Alasdair Watson

Long-time readers of my blog my remember that a little over two years ago, I wrote this:

“It’s been a good day today.  The sun has been shining down from a beautiful blue sky.  At lunch, I sat in the beer garden of a pub, drank an ice cold lime and soda, and enjoyed the summer.  I took a walk in a park this afternoon, and strolled underneath trees, before visiting my family for dinner.  As the sun set, and the sky turned an amazing red, shot though with silver clouds, I hopped on a train to see some good friends I haven’t seen in months, visiting from the states.We sat about and laughed and drank gin and tonic and ate great food and we had a wonderful time.  It’s been a really good day.”

Today, the sun did not shine, until I left the office to meet up with Andrew, and an American friend I don’t get to see enough of.  We walked through the backstreets of London, which are pretty much my favourite place to walk, and despite the day’s unpromising start, I found myself enjoying the early evening sunshine.  We went for good food, and enjoyed pleasant conversation.  I’m home now, and the sunset through my window is a beautiful as any Tooting has ever given me (and it’s given me many) cresents of cloud burn gold against the pale blue sky, lit by the sun.  All things considered, I’ve had a good day.

I end this post with the same sentence I ended that post with, two years ago.

I was laid off this afternoon.

I don’t normally do the “sharing my dreams with the world” thing, not least because I generally don’t remember them. But for the last week, I’ve been having what I can only describe as a continuing dream, and a really vivid one. I’m sitting crosslegged in front of a low coffee table in the flat I lived in until I was ten. Someone is sitting opposite me – I have no idea who they are, but we’ve been having a conversation about life the universe and everything, over the last week. Over the course of this discussion, we have, from time to time, left the table to pop back into my memories and also into a few things that haven’t happened, but it really isn’t hard to see how they might have, or what the particular set of feelings that inspire the fiction are. Generally, the point is to explain what I did wrong at that time/would have done wrong – not always, but generally.

Every night, the dream more or less picks up where it left off the previous night. I’m really not sure what I’ve done to mean that my subconcious is giving me this kicking/sage advice in such a peculiar way, or why it’s such a miserable bastard. (Shut up, the lot of you – I am not miserable, and not generally a bastard. I am a happy and nice person. If you disagree, I will have you eaten by trained squirrels.)

Last night’s particular gem (the gist at least):

“No-one ever promised you that you’d get anything you want. If get even one thing, consider it a bonus that’ll last for a short while and enjoy it. You’re not alive to be happy. You’re alive to be alive. Anything else is your own idea, and means fuck-all. Being unhappy about the nature of life is completely pointless, and the sign of someone who hasn’t grown up yet.”

I’m hoping to talk to a more upbeat bit of my subconcious tonight, because while I can’t disagree with that lot, I like to start my day with a little less bleak reality than that. I’m really not ready for stark existential horror until I’ve had a coffee.

—

In other news, I’ve been meaning to mention Flipron, a band I caught quite by chance at Glastonbury. I’m listening to their album “Fancy Blues and Rustique Novelties”. Their website has a review that describes them as “easy listening for the uneasy”. They’re like hawaiian music gone strange in places, weird little Tim Burton-esque bits of song. Ace.

I’m back from Glastonbury – mamaged to get a coach just after seven, was back in London by lunchtime. 

Had a cracking time, thanks to davebushe, rockoctopus, Sandi, Nathan, Ciaran and Jason.  But I am never doing that again.  I’ve never liked camping, and I like it even less when I am, for instance, woken at five am by people doing lines of coke behind my tent, or even more excitingingly, woken at 3am by a bunch of people returning to a tent somewhere nearby in order to party until the sun comes up.  Also, mud is over-rated.

But lest you all think me a miserable old sod (or rather, lest I confirm your view of me) I re-iterate, I had a good time, and I’m glad I went.  A small stack of sublime moments – watching Menlo Park playing the bandstand while drinking a hot spiced cider, and the strange over-shoes that Jason and I bought, that were a pain in the arse, and yet I was still somehow sorry to dispose of them.  Watching Jason unfailingly get a good portion of his crowd on their feet and singing by the end of his set. 

And more: stumbling back to my tent at 1am, only to hear a band playing in a nearby bar, stopping in to check them out on a whim, and ending up buying one of their CDs or the double rainbow over Supergrass as the weather changed from shine to rain to shine in a matter of ten minutes, and y’know, just generally having a reasonably chilled out time. 

Oh, and one of those little moments of perfect beauty that’ll stay with me forever: watching an enormous soap bubble from a child’s bubble sword catching the last rays of the setting sun as it drifted on the breeeze, and seeing it explode into a hundred smaller bubbles lit like fire.  Worth it all on it’s own.

And I think the whole thing has taught me some lessons, which is really all you can hope for out of life.

(I’ve just read that last sentence again.  I think I may have caught something off a hippy while I was there.  If I start talking about peace and love and how we should all be nicer to the planet, man, please have me humanely put down.)

[Edit to add: I cannot be arsed to wade back over that many posts – if you’ve posted anything I need to know about since Wednesday last week, leave a comment pointing me at it.]

Downs: Have failed dismally to catch up with dr_dastardly and halloqueen will call tomorrow and apologise.  Getting home, having dinner and getting to the gym took me longer than I thought it would.  Well, no, it didn’t, but I became slightly distracted, and wound up running an hour behind myself.

Ups: M&S one cup filter coffee (those little mini filter things) are fucking fantastic.  A convenient amount of nice coffee, without the hassle.  Hurrah!

As per, but still, you all ought to read this. It’s Cory Doctrow’s speech to Microsoft about Digital Rights Management. It’s as on the ball as I’d expect from Doctrow, but as well as providing a strong argument against DRM, it’s should provide a pretty good summary of the background to the whole affair, and generally explain why you ought to give a fuck about the debate if you’ve been ignoring it up to now. At least, I think it does.

Also, if anyone would like to buy me this, then I’m sure I can come up with some appropriate form of thanks.

This week, I shall be mostly: Getting ready for glastonbury. Other than rockoctopus and davebushe, is there anyone else reading this that’s going?

[Update notice: Black Ink has new content.]

Good weekend. Double dose of clubbing, which is slightly worrying, since I seem to have come out the end of it feeling pretty much fine, rather than the wreck I by rights ought to be (special prize to the people at for following “The Sick Bed Of Cuchulainn” by The Pogues with Flogging Molly’s “Devil’s Dance Floor”, which pleased me beyond measure – a pair of tracks I’ve never heard while out clubbing before, but which I adore…) and I even managed to run the second installment of the game on Sunday, and did not collapse in a tiny brain-fried heap as I’d feared I would. I’ve got a few re-writes to do on my notes for the next few sessions, just to re-structure act one a bit – based on player feedback, one of the things I had in mind for later needs shelving, but I can replace it with an interesting sort of action sequence, that’ll also play to some interesting stuff about one of the characters, so that’s OK.

Quiet week coming up, thank god. No gigs, no nights out, nothing planned for the weekend, and I’m going to be my best to keep it that way, I think. A rest, before Glastonbury…

But apparently, Thea Gilmore’s fans don’t like it.

I appreciate that her sound is changing – there’s a more rock vibe to a lot of her most recent album, that people who went for the more folky sound of her earlier stuff may not go for. I appreicate that if they liked her more acoustic stuff, they may not enjoy the full band. And I admit that it was bloody hot in that venue (Islington Academy), but I don’t think I’ve ever been to a gig with a more inert audience. Half the people standing near me (and I was pretty well toward the front) had their arms folded across their chests, and didn’t look like they were enjoying themselves at all.

Still, I really enjoyed the set, and would probably go and see her again, in the hope that the crowd will be more prepared to move a little.

In other gig news, Nick Cave has a new album out in September and is playing Brixton in November as a result. Hurrah!

Went for my usual walk round Battersea Park at lunch, as I have every day this week. The Park has unsurprisingly, been busy so far this week – full of people out enjoying the sun. Today, despite the generally OK weather (sunny patches through cloud, slightly cooler than the last couple of days), it was empty. Not just slightly less busy – empty. The only people I passed were a mother and child, a couple of people walking their dogs, and another couple of people from the Dog’s Home walking their packs of dogs. (One of the dogs from the home had no hind legs, and was instead strapped into a contraption that gave it rear wheels instead, allowing it to pull itself along by its front legs, like some living version of those old children’s toys. I managed not to laugh out loud, but only just.)

But aside from that, the place was deserted – there wasn’t even the usual collection of joggers. What does everyone else know that I don’t?

I thought it was important to let you know that I want to help someone else to live after my death by donating my organs.

Every year hundreds of people die while waiting for a transplant. If I can, I would like to help.

I have therefore added my name to the NHS Organ Donor Register which is a list of people willing to become donors should the situation ever arise.

I registered my wishes via the UK Transplant website. You can find out more about organ donation on their site.

http://www.uktransplant.org.uk

Thanks to thepaintedone for pointing this one out. I’ve been meaning to register for this for years, and never gotten around to it. Never occured to me to check if I could do it on-line. So now I have, and I encourage you to do that same, and paste the message above into your own journal to encourage others.

Edited to add: And, of course, let your next of kin know you’ve done it, as well…

I bought a book called Shopped the other week, about the rise of ths supermarket, and the effect it has had on British food culture, and British shopping life. I’m only fifty pages in, and already I’m swearing off shopping at places like Sainsbury’s and Asda ever again, although my Mum will be pleased to hear that Marks and Sparks gets off lightly (which also makes me feel rather better about my shopping habits).

Anyway, I just wanted to commend it to your attention.