She belongs to yesterday

Last night I watched a documentary about Johnny Cash. Actually, I'd seen it before, but I still watched it to the end. The prison gigs were amazing, and seeing his daughter talking about what she and the rest of his family thought of the Hurt video was gripping too.

I'd forgotten that at some points the incidental music is actually Mazzy Star. I checked a certain website today and found that a French singer-songwriter called Charlotte Marionneau has an album out featuring Sandoval and Robacs, and also Kevin Shields and Colm O'Ciosoig. It's under the name Le Volume Courbe - anyone heard it?

I had dinner with Kate and James and me mum and dad on Saturday, and then went to the Halfway House, which is very nice. I asked my sister about the LLLLLLRB, or whatever it's called. "It'll be amended." How far, though?

On Sunday my mum dropped round to see how the bathroom's doing, and wave me some pictures of a place she's thinking of renting for a week on Skye sometime. She waved the picture at my dad because it was in Totescore, and he said "That's my granny's house." It's all mod cons now, but he stayed for months on end when the water came from the stream, and the toilet was "anywhere between here and the sea". Marion died at 103 about three days after my 5th birthday. I don't remember ever meeting her. I met her other daughter, my auntie Janet, when I went up with my dad to take my gran up for the summer a couple of times in the mid to late eighties. After Janet died it was sold. My dad reckons his family have been around there for four or five hundred years.

I know when Glen's wedding is, now - last night I was discussing with people how appropriate it is that it'll be in a distillery - so I know I get to visit Islay soon. Campbelltown, too, most likely, which will be interesting.

During Sunday there was the tech walkthrough on the hill, which involved demonstrating our (hah!) mastery of firemaking skills for gav, so he knows we can actually do it. I was, of course, bricking it because I was sure wasn't prepared, but Amy stuck around (a star, as usual) and after a slight false start we got a blaze going very quickly. People seemed impressed. More practice follows. It was interesting to do it up on the monument in the wind. I'd already been up there for three hours as sunshine turned to cloud to snow and back to sunshine. It was good to get home to the warmth - after picking up 160 pounds of scrap cotton, of course. No rest for the slightly inept.

This new "location" thing's quite nice, isn't it? I wonder if anyone will find it useful?

So tonight that I might see

The smoking ban's been going exceptionally smoothly( Read more... )

Don't get involved in unfinished polyologies.( Read more... )

Incidentally, anyone Easterconning?

I'm looking forward to seeing Timothy Spall play Pierrepoint( Read more... )

I got dragged out to a rather nice punk club called Gulag Beat the other week.( Read more... )

A couple of days after that there was a super-secret surprise party for someone's birthday. It was good, and seemed to be filled with the current generation of Geasites. They were all terribly terribly young.

On the Sunday there was a concert by The Organ in Glasgow.( Read more... )

Bob Carlos Clark is dead. Stanislaw Lem is still dead, but at least got a nice big Guardian obituary courtesy of Chris Priest.

The body at Duddingston wasn't John. It was a homeless man who went missing last year. The police don't think it's suspicious.

From pigeonhed :
"We (Swell Maps) were probably more influential and important than we realize," reflected Sudden. "Apparently we've influenced all these bands like Sonic Youth and Pavement, but all I can say is you can't blame me for that." Sadly missed. Glen the soon-to-be-wed once swapped me his whole 7" collection for a Fire Engines 12" . . . this isn't as impressive as it sounds, but did include a copy of "Let's build a car".

Further to a recent discussion, there's an interesting case here of a former chef who rustles up omelette and chips while sleepwalking. "My wife says I should plug the Hoover in when I'm sleepwalking and do the housework." It would be some compensation for the disturbed sleep, I suppose.

Macca is to stand trial after an incident at the Barrowlands gig that I missed.

The Scotsman last week had an article about the Italian election, currently almost over, which started:
THREE days before Italy's general election, Silvio Berlusconi, the prime minister, went on the warpath yesterday, accusing the judiciary, the press, big business and banks of plotting his defeat.

Sadly, the headline was "Berlusconi: they're all out to get me" rather than "They've all got it infamy", which would have been much more appropriate.