Cat update, since I know that's what you're really here for.
I have a pretty nice acoustic guitar built by Simon & Patrick, a Canadian firm of luthiers (all wood sourced from within a fairly tight radius of their factory), it's a lovely sound, a lovely feel, built in a Martin style (for those of you that need reference) but significantly more affordable. It comes in a nice bag.
Which the cat has now realised she can climb up. The Strat case? The Ric case? Too smooth. The S&P bag? Yeah you can really get your claws into that.
So that's what I'm dealing with/fending off while writing this.
I've been in here with her for fifty minutes now, might be another hour. Once J's call has ended she has to write it up. And the cat loves walking across laptop keys. And phones. Almost wiped Spotify from J's iPhone at 9am. So the living room's out of bounds for a while. And I need to move this guitar case.
All I really want to do is keep updating twitter to find out whether we've signed Luis Diaz yet: a footballer I'd never actually noticed play before 8.30 this morning ands now find absolutely vital to my future happiness.
That and follow the disappearance of the Sue Gray report. The Met have apparently asked her not to include any details of anything that they're now investigating. Which is, if I recall correctly, *all* the parties. (Coughs into hand, manages to include the words 'blatant cover up')
Anyway.
The pictures are coming up again. It's that time of year. The week we closed HMV Speke. The end of 27 years selling records. Which was quite cool at times.
I had a few other things to say there, actually said a few of those thing, went back, deleted each line; it's old energy, I could feel it coming back. I don't need it, it's not part of this life. Here's a photo for you though, one of my favourite photos of myself:
I wouldn't normally do this kind of thing. Wouldn't contemplate the concept of a spot of Townshend style auto-destruction. Not of a guitar. A guitar is a holy thing.
But.
It was a ten pound acoustic that had been left by a lad who hadn't worked in the shop for a couple of years and it was knackered. Everything had been pulled from what used to be a shop and was now 'a unit', units had been skipped, the old couch that I'd given to the staff room; skipped. I don't remember what happened to the full size pool table. This guitar wasn't wanted, it wasn't good enough for anyone to use for any musical purpose, it was very definitely going in a skip.
You can't allow that to happen when there's a chance to have your own London Calling moment, your chance to be Paul Simonon for a second (like any of us could ever have an ounce of Simonon's effortless cool).
So I went for it. And it felt great.
Which isn't about what I'm listening to, and breaks my own rules for this place.
I'm listening to that Transvision Vamp album I bought for a quid yesterday, I'll tell you about it tomorrow. For now, let's just imagine that I've been listening to The Clash Live At Shea Stadium, an album that captures the band supporting The Who and taking on the audience on their own terms, giving us incendiary takes on Clampdown and English Civil War - both of which feel like absolutely necessary messages right now.
Which means the only thing I can do is take the vinyl off the deck, reach for my copy of The Clash CD and stick it in so I can bathe once again in the viciousness of the opening London Calling, Joe's sublimely left field between son patter, seemingly designed to confuse America as much as possible, a gloriously speedy dubby Guns Of Brixton and the perfect trifecta of The Magnificent Seven into Armageddon Time and back into The Magnificent Seven.
It's an album that doesn't hold any memories, just perfection. It's an album that memories point back towards.
(This isn't from that album, it's from a year earlier but it is, obviously, Magnificent. And to me this song will always be walking up the hallway of The State - as seen briefly on The Responder this week, it's a place you can't disguise from those of us who lived it - and into the main room. It's poise and pose, it's attitude, it's eternal.)
On the 23rd of October ten years ago, I was supposed to write here for the final time. I was writing up until my 50th birthday then stopping. Job done. The task I'd set myself at the start of 2013 complete. Obviously that didn't happen. I enjoyed it too much, had too much to say. But, in time, it dwindled. I didn't feel the need to write here as I had so many other things to write elsewhere - - aside: I intended to write a 'What Happened Next' piece here for my 60th. Started it, semi-planned it, was going to talk about everything that had happened after the blog/partly because of the blog. But other things came up and I wasn't convinced people would be that interested. So I didn't. And none of that is the point. None of it's the reason I'm back here for this one. J's cousin, Paula, bought us a book: a notebook, lined empty pages and a pocket at the back for memorabilia (of the paper kind, snow globes would have been an issue), nicely bound, impr
Note to self: yesterday was about a single, it played at 45rpm, change the speed. Full on John Peel "this one plays at 33" moment there. Which didn't benefit Michael Stipe in any way at all. "We're REM, from Athens Georgia. This one's new." They were all new, we knew nothing about them other than the whispers that were coming out in the music papers. (Aside: J's on a video call in the living room, Daisy's in with me; she's currently hiding either under the banjo on its stand or behind the Rickenbacker in its case. Both are worrying me. i am, quite ironically, having kittens here. See what I did there? Dad jokes all over the place.) REM were one of the groups that made me want to own a Rickenbacker. These and The Church more than The Jam or The Beatles strangely enough. Back to the point. The radio wasn't playing REM in 83. Not that I recall. (Another aside, I'm writing this while watching/listening to PMQs - we've just had a Tor
Sunday morning. Nothing opening at breakfast time, lots of things not opening all day as it turned out, so we went for a walk. A long walk. A long walk to another state. Down to the Mississippi, along the Mississippi, to the 'Big River Crossing'. A bridge over the river. A one mile long bridge from Memphis in Nashville to West Memphis in Arkansas. Jumped over the state line, mid-river. Got to the other side, put our feet on the soil of Arkansas, turned round, walked a mile back. Genuinely brilliant and worth every second. Found ourselves in an Exxon station, in the middle of very little, waiting for an Uber. An Uber to take us out to McLemore Avenue and the Stax Museum. Which was, and I hate to say this because it's Stax and everything that came out on Stax is brilliant, massively disappointing. It's on the site of Stax, in the way that the Cavern is on the site (almost) of the Cavern. It looks like Stax. In the way the Cavern looks like the Cavern. But it's no
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