Mumbling Into The Void (slight return)

 We made it. We got through.  So what did we do in January? Book wise I'm (still) in the middle of the Collected Poems Of Roger McGough (bit up and down to be honest), the Salmon Poetry Compilation I bought in Cork last year (similar but very modern and not attempting humour, guess it's a case of finding what works for you, maybe I'm not a poetry person.  Still reading the Eno book, the Rupert Everett short stories, the collected 2000ad Dan Dare that Tom bought me for Xmas 23, the Johnny Cash lyrics (same as) which work brilliantly, they're leading me to Cash songs I'd not heard before, making me reappraise the value of those lost years between San Quentin and the American Recordings.  Realised a couple of days ago that I've started the Paul Morley Anthony Wilson bio and not got far, so still in the middle of that, still own the middle of Jon Savages Secret Public and 1966 (technically still in the middle of God Emperor Of Dune but have been since March 1982, th...

 Was listening to 'The Bad And Lowdown World Of The Kane Gang' because of a review on 200 Words (Bluesky account), just horribly infected with all the worst bits of 80s production - cavernous drums, Clapton-esque guitars. Now switched to the 2022 remix of Dylan's Time Out Of Mind album, which basically removes all the production that Lanois placed on it and returns to the band and the instrumentation. The production was fine; swampy and ghostly, but this feels more classic.  Weird to think that this was Dylan's 'late period' album, post heart disease health scare, a man staring at old age and mortality; he was 55. It's 28 years old now, there've been 10 albums since (Including 3 albums of 'standards', one a triple disc set, and the strangely sincere weirdness of Christmas in the heart - it's Bob, you get what you're given.) Getting places now. Got a contact number for the theatre we'd quite like for MIH. Question out to all concerned ...

 A soundscape. Something Eno-ish, Music For Airports/Apollo style. The sound of the universe in the distance. Everything that's ever happened happening at once Ghost voices (not actual ghosts), brief scattered speech. Possibly about love The poetry of the afterlife. A whisper.  The sound we heard at 566khz A relaxing version of Metal Machine Music. It's the background noise of creation.  Peace.  Whiteness. White lights Bare feet.  No make up, a plain-ness to appearance Clothes - no idea what these look like. White seems to obvious. As does grey.  Create the world without creating the world.  An industrial setting. Scaffolding. Structure. This is a building block, a waiting room, it's a place to start creating the next thing. 'The pillars of creation'

 Not feeling it this morning.  Feel wiped out, not quite awake, the edge of a depressive moment peeking over the horizon. The stuff I don't talk about, the stuff I try to work out internally in the calmest way possible.  Could be an accumulation of: No sleep Sunday night/picking Matty up from Manchester Monday night - 2.5 hours in the car starting at 9.15/last night's red wine/a run in the morning, the gym in the evening, possibly just overdoing it/the cat waking me at 6.30 this morning to go out and me falling into a really deep sleep after that, the kind of deep sleep that bleeds into the day and takes forever to shake off.  Or it could be the fact that there's too many films to watch, books to read, guitars and pianos to play, too much TV, all this stuff to do and no idea where the time comes from.  But it's probably the fact that I feel I replied to S's email incorrectly. Tells me about the health issue and I reply with Bloody Hell, I had no idea! He'd joked...

 Stalin Malone from Costello's Spike The Beloved Entertainer going in the background. This morning was a 5k with yesterday's main Anfield Wrap (the one I wasn't on) in the background. Breakfast, shower, head to town, record an Under The Lights, home for lunch. Now 2.45 and I'm aiming for  couple of hours on the Beatles project before heading to the gym about 5. Discovered the joys of actually lifting weights on Sunday, going to go for it again. The idea of being healthy. Need to ask Matty if I can take over his Apple Watch, he's not using it at all now far as I'm aware.  Message to Mike this morning to see if he has contact details for Epstein (he doesn't yet), email to all involved in MIH seeing if we're meeting this week. David not available. Stephen's in rehearsals for SV so poss unlikely. Suggested that GJ's company could be an option for touring Picked up the acoustic, always a good way to avoid work, tried out a trick on playing CFG up the ...

 So, here we are. Monday afternoon, getting ready to think about getting ready to do some actual work. Two Anfield Wraps booked in this morning; the Bacon Butty with Josh, then the main show. Just before we started the BB, Neil popped in to ask if I'd be okay dropping out of the main show so he could fit Gibbo in, as Gibbo had realised he hadn't talked about the match yet.  All fine by me. Home an hour earlier, an extra hour of writing.  Obviously, as ever, I managed to find things to get me through to the point where, as ever, I started work at 3pm. Involved popping round to mum's. Hold on.  My hatred of this record player is growing by the second. If I could just persuade it that the fact that I'm typing doesn't mean that the loose wire needs to shake itself looser, life would be easier. The ultimate example of false economy - should have just bought a better deck in the first bloody place.  Anyway. Emptied some bins for mum, poured some Daz into her plastic h...

 It was there.  The album I was talking about yesterday? The Church's Heyday album. From 1985. The album I didn't buy at the time because there'd been a couple of slightly lesser albums that followed on from The Blurred Crusade and I'd lost a bit of faith, but was overjoyed to pick up a CD copy of in the Florida mall in 1992 (also bought on the same visit, Neil Young's Decade, which cost about £50 in the UK at the time - this being the trip where we headed to the mall mid-afternoon in blazing sunshine so I was wearing prescription shades, and came out in darkness with no change of glasses - "It's 20 miles to Clearwater, it's dark and I'm wearing sunglasses, let's go." It was exactly where I left it on Wednesday. In the jazz section. "So you hid it?" said J. No, I put it back where I found it. It's not my fault they put it under jazz. £35. 50% off. £17.50. Also picked up Violent Femmes 4th album for £6. In that rack there, in t...

...go record shopping. I mean, it wasn't an intention. Except I did. But I was just looking. Just in case anything incredible had gone into Dig's sale that wasn't there last week. But thought I might as well pop into Rough Trade on the way, just in case. I'd been in town for an Anfield Wrap, the overview show - looking at what's just been, and at what will take us into February; which seems ages away but looks to contain about six games in ten days. I'd done the maths yesterday.  Went into Waterstones on the way back to the station (I could easily head to Moorfields and avoid temptation but where's the fun in that?) Bumped into the excellent Jeff Young, writer of Ghost Town and Wild Twin. Beautifully written books both, Ghost Town being a spectacular dream of Liverpool's back streets. Talked publishing and theatre and do we follow each other on BlueSky? We do. Need to go for a cup of tea sometime soon.  Then headed for Rough Trade. Where some bastard had...

 22nd January and the madness continues unabated. Trump, while pardoning 1500 people who'd been jailed for their part in the January 6 insurrection, names them as 'hostages' which they've never been. Then moves on to the subject of Gaza and what a fantastic location it is, lots of potential, could do great things there.  Palestine has been flattened, the current POTUS sees this as a real estate opportunity. Great beach fronts, ocean views, wonderful sunsets. He says these things out loud.  Meanwhile on this side of the pond - Prince Harry's just settled his lawsuit against Newsgroup, which annoyed me at first, if there's one person who could bring that shitty little rag down forever it'd be him, his family's definitely got the money to go for it. But. It looks like the group's apology includes admission of unlawful activity, phone hacking, the works. Tom Watson has already made a speech asking for assurance from Mark Rowley that when they hand their ...

After everything I said yesterday about what I was going to do, I decided to ghost down with some flu-type lurgy. Possibly weariness related to having three hours sleep, possibly to do with the fact that, as J put it, "You spent two nights at the theatre last week, you'll have been hugging all and sundry." So, spent a couple of hours on the couch, couple of hours lying on the bed, still failing to sleep.  Missed the entirety of Trump's inaugural speech. But caught the sequel, where he went to big room next door, said out loud all the things he'd been told not to say in the actual speech. Like this was going to be any less televised. Watching JD Vance's face crumble on live telly as his bosses 'weave' became more and more incoherent. Still, at least you were able to see what next Saturday's SNL cold open will look like. Split screen, Dana Carvey all "No, listen, I'm serious here" and James Austin Johnson rambling forever. Ideally he...

You know what? I'm getting really bored of this 'being awake the whole bloody night' thing.  I went to bed at 12:15, we'd been to see A Complete Unknown at the Odeon (literally round the corner, very handy) - more on that later - came home, had a whisky as a nightcap, played a game of FIFA, pout my head on the pillow, knew immediately I wasn't catching it. Still awake at 1.15. Then again at 2. Then at 3. And stayed awake for quite a while after that, with my head, once again, going "You know what you need to do with the festival remix of MIH? In order to make the change from two acts to one work? This." "Okay, sound, I'll do it in the morning like a sane person."  By 4am I'm downstairs, getting a head start on World and Connections and that weird Spanagram thing. Getting answers wring because the connections are designed to make sense to Americans. Then reading BlueSky posts about Trump, then playing Call Of Duty then FIFA then back to be...

 So where were we? I'd bought some vinyl in the Dig Vinyl 50% off sale. Results: Prefab Sprout's Swoon, as wondrous and weirdly fractured as ever, Lambchop's This Is What I Wanted To Tell You, gorgeous; Kurt Wagner using autotune and ambience to create a sort of alt-soul that feels both modern and classic, slightly  out of time, slightly dislocated, warm and fractured. Sits nicely with The Bible and Show Tunes. Lovely to write to. Room In The Wood's 'We're The Martians Now'? Not entirely sold yet, think it might be a grower. Quite bare but quite psychedelic. If that's not a juxtaposition too far. Got Dragonfly on at the moment. Given the group's pedigree (The Room and Benny Profane) and that I know the producer, the drummer and the flautist (a little bit on that last one, met him once) I'm going to grow into it. The match yesterday? Watched it on a stream from the states. Peacock TV. Which died completely on the 89th minute. 88 minutes of watchin...

And now it's today, still, and I'm writing about today.  David Lynch died last night. 78 and not unexpected, he'd been diagnosed with COPD (or similar) and was now unable to leave the house. But sad. A towering genius, a man who approached life on his own terms; you may not have needed to watch everything he ever made but the world was a better place for having him in it.  Add David's passing to that of Tony Slattery and Linda Nolan in the last few days, both really sad moments, people who'd been there for so long, Tony having seemingly passed through a terrible period (decades apparently) in his life and got to the other side only to be taken so swiftly, Linda after 20 years of recurring illness. Joan Plowright about twenty minutes ago, 95 but a giant of her industry.  And then there's Alan Stocks. Lots of things at the Royal Court. Known well and loved by so many people I know; I only met Alan very briefly once or twice, passing on the way in to the theatre or...

 It's Friday now. Not Thursday. So this is me writing about yesterday. Which started with waking up at 3. Think it was cat related. Sure it was cat related. Whatever it was, it left me awake. Which meant that when I went back to bed I slept late. Which meant there was no run because there was no time. There was breakfast, then there was making lunch and heading out.  After some MIH rewrites. The afternoon was the Creative Writing class at Spider, then a 4.30 Anfield Wrap, a bit of tea (Philharmonic pub, fish and chips, a long way from impressive.) and a judging spell at 'What Happens Next' festival.  Said to J around 11am, "I'm not in the mood for the day. The day was wondrous. Joyous. All the good things.  The writing prompts for Spider were excellent, just worked. Two five minute quick burst on 'It's Going To Be Great' and the creation of an acrostic. I'd intended cut ups for the second half, brought in 12 copies of Metro with me for that purpose....

 That's the first single from Edwyn Collins' 10th solo album. "Knowledge". I hadn't intended writing about that today. Because I didn't know it existed until an hour ago.  It's gorgeous for... like, a million reasons. The first verse isn't the most poetic lyric you've ever heard; it's simplistic, it's obvious. Until he says "I don't feel safe, I don't have faith" then he moves somewhere else.  The voice is the voice of a man in his 60s. A man who's been through a lot. "In my youth I was shy and awkward, anyhow I made it count, the point is keep on going, it's the same for everyone." It's a reflection on life, on living, on where you've come to, where you've been, what you've gone through.  And Edwyn's been through a lot; a series of strokes that nearly killed him, that left him without speech, that resulted in aphasia, the inability to produce or understand speech through brain damage....

And sometimes social media can be brilliant. As much as I've abandoned Twitter, am considering bailing on Facebook, can't see the point of Instagram and Threads is just... weird. (My 'For You' feed just seems to be full of people announcing the deaths of loved ones, which is awful and moving and infinitely sad but I have no idea why it's being pushed toward me. I empathise massively but it's not my sadness and I'm not sure that it wants to sit with me. Maybe it's a lesson in something? I don't know.) But Bluesky. I received a reply to a post on Bluesky, from a lad asking if he could have my email. That he had something to send me that was Blue Nile related.  I followed him, messaged my email to him and received an email telling me what my 'Get Into This' piece on The Blue Nile meant to him, where he is in his life that it spoke to him.  You don't need the details. They're his details.  But it's one of the most beautiful, moving em...

It occurs to me that at some point, I'm going to actually need a new turntable. The really nice Technics I got for a bargain on eBay has had a loose wire since day one. And we're a long way from day one now. The left channel drops out, distorts, vanishes. At least I think it's the left channel. It's the channel on my left as I face the speakers. Which probably makes it the right channel.  I got the deck for about £50. Which was a bargain. Didn't know I'd need a pre-amp. Which cost me about £120. Or a decent cable, which cost me about £40. And a new head shell. And a new stylus. Don't try to save money, it doesn't work.  The whole thing died again this afternoon, just as I sat down to write. Took the pre amp apart, put it back together again. Pain in the arse. One good idea though - took the MacBook into town with me. The half hour gap between finishing the 'Team talk show' (always nice to see Mr Sutton on a show) and starting the 'main show...

 Monday morning. 3.15am.  I didn't get up to write this. That'd be ridiculous.  I didn't get out of bed, pull on my dressing gown, sit is a far too cold study (rather than boot up the MacBook and sit at the still fairly chilly dining table, just to catch up on the fact I didn't write a diary entry yesterday (when I was having a lovely quiet, calm day), that wasn't playing on my mind. At all. No, I'm here now because I woke up (I think I woke up, I may not have actually slept yet, which is annoying since I'm up at 8am for an early Anfield Wrap) and my mind went, "You know what's wrong with act one in the pitch NOW?" Which is a troubling thought as my deadline for this is Friday and all I've written so far is act one. Therefore, why not tweak it again. "The reality of their outside lives," I thought, "is still not there. That idea that they do something other than THIS VERY MOMENT, that the theatre asked for? You haven't gi...

 A 12:15 kick off. 3rd round of the FA cup. Freezing getting there. Freezing being there. Freezing doing the Pink afterwards. Freezing walking back to the car. Back in before 4. Lunch after breakfast. Pretty much right after. Tea by 6. By 8 I feel like absolute shite. Eyes heavy, totally bunged up. Stomach awful. Which I think I'm ascribing to the terrible 'potato and meat (they're not even pretending anymore) pie.   Could seriously do without coming down with something, got three Anfield Wraps, a writing class, two nights of judging What Happens Next and a deadline.  Illness would be quite inconvenient. Massive intention to be better tomorrow.  Beat Accrington Stanley 4-0. Decent enough. Through to the 4th round. All that matters really. 

 A quick detour to here. Nearly forgot, despite the tab being permanently open. I'm working on the DD 8 page pitch, editing it down, trying a few new flavours. Still in act one, with next Friday being my deadline for getting it in. I'm sure there are people who can knock these things out in a day but I overwrite, and overwrite, and overwrite. Just like that.  I started at 11am, write for an hour, picked up our Tom at noon-ish. Minus two degrees at that point, up from minus five. Treacherous floors. And me, J and Tom went for lunch. Tom fancied the Packet Steamer, me and J Ego at Punchbowl. We went to Ego. Couldn't fit anyone in until 2.30. So we went to the Packet Steamer (or Steam Packet. Years of it being there, never sure what it's called.) Really nice lunch, couple of drinks, a great conversation about exactly how destroyed the world is with the return of Trump and the rise of the ridiculous man child who's managed to buy America for $44bn. In the middle of it w...

 It's a good job we're not superstitious. Half eleven last night, me and Matty are having the final game of FIFA of the evening (manager career, third season in, Everton top of the league in January 2027, clear by 12 points, in the knockout stages of the Champions League, they should just give us the actual real world job now, we'd be boss) and there's this god almighty crash.  It sounds at first as though someone somewhere outs9de has smashed into something, then a split second makes you realise it's upstairs. J's in bed, went up before the end of the first half of the disappointing Liverpool game at Spurs (two disappointments on the run again, needs to not be a teen - match very much marred by Rodrigo Bentancur seemingly collapsing in mid air as he dived for a header in our penalty box. After that nothing really matters when it comes to results), so I thought J had fallen, knocked something over, Matty shouted up, I raced up.  J's stood in the door of the ...

 It's 9.45am. I've been up for basically forever but I'm still in a dressing gown, getting ready for the idea of getting ready.  Woke up at 5. By 5.30 I'd decide I was wide awake bastard wake and getting up was the only viable option. My mind was racing with what was wrong with the first act synopsisI'd spent the last two days writing and how to put it right. By 6 I was downstairs writing. Couldn't work in the study; it's the coldest room on the planet (a remnant of having the old garage converted by cowboys) so, until warmth entered the world, it was the dining table with the MacBook. First world issues. Wrote till 8.20, rejigged the structure of everything I already had, put back in some stuff from an earlier draft that I'd taken out. I'm now back to where I was at 6pm yesterday but curiously tired. I've got that airport feeling - up at the wrong time, breakfast at the wrong time, coffee at the wrong time. But the work's gone well. And will...

 So, the big question of the day is, why are the government having to spend all their time defending themselves against a right wing billionaire bellend (can he see the do you think?) who's decided that it's his job to interfere in British politics, to back Nigel Farage's Reform 'party' (it's not a party, it's a private company; garage has said if the govt aren't going to commission a new inquiry into grooming gangs then he will do it independently, he knows he can raise the money for it - of course he can raise the money for it, the only thing Reform exists for is to raise money for the snivelling little racist), to make the concept of grooming gangs the go to topic for everyone at the moment, to flood the media with the subject? What's in it for him?  Because the only thing that matters to people like him is what's in it for them. Trump. Trump's not in it to make America great again. He's in it to make a profit. Despite having been born...

 I've just seen the Guardian's review of Playing Nice (started on ITV last night, yet another thriller because there aren't enough of those on TV - hey, if it sells and all that.) One star - Mind bendingly bad. Which has genuinely made me more intrigued to watch the remaining three episodes than I was after watching the debut episode.  Background. The match that was not called off? Should have called the bastard off. Wet, cold, grim. Just the walk to the ground. Slush covered pavements, melted ice water in the road, cars possibly delighting in seeing how much of that water they could throw up over us. Three pairs of socks, running tights, jeans, walking boots, under armour, t-shirt, sweater, HEAVY coat, snood, hat gloves. Soaked. And three hours to go.  Terrible performance by a previously dazzling Liverpool against a previously appalling Manchester United. Possibly the players were as convinced this would be a walkover as the rest of us were. It wasn't. It was just a b...

The game's on then. We had the amber weather warning yesterday for overnight (amber or yellow, who really knows and what's the difference?), tons of snow apparently. I scoffed at the idea, we never get snow on the banks of the Mersey. Here's our garden: Definitely snow. More than usual. And at ten o'clock this morning, just after LFC had announced that there'd be another meeting to see whether the game could go ahead at noon, it started snowing again. Then stopped. Then started again. Which made it likely that there'd be no game. Which kind of ruins the rhythm of the day when you've woken with anticipation and suddenly have no idea what you'll be doing now.  Which is an incredibly minor complaint when you're sat in Bootle and are literally at home, while others have travelled far and wide for this, many setting out before the noon meeting, many more already here (our Charlie came over yesterday, stayed at my mum's, went record shopping - welcome ...

 Matty's mate, Duffy, round to watch the Everton game on a stream they couldn't get, turned to me and asked, "Is this true about Musk buying Liverpool then?" Is what what? Seriously? I looked at the image on the post. Is that the Star or the Sport? If it's the Star then it's a worry. I've got a mate that's sports editor there and if he's let that through then we're in trouble. It was the Sport. Which means its bollocks. But still, a serious question to be asked: if Elon Musk were to buy Liverpool could I continue supporting them? The man who's done more in the last year to facilitate the rise of the far right - buying Twitter once his bluff was called and he was forced to stump up $44bn then running the thing into the ground by letting every single banned account back on, Trump, the Tates, little Tommy ten names. The man who's funding Trump, who's offering to fund Farage, who's demanding that the UK have a new election because S...

 It's 4.30pm. I'm about to start work. Which is pretty much okay - my best work is done between 5 and 7 so I'm on target to be great.  This morning was an Anfield Wrap (at 12.30 so technically that's afternoon but I left the house at 11.40 for it and all that happened before it was a gym visit where I managed ten minutes on a treadmill before getting bored because it goes nowhere and pulled something on the right side of my chest doing one of those things where you pull the wight bars down) We talked about Manchester United and how much of a mess they are on and off the field (that Sir Jim bloke doesn't seem to be the messiah they expected, I'm gutted for them) ready for Sunday afternoon's game. Then a diversion into exactly how deluded Mikel Arteta is, and how he's reinvented Arsenal's fanbase in his own image. Good show. 6 Music's 80's day's been decent, managing to actually play loads of stuff we actually listened to at the time. Curre...

 The intention was to start the day with a 5k run. The first of the year. 550 run in total last year, plans to increase that number this time out. (Ditto for books, 48 read last year, want to push past 50 - and yes, theatre scripts do count as books for that purpose). Woke instead at 5am. With my head running revisions for the new version of the 8 page pitch that, until such time as it's fully signed off and announced, will be referred to as DD (all my shows going under initials at some point with the exception of 'A Brief Conversation About The Inevitability of Love' which is referred to as Brief Conversation and currently looks planned for November-ish) "If she does this and he does that and they ask that question and if this happens in the mid nineties instead of late eighties and if that pronunciation doesn't make sense to anyone outside the city then where does that put us and who does that make them." So, at 5.30 I'm at the dining table with my noteb...

 The New Year actually started with dancing. Fireworks and dancing. We'd planned cocktails in town but the weather decided on torrential so we stayed in. Couple of bottles of Prosecco, a bit of wine, a bit of telly. As fine a New Year's Eve as you could ever want.  The fireworks hit at 11:50, which is a bit early, the dancing hit about 1am. Whirling round the living room to Jools Holland's Hootenanny.  Now, I've been as cynical about Hootenanny as any - including predicting the presence of Ruby Turner well in advance (Ruby's boss, no issue at all) This one was splendid. Social media this morning (mostly twitter, dropping in to view, refusing to countenance posting on Musk's hellscape) is telling me that The Boomtown Rats were awful. I loved them, She's So Modern, Rat Trap, Don't Like Mondays - made me quite fancy the idea of finally seeing them live. Geldof's marmite, carries himself with attitude, arrogance and self importance, but that's what m...