The Bit I Missed Last Time

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…