “Songs For The Colour Yellow”, so they can also be included. Hence the new version of the CD will comprise “A Week Away” remastered, the new seven song cycle, plus the five extra tracks. . We have also decided to include lyrics having originally resisted this. I have been convinced over the years, mainly by people for whom English is not their first language, that this really helps. I didn’t like the idea initially, as seeing them written seems to imply they should work written, which they don’t, as they are lyrics, not poetry. But I have warmed to the idea and was happy to include them with the Shirley Lee album and now this. . We also plan to play the “A Week Away” album live in full for the first time, at the ICA in London, and on some German dates. Jim, Si, Ronan and I have always wanted to play at the ICA – I remember us talking about it ten years ago, so it will be a treat to finally do it. We have fixed the date: Wednesday 30th September. The Junipers, who we saw live in Liverpool are going to play with us, which is great, as they are wonderful – so nice when you find a band who are that good! . Jim is keen to create a short film about “A Week Away” to show at the gigs, so we met his friend Jean last week to start planning that. Jim’s idea is to make it as much of an event as possible, which is great. We are also DJing at “How Does It Feel” on Friday 4th September, which is the day that the movie “500 Days Of Summer” opens. Apparently one of the main characters in this film says either “of course, the band you should be listening to is Spearmint”, or “Spearmint are the best band in the world”, or something, so I guess we can all go see the movie before DJing. Knowing our luck we will have been subtly misinformed and the quote will be something slightly different like “Spearmint are a great big pile of steaming shit”. . I was in a movie once: “Stormy Monday” by Mike Figgis, with Sean Bean, Melanie Griffith and Sting. This was when I was living in Newcastle – I was paid twenty pounds to be an extra for the day, which I thought was amazing money at the time. It was mostly spent hanging around with rest of the extras in a hall near the river where I later saw The Fall play – can’t remember its name. I never saw Sting, but Melanie Griffith came into the room once with a fur coat draped over shoulders and starting complaining in a shrill Marilyn voice. I thought she was awful, but I have since come to really like her in “Celebrity” and “Cecil B Demented”. I did two scenes, the first was walking into the Jazz Club with a girl, which seemed to go quite well. Afterwards Mike Figgis came over to us, all frizzy gingery hair and long denim collars – how camp he seemed, yet all he did was flirt with the girl, telling her how well she had walked into the Jazz Club. He didn’t acknowledge me. I wasn’t impressed, but of course, he went on to make some great films, including “Leaving Las Vegas”. The second was a crowd scene involving Sean Bean where some guy is smashing a window with a bottle. This made it into the movie and I can be seen about ten to fifteen minutes in I think, bobbing around at the back of the crowd with short hair and big bomber jacket, over-acting in fact. . Am going to try putting full stops between the paragraphs to try and introduce some spaces. Might look rubbish, but might work. . I like this Mingus album – he gets a big fat bottom end on his records, using a big band approach – really heavy. The only downside is that each of his albums seems to include one track that sounds like “Remember You’re A Womble”. Having come to Jazz backwards, via Soul, I initially found Ornette Coleman too mad for me. I have gradually been warming to him though, and Bridie and I went to see him play live on the Southbank (he has curated this year’s Meltdown Festival). He was amazing live and we feel really luck to have got to see him. . London is Michael Jackson crazy following his death a week ago. A shrine has sprung up outside the stage show on Shaftsbury Avenue – photos, flowers and sweet letters written in faltering broken English. It is touching and reminiscent of the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death. I suppose the fans of both those people are happy to sanctify them and it seems inevitable, and appropriate. His records can be heard everywhere, with “Man In The Mirror” seeming to be the front runner. I am quite happy to hear him so much, and I always thought “Man In The Mirror” was under-rated, as the lyric is stunning. Strange that my “Show You The Way To Go” which was massive at the time, and is my favourite, never gets played. “Farewell My Summer Love” doesn’t seem to get enough attention either. . We heard the news on the radio, late, in bed. It reminded me most of hearing about Elvis’s death, which I am old enough to remember. Back then I was lying in bed listening to John Peel, and odd vague reports starting to come through that Elvis was dead, until eventually they were confirmed. It was the same with Jackson – initially it was that “a man had collapsed and been resuscitated in Neverland”… then later that the man was Michael Jackson… then later that he was dead. It was truly shocking and very very sad. . I was lucky enough to see him live twice. Three times in fact, if you count the Brits where Cocker slipped onstage. I saw him on the “Bad” and “Dangerous” tours. Both shows were brilliant, but the first one particularly blew me away, especially the opening ten minutes. I have never been so excited at a show – I was lucky not to have a cardiac arrest myself at that point! I grew up watching Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly movies – there is something about watching a man dance that briliantly that is amazing. It is great to see any dancing, but there is something about watching a guy, or a group of guys that is special. Michael Jackson had that magic, something heart-stopping and the way he moved, and to see that live was as good as it gets. . Michael Bradshaw (Dunston’s very own King Of Pop) used to rip him off all the time when we were in Laverne & Shirley. He was such an inspiration. I remember the day after Elvis died, I heard Cliff Richard on the radio and Cliff was really angry – angry at Elvis and angry at the people around him for letting things get so bad and letting him end like that. I wanted Michael to win. I wanted him to do the fifty shows at the O2 and amaze the world at his brilliance. He will be missed very much. Though in a way we have been missing him for fifteen years or so… He did well to make it to fifty years old; Elvis was only, what, forty-three?

(Soundtrack: Wayne Jarrett “Showcase”) We just did a handful of gigs around England. Which always raises the question “why do gigs around England?”. The problem being that once we pay for a van and a driver and a cheap hotel, we lose a load of money. If you can get someone to drive for free, and you own a van, and are comfie sleeping on someone’s floor, then you can make it work. I didn’t want to put the guys through that this time, so it cost a packet – in fact the money that I had managed to save by working for the last couple of months all went on these few gigs. By playing in your home-town, which for us happens to be London, you can at least break even, but venturing anywhere that needs a stop-over costs a lot, so we certainly did not do these gigs for the money. If we were doing them to “build our following” then that would be akin to painting the Forth Bridge with a toothbrush.  Although at least then the bridge would eventually get painted…  Perhaps it would be more akin to painting the Forth Bridge with a toothbrush and using paint which washes off in the rain. Maybe if we were out gigging most nights we could make some inroads, but a handful of shows around each album is never going to make a difference. If we were using it as an excuse to get together and have a laugh with the band, then it definitely worked – we had a good old time listening to Bill Withers in the van, drinking too much beer, analysing life and eating chips. But then we could have got together to do all that and had a good night out in London for a fraction of the cost. We did enjoy playing the songs though, and even though there were hardly any people at some gigs, and at some shows the crowd were just talking while we played, we still felt like we played well and were proud of what we were doing. Those moments, and at least one great gig made it worthwhile. After all, does a band really exist if it doesn’t play together in front of an audience? And it may be a chiche, but there is no substitute for playing live in order to sort songs out, to move them forward. When we were in Liverpool it seemed there was live music blasting out of every bar. There were also several 90s nights on, which I notice are starting to appear. Up to ten years after a decade is over, it seems that it lacks a real personality compared to previous decades, then it gradually comes into focus until about twenty years after, it gains nostalgia value and you find yourself liking things that you hated at the time. It is happening now with the 80s. Bands are now making records trying to deliberately recreate the 80s. Just like they did in the 80s with the 60s, when Mod or The Smiths or The Las all owed huge debts to the 60s. Or in the 70s bands were fixated with the 50s. I guess it is about playing with the sounds you grew up with, or records that your parents liked. So 90s nights currently seems a little odd, but will become commonplace. What will there be in ten years time? Noughties nights? Which is bad enough, but what ten years after that? What do you even call that decade? Andy did a ridiculous thing of playing our gig in Leeds, then getting the first train to London the next morning to rehearse with Weller, then getting the train to Liverpool to play a festival show with us at 5, then a doing a gig of his own at 9, then another show with us at 10 then another solo show at 11, then up first thing to get back to London to do a gig with Weller the next day. Inevitably, this ambitious plan ended with him missing our tea-time show and arriving back in Liverpool as he was due to go onstage at 9 – apart from the tea-time show it all went well though. That was a rotten set – us playing songs with no bass – though I suspect it would have been rotten anyway. Our 10 o’clock show was fab though. Bridie and I went to a comedy show in Portobello the other night. Stewart Lee was excellent as ever, but the main attraction for me was Brian Gittings. Few people have reduced me to hysterics in my life: Peter Sellers as Clouseau, Ted Chippington, Harpo Marx, Steve Martin in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and a theatre group from Brighton called “Cliffhanger” spring to mind, but it doesn’t happen often. My very favourite, Larry David, causes me to get over-excited and thrilled by the brilliance of “Curb”, but never has me in hysterics. We have seen Brian Gittings before, and as soon as he comes on I start crying with laughter, and can’t stop until he goes off. It is extremely painful actually, but I suppose it is good for me. We had a good time visiting Lille – it has a lovely old quarter for tourists, but feels very much alive as a town. It is currently over-run by giant black babies called the devil’s babies – see the photo. Now back in West London the temperature has shot up. We are back to drinking red stripe and photgraphing ducks – except Philbert, the unphotographable duck du jour. This is when the Uxbridge Road comes into its own – it all makes sense on hot summer days, and especially hot summer nights. Hence I am playing reggae loud!

(Soundtrack: Miles Davis “Milestones”) We got a copy of the book of graphic novellas inspired by our songs. It is odd and brilliant to see it in print. Some of the songs are treated quite literally and some have totally different interpretations. Si and I were leafing through it, really excited. It is a very strange sensation to see things that started out as in jokes and then made their way into songs, now featuring in cartoons by somebody else. For instance, when we both lived in South London, and we would travel home late at night after gigs or the studio we would always see urban foxes crossing the road, and we would talk about Mr City Fox making his way home. I later put Mr City Fox into the lyrics for “The Last Bus Home”, and now there he is, in cartoon form, watching proceedings in the cartoon version of that song. Devising cartoons inspired by songs really does work – it makes me want to explore it more in the future – it is a lot more satisfying than videos of songs. The book is gorgeous and we are thrilled with it and honoured that it exists. It is a great companion for anyone who enjoys our songs, but manages to stand alone nicely too. Ronan has gone off with the one copy, so hopefully we will get more soon. We are completely indebted to Eric who pulled the book together. He also sent me a copy of their Tori Amos collection of graphic songs, which is great too. In fact, Bridie seems a lot more excited about that one than ours (being Tori mad). The two of us are now drinking again after our forty days of abstinence. I am really glad we did it, as I now feel in control of drink, rather than the other way round. After about twenty days of not drinking the cravings disappeared and our habits were reset. So by the end we were not that bothered about starting again. I found that I slept better and felt a bit clearer headed during the forty days, and it certainly saved us some money, but on the whole it did not make a huge difference. It has been nice to have a few since though! We had a lock-in at the local on Saturday night and it was great. We were looking for something to replace going to the pub, and we came up with learning to speak French. Clearly the first thing you think of rather than a pint is to conjugate a few French verbs… We got a book and CD of thirty lessons and are about halfway through it. I spent several years learning the language at school and did well at it. However, because it was all written rather than spoken, the net result was that I could speak it falteringly, but as soon as anybody responded at as normal speed, I could not understand a word. I would like to pick it up again and actually be able to converse properly. Imagine being able to watch French movies without needing subtitles! Bridie loves all things French so for her it is about learning the language and then spending more time there. We are off to Lille in a few weeks so we can have a go at speaking it then. The dayjob I am doing has been extended until late June, which is great, but I am getting seriously restless about getting on with some writing. I am going to talk to them this week about the chances of staying on doing three days a week. That would then give me two days to write. I would have less money, but it would suit me really well, at least until the next album is written. I have an idea for a long, sprawling Shirley Lee album, and I can’t wait to write it. As usual I will probably start out with this idea and end up writing something completely different though… The other night I met up with my old school friend Nick to go the Hackney Empire to see Paul Merton presenting classic silent movies. I hadn’t seen Nick for six years. He used to have a huge shock of wild black hair, and I wasn’t sure how he would look after six year. It turns but he looks exactly the same, in fact his hair was blacker and wilder than before. We went to quite a few things at the Hackney Empire years ago, including Frankie Howerd and Joe Strummer (not together). It is a really nice venue and it was great to see Nick again. The main film shown was supposed to be Buster Keaton’s “Steamboat Bill Jnr”, but was changed at the last minute to Buster’s “Seven Chances”. I was quite pleased as I saw “Steamboat Bill” recently, and hadn’t seen “Seven Chances”, which turned out to be even better. We watch a lot of Laurel and Hardy talkies at home. Paul Merton showed a late silent short of theirs which was hilarious and he told the story of how they got together, which put me in mind of when I used to work as a Video Buyer for Our Price stores. A small supplier kept ringing me wanting to meet me. I didn’t want to spend time meeting him as I knew the videos he had were a load of old baloney. Then he told me that he had Laurel and Hardy movies, so I relented and agreed to meet him. It turned out that he did have Laurel and Hardy videos: he had Stan Laurel videos and he had Oliver Hardy videos. I remember once, when I was doing that job the marketing department came up with an idea for a promotion: the poster showed a squid sitting on a pile of CDs at the bottom of the ocean. He had a couple of legs in plaster and the line was “CDs Under Six Quid”. Get it? Unfortunately the buying team then discovered that they couldn’t make the promotion work with the CDs at less than six pounds. The net result? A poster of a poorly squid sat on a pile of CDs at the bottom of the ocean with the line “CDs Under Seven Quid”.

(Soundtrack: Jeffrey Lewis “’Em Are I”) I had to go to Manchester for work. It was annoying because I had to be at the offices for 8.30 am on Tuesday morning, so I decided to go up on Monday night and stay over. I have been to Manchester before, years ago for work, and I had stayed in a huge, old, grand hotel which I had really liked. I was sure it was called The Great Railway, but when I looked online it wasn’t listed. I supposed it had closed, which was a shame. It was like stepping back in time there: red velvet and gold fittings everywhere, a massive foyer with the biggest chandelier hanging high above. The staircase was amazing – really wide stairs like something out of an old Hollywood movie, spiraling up around the chandelier. If you climbed to the top floor and looked down, you could see the chandelier hanging way below. You would feel dizzy looking down within the staircase, but also shocked just how grand and sumptious it all was. It was slightly crumbling too, increasing the air of it being from another age. Assuming it had closed, I booked into a modern chain hotel near the station. I got there around 6.30, checked in, and headed straight out towards Chinatown. I remembered where The Great Railway hotel was, so I decided to go that way, just out of curiosity. There it was, just as I remembered it. It was closed, the main doors padlocked, and some of the windows boarded up, the higher ones with smashed gaping glass. Its huge red-brick structure still looked imposing. The walls at ground level were plastered with posters for gigs and clubs. I stood looking at what was on, wondering if I could spot anything for that night. The only one was “Hodgsons’s Authentic Victorian Music Hall, 7.30 every Monday night at The Variety Theatre, Relive the good old days!” After initially dismissing the idea, I decided on impulse to go. I knew where the theatre was, just ten minutes walk away, and it sounded interesting at least… I could always leave if it was awful. So I walked round there and took my seat just as the lights were dimned and it turned 7.30. I sat towards the back as I have a fear of being “volunteered” for things like this. The theatre was beautiful inside; small, but full of atmosphere, and well worth seeing, even if the show turned out to be no good. It was a third full – maybe thirty people altogether, of which about ten had come along in Victorian fancy dress. The show started with a song from a troupe of women in colourful frocks and then continued with the cheeky M.C. doing his best to get the audience going, followed by a succession of magicians, ventriloquists and boardy songs. The audience loved it, joining in and clapping along with the songs, and laughing at the weakest jokes. I noticed one gentleman though, who laughed loudly, but at different times to everyone else. He would guffaw suddenly when there hadn’t been a joke, or halfway through a story. His laugh was strange: loud, hollow, and somehow seemed to have pain in it. It struck me as odd. What was it that particularly tickled him? Was he taking the mick? Were the comments he responded to particularly relevant to his life? Or was he laughing at something else entirely? Did he always laugh like that? I thought it odd, but somehow fascinating – he captured my attention more than what was going on onstage. It seemed strange, yet I kind of longed to be unselfconscious enough to laugh like that. When was it that I had last laughed out loud like that? I remember laughing a lot as i boy, but recently? Back onstage, the M.C. was explaining that there was to be a fifteen minute interval. The audience applauded loudly then started to stand up. I watched the laughing gentleman, and he stood, put on a dark overcoat, picked up a black, silver-tipped cane, and instead of heading down the aisle to the door with the rest of the crowd, he went alone out of a door at the side marked “Exit”. I wasn’t that bothered if I missed the second half of the show. In fact, I had no real plan for the evening, except to get dinner in Chinatown at some point. So I picked up my jacket, slipped through the people shuffling towards the bar, and followed him through the same exit. The door opened onto the street – a side-alley. It was now dark. To the left, at the end of the alley, I just saw the man disappearing round the corner. I let the door slam behind me and hurried after him. For some reason I wanted to follow him, maybe find out something about him, at least get a proper look at him. I found myself on a street I didn’t know behind the theatre. I could see the man walking briskly in front, so, walking close to the walls, I followed him through the almost gothic red-brick streets of Manchester. It was the first time I had ever followed anyone. I felt like characters from hundreds of old films, and started thinking about how I would react if he spotted me, or turned, or glanced around. But he didn’t and I had still not seen his face. I now recognised the street. In fact, we were retracing the steps I had taken earlier to get to the theatre. A few minutes later we were on the same street as The Great Railway hotel. There was only the two of us about. He crossed over and walked straight up to the hotel. He took something from his pocket – a key? He appeared to be unlocking the main door. I stayed back in shadow across the street, holding my breath. Sure enough, he opened the door, and without looking around, he went in. After a few seconds I crossed the road, went up to the door and looked in. It was dark inside. I walked along to see if there were any windows I could look through, but they were all boarded up. One strange thing was that the poster for the Music Hall show was no longer there – odd that it should have been removed in the last hour or so. I returned to the door, intending to now carry on to Chinatown to eat. It puzzled me that he had gone inside, at night, alone, especially into this hotel of all places. I tried the door. It opened. I slowly pushed it and went inside. I stood for a moment, adjusting to the darkness. High above, the ceiling must have had glass because moonlight shone down over the staircase. I could see the giant chandelier still hanging, the empty reception desk, the armchairs in the foyer. It looked exactly as I remembered, except deserted and dark. I looked up and caught a glimpse of the man – he was climbing the staircase. He was about two floors up already. Without hesitating, I hurried to the stairs as quietly as possible and climbed, two stairs at a time. I looked up again and saw him leaving the staircase and go through some double doors. I memorised where, and hurried after him. It was the fourth floor. With blood pounding in my ears, I gently opened the double doors and peered down the corridor. He was nowhere to be seen. I walked past the rooms: 412, 413… it was really dark. Then I noticed a light coming from beneath the door of room 417. My legs felt weird as I slowly approached the door. It felt like I was walking on a spongy floor, a trick floor in a house of fun. I stood motionless outside the room, looking down at the thin line of light. Very slowly, I leaned towards the door and listened. Silence. I leaned closer so my ear was almost touching the wood. I stood trying to hear something above the roar of blood in my ears. After a minute or so, I heard it. His laugh was strange: loud, hollow, and somehow seemed to have pain in it.

(Soundtrack: Ruts “The Crack”) Last week Brian and I finished mixing the tracks for the forthcoming Spearmint EP. Brian ends sessions by standing on a chair and taking photos of the mixing desk. It always looks to me like some kind of Home Guard observation manoeuvre when he is up there. He then puts the photos onto his computer, so that he can zoom in at a later date to recreate all the settings quickly, should he need to revisit the mix. I left the session on a real high as I thought the tracks sounded amazing. Brian posted me a CD of the mixes, which I got a couple of days later, and I made the usual mistake of sticking them straight on and being disappointed by how they sounded. I don’t know why I always fall for this; it is an expectations game, constantly expecting things to sound great and being disappointed, or expecting things to be disappointing and them sounding great. “Good soundcheck / bad gig … bad soundcheck / good gig” over and over again. But lots of things in life are like this aren’t they – so much of our reaction depends on preconceptions. I then listened to the tracks again the next day and they sounded great. I envisaged the project as a kind of 10” vinyl expansion of an EP we did a few years ago called “The Last Bus Home”, which I really liked. Pleasingly that is exactly how it has come out. Thematically it has a link to “A Week Away”, which suits the timing, musically it is quite “Goldmine” / “Leopard”, but a bit different to anything we have done before. Jim is now back from holiday, so we will meet this week to start talking about the artwork. I have always wanted us to do a ten inch, as am very fond of the ones by The Fall, The Clash, The Rudolph Rocker, etc – ten inch records are such gorgeous things! I figure that if our releases are going to become more and more geared to downloads, then we might as well make sure that the “physical version” is on a lovely format. Andy suggested doing a double-seven inch EP and I would love to do that at some point! On these new tracks you may notice that I annunciate my t’s slightly clearer than usual. I have been making an effort to reclaim my t’s recently. After so many years living in London, I find that my t’s have been eroded, and I hear myself increasingly saying things like “wanned” rather than “wanted”. Halting this slide is not that easy and I find myself over-pronouncing t’s to compensate. I don’t want my words to be eroded by others. It is like when you hear Brits singing without g’s like “goin” instead of “going”. I know this comes from hearing so many Americans singing that way, but that is no reason for us to do it. Let me keep my t’s and g’s! If they go I won’t have that much left to work with. Yesterday Bridie and I went to see a really excellent Swedish vampire film called “Let The Right One In”. Quite arthouse in approach and nice and sparing in use of special effects so that it was genuinely creepy and involving. Good soundtrack too. Hollywood horrors have a habit of starting well then losing all the tension once they start revealing things and showering us with special effects and unsubtle music, which I find dull, and never scary. there are a few horror films out now, I think so that the DVD then comes out around Halloween. Each morning during the week I go to the Starbucks before work. There is a big American guy who works there. As I approach the counter he shouts “What can I DO you for, BUD?” To be fair, he shouts this at everyone. The other chaps in the queue are all wearing suits and carrying laptops. One of these guys will respond by grabbing his collar, pretending to be choking with thirst after a long trek across the desert, and cry “Cawffee!” Or “I don’t care what it is as long as it’s brown and wet!”. I tend to order a filter coffee, which they call “Drip” and this week has been an Ethiopian blend. I go for the small size, which they call “Tall”. So I ask him for this, and he shouts “A TALL ETHIOPIAN” I always expect to see a tall Ethiopian come walking out of the back room at this point. I ask for a blueberry muffin, and he shouts “the muffin BLUE”. He rings up the till, and the digital display says “TALL DRIP”, which I always feel I should take offense at. I pay and he says “Thank you BIG MAN”. Last year, Bridie and I nipped into a Starbucks at Piccadilly for a quick coffee before we got the tube to Battersea to see a show (the wonderful Will Adamsdale in fact). I paid with a twenty pound note, but the girl gave me change for a ten. I hesitated about whether to say anything, but when I went through my pockets and thought back to getting cash out and what had been spent, I felt sure I had been short-changed. So I went and queried it, but the girl was adamant that I had given her ten. Having worked in record shops I know what the crack is – there is no need to get angry, no point in getting angry about it – it is the customer’s right to ask them to check the tills there and then and see if there is a discrepancy. So I asked for the manager and made them cash up. It took them fifteen minutes, but it was worth it as the till was ten pounds out – result: I was ten pounds better off than if I had just let it go. Unfortunately, due to the delay caused by the cashing-up, we were then too late to catch the tube to Battersea, so we got a cab – cost: eleven pounds.

(Soundtrack: Parliament “Osmium”) It is fine to be working again, and the job is good, but it is amazing how day jobs wolf up your waking hours. Suddenly whole weeks flash past, time accelerates, and you have to really fight to get your own stuff done. But the money is useful, so I am not complaining. In Spearmint we joke about how we would actually make money if we were a Pulp tribute band. This would be funny, if it were not clearly true. I think we would even make more money as a Spearmint tribute band. We have pegged Nearmint as our name. I like that, as it means something, as well as sounding like our name. In the same way that Aswas would be good for Aswad… or Travisty for Travis… these probably really exist now, as tribute bands are such a thriving business. Last night I went over to Brian’s to mix some songs for the Spearmint EP for the autumn. Mixing involves me sitting at the back of the room, eating chips and drinking coffee, working on lyrics if I am feeling lively, thumbing through old copies of Artrocker if not. Brian tinkers about with the tracks and I comment when something sounds wrong, or right. It is not exactly hard work, but the trick is maintaining focus and being objective when you hear something over and over again. For these songs it is very much about them sounding as full of energy as possible. It was good – we work well together; as Si remarked during recording, Brian tends to come up with the same views as we do. Time may prove me wrong, but the tracks sounded great to me. I am going back to finish them off next week. Brian also played me some of the new songs he has done with The Clientele and they sound fabulous – am looking forward to getting the album, and seeing them live. Bridie and I went to a gig the other night and perhaps as we are still not drinking, I really noticed how much people were talking during the show. It seems to me this is a phenomenon which began in the early 90s – going to a gig and talking through it. Seems very odd. Maybe it is worse on London than elsewhere in Britain. In London less people pay for their tickets, and more seem go to gigs to check a band out, rather than going along to listen and enjoy. This is true of all capital cities, but seems worse here. The other thing that gets my goat at gigs is when people show their appreciation by sticking their fingers in their mouths and doing that really loud whistle – that is more damaging to your ears than the bands themselves. Why would you make that noise with people stood just in front of you? Which may explain the headache I have had for three days now. I went into the chemist on the way home to get Aspirin. I paid for it and after the lady gave me my receipt and change, she said “Thank you, you may go now.” I like that. Maybe they sometimes get people in who don’t leave, just stay at the counter? A couple of weeks ago I recorded vocals for “36 Reasons Why”, the song co-written with Andy Lewis for his next solo album. We played it live as a band at the first Shirley Lee gig. Meanwhile Andy recorded his version for the album at Weller’s place – it is different and also sounds really good. Andy put down a rough version of the lead vocal, singing from my lyrics. Once confronted with the words he decided that he wasn’t comfortable with them and sent me an email suggesting a re-write. Imagine my reaction at receiving an email telling me my lyrics were not good enough! Andy even suggested new lyrics, which didn’t hit the spot for me. But of course, it is his record, so he needs to be happy with it. I decided that I would try and come up with new words which he would like, but which I still loved and remained true to the song. So I came up with a new version, which we then tweaked as we recorded… And I do think it is an improvement on the original, so it all worked for the best. The following week we went to see Andy play stripped down versions of a few songs live with his chums Pete and Jess. It sounded really good. They played about eight songs, then finished, but the DJ encouraged them to do an encore. Andy explained that they didn’t have any more songs, but that he would like to welcome to the stage to sing “36 Reasons Why” a Mr Shirley Lee… This completely took me by surprise… I got up and made my way to the stage, hoping that Andy had a copy of the lyrics… but it turned out he didn’t. I couldn’t remember the original lyrics, let alone the re-write, as the song is chockfull of words. So once I got to the stage, I had to turn round and go and sit down again! I felt really useless. I felt like most singers wouldn’t have needed written lyrics. Another time perhaps… Andy is aiming to get his album out by Christmas, and Jim is trying to get his album out this year too, hopefully in July in fact. Jim’s “solo” band is called Telley – it is mainly Jim and his chum James on drums. Rhodri has produced it and it sounds great, really fresh. Jim likes the idea that three of us are doing solo albums this year. Roll on Ronan’s album of baritone versions of Sonny & Cher hits! By the way, the photo is of a street stencil from when we were in Rome last year. I like the image – maybe it is well known? It made me think of it as great artwork for a seven inch single, or a flyer for a club night. I really must ask Rhodri to show me how to put spaces between paragraphs in these diary entries; no matter what I do it removes them when I post it, so you have to plough through a slab of text… Anyway, am off to make some stir fry and we are going to watch “The Quiet Man”, which neither Bridie nor I has ever seen. This Parliament track “The Silent Boatman” has passed me by until recently but it really is a corker!

(Soundtrack: “Soul Cities” Kent Soul Collection) Why do people wave in? I mean, if they are walking past and I am sitting here at the table inside the flat, why do they wave in? It doesn’t seem appropriate to me. If they were close friends it would seem right, but these are neighbours I have hardly shared two words with. Like “Mr E” next door – he looked in and waved at me so I just stared back. And then I felt guilty, as though I had been rude… But then he should stop flirting with my girlfriend… But then I suppose we do use his wi-fi for free… I wonder if he can tell? A girl who lives the other side waved in a few days ago, and beckoned me to the door, so I went, thinking she was in some kind of trouble. She said she had seen me in here and wondered if I was a writer. Can’t you even get privacy in your own home now? A while ago a chap waved in and asked if he could borrow ten pounds as he had run out of petrol. He said once he got the car going he would drive to a cash-point and return with the money. He offered to leave his phone and house-keys as security, but I declined and gave him the ten pounds. he never came back, so I suppose I was had… but I felt happier being the trusting soul who was had, than I would have done turning him away. Didn’t like him waving in though. I am now two days into a new day job. An opportunity came up on Friday to start yesterday working for a couple of months for Paramount in their film catalogue department. This was too good to turn down, as I was getting nervous about money, and film catalogue genuinely interests me, and they seem like decent people. Also, I can walk to work – takes about forty-five minutes, which is very good in London, where any journey to work that takes less than an hour is seen as a plus. I aim to save some cash so that I can return to writing in a couple of months time, and keep the writing going in the evenings too. By the way, the photo is one Bridie snapped of me with the Golden Gate Bridge behind. Really felt like relaxing with a pint after the first day of a new job, but didn’t because it was Day Fourteen of our alcohol-free Lent. So far, it is going really well – I haven’t found it difficult at all, which has surprised me. In fact, giving up for a period like this has proved much easier than trying to avoid drinking on a single evening, if you see what I mean. I tend to get into circular internal debates such as “I shouldn’t really drink tonight as we are going out tomorrow, but I really fancy one”, which usually end up in drinking virtually every night. I don’t feel much different, but am sleeping better. It may be tempting to binge a bit when we start drinking again, which I guess would not be healthy. Before he died, my father made me promise to have regular health checks. he said that he wouldn’t have got so sick if he had acted sooner when he noticed any changes, or if he had had regular prostate checks. So I went for a full check up about eighteen months ago, which ended with a session with a German doctor who was going to check my prostate. First of all he examined my testicles. He asked me to undress and lie on my side and then he started fondling me. Unfortunately as he did this I got a fit of hysterical giggling. I mean like a shy schoolgirl, or a tickled Norman Wisdom. He asked me what I did and I explained that I was a song-writer. He told me in his strong German accent that he loved music, and that he was also the captain of a semi-professional sailing team. Each year they chose a song as their theme when they entered the big competition, and his favourite was last year when they had a Queen song. He racked his brain to remember which one it was. “We Are The Champions”? I suggested. “No, that wasn’t it”… “Er… Bohemian Rhapsody?… “No, not that one”… “Er… We Are The Champions?” I offered again, in the way that people do when they have already been told it is the wrong answer, but can’t believe that it actually is the wrong answer. By this time, he had finished with the testicles and had picked up a pair of latex gloves, preparing to go for the prostate. “Oh, what was it, what was it?” He was getting frustrated…. “I know!” he suddenly shouted, and snapping the glove onto his hand he loudly sang “One Vision!”, and shoved his fingers up my arse. So I don’t hear that song in the same way any more. Luckily it was not one of my favourites from the Queen songbook. Intending to get a check done annually, I went to the local clinic the other day, where they just gave me a blood-test to check the same thing. As I sat and read in the waiting-room, a family came in, who I think were going abroad for a holiday as they were each getting an injection one by one. I took an instant dislike to the older son, who had that posh public school, the world owes me, air about him. I have nothing against posh people, or public schools, but there is a certain type of complete prick that they produce that Bridie reckons I am prejudiced against. She is dead right. And this one’s first name was Mills. Anyway, when he came out from having his injection, he started acting up to frighten the younger son who was due to go next. Mills pretended that he was dying from the pain of it, freaked out the kid, then revealed that he was joking. “Oh Mills!” cried father. Mills sat down satisfied with his jape. The thing is, a few moments later, Mills did genuinely have a bad reaction to the injection. At first they didn’t believe him, then there was a commotion and all the nurses and doctors came out to help. He looked like death, but was alright again after five minutes or so. I was sitting pretending to read, but actually delighted with Mills’ misfortune. He would probably wave in too.

(Soundtrack: “Absolute Beginners” Soundtrack, Eric Bachman “To The Races”) We went back into the studio with Brian last week to record some new Spearmint tracks. These are tentatively destined to go on a 10” EP in September, alongside some live shows celebrating 10 years since “A Week Away”. We went in with the intention of getting four and a half songs recorded and mixed in three days. I say four and a half because one of the tracks is planned to appear twice: different versions with different lyrics. Working fast, we got all the recording done, but didn’t mix them. I suspect this was wise, so they can be lived with for a while and then mixed in a few weeks time. This is better than mixing them hastily then having to revisit. One of the songs, “A Signal Or A Sign” was brand spanking new, with the lyrics and arrangement being nailed as we recorded it. This makes recording thrilling and really spontaneous as the track comes together before your eyes. It is not necessarily the best way to work, as you may get better results by working on a track for longer before recording, but it is worth it for the buzz. It worked well having a mixture of well worked out songs such as “Outside The Roundhouse”, and totally fresh tunes. Brian was on form and all the guys played really well. Andy was zipping back and forth to Abbey Road to do some charity show with Paul Weller, but he managed to come rushing in and play some blinding bass. It all sounds very Spearmint and I am excited about it – after all it needs to be good to go alongside “A Week Away”! Yesterday Simon and I cleaned out our storage cupboard where we keep our equipment and CDs. We tend to do this each time we have a new album ready, prompted by the need to dig out copies of older records to sell at gigs. Also by the fact that the cupboard gets so packed we are always hopeful of getting rid of stuff and freeing up space. It is also an excuse to have lunch and drink coffee and make an afternoon of it. While we were getting all the gear out, there was a Reggae band playing in one of the rehearsal rooms downstairs. On the way out to get coffee I mentioned to Simon that Reggae was exactly the right soundtrack to be doing this job on such a sunny day in West London. When I got back I suddenly realised who the band was – only the fucking Specials! We were made up, and were treated to “Do Nothing”, “Stereotype”, “Friday Night Saturday Morning”, “Ghost Town” among others – made the whole job a pleasure! Jim is green with envy… Tonight we are rehearsing for Thursday’s gig. We are supporting Darren Hayman at The Lexington in Pentonville Road. Hopefully we will play “A Signal Or A Sign” if it doesn’t sound too bad tonight. Am hoping we will pull out another less obvious Spearmint tune too. It will be good to see Darren again – we did several shows together around the “My Missing Days” album, but I haven’t seen him since. Our manager Nick is over from Istanbul – it will be the first time he has seen us since about then too. Yesterday as Bridie and I were walking home from going to see the new Clint Eastwood movie “Gran Torino” (which is fabulously entertaining), we noticed an exotic looking duck by the lake in the park (see photo). After a little research Bridie found him on the Internet; it seems he is a Mandarin duck, native of China or Russia, and is quite a rare fellow, usually only found in zoos. Apparently they are a symbol of romance and fidelity. I am not sure if he was an escapee, or wild, but he did seem to have a lady with him. Today is our first day of giving up alcohol for forty days. We have decided to give it a go for Lent. It seems that lent is in fact forty-six days, with the extra days being Sundays which are counted as days of rest. Our version is going to be forty days from today, ending at Easter. I am going to find this hard. I enjoy drinking; have done since I was sixteen. We drink most days and spend way too much money on it. I wouldn’t say I have an alcohol problem, but I sure do fancy a drink quite often. So on the one hand, I am worried that I will not be able to give up, on the other other hand I am looking forward to it. That part of me is happy to be given permission not to drink for a spell. I think that doing the gig on Thursday will be tough. The money that this will save us will be handy as Bridie is also now not working. She has left her job, basically because she didn’t have enough work to do, which after a while is worse than being too busy. So we are now both at home, and have played tennis a couple of times this week, which is nice on a weekday as it is quiet, and the Parkie isn’t around to collect the money. Bridie is actually a lot more employable than me so I am confident that work will be found soon. I seem to have granted myself some time to write the next album. This feels right to me. One of the things I dislike about drinking is that I tend to wake up, wide awake after three or four hours of sleep. I did that last night, because of course we got drunk on our final night of booze. It is annoying being so awake for so long in the night. Last night I got to thinking about how I would like to try doing stand-up comedy at least once in my life. I would probably be awful, but it has always appealed to me. Once we were doing a Spearmint gig in Brighton (with Darren in fact) and the power went down, but the microphones were still working so I thought it was the ideal time to give it a go. I started telling what should be a genuinely amusing anecdote about Jeff in Sweden. Halfway through, I realised that I was dying and the crowd were not with me at all; it was awful. Luckily the power came back on and I was saved, but it put me off the stand-up idea for a while. The urge has returned though. I guess I should just write ten minutes of material I am happy with and go and try it out at an open mike night. There are a couple of good comedy clubs near here. I certainly wouldn’t be asking the guy in the front row where he is from and what he does. In fact there wouldn’t be any interaction with the audience – I hate that. Pity the poor girlfriend who would have to sit through an attempt at stand-up. All the rubbish gigs are bad enough!

(Soundtrack: Dexter Gordon “Our Man In Paris”, The Shortwave Set “Replica Sun Machine”) We did our first Shirley Lee gig on Saturday. It was at an extremely pleasant pub called The Wilmington Arms by Exmouth Market and actually very close to where we recorded “A Week Away” ten years ago. Boy were we nervous before we went on! Even though it is a small venue, it is the longest we have gone without playing live, plus they were all new songs (except one), and under a new name rather than Spearmint. As with the album, the live show is kind of Shirley Lee performed by Spearmint. We were all there, and Jeff did the driving – Adam even came along too. Thankfully it went well and was thoroughly enjoyable. To me a good gig feels “true” to the spirit of what we are trying to do. This has nothing to do with how many bum notes are not played, or the audience reaction, or the size of the venue, or the number of people there, or how good the sound is, but is an indefinable something that happens on the night… or not… the reaction of the crowd can certainly help things along though. We had had a rotten final practise before the gig. Experience tells me that at the last rehearsal before something important, songs can distort in your head and sound bad even when they are fine, so I tried to cut us some slack, but we didn’t really know the tunes well enough. The upside of that was that a couple of them came together properly for the first time as we played them live, particularly “The Last Song” and “Restless Soul” which is a new song that will probably appear on the next single. It is a good venue with a nice vibe, and it was a pleasure to watch The Bitter Springs play after us – they are one of those bands who really should be a lot bigger than they are – so good live, and wonderful lyrics. We may play with them again this year. A long running Spearmint joke is that I do not actually write songs. Instead I enrolled in a Swedish Mail-Order Song-Writing Service several years ago. They send me a batch each month which I dutifully take into the band. The joke goes each time that this latest batch isn’t up to the usual standard. Sometimes writing songs is like that – you have no recollection or idea of where the thing came from. It may as well have been sent from Sweden. I have spent today finishing two new songs for a Spearmint EP which we are planning for September. We are rehearsing them tomorrow and recording them next week. So tomorrow, I will have that pleasure of playing them to the guys for the first time – me nervous and hoping for a great reaction, but of course met by the blank faces of people more concerned with figuring out exactly what parts they are going to be playing on them You would have to be eagle-eyed indeed to spot from the trailers for the new Woody Allen film that is a Woody Allen film. I suppose this makes sense, as the launch of a new movie from Woody is not met with the anticipation it used to be and is probably more likely to put some off going to see it. The strategy seems to be working judging by the number in the cinema at the weekend. People are a bit funny about Woody Allen these days. I know some just do not like him and that is fair enough, but there seems a general unwillingness to welcome new work from him. McCartney gets the same reception – perhaps it is the lot of the genius who has the misfortune to still be around, and working. In the 70s Lennon couldn’t get arrested here (that’s because he was getting arrested in LA and New York), but a few years after he died suddenly everyone was back onto saying how much they loved him. I accept that McCartney’s or Woody’s recent work is not as ground-breaking as some of their previous, but there are still good bits in there, which as a fan, I am grateful for. Shouldn’t we be celebrating these people and especially the fact that they are still around? Or least have open minds about their work? Open-mindedness seem quite hard to come by. If you don’t have it you will miss out on a lot of music. Bridie’s got it. Simon in the band has got it – his openness and encouragement have kept me from giving up on many ideas. You wouldn’t expect people working in mainstream music to be open-minded, but I have found that the so-called Indie community is just as closed. Like they would hear a record which they like the sound of, then find out it is by Phil Collins and hence reject it. Listen, if Phil Collins or Robbie Williams makes a great record tomorrow then I will buy it, even though I can’t stand either of them. Why would I miss out? As a listener, the personality of the person making the record is irrelevant to the record itself. Most great records are made by complete arses anyway, you just don’t know it unless you are unlucky enough to meet them. Having said all that, and to completely contradict myself, those individuals who have such extreme taste and personality that they only accept music which fits their a narrow groove and reject all else, are also crucial characters to have around in order to create something with real personality. Maybe you need a combination of blinkered extremism and enthusiastic open-mindedness in order to proceed as a group? I grew up watching Woody Allen movies after seeing “Sleeper” at a film club at school with my friend Nick. As the years passed, Nick and I would meet up and see the latest at the cinema together. I associate the different films with me in different flats and cities… Anyway, here are 10 reasons to love Woody: 1 He is the world’s greatest living film-maker 2 No nudity or violence is shown in any of his films 3 He has truly independent ethics – all the movies are true to themselves; none are aimed at making money 4 He is the best writer of women’s movie roles in the last 50 years – nobody else even comes close! 5 His incredible work ethic – he makes a film each year (a bit like Mark E Smith’s output) 6 His unerring sense of casting 7 His films are re-watchable many times – they really are made that way 8 The wonderful use of music – he guides us through brilliant 20s, 30s and 40s Jazz 9 His steadfast avoidance of any “dumbing down” – he expects us to keep up, or learn as we go 10 While filming in the Hamptons he decided it would be nice to have a home out there, so he found a property, spent a year doing it up and getting the design just right. The morning after he spent his first night there, he rang the estate agent and instructed them to put the property back on the market. He explained that he could not sleep with the sound of waves rather than sirens, and that there was nothing to do out there after dinner. Actually, that last one just paints him as odd. Here are 10 better reasons: 1 Stardust Memories 2 Everyone Says I Love You 3 The Purple Rose Of Cairo 4 Manhattan 5 Radio Days 6 Deconstructing Harry 7 Zelig 8 Annie Hall 9 Play It Again Sam 10 Celebrity Just my opinion, obviously.

(Soundtrack: Kent Soul Collection – “A Soldier’s Sad Story”, Nina Simone “It Is Finished”) Rain is falling as I write this. The heavy snow which fell on Monday is now reduced to icy patches, which I suspect will be gone by the end of the day. The snowfall was a total one-off. In all the years I have lived in London I have never seen a proper fall of several inches, just the odd flurry which quickly disappears and doesn’t lay. We had a good four inches worth and the city came to a standstill. No buses were running and most of the tubes were down, so the majority of people stayed at home. It became like a public holiday, with a kind of carnival atmosphere. We got up early and walked up to Wormwood Scrubs Park; perfect virginal thick white snow everywhere (see photo). We saw about thirty bright green parrots perched huddled together at the top of some trees. Dogs out walking were dancing round looking confused and delighted – the first time they had seen snow. In fact it was the first time for many Londoners. We went to Ravenscourt Park in the afternoon and people were going a bit crazy, building crowds of snowmen and pelting each other with snowballs. With all the gloom about recession recently, it seemed like a release and a welcome break from reality. I do not think I will see snow like that again in London. Monday seems to have become known as “Snow Day”. Last night we rehearsed for the first Shirley Lee gig, which is next week with The Bitter Springs at The Wilmington Arms in Clerkenwell. Given that this is a completely new set for us, the songs are currently still finding their place as live versions. So I am a bit nervous about the gig, as more work really needs to be done on them. On the other hand, it is probably right that they are not quite nailed yet, as that will happen during the course of doing some gigs. We are planning on playing most of the album, plus a new song and a track I have written with Andy Lewis for his forthcoming album, and a (less obvious) version of a Spearmint tune. Spirits were good and there were some lovely moments during the session. One more practise next Tuesday, then the gig on Saturday. Fingers crossed everyone can make Tuesday and we don’t get hit by snow or sickness. Last week we went to a night called Book Slam at 12 Acklam Road in Portobello, with Bridie’s friend Natasha. This is a venue beneath the Westway motorway, which used to be called Subterranea years ago. I remember our previous band Laverne & Shirley spending a hopeless night celebrating Simon’s birthday where we met in Notting Hill, had a few drinks and then set off for Subterranea, but just could not find it. We kept being given bogus directions from passers-by, and eventually had to call it a night and go home, because we never found it, which was ridiculous. Not long after that we played a gig there – I like the place: it has that Clash / Reggae feel to it, that Notting Hill and Brixton epitomise. Anyway, the Book Slam is a monthly night where four authors read from their work, interspersed with Reggae tunes and live music. Given that it is a club, humourous writing works easier than more serious pices, and all four authors were reading funny sections from their novels. They were all really good – I was particularly taken with “Ten Storey Love Song” by Richard Milward, who read with a cardboard tower block over his head, and looked like the literary equivalent of a new Manc band. Bridie liked “The Bird Room” by Chris Killen. Skinny jeans and trainers is clearly what you wear if you are a young male British author, or at least these four were. Their publishers were there too, and I was struck by how much nicer and more positive the atmosphere seemed compared to people in the music industry. We were watching from the balcony, and while the readings were taking place there was obviously no loud music – unusual in a club setting. We gradually became aware of regular swishing sounds from the ceiling, and then realised that it was the sound of cars speeding across the Westway, just a few feet above our heads. A couple of weeks ago the Guardian ran a series of supplements featuring their list of the 1000 books that we should all read before we die. I do love lists like this because they are a good way of getting into things that you might otherwise miss, so we collected them all. It is scary when you think about it though – try this: Take the age you expect to live until (be generous)… Subtract your current age from this… Multiply this number by 12… Multiply this figure by the number of books you read per month on average (be honest)… Subtract from this the approximate number of books which you have read before and would like to re-read at some point… The answer you get is the number of new books you are likely to read before you die, going at your current rate. In my case the answer is 718, so I am unlikely to get through those 1000. Sorry – this is the kind of silliness I start fixating on if I am lying awake at night. What I take from this is that I should read more and that I should choose well and not squander one of my 718 on some “classic” which is unreadable, nor on a lazy guilty pleasure… on the other hand, the odd comfortable crime novel is pretty appealing. I am trying to read the some classics in between modern novels. I just finished Tolstoy’s “The Death Of Ivan Ilyich”, which is a really short easy read, and inspired the film “Ivan’ XTC”. It is brilliant, and makes you consider how you are living your life. Last year I did read “Don Quixote”, having heard so much acclaim for it. It was very enjoyable and funny, and truly modern, especially Part Two, in which they are moving through a world where they are celebrities, curtesy of the success of Part One – a bit like David Brent becoming a minor celebrity in that Christmas Special. I shall use the 1000 books list to find a few more that I might enjoy. I think that lists and reviews are a very positive thing when they encourage you to give something as try. We went to see the American comedy film “Role Models” last week. It got a 5 star review in Time Out, but as it happens it wasn’t really my cup of tea – it was quite watchable, but for me, not as great as, say, Pineapple Express. Nevertheless, it didn’t bother me that it got a rave review – I mean with any of the arts, some people are going to like it and some are not – Tom Huddleston of Time Out clearly loved it and probably turned some like-minded people onto it. In the same issue of Time out the same Tom Huddleston also reviewed “Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist”. He gave this film 1 star and was vicious in his condemnation of the movie. Bridie and I went to see it anyway, and we both absolutely loved it! OK, so this just confirms that people’s taste differs. What I do not understand though, is: “What was the point of the 1 star review?” What is the point of writing something really negative things about an artistic venture, getting it printed up, circulated round London and selling it? How is it supposed to help people – by putting them off something that they may have enjoyed? I am all for the old punk fanzine approach of writing enthusiastically about the music and films that you love, and not writing about the things that you don’t love. Over the years I have been kept away from great records and movies, by letting my defenses down and believing negative reviews… then years later I have come to the album (like, say, Marvin’s “”Here My Dear”) and found that I loved it. Maybe the critics feel they need to be negative sometimes, to give a balanced view, or they feel that purely enthusing for a living would lack bite, but they waste my time and I shall continue to take no notice of them. Where does this need to critique everything come from anyway? Maybe it is from school and having everything you do handed back to you with red ink comments. Maybe we are brought up to feel that this is the way to respond to other people’s work… maybe the critics are getting their revenge on getting so much red ink when they were younger… Last week saw the end of our Vegan month. The things we had not been eating certainly tasted good when we have had them this week! The month of abstinence taught me that Vegans are poorly catered for in cafes (who are losing their potential business), that I missed eggs and honey more than expected, that I missed cheese and milk less than expected, and that I have no moral urge to become Vegan (whereas I firmly know that for me it would be wrong to eat meat or fish). Wow, this CD is brilliant – “A Soldier’s Sad Story” is a collection of Deep Soul tracks, all about the Vietnam War. I highly recommend it, especially “Bring The Boys Home” by Freda Payne and “I Can’t Write Left-Handed” by Bill Withers. We also went to see Sebastien Tellier play last week. He is French… so French!… and plays that kind of sophisticated Serge Gainsbourg Pop while effecting extreme eccentricity with long rambling monologues about chicken sausage and the like. I think in France there are government guidelines ensuring that a high percentage of radio and TV is populated with French entertainers, rather than British or American imports. It means they have a very dense, very French culture which can seem impenetrable to us Brits. It sometimes feels as though they are the island and we are on the mainland… Anyway, he was fab.

(Soundtrack: Neil Young “Rust Never Sleeps”, The Pastels “Illumination”) On the way home just now I passed two policemen on “stake-out”. They are fully visible, about three streets away, stood on a corner, complete with huge machine guns. They have been there for at least six months. I have been passing them every day or two and wondering why they are there. Initially I thought that perhaps there had been a lot of break-ins on that street and they were increasing police presence, but then they were there too long for that. I considered if they were waiting to catch someone they expected to show up, but then surely they would not be so obvious? The only reason they would be so visible is if they are guarding someone, or providing protection. So I concluded that maybe a foreign diplomat was staying there – I started to look at the houses and found one that is larger than the rest, and set back from the road. Some days the cops have cups of coffee or soup or packets of Jaffa Cakes on the wall by them; I couldn’t help imagining local housewives bringing them sustenance. After all it has been below freezing a lot of the time over the last few weeks. Bridie kept encouraging me to ask them why they were there, but each time I intended to, I chickened out. Then the other night we were walking home late and a bit drunk and Bridie bounded up to one of them and asked “Excuse me, but we have seen you here for a few months now, would you be able to tell us why you are here?”. He smiled, looked a bit smug and glad of the distraction: “Not at all madam – we are guarding the home of an important government official who lives nearby”. “Oh, who is it?” “I am afraid I am not at liberty to say madam.” I chipped in with “And do they live in that house over there?” He smiled, smugness levels peaking: “They might do…” I am not sure his colleague was impressed with his manner. Anyway, we thanked them and staggered off home. So who can that be? How high up do you need to be in order to have two armed guards at all hours of the day? I am not sure I would recognise politicians anyway, I mean Gordon Brown yes, but not the rest of them. I would like to have included a photo here of the stake-out, but I was too chicken, so instead this is one of Bridie and I reflected in a big eye in the basement of the Kelvingrove Museum on a recent trip to Glasgow. We have finally finished the list of our top 100 films of 2008. You would be right to say that watching movies then grading them and compiling an end of year list is completely anal, but it certainly is fun! It is a joint list so there are one or two titles which are higher or lower than I would have placed them left to my own devices, but only one or two. I think it was a brilliant year for films, in fact there is a case for it being the best year ever: so many classics! I mean, what year would be better? 1939? (Wizard Of Oz, Gone With The Wind, The Women), 1950? (Sunset Boulevard, All About Eve, Rashomon), 1959? (Some Like It Hot, Room At The Top, North By Northwest), 1972? (The Godfather, Cabaret, Deliverance), 1977? (Star Wars, Saturday Night Fever, Annie Hall), 1992? (Reservoir Dogs, Waynes World, The Player). It is easy to see the past as being better, but I am not so sure. Anyway, who gives a monkey’s? There are a couple of films we have yet to see (Gomorrah, Eden Lake, Die Hard, The Kite Runner), but here is the list: 1 Milk (wonderful and memorable as explained in previous diary entry) 2 The Diving Bell And The Butterfly (a beautiful, moving, life-affirming masterpiece) 3 Mamma Mia (don’t sneer; I love musicals and this is great – it will quite simply become the most popular musical ever) 4 Man On Wire (I recommend this to anyone, there is nothing else like it) 5 No Country For Old Men (perfect) 6 My Winnipeg (the most singular vision of the year: Guy Maddin makes movies like great indie records) 7 Mister Lonely (another great, quirky indie film – I love this, it is so uplifting and heart-warming, especially Diego Luna as Michael Jackson – needs to be seen again soon) 8 Sex & The City (OK I wouldn’t have had this one quite so high, and it doesn’t equal the brilliance of the series, but it is much better than it might have been) 9 In Bruges (instant cult classic, would make a great double bill with Withnail & I) 10 The Dark Knight (a bit long and a bit noisy, but over-whelmingly good) 11 Burn After Reading (the Coens on absolutely top form) 12 Pineapple Express (it seems to me that this will grow in stature – a future classic – with a lovely performance from James Franco ) 13 Year Of The Dog (funny, moving US small town indie from that Chuck & Buck chap) 14 Sweeney Todd (nice and dark version, and Sacha Baron Cohen always adds so much to everything he is involved with) 15 PS I Love You (this would have made a prefect Sex & The City 2, a really good, soppy romantic comedy) 16 There Will Be Blood (already a classic) 17 The Orphanage (ace Spanish ghost story) 18 Iron Man (wonderful, dry turn from Robert Downey Jnr) 19 Margot At The Wedding (under-rated, this nasty, repressed role really suits Nicole Kidman) 20 Happy Go Lucky (lovely gentle Mike Leigh movie; deceptively innovative in subject matter) 21 Paris (top notch Romain Duris ensemble piece) 22 Persepolis (already a classic) 23 Lonesome Jim (perfect Steve Buscemi US small town indie flick; Casey Affleck is so winsome) 24 30 Days Of Night (under-rated I think: a classic zombie thriller) 25 I’ve Loved You So Long (wonderfully played Kristin Scott ~Thomas drama) 26 Gone Baby Gone (I have always liked Ben Affleck and this proves me right!) 27 Heartbeat Detector (original, dizzying, challenging puzzle with the ace Mathieu Amalric) 28 Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day (charming and great to see Frances McDormand in a lead role) 29 Then She Found Me (this is a really good romantic drama from Helen Hunt and Colin Firth is turning into a great actor) 30 You Kill Me (charming San Fran Ben Kingsly hit-man comedy) 31 4 Months 3 Weeks 2 Days (uncomfortable, darkly funny, brilliantly made and acted) 32 Joshua (classy lost take on Rosemary’s Baby only saw daylight last year) 33 Be Kind Rewind (charming, light Michel Gondry comedy) 34 Stardust (a family fantasy adventure that really works) 35 In Search Of A Midnight Kiss (almost classic, like an Indie LA Woody Allen) 36 Easy Virtue (classy and sharp, Colin Firth and Kristin Scott Thomas very good again) 37 Lars And The Real Girl (cool cult comedy with Ryan Gosling) 38 A Little Trip To Heaven (oddly lost Icelandic-made noir with Forrest Whitaker) 39 Twilight (highly enjoyable for a mainstream teen franchise) 40 Summer Hours (lovely thoughtful French ensemble piece) 41 Garbage Warrior (I totally recommend this inspiring documentary about Michael Reynolds, who builds self-sustaining homes out of garbage) 42 The Visitor (gentle, warm, uplifting) 43 Juno (entertaining and funny; Ellen Page is a star) 44 Taken (big, dumb, exciting, guilty, pleasure thriller from Luc Besson) 45 A History Of My Sexual Failures (charming, surprising, likeable documentary) 46 Smart People (under-rated follow-up to Sideways) 47 The Strangers (a good low-budget slasher horror with Liv Tyler) 48 Teeth (surprisingly witty and well made spoof horror – she has teeth “down there”) 49 In The Valley Of Elah (enjoyable, classy civilian/war drama with Tommy Lee Jones) 50 And When Did You Last See Your Father? (tender story of Blake Morrison’s relationship with his father – another great performance from Colin Firth!) And here are the next 50: 51 Baby Mama 52 The Changeling 53 Stepbrothers 54 Indiana Jones 4 55 Kung Fu Panda 56 Flight Of the Red Balloon 57 Horton Hears A Who 58 Priceless 59 Garage 60 We Own The Night 61 Her Name Is Sabine 62 American Gangster 63 Female Agents 64 Nim’s Island 65 XXY 66 The Mist 67 Dan In Real Life 68 The Savages 69 Hallam Foe 70 Ghost Town 71 Annie Liebowitz 72 Walk Hard 73 Son Of Rambow 74 We Are Together 75 Madagascar 2 76 While She Was Out 77 Underdog 78 Tropic Thunder 79 The Air I Breathe 80 Inkheart 81 Space Chimps 82 The Lookout 83 Show Of Hands 84 Wake Up Ron Burgundy 85 P2 86 Death At A Funeral 87 The Wackness 88 The Rocker 89 Meet Dave 90 27 Dresses 91 The Fall 92 Cous Cous 93 Syndromes Of A Century 94 Honey Dripper 95 Silent Light 96 Swing Vote 97 X Files 2 98 You The Living 99 Comedy Of Power 100 Somers Town Clearly some of these were not technically 2008, but, hey, it’s our list… Roll on 2009!

(Soundtrack: Ornette Coleman “Change Of The Century”, Bon Iver “For Emma, Forever Ago”) Now well and truly into January and I have done virtually nothing about finding a new job. I did go and see about a short-term position for a DVD wholesaler, but do not think it is for me as it would involve spending at least two nights a week up in Burton in the North Midlands, and the idea of being away from Bridie and up there two nights per week does not appeal. I have decided to approach some music publishers, in case there is somebody out there just sitting waiting for the opportunity to support me while I write the next album. Our friend Pete, who does our mastering, is going to help me put a CD compilation together, and I will then get in touch with ten or so. A bit of a long shot, but you never know… Sad news last week that Patrick McGoohan has passed away. He embodied individuality and artistic integrity. We have been working our way back through watching “The Prisoner” and it really stands the test of time, setting a standard for intelligent, surreal, cult TV, that not even Twin Peaks matched. In fact Twin Peaks caved in halfway through season 2 whereas the Prisoner never did. He was so headstrong and defiant in that show; a real inspiration. I used to watch it with my father and we would both try and make out that we knew what was going on. We did the same with “2001″ when we went to see that at the pictures. My parents and I would go to the cinema quite often when I was young. They had an odd habit of not checking the time of the films, just turning up. So we would have our tea, then go to the cinema, and go in at whatever point the movie was up to. I remember us doing this for “Ice Station Zebra” which starred Patrick McGoohan. We arrived half an hour before the end of the film causing a disturbance for the people already engrossed. If you know that movie you know there is a twist near the end, so that was the first thing that we saw. We then watched it to the end, and sat through the intermission. The ad’s would then come on: mainly painfully scratchy efforts for local businesses (”Cor, lovely and fresh!” was the catch-phrase for Warburtons bread, as exclaimed by a cartoon robber breaking into a safe and finding a loaf inside), This was followed by a short film on canoeing or bell-ringing, then another quick intermission, and then the trailers, and then “Ice Station Zebra” started and we learned how we got to where we were when we came in. When it got to that point we would usually stand up and leave, causing another commotion, but on this occasion, we stayed and watched the ending again. Mum had a crush on Rock Hudson, I was in awe of McGoohan and Dad loved all the snow and the submarine. It is interesting how some old TV shows stand the test of time and others do not. We tried to watch “The Persuaders” and “The Odd Couple” recently, both shows I had fond childhood memories of, but they are now absolutely awful, unwatchable. “Columbo”, on the other hand, actually seems even better now. All those wonderful guest directors and stars, such inventiveness and quality in the writing, and a tour de force performance from Peter Falk. Bridie has completely fallen for the guy, and we are gradually watching all his movies too. Patrick McGoohan holds the distinction of having appeared the most times as the guest murderer in “Columbo” – 4 times, and his acting, writing and direction on the show really lift it to being some of the best ever TV. Also check McGoohan out playing the drums in “All Night Long”, a 60s British Beat movie based on Othello (Charles Mingus is in it too) – that would make a great wall projection for a club or a gig. One advantage of not working over Christmas was that we were able to have a proper break, and got into a nice routine of lying in then going out for walks in London. I am beginning to tire of life in London, not so much the city itself, but the people, and the time spent on public transport. One thing that always amazes me however, is how wonderful the parks are and how green London is. We were surrounded by deer in Richmond Park, surely one of the greatest parks in the world. We walked round the four ponds on Clapham Common, and watched confused geese skidding across the ice. We explored Tooting and Wandsworth Commons and learned about the history of the capital’s hospitals on the South Bank. We followed a trail along Beverley Brook from Richmond to Barnes and found a new favourite pub. We warmed up with veggie chilli in Borough Market and walked various loops along the Thames, which has a real romantic, spiritual quality, hence its appearance on the artwork for the new album. We are gradually walking the whole of the Thames from the Barrier to the Source – 180 miles altogether. So far we have walked 100 of it. With some thoughts of leaving London, we are hoping to finish this this year. You can also get around a lot of town by following the canal routes, which is much mellower and more romantic than busy streets or public transport. Plus all the amazing cemeteries… Now halfway through the month of being Vegan. It seems that this is easy when you are cooking at home, as you are in control. Also not too bad eating out in the evening, as Indian and Chinese both offer plenty of choice. I have found the hardest thing to be cafe lunches, as cheese, eggs and milk are out. Pret etc do coffee with soya milk, and this is fine, as long as the soya goes in the cup first, and the coffee has cooled slightly, and not too much soya is used. In fact, I have come to prefer cappuccino with soya as it can sometimes be sickly with milk. Getting decent food at lunch can be frustrating though, and makes me appreciate that there is not much choice for Vegans! Difficult to get sweet snacks too, unless you go to a health food store. We had our first rehearsal of the year the other night, trying to turn the new album into something we can play live. That’s Andy pumelling his bass in the photo. I find that a good rehearsal is down to punctuality and mood. It’s not about musicianship or technical stuff, it’s down to people being up for it. Usually if one person is on a downer, the others can lift them out of it, or compensate. If two people are not in the mood then it is a struggle. Amazingly all five of us were on good form this time so it made it easy. That won’t last, but I enjoyed it. Some of the songs were working, some were not, but we have a couple more sessions in before we try it live on Valentine’s Day (understandably not a popular choice of date with our wives and girlfriends!). Went to see the latest Clint Eastwood film “The Changeling”: big, clumsy, entertaining, American story-telling – it is very enjoyable. Unfortunately we both got the giggles at John Malkovich halfway through. He is all hairpiece and lisp and pout, and we cracked up every time he came on screen. Apologies to the couple in front. Still, at least he was introducing some humour, which Clint clearly had no intentions of providing. Good film though. Not as cool as “Play Misty” or the ones with the monkey obviously, but pretty good.

(Soundtrack: Nina Nastasia “The Blackened Air”, Daniel Johnstone “Lost And Found”) Just before Christmas we visited San Francisco for a few days. We have been there before, but this time really fell in love with it. One reason I think, is that previously we had stayed centrally, on the basis that it is then easy to travel to the groovier areas of town. This time we stayed between the Castro and Haight, where there is a lot of nightlife so we could easily walk home in the evenings. Haight Street still has an air of the 60s and The Grateful Dead about it, and is home to Amoeba, one of the best record shops in the world. One of the main things we wanted to do this trip was to go and see a film at The Castro, which is a huge cinema from the 20s, completely intact, including a chap rising out of the stage playing a pipe organ before the show. We would have happily seen anything there – we were thinking of an old classic, as they regularly show treats like “All About Eve” or “Blue Velvet”. It is a different experience going to the cinema in the USA, or maybe it is just the West Coast with its movie history – it always seems much more of an event, with the audience getting there early, and likely to respond and applaud during the film. The combination of this and the lovely cinema made it very appealing. We were lucky enough to arrive in town the day before the new Gus Van Sant film “Milk” opened at The Castro, so by getting up early on the Friday morning we were able to bag tickets for it. Gus Van Sant is one of my favourite directors. I liked “My Own Private Idaho”, “To Die For”, “Good Will Hunting” and “Finding Forrester”, but it is his run of recent films which is so astonishing: “Gerry”, “Elephant”, “Last Days” and “Paranoid Park” are all stunning. So we were already excited about seeing “Milk”. The film tells the story of Harvey Milk, the openly gay member of the Board Of Supervisors in San Francisco in the 70s, who tirelessly campaigned for gay rights and managed to stop Proposition 6 from going through, which would have prevented gay men or women from teaching in American schools. He was also known as the Mayor of Castro Street – he was based there and the area was, and remains, a centre for the town’s gay community. Most of the film is set in the Castro, so we were going to watch it where the story happened. As we were getting ready to go out, we noticed a procession going past our hotel. Hundreds of people marching in the dark, each carrying a single candle. We later found out that this was a recreation of the march that occurred after Harvey Milk’s death, and was in honour of his memory and the opening of the movie. When we got to the Castro we had to queue right down and round the block (I took the photo while we queued, though I managed to obscure Sean Penn), and when we got inside it took us a while to get two seats together, ending up really near the front. The place was rammed and the atmosphere electric. The film is wonderful, and to hear the audience reacting to it was very moving. Several of the characters featured are still active in San Francisco politics today, and to hear them get such heartfelt cheers at the end of the movie brought us to tears. It was an unforgettable experience. Afterwards we ended up in a bar called Martuni’s, which Bridie has completely fallen in love with. They specialise in Martinis (it was invented in San Francisco), and have a bar at the back where karaoke is sung around a piano – lots of show tunes and flamboyant performances; a brilliant atmosphere. I was gradually getting up the nerve to try a Bacharach song, but never quite made it. Bridie nearly got to do “Under Pressure”, an unusual choice, but the pianist couldn’t remember it. The next night we went to a Comedy Club called The Punchline, and saw Emo Phillips, who was great: “I had a good German friend of mine to stay recently… I gave him bagels for breakfast… He said “We just can’t get bagels as good as these back in Germany”… I said “Well, who’s fault is that?”" We also walked across the Golden Gate Bridge while we were there. We had done that before, but in the meantime had seen the documentary film “The Bridge”. It is a powerful experience walking to the bridge and over it, and the film, which focuses on it as the suicide capital of the world, added to the sense of… I don’t know what the word is… “power” is probably closest. There is a feeling you get at any major landmark in the world, perhaps something about being in the presense of something which has been there through many generations and is bigger than us, almost a religious quality. The Golden Gate Bridge gives this feeling in an extreme degree: inspiring and unsettling. I would like to write about it at some point. I singularly failed to meet up with Eric Stephenson while we were there. Eric has put together a book of graphic stories by different artists inspired by 24 Spearmint and Shirley Lee songs. We have been liaising on the project for a couple of years and were hoping to meet for the first time. I wanted to thank Eric in person for everything he has done to make this happen. Every so often somebody has faith in what we do and, believe me, it makes a big difference to us. We had made an arrangment, but thanks to my incompetence with my mobile and the hotel phone, we didn’t get together. I suspect we will return to San Francisco this year though, so hopefully we can meet then. I went to get a haircut on Tuesday. I thought I had better, with the hideous possibility of job interviews looming. I had intended to go to Colin, who has been the local barber for years. The notice in his window says “I was asked if I was spending Christmas with loved ones. I said “No, just the family.”" He had a sign up last year saying “I will be closed this weekend as I am celebrating 5 years of happily married life. It is our 20th wedding anniversary.” A funny guy. A bit of a local legend. When I went there he asked me if I followed football. I said No. There was a long pause, then he proceeded to talk football at me for the whole haircut, presumably having decided that my input was unnecessary. It was, however, Colin’s first day back after Christmas so I figured he would be busy, hence I went to the newer one round the corner. He can moan for England. Give him a topic and he will moan about it until you stop him. I told him what I wanted with my hair, and he then gave me his usual cut. Do these people ever really listen? I think whatever you say to them they just give you their usual cut. Bridie went for a haircut last year, and took in a photo showing exactly what she wanted. She came home distraught, claiming to have been made to look like one of the Ramones. I must say she looked pretty good to me! (but then I have a thing for Joey Ramone). Later that day, I met Andy Lewis to go over to Brian’s studio in Blackhorse Road, where we recorded the album. We wanted to get some sounds onto a CD to use live on a song called “The Lights Change”. Andy was in fine fettle, clutching a new digital Mellotron which he had just acquired. He was full of stories about having spent New Year’s Eve at a party at Paul Weller’s studio, and the next day walking with Paul in the Surrey countryside. I told him that Bono once stood on my foot, but he didn’t seem too impressed. Andy and I have written a song together called “36 Reasons Why”, which is for Andy’s next solo album, but I think we will try it live when we do the Shirley Lee gigs. Brian was well, and we chatted about doing some Spearmint recording in late February for a potential EP for later in the year. He is currently recording with The Clientele – I seem to remember I like them, but have not heard the recent stuff – must check it out.

It is nearly 6 pm and I still have a headache from too much Peroni last night. It is very nice, that draft Peroni. Bridie and I (that’s us in the photo) saw in the New Year at our local pub, dancing to the traditional hootenany sounds of Midnight Oil, Ray Parker Jnr and Desmond Dekker. The DJ’s technique was to have Stevie Wonder’s Greatest Hits permanently in one deck and then to change selections in the other. Hence every other song was from little Stevie. Is it normal to announce at 5 to 12 that the bar will close at quarter to 12 so that the staff can have a drink and see in the New Year? Aside from announcing it after it had happened, surely the one time you definitely want a bar to be open is round midnight on 31 December? Still, we had a brilliant time, and were last ones out, by which time we had both developed seemingly unstoppable hiccoughs. Today, New Year’s Day has been very very cold and very very grey. We went for a walk round Whitehall and Westminster to shake hangovers. All was quiet, as Bono predicted. He stood on my foot once, in the bar in that hotel which they own in Dublin. He was heading through to the bar with that chap from The Waterboys, when he trod on me. He did stop and apologise though. He has probably been dining out on the story of how he stood on Shirley Lee ever since. Could be a quiet night in with a movie or two tonight, I am feeling decidedly queasy… We have decided to go Vegan for the month of January. I do not anticipate this being too hard as I have been Vegetarian since the age of 20, but we shall see. I think having to have Soya Milk in coffee will be the main thing, although I have just realised that honey is out too. We are doing it out of interest really, giving things up for a while makes you think about what you are consuming. We cut out wheat in October – it didn’t make much difference to us except that it was bloody inconvenient. It was very interesting though to figure out which things did or did not contain wheat. The hard one for me will be giving up alcohol for a while; we are thinking of doing this for Lent. We briefly considered axing alcohol for January, but the prospect of a long cold month including my birthday, with no booze seemed unappealing. Especially as I am now unemployed. Last year I worked for a company called EUK. They were a wholesaler of CDs, DVDs and Games, buying them at advantageous prices from suppliers then preparing them for the shopfloor and selling them onto retailers including Woolworth, Zavvi, WH Smith and Sainsbury. They crashed and went into administration about a month ago. The administrators moved in and tried to sell the business, but failed. Nobody at work knew what was happening, communication was poor and rumours were rife. On Wednesday 10 December signs appeared in the canteen saying that Christmas lunch would now be served the next day. Canteen staff were openly discussing the fact that they had been asked not to provide food for the following week. On the Friday we were all called into one of the warehouses and told that the company was insolvent and that we no longer had jobs, no notice, no redundancy. There was a lot of tears and a lot of anger, directed both at the administrators for not managing to sell what was a profitable business, and also at the board for allowing it all to happen. EUK had supplied about a quarter of the market in Britain, but it was part of the Woolworth group. Woolworth had been struggling for a while and had drawn up various plans to re-invent themselves, but as the recession took hold during the year, suppliers found they could no longer get insurance for doing business with them, or EUK. This meant that purchasing had to be managed on a weekly or even daily basis, which proved very difficult going into the busiest and most expensive time of the year. It got to the point where the cash needed to move forward was too great, and there was no choice except for both companies to go into administration. Neither company was sold and Woolies are about to shut their doors for ever on Sunday. A small team are dealing with the stock left at EUK. Zavvi have gone into administration too, as a knock-on effect of EUK going under. They follow all the other chains of record shops who have gone over recent years: MVC, Our Price, Virgin, Fopp, along with a host of Indie stores. This leaves HMV with a high street monopoly. They should be safe, for a few years at least. In addition to this, Pinnacle went bust last month. They were the main distributor of Indie music in the UK, including our hitBACK label. This signals the end of an era. The music will still be made, but there is now a very narrow route into high street shops. We will be buying the weird and wonderful online – there will now be no alternative. I will miss being able to browse Indie CDs and LPs, but there is no point moaning about progress, it was inevitable that this would happen sooner or later, it is just that the recession has made it happen now. So, I am out of work, and considering what to do next. Of course, my ideal would be to focus on writing full-time, and not get a day job, but this does not stack up financially. We live in a small flat in Shepherds Bush and we really like it, but the rent is high. I fear I have no choice but to look for another job. We are also considering moving out of London – it would make sense to be nearer to my mother in Yorkshire, as she is 80 and lives alone. I do not think that would damage the band, after all Ronan has lived in Hastings for a couple of years, he just comes up to London for rehearsals etc. It all needs some thought, and I need to sort it out by February, or money will run out. I should get some time during January to do some writing though, which will be a treat. I plan to write this diary this year only and then stop. I will aim to write at least one entry each week, and to be honest about what is happening, hopefully capturing what it is like to be me in London in 2009. I find when I read other people’s diaries, that it is the day to day things that are of interest, so I make no apology for talking about the mundane. There will also be a lot of jibba-jabba about movies, which is a particular passion of Bridie’s and mine. I remember reading in Brian Eno’s diary that one day he got up and decided to try drinking a glass of his own urine to see if it had efficacious effects. Perhaps I will try that… But then, where would I get a glass of Brian Eno’s urine?