James Higgins: Meanderings

Fun is a word that appears a lot in these pages. Don't be alarmed. You can't have too much fun.


Spooky and fun. That seems to be the objective and criteria by which I judge gigs these days.
My music seems to be getting creepier all the time. Soon people will be too scared to show up.
What lies beyond spooky? Terrifying? blood curdling? Chilling?
There is a thin line between creating an ambient atmosphere and freaking people out.
Are we talking mild slightly salted chedder or an over ripe aging camembert that's been left drooling in the sun?

Fun though is fun. Harmless fun being top of the fun genres whilst sadistic fun lurks at the bottom of the heap.
To be playing spooky music in a rock n roll band and see people enjoying themselves is one of the top funs. Especially when you get paid for it. Though paid fun would be categorized under rare species.

In the big picture, earning a living from music isn't about fame and fortune, it's about creativity and freedom and living in the moment while making ends meet. Poverty is often one of the side effects of doing something you love. I've heard it said that if you are doing the job you love then you'll never work a day in your life.

But if you find yourself involved in an activity that's spooky but not fun, you should stop immediately and retrace your foot prints until you find where you digressed.

Mixing spookiness and fun and wages is quite a juggling act but juggling is fun too.
How do you kill a clown?
Go for the juggler.

Well here is some real news.
Remember Mark Flanders? We did a gig together in the Lettered Streets Cafe a while back. He is running as a Democrat for State Representative. 42nd district of Bellingham.
That might not be exact information but he is running for some political office. I believe this to be good news for Bellinghamsters because Mark strikes me as a fair minded individual with a sensible head on his shoulders who is just pissed off with idiots and weasels being in charge of this country.
Check out his website at
www.markflanders.us.
And with a name like Flanders, well of course he's honest.

Someone asked me to write about an important life changing day in my life.
Apologies for the grammar.


On their ill fated return journey from the South Pole, Scott of the Antarctic and his crew succumbed to frostbite, starvation, and fatigue, a mere 11 miles short of their supply cache. Obviously they were not smokers. If they had been, I believe they would have survived. Nothing motivates a smoker with no cigarettes more than the promise of a smoke. A puny Eleven miles cannot stand between a serious nicotine deprived individual and his cigarettes. If a crumb of tobacco existed on the Antarctic continent, Scott and the lads would have found it, even if it was back at the South Pole. If, in their ravenous state, they were to encounter a penguin out walking, I doubt they would have eaten it: they would have rolled it up and smoked it: Or at least chewed it for a while and spat it out.
When Scott’s frostbitten Petty Officer stepped from their tent into a raging blizzard, with his immortalized last words,” I’m just stepping outside for a moment. I may be gone some time”, his objective was to sacrifice himself discreetly, so as not to burden his companions. Had they all been smokers, I believe they would all have followed him, to make sure he wasn’t sneaking off for a smoke.
“Quiting is easy: I’ve done it a hundred times”. So runs the old smokers adage. Giving up smoking is not easy. Not easy at all. Recovering drug addicts who have fought off heroine, cocaine, alcohol, and all their equally seductive derivatives, will invariably still be smoking tobacco at the end. Quiting smoking is like trying to kick Scotsmen out of a “pay as you leave” bar; it’s possible, but it takes dedication and maybe some tyre levers.
I tell all of this for the benefit of non smokers. Those who have never smoked tobacco, can never appreciate the satisfaction that a simple cigarette can bring at the end of a hard day. How could they feasably understand the iron grip that this ritual exerts on a smoker’s mind that refuses to let him stop puffing. Smoking becomes such a part of him that the thought of quiting frightens him as if he’d been asked to donate a limb to science. So if you have circled a date on your calendar to start smoking any time soon, allow me to warn you now: don’t do it. You will pass a year or two enjoying it immensely then you will spend the rest of your life wishing you could stop. Taking up smoking is like getting a tattoo or selling your independence. When the ink is dry on arm or paper, it becomes a binding contract you will be held to your entire life. You can wriggle and squirm. Doctors may cut holes in your throat to help you talk or new lungs may be transplanted into your chest so you can breathe again, but the craving will not release you. You will face death as a shriveled up piece of burnt bacon lying cold in a rusty pan. There, just for spite, you will ask for one for the road. But you can’t tell a smoker that. It just doesn’t cut through the smog. As I said, it’s not easy to give up smoking: not easy at all
I guess I smoked the cigarette that made me a smoker on the fringes of the French city of Lyon. A friend and I were hitching vaguely towards Avignon when we got side tracked into Lyon, the second largest city in France. We were camped by the roadside for several days waiting for a lift out of town. Each night we lit a campfire and sat around talking.
My friend was a tobacco smoker. Each evening, the rich aroma of his fresh tobacco wafted across the fire and up my nostrils. It smelled delicious even to a non smoker like myself. On the spur of the moment, I asked if I could have one. My friend tossed me the packet. I rolled a wrinkled cigarette, lit it up and I slowly inhaled. I puzzled over the sensation and as I exhaled, declared it highly pleasurable. It wasn’t like eating or drinking, yet I felt I had consumed something into my body in a very odd manner. I smoked the whole thing, trying to figure out the proper way to hold it between my fingers. “That was good”, I nodded as I tossed the soggy butt-end into the fire. With those words I set off down that Smokey road. My friend, who had watched me puff gingerly on the rollup, cleared his throat and said to me, “remember, I didn’t force you to take that cigarette. I didn’t talk you into it nor did I offer it to you. You asked of your own free will.” I accepted his disclaimer with an indifferent shrug but by the time we got out of Lyon I was graduating from one cigarette to 2 or 3 a day. Foolishly, I still considered myself a non smoker.
After a few months traveling and playing street music (busking), we were hanging out, up in the French Alps. My friend decided he wanted to go home back to Scotland. An acquaintance gave us some old vinyl records to sell at the station where we’d taken to busking since the tourists left town. We scraped enough money to buy one cheap bus fare home for my friend. Even though I was essentially homeless and broke and winter was truly warming up, I had decided to stay in France and test my luck. I had begun a journey and I knew inside that it did not lead straight back to dead end Scotland. In France I felt some semblance of purpose to my life. Every day held challenges and every evening that I was alive was a personal victory. My friend boarded the bus and took his tobacco with him. A year would pass before I’d see him again, but I knew I couldn’t wait that long for a cigarette. It was at that moment as I entered the tobacco store and bought a packet of drum, a set of roll up papers and a lighter, that I officially joined the smoking ranks. I was now undeniably a smoker. If someone came up to me and said, “do you smoke”, I now had no choice but to reply with a yes?
As I clawed my way through that hard winter, every cigarette was a small ray of sunshine. I felt like a refugee. My clothes fell to rags and I laced them together with shoelaces. The strings on my guitar were like barbed wire. My frozen fingers felt as big and numb as bananas as I stood in the windy subway tunnel every day at the station. The competition for the one spot to play was intense. The local bums and winos had taken to begging there. Other musicians were in line too, gypsy women goaded their babies to cry which, in that frigid climate; I suspect didn’t take much prodding. Hell, I could have cried myself. Busking in that tunnel was like singing inside a snow blower. Then there was the police who came along at irregular intervals and kicked everybody out. One day a small boy stood in front of me as I played. He looked shy and innocent enough till he lunged at my guitar case and crammed as much of my earnings as he could into his mouth. Then he ran off down the tunnel.
As summer finally rolled around, the snow line receded and my body began to defrost. I set about the important business of bumming around the continent with my guitar and living a life of ease. I hitched to Amsterdam, home of Drum Tobacco; I spent a few months in Salzburg, Mozart’s home town. I busked outside his front door and got moved along. I took a part time job at a hotel that showed the Sound of Music movie every day at two o clock. I was payed in omelets. When I got sick of omelets, I went north to Scandinavia and criss crossed Germany and Switzerland and France playing on the street at every hamlet of a town I drifted into.
In those early days, I enjoyed every cigarette. I puffed merrily away under the stars. I was young and healthy and living an active outdoor life. If I was hitching somewhere and had only a few coins, I much preferred to buy tobacco rather than a sandwich. A sandwich would be swiftly eaten whereas a pack of tobacco had no nutritional value, but it did offer more long term comfort as I stood all day by a roadside.
Soon enough though I had nicotine stained fingers and a morning frog in my throat, but it didn’t bother me much. It didn’t affect my guitar playing but it did take a toll on the vocals. By then I was having a cigarette with morning coffee, a cigarette before busking, one after busking, one with every evening beer, one before bed and if I could have smoked in my sleep, I’d have had a few then too.
Some years later I took up residence in Southern Germany, in the beautiful medieval town of Regensburg on the Danube River. Here, I entered into the gig scene where I played music at night in dark, Smokey bars. By this stage in my sooty career, I could roll a cigarette and have it lit in less than 10 seconds, [Faster than an Olympic athlete could run 100 meters.) Though I was smoking more than ever, I still felt healthy enough. I was in my mid twenties, when one day, some fellow smoking friends and I played a game of football (soccer) for old time’s sake. It was not one of our brighter ideas. We huffed and puffed and our poor hearts pumped. Our lungs choked and coughed to the point of suffocation. We endured about 10 minutes before collapsing, gasping like landed fish on the grass. This was not good. We realized we were no longer the football heroes of our youths. The smoking, I decided was beginning to make its mark. It was a little scary.
I decided to quit: and quit I did. So did my girlfriend whom I shared an apartment with.
Naturally we began to argue till one of us would storm off to buy cigarettes. On returning, the other would say, “well if you can smoke then so can I”. Thus peace was restored.
Not smoking in bars was the hardest. I noticed that without cigarettes in hand, I had begun to gulp my beer much faster. After a few pints I would begin to bum one or two cigarettes. I would bum from everyone at the table night after night until people grew annoyed with my begging and would say,” you haven’t given up smoking cigarettes, you’ve only given up buying cigarettes.” I’d slump off to the cigarette machine, defeated once more.
Our next ingenious idea to stop our nasty habit involved a tree beside the Danube. We would buy a pack of cigarettes and go for a long walk with the dog along the river. After we’d smoked one cigarette each we would attach the packet to a branch high in the chosen tree and walk home. If either of us wanted a cigarette then we had to do a two mile round trip to the tree for a puff. Needless to say that the dog got a lot of exercise during that experiment.
One day we arrived at our tree, desperate for our puff. There was a boyfriend and girlfriend right there sitting below our tree. Leaning against it: Having an intimate moment. We prowled around for a little while but they showed not a hint of leaving. I was forced to stomp right up to them and reaching over them I grabbed the lower branches of the tree. ”Excuse me”, I said boldly as if I worked for the parks department. “I’m just checking this tree and it can’t wait. Indeed it can’t.” They looked up at me as if I were mad but didn’t get up. I climbed clumsily over them and into the tree. When I came back down with two cigarettes in hand, I apologized for the inconvenience. “Just getting some cigarettes,” I mumbled. Then as a parting shot I added, “It’s a tobacco tree.”
Try as we might, the longest time we survived without a cigarette was a couple of months and even that had plenty of cheating moments. After years of smoking I was still puffing my way helplessly to the grave. The frog in the throat was turning into a large amphibian and my nose was permanently blocked and I was learning that there’s nothing like a good cough in the morning. I was winded just walking up a flight of stairs. Maybe it was time to get away from the bar scene for a while?
We decided Regensburg was becoming too routine. So we left Germany and wandered around Europe in our van with our dog and our tobacco. We picked grapes and I played street music till October came around and we found ourselves living for a time in France near Limoge, with my sister. She lived in a lonely old farm house far out in the countryside. Xmas was approaching and my girlfriend was going home to America for the holidays. She would be gone for 1 month. I was left with some groceries and some money which hopefully would last 4 weeks till her return. After she departed it became apparent that there was not enough money for both beer and cigarettes. Something had to be sacrificed. Beer or tobacco? I decided that now was as good a time as any to stop my evil smoking habit. I was stranded in the countryside with no girlfriend to argue with and no city pressures to send me running for the sanctuary of cigarette smoke in my lungs. How could I lose? If it came to a choice, I decided a lifetime supply of beer easily beats a lifetime supply of tabax.
On the morning of the 20th of December 1996 my tobacco pouch was empty. By midday I had raided the ashtray and then the trash can. Before it got dark I scoured the back yards for old discarded butts. I dried them out on the stove and attempted to smoke them. They were disgusting. Then I remembered the ash tray in the van. I found a few in there but by now every corner had been searched thrice over. There was not a crumb of tobacco for ten miles.
The next morning I kept busy chopping wood and helping with chores. I began to build a garden wall and I painted and sketched and cooked. Every time I stopped for a break my mind thought instantly on tobacco. Instead of smoking I reached for a beer. Once again I was drinking a beer for each potential cigarette. Luckily they were small beers. I was chain drinking as opposed to chain smoking. I asked myself, “What did I do in my breaks before I was a smoker?”
The strangest thing about this attempt to stop smoking was that it worked. I quit smoking. The only close call was on Xmas Eve in town, I was waiting for my sister, who was at the town community centre Christmas affair. She was delayed and I stood outside to wait. My first thought was that this would be a great time for a smoke but I had no tobacco... and I’d stopped. I paced back and forth: waiting and waiting. I realized I was standing outside a tobacco store. “Oh Jeez no”, I said out loud. I went back into the community centre searching for my sister. She was still busy. I went back out. The tobacco called to me. Luring me, like a mermaid lures a sailor to his death. I’d only been an ex smoker for a couple of days and I was still practically defenseless to its charms. I considered bumming a cigarette from someone to help me through this moment of weakness. But I knew if I did, I’d be back to square one and with a single toke I’d be a spineless smoker again. One and a half hours I stood outside the tobacco store, jingling restless coins in my pocket, more than once I turned to go in, almost clasping the door handle, watching others go in and come back out. Watching people unwrap their favorite brands like Christmas presents and light up. Me, staring at their cigarette butts crushed on the pavement. Just in time, my sister came out and we drove home cigaretteless. My lungs booed but my mind cheered.
The month passed. My girlfriend came back. She was still a smoker and she still craved that after dinner cigarette. She thoughtfully would sneak off to have it out of sight. Strangely, I didn’t crave it as much as I thought I would. I almost felt sorry for her, seeing her still enslaved. I never gave her a hard time about smoking as a lot of ex-smokers are prone to do. Often they become downright self-righteous and annoying, but I didn’t get that way. I’d had a month in the country with no peer pressures or strains of society. Back at the bar scene, there was always some temptation to smoke. My girlfriend finished her packet and quit.
That was ten years ago. I am mostly proud of how we stopped. All on our own: no nicotine patches or hypnotism. No acupuncture. We did it with our own will power, in our own way and time, and it worked. I put 15 years of smoking behind me. We’ve both still stopped. I feel so much healthier. I no longer wheeze my way up stairways. I play football (soccer) and walk for miles with my old dog. My lungs no longer gasp and rasp for air. My fingers have lost their nicotine tan. I no longer cough like an old diesel in the mornings. All in all I feel a lot better. Now I’m just working on that alcohol problem.
I think back to that distant day up in the French Alps when my friend went home and I bought my first tobacco. I became an official smoker that day. Wherever I went, I had tobacco with me. It became a part of me. Even between cigarettes, I was still a full time smoker: forever on call: waiting to be paged by the demand to light up. But now I ask myself, when will the day come when I can safely say I am a non smoker. Can I never trust myself? Can I never more savor the exquisite contentment of leaning back on a comfy chair with a fresh roll up after eating a greasy pizza and blowing a smoke ring towards the sky? Sadly for an ex- smoker there is no such thing as just one cigarette. I need only think back to Lyon to realize just how addictive one cigarette can be. For me, personally, there will always be the lingering fear that I will fall back into sin. Like a dormant volcano I could erupt again any time and start spouting fumes. I can live in the shadow of that eruption as long as I’ve got my beer. So pass that bottle over here and help me douse my flames.
Nowadays, cigarette packets carry warnings to inform us that smoking is bad for your health, but for Scott, the Non Smoker, of the Antarctic who died down there in that frozen wasteland, can we make an exception and say this one time that NOT smoking was bad for his health.

It feels like I've just about finished putting together a new CD. I'd been recording a lot of hap-hazard songs for a long time, but I couldn't quite find the thread that connected them. Some of it was very electric and rocky. Pat from the Rustix came over and played some drums but I always sensed that stuff was for a later project.

It was after I recorded the song, "Shannon", that I finally knew where this album's direction was going. In fact it was only then that I understood that I was actually working on a project at all. I'd given "Shannon", a very basic arrangement and it seemed to work. It was the first song in a long time that I'd felt excited about.
I decided to continue with this minimalistic approach and make a whole Cd using washtub bass and various other home made impliments. I had a 3 string stick banjo and the 42 dollar junk shop guitar, some shakers, a dented symbol on a broken high hat stand and a few other oddities lying around.
I realised I was doing a return trip to ,"Crawling Out the Woodwork", but it felt right. It felt a little bit Neilstonish too.
I don't think that this is a step backwards. If anything, this CD highlights a maturity over the years. Obviously I still have the same recording equipment which isn't fancy. Some of the songs are old but there are a few newer ones. It is a simple album. Humble, honest and a bit spontanious.
People often think about washtubs and envision some kind of hill billy Deliverence hoot-nanny music. But this isn't that kind of CD. It's spookier and a little dark.
Anyway, I thought I'd share that with whoever's out there.
As yet, it has no title or official cover.

Here in the USA, people really do drive a lot. I had been told about this phenomenon before I moved here, but I always thought it was an exaggeration. Now since I moved here, I see how true it is.
With oil prices going bananas, you'd think folks would ditch their cars. But no, it appears not. They just delve deeper into their pockets.

I was raving to myself the other day and wondering what would happen if people could buy car insurance on a one day at a time basis. If drivers were able to insure their cars for individual days instead of on a yearly or six month basis, would this encourage them to drive less?
Obviously many people need their cars every day, but some don't.
If people could insure their car once a week for 24 hours and do all their errands, perhaps they couldn't be tempted to drive again all week. Could this approach help cut down on nasty emissions, help save money, and force people to get a little more exercise too?
Of course people could maybe choose how many days of the year they wish to be insured for. It need not be one day. Drivers might buy cards with any number of insured days written on it. The dates could be left open for flexibility. Naturally, insurance companies would have to be reasonable with pricing.
Drivers might grow to realize that they can survive without their cars a lot more than they thought possible.
Even if this idea is rubbish, maybe it's on the right tracks. It discourages people from driving without hurting them. In this poluted day and age, all ideas should be considered.

Just raving.

Happy Earth Day.

No news is good news.

1. What is Neilston?

2. How many stations are there between Neilston and Glasgow?

3. Can you name them? (Not a yes or no question).

4. Where would you find The Silver Pool?

5. What song is considered to be the Neilston Anthem?

6. Where was the old Neilston library housed?

7. How much does a penny carmel cost?

8. How high is The Neilston Pad?

9. In which century was Neilston first mentioned?

10. What happens on the first Saturday in May?

11. Does the Levern Burn flow into the Killoch Burn or does the Killoch Burn flow into the Levern Burn?

12. What is the official name of "The Low Road"?

13. What is the name of Neilston Juniors' football ground?

14. How many pubs are there in Neilston? (Including pubs that were recently fire damaged).

15. What is the proper term for someone from Neilston? (Keep it clean).

16. Where is Russell's Brae?

17. Has a Lesser Spotted Wurkin Coonsilman ever been seen in Neilston?

18. When was the Crofthead Mill first established?

19. Netherkirkton. What was the building's previous function?

20. On what date does Christmas arrive in Neilston?

21. Which comes first; Christmas or New Year?

22. True or false. Merry Christmas.

23. Where are the answers?

Bad gigs are, of course far more interesting than good gigs. Good gigs are like package holidays. You go, you return and not much really happened.
But bad gigs are like stories on the road. They’re far more interesting and totally unpredictable. You'll talk about them for years though it wasn't funny at the time.
No one knows where or when they will strike or what catalyst will set them in motion.
Personally I've had some doozies. Maybe not bad but not good. Memorably forgettable. I won't bore you with them all, but here's an interesting one. Was it a bad gig? You tell me.

First we have to get there.

We are on a train parked on the East side of the German/Czech border. The Iron Curtain is still up. Soldiers in brown uniforms are walking along the tracks, searching under the train for anything illegal. Inside the train, the passengers are being frisked and questioned. The guards scrutinise travellers' wallets.
There are 2 well armed inspectors in our car. They scrutinize my brother’s papers and stamp them. Next they check out my American girlfriend's papers. They too are in order. Next it's my turn. They are not satisfied with my university credentials. I've told them I study art at Stirling University. That's not enough detail for them. They want the course and the university address. They seem very agitated and a little threatening: perhaps taken by a sudden desire to shoot someone foreign. I take my visa and fill in the appropriate info. They stamp it and leave.
My brother then informs me that Stirling University has no art department. I inform him that I gave a phony address anyway.
On we go into Czechoslovakia where due to cutbacks in the nation’s ink budget, many of the vowels have been removed from place names. We negotiate the town of Pilzn which sadly must rate as the filthiest town I ever entered. Clouds of reeking smog blew down the streets. Cars belched black oily fumes and the buildings were coated with the dark grey cancerous residue of factory chimneys. What were they building in there anyway? My lasting memory of Pilzn is an image of a converted cattle truck thundering down the main street with the words, "TAXI" handwritten across its windshield.

Surprisingly, just outside of town was a great campsite on a beautiful lake. We spend the night there and move on next morning to Prague. We stay there a few hours and hang out with some cheap beer (pevo) and some deep fried bread from a street vendor in a van.
A day and a half after leaving Regensburg we arrive in Brno. We have a gig scheduled for the following night at a festival in a tiny village nearby. The name escapes me at the moment. Did it start with an M?
We stay in Brno with Pavel, a friend of my brothers. His hospitality is wonderful. We are housed in the basement suite of his parents 3 story home, which overlooks the town of Brno. We are fed a banquet and eat like royalty. I am astonished as I had been prepared for normal everyday supermarket munchies.
Later we take our guitars and go off to a bar where we plan to play some music. Pavel leads the way. We enter. The bar is jammed. Not even room to get a guitar out. We exit. Pavel goes back in. Two minutes later he exits and we all troop back in. We meet the owner, a burly guy with a butcher’s apron. He beckons us to a large round table. The inhabitants look up. The owner points at them with a big sausage finger and says. (Excuse rough translation) "You lot. F#@K off." He points his thumb over his shoulder.” This table is reserved”.
The table thus vacated, we sit down. The locals gather round looking down at us, gnashing their teeth. Nervously, we get our guitars out. Schnapps glasses and 6 bottles of wine materialize on the table. The owner hovers.
I look at Joe. "This had better be good".
It's do or die time.
I take a deep breathe and we're launched into Knocking On Heavens Door.
There is a cheer. We live to sing another day. The natives are friendly.

Next morning is bright and warm. We take advantage of the "free" public transport and head off to a lake. It's fun fun fun. I’m working on my swimming strokes. Lately I’d been doing the Brick but I make progress at the lake on this day and graduate to the Flailing Log stroke.
Next stop is lunch in the village of the festival. Here we eat a local delicacy known as baldy Chicken.

This is wine country. People drink wine in half litre glasses. Or at least they do today. They drink a lot of it.

Me and Joe are scheduled to play in the mid afternoon. We all sit around in the village, relaxing and trying not to overdose on the white wine.
The festival is taking place in the village hall. It’s been organized by Pavel who had met Joe in Greece some time back. They’d stayed in touch and Pavel had asked Joe to play at his festival. Joe in turn asked me to play along and Hil had come along for the adventure.

The village is a tiny little place that seems build around an abandoned farm. Roofs sag, sidewalks are non existent. Traffic is rare and the place feels half asleep under the summer sun.
Due to some mix up in the schedule we are now due to play around 6pm. But 6pm comes and goes as do the pints of wine. Pavel tells us we’ll be on in an hour.
There is no beer to be had. In fact it appears that wine is the only liquid in town.
By 9pm, we still haven’t played. The wine and the sun have fried and shrunk our brains to the size, shape and mentality of prunes. We are all talked out. We go for a twilight saunter around the village. The only bar in town has just closed and we wish we’d known about it earlier. A beer would have been nice to wash down all that wine. Some food would have helped too.

Back outside the town hall we can hear the muffled screams and distortions of a punk heavy metal band. I go inside and watch them play. They appear to have come straight up from a coal pit. Their clothes are black with coal dust and some wear miner’s hats. Their faces are blackened like negative raccoons. They are very animated and somewhat theatrically disgruntled. National flags are being spat on, shat on and stomped on. Most notably the US flag.
At 1:30 am. We are told it’s time to play. We’d rolled into town about 14 hours previously. It’s been a long day.
Backstage I wrestle in the dark with my guitar case. Joe is somehow miraculously already on stage. I can hear him introducing himself. Then he says, “And here’s my brother James…” And that’s the last I recall for a while.

I awake atop a packing crate in a fetal position.
The show is over. Hil is urgently saying we need to get the train. "Jeez was the gig that bad"?
My winelogged mind is still lost in La La Land and I’m thinking through fog. “Train? Here? What train? Then I remember we have to catch the train home to Regensburg in the middle of the night.
I jump up and begin blathering like I’m in control of whatever situation this is. As if the train driver is a personal friend and he'll see us personally to our seats.
Then Hil says the words that were to be immortalized forever in busking lore,” SHUT THE F@#K UP”.
I fall immediately silent like I've just melted pathetically into chocolate slush. All around us the Czechs are laughing and parroting Hil. “shut ze f@@k oop. Shut ze f@@k oop”.
Next I remember me and Hil are on a train. Joe is still back at the festival, perhaps wisely contemplating a solo career. It’s the middle of the night. I have a horrible thirst and there’s nothing drinkable on board. It will be hours before we get to a watering hole. I walk the corridors like a ghost on a ghost train. I find an open can of what seems to be beer. It sits abandoned on the floor in the aisle. I circle it a few times then I swoop it up and drink it. I have no idea what it tastes like as my taste buds are still knocked out. But it wets my cracked throat.

For me, I guess the gig didn’t happen. It seemed to have gone well enough without me. I doubt I was missed. People weren’t clamoring for autographs or demanding their money back.
According to eye witness accounts, I had been right behind Joe but had failed to emerge on stage. Joe had forged ahead and played the gig.
Hil had tried in vain to raise me from the dead. She’d pleaded, shook and kicked me. The latter strategy I suspect was more in anger than to awaken me.
Finally she’d given up and settled on getting me awake in time for the train. Apparently, the moment she mentioned “Train”, I was on my feet and babbling insanely to the assembly.

Good trip I guess. Not such a good gig. But wasn’t that a party.
And the moral of the story?
None whatsoever.

There must be so much silent historical film footage of political rallys, sports events, factory strikes and warfare and the likes, scattered about the world.
I always imagine that it must be possible to zoom in on individuals in a long since dispersed crowd and lip read what they are actually saying or hear their personal opinions on whatever was at stake.
Surely there must have been one German at the Nurnberg rallys who thought that Hitler was a plonker.
This lip reading of history sounds like an invaluable untapped resource. Big problem was that everybody spoke in black and white back then (and fast too).
It could possibly be as useful as DNA in a murder, catching whispered confessions on the silent screen. Too late to proscecute but it could provide closure to the case.

What about all that old footage of immigrants arriving at New York Harbour. They must have had something interesting to say.
Could make for some interesting TV.

I just thought I'd mention that.

For the full time busker, winter is split cleanly and abruptly in two. Pre- Christmas and post-Christmas.
Pre-Christmas has a great sense of optimism and expectation which fuels a fair degree of enthusiasm.
Everything is geared towards Christmas Eve. Profits rise with every sunrise until suddenly it's all over. The Kristkindel markets pack up. The decorations are put back in their boxes whilst the Carolers are lined up and shot. New Year finds the last of the Christmas trees thrown out with the wrapping paper and the empties.
At this point, many buskers call it a season and depart for warmer climates or back to college or to their normal jobs. But this is where the full-time street musicians roll their sleeves up and brace themselves for the coming months of torture. The migrating busking flocks have flown south and only the year round residents are left to paw an existence from the frozen streets.
Trust me when I say, anyone busking in late December/January needs the money.
Once, when I was hitching throught the black Forest in the aftermath depression of Christmas, I got dropped off in Freiburg.
I saw a busker playing in a deserted underpass. He sang a song with the line, "looks like it's you and me again babe". He looked like the loneliest guy in the world singing the saddest song ever. I passed on by. He didn't nod hello as buskers often do. I guess he saw my little guitar in a garbage bag and estimated my affluency. I returned 2 minutes later and he was gone. Probably went off to kill himself. I took out my guitar and laid the garbage bag on the ground as a money collector. I made 5 deutch marks (one coin) then my bag blew away. I followed it out of the tunnel and we kept on going out of town.
Years later I think I met that busker in a bar. Still in Freiburg. I guess the busking hadn't been so bad or perhaps he'd just been busking up some extra cash for the January sales.

I guess January to April is the desperate time of year for those who work the streets. Though the students, entrepeneurs and summer buskers have gone, those who remain provide fierce competition. They are, as I mentioned, desperate.
"Faire la mange". This is a French catchall phrase for street performances that earn money. These include activities such as busking, juggling, panhandling, mugging, stabbing and breaking down crying.
Buskers in France don't seem to have heard of the unwritten law of busk for one hour then move on.
If you ask a French busker when he will be stopping, he will look at you in disbelief and blurt out, "Stop? Moi? Are xoo kwaizzy."
Napoleon didn't stop either and look what happened to him.
Me and Frank shared the Annecy subway tunnel. He played mornings and I played afternoons. But it wasn't always so simple.
Frank would turn up like clockwork each morning at 9:00 am. I was inevitably always just too late. So I began turning up a few minutes earlier too, and so sparked off the race for the pitch which culminated a few weeks later when Frank showed up at 6:30.
At that hour we were alone down there. No one really showed up till around 8:30. we'd drink coffee and talk. Melanie, (Frank's dog) would sit in the open guitar case to keep her feet off the cold stone. An open guitar case was a vital part of the terms of staking a pitch claim. A closed case meant you were just a guy standing there who happened to have a guitar case. Thus you were open to be ambushed by other buskers hiding round the corner. They'd peek round descreetly from the underground carpark, with their guitars primed and ready, then if your instrument wasn't unpacked, they'd leap out and start strumming with avengeance. it was kind of like being musically mugged.
A coo. Or a revolution. Bastille day with egality, fraternity, and a touch of every man for himself.

Meanwhile my fellow Miserables who shared the tunnel's precious resources, spent the day bouncing off the walls in delirium till by late afternoon, they were slouched cross-legged against the wall, touting bottles of red plonk and shamelessly begged the price of another.
By the time I was packing up, I'd have watched them slide imperceptively down the wall as if they were evaporating. From the lotus position they morphed slowly into the horizontal crucifiction position.
When I took a parting glance over my shoulder, the tunnel looked like it had been shot up in a war zone. Such a scene of carnage. Red wine drained out of the groaning corpses that littered the tunnel. Half open plastic bags of possessions wrapped in twine were clung to like life jackets. Openal knifes tumbled from back pockets and from trouser legs. A reek of soggy camembert cheeze and stale baguettes wafts down from La Buffet a la Gare. Papers and cans roll echoeing down the netherworld bottleneck crying out for pity from the cruel world above. Such poetry in a subway.
The last thing I hear as I step over a body is an exasperated little voice bleeding self pity unto itself. "Anything. Anything. Even a cigarette".

Spring weaves into summer and the full-time busker is rejuvinated like the natural things around him.
Behind him are the stark leafless days where winter treated him as a personal spitoon. Ahead lie days of lazy squander.

TO BE CONTINUED...

If any tune was up for the Buskers National Anthem award, surely it must be Whiskey in the Jar.
If you're experiencing a hard day busking at the office, and nothing is going right: grannies aren't biting, shop keepers are complaining, guitar case is empty. When all has failed, it's time for the busker's secret weapon. whiskey in the jar. You roll up your sleeves, take a deep breathe and 6 or 7 verses later you're in the pub having a beer.
Whiskey in the Jar is a fine song but having said that, I must say I don't really enjoy playing it much. It's one of those songs that have been played to death. The mere suggestion of playing it in busking circles illicites groans and threats.

I can picture a busker in confession and the priest is giving him penance. " Sing 3 Whiskey in the Jars and a Wild rover".
I can then see the sobbing busker groveling in the dirt. "No Father. Not that. anything but that. I'll join a monastery. I'll give up something. "

I wonder who actually wrote it? Did he know what he was starting?

The entire process of building rustic furniture is fun. Especially when you live out on the Pacific North West.
The journey begins with a leisurely walk on a lonely beach in search of interesting pieces of driftwood. If I find any suitable flotsum, I drag it home and leave it in a sheltered spot to dry out.
I am careful not to put it anywhere out of sight as if I do this, I inevitably forget about it and nothing ever gets built except a fire. That's just me though.
The next stage is some sort of sudden urge to build. It's usually sparked very spontaneously by an accidental glance at the angle of a branch in a corner or discovering that I have accumulated a bunch of similar shapes. Before I know it, I'm hammering and drilling and kicking up a dust storm.
Not many tools are necessary for Rustic building. A hammer, an electric drill, a saw and a bunch of nails. That's enough to keep you busy for hours.
There is a rhythm to building rustic furniture. Time just disappears. Saw, drill, nail. Saw drill nail.
The Beauty of it all is that the pieces evolve and each piece is unique. No one can ever say you're doing it wrong. Like art, it is never wrong.
The first piece I ever built was in 1996. I built it around November. It was a rickety little spidery table built from grape vines I'd collected whilst picking grapes in Volnay France. By December it was in the stove.
But I'd been bitten by the rustic bug. The virus lay dormant for a few years till I moved out to the pacific coast. All that virginal driftwood strewn on empty beaches called to me to nail it together. Soon my yard was overflowing with experimental wobbly chairs and tables. most ended up as firewood but I persevered and slowly I made progress. The pieces were becoming sturdier, less imbalanced, more shapely and weren't marched so directly to the fire wood pile. People stopped asking me why I nailed my firewood together before burning it.
I have no formal training with carpentry tools. When it comes to hammering, it was literally all hit or miss.
I keep my tool kit to a minimum. I don't even use a measuring tape. I measure everything by eye which can lead to hap hazard results. But for me, building rustic furniture is all about the process: being outdoors on a pleasant afternoon just bashing away and seeing what happens.
Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes I even sell a piece. As often as not, I just sit on an old chair on the cabin deck and listen to the birds in the twilight.

Went down to the mail box this afternoon to clear out the junk mail. But lo and behold, there was a little brown package waiting for me. My address was hand written and mailed from California. Hollywood California. My heart skipped a beat. I made a quick mental count of all the top actors I knew who might be trying to get in touch with me. None. Excitement over.
Well I opened the package in the kitchen and out hatched 5 compilation CDs from Songsalive. They're a musicians organisation. I'd applied to be on this CD months and months ago and had completely forgotten about it. Anyway, there was my name right there on the cover along with a whole bunch of other folks.
Most of the songs were very catchy and poppy. Some lyrics even rhymed. I couldn't figure how one of my songs ever got on board. I'm not very catchy at all.
Well anyway, it was a great honour to be selected. Maybe they were short on musicians.
Thank you Songsalive. "Arf arf". And you too, Rebel.

It was back around 1981, I first applied to Art School. There were two main reasons why I wasn't accepted. Firstly, was my lack of entry qualifications, and secondly was my lack of paintings in my portfolio. I just couldn't built up the quantity needed to pack a decent sized portfolio. A certain lack of artistic skill probably played a significant part too.
I lost interest in art for a few years after that chapter and concentrated on other art forms such as drinking heavily and perfecting my rubber man walk.

When I left home and went to explore the continent, I had no camera. What is an expedition without an official photographer? A failure? A work of fiction? What is a Scotsman's holiday to Majorca without the traditional sombrero postcard home. "Weather is here. Glad you're not". My European trip was destined to be forgotten because there were no witnesses. I was travelling with a friend and he had brought a little camera along. His high school art teacher had commented on his artistic ability: "Great imagination. Can't draw". He did take some great pictures though. One early evening In a tiny Belgian town called Coo, we stopped to rest on a park bench. Some kids were playing in a fountain. One of them ran home and returned with a bottle of dish cleaning detergent. He emptied it into the fountain and soon bubbles and foam were blowing all over the place. The kids were having a great time making santa beards and running through walls of bubbles. The whole village was one big happy frothy bath tub. Right in the middle of this hilarity, my friend photographed me, clad in my rags, sweaty and grimy from camping rough, and hitching. Looking very much the hobo and not showing particular interest in the soapy water that I so obviously needed. Sadly we'd never get to see that picture as the camera was stolen a few weeks later. (Police are awaiting developments). But fortunately for posterity, I did have a pencil and a little thin red notebook. There were a few useless addresses scribbled in it but it became my sketchpad. Soon I learned to appreciate that a bad scribble was as worthy as a bad photo. When the little book was full, I bought another and I filled that too. I seemed to have re- discovered my interest in drawing. Each new sketch pad was like a new spool. I was drawing just for fun. The scribble books soon mounted up till I was lugging several pads around. They were taking up space in my pack, in my pockets, and in my guitar case. It never occured to me to post them back to Neilston.

At this point winter kicked in and my friend, wisely, went home. I was fortunate to move into a youth hostel half way up the Semnoz Mountain in the Alps. Jeusette, the lady of the house, kindly allowed my to work to pay for some of my lodging fee. Thus my sketch pads and I spent a cozier than expected winter though the busking down in the valley was horrific.

Artistically, I've always been a doodler. It was a rare day when I completed any picture. This travelling and sketching suited me perfectly. Each town or face was an image that presented itself briefly then departed. My pictures became moments and I was content to capture those fleeting glimses on my moving background.
I never really improved much as an artist over the years. I never seem to have had that ability to see things through to a conclusion. Perhaps travelling around so much gave me an ideal excuse to never pursue a painting to its finale.
I still have many of those sketches. I had no idea that it would accidently grow into a huge portfolio of pictures painted with whatever materials were cheapest or nearest.
Maybe there's still hope for me getting into an art school one day.


(Yea right).

The Karst Caves in Slovania around 1996.

Trusting our lives to some anonymous Slovanian Casey Jones, we set off through an underground railway tunnel in search of the fabled Karst Caves of Slovania.

.......................

We wormed our way deep into the heart of the mountain, aboard what surely must have once been a little toy playground train. It was certainly a roller coaster ride. The tunnel was so low and narrow that if I'd stood up to pee out the side or toss a beer can at a passenger, I'd have scraped the bark off my head.

Nine twisty kilometres later, when finally we stepped out, the view was spectacular. Suddenly I realise why nature would keep such a treasure vaulted up and hidden away. I could have been standing inside a loaded treasure chest We were in what felt like an inverted cathedral. The ceiling was high and distant and rock formations were eerily lit in luminous greens and reds.
There were the usual stalagmites and stalagtites but also odder shapes like one that looked like a rough hewn camel. We walked around in awe, crossing rickety iron bridges over black canyons, climbing rock hewn staircases and talking in hushed tones. The tour guide, who tried in vain to discourage photographs, mentioned that orchestra concerts were occasionally held there.
After another trip on the Noddy train, we emerged back into the sunlight, we felt we had visited a truly hallowed place. It was a primeval experience: this place that had lain in darkness forever, oblivious to the passing of kings and wars that were fought above its head. And yet, what use is a work of art that is never to be seen. Can art exist without appreciation? Like the old adage, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, does it make a noise?" Or if a man speaks in the forest and his wife isn't there to hear him: is he still wrong?
I bet there are a load of artistic spelunkers out there in the world. But despair not, fellow doodlers: no artist anywhere can challenge the ingenuity of Mother Nature's paintbrush.

Anyway we got back to the car and someone had crashed into it. We ended up staying a good while longer in Slovania than we'd intended but we actually had a great time. Thus the accident was a blessing in disguise.

If I get back to this later, I'll tell you about a Mr Erasmus who lived in Prejama Castle.
Now there's a death.

What do you personally gain by the development of Chuckanut Ridge?

For the uninitiated, The Chuckanut Ridge Development saga has been going on for years. It is an approximate 85 acre parcel of second growth forest on the South side of Bellingham. Neighbours and environmentalists want to save it. Developers plan to build a new housing project on it.

So...What do you personally gain if the development goes ahead?
Well, if you are homeless and have a quarter million dollars you could just possibly afford to live in one of the new houses. But if you are homeless you may already be camping in there anyway.
If you are a real estate agent or developer then you may stand to make a fortune in cash. With these profits you could then move in to a trophy home on some as yet undeveloped land and campain to protect it. The local newspaper (which I note hasn't made much comment on the matter)stands to gain about 700 new readers while the local supermarket owners are no doubt rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of all those hungry newcomers moving in to town.
I imagine that few of us fall into the above categories.
Bellingham has a population of over 60,000. Surely they can't all be developers?
I wonder about developers attitudes sometimes. Surely they too must see all the red roadside signs stating, "NO Chuckanut Ridge Development". When so many people are so passionately against their plans, they clearly must feel that they can live with their actions for the rest of their lifes.
During the building period, there will be construction jobs available, but they will be short term. Most people will gain nothing good from this project. Many probably will never realise what they even lost.
The harsh reality of fighting to save a piece of land from development is that environmentalists need to win the issue every single year it crops up, but developers only have to win once.
It's a sad truth that most landscapes have to be extraordinarily spectacular and economically useless before they are deemed fit to be saved.
The Chuckanut Ridge forest isn't a stunning example of natures best work but it is a wonderful peaceful place offering tranquility for free right on the town's doorstep. Many summer evenings I've meandered among the great tall cedars and Douglas firs: lost in a Daydream and listening idly to birds gossiping with their neighbours. I rarely met another soul in there and this makes it so much easier to relax. No people: no problem. Within the sanctuary of the woods, it can feel like the rules and regulations that bind us to abide by the laws of our town are temporarily left at the gateway. Not that I want to break any rules but it is amazing, the subconscious weight of that ever accumulating stack of rules we heft around with us.
Just like all the other animals, humans need freedom of thought. Complete freedom. We may think we have it, but we don't. If an eagle stood on Blanchard Mountain and decided to fly to Canada. He would just take off and go. Maybe he'd stop off at a few islands in the San Juans, eat some fish, sleep on Vancouver Island and maybe hang out in a tree with some old buddies. But if I could fly like an eagle, I would wonder if it was legal, I'd worry about getting through customs, about tresspassing, was I flying over the speed limit, and whether or not I needed a fishing licence. So you see, our heads are so cluttered by rules, it's a wonder we ever leave our houses.
What do we gain by keeping the Chuckanut ridge as it is? We may not gain but we do not lose. We keep a place that is as spiritualy valuable as a cathedral. We get to have a wildlife experience without going to a zoo. We gain a mental victory in that we stood up and saved a corner of the world: a woodland that had already given its lot when it was harvested all those years back. How can we be so ruthless to then ask the forest to give its life again?
And for what? It's not like the majority of people moving to Whatcom county are political refugees or famine victims; no they are mostly ordinary Americans looking for a change. If there's no house available, they'll shrug and move on. No big loss.
What does Bellingham gain by knocking down its trees? Bellingham gets a new housing scheme, some temporary jobs, and an influx of strangers, asking where they can go for a walk.
By leaving the trees standing, Bellingham gains an unofficial park that is a natural buffer between the town sprawl and the Chuckanut Mountains. Bellingham can learn there are other kinds of growth that don't include concrete.
Bellingham learns that a town does not need to continue to expand outward in order to be judged a success. When a town learns to maintain and manage its present day structure perhaps then it can think about stretching its boundarys. Finish building the town first before moving on to future plans. I look around Bellingham and I see businesses opening and closing so quickly it causes a draught. Obviously Bellingham needs a fundamental rethink. Sprawling and widening roads and chopping up the forests is not the answer. Why not direct the funds slated for more housing on the edges of town and channel it into recycling the old town centre to generate some life and spark into its old stone bones. When Bellingham has graduated as a successful small town then it may chose to stay that way or move up a weight.
I arrived in Bellingham between Christmas and new year 1998. My first impression was that it was depressing. The Boundary Bay building was a big grey ugly box. Georgia pacific hogging the waterfront didn't add to the ominous atmosphere. Frankly, I thought that the best bet for this town center was to knock it down and start again. Put it out of its misery.
I began to learn about the town's economic history and how the malls had sucked the downtown dry of retail and shoppers. I also heard optimistic talk that there were new investors desperate to pump some money back into Bellingham's town center.
Ten years on from then, there have been slight changes but nothing that would really catch your attention. The garbage cans got new covers. The car park outside the Boundary Bay got a roof. Georgia Pacific has shut down but the factory continues to dominate the shoreline. There isn't much public shore line around Whatcom County. Which is sad. It's mostly privately owned except a few tiny scattered beaches.
Simple things can enhance a town's street atmosphere: like a pedestrian zone with stone archways to keep the rain off as shoppers enjoy a coffee at a terrace: a park at Georgia pacific. Encourage music and art and other colourful street- worthy activities. Rickshaw taxis, horse drawn carriages for tourists. Boat taxis to the islands. Beer gardens. More street festivals. Cafes in parks and tall shady trees in supermarket carparks.
Of course I'm just throwing little ideas about, but that's where big ideas get started. Bellingham needs an attainable goal: something to look forward to achieving. Knocking down the trees on Chuckanut Ridge is sadly a collossal step in the wrong direction.
What would David Brower have done?
There are many fine natural wonders in Whatcom County but the sad honest irony is that Bellingham on the whole is just about the ugliest thing in the County: and it's the one thing that is expanding. Sure it has nice neighbourhoods and parks but the sprawl and the runaway malls, the spectacularly unimaginitive square box downtown architecture, and the ever widening roads manage to cancel out a lot of bellingham's character.
A man once said,"drink more bottled water". He was a bottled water salesman. In Bellingham, some people say that growth is ineviteable. I can guess what business they are in: development business. Sprawlers.
Folks listen most to he who talks loudest. P.T. Barnum of circus fame once said, "all publicity is good publicity: even bad publicity". Sprawlers talk a lot and they talk loud. They don't exactly tell lies: they exagerate. They talk of family values and safe neighbourhoods and job creation and tax breaks and better schools etc: all available if the public will just allow them to do what they want.
Environmentalists have a tougher sell. It's hard to appreciate the value of just leaving the land untouched and sitting apparantly useless. It's hard to get sold on something that a lot of people only have a vague grasp of. The gain is not in monetary terms or anything quite as family orientated as the developers speaches.
A house can be knocked down and rebuilt in a few weeks but a tree takes decades to regrow. So if you knock down an eighty year old tree, you better be sure that you have made the right decision because you won't see it back in your lifetime.
So what will you gain?

The reality is that the developers own the Chuckanut Ridge property.
Personally if it was mine, I'd like the privelage of being able to use my land as I see fit.
I have a tiny piece of property. My garden. The trouble I had just trying to get permission to have a shed was astounding. Yet it seems that the larger the project and impact and destruction, then the easier it is to gain a building permit.

Huck the dog is getting old. Thirteen and a bit. It's hard to believe that I got him when I was in my twenties. He was 7 months old. My girlfriend and I were living in Regensburg in Germany. Huck was born in nearby Bad Abbach to a Great Dane and a collie, Bernese mountain Dog mix (I think). We liked to think he was a Catahoola Leopard Dog. There really is such a breed.
He's got that Great Dane brindled marking. He looks tall until you see him beside a dog of Alsation proportions. I think he inherited many Great Dane characteristics. He seldom barks. He is great with kids. He is great with other dogs and he is intelligent and a bit of an independant thinker. I don't know if all those characteristics are Great Danish but they are good qualities. "Huck der Forsichtlich", said a Bavarian. "Huck the Careful".
For sure though, he is a handsome dog. People were forever stopping me on the street to ask about him. Kids always wanted to pet him. It was uncanny. On witnessing Huck, unphased, being mobbed by an adoring school trip of pawing kids, my mother said, "What manner of beast is that?"
Huk's done a fair bit of travelling in his time. He was with us up in Sweden, at the Norwegian border where we got turned back for lack of international dog related paperwork. He was down in Austria peeing in the royal gardens. He had a petite amie little girlfriend in France. He ran around the dunes in Denmark where the Baltic and the North sea merge. He went to a festival in Hungary, had a car accident in Slovania while we were down in the Karst Caves and he fell in a huge vat of manure up to his neck in the Italian Alps near Lago de Ledro.
We spent a night stalking rabbits in frankfurt airport, then we flew to the states where he has been across country a few times and up and down to Canada. That's a lot of miles for a dog.
The last adventure we had together before coming to the States, was a trip down the Danube. I was on an old clunker bicycle and he loped along beside me. We were on the route for 6 weeks but only covered 136kms. We did all the travel in the first week then camped on a little island near Donauworth and just settled down to wait for the winter weather to get better. We got too comfy and cycled no more. Eventually I tossed the bike in the bushes and we went off to America. I wonder if the bike is still there.
So now Huck takes it easy. He has all those little niggling aches and pains that dogs accumulate over time. His back legs get up a minute after his front legs, and he's stone deaf. He's on medications too just like the American human population.
But I think he is happy. His eyes appear a little cloudy but sometimes I still see that cheeky look on his face.
A few days ago we went hiking in the Cascade Mountains. We hiked a trail to Cut Throat lake. A 4 mile round trip. Huck took it easy and plodded along. He was dead beat at the end. Dog tired. But he made it. Life is about the simple things now. Good food, a warm safe place and trusted friends.
I envy Huck, his ignorance of growing old and dying. for him it's uncomplex. No worry, no doctors, no one to inform him constantly of his waning strength or to discuss medical operations in gory detail. It's all about the present moment. No estate or wills to sort out. No debt to pay or pass on. Nope. Today is the best day of your life.
Right now, we are off for a walk in the woods.

I need a new backpack but can't afford one. I wonder if it would be cheaper to hire a little guy and carry him on my back while he carried my stuff for me. It might work but who'd carry his stuff while he was carrying mine? Even a backpack's got to eat.
That's just nonsense.
News? Not much. Mr Bush is still out there buzzing about like a bum note in a guitar solo. The political world and the media are talking casually of impeachment like it's one of those garden chores they'll get round to eventually. Like weeding. American politics could do with a bit of weeding.
The trouble with bad notes is that no matter how awful they are, the listener will eventually tune them out till they are an integral part of the song. And that is the danger of bad politics in a good system.
Then there's urban sprawl. People, new to an area, have trouble visualising that their fresh out the packet condominium was in fact a tract of forest in a secluded valley several miles from town not 6 month previously. They see it only as they have always seen it. An urban reality with no trace of history attached. The builders, like the pharohs, have disappeared and left no paper trail.
There is something ghostly about the emergence of a new housing development: the way it grows imperceptively each day while you're not looking. it's like watching the hands of a clock. They refuse to move then you blink and suddenly the kettle has boiled and cooled to room temperature as if that new cluster had always there. How else could it have looked?
I am of course talking about Bellingham. The little town that seems to be on steroids. Solid muscle bursting from its tiny frame with nowhere to stretch except along the shores and up into the mountains. All the mall stuff in the North of town must once have been farm land and forest. Farmland isn't perfect but it's far better than sprawl. In the south of town they are building right outside my front door. Next door to the right, they are about to erect 3 houses. Just beyond the highway on the padden Lake Hill, they have mapped it out for housing.
Down the street towards Fairhaven there is a tract of approx 80 acres of forest that is slated to be replaced by a housing development. I've walked in there with my dog almost everyday for a long time. It's a very peaceful place. Second growth forest. there's a little herd of deer, and woodpeckers and squirrels and a big owl who attacks us every year around September.

When my son was less than a few days old, we brought him to the woods. He slept quetly as I carried him in a sling while my dog wandered around. Maybe I'm just an old hippie but I know that this is a special place. What's special about a housing development? I haven't recently become aware of a sudden surge of homelessness sweeping through Bellingham. So who are these houses for? Are people crying out in dispair for roofs over their heads? Even if they were, since when did developers worry about the homeless? Well I'm just glad my dog is growing old because soon there's going to be nowhere to walk him.
I guess I won't need that backpack.

I often think that there must be a different PA system for every musician. I've never seen two musicians turn up at an event with identical set ups. Last time I showed up to play the market, there was a band with a PA system shaped like a lampost.
Nowadays, I have a little crate system that is easy to wheel about and assemble.
Last year, though, when we were playing as the Rustix, we had a set up loosely pieced together from various junk stores.
The bass amp was a little wooden box affair, more carpenter than engineer. The other amps were an odd collection of obscure brands and knob sizes. Special effects included, buzz, drone, and crackle. Kind of like electronic breakfast cereal. Good for the cholestoral but bad for the ears.
Playing at the Fairhaven Wednesday Market is fun though. It's a very relaxed affair. Vendors set up in a rectangle around the village green whilst hoolahoopers and sunbathers mill around soaking up the pleasant ambiance. It kind of reminds me of a compact little festival. generally there are 2 bands who play. Music starts at 3 and winds down around 7. The vendors are very apreciative of the music and it doesn't take long to get to know everyone. It's a very family friendly day out.
Even dogs are allowed.

One of the worst bar PA systems I used must have been in Ingolstadt town in Bavaria. This thing must have fell off the back of a lorry.... and gotten smashed up and duct taped back together again. Guaranteed distortion. I could sing like a Dalek. It was an embarrassment to plug into. Luckily the crowd drowned me out.

Then there was the system in the Furth Irish pub. this place had a tiny stage about the size of a doorstep. The PA system was just a huge amp on a shelf at my back. I was litterally standing against it. So, for my ears it was loud even when turned down low, but for the crowd to hear me, I had to turn it up loud. The result was brutal.
The crowd retreated to the back of the room. They're lips moved as they cried for mercy but I could not hear them. I walked around in a deafened state of confusion for a week.

I am currently working on a big mural for my wee son's bedroom. It depicts the story of the Artist formerly known as Jack and the Beanstalk but now known as Jack and the Big Tree. It's a lot of fun.
Started work recording the trad. song, The Farmer's Boy. Got 4 tracks down then the mic packed in.
And now the sport and weather.
In 7 aside fitba' it ended a 10 each draw after 2 hours play.
Muggy weather. Weather to get mugged in. Hopefully it won't get too robbery.
And that's the news.