The Bit I Missed Last Time

Finally got all my work bits and pieces done. 9.30pm and a whole day tomorrow not touched yet.

I must say thanks to John at the club for a fine end to the Chester visit and lovely to see ex-work colleagues and discover their ridiculous success.

These are the things I’ve failed to get:

A haircut
An unlocked phone
A plan
The right sized luggage
A tube of sudocrem
A mosquito net
Socks
The right seat on the plane
Etc…

Still – I found my insurance, my spare Euros and Dollars and some shaving foam.

On balance, I’m not sure I’m ahead of the game, but the nervousness has set in now, so it must be happening. However, it’s only a short trip, so here goes nothing.

Here’s an entirely out of context song for the day – although it does reflect on my visit to the V&A last week. Plus the odd bit of lyric DOES fit…

And most annoying it is as well.

I’ve been looking forward to the Trafalgar Square Party for 30 years – AND I’M GOING TO MISS IT.

Debbie demanded this as a daily allowance.

Funnily enough, it’s initimately linked with the last trip in that I first heard while in a hotel in Colombia. A very fine record,

And now a bit of footie and some Bowie

A long weekend for Easter, with a quick burst of work in the middle, and everything points towards the leaving of London.

With no-one to play with, the rest of the world being busy, I wander around the West End for two days running. Walking the length of Oxford Street on Good Friday with The Clash and Julian Cope providing most of the random sounds, I happily bump into Critical Mass doing their thing. Just another reason why London is The Best City in the World – even during the worst winter for 50 years.

Saturday and I return to open new accounts and grab some filthy yankee dollars. Today’s genuinely random soundtrack is, remarkably, East India Youth, with a bit of time for Bark Psychosis – the two being properly linked in a number of ways.

Anyway, every conversation, text, email and phone call seemed to related to leaving – which is a good thing and only to be expected just now.

So as I hopefully get into the spirit of writing a few regular words – and reviving the tradition of a tune a day – here’s the Easter 2013 effort. It combines my last half-decent journey with the remarkable efforts of a young man who entered my life, stage left, three years ago – almost to the day.

¡Salud!

And the particular Bark Psychosis track that caught my ear:

So, it’s 8 years (EIGHT YEARS) since the last trip finished, never mind started. A lot’s happened in that time – or maybe not much?

In short I gained a few nephews and lost a few relatives and friends.

I abandoned a career and started a business, of sorts. In fact I sort of started two.

I went to Japan twice and Spain quite a lot more.

I played with the BBC and sort of won, leading directly to me getting immersed in the nether regions of the music industry.

Like most people, I continued to determine who my real friends are and added a good few extra decent ones.

And finally, inevitably, I turned fifty.

Strangely, I’m writing this on St Patrick’s Day. Previously, that would have seen me writing the day and night off in a number of suitably seedy alehouses, but times and people change.

So – here we go again. Smaller, shorter, cut.

The world has most definitely changed a lot, but I’m hoping the people haven’t.

Anyway, a man of certain habits, I feel it useful to keep the idea of a tune a day going. So let’s start off with this…

Oh no – I can’t. The first frustration of many?

Still, here’s a version – it’ll have to do…