A day without crutches...pay the price, boy...

A bit of a breakthrough today as I managed around the house without my crutches for the first time...

I burned and printed 20 copies of Ian Sclater's CD for him - he came round and picked them up. That particular project is now over. Very enjoyable work and I think the result is a fine little guitar and vocal CD showcasing Ian's best songs. These copies are going out to the States and to his family as presents...

Jim Park phoned - first time I've spoken to him I think since I broke my ankle in a football tackle between us. No hard feelings of course. This weekend he's off down to London for Robert Hind's 40th birthday. Robert's the younger brother of Nicky Hind. Jim, Nicky and I all played together in a band called Capital Models around 25 years ago...

Jim wanted me to write a spoof telegram for him to read out at the meal...so I did and e-mailed it to Jim - hope he likes it (and I hope Robert remembers me). The telegram was based around the first words RH ever spoke to me. He was about 13 and I was 19 and very proud of my rock star hair at the time. He came up to me and said "You're going bald"...

In a fine example of karma, Robert is now bald as a coot. Of course I choose to be bald by shaving my fine head of hair every so often...

Another CD arrived today. Adrian Belew's "Side Two" (I'm waiting on "Side One"). Rather disconcertingly a couple of tracks on the CD use rhythm tracks from the Korg Electribe drum machine and, like me on an electronic remix CD I did a couple of years ago for CBQ, he hasn't bothered to adapt the factory presets. So it sounds like one of my tracks is about to start....

This is kind of a home-recorded solo album. "Side One" is recorded as a power trio with a Les Claypool and Danny Carey. Should arrive soon...

You can read about the creative process behind these albums here http://www.adrianbelew.net/adrianupdates.html - reading through this, I am taken aback by just how much Adrian's feelings about recording, mixing, rearranging running orders etc etc and his excitement about his project are similar to how I felt in the final push to get "Deeperdown" finished...

I tidied up the house a bit, as best I could in my hobbling state. This mostly involved removing old editions of The Wire magazine, a couple of architucture and design books, two large books of Blue Note albums covers and various pieces of paper from the coffee table....

In the evening, a call to my sister, Pam, in Hemel Hempstead. She regaled me with stories of the recent huge explosion and fire there. Turns out she works on the Industrial Estate which was partially destroyed by the explosion. Scary stuff. She's coming up next week to stay with my mum for Christmas...

Then, Anne and I enjoyed a couple of glasses of Chianti and a Sainsbury Curry (v tasty indeed - recommended) whilst listening to Bach's Oboe Concertos and a couple of arias from Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" before settling down to a night of TV..

Third Rock From the Sun
Spin City
Bleak House
The Tonight Show with John Stewart
Doc Martin
Sensitive Skin - a poignant end to what turned out to be a great little bitter sweet comedic six part series - enhanced by the touching use of Glenn Gould's performance of Bach's piano music...

..and, finally...Alien Resurrection - not scary but a reasonable story. Now I have seen all the Alien films except for last year's Alien v Predator - no doubt I'll hire it sometime once we've got round to buying a new DVD player..

Went to bed at 12:45 but couldn't get to sleep because of the pain in my leg. I think I may have overdone the walking without crutches over the last two days and will need to take it easier tomorrow...