THE DEEP POOL - MAY 2004

A beautiful April, some of it spent in the altogether admirable company of Willard Grant Conspiracy, one of the finest bands, and bunch of individuals i have ever travelled with - the weather was stunning every day on this tour, i never got that oppressive 'stuck on the tour bus with a bunch of bastards i don't know and don't want to know' feeling, i saw lots of old friends and made lots of new ones too, from Swansea to Edinburgh - aahh!!

In between times on this tour, Michael Weston King and i did a tour of north Staffordshire and this was great fun too - we ended up at the Biddulph Working Men's Club, Biddulph, after a beautiful, though accidental, journey through secret hidden vales to the north of Stoke-On-Trent. Staffordshire looks like crap from the Virgin Cross-Country train, so it was a delight to discover its whys and wherefores (as e e cummings might have said) whilst having a laugh about overrated singers with Michael - and no, we were not laughing at ourselves...

(Note to train anoraks - the Virgin Cross-Country service has become dramatically better, mainly because it no longer stops at Banbury and Leamington Spa - a brilliant solution to a time-keeping crisis, just don't stop as often! Now it's often early into stations, and so has to linger and languish just outside - just as annoying in its own way as being late - as one fellow passenger (that's right PASSENGER, not customer) observed - 'with the time we now have to wait because we're ahead of schedule, you'd think the train could stop at - ooh, i don't know - Banbury and Leamington Spa'). Thank you for allowing me to 'let off steam' on this important topic in my life - you see i'm still recovering - the other day i was going to alight the train at Oxford and go to a groovy young Chinese cafe i know for lunch, but when the time came i couldn't be bothered and so stayed on the train, where i bought a BLT instead: even though this sandwich was disgusting, i just kept on eatin' - all wet, slimy, lurid, tasteless, bland, chemically and smelly - i nearly then got off the train at Winchester to get rid of the taste with a pint of Space Donkey cider at the Albion, but i couldn't be bothered, so went home where Mr Big, our BIG tomcat presented me with a headless mouse.

NOTE to UK readers - this British Forces Torture Crisis in Iraq - surely the solution is simple -send in Tamsin Outhwaite...

A 'few bad apples' in the UK and American armies in Iraq? Yeah, and my mother's got rabies. As Hunter Thompson observed - 'in a society where everybody's guilty, the only sin is getting caught'. Squaddies from every conflict have gruesome photos to show - it appears to be part of the deal in modern armies - 'gruesome photo opportunity coming up in a few minutes chaps' - 'thanks sarge'.

Anyway, Willard Grant Conspiracy - what a band - if you don't know their music, buy their latest studio album 'Regard The End', a brilliant brilliant record. Live, a lot of their songs are dead slow, deeply moving, haunting and uplifting - they can really play, and Robert Fisher is a top of the line bass-baritone singer with serious charisma. For my next studio album i've been writing some acid shanties - My Seafaring Days Are Over, and The Law Of Tide - i've asked Robert to sing the lead vocal on the latter, while i flutter around with backing vocals - Mr Fisher, he say yes.

I'm also listening to a record by James MacMurty, called 'Where'd You Hide The Body' - it's a lovely record - somebody sent it to me - who was that? Thanks! There's an excellent song on it about being a single father, called Rachel's Song. It's got me to thinking about curating an album of single parent songs - any ideas for this out there, songs you think would be good? There are of course, my own Single Father, and Heartsick Land - all ideas gratefully received.

A very old friend called Peter Forster has sent me a fig tree - it came in the post with an instruction to plant it in the drum of an old washing machine. My washing machine is old but still works - i put the fig tree in and it went round and round, but i can't help feeling i'm doing something wrong - maybe a higher temperature and some Vanish would help....but greater love hath no man than he send you a fig tree in the post - also thanks to Liam Carson for a great novel about fucked-up London in the time of Thatcher.

Sometimes i wonder about the veracity of my business life. I was in a weird backstreet pub in Crewe the other day having a drink when a bloke told me i was playing the New Roscoe in Leeds on the same day as i played The Beverly Festival with Ian Rankin. It was news to me, but turned out to be true.

Please note: my show at Beverly with Ian starts about mid-day on 20th June, in case you were just gonna turn up and hope for the best.
It's awful just going to Edinburgh for a few hours as i did on the Conspiracy tour. It was a great show, in Queen's Hall which i'm playing with Ian on 14th August as part of the Festival, but after my set, and after talking to a few record-buyers, it was time to go back to the home of my good friends Colin and Avril Somerville, drink some red wine and fall into a very deep sleep. I woke up, Colin made an omelette, Avril and me talked about recording Forbidden Songs Of The Dying West in Cornwall, and it was back on the train to Coventry - the merest hazy glimpse of Fife as the train picked up speed to the blue/yellow west, slowing to pass the horror that is Carstairs Prison for the criminally insane, then racketing down through the Border hills and rivers in mid-Spring, past my sister's house near Lockerbie, and surging into Carlisle station, where many many years ago, when Peter Forster and I shared a flat briefly, i worked on the Christmas post. You had to sign the Official Secrets Act. I was once in a meeting at my charity The Core Trust, talking to fellow workers about a government grant scheme. I suddenly noticed that one of my colleagues was uneasy and had stopped contributing to the subject in hand. I asked what was wrong, and she explained that she had been a member of a working party that had drawn up part of the conditions of the grant in question, and could not discuss it as she had signed the Official Secrets Act. I said well so have i (but didn't mention that it was when i became a seasonal platform-working postie at Carlisle station). All the other five people in the meeting then said that they too had signed the Act at various stages in their lives. Our colleague still couldn't divulge what she knew, but i conducted a sweep of the entire project and found that nobody working for us had NOT signed the Act at some point. A cursory check of the country as a whole proved that a suspicion i was nursing was correct - NOBODY in the country of Britain has NOT signed the Official Secrets Act at some point, except the drummer in Blur and the Channel Five weather girl. No wonder nobody knows what's going on anymore - i blame the parents.

So, May - i'm playing Essen, Hamburg and the Glitterhouse Festival with Michael Weston King and The Decent Men, also doing my own set - first on - at Glitterhouse, then going to the Moers Jazz Festival to perform as part of Mirrorman with David Thomas, Michael Cosgrave, Andy Diagram and Keith Moline, then flying home and fuck the lot of you. Oops, sorry about that last bit, us musicians get very tetchy when we're on the homebound journey from touring - you're queueing to buy your foie gras in Duty Free, and the arsehole in front of you DOESN'T HAVE THEIR BOARDING PASS WITHOUT WHICH YOU CAN BUY FUCK ALL AND THE ASSISTANT WON'T SERVE YOU INSTEAD WHILE THE BASTARD FUCKS OFF TO GET THE BOARDING PASS FROM THEIR TWATTY HUSBAND WHO DOESN'T UNDERSTAND WHAT HE IS BEING ASKED, THEN SAYS 'YOU'VE GOT THE BOARDING PASSES, NOT ME, NO YOU'VE GOT THEM' AND ALL THE TIME YOU'RE STANDING THERE, YOUR FLIGHT IS BEING CALLED AND YOU WON'T HAVE TIME FOR A DRINK IN BEERLIFT, YOUR FAVOURITE FRANKFURT AIRPORT BAR UNLESS YOU DECIDE TO NOT BUY YOUR DUTY FREE SHIT WHICH YOU DIDN'T WANT ANYWAY, SO YOU PUT IT BACK JUST AS THE PERSON RETURNS AND YOU'RE IN TWO MINDS (AT LEAST) AS TO WHETHER TO BUY THE DUTY FREE SHIT OR HAVE A DRINK AS YOU MAY NOT GET ONE ON THE FLIGHT WHO KNOWS THESE DAYS SO YOU DROP THE SHIT AND LEG IT TO BEERLIFT WHERE THERE IS ANOTHER QUEUE WHERE A GUY IS QUESTIONING THE PRICE OF HIS DRINK AND THE BARMAN IS POINTING TO THE PRICE ON THE BOARD THAT SHOWS THE PRICES WHILE A SOFT BUT MENACING FEMALE VOICE IS SAYING 'WILL PASSENGER LEVEN FOR HEATHROW PLEASE.....' SO YOU INTERRUPT AND SAY EXCUSE ME I'M IN A REAL HURRY - CAN I HAVE A TREBLE WHISKY AND A LARGE RED WINE PLEASE AND EVERYBODY LOOKS AT YOU AS IF YOU'RE SCOTTISH, MAD, OR A MUSICIAN, THEN LOOKS AT THE GUITAR WHICH YOU'RE NOT GOING TO BE ALLOWED TO TAKE ON THE FLIGHT 'FOR SAFETY REASONS' ALTHOUGH OF COURSE IF YOU'RE PREPARED TO BUY THE GUITAR A TICKET THE 'SAFETY REASONS' MAGICALLY DISAPPEAR THEN AT HEATHROW YOU GET A TAXI DRIVER WHO SAYS 'SO ARE YOU IN A BAND THEN? - YOU MUST GET SICK OF LIVING OUT OF A SUITCASE' THEN YOU GET HOME AND THERE'S NO-ONE THERE ALTHOUGH THERE IS A LETTER FROM THE PERFORMING RIGHTS SOCIETY TELLING YOU THAT YOUR QUARTERLY PAYMENT IS TWENTY TWO POUNDS FORTY THREE PENCE INSTEAD OF THE SIX HUNDRED POUNDS YOU NEEDED IT TO SAY TO COVER ONE OR SEVEN OUTSTANDING BILLS, THE PUB HAS JUST CLOSED AND THERE'S NOTHING TO DRINK COS YOU ABANDONED THE BOOZE AT DUTY FREE BUT YOU CAN'T SLEEP BECAUSE YOU KEEP WAKING UP AND FAILING TO RECOGNIZE YOUR OWN BEDROOM AND YOU LOOK OUT OF THE WINDOW TO TRY AND GET A CLUE AS TO WHICH CITY YOU'VE JUST PLAYED AND TO YOUR AMAZEMENT YOUR LOCAL PUB IS ACROSS THE STREET THEN THERE'S A SCRATCHING NOISE AT THE WINDOW AND IT'S MR BIG WITH ANOTHER MOUSE SO YOU HISS AT HIM TO MAKE HIM DROP IT WHICH HE DOES THEN YOU CAN SEE HIM THINK 'OH, FUCK IT' SO HE COMES IN THE BEDROOM AND YOU CUDDLE UP TOGETHER AS DAWN BREAKS AND IN THE BACKGROUND YOU CAN HEAR THE DUSTBIN MEN COMING UP THE STREET AS MR BIG PURRS AND DROOLS IN YOUR EAR.

jl