THE DEEP POOL - JANUARY 2003

Walking alone down a frosted lane in Dorset last week, between Nettlecombe and Powerstock, the seven-foot high hedgerows had been newly cut back by a tractor and machine (the tractor was still purring about four fields in front of me) and there was a smell in the air that i'd never really thought about before - the smell of winter green. Holly, ivy, hawthorn and bramble had been shorn, and a scent of crushed evergreen leaves filled the rutted road.

It was a wonderful, heady, somehow secret perfume to move through alone, and I was almost sorry when The Three Horseshoes pub came into view opposite the small church in Powerstock. But only almost sorry, because I'm currently nursing three cracked ribs and a badly swollen hand after losing an argument with a grey horse called Hugo on Christmas Eve. It hurts, and in the lanes I kept skidding in the frost, not falling over, but having to keep my balance so dramatically that the pain started all over again...so at the pub, with its beautiful view down the Brit valley, I drank a whisky mac and a pint of the strong local beer from Bridport, the name of which has gone out of my mind right now...

...So the holiday is over, and already a fearful amount of live work is in my show-book - only 4 shows in January, and two promotional trips - one to Hamburg and Berlin, and one to Milano. I genuinely like my business partners in Italy and Germany, so it will be a pleasure to see them again, talk about the new record, do some interviews, play some radio shows, and have LUNCH! - remember lunch? I shall fly home late from Berlin and Milano - then there is a long journey home by train - opening the front door, the animals waking up to say hello, the village asleep in the icy winter wind, a big pile of frozen sick outside the pub - it's great to be alive...

I'm very frustrated - here in the UK we have a TV programme called Coronation Street which is a soap set in city of Manchester. There is a bad person in the soap called Richard who is going to kill a nice old lady called Emily, and I watch every episode, wherever i am, because I so want to see this murder, but the bastard has failed to kill Emily now for 3 weeks - I can't take much more - if he kills her when I'm in Berlin, I shall be really really pissed off - I may have to phone home, so that I can hear the screams down the line - what if she doesn't scream? - aw, fuckin hell... I have to get away from this keyboard - much as I love you, it's killing my sore hand - be back in Feb - time flies when you're having fun - or getting older - as they say, change accelerates towards the end of a cycle........

BOOKS BY MY BED: The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought Seeing Things - Seamus Heaney The Inferno - Ciaran Carson SHOW

PREVIEW JAN 22 - Wellwod Arms, Amble, Northumberland, 01665 710 284 - never been here before, but Amble is next to a long beach on the North Sea which goes up to another lovely small sea town called Alnwick. This is my mother's original part of the world, and I'm looking forward to a long beach walk the following day, thinking of my dear mum walking here as a child...

JAN 23 - Bein Inn, Glen Farg, Perthshire, Scotland, 01577 830 216 - some of you may remember this show from 2 years ago - a small hotel on a dramatic mountainous bend of the road in Glen Farg - close to Loch Leven and my old Fife home - accomodation is simple but good here, so is the food, and David who runs the place has a collection of rock/pop memorabillia which comes a surprise in the middle of nowhere. A real sentimental journey for me, and some of my oldest friends, fierce but warm Fifers, will be sitting round the log fire afterwards exchanging weird tales of old Fife in the fifties and sixties...

JAN 25 - The Tron Theatre/Celtic Connections, Glasgow, Scotland - 0141 353 8000 - after a day off in Glasgow - drinking at The Vale, The Riggs, The Horseshoe (that should do it), I'm at the Tron with Eleanor MacEvoy. The Tron is a lively rebuilt theatre with a great bar and good food - Eleanor is a superb performer, and you get that special affectionate Glasgow heckling which means you've goat tae be guid - a wull be pal...........

JAN 29 - Faversham Folk Club, The Chimney Boy(?), Faversham, Kent, England - 07980 203 992 - i was real glad when Mary booked me for this show because Faversham is an ancient, unusual town with more than its fair share of remarkable old buildings, and an ancient brewery - Shepherd Neame, currently running a controversial advertising campaign for its beer Spitfire - 'No fokker comes close' - 'Goering, Goering, gone' being two examples of the wording on their beer mats. It IS a good beer, but really...I had hoped to spend a day wandering round the town the next day, but I must somehow get to Heathrow for 5 a.m. the next morning to catch a flight to Milano and LUNCH!


jl