The house I have been living in for the last week in the far north of Britain, as far as you can go, has an electric cooker ( Read more... )

Hunting for half-forgotten photos of an old friend - and clearly long-lost, since I couldn’t find them - I came across these photos taken at gigs a while back. Over thirty years, to be precise.

I now take pictures at jazz gigs; back then, I wasn’t such a jazz fan (though I did dig up some negatives from jazz gigs, too - they’ll wait for another ( Read more... )

This time last weekend, I was sitting around nervous, waiting for things to happen. I looked at Twitter; frankie_cap broadcast that she was earwormed by Tom Lehrer's song about the atomic table.

For a reason that I can't fathom, this got me thinking of the song Dry Bones by Fred Waring & The Pennsylvanians - only as it appeared in the tv programme The ( Read more... )

Today is Holocaust Memorial Day.

I was talking to a friend about the holocaust at the weekend, and we discussed how important it was to remember.

I have nothing else to say: except that we must rembember.

Last weekend, I started this year’s diary by moving all the addresses from the old one into the new one; some people don’t get copied across, dropping out after a while of silence ( Read more... )

So there I am, browsing in Fopp again. I have no idea how I got there.

My eye is caught by a box set. “Original recordings from the Manticore vaults.” And one of those recordings is of the second ever rock concert I went to: Emerson Lake & Palmer at Hammersmith Odeon, 27 November [erm…] 1972.
( ...If we make it we can all sit back and laugh... )

It is cold; I don’t think the temperature has risen above freezing since Saturday, like much of the country. Yesterday, I was caught in a snow shower in Princes St - large flakes swirling around the merry-go-round, ferris wheel and slide ( Read more... )

andrewducker linked to an article on the BBC website about Ray Morrissey, who, according to the article, has been to over 5,000 gig in 35 years. (Actually, that works out at just over one a month, so they may have got their numbers wrong, but let's skip over that.) Ray kept notes of each gig he went to; and he has put them all online in an accessible, ( Read more... )

I found the drawing Quentin Blake drew for me. It wasn't where I thought it was; I thought it had been on its own sheet of paper, when in fact it was in my old autograph book. One of Blake's characters was called Patrick, and that is what he dedicated to me.


( Read more... )

Before catching the train back to Edinburgh, I went off to Tate Britain. Mostly, I wanted to see Martin Creed’s Work No. 850, but whilst there I thought I’d catch the Bacon retrospective and see the works shortlisted for the Turner Prize, too; and make the use of my new Tate membership…


( Read more... )