08/01
SOTD: Call Me – Blondie
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=StKVS0eI85I
Today is not James Dean’s birthday, or at least it would not be if he was not dead. How did I managed to confuse Elvis’s birthdate with Dean’s? They are both on the 8th, just that Dean’s is February. No comment about that except it reminds me of a girl I once knew when I was fourteen. She was beautiful, blonde hair, hazel eyes, smart, funny, insecure. I took her to see the show ‘Dean’ as I recall, a short lived West End production which I hardly remember, about James Dean’s life and early death. I thought I loved her (I fell in love very easily back then) but she was too insecure and self critical to agree, I was too immature to handle that. We parted, I fell in love with someone else, and someone else, and someone else, she went to college and moved to the States and married a fireman and lived on Rhode Island.
Song of the day today is courtesy of the radio. I had something of a crush on Blondie, not a posters on my wall crush, I was too keen on film posters for that, but enough of a crush. I loved the music, it was exciting, they played at CBGB’s with all those other exciting bands – The Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Richard Hell and the Voidoids. There was an energetic ennui about her which got to me I guess and the fact she came from probably the most exciting city at that time, New York. Of course the other things I love about Blondie (the band) is Clem Burke’s drumming. It is the combination of crisp, tight rhythm and showiness that I like. He is someone I group alongside such as Topper Headon and Rick Buckler, less showy than Clem but they are both fine examples of drummers who drive the band forward and keep it close, on track at all times.
10/01
A feast day for Clochette as she discovered a fat wood pigeon at the nunnery. Not so much fun for me as it was still alive. It had a broken wing and was on the ground in the trees with C making attacking lunges and crunching at its neck, pulling feathers and chomping on various other parts. I wrung its neck and Clochette got to work. That work only lasted a minute or so then she was bored and ran off. Not even on our next two passes did she get excited again and have another ravage.
11/01
A typical Brittany day this morning. As I walk up the road the sun is behind me and a huge bank of dark grey cloud is ahead. The net result is that trees and houses are lit up against the brooding sky giving the impression of impending doom. But in a good way.
I have realised something slightly sobering. I have said before that the process of walking gets the grey cells going and as a result topics or musings or memories come to mind, all grist to the blogging mill. That’s all well and good until you pass an elderly couple on the road without noticing them immediately. The looks they give you as you are talking to yourself are not good, a mixture of fear, pity and disgust. Of course, with my limited French it is difficult to explain I am going through a topic to be written down and posted. To be honest, considering their faces, I would find it hard to put them at their ease if they were English. I realise that the blogging process is not only a boon to my army of readers (there is still five of you, right?), it is a boon to me. Without the excuse of a blog I would just be some random bloke talking to himself in the street.
The routes your mind takes are not unusual to you, you see the connections pretty quickly. Today I went from a brief discussion with a friend a while back about Scritti Politti, telling them about seeing them in the late 70s or early 80s at Brunel University, to a gig I went to with a friend, Gavin, where we saw a band we liked briefly, The Passage (they had a 12″ single XOYO, also a track called Pindrop) who supported Julian Cope. He had, apparently, a 13 year old drummer, at least I was told that, and a mike stand built from the square tubing people use to construct market stalls. It had foot plates and he would climb his bent, angular stand whilst he sang. From there we go to missing the last trains home from the centre of London out to Ruislip and Gavin and I wrapping ourselves in cardboard and sleeping in a shop doorway. I recall taking the first available train back to Harrow and going straight into work at the Land Registry. My boss at the time allowed me to sleep at my desk in the morning. Her claim to fame was she was divorced from a man who was suing the writers of the theme to Chariots of Fire for plagiarism.
12/01
Today I have to work out what else I am to write. I had a plan for a particular type of book but I find that there are a couple of examples of the same thing already in existence, one of which is very good. I can adapt my plan by narrowing my focus, although that may reduce my possible audience, or I could switch to a novel. Today I shall read through some of my ideas, collate them and make a decision. As the first planned book is quite different from other options, I may do both, they involve different sorts of thinking. It will be good to collate the ideas, though, I have not looked at the various note books stockpiled for a while now and I need to assess what’s good and what’s not.
donaldmv 