Hey Mom & Dad

You're going to need those earplugs! I got a late Christmas present in the post this morning:



Pennies from Heaven.mp3

...

(Contents of one forgotten pocket):

Basement tapes

Despite my ongoing sore-throat and related mood, I had very much fun last night recording things in my studio with Yo Zushi. I think my uselessness adds an extra degree of lo to the already quite lo lo-fi.

ain't no lie.mp3

Solitude.mp3

Dream.mp3

St Sebastian.mp3

With Mike.mp3

All of me.mp3

Revisions

Beyond last minute new cover for Sneep (which isn't as dark as it appears here, I hope), plus revised type for the paperback of Wenlocks.




Oh, and the prize I sort of won a little bit at the end of last year is now defunct. Here is an article about it.

I have a lot of editing to do, but am feeling a pressing and slightly manic need to go drawing.

Inflated envy

Meh, I'm in here re-working a cover I thought was done and dusted, while outside there are workmen who get to play all day with a gigantic helium balloon that dangles cameras and gadgets...

...

Today I got rained on very heavily while carrying an aquarium, oh ho the irony.
Now I'm drinking cocoa with rum...

I got long-listed for another award, but once again I don't know if I'm supposed to say anything...

"Jazz, presumably"

But Doves prefer country...

Sunday Times Children's Book of the Week(!):




In other news: I was taken to secret, subterranean soho haunts on friday night, and yesterday I went to see a friend's exhibition which turned out to be in a beautiful rickety old Georgian barn full of mannequins and moth-eaten costume paraphernalia , Joseph Cornell style curio-boxes, dried pipe-fish and corsets. The exhibition was in a small candle-lit room, and next door we sat and dried damp selves and drank tea next to a stove with a wiggly chimney while the rain made sounds on the roof. Oh, and there was a dovecot outside, with doves! In the heart of suburban Enfield!

Some scissors and a comb, and quick.

Here are some pictures from friday night's gig, courtesy of Stoked Acoustic's myspace. My hair is beyond a joke (not to mention my shirt, but at least the place was a lot darker than it seems in the photos).
{Edit: I'm too sick to work out what's wrong with the html in that link...}





Outside today it was very funny, so many people valiantly brandishing totally pointless rags on sticks. Every umbrella was inside out and broken in the wind. Glad tidings for me and my very-ugly-umbrella (beyond repair). I wanted to draw some, but hadn't the energy to do the scene justice.
I made it to my meeting though, then home to spend the rest of the day in bed.

Blink

Small achievements from a day spent working from bed...

Some very bleary layout sketches. Some very minimal manuscript edits.

Have finally persuaded Amazon that I didn't illustrate John Hegley's My Dog is Carrot. I was meant to at one point, but he sensibly illustrated it himself in the end.

And I got some good news about Addis Berner Bear which I'll keep under wraps for now.

Droop.

Oh, and...

I made this too the other day, in the spirit of coming out from behind the vegetable patch...

Fiddlin'

Put pen to sketchbook today, hoping for something towards a meeting I have on tuesday, but discover now that I am getting sick so that might be why everything was so rubbish...

But Rowan and her friend Marit came by on a flying visit on the way to Sweden. Fortunately I wasn't too sick to cook things, and play.

Nameless.mp3 (What's it called Rowan?)
Rowan Rheingans: Fiddle
Marit Fält: Mandola
Me: Guitar

Estonian tune.mp3 (Again, what's it called Rowan?)
Rowan Reinghans: Violin
Marit Fält: Mandola
Me: Fretless Banjo

Enrico.mp3 (Thomas Hardy's favourite fiddle tune).
Rowan Reinghans: Fiddle
Marit Fält: Mandola
Me: Fiddle

Tripping up the Stairs.mp3
Rowan Reinghans: Violin
Marit Fält: Mandola
Me: Fiddle

Our Cat Has Kitted.mp3
Rowan Reinghans: Violin
Marit Fält: Mandola
Me: Fiddle

Also, Rowan is playing on some of Lisa O Piu's recordings here, which are quite something.

We're lost, aren't we?

(Gig was fun. Very, umm, different than the last one...)

The rose will fall for you again

Yo's set was just lovely. He chose to ignore the microphones, the room was just small enough and it was quite beautiful. And very nice to play the saw that way.
And you weren't there. I just know you weren't.
Don't make the same mistake tomorrow: 93 Feet East. I don't know if I'll add more than a couple of tracks worth of improvised background circus operatics again, but Yo is somebody to see, I attest, and that moment when he calls out three young fellows for a unison chorus; "It's all gone away with the Swallows," it nearly gives me the weepy feeling an amateur brass band gives, when they take breaths between bars (I seem to have inherited this particular sentiment from my father, I discovered at new year).

Also, take a look at Yo and Zoë's magazine: Rag & Bone.





{Edit: Forgive my drunken gushing. True though.}

If I draw a lot of monkeys.

And then a lot of typewriters..?

By the way, this evening might well see me playing the musical saw for Yo Zushi at The Red Lion in Stoke Newington. Come along if you're in the area. It's cheap!