THE DEEP POOL - DECEMBER 2004

It's almost certain that i'll have used this expression before because it's one of my favourites: change accelerates towards the end of a cycle (answer that and stay fashionable!), and i use it now to sound like a London taxi driver - it's nearly christmas - where has the year gone?

Here comes the winter solstice - the time of lowest light when we should all be sleeping most of the time, full of smoky bacon crisps and Lazer - a cheap but strong cider that gives you no buzz - you just feel confused, tearful, reach for the smoky bacon crisps, then fall into a coma, only to awake at nine in the evening feeling very terrible and unable to sleep until six in the morning as the morning television news dribbles into your despairing mind - ' and news just in, it transpires that David 'Arsehole' Blunkett has fucked up the lives of loads more women than was previously thought, although he says - and we quote - 'it was all a bit of a laugh at the time until it turned out that i'm actually a sociopath with Home Secretary tendencies and it serves the bitches right for thinking they could stop shagging me when i wasn't ready to stop shagging them and expect to get away with it without an identity card'. I hope his dog shits on him.

Going back to Lazer, my friend and recording confidante David Wrench once told me about the time he had a bad Lazer habit which he broke after waking up from a cheap cider coma, and, trying to focus on the empty plastic bottle, read the word as 'Loser'. These days i feel sure that if it was called Loser it would be a big hit, with a certain cool cachet among, well, fucked up people who still liked to think of themselves as cool. But why should i concern myself with the sales of Lazer? - i'm sure its doing just fine and will sell really well over the festive season: in fact this is where identity cards probably start to come into play - you could be lying in a frozen heap outside the closed seaman's mission in Southmpton with your near-empty bottle of Lazer, and when you thought to yourself, as i do every morning, 'who am i really, really?', a reassuring tap on the 'plastic in your pocket' as these cards will come to be known, will remind you that your DNA has been enshrined and encrypted forever by a blind lunatic who has the 'support' of Tony Blair.

Apologies to my overseas readers - i'm just inappropriately disgorging a deeply held contempt for a 'New Labour' politician - i'm over it now - for time being.

Robert Fisher, celebrated leader of Willard Grant Conspiracy came to sing at Bryn Derwen Studio in Snowdonia, Wales, and brought with him a fellow Fifer called Malcolm Lindsay. Robert sang a song of mine which is an acid shanty due to appear on my next studio album which will be largely recorded in Beirut. I was explaining the subject matter of another of these acid shanties which will be on the record - about a man's love for his captain who has died - the captain, not the love, to Malcolm and Robert.

His death was caused by a woman becoming lost in his groin, like a sliver of metal, which, if trapped in your body, will inexorably make its way to your heart, then kill you when it tries to pass though the heart. So the woman gets trapped in his body in the groin area, like maybe a snapped needle when fixing heroin or cocaine or speed, and slowly starts its journey - you know it's going to kill you, and every agonizing twist and turn brings a particular body memory savagely back into focus as the deadly progress mirrors the fatal events of a doomed love. Early in the song there is an image of the weeping sailors carrying the captain's body from a bar where he was singing as the metal/woman finally struck home.

Also in the song, people the captain has known stop what they are doing miles inland from the scene of the captain's impending demise to make a journey towards the bar where his end will come - they don't know why they are going there, but their own song will be imcomplete unless they attempt to be with him in his hour of death. They won't make it to the bar, but the attempt will have been everything, and, suddenly free of the spell when he dies, they'll go Christmas shopping instead, to buy a bottle of cheap supermarket port - a port in every groin - smiling to themselves as they pass the display of Lazer which they used to drink when they were younger - ahh!, the good old days!

Anyways, as i was explaining all this with a certain relish in the control room, Malcom slowly shook his head with what i fancied to be a certain apalled respect - this cheered me up enormously. Later he played me some music of his own that he had been working on - an incredible Russian string quartet playing music of his own, preceeded by a poem by Fife poet Ronnie Kerr, spoken in Russian in Fife by a woman, and in English in Russia, by a man. It was deeply moving stuff. As the strings ended, Robert and I looked at each other and shook our heads. People play you stuff all the time and you brace yourself for being polite when you were actually bored and wished you could have been in the lavatory with a three day old local newspaper. But this was different - i'm listening to it now as i report to you - great passionate playing that makes you scrunch up then relax over and over...

Earlier in the day Robert played about seven new songs in the studio for Malcolm to listen to. I was asleep during this - sleep is my big thing at the moment - i plan my days to sleep, but i don't dare sleep on trains because i know i snore on them and its too embarrassing, waking up with a violent snort, to see everybody looking at you with serious distaste, or, if you're in the Birmingham area, laughing their heads off. When i woke i went back to the studio, Robert had left and David Wrench was doing a quick mix of the songs. They sounded fantastic - it turned out he'd played them one after the other in straight takes. It could have been a finished record, such was the quality of performance.

A few days earlier Michael Weston King and I had played a show in the town of Beaumaris on the shore of the Menai Strait in North Wales. The next morning i walked on the seafront and there was snow on the hills of Snowdonia. It was cold grey and beautiful. I felt alone in the world, but it was a good alone, with a strong sense of belonging to the world. I was wearing my tweed jacket and a black scarf, and practised saying 'good morning' to elderly people passing by as if i was a minor celebrity hoping to be recognised although pretending to be there 'incognito'. (If you see what i mean - i can't be bothered to express this any better). it went really well, with folk being taken aback by the unecessary amount of charm i put into a simple 'good morning' - i could feel them thinking 'do we know him from somewhere - ooh, maybe he's on the telly'. Eventually i became mildly depressed by this, and went to a charming olde worlde pub and ordered a gin and tonic with a flourish of my Saturday Financial Times. Once a month it has a section called 'How To Spend It' edited by Lucia Van Der Post, which is full of good ideas for seriously rich people on how to spend their money. I sat a rickety table, sipping my G and T ('Bombay Saphire please') and studying pictures of crocodile skin handbags as if thinking of getting one for a lover. Everyone either ignored me or hated me or both. Then i got the train to Preston.

I daresay there are more important things that i should be imparting, but i just can't think what they are. My new album songs are sounding really good - i just finished looking after a lurcher called Johnny for two days. The first night the poor dog, which is obviously used to sleeping in the bedroom with someone, howled all night in the kitchen and banged on the door - or rather he did this until i went down stairs with a rolled up copy of 'How To Spend' it and smashed him over the head, saying ' shurrup or you're fuckin dead'.

He bared his teeth for a moment so i gave him another swipe but he hurtled under the kitchen table and i only caught his arse.

In the morning he was extremely wary, but i gave him a piece of cold roast pheasant and took him up the fields to run around. I don't think he's been getting much exercise - he went over the grass like a hovercraft that's been drinking Red Bull. As we approached the farm close to the Farmer's Home pub, i suddenly remembered that there was a gyspy smallholding there where the man let his hens run free. Johnny had already chased Mr Big, our fearless rescue cat up the old apple tree, so i knew he'd go straight for the bloody hens. If he had the hens it would mean the whole sizeable local gypsy community turning against me and prodding me in the chest in the Co-op when i went to buy the FT on Saturday, saying 'ere, what about Stacey's 'ens then eh?'

Johnny was closing in on the hen site - i'd never catch him and i could see that the gate was open so Stacey could feed his horses. My blood was running cold - would Johnny, who didn't know me and was still pissed of about being brained by 'How To Spend It' come to heel or just do his eternal lurcher thing.

'Johneeee' i sang loudly but not scarily. He continued outward bound at three hundred miles per hour. 'Johneeee - here boy!'

To my amazement he stopped and turned back to me, possibly hoping for another piece of cold pheasant. Cold sweat was running down my legs as i clasped the lead to his collar and gave him an affectionate head fondle - 'GOOD boy!'

As i passed Stacey he was singing to his black horse with the grey tail - 'then you'll realise - EVERLASTING LOVE'.

Hope i see you on the road before Christmas - Sir Vincent Lone is supporting me and playing real good - i'm going to the pub for a last drink with Roger. All we ever talk about is the mystery of 'Americans'.

jl