Psychological Travelling

Re-Opening

2009-06-20T12:09:00.000-07:00

I thought I might come back to this one day. So much has happened in the last eighteen months. My ex-partner left me and went back to the UK with our two daughters and I stayed in France. But now the time has come for me to return too. I will leave great weather, daily swimming, peace but also Ryanair, constant battles with the language and a feeling that I am divorced from the real world when I am here. So back to the UK it is at the end of October.

Blog closed

2007-12-16T01:03:00.000-08:00

I have decided to close my blog. It has become too self-indulgent. And as someone recently said to me 'boring'. So, the only reason to write it would be for myself - so I shall continue in written form. The second reason is that I have not kept to my promise of honouring the greatest diarist of all - 'Chips' Channon. He said 'what is the point of a discrete diary - one may as well have a discrete soul'. I have not revealed what has really been happening in my life over the last twelve months. The happy professional experiences have been balanced by unhappy personal experiences and it is to those which I now need to devote my time.

Snow in the Sud

2007-12-15T05:02:00.000-08:00

10 minutes from the Mediterranean and we have thick snow. Izzy, my naughty youngest has never seen real snow before and is transfixed. Lily, nearly eight is now building an 'homme de neige'. I have a garden full of happy children - about eight at the moment because Lily is the social animal par excellence. 10 days ago I was in the 35 degree heat of Port Au Prince Haiti. What a change. Extremes are wonderful.

This morning I have had english TV installed. Anyone who has had to endure french TV - endless programmes of people talking in the studio - will understand my joy.

And from a persoanl point of view I made an early start on the new book and good progress is being made. This has to be written by January 20. 35,000 words to go. 1000 per day.

Santa Claus is coming to town

2007-12-12T09:45:00.000-08:00

The first sighting of a cuckoo in March/April signifies the arrival of spring. And the christmas equivalent is the first playing of Phil Spector's 'Christmas Album' in December. Today, Lily and Isabelle and daddy got to work on the tree accompanied by The Ronettes, The Crystals, Darlene Love etc. Lily knows most of the words so we were able to sing along to the famed 'Wall of Sound'. Lovely.

I must remind myself not to email gripes to my publisher when I have had a couple of glasses of wine. I said what I wanted to say but probably not with the tact I should have.

Ed Doolan

2007-12-11T12:21:00.000-08:00

So much has happened recently that I forgot to mention a recent appearance on the Ed Doolan show on BBC West Midlands. Ed is also known as 'Mr Birmingham' an institution in the Midlands rivalled locally only by Carl Chinn - although Ed is Australian. I was invited on to talk about Positive Thinking and was given fifteen minutes. The 15 minutes soon became one hour as we took lots of texts and a few calls on the subject. I, of course loved every minute of it. Ed himself has had a few problems with his heart and we had an interesting sidetrack on whether positive thinking can pull you through health problems. He believes it can - as do I - and gave the example of how he had a serious heart operation twenty years ago a week before Christmas and that what pulled him through was the desire to broadcast his traditional Christmas day show. He was duly wheeled into the studio on Christmas morning. What they hadn't told him was that there was standby ambulance outside throughout the whole show in case of any relapse. Of course, there wasn't.

He re-enforced my belief that we need to continually create 'why's' to live for.

I wanted to also say that I really like Birmingham and from a personal point of view getting close to a place by being on a radio show helps no end. Not a fashionable view perhaps but it is a transformed city.

Perfect pop

2007-12-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Any More' - The Walker Brothers.

Discuss

Bits and bobs

2007-12-05T15:51:00.000-08:00

A joke apparently attributed to former UN Secretary General Perez De Cuellar. When asked how many people worked at The United Nations he replied 'about half of them'. I met the good half this week.

Does it annoy you when people insist on putting 'lol' on their emails, messages, blogs etc? I had to look this up tonight. It means 'laughing out loud'. If you have to put this sort of mindless stuff in what you write I think you probably need a personality transplant. Or a wider ranging vocabulary. Or both.

Tonight, as I checked back in to my hotel - The Ibo Lele in Petionville, Haiti - the lady in reception offered a 'massage', with eyes raised on the word 'massage'. I walked off and ten minutes later she was on the phone to my room. Non merci. Do I look that lonely? Or desperate? Or perhaps she was.

My final night in Haiti. 'When was the last time you did something for the first time?' For me this was a view of the world I had never seen before. Of course, the next time I come it won't quite be the same. First time experiences in life mean everything. From birth right up to death. Perhaps Darfur next? Or DR Congo? Or East Timor?

Haitian Bee Gees

2007-12-02T18:38:00.000-08:00

An evening indoors avoiding various Haitian biting things. Having done lots of work, prepped for tomorrow etc. I treated myself to an hour of You Tubing. I got Frank Zappa in my head and spent an hour watching various live version of his Allman Brothers cover 'Whipping Post'. Marvellous. If you don't want to do the full hour but want to see Frank at his best head for the 1984 New York version. 7 minutes and a great vocal performance from Bobby Martin.

Last night I went with my hosts Berta and her partner Jongee to see a band described as Haitian Bee Gees. They sounded so awful at the gate that we didn't even venture in. A great piece of fish at a local restaurant instead. A quick drink after where I saw the largest cockroach I have ever seen. Red and winged.

First time in Haiti

2007-11-30T18:02:00.000-08:00

Writer Ursula Le Guin said that it is not the end that matters as much as the journey to the end. I am enjoying the journey and I suspect that whenever I sit back and reflect on my life I will think that the last month of it has been special.

I started 3 weeks ago in Bosnia and what a place that was. I then made a number of speeches in the UK which seem to have opened up some life changing opportunities and then it was back in France for just a few days before the journey to Haiti where I am now. I am really in Africa although Haiti resides in the Caribbean.

Two high points already. I arrived from Miami via New York (‘Just a New York conversation rattling in my head’ – thanks to the Half Note) with American Airlines (is there a worse airline in the world?) and was regaled by a fantastic Haitian band employed to entertain new arrivals as they get off the plane and make their way to the terminal. They were great. I was whisked through customs by my ‘meeter and greeter’ when everyone else was getting a grilling and within ten minutes I was on my way to the UN compound.

The second high point was a conversation with Shqipe Hebibi, a Kosovar who is also a good friend of a friend of mine back in Kosovo, Arlind Bakraci. Shqipe has a story to tell. Shqipe was working in Afghanistan in 2005 when she and two others were abducted by Islamic fundamentalists on their way to lunch in a UN 4x4. Your chances of not surviving were, and still are, minimal. Shqipe said that everyone tells you that at moments like that you think your life will flash before you. What actually happens is that everything happens so quickly that you can’t compute what is going on. They were held for 27 days and became the lead news item around the world. Shqipe was very, very lucky. It seems that a wealthy Kosovar had made contact with the kidnappers and that the Moslem link together with money had eased her release as well as the release of her colleagues. As someone who is fascinated by the psychology of what happens in those situations I asked Shqipe how she now feels looking back. What she said really interested me because she says that she now tries hard not to forget anything that happened. So the 3 hostages talk about their experiences so they don’t forget. I had imagined that you would try to forget everything but for the three of them this clearly isn’t the case. They will be ‘there’ for the rest of their lives.

My hotel (Hotel Ibolele) is stuck in the side of a mountain overlooking Port au Prince – the higher position keeps the Malarial mosquitoes away – and while my room is one of the worst I have stayed in I have a twenty metre pool for my own use it seems. So every night I swim in the dark, in delicious heat and enjoy Cajan fish and Haitian rice. The mangoes here are stunning and the best fruit I have ever eaten in my life. I am eating 3 per day. Haiti is the world centre for Mangoes – over 150 varieties. So at breakfast I have a plate of mango and banana, fresh coffee, some bread and jam, a fruit juice made from fresh lemons and limes and I can see all of Port au Prince beneath me and for about 70 km. A warm breeze gently eases me into full work mode. I haven’t felt this well for 10 years.

In the midst of all this journeying Sam, my new Commissioning Editor has given me the go-ahead to write the next book. So December and January in France with my babies writing and reflecting on a marvellous passage in my life. And what is more I am booked out completely for February, March and April. I almost forgot to mention that I have just won a contract with the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Enjoy the peaks Doug.

I am sorry if this blog sounds overly smug and congratulatory but I write it partly for myself. I just want to remember the special times.

I am finding time for music and today it is The Dells and a great piece of Northern Soul ‘Wear it on our face’. But a mention too for Charles Mingus’ ‘Haitian Fight Song’.

Beauty

2007-11-17T12:36:00.000-08:00

Has there been a more beautiful piece of music released in the 21st century than 'Olsen Olsen' by Sigur Ros off the 2000 album Agaetis Byrjun? Why haven't I got into this band before? I think I like to keep in touch with newness but I missed this group totally. They are fabulous. Surely the world's leading rockband? Any american bloggers reading this should get along to a screening of their new film 'Heima' in NYC on 19 November. I am sure there are other showings too.

Are they a throwback or something new? Well there are obvious influences but there is nothing like them. They even sing in an invented language.

Just say no

2007-11-13T02:28:00.001-08:00

I have a fear of lack of activity. This means that when there is a lull I take on work and projects that I should not be involved in. As I look at my diary for the next 9 days I see I am doing loads of stuff I do not want to do. It is not New Year yet but I resolve to learn to say ‘no’. I could be with my children and writing my next book. Instead I am in places like Birmingham doing ‘stuff’ that doesn’t interest me. Fool, Doug. And why do I feel ill all the time? 67 flights this year must have something to do with it.

Musically I have two new albums to recommend. The Robert Plant/Alison Krauss newie is one of those rare occasions where one plus one equals three rather than the usual one and a half. A gem of a record. Does Marc Ribot now play guitar on every album released by anybody?

And I am venturing into the new Sigur Ros. It hasn’t had great reviews but I cannot understand why. It sounds great to me. I will report more fully after a few more listens.

Bosnia

2007-11-10T04:00:00.000-08:00

Waiting in my hotel in Sarajevo for my car to take me to the airport gives me a few minutes to mention my trip to this special place. The high point - although high is the wrong word - was a trip to the famed Mostar. Those who followed the war in the early 90's will remember the name. Almost every building still pockmarked with bullet holes from the street fighting but a quite beautiful 'old town' - little shops, cafes and churches and what they call the new old bridge. The Serbs blew the first one up.

I stopped in a place called Jablanica for a coffee and a chance to look at the stunning snowy mountainous view. From there I could see the famous bridge that Tito blew up in 1943. My driver told me the story of how the Germans stood on one side of the river, Tito's partizans on the other. Tito blew the bridge up and the germans figuring that Tito could now not cross the river went back into the hinterland, safe they thought from Tito's band of brothers. Instead overnight Tito built a new temporary bridge, came round behind the germans and defeated them. It was turned into a film starring Richard Burton the name of which escapes me. The bombed bridge is still there rusting up the side of the river bank.

My hotel where I was staying in Capljina near the Dalmation coast was fabulous. Expecting the usual slightly run down affair I was amazed to be shown the best hotel room I have ever stayed in, anywhere. Being the guest speaker wins one certain advantages!

Today it is airport hopping day. Sarajevo to Montpellier via Vienna and Paris in half a day.

Wilde Travel

2007-11-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

Does, as Wilde said, too much foreign travel dull the mind? I am about to find out. This week it is Bosnia followed by 10 days in Haiti punctuated only by a little public speaking in the UK. I will blog extensively on both Haiti and Bosnia on my return. I still maintain that the strangest people I have ever met (and I have been to some strange places) are the french.

I must bhowever mention my music of the week which is anything by Funkadelic. But particularly the 'Hardcore Jollies' album and 'Maggot Brain'. George Clinton still doesn't get the credit he should. He was, and is, completely mad (in the same way as Lee 'Scratch' Perry) but endearingly so. If I ever go mad I hope it is the same way as those guys.

Halloween

2007-10-25T09:08:00.000-07:00

Why do we have this? I really don't remember ever being aware of halloween as a child or 'celebrating' it at all. And now it seems to be everywhere. Here in France it feels like the build-up to Christmas.

To me it's about evil. So I am being grumpy old dad at the moment. After explaining why I wasn't going to drive her the 1Km to school (pollution, dad's need for exercise), and now the denial of the existence of Halloween I think my eldest daughter is having her worst fears confirmed about the miserable 'old man' alone with his newspaper and music in the corner of the room.

The Onion

2007-10-25T06:53:00.000-07:00

A while ago I blogged on the USB fridge that holds one can of coke. On the occasionally very funny website 'The Onion' I have just seen a spoof advert for the USB Toaster. Today's joke is clearly tomorrow's reality.

This posting allows me to direct you to another spoof piece on the site that had me in hysterics:

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/use_of_n_word_may_end_porn_stars

I hope those of you who are not overly sensitive souls might enjoy it. Those prone to shock...enjoy being shocked.

Infidelity

2007-10-25T06:30:00.000-07:00

A friend approached me the other day with a problem. About 12 months ago his wife embarked on an affair with another man which lasted about 6 months. The affair is out in the open which is fine. He and his wife haven't had sex since the end of the affair. They get on well even now and comfortably life in the same house with their children and provide a loving atmosphere. My friend does not want their relationship to end. He would probably not mind if his wife embarked on another affair. What is important to him is that his children have a happy, 2 parent home which they do at the moment.

His wife has just approached him about a resumption of a sexual relationship. He is not interested although in all other ways he feels close to his wife. By saying he doesn't want a sexual relationship any more he puts home stability at risk. By saying 'yes' he crosses a line he is not interested in crossing. What should he do?

BusinessBalls

2007-10-25T06:25:00.000-07:00

There are a number of vogue ‘business speak’ speak words and phrases that really annoy me. As I earn around 50% of my income as a corporate trainer I get to hear them more than most. Here are a few of them:

1. ‘Best Practice’

This annoys me because I believe in the infinite creativity of people and the potential we have to do something effectively in ways that are unique to us as individuals. The words ‘Best Practice’ imply only one way. A surefire way to stifle initiative and innovation in employees. I notice that some organisations have even started to develop ‘Best Practice’ departments. Surely a recipe for ‘our way is the only way’ thinking. And corporate death as a result.

Government ministers (Ruth Kelly in particular) use this a lot because they think that by using it they signal that they have a handle on their ministerial portfolio and what success means in, for example, the health sector. Will a journalist one day ask her what ‘Best Practice’ means because it means nothing to me at all.

To be able to adapt to the situation you find yourself in to me is a priceless life and workplace trait and will be increasingly so in the future. ‘Best Practice’ is the antithesis of that.

2. ‘Competencies’

Is there a job ad that doesn’t include the word ‘competence’. As opposed to what – incompetence? Competence means base level ability to me. Is that what our organisations want to employ? Surely they want the excellent rather than the merely competent?

And things are getting worse. I see the increasing use of ‘competency matrices’. People get employed to develop this gibberish – usually in Human Resource Departments. What does this add to any organisation? It sucks the money out of investment in the future and sucks the life out of people as it drags them down to a base level of mere ‘competence’.

3. ‘Human Resource Development’

I have blogged on this one in the past. As my fellow blogger Arkangel (http://simplepleasures3.blogspot.com) has recently said, was there a more cold, calculating, inhuman phrase put together to refer to human beings?

4. ‘Singing From the Same Hymn Sheet’

Which means theirs not yours.

5. ‘No-brainer’

Usually said by those who have lost the ability to think at work i.e. lost their brain.

6. ‘Let’s Brainstorm this’

‘Let’s get all the ideas out on the table so that you feel better but in the end we’ll do it my way anyway’.

If I ever use any of the above in my books you have the right to turn me into a human resource (whatever that is). Actually I do use ‘Brainstorming’ in my new book on creativity but I take the position of the cynic on this one. We know that , for most of us, we do not get our best, most creative thoughts in this 'forced' environment. Most of us need time - get the problem on the back-burner - to come up with a creative solution.

Writing to ENO

2007-10-18T05:44:00.000-07:00

I have an MP3 with 15 Brian Eno albums on it and I am trying to listen to all of them in one day while working. Today is book proposal day (1 down and 2 to go) and Eno is the perfect friend to the writer. As I write I am in the middle of Here Come The Warm Jets album. 'Baby's On Fire' is the current track and what a genius track it is. But is the guitarist Robert Fripp or the guy out of the Pink Fairies? Answers Please.

I had a night in London on Monday and stayed at fellow muso and wine fanatic Brian's house. The next morning we felt truly people of the world. He heading to the airport for a plane to Marrakech and me for a plane to Perpignan in France. Soon for me it will be Port-Au-Prince. What a thrill that is going to be. I can feel the butterfiles starting.

Out of jail, out on bail

2007-10-12T14:57:00.000-07:00

Gil Scott-Heron was one of my first musical heroes. Ironically this most ascerbic of commentators on American society has, in the last 20 years been far bigger in the UK than the US. Gil has been in jail for the last two years. He skipped a probation order to appear on stage with Alicia keys (a sure sign that Gil had 'lost' it). But Gil is now out, recording a new LP and has just done his first post jail gig in New York. he will be doing his customary 7 nights at the Jazz Cafe no doubt. And he is recording a new LP. So in honour of his release here are the lyrics to his greatest (and much copied moment) 'The Revolution Will not be Televised'.

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised
You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be televised.
The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox
In 4 parts without commercial interruptions.
The revolution will not show you pictures of Nixon
blowing a bugle and leading a charge by John
Mitchell, General Abrams and Spiro Agnew to eat
hog maws confiscated from a Harlem sanctuary.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be brought to you by the
Schaefer Award Theatre and will not star Natalie
Woods and Steve McQueen or Bullwinkle and Julia.
The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal.
The revolution will not get rid of the nubs.
The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother.

There will be no pictures of you and Willie May
pushing that shopping cart down the block on the dead run,
or trying to slide that color television into a stolen ambulance.
NBC will not be able predict the winner at 8:32
or report from 29 districts.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down
brothers in the instant replay.
There will be no pictures of Whitney Young being
run out of Harlem on a rail with a brand new process.
There will be no slow motion or still life of Roy
Wilkens strolling through Watts in a Red, Black and
Green liberation jumpsuit that he had been saving
For just the proper occasion.

Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Hooterville
Junction will no longer be so damned relevant, and
women will not care if Dick finally gets down with
Jane on Search for Tomorrow because Black people
will be in the street looking for a brighter day.
The revolution will not be televised.

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock
news and no pictures of hairy armed women
liberationists and Jackie Onassis blowing her nose.
The theme song will not be written by Jim Webb,
Francis Scott Key, nor sung by Glen Campbell, Tom
Jones, Johnny Cash, Englebert Humperdink, or the Rare Earth.
The revolution will not be televised.

The revolution will not be right back after a message
bbout a white tornado, white lightning, or white people.
You will not have to worry about a dove in your
bedroom, a tiger in your tank, or the giant in your toilet bowl.
The revolution will not go better with Coke.
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath.
The revolution will put you in the driver's seat.

The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised,
will not be televised, will not be televised.
The revolution will be no re-run brothers;
The revolution will be live.

ECM Records

2007-10-12T14:09:00.000-07:00

I am 'playing' tonight. And I am playing with ECM records output. And I am listening to Qaws by Anouar Brahem, Jan Garbarek and Shaukat Hussein and I am thinking it is one of the most remarkable pieces of music I have ever heard - Garbarek's blistering quasi-arabic sax solo near the end is one of his finest moments and Brahem flies. ECM records was the label that took innovatory jazz to a new level and made Scandanavia the leader in jazz progression from the 1970's. It has retained that position to this day. George Russell, the great band leader thought the Scandanavians second only to Africans in their innate sense of rhythm.

Anouar Brahem is a Tunisian Oud player who has yet to produce a track that is anything less than interesting. For those that don't know him his album 'Thimar' with Dave Holland and John Surman is a useful entry point. But his greatest is 'Khomsa'. One of my five best albums of all time. His latest 'Le Voyage De Sahar' is fabulous too.

The Rugby World Cup

2007-10-12T04:08:00.000-07:00

Rugby is proving itself. As are the French. And I believe we are witnessing one of the best sporting competitions ever held. There are two reasons for this. The first is the rise of the ‘smaller’ nations challenging and sometimes beating the ‘bigger’ ones. This has now made the sport ‘global’ rather than a manifestation of empire. We have crossed the bridge. The second is the amazing level of support. It is interesting to compare this world cup with the soccer one. In the early rounds of the soccer world cup you often get games played in almost empty stadia. But in the RWC even the minor games – USA v Tonga for example – have been attracting crowds of 30,000 plus. This would be unheard of in football. I was reminded of the 60,000 crowd who watched a world cup qualifier between Georgia and Russia a couple of years ago. The French deserve credit for their great support and I was thrilled for them that they reached the semi-final. I was at Lyon airport at 10.30 on Saturday night and was able to join hundreds of people huddled round two screens for the last 15 minutes of the match against NZ. A wonderful atmosphere.

And now, against all the odds, England are playing France in the semi-final. How did that happen?

The Life of a writer

2007-10-11T15:09:00.000-07:00

You know when you have been selected to take a more diffcult path in life when your books are translated into Korean, Arabic and Albanian and not Spanish, Chinese or any other language with huge commercial potential. I look forward to the £4.97 royalty cheque (6 month period ending October 2007).

With 3 books planned I have been writing synopses. Actually I lie. I have been trying to write synopses whilst listening to huge amounts of music. As I haven't given musical recommendations recently this is what is currently 'tickling' me according to my itunes playlist:

Dave Douglas - Freak In
Astor Piazzola played by Gidon Kremer
Promise of a Fisherman - Santana
Gilles Peterson in Africa (Fela Kuti tracks)
J Dilla - Donuts
Mazzy Star - So Tonight That I Might See
Five Stairsteps - Behind Curtains
Harold Budd and Brian Eno - Ambient 2
Chico Hamilton with Eric Dolphy - Ellington Suite
Airto - Seeds on the Ground
Zbiegnew Preisner - Kieslowski film soundtrack music

And that was just today...

Bliss was it...

2007-10-10T06:00:00.001-07:00

...in that dawn to be alive.

I am going to see Pharaoh Sanders live at the Jazz Cafe.

And I cannot wait.

Feeling down

2007-10-09T04:27:00.000-07:00

Getting bad feedback from a client is not nice. And reminds me not to take work that doesn't interest me for the sake of the money. I am nearly at the point where I can choose my work. Perhaps now is the time to be hyper-ethical and take only that which 'tickles' me.

The lesson - don't try to deal with a subject like feedback skills in front of 100 hyper-analytical, introverted lawyers. I corpsed for the first time in five years. The last time was when I had 200 hundred housing workers for a day and I was asked to do a workshop on teambuilding. No-one told me they were going on strike the next day.

cosmorgasm

2007-10-09T04:22:00.000-07:00

I was at Vienna airport on Saturday evening and, browsing through the magazines I saw this on the front of Cosmopolitan:

'THE BLENDED ORGASM'

So deep. So strong. How you can have one tonight.

Now, I have tried a few things in my time, but I had never thought of reaching for the magimix as a means of satisfying a woman. Perhaps this is where I have been going wrong.

Broken Dream

2007-10-06T01:59:00.000-07:00

Almost a year ago, just after I began this blog I wrote about how ageing means settling into mediocrity for many and how Rod Stewart, who was superb for about 4 years - 1969 - 73 and has done nothing with any musical merit since continues to peddle trash and get paid for it. I don't blame him - I blame all of those people who buy the stuff. I say all this because I am just listening to 'In a Broken Dream' by Python Lee Jackson from 1972. Python Lee Jackson is Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck. And it is a fabulous piece of music.

A gun pointed at your head?

2007-10-06T00:20:00.000-07:00

Dinner the other night with a Kosovar friend of mine who told me a little more about the Serbian threat in 1999. His neighbour then, a Serb, who he had known for a number of years, came up to him one evening, out of the blue and pointed a gun to his head and asked him what he done to his wife. He took my friend outside and my friend feared for his life. Suddenly this man's wife called out to him. She had been out all day.

A few weeks later my friend was at the Macedonian border trying to get across the border to escape the murderous Serbian army - as were a million others. Near the border he came across a Serbian soldier who again put a gun to his head and this time I think my friend thought his number was up. At the moment a large number of US planes under the guise of Nato flew overhead. My friend's life was spared as the soldier deemed it prudent to get away as fast as he could.

My friend bears no ill will towards the Serbs - he just thinks that there was a huge, collective brainwashing going on there. That doesn't stop him being passionate about Kosovar independence. We are now very close to this happening. Kosovo will be fine. The Americans are committed here for fifty years having built their biggest army base in central Europe in the middle of it. Kosovo is massively important to them and Clinton (and Blair) are gods for setting NATO troops against the Serbian army. It would be just about the only place that Bush could walk down the main street and be cheered.

There is a book waiting to be written about Kosovo that takes its history up to the moment of it's independence. I would quite like to be the person to write it.

Interesting Times

2007-10-01T14:17:00.000-07:00

Strange things in the last few days:

Sitting opposite Kosovo Prime Minister Agim Ceku as we waited for the plane to Pristina. Kosovo. It is strange to sit with someone who you know has killed.

Coming out of the train station in Vienna on arrival and seeing the great Joe Zawinul’s ‘Birdland’ jazz club opposite with a small but simple tribute to him. He died two weeks ago as I mentioned in a recent blog. Zawinul was a hero of mine.

On arrival at Pristina airport slowly realising that the person I was sharing the official car with is the person who approves my visits and agrees to the cheque being signed. He realised who I was before I realised who he was. Hence his line of questioning which it took me a while to fathom.

Reading the Daily Telegraph (through lack of any other option) and being surprised at the low level of debate and rational argument in such an esteemed paper. Many ‘news’ articles were actually opinion articles apparently designed to brainwash the gullible. Simon Heffer’s column just full of rant – advocating the immediate abolition of the UN. Really Simon? His column just seemed nasty. The letters page full of ‘The country going to the dogs’ and ‘rapidly becoming 3rd world’. What a miserable way to see your country. Especially as it is patently untrue. It is just different from the way they want it to be.

England making a reasonable impersonation of a rugby team last friday.

Being aware of my complete lack of sex drive at the moment. Good or bad? I remember the late George Melly saying that life became so much easier when he didn’t have to control a wild beast anymore. I don’t think I am at that stage yet but the lack of ‘desire’ is puzzling.

Sleeping solidly for 9 hours without waking up. For the first time for a while I had a spring in my step this morning.

Having my mother arrive in France with new boyfriend and thinking that I do not like her at all. I started to feel like my sister does about her and I started to feel a little guilty about that. It’s the first time I have ever felt no connection at all and I could not wait to get away and on the plane at Lyon. She is drinking very heavily and is clearly telling lies to a number of people, me included.

But despite some of the negativity above I feel positive at the moment although my hypochondriac tendency is coming out. Hence no alcohol for a few days.

Music of the day: Zakir Hussain – Making Music. Thanks to the Half Note blog in NYC (my favourite blog at the moment) for reminding me of the beauty of this album.

Travels

2007-09-28T00:45:00.000-07:00

One of those perfect mornings. South of France, my youngest daughter's birthday, beautiful sunny morning and Pharoah Sanders newly acquired album album 'Elevation' for company.

Tomorrow it's off to Lyon to catch a flight to Vienna. I get six hours in Vienna for roaming before catching a flight onto Pristina, Kosovo where I will be for a week. I have been to Vienna a few times and while I like it, it's architectural perfection bores me after a time. I like my cities to have attendant grub and sleaze as well as museum-like architecture and Vienna is a bit too perfect for me. The kind of people who like Vienna are generally the kind of people I find a little too conservative.

Anyway, back to Pharoah Sanders. I am a bit of a completist but had never heard this album until I bought it London l;ast week. I like it because it does what Pharoah does best. Beautiful melody followed by chaos and musical blood-letting before a skillful return to melody. Cleansing, purifying music.

The year of the aerosol

2007-09-23T07:30:00.000-07:00

A busy two weeks in the UK comes to an end. Last week it was Manchester all week and after 4 days in France it is off to Kosovo for a week.

I saw the strangest exhibition imaginable in Manchester at the Gmex. 'Aerosol 2007'. What a riveting exhibition that must have been. And being the Gmex it must have been a big one too. Are that many people interest in Aersols? I imagined the whole exhibition being populated by glue sniffers and aerosol inhalers working out where the best sniffing fix was likely to come from in the next few years. But I suspect it was packed with aerosol salesmen ('men' chosen deliberately) absorbed by the magical world of particulates, smell and canisters.

France for four days will be a challenge. My mum ran off with another man earlier this year and I get the dubious honour of meeting him as she has persuaded him to come to France and meet the son and grandchildren. I have no interest in meeting him yet at all. In fact I surprised my usually immoral self by saying that I would not allow them to share a bed in my house. So they are staying up the road. I didn't want to explain to my 7 year old how grandma could sleep with grandpa last year and with new bloke this year. My mother, for whom the skills of 'emotional intelligence' have not yet been absorbed doesn't understand my point.

Music of the day: I am being a dinosaur today and have dug out Lou Reed's 'Transformer'.

Georgia

2007-09-16T04:13:00.000-07:00

Georgia, having been there 3 times recently is a place close to my heart. An intelligent passionate people with a troubled history. But last night they got closer to my heart still. They played Ireland in the rugby world cup and Ireland are one of the better sides in world rugby. It was a fantastic match and reminded me why rugby is so superior to football in terms of character and morality (and I must add, enjoyment too). No preening, falling over, being overpaid or verbal abuse of referees and opposition. It wasn't a question of whether Georgia could have won. They should have won and had they done so it would have been the most significant result ever in world rugby.

At the beginning of the year I was in Tbilisi and spent some time with one of the coaches close to the Georgian team. He told me how the game got started there (in the 1960's) by a french worker who started a team in his spare time. The Georgians took so quickly to it and it is fast becoming a national sport. Two years ago Georgia played Russia and 60,000 went to watch it. Most of the best Georgian players play in France which probably explains the great support they got from the crowd in Bordeaux last night.

In twenty years I think rugby will have become a global sport - there are signs that the US are starting to build a player base and the University of Berkeley have a very good team. The english, who invented the game may come to see the last ten years as the last time we had such in an exalted position in the sport. Our time may never come again. One thing is for sure. England would not have beaten Georgia last night.

Something to lean on...

2007-09-15T05:46:00.000-07:00

I have been in London for a week and next week I will be in Manchester. Earning money of course but once in a city I am a child in a candy store. I am one of the few males who enjoys shopping and of course, London means the obligatory trip to HMV. I limited myself to two purchases. I have been overdoing the jazz recently and so I diversified with a reputedly classic album by Talk Talk (a while after they dropped the new romantic stuff) and Eddie Hazel's also supposedly classic solo album.

This morning I am nursing a modest hungover courtesy of one of the most original wines I have ever drunk - Amestoi - a basque white wine with a hint of fizz. Expensive but worth every penny. The drinking was done in anticipation of england putting up a decent performance against South Africa. Sadly they didn't. In fact it was close to the worse england performance I have seen and I saw a few bad ones in the eighties.

So today I am consoling myself with my new purchases. Both are brilliant. Hazel is a guitar genius whose 'Maggot Brain' on the Funkadelic album of the same name is often cited as one of the greatest. His mum insisted on it being played at his funeral - he died young.

'Spirit of Eden' is a bona-fide classic. I know where Sigur Ros come from now. I recommend it highly to all readers. They must have been listening to Miles, Sylvian and a bit of prog at the same time.

The giants of jazz

2007-09-12T14:54:00.000-07:00

A giant of 20th century music died yesterday. Joe Zawinul of Weather Report, Miles great late sisties line-up, The Cannonball Adderley Band and the Zawinul Syndicate moved on. The brotherhood of jazz, so soon after the death of Max Roach loses another one of its greatest exponents. For those not in the know, Zawinul was the genius behind Miles Davis's 'In a Silent Way', the composer of the seminal 'Birdland' and to my mind, one of his greatest (and my favourite piece of his) 'Boogie-woogie Waltz' from 'Sweetnighter'. A true innovator and an endlessly fascinating innovator.

King Curtis

2007-09-11T03:12:00.000-07:00

In my pantheon of male soul greats the list would include Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Donny Hathaway, Bobby Womack and Curtis Mayfield. Marvin is first having produced the two greatest soul albums in history but behind him, and only just, comes Curtis Mayfield. I say this because I have just discovered some of the music that Curtis produced (but didn't perform himself)from the '60's and '70's. The Curtom Soul Compilations are great but I cannot recommend enough The Five Stairsteps - a wonderful, doo-wop inspired soul vocal group that Curtis put together in his spare time in the sixties. He had music dripping from every pore of his body then and produced brilliance almost at will.

I watched a fantastic programme on BBC2 a few years ago (I note that BBC2 have given up on this sort of programme). It featured Curtis just after he had been rendered quadraplegic by collapsed rigging on a stage while performing. Curtis was teaching himself to sing again and to play the guitar and through amazing effort he did it. But we all doubted if he could ever re-create anything near in quality to that which he had done before. The world is full of once great musicians who keep on churning out albums that are worthy but dull efforts (Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and many others). But Curtis suddenly came out with 'New World Order',a beautiful album that stood up superbly against his other work. Sheer force of will had got him back. He died within a year of its release. I sensed that he had decided that the time to go would be after he had taught himself to sing again and produced an album that said to the world that he had made it back. A great guy.

What adds excitement?

2007-09-11T03:03:00.000-07:00

I love the phrase 'When was the last time you did something for the first time'. It is my personal mantra. I believe that it is critical to say this to yourself regularly after the age of 40 otherwise life just becomes a unmemorable downhill slide. Life passes more quickly as you get older because you have less memorable first time experiences. We all have different interpretations of new experiences. For some it might be hobbies or new sports. For me it is musical discovery (well-chronicled in this blog) and going to new places. I don't mean by that Spanish beach resorts. I mean immersion in something very different one's own frame of reference. In the last couple of years I have been to Kosovo, Macedonia and Georgia. This year I am going to Kosovo again, Haiti (in November) and Hungary (for Christmas). Haiti in particular will be a real first time experience and one that not many will be able to share. I hope to be going to India (and taking my children with me) in February next year. Marvellous. The next six months will be special.

Music of the day: If I could only remember my name - David Crosby. A recent discovery for me. Is it his best work? Clearly many think so.

Racisme?

2007-09-04T06:20:00.000-07:00

I speak a little french but had a real challenge with the father of one of my daughter's friends yesterday. My daughter had been away for the day and he came to drop her back home. He talked almost non-stop for twenty minutes and, as men do, we got onto sport and the french national football team. I couldn't work out whether he was saying that it was appalling that the french team that won the world cup was predominantly African and therefore not french (the racist Jean Marie Le-Pen position) or whether he was taking the liberal view and suggesting that national boundaries matter less with the free movement of people. His french was so fast I was only picking up one word in four. I gave him the benefit of the doubt and assumed he was taking the 'inclusive' position. I fear however, that I was wrong in this assumption. The Languedoc is the beating heart of racism in France.

School

2007-09-04T06:13:00.000-07:00

My almost three year old started school today. She cried her eyes out when I dropped her. It took 40 years of experience to prevent myself doing the same. When I went to pick her up at lunchtime she was having a great time. The fickleness of youth! I was at Boarding school for ten years from the age of eight and I remember crying after my parents dropped me for the first time - Sompting Abbotts School near Worthing if anyone is interested. Only half an hour later I wondered why I had cried and was eating a vast meal and mucking about with new friends. I must confess that while I absolutely loved being at school I couldn't contemplate sending my children away as boarders.

Great English Accents

2007-09-01T10:02:00.000-07:00

Does anyone,in the history of film, have a worse english accent than Dick Van Dyke in the film 'Mary Poppins'?

I have endured this film 3 times today because my overtired daughters were struggling to do anything else after their Lyon exertions. We had a lovely 3 days. Lyon is a great city (why do I live in the country - I love cities, London of course the best)and not over-burdened with tourism. It reminded me that I currently reside in a culture, excitement and pleasure-free environment - the Languedoc. No wonder France, and this part in particular has an alarmingly high rate of anti-depressant absorption. It is plain and the people narrow. When I go to places like Lyon I remember why I like cities. Next week it will be London for a fortnight. I may do little. But I always have the choice to do that or the opposite. Cities give me freedom of choice.

Music of the day - Gismonti/Vasconcelos - 'Duas Vozes'

I forgot to mention that my 2 year old was so energised by the visual stimulation of a city that she thought nothing of climbing the 500 steps - 'tout seul' - up to Fourviere to reach the fabulous Basilica - 'Notre Dame'.

Summertime...

2007-08-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

and the living is...well you know the rest.

So easy is fact that I had time to follow up my ten best jazz gigs (I counted eleven of them) with ten jazz albums which to my mind are really underrated and in some cases almost unknown. At least three of them (Dolphy/Little, Lateef and Szabo) are right up there in my twenty or so favourites. As is the DDonald Byrd. So, have you heard any of these?

(last blog until next weekend I am off to Lyon for a few days and for the first time in two years I am planning to go two consecutive days without turning on a computer).

Next Album – Sonny Rollins

Form 1973. Totally unknown and to my mind one of his best. This is happy like most Rollins albums. It was probably ignored because everyone was listening to Herbie and Miles and jazz-fusion in 1972. I love George Cables’ keyboard playing too on this.

Fancy Free – Donald Byrd

This is a classic album. Beautiful playing – particularly on the title track from Byrd and Frank Foster more usually associated with the Basie band and showing a completely different side of himself here. Donald Byrd is a great musician who lost credibility in jazz circles when he took the money route with The Blackbyrds. This album was him at his creative best.

High Contrast – Gabor Szabo

I would take this on a desert island with me – it is one of my favourite albums. This is also one of the most bizarre collaborations in musical history. Gabor Szabo (Hungarian gyspy) and Bobby Womack (Amercian soul legend). Bobby only plays guitar. This album features the original version of Breezin’ made famous five years later by George Benson. The original, as is usually the case, is far superior. A mention too for the drumming of the always excellent Jim Keltner.

Live at the Five Spot – Eric Dolphy

I just love the feel of this live double CD. Mal Waldron on piano stands out as of course does the genius of Dolphy. When I listen to him I wonder what he would have gone on to create had he lived. He was dead a year or two later. (‘Last Date’ recorded in Holland is worth buying too with a terrific version of ‘Miss Ann’ – called last date because it was for Dolphy).

Free Form – Joe Harriot

Britain’s first jazz genius laid this down in 1961 and it is up there with the work of Coltrane around that time. Groundbreaking and powerful it was of course virtually ignored in the UK. The Penguin Guide To Jazz recently acknowledged its classic status by awarding it the 5 stars only given to very few albums (Kind of Blue, Love Supreme etc). It is that good.

Take Twelve – Lee Morgan

Sidewinder is the most famous. But I like this. A formula blue note jazz album perhaps but ‘A Waltz for Fran’ is beautiful and Second’s Best and the title track great jazz blasts. One to go for when you are not sure what to put on or have been listening to the jazz classics too much.

Eastern Sounds – Yusuf Lateef

A great album from 1957 from a great guy with YL showing the range of musical instruments he can play. This was the album that reconnected me to jazz around 1990 after a lull. It has a lovely feel and understatement in the playing. This is just ‘cool’, sparse and it sounds so evocative of the late 1950’s. YL is one of the very few who sounds convincing playing jazz on the flute too (along with Dolphy of course).

Far Cry – Eric Dolphy with Booker Little

This is an album of pure genius played by two of them. It features both Dolphy just as he was becoming THE great multi-instrumentalist of the time and the trumpter Booker Little who died aged 23. I have loved this from the moment I bought it when I was about 22 and really getting into jazz. Every track is great with the opener featuring the little played bass clarinet and a magnificent “Tenderly’ featuring wonderful solo alto sax from the man himself. This is a straight jazz album just before Dolphy announced his freeform credentials with ‘Out to Lunch’ and others. For a time (perhaps two years) I think he was the best.

The backing musicians are Jaki Byard, Ron Cater and Roy Haynes. It doesn’t get much better than that.

Sweetnighter – Weather Report.

Everyone knows Black Market and Heavy Weather but this is the one for me. Boogie Woogie Waltz is like nothing I have ever heard and shows what a great rhythmic keyboard player Joe Zawinul was. No wonder he was in Adderley’s band for so long. Intelligent fusion when the idiom was being abused and jazz becoming unrecognisable. That had a good side but I don’t really think that black American jazz music has ever recovered. The Scandinavians now rule the jazz world.

The Black Messiah – Cannonball Adderley

I have put this in because I haven’t heard it for 20 years! I want to hear it again and I cannot find it. I remember it was live and I think featured a young George Duke on keyboards. I just remember listening to this a few times at my friend Robin’s when we were about 18 and it was great. Robin of course ‘lost’ the album.

I must add that today, despite all the jazz pontification I have been enjoying Dusty Springfield's 'Dusty in Memphis'. The only white woman who could ever sing soul. Anyone disagree?

Ten great jazz gigs

2007-08-20T12:25:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be fun to include my ten favourite jazz gigs. In no particular order (apart from the first):

Pharaoh Sanders – Dingwalls 1993

I think I have said enough about this in previous blogs. The best musical experience of my life.

Miles Davis – Royal Festival Hall 1991

The gig wasn’t that great. But it was him. And he mattered. And he was dead six weeks later.

John Etheridge – The Bass Clef, 1991

I was one of the four in the audience for this! A cold bleak Sunday night. He turned it into a play, improv session for us and we chatted with him between pieces. His playing was remarkable. I have seen him play live many times (and he is second only to John McLaughlin among British guitarists in my opinion) and this was the best. And what a pro for doing the gig with his full band. I left the gig to find my bike had been nicked.

Pat Metheney – Hammersmith Odeon, 1992

I surprise myself by including this but he had his full band (about 12 of them) and he was fabulous. A bit bland for me on record but live he is right on the spot. The show stopper was ‘Are you going with me’. And we were.

Talvin Singh – Barbican 1999

TS played with Sun Ra when he was 16 and is a musical master from the east end of London. He left jazz years ago and probably got off after this gig. It was the Mercury Music Prize celebratory gig and included Bill Laswell playing the loudest bass I have ever heard, Sakamoto on keyboards and the underrated Cleveland Watkiss on vocals plus various Indian percussion maestros. This was him at his best with a great band.

John Surman – Purcell Room 1996

A solo concert from a musical genius. Highly pastoral and a gig laced with anecdote, Thomas Hardy references and of course brilliant multi-instrumentation. I remember someone coughed and he said ‘count yourself lucky you’re not at a Keith Jarrett concert’ (Jarrett is known for admonishing audience members who cough, play with sweet wrappers etc.)

Eberhard Weber – Queen Elizabeth Hall 1997

One of ECM’s greatest did a solo bass show and I must admit I wondered if the bass could sustain a 2 hour slot. If I had shut my eyes I would have imagined there were five musicians on the stage and I could have listened to him for two hours more. A great musician and a great, humourous guy.

John Scofield – Monkey’s, Brentwood, Essex 1990

I blogged on this the other day. A muscular, tight performance from a great, great trio. I remember I had just bought his acclaimed ‘Time on my hands’ album and didn’t rate it at all (I still don’t) but this gig was another world entirely.

Jan Garbarek – Royal Festival Hall 1994

The first time I saw him and the only time I have cried at a concert. The music was magisterial and very beautiful. And what a band – Bruninghaus, Weber and Marilyn Mazur

Sonny Rollins – Theatre Royal 1995

This was just one of the happiest shows I have been to. He was in full calypso mode with an excellent Bob Cranshaw on bass. He was around 65 then and his lung power was something else. I still think his ignored ‘Next Album’ is one of the best straight jazz albums I have heard.

Gil Scot-Heron – Jazz Café 1991

This blew me away completely. Gil still had it together then before the drugs got hold of him. He is currently a crack addict, HIV positive and in jail. He was poignant, assertive and had a fabulous band with Gil himself playing lovely chords on the Fender-Rhodes. I spent the evening calling for him to play ‘Beginnings’ – one of my favourite Gil tunes. He didn’t of course but I still loved every second of this.

Other great ones – Arild Anderson, Vinicius Cantuaria, Shakti, Egberto Gismonti, Terje Rydal. The Rydal got very, very close to being included. Anouar Brahem – my current musical hero – probably would have been in there but I was, to my shame a little too drunk at his concert and didn’t enjoy it to the full – a shame really because he had Dave Holland and John Surman in his trio. Anyway I shall be seeing him live in Montpellier next month playing his new (and absolutely brilliant album) ‘Le Voyage De Sahar’.

People who I haven’t seen and would like to: Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard (sadly his chops have gone), Charlie Mariano.

And of course there are many whom I would have loved to have seen but will not now do so! Dolphy (dead just before I was born), Coltrane (dead just after I was born), Clifford Brown, Freddie Webster (whom Miles thought one of the best), Albert Ayler, Art Pepper. I would really liked to have seen Collin Walcott and Don Cherry together as well. I would like to have seen Britain’s very own Joe Harriot around 1961 to see if he was as good as everyone says. Certainly “free-form’ from 1961 is right up there with the best of American modern jazz from that era. We didn’t know what we had!

It’s perhaps not fair to include the missable ones but Miroslav Vitous trying to do a duet acoustic bass concert with his brother at the Jazz Café when there was an MTV party going on inside takes some beating. I still love him for ‘New York City’ his 1976 disco piece though. Where did that come from?

Perhaps a blog soon on other great non-jazz gigs. Nacao Zumbi (great, great, great), John Martyn, Santana. I really enjoyed The Gotan Project too at Somerset House in 2003.

Great french service

2007-08-20T10:53:00.000-07:00

My car broke down on the A9 outside Narbonne, Southern France yesterday. I take back all I have ever said about French service. My mobile had simultaneously decided not to work, I had my three and seven year old with me and I was feeling both gormless and helpless. A ‘patrouille’ vehicle arrived quickly and unprompted and arrange for me, the car and daughters to be towed into Narbonne from whence a taxi was booked (not an easy thing to do in France on a Sunday) which took me and the babies the 100km home. All done in about two hours. I didn’t even have to speak a word of French. Why can’t the French make everything else about French living as easy as this?

The ‘Takk’ album is still the one being played almost continuously and the track ‘Svo Hljott’ is a remarkable piece of music. This is a truly fabulous album. I only hope I am not playing it to the point where I will never be able to listen to it again. There is so much great new music around at the moment and I seem to be discovering most of it simultaneously. That said I have also been enjoying a 50’s doo-wop compilation and particularly The Flamingos ‘I only have eyes for you’. A friend of mine Mike, who is in his fifties and lived (and survived) the music supported excess of the late sixties and early seventies and can tell you about some of the most obscure music ever reckons this is the best age for music since 1967-73. I agree with him. I was unfortunate to be in my teens in the early ‘80’s – the direst time for popular music since about 1957 (Jazz of course, comes under a separate heading). I had an argument about this with someone the other week who thought the early ‘80’s were the best. I asked for evidence. The answer? Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, Human League…you get the drift. No wonder I drink too much…

Miles

2007-08-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

I fell to sleep today - during the day. A real old man's sleep. I lay on the sofa, put the wonderful Sigur Ros 'Takk' album on and the next thing I knew it was the last track and I was coming round. It's funny, I felt like I had heard the whole album but I was not conscious of doing so. The undermind at work...

Inspired by reading an excellent musically orientated blog from NYC I thought about Miles Davis today. I remembered seeing him live at the Royal Festival Hall six weeks before he died. The night he actually died I had been to the theatre and I put the radio on when I got home and heard the news. Obviously I had to have a drink to arguably the 20th century's most important musician (well to me anyway) but the only drink I could find was a very old bottle of creme de menthe. It must be the only time in my life when there was nothing alcoholic and tempting. Still I drank the CDM and listened to (from memory) 'walkin''. I don't really know why I chose that album. It was never a favourite but perhaps a desire to listen to something of his that was not totally familiar made me go for that one. I was buying a Miles album a week at that time and maybe I had overdone it.

There are some Miles albums that are criminally underrated. I love 'Jack Johnson' and particularly the Herbie H stuff on it and also 'Starpeople' from the eighties which featured John Scofield. I saw Scofield a few times live (it was two gigs a week in the very early '90's) and once at the tiny 'Monkey club' in Essex he was phenomenal. Monkey's was almost like a private jazz club and I remember a few weeks before the gig the owner took to the mic and said 'look, we've got a chance of getting JS here but because it's a small club we can only get a few people in. If we all pay (£30?) each we can get him'. And he did. He was amazing (with I think Adam Nussbaum with him) and there was less than 150 of us cramped into a tiny club. Cramped, loud (and my partner in crime Mike, very stoned) but a seminal moment in my musical life. I am sad in a way at all the gigs I miss. Next week for instance Britain's very own John Etheridge (one of the world's great guitar players) plays with Arild Anderson (one of the very first ECM pioneers) and John Marshall (Soft Machine and many others) at the Pizaa Express in Soho. But I cannot be there.

While I write this I am listening to the Sigur Ros album again. It is stunning. And it continues to be my album of the day.

Happy Birthday

2007-08-16T13:06:00.000-07:00

This blog is at risk of being turned over solely to music and if I read my first blog in November 2006 it was meant to be about thinking positively with one permitted daily grip.

Anyway it is music time again and yesterday I went to Montpellier and spent my birthday present from my sister Nikki. The absolute gem among the acquisitions was the album 'Takk' by Sigur Ros. I knew of this album when it came out two years ago but I just hadn't got round to buying it. What a waste of two years of listening pleasure. This is the best new album I have heard in that time. Totally original, anthemic and just beautiful. Caroline is away for a few days and Lily my eldest was having dinner at a friends. So there I was with my almost 3 year old Izzy having dinner to the sound of Sigur Ros when she said 'I like this music daddy'. I gave her a big kiss and took a large celebratory swig of the lovely St Chinian I bought today. She is even either going to learn to love it even more or grow sick of it.

One album I bought was the lesser known 'Presence' by Led Zep. Not a great album but 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' is a contender for their greatest track.

It is lull time. 3 visits to Kosovo before the end of the year, a manic hotel to hotel month in the UK in September plus I hope the commencement of a contract in Frankfurt around October time. Christmas is likely to be spent in Hungary. I wonder where else I will get to this year? And the new book comes out in November. Just as I thought the last one was my worst I believe that this one is the one I am most proud of. I now seem to be falling out with my Commissioning Editor during the writing of each book as I have with this one. Either she is getting sick of it or she treats it as par for the course. I suppose she must be used to dealing with Writer's Ego.

Language

2007-08-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

Interviewer: ‘If you could have someone alive or dead for lunch who would you chose’.

Interviewee: ‘The one that’s alive’.

Sometimes we don’t quite say what we mean. Of course, apart from the question that was intended and the way it was heard there could be a 3rd interpretation – you could infer from the question that you were going to be eating the person. Interesting. Who would you eat if you were forced into cannibalism?

Does this show the flexibility of the English language? I read that there are now 5 times as many words in English as there are in French probably because English is now spoken in so many different cultures and they all put their own spin on it whereas French is now spoken as a first language by about 100 million people. I for one will be very interested to see how global Spanish will be when it becomes the majority first language in the US – 25 years time is the prediction. Will it become the 2nd studied language after English in European schools. I think it likely that German and French will both be pushed back. The Germans are secure enough in their own identity to not let it worry them. The French are terrified of the decline in use of their language perhaps again demonstrating the well publisized fear they have of the alck of ‘France’ in the world. I constantly try not be negative about France in my blogs (and fail miserably) but I, after 4 years of living here see little evidence of a culture that is anything but self-absorbent rather than outward looking. That to me makes it dull.

Roast bunny

2007-08-06T11:50:00.001-07:00

A lovely quote in yesterday’s Sunday Times made in pre-revolutionary France by a society lady – ‘Of all the men I never loved, my husband was the one I liked the most’. I wonder how many other women might say the same thing. Plenty I should think – in fact I know a few.

Another quote and one closer to my own life from Thomas Keneally on Desert Island Discs recently ‘What makes me write is fear…the fear that I cannot write’. Why does this resonate? Because I have just finished my new book last night. Out in November. This is number five with a 6th and 7th to follow shortly. The target is ten and then I may stop. Thankfully they do earn me money so this isn’t quite self-indulgence. But the fear is what drives you to write. Plus the incentive of the 2nd and 3rd cheques for the advance.

We have had a lot of domestic rabbits in the garden from the house opposite us – fine by me as they keep the grass down. Anyway my eldest Lily (7) has befriended a ten year old girl in the opposite house and last night she was invited over for dinner. Rabbit on the menu. Life in rural France. Was it Flopsy, Mopsy or Cotton Tail I wonder?

Album of the day – Le Pas Du Chat Noir: Anouar Brahem.

Pharoah Sanders

2007-08-02T07:40:00.000-07:00

Great music and great musicians are often only appreciated when they are gone. Thankfully Pharoah Sanders is very much with us but I read an interview today where he said he doesn’t get enough work. ‘I’d like to work more’ he said ‘but nobody calls me’. I would pay Pharoah Sanders 5 grand to come and do a personal appearance in my lounge tonight. And I know 5 friends who would pay their share of the cut.

One of jazz music’s greatest ever saxophonists can’t get enough work. A man whose ‘sheets of sound’ graced John Coltrane’s ‘Ascension’, whose late sixties albums produced a whole new idiom of what we might call spiritual jazz and whose album ‘Journey to the One’ to me is the signing off point for a fabulous era of black American music. ‘You’ve Got to Have Freedom’ being just a joyous dance anthem.

I have seen Pharoah live a few times. The first time was at Dingwalls in Camden. For the first hour I stood right at the back and couldn’t really see or hear properly. I then popped to the loo and had to pass near the stage. I and Mike, John and Caroline who were with me (Arkangel did you leave this one?) were never further than 3m away from the stage for the next three hours. He was mesmerising, magnificent. He played for ever and you sensed he was absolutely at the top of his game. He just did not want to stop. It was the closest thing I will ever see to his mentor Coltrane. Pianist William Henderson and Steven Neil on bass were at their best too.

At about 1am he had to wind up. 500 of us sweating and drunk on atmosphere stood silent when he clanged a huge gong. One of the most surreal moments in my life was absolute silence in a heaving jazz club for around 3 minutes when for 4 hours before the place was a musical party. Someone coughed and he clanged his gong again. We laughed and obediently fell silent. Marvellous. I feel a few tears at the memory of it.

I still have the review of the gig from the Independent. ‘In Dingwalls last night all heaven broke loose…’. Sometimes I wonder if reviewers ever go to concerts. This reviewer was most definitely there.

And this man can’t get enough work!

Service in France

2007-08-02T04:47:00.000-07:00

Your handy guide to french customer service:

For 'after sales service' : **** off

For 'before sales service': 'Count yourself lucky I'm lowering myself to serve you'

Most recent french service experience:

I had a meal served to me the other day with broken glass in it. They bought me a replacement and still charged me.

A day before that I had called wanadoo to say my internet wasn't functioning properly they suggested I went to the local branch of france telecom to get a replacement filter. When I told them that I had already tried 4 different filters they suggested I still went to the shop to get a 5th and that it might work. I don't think so. I sorted out the problem myself in the end.

Have the french got it right and the Brits and Americans are just very unchilled about customer service? Or am I right to be sick of being continually ripped off and treated like a nonentity with a wallet. The first day we arrived in France nearly four years ago a local said to us: 'Welcome to the land of the rip-off'. We laughed. I don't mind paying a lot of money for things that work. I do mind when the interest in me disappears at the moment the cheque is banked.

Madlib

2007-07-25T10:33:00.000-07:00

This morning I was up at 7am and I immediately began to write. 700 words by 8.30am when my eldest daughter poked her head around the door. When I do this I always say I must do this every day – an early start is the key to a day of productivity. It was a stunning morning – already 22 degrees and the sky was that Mediterranean blue that is to deep you can almost slice it. It seems we now have two weeks of this. Two weeks of writing and swimming to look forward to. I am sorry to gloat about this – particularly because UK readers are ‘swimming’ for other reasons. France for 8 months of the year is not a place I care for at all. But for 4 glorious months in the summer it becomes another country.

I am 22,000 words into my next book. 13,000 to go and the usual worries about non-completion, writing garbage etc. And the worries were justified when my first batch of copy was pulled apart by publisher and editor – justifiably so. A critical sharpening up of my mental faculties took place over the weekend and I hope I am now writing my best book yet. A thin dividing line between dross and excellence.

Anyway – to continue my musical theme of the last blog. Musically one thing always leads to another with me when I make a new discovery. Looking up more about J Dilla I discovered the name Madlib (and what a great name to). So I downloaded his album ‘Expressions’ with hip-hop vocalist Dudley Perkins. Pure class – particularly the middle 3 or 4 tracks. I didn’t know music like this existed. I have always known that hip-hop extends into the world of highly intelligent music (such as Spearhead/Michael Franti) but I didn’t really know where it lived. So, I imagine (and hope) there will be more recommendations to come.

J Dilla

2007-07-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

I suppose one of the things about being forty is that you give up trying to be cutting edge – if I ever was. So new things hit you about a year after they were new things. Bouncing a few emails with my good friend Carlos (erstwhile flatmate of the Chemical Brothers at University) he must have remembered that I loved DJ Shadow’s album ‘Endtroducing’ album from 1996. I felt cutting edge then – I must have been one of the first to own it and recommended it to about fifty people all of whom loved it too.

Anyway in classic ‘if you like this then you’ll love this’ mode he suggested a listen to J Dilla’s ‘Donuts’ album released last year 3 days after his death from a rare blood disorder. I ploughed through 30 second bites of each track on itunes (each track lasts around 1 minute 30) and then downloaded it. The man knows his soul. Buy it now.

I suppose one of the other things about being forty is that you learn to look after things that you have paid for. What I mean by that is that you paid outright for rather than on credit card, loan etc. So recently I bought a swimming pool which I am now cherishing like my first born. Hell I am even making people wash their feet before they get in it. 5000 euros. It is the luxury item of my life and I shake at the thought of the money I spent on it. But 3 swims a day and the almost instant lightening of my usually angst ridden state suggest that a 5000 euro investment equates to five extra years of life.

Particularly useful when trying to write books in post 30 degree southern French heat.

Album of the day is ‘Donuts’.

Swimming

2007-07-06T13:34:00.000-07:00

I have recorded few really good days over the last six months - for the most part there haven’t been many of them. Stuck in airports, endless delayed flights, lack of sleep and the demands of clients have made the last couple of months at least less than thrilling. And I guess, as I look at my volume of blogs, the declining number perhaps indicates a lack of recent stimulation . I haven’t been able to think of anything I wanted to say.

But today has been good. I started with a couple of thousand words of the new book (’Brilliant Idea’), and followed it with some insightful research. All the productivity meant I felt less than guilty about heading down to our local lake this afternoon for an extended swim with my seven year old daughter. Nothing is as tedious I suppose as reading about other people’s children, particularly if you have none yourself. But this afternoon was blissful. The perfect temperature – around 35 degrees – deep blue sky, clean water and a rare opportunity to have some time with Lily. Younger daughter was at the crèche. We swam to the opposite side of the lake (Le Barrage at Vailhan in The Herault), then around an Island in the middle of the lake and then we went in for a final swim out to the middle of the lake. There is nothing like the hot sun on your face when immersed in cold water. You feel all the toxins escaping from your body by the second.

And those lovely words a father loves to hear – ‘this is really good daddy, just you and me’, that tells you that she will treasure the rare but lovely 3 hours we had.

A curious thing happened this morning. On the spur of the moment I bought a series of Mozart piano concertos (21-25) played by Ashkenazy at HMV Oxford Street last week and listened to them all this morning while I worked. I have posted little about music recently but today I recommend them as an aid to creative writing. I like some classical music (although I cannot stand the tweeness and ham acting in opera) but I surprised myself with the pleasure I got from these. I balanced it with Roni Size’s ‘New Forms’ on the drive back from the swimming!

Weights and Measures

2007-06-27T13:22:00.000-07:00

In my quest for complete scientific knowledge I have inadvertently discovered a new system for weighing things that I believe will revolutionise business everywhere. Indeed I think it will create a measurement system that guarantees extra profit for all commercial enterprises that use it.

It is called the ‘ryankilo’ and is already in use by celebrated money-making machine and part time airline Ryanair. A ryankilo is equivalent to 1.1 metric kilos. This is how it works. If you take a bag on a British Airways flight and it weighs 15.6 kilos you will find that the exact same bag with the exact same contents will weigh 16.8 kilos with Ryanair. With a hold limit of 15 kilos per person (which in effect means up to 16 kilos) Ryanair is able to charge you for the extra kilo. In my lifelong search to find the perfect route to money-making even I could make money out of that. And so could you.

Just imagine what this will do for shops. A 10% saving for the seller on anything you buy that needs weighing – Woolies ‘pick n’ mix for example.

There is one place where it won’t work though. The dieting industry.

What are Human Resources?

2007-06-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

Thought for the day:

I have always thought that only a Human Resources department could come up with the phrase ‘human resource’. Let’s make machines out of people! It’s the way human resource department insists on things like ‘competency matrices’ that gets to me. And then they wonder why they end up recruiting the merely competent rather than the potentially great. The frame of reference is so narrow. For example, look at any recruitment ad now and you see an identikit formula for recruitment – good team player, ability to work under pressure etc. ‘Good team player’ is such a wide and meaningless phrase and even if we could agree what this meant would we want everyone in the team to share these characteristics? Surely teams are meant to have a wide diversity of souls, brains, emotions, and perspectives.

In the words of the great management guru Tom Peters – ‘I have met many human beings before but I have never met a human resource’. And I bet he hopes he never will…

I hear people can now get degrees in Human Resource Management. I just do not see where human resources add value to any business and that must be the criteria for the existence of any department. The best definition I ever heard of organisational effectiveness was a raison d’etre that seeks to ‘cut out systems and procedures that don’t add value in the eyes of the customer’. I need a lot of convincing that HR adds any value at all. They have even swallowed up training departments and this has been disastrous for training in organisations in the UK. The genesis of HR was the old payroll department. Isn’t it about time they reverted to that?

Romantic Love

2007-06-17T08:27:00.001-07:00

I saw two people last week. One I guess in their mid fifties (male) whom I know well and one slightly younger and female who I know less well. They have been together for more than fifteen years. I have been thinking a lot about romantic love recently and when I saw these two together I realsied what it was. They touched each comfortably though not explicitly and I could feel the charge that existed between them. Never was the two magnets metaphor more appropriate. They were very comfortable commenting on each others vulnerabilities in the most direct ways but were able to divorce their own egos from the critisising. You have to be very sure of each other to do that. And yet, even though this certainty existed, I felt that they still reserved a part of their reactions to each other as one does when you are in the early stages of a relationship. In other words even though they were fifteen years into a relationship they still found each others words interesting and worthy of their time. I enjoyed observing them.

And as I observed them I wondered how many who are in long term relationships or marriage manage to remain romantically in love with their partners in the way they did in the first year of two of their relationship. Do you listen to your partner? do always have time for them first? Do you still get a little thrill if you are away for a day or two and then come back? Is criticism fun and playful rather than biting and nasty? And do you at least get the feeling that occassionally at least you want to take them to bed and have three or four hours of rampant nookie? That is to say that you still find them physically attractive.

Is there anything more important than this? Than real romantic love?

USB

2007-06-02T00:01:00.000-07:00

I had an enjoyable drink with some IT wonks here in Kosovo last night - my last night. A really international group - Kosovars, Romanians, Canadians, Turks, Thais. We talked about the takeover of the computer as a communication tool but also as an energy source and more than that as the central hub in our home. The clinching moment in the discussion came when one of the group informed everyone that he got an email today advertising the first USB Fridge. You plug it into your USB and off you go. It holds one can of coke but it cannot be long before we run household fridges, cookers, microwaves (I am proud to say I have never owned one of these) and so on. One of the key household devices - music systems - are being utilised more and more in this way and the next logical step will be to power the home through this central source.

With Bill Gates announcing yesterday that a key Microsoft development in the next year or two is the removal of traditional computer interaction devices such as the mouse and the keyboard where does the imagination take you? Using voice and touch to communicate with the hub (what we currently call a computer) to direct all activities in the home. Billing through one source that monitors everything in your domestic environment.

New Realities in Kosovo

2007-05-28T13:28:00.000-07:00

I am sitting here in my hotel room in Pristina, Kosovo at 9.30 after dinner with my good Kosovar friend Arlind and listening to the beautiful sound of the last call to prayer at the mosques dotted around the capital. It is almost like a competition. The Imans ‘sing’ at call to prayer time and at this moment I can hear the sounds of around 6 Imans all singing in a kind of competitive symmetry.

Tonight we debated the future of Kosovo. I bemoaned the fact that billions of dollars have been spent on creating stability with it seems little thought given to the fact that what gives most people stability is a job and money in their pocket. With unemployment running at 70% and with a rapidly declining inward financial contribution from Kosovars working in Germany and Switzerland it is extremely difficult to see where economic growth will come from. Nation status will make it more attractive to foreign investors and that will create jobs but not enough to make changes. I fear that too much money has been spent on job creation opportunities for Europeans with too many educational certificates who can theorise and pontificate but who lack the real Can Do mentality to do the things that really matter. This is a great place to test out whether all of that theoretical stuff you learnt between the ages of 18 and 26 mean much and I guess that many learn that these theories do not apply in places that are very different to your frame of reference. The frame of reference that is universal is a job, money in your pocket, the possibility of being entrepreneurial if you are so inclined and the wherewithal to make business work. Western values mean so much more if you can afford to have them. And to pay for them.

Europe has too many people who stayed in further education with nowhere meaningful to go and they end up working for international agencies funded by American and EU money and achieving little because they have been shielded from the real world. I am increasingly angry and frustrated by this. We have too many overly qualified people in Europe and we seem to think, in the UK at least, that 50% of our young people getting degrees is a good thing thing. I think it crazy. Where do they go? Ultimately states have to create work for them because this never-ending educational circus kills off the Can do, Will do mentality. Many of us need an element of real-world struggle to define and shape our lives. Formal education does not provide this.

Mark Higson

2007-05-27T06:11:00.000-07:00

In 1991 I worked with a guy called Mark Higson for around 18 months. In the 1980’s Mark was in charge of the Iraqi desk at the foreign office and was in a unique position to see the reality of what went on in the Arms to Iraq scandal in which ministers such as Alan Clarke and William Waldegrave were complicit. Mark resigned on principle at the corruption he felt was taking place. He became the chief witness in the Scott Inquiry into the sale of arms to Iraq. He quickly became almost unemployable and started to drink heavily. He lost his marriage and regular contact with his children in the early 1990’s.

In what was must have been a very strange experience for him he came to work for us selling the training films we had made over the phone and became a team leader very quickly. But he was also drinking and empty vodka bottles were found in the cistern toilets. Eventually a senior manager asked him to leave. We had all known about his background. I remember coming back late from a meeting and he was being interviewed live by Channel 4 news outside our offices while the scandal was unfolding in the public eye.

I kept in touch with Mark for a while afterwards and the last time I saw him we went to a rugby match together – in 1993 I should think. I read an excellent John Sweeney book on the crisis in which Mark was clearly the primary source of information.

Mark went to live in Birmingham, living in fear of being followed by the secret services which he undoubtedly was being for a least a while. I remember him saying ‘there are more than two of us watching this game of rugby’. He ended up living in a bedsit in Birmingham on social security and he couldn’t get a job. He died in 2000 aged 40 having had, it is assumed, a seizure and cracking his head as he fell. A Cambridge high flyer, a successful early career, a happy marriage all gone in a few years.

I say all of this for several reasons.

I knew quite a bit about Mark (and the arms to Iraq realities) but didn’t know what had happened to him after 1994 (we chatted on the phone then). Thanks to Steven Jacobi’s excellent play on radio 4 about Mark recently I was able to know what became of him. Steven Jacobi was his oldest friend and closest friend. I contacted him after the broadcast and he hopes to lengthen the play and take it to the stage.

A key point here – and totally relevant to the continuing carnage in Iraq – is that we made Saddam Hussein the man he became through supporting him in the Iran-Iraq war and keeping him supplied with arms. If he ever had WMD’s, and the evidence suggests that while they had gone by 2003 he had them (or was developing them) prior to this we can all guess where he might have got them from. Decisions made 20-25 years ago are being played out in real events now. Mark didn’t live to see the current fiasco. I wonder what he might have made of it.

The final point is that Mark was a lovely, honourable man working in a ghastly, dishonourable environment. He made an appalling career choice which killed him. A highly intelligent man he could have done many things more in keeping with his personality. Mark’s story tells us the dangers of trying to be something you aren’t or are unsuited to being. A horribly sad end to the life of such a warm, friendly guy.

Chirac/Blair

2007-05-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

This month has seen the departing of a European political dinosaur (Chirac) and the almost simultaneous departing of someone who was rapidly becoming one.

Chirac embodied for me all of the things that are going wrong with France. An adherence to old sixties Gaulist politics and a complete unwillingness - or more likely fear - to embrace the realities of the new world. Ironically many french business people were treating him as irrelevant and getting on with the job of reaching out into the real economic world. Carrefour for example is the world's second biggest supermarket chain and France has four of the biggest energy companies in the world. What france lacks is any sense of personal dynamism. As a country it seems to have no discernable charisma.

Sarkozy has made lots of positive noises and, had I had the vote there he would have got mine. He has energy and ideas. The left wing press has dubbed him some sort of neo-con or Thatcherite figure and he is neither of those things. What he has I think is a willingness to take the flak for the pain which France will now have for the next 5-7 years as it gets itself out of its moribund state.

Tony Blair goes in a few weeks (why not now?). I sense that in thirty years time history may reflect kindly on him but of course, at the moment he is defined by Iraq and the unending carnage there. What Britain has had over the last fifteen are two excellent Chancellors - Kenneth Clarke and Gordon Brown - and I think much of its economic strength has come from their strong stewardship rather than Blair excellence. I do not see Brown as a Prime Minister though.

Gordon Brown has big problems now due the dreadful lack of talent in the cabinet. Mowlam, Dewar and Cook all dead. Imaginative thinkers such as Frank Field newtered and bruisers such as John Reid opting for a 'rest'. I find Ministers such as Ruth Kelly and David Milliband (a potential 'leader' - surely not)so uninspiring and I cannot escape the feeling that they are out of their depth.

Tubby Custard

2007-05-04T11:24:00.000-07:00

The things we do for the love of our children. I was in the UK for a couple of days and in the search for increasingly creative ways of getting the approval of my children I came across the idea of making ‘tubby’ custard – the bright pink concoction so loved by La La and Po in particular. The ingredients are simple – cochineal and custard and a saucepan. As with the non tubby version cook slowly and add only the smallest amount of colouring. My advice to wannabee tubby custard makers is to go for Bird’s powder - which has the drawback that you actually have to make the custard, as opposed to superior pre-made Ambrosia. The reason is that Ambrosia is a brighter yellow and you run the risk of the bright yellow and pink turning it into orange custard. Or rather radioactive looking custard.

Satisfied children. On the next cookery slot I will be advising on the making of tubby toast. Or perhaps not.

Music of the day: Mellow Yellow – Donovan

Brazil

2007-05-04T07:57:00.000-07:00

I believe that Brazilians are the most naturally musical people on the earth and I first started to love their music in 1989 when I bought 2 David Byrne compilations ‘Brasil Classics 1 and 2’. I thought it time that I did a recommendation of ten great brazilian albums that I believe that anyone who wants a ‘rounded’ collection should have. Brazilian music has been described as the perfect combination of ‘happy sadness’ and to my mind all of the different emotions in between. It is often melancholic but never depressing and in one incarnation the world’s best party music too. I hope you might explore one or two of the selections on this list. If you want to ‘ease’ yourself in then I do recommend the David Byrne collections.

Brasil 2mil: Various

The Belgium label ‘Ziriguiboom’ has been responsible for some of the key Brazilian releases in the last 6-7 years and this is a great compilation (from 1999) that shows where Brazilain music was, and has proved to be heading. It gives homage to the great Brazilians of the past as well as the future but the music is undoubtedly ‘now’. The standout tracks come from Chico Science, Vinicius Cantuaria (great live) and a sensational finish from Arakatuba.

Radio Sa.mba: Nacao Zumbi

I saw Nacao Zumbi live in 2003 and I (plus two friends) appeared to be the only non-Brazilians there. This is one of the best concerts I have ever been to. Nacao Zumbi are a Brazilian rock band with enough samba influences to create a sound like no other. Their guitarist, Jackson Bandeira, is to my mind one of the best guitarists out there and a track such as ‘Na Balada Do Rio Salgado’ shows exactly what he can do – you can imagine this piece being used in a contemporary spaghetti western. I choose this album just ahead of one of their others ‘CSNZ” performed with the great singer Chico Science – who died young around 2000. Both albums are great and intelligent examples of music we shut our minds off from in the west because they don’t sing in English. Or rather, the singer ‘Pixel 3000’ doesn’t.

Quarteto Novo: Quarteto Novo

Perhaps one of the most important jazz albums ever made, let alone Brazilian albums. The fabulous debut album which introduced Airto Moreira and Hermeto Pascoal to the world. These are two of the world’s great musicians and we hear them here at their absolute best. This music is sharp, clever, rhythmic and superbly played. The tightness and intricacies involved in the music showcase genius but also a band who had honed themselves perfectly – and of course owe much to the brilliant arrangements of Hermeto Pascoal. Great tracks include Misturada and Ponteio (actually a bonus track) which have become staples of many Brazilian compilations.

Seeds on the Ground: Airto Moreira

Possible his last really ground breaking work. That is not to say he did some great stuff afterwards but probably not much that really sounded like nothing done before. He made this close to the time when he appeared with Miles Davis at The Isle of Wight festival and he provided a great description of walking on stage and being confronted by a seething mass of 400,000 people waiting to hear Miles and band play. Particularly when his live gigs prior to that were more akin to 250 in a jazz club.

Airto came out of the great ‘Quarteto Novo’ with Hermeto Pascoal (who adds his brilliance to this) and he married the singer Flora Purim who also appears on this album. Every track is great, some are experimental and ever changing such as O Galho da Roseir and ‘Papo Furado’ just ‘burns’ superbly in the way only late 60’s music can. Ron Carter plays great bass too. Perhaps one of the most important things about this record is that it is one of the last statements of pure 1960’s Brazilian jazz before the sound became diluted by US jazz-fusion and US recording techniques.

Cantiga De Longe: Edu Lobo

Edu Lobo is one of the most important musicians of the post 1965 period but this is a little different from his usual orchestrated, highly arranged pieces. This album, which features Hermeto Pascoal once again is simple but stunningly played and several of the tracks – ‘Zanzibar’ for example – have become staples in western music.

This is rare indeed but it has appeared on CD and I was lucky to pick up a copy about 10 years ago. If you see it, buy it and you will not regret it. This album, along with the Quarteto Novo one formed the heartbeat of the unique Brazilian jazz sound in 1967.

San Paulo Confessions: Suba

Suba is actually Serbian (Mitar Subotic) and he won a 3 month UNICEF music scholarship to Rio and stayed. This is an absolutely breakthrough album from year 2000 that fused classic Brazilian sounds (Chico Buarque samples for example) with electronics and newer beats. But this music is undeniably Brazilian. The album introduced us to the voices of Bebel Gilberto and Cibelle and Suba was closely involved with BG’s ‘Tanto Tempo’ – reputedly the biggest selling world music album of the last ten years. A great dance album too with not a weak track. Suba was killed trying to save the master tapes for his follow up album in a studio fire. He helped kick start a renaissance in 21st century brazilian music when it had lost it’s way in the 1990’s. Being an outsider undoubtedly helped. Many great musicians pooled together to produce ‘Tributo’ in honour of him after his death.

Africa Brasil: Jorge Ben

The composer who wrote classics such as Mas Que Nada is in my opinion the best Brazilian singer-songwriter there has been. The great Caetano Veloso himself has sad that Jorge Ben is incapable of writing a bad song. This album could justify inclusion for the sensational ‘Unbarabauma’ alone – written in homage to Brazilian football but all the tracks on the superbly rhythmic album are top class. I do recommend a four CD compilation of his music which traces his career from Chove Chuva in 1963 up to 1975 and including 5 tracks from Africa-Brasil. Money well spent if you want to hear some of the best in Brazilian music from that era.

Cru: Seu Jorge

If you have seen City of God or Life Aquatic you will know the actor and singer Seu Jorge. This is his best album from 2004. It goes back to the languid cool sound of the late 1960’s but is unquestionably modern. Great tracks include Tive Razao, Bem Querer and Una Mujer. He doesn’t have the best voice in the world (as those who have heard his album of Bowie covers will know) but his music is highly charismatic and cool.

Milton Nascimento: Clube Da Esquina

Possibly THE giant of Brazilian music and certainly one of Brazil’s greatest musicians. The best of America such as Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter play with him regularly and they would be doing that if he couldn’t live in that company. A great vocalist and quality musician this album features the cream of Brazilian musicianship such as Lo Borges (who is co-credited) as well as Deodata, Beto Guedes and Toninho Horta on guitar. It’s hard to pick a standout they are all so strong but this album is probably for those who want musicianship first and standout ‘tunes’ second.

Brazuca Matraca:Wagner Pa

Friend and colleague of the superb Mano Chao, Wagner Pa is Brazilian but has chosen to make his home in Catalonia. This a marvellous modern album made with top class musicians with Wagner Pa producing a stellar vocal performance – particularly on the opening track where he raps in a way I have never heard before. Like Chao he can sing in a number of languages and does so, all to great effect. This gets better and better every time I listen to it and I prefer it to Clandestino.

Re-assigning Knowledge

2007-05-04T03:41:00.000-07:00

‘The Play’ – (American) football

It is 1981 and the University of Berkeley are playing Stanford in the final of the College Bowl. 100,000 baying supporters are either hysterical or stunned when Stanford kick a field goal to take a 21-18 lead with 4 seconds to go. Some of the Stanford players are already celebrating and the Stanford marching band is already in the ‘end zone’ playing celebratory victory music as Stanford wind down the formalities with a kick-off. In normal circumstances Berkeley will try to run the ball back at Stanford with almost no-hope of achieving anything.

But these are not normal circumstances. When under pressure we can display the most remarkable creative resourcefulness. It turns out that many of the Berkeley team double up as the Berkeley rugby team. So what can they do, that might surprise Stanford? They play rugby. With brilliant ball-handling they score a touchdown with no seconds remaining, the scorer … almost decapitating the Stanford marching band’s tuba player in the process. The crowd have only just begun to compute what has happened in their collective brains, the commentators cannot speak and the Stanford players are immobile. One of the greatest sporting moments anywhere, ever has just been witnessed.

Lesson – a critical element in idea generation is to learn to apply some knowledge and/or expertise from one area to another, related or entirely unrelated area. Rugby and (American) football are related. What about strawberries and customer service?

But there is a second lesson here. Never take success for granted.

Thanks to Stuart Moran (formerly of Berkeley) for showing me the YouTube on this one night in Ohrid, Macedonia last year.

Play at Work

2007-05-04T00:04:00.000-07:00

My fellow blogger Arkangel has started a good thread on the value of play at work to which I am making extensive contributions and rather than write it all here I recommend connecting to his blog at the address below:

http://aarkangel.wordpress.com/2007/05/02/webworld/#comment-825

I will however add one quote from my 'Positive Thinking, Positive Action' book:

Not many of us will say on our death-bed "I wish had spent more time at the office. But we might say 'I wish I had had more fun while I was there'.

Only you can do something about that.

Whistle Test

2007-04-24T23:39:00.000-07:00

I stayed for 2 nights at my friend Brian’s and as well as the usual over-indulgences we watched a couple of DVDs. The first was the Borat film. I cried with laughter – particularly the dinner party scene – and I have not done that for a very long time. The Fast Show Christmas special from about a decade ago was probably the last time.

On Monday night we indulged, as two ageing rockers in the Old Grey Whistle Test DVD and I enjoyed this as much as Borat but in a very different way. I’d forgotten how great The Sensational Alex Harvey Band were as live performers. Clem Clemson was a magnificent guitar player and a showman. Also featured were Tim Buckley (a magical ‘Dolphins’ recently well covered by the Soul Bossa Trio) – if he had lived where would his career have taken him? An intense sexually charged performer. John Martyn, Bill Withers, Emmylou Harris and Curtis Mayfield represented the singer songwriter genre and all were excellent. I surprised myself by thoroughly enjoying a great Lynard Skynard performance and Jan Akkerman and Focus were also terrific. I have a good Akkerman album called Tabernacle where he plays the lute and it illustrates what diverse and talented musicians these were. The low point was Elton John and it re-enforced my view that although he wrote a couple of classic singles his legacy does not go beyond that.

This truly was the age of supercharged live performances. I do not hark back to a golden age of music however. Times have changed. What I do think is that each generation has a musical style which defines it and in that early seventies era it was great rock music and its subsidiaries. Rock music is now a creatively dead music form but other genres have come along to replace it. Not better or worse. Just different. To illustrate the point, in a future blog I will list some great 21st century albums that I believe enhance any collection.

A different topic. I blogged recently on Sarko and Sego and I am pleased to see that they made it through to the 2nd round. France will have a choice between two fairly distinct sets of policies. What interests me is that commentators are saying that the 85% turnout is a sign of political maturity. You could easily say that this is a sign of its political immaturity. A huge number of people in France clearly believe that France’s decline will be reverted by politicians rather than by themselves and a shift in their own attitudes. For all the ‘new dawn’ rhetoric in 1997 when Tony Blair got elected in the UK only 60% of the electorate voted. The rest of us continued to take responsibility for our own lives.

Song of the Day: ‘Dolphins’ – Tim Buckley

George Kelly

2007-04-18T06:06:00.001-07:00

I often find myself, when reading psychological research that makes academic breakthrough, agreeing with everything that is written but today I made an exception. For example, when studying political theory when younger I can recall agreeing with everything John Stuart Mill said ‘On Liberty’ as well everything in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract’. As I now research my next book – ‘Brilliant Idea’ – I came across George Kelly’s excellent work in the 1950’s on ‘Personal Constructs’. I have often used the idea that many of us live our lives according to an autobiography that has been written – in other words we become prisoners of the kind of person we have been up to now rather than aspiring to the kind of person we could become. The prisoner is the kind of person who says ‘I am as I am’ with no recognition that we can and do change.

The idea is that we all have different ‘constructs’ or interpretations of what is real and will often live accordingly. When that construct is challenged it creates great difficulty/anxiety for us. Kelly states, and I believe wrongly, that this is not the same as saying ‘my world is THE world’. I think that an individual’s interpretation of the world and all of the ‘events’ and occurrences that occur within that individuals life that create our overall interpretation, are the building blocks (and blocks is a good word here) that can, if we are not careful, suck us into an increasingly one-dimensional existence. We do not allow for the possibility that we might be wrong and perhaps only do so after great internal struggle.

It may be that I am mis-interpreting Kelly’s work – and therefore applying my own personal construct to what he wrote. But I did find much to enjoy in what he said and recommend to any readers his repertory (or ‘rep’) grid) which will help you understand your own ‘personal constructs’, around values and personality issues, so much better. Are you a prisoner too? Mark Brown covers this in his ‘Dinosaur Strain’ book very well.

Music of the day: It is not often I recommend classical music but I bought Tamas Vasary’s 1965 interpretations of various Chopin piano pieces in Montpellier yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed them. (Deutsche Grammofon)

Vincents

2007-04-17T05:07:00.001-07:00

I have two old friends called Vincent. The first is an actor, Vincent Regan, who has recently starred in the Hollywood blockbuster 3000. Vincent and I shared a place in Tooting in the early 1980’s in Garratt Lane, Tooting with another actor Charlie Daish. To say Vincent is still a friend is a bit disingenuous because I haven’t seen him for a couple of years and may not see him again. I say this because I read that in the film it would seem that Vincent has the perfect six-pack on his forty-year old body. This was commented on in the papers accompanied by a comment from a friend (was this you Charlie). ‘He didn’t have the perfect six-pack when we went for a drink recently!’ It is of course all done in post-production. It is hard to know what is real now and probably explains why I rarely watch films at all. Or indeed read novels. Reality is the thing for me.

The second Vincent is someone who I regularly keep in touch with (and is a film-maker) and I mention him because he has bought a house very near me in the South of France. We are both very near a place called Beziers. This is rugby country and in the 1970’s and 80’s Beziers could ly claim to being the world’s best rugby club. They were French champions 10 times in 14 years and boasted a fearsome pack of forwards. I went to watch they play in a relegation battle a couple of years ago and the intensity of the occasion felt like a mediaeval bear-pit. I have been to other clubs in France. The smaller club matches are the most fascinating. Even the tiniest villages can raise a team and the games conform to all of the stereotypes. There is nearly always a 30-man punch-up, the wings are all incredibly thin with very tight shorts and the forwards all squat, hairy and immensely strong. They also take place on Sunday afternoon, right after lunch, so most of the crowd is lubricated by large quantities of vin (very) ordinaire. I used to live in a village called Coursan and we went to watch them play once. The match had been awful and eventually the thirty players started fighting. Right after this Coursan produced a moment of sublime brilliance amidst the rubbish. They ran the ball from behind their own goal-line and it went through about 20 pairs of hands and the fly-half ran the ball in un-opposed and in flamboyant celebration. The crowd erupted, as did I, and we forgot for a moment that we were watching a village team and thought we were at the Stade De France . France in a nutshell – tons of mediocrity laced with the thrillingly unpredictable.

On Friday week my team, Narbonne play Toulouse. If they lose they will almost certainly be relegated for the first time ever. I wish them well. I will be there.

Slowing Down

2007-04-17T05:05:00.000-07:00

I am particularly enjoying the new Air album. After Moon Safari and the excellent soundtrack to Virgin Suicides they had rather lost their way, to the point where I questioned if they still had any ideas left. But the new one ‘Pocket Symphony’ is a great return to form. The track Mer Du Japon is one that I am particularly enjoying.

It is rare that bands or individuals who produce great albums very early on are able to sustain it. This to me is actually less to do with their own lack of creativity and more due to the demands of record labels who want more ‘product’ – usually identical to the last one. So they are immediately under pressure to have something to say even when they have nothing to say. The creative process is, for the most part, not a switch that can be flicked on when needed. I read a good interview with Scott Engel (Walker) of Walker Brothers fame. He produces an album every decade with fascinating results. He said this in a recent Sunday Times article about how the creative process works for him:

‘I sit and wait. It takes a lot of silence until the right line will come. I have to wait until something comes that I don’t expect, something that surprises me but that I know is right. Or maybe I am just really slow!’

In his book ‘A whack on the side of the head’ creative writer Roger Von Oech came up with the great line:

‘Slow down, or nothing worthwhile will ever catch up with you’.

For me it is the deadline that lubricates the creative process. But I also have a different speed. I make a point of writing up many of my random thoughts even if they have no apparent significance at the time. It is amazing how often I refer back to my jottings and how useful they become when I need creative inspiration. Don’t get it right, get it written.

Business books can be interesting

2007-04-13T05:14:00.000-07:00

Many of the books that have sold well in the business environment were not necessarily written with that audience in mind (‘Emotional Intelligence’ is a good example). With that in mind I list the ten books I always go to if I want to stimulate my thinking around work and human behaviour. I only half apologise for including one of my own…

Hare Brain Tortoise Mind – Guy Claxton

Very often we think best when we are not consciously thinking about a specific thing. This book helps us to understand why that may be the case and why slowing down can help us generate great ideas and make better decisions.

Dinosaur Strain – Mark Brown

A personal friend so I am biased but if I ever want an interesting ‘take’ on work related subjects or a deeper ‘know yourself’ exercise that goes beyond pop psychology territory then I always go to this book. I particularly like the way that Mark subtly removes his work from faddish thinking while always offering a stimulating alternative view.

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be – Paul Arden

As it says on the cover ‘The world’s best selling book by Paul Arden’. I fell for it… But this is just a very interesting look at a much-abused subject. Did you know that Victoria Beckham always wanted to be more famous than Persil Automatic? Did she succeed?

Understanding Organisations – Charles Handy

Everything you want to know about how organisations work. Particularly useful if you want a central reference point for all the seminal workplace research work that has been done in the last fifty years.

The New Leaders – Daniel Goleman

Uses his work on Emotional Intelligence to show how we can learn to be leaders. The best book on leadership I have read (I admit that there are few good ones – and particularly strong on leadership styles and adapting your style to the person and the situation you are in.

A Whack on the Side of the Head – Roger Von Oech

This is just a great book – an innovative way of showing us how to be more creative and innovative. Full of contradictions as all good books should be.

The Doctor and The Soul – Viktor Frankl

Everyone cites his book ‘Man’s Search For Meaning’ but this for me cuts very deeply into my own soul and raises so many ‘ah-ha’ moments that I almost feel it was written for me.

Learned Optimism – Martin Seligman

Does exactly what it says. Balanced too because he shows how pessimism can be a very healthy emotion if it propels you into positive action.

Riding the Waves of Culture – Trompenaars, Hampden-Turner

Far more than a book that tells us why people from other cultures behave in the way they do. In fact the authors say directly, and I endorse this, that the book is really about how individuals see the world in the way that they do and how we can adapt our behaviour according to their world-view.

Mind Your Own Good Fortune: How to Seize Life’s Opportunities – Douglas Miller

Sorry…

Rap

2007-04-12T07:39:00.000-07:00

Rap music has a terrible reputation among the chattering classes because of its highly misogynistic tone. But within the dross there are some golden nuggets that anyone with an interest in black amercian music should own. Of course historically we have the great early seventies works of Gil Scot Heron and The Last Poets and the eighties excellence of The Sugarhill Gang and Grand Master's Flash and Melle Me. Michael Frantii continued this in the nineties through the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Spearhead. And if you like something really hard-hitting with great social commentary then I recommend the following. I thank fellow blogger Dan Davies for reminding me of black performance artist Sarah Jones classic pop at the current crop of rappers who see only 'hoes and bitches and booty' rather than women. To see her perform this with serious conviction is something else (available on DJ Vadim's album 'USSR: Life From the Other Side').

Your revolution will not happen between these thighs
Your revolution will not happen between these thighs
Your revolution will not happen between these thighs
Will not happen between these thighs
Will not happen between these thighs
The real revolution ain't about bootie size
The Versaces you buys
Or the Lexus you drives
And though we've lost Biggie Smalls
Maybe your notorious revolution
Will never allow you to lace no lyrical douche in my bush
Your revolution will not be you killing me softly with fujees
Your revolution ain't gonna knock me up without no ring
And produce little future M.C.'s
Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs
Your revolution will not find me in the back seat of a jeep
With L.L. hard as hell, you know
Doing it and doing and doing it well, you know
Doing it and doing it and doing it well
Your revolution will not be you smacking it up, flipping it or rubbing it down
Nor will it take you downtown, or humping around
Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs
Your revolution will not have me singing
Ain't no nigger like the one I got
Your revolution will not be you sending me for no drip drip V.D. shot
Your revolution will not involve me or feeling your nature rise
Or having you fantasize
Because that revolution will not happen between these thighs
No no not between these thighs
Uh-uh
My Jamaican brother
Your revolution will not make you feel bombastic, and really fantastic
And have you groping in the dark for that rubber wrapped in plastic
Uh-uh
You will not be touching your lips to my triple dip of
French vanilla, butter pecan, chocolate deluxe
Or having Akinyele's dream, um hum
A six foot blow job machine, um hum
You wanna subjugate your Queen, uh-huh
Think I'm gonna put it in my mouth just because you
Made a few bucks,
Please brother please
Your revolution will not be me tossing my weave
And making me believe I'm some caviar eating ghetto
Mafia clown
Or me giving up my behind
Just so I can get signed
And maybe have somebody else write my rhymes
I'm Sarah Jones
Not Foxy Brown
You know I'm Sarah Jones
Not Foxy Brown
Your revolution makes me wonder
Where could we go
If we could drop the empty pursuit of props and the ego
We'd revolt back to our roots
Use a little common sense on a quest to make love
De la soul, no pretense, but
Your revolution will not be you flexing your little sex and status
To express what you feel
Your revolution will not happen between these thighs
Will not happen between these thighs
Will not be you shaking
And me, [sigh] faking between these thighs
Because the real revolution
That's right, I said the real revolution
You know, I'm talking about the revolution
When it comes,
It's gonna be real
It's gonna be real
It's gonna be real
When it finally comes
It's gonna be real

Sarko-Sego

2007-04-10T02:43:00.000-07:00

The talk here in France is of the impending presidential election and the two principle contestants – Sarko and Sego - Nicholas Sarkhozy and Segolene Royale. In broad terms Segolene is the socialist candidate who wants to continue and expand the role of the state in improving people’s lives and Nicholas Sarkozy is the economic liberal who wants to free up the French economy from excessive state control. So a classic right/left confrontation. There are other contestants such as Francois Bayrou who lives in the middle (and may just sneak in a la Giscard D’Estang in the 70’s) and Jean Marie Le Pen who sits on the right and is a narrow-minded bigot.

I am currently witnessing some of the problems in the French economic system at first hand. It is alarmingly difficult to do anything vaguely entrepreneurial without the state first of all giving its ‘permission’ through a bureaucratic system that most of the people who work in it do not seem to understand. I believe that the current France crushes the creative spirit - how many great French creatives can you name in the last 50 years compared to the fifty years before that? It has one million less small businesses than the UK and this would be ok if there were jobs for everyone but there are three million unemployed and millions more ‘saisonnieres’ – seasonal workers who are paid not to work for 7 months of the year. I believe that unemployment is the ultimate indignity. It is even more offensive for the French government to make it doubly difficult for those with the drive to push themselves out into the world to do so. The French really do seem like rabbits stuck in the headlights. Too de-sensitised by the pervasiveness of the state to allow words like initiative, creativity and hard work to enter their lives and too nervous of uncertainty to allow themselves to be rid of bureaucratic shackles. The ultimate sign of the state-sponsored crushing of the individual spirit were the recent demonstrations by many young French who wanted ‘fonctionnaire’ type jobs for life just like their parents had. I found it very sad indeed that an age group with its collective life ahead of it should want ‘certainty’ for the next forty years. All that zest squeezed out so young. One can only imagine what they might be like at the age of 40 or 50. Compare the youth of a rapidly growing economy like Spain to the young French and there is a real sense that over the next 30 years European politics may undergo seismic shifts.

The young French are leaving. 300,000 young french now reside and work in the UK (mostly London) which explains why Sarkozy has been vigorously campaigning in London for French votes. His daughter works in banking in London too. Segolene Royale wants to roll out a state sponsored programme that will put 500,000 french to work and to increase taxation to pay for it. To my mind governments in the modern world do not create jobs - they get in the way of those who have the energy and foresight to do it. They can do much to create the environments in which jobs are created by loosening their grip on the individual and on those with entrepreneurial spirit. I feel that the UK’s current economic strength has come from this self-same loosening. We have many social problems in the UK but I do not envy the French ‘social model’ one bit. It crushes human endeavour and that to me is a terrible sin. If I had the vote here, Sarkozy would get it. And I am not right wing.

Northern Ireland

2007-03-28T07:28:00.001-07:00

Seasoned observers of Northern Ireland politics scarcely believe it to be true. Fire and brimstone preacher Ian Paisley in the same room and talking with Gerry Adams who says that Ian Paisley was the reason he became a republican and terrorism endorser in the first place. In an environment where there have been many false dawns this could actually be the moment when Northern Ireland becomes sane. When I saw terrorist Gerry (‘jelly’) Kelly being interviewed with Ian Paisley Jnr on Newsnight later you began to realise that this might actually be for real. Then interviewer Gavin Essler recalled that the first time he had interviewed Kelly had been in a prison in Holland and you realised how much both sides have had to swallow to get to this point.

One thing that has not changed much in the last thirty years is the cast of characters. I suppose the upside of this is that if you cannot win over the most intransigent then nothing is for real. On the other side of the coin, Ulster politics will need to move on rapidly and it will be interesting to see what the next generation of politicians will do. I think one point that needs underlining is the weakness in Sinn Fein’s position. I personally feel that many south of the border are not really interested in taking on the burden of the Ulster economy with 30% unemployment, a massive state benefit burden and poor infrastructure. Ireland itself (minus the 6 or 9 counties) is an economic success story but is not so powerful that it could absorb Ulster easily. Look at what happened to the German economy after 1989. What is happening is that the Dublin Government is investing in Ulster (the Dublin-Derry motorway for example) and perhaps we might see a gradual absorption over the next fifty years. The tipping point may occur when Catholics form the majority population in Ulster.

I have an emotional interest in all of this because I lived in Portrush, Northern Ireland for three years when I was a student. I remember going, as an observer, to Coleraine to witness a Unionist demonstration against the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement. I have never felt so terrified in my life. I don’t suppose I will ever feel again the tension among the 20,000 crowd as Unionist politicians led the ‘no, no, no’ chanting that exploded from everywhere. I spoke not a word so as not reveal my English accent (the irony of being English in a crowd of UK ‘loyalists’) and got away as soon as I could.

Good luck to Northern Ireland.

Music of the day: I played some Davy Spillane (ex of Moving Hearts) in Irish tribute. The ‘Out in the Air’ album which I have not listened to for 10 years.

As a footnote; the thoughts occurs to me that sometimes ‘life’ tells us something. My last two blogs have related to Kosovo and Northern Ireland and my involvement in those places. I am not a destiny type (as anyone who has read my books will know) but perhaps I was always meant to be close to ‘trouble spots’. I wonder if readers notice similar patterns in their own lives?

Me, Me, Me

2007-03-28T07:27:00.000-07:00

Why was I so averse to the work I am currently doing with the legal profession that I alluded to in previous blogs? Who knows? I am thoroughly enjoying it. 3 hours per day which frees up valuable thinking time but I am actually enjoying the company of those in ‘the professions’ after several years of working mainly in the not for profit sector. My client is not quite magic circle but just gets into the top ten legal practices in the UK and the top 100 in the world. And today they have asked me about doing other work for them in the future. However the opportunity I am currently working through with Mark Brown may change everything for me and could mean that I will soon have to turn down work. The question is – which would I choose not to do? The lowest paid is often the most rewarding and I do want to see my Kosovo work (see blogs passim) through to completion. Ahtisaari – the UN special envoy to Kosovo - has today suggested that Kosovo will indeed gain independence and as I have been working there for nearly five years I feel that I have been in my own small way helping to make a difference. I have trained a huge number of workers from the both the UN and OSCE there and I like to think I have played a part in the change. The Kosovo work will be the last to go if (and the ‘if’ is looking more like ‘when’) the opportunity flowers. And I will be back there at the end of April for nearly two weeks.

My parents are separating after 41 years of marriage. My mother has found a partner who lives in Yorkshire and it seems she has more or less moved in with him. He is sixty and wealthy and will no doubt look after her. It all seems strange that only a few weeks ago she was chasing Poles (double entendre intended) around Europe. And now she has left my father. My dad turned up in South London last weekend and we went off to watch some rugby. He has a ‘lady friend’ himself – my father’s ability to bounce back is superb – but I feel that his extreme haste in telling me this suggests it is a reaction thing to maintain his own self-esteem. A good thing too I suppose as long as he doesn’t attach too much to it. My sister and I are both fairly cool about the whole thing – there is so little time and it is so sad if we spend too much of that time unhappy. In fact I think we both agree that this should have happened years ago. Never hang on unless there are children involved.

Music of the day: Ein Deutches Requiem – Brahms (Rattle)

TV's Ulrika

2007-03-23T04:55:00.000-07:00

TV (as in television not transvestite) nights can be healthy. A complete tv night is rare for me but enjoyable when I do it. So the other night it was a programme on Ulrika’s sex addiction followed by Marbella Belles.

I enjoyed one and found the other appalling and it may surprise readers to hear that I thought the Ulrika programme the poor one. It began apparently as a programme in which Ulrika would investigate the idea of sex addiction in others and how it can be overcome but quickly became a moderately titillating expose of Ulrika’s sexual past with all the juicy bits left out. It felt like the viewer was being manipulated and that the modest Ulrika expose was always in the mix. We got to hear about Ulrika’s need for love and attention and nobody made the observation that her doing this on television was actually fuelling this need explicitly. She had the option not to but chose to do so and so fed the Ulrika attention industry further. She can only blame herself.

In Marbella Belles we were treated to an apparently superficial group of people living in a world of spray on tan, ‘shampoo’ at lunchtime, vulgar jewellery and ‘drinks’. One of them freely admitted the vacuity of it all but amidst the froth were single mothers who had come here without a penny and had set up million pound businesses and others with a general ‘haveago’ attitude. Their values were certainly not my values in some respects but I admired the energy. The lady however who delegated all of her child caring responsibilities to the Asian maid and whose main occupation seemed to be smoking in a horizontal position was appalling. As she said herself she drops her kids at school has a couple of fags and then does nothing for the rest of the day. She was shady about where her husband’s money had come from (this may have been revealed in an earlier programme) and I was reminded of the quote about Brits abroad – those who live in France vote Tory, those who live in Italy vote Labour and those who live in Spain have recently held up a Post Office. Allegedly.

Music of the day: Catch-a –fire – Bob Marley

The Legal Profession

2007-03-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

I find myself working with the legal profession on two fronts at the moment. The first is professional and the work I return to the UK for on Sunday. The professions believe they are unique and like nobody else but when it comes down to it they have the same souls, hearts, brains and bladders as all of us. But in one way they are different - service. I am just selling my house and it seems that the world of email has not quite reached the legal profession yet. The solicitors of my buyer have raised a number of fairly minor points about my house with my solicitors. The logical thing to do would have been to phone me up or send me an email outlining those points. I could then reply to them right away. Instead it seems that this all has to be done by post. A letter to me which will take about a week to draft no doubt and then another week for them to reply to the buyer's solicitors. In the meantime I continue to pay for a house I am not living in and the buyer continues to rent a house they don't want to live in. The solicitor gets their cash either way. Am I sounding bitter? Probably not. Just frustrated.

This has been a non-week I am ashamed to say. Preparing for some work I really do not want to do, waiting for approval for a book idea which sadly seems unlikely to happen and also waiting to hear about work in Kosovo, Rome and Nepal. I have not mastered the art of 'waiting' for anything and sadly impatience is probably the thing that damages my well-being more than any other. I seem unable to do anything slowly. I either don't do it at all or my pace is frenetic. I love that latin phrase 'Festina Lente' (make haste slowly). The old motto of the Fabians. But I have to learn to apply it to my life.

I realise the 'down' tone of this and recognise that a number of you read my blog for the positive angle. Today, I guess is just one of those days and even positive thinkers are allowed the odd one! I suspect my return to London will fire me as it usually does. I am a city animal.

Today's music; Free Form - Joe Harriott

Remember me

2007-03-13T08:02:00.000-07:00

I enjoy it when I know that people have thought of me and make the effort to do something to show their appreciation for work done. Such was the case today when one of my participants (Laura) at the workshops I ran in Germany recently got in touch to email me some photographs of the fun times over the two days and to ask about buying my books in Germany. She was not the person who recruited me so had no need to create a professional veneer but had done so out of kindness and because she had enjoyed herself. This simple pleasure will probably mean nothing to readers but is what makes my job worthwhile. As a consultant you do your job and then go home and it can be frustrating not knowing how much impact you have had. I have found my forte working with large rather than small groups as I hope recent work in Macedonia and Germany attest and I really must pursue this. To know you made a difference is I think the primary motivator for most of the employed and self-employed. It is such a shame that so few managers tell their staff this when to do so would raise the motivational levels so much. And it costs no more more than kindness.

A quick change of subject. I got back to France for a week with my little ones. I am away a lot but when I am there I am very 'there'. Much more so than say the working parent who leaves the house at 7.00am and does not re-appear until 7 or 8 in the evening. The joy of seeing my children was added to by the success of the england rugby team against the french. I asked Lily my eldest who she wanted to win. She said France because she was french now. I wonder what she will feel when she is 20 or 25? With huge numbers of young french moving to London for work and other stimulation my suspicion is that she will continue her education in the UK.

Song of the day: I believe in Miracles - The Jackson Sisters

Soul Damage

2007-03-08T05:27:00.000-08:00

When I was in Germany recently one of the members of the team working with the Kyoto Protocol came up to me and said ‘I’ve just realised that you are living the life I want to live. Writing books and consultancy’. I was surprised by this and as I reflect I probably am living the life I think I would have felt ideal five years ago. But isn’t it strange that the enjoyment of it is likely to come more in the reflection than the actual doing. There is so little time to reflect when doing that the pleasure, even though I admit I am vaguely conscious of it, is hard to pin down. I suspect that this is a crucial part of being a human being. If we all got satisfied in our twenties there would be little to drive our race on. And that is the reason that we are wired up to enjoy the hindsight rather than the present. We would stop too soon otherwise.

I am ashamed to say that I am just about to conduct an experiment on myself. I have accepted a contract to do some work that I am bitterly regretting taking on. I got too deep into discussions about some work that I thought I might like to do that I cannot extricate myself from. The experiment is to see if I can motivate myself to do something I have no interest in, or desire to do. Of course I shall be a professional but I suspect I will internalise some frustration and will have to make sure that I have a way of letting it out. I am also figuring out that the client is unlikely to be reading this!

In my blog at the beginning of the year I said I suspect that I would be travelling and writing a lot. I have been asked about the possibility of going to Nepal. I am shaking at the possibility.

And still the opportunity of a lifetime barks very loudly at me. Would it give or save ‘soul damage’? My soul is already damaged and I must not damage it more. The possibility of successful repair is likely to come only by risking the chance that the damage could be increased. But is my motivation based too much in the financial possibilities rather than the intellectual nourishment?

Music of the Day: I am generally not one to re-tread my youth but I really enjoyed Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ this evening.

Liz Smith

2007-03-06T05:37:00.000-08:00

Every Monday I try to listen to Robert Elm’s listed Londoner on his BBC London show. This week he featured Liz Smith, star of The Royle Family and a number of Mike Leigh films as well Peter Greenaway’s ‘The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’. Hackneyed phrases like ‘National Treasure’ would have come to mind before this show but I will remember her interview for one comment she made in deadly seriousness amid all the jocular banter she and RE developed during the interview. Early in the interview she outlined the early part of her life. Her mum died in child-birth when she was two. At the age of 7 her dad (whom she adored) met her at the school gates and said he was going away for a while. She never saw or heard of him again. Her grandparents took her in and within a year her grandfather died. She created happiness in her life by entertaining and making people laugh and thus gave birth to the talent that would serve her so well later in life. She married young, had children and then her husband left her. As she said herself, her life up to that point had been one of loss. They went on to talk about her success as an actress which happened after the age of 50 (with her children now in their twenties) when a very young Mike Leigh cast her in ‘Bleak Moments’.

After the talk of success RE asked her if she was tempted to stick two fingers up to those who had abandoned her (and particularly her father). She was honest and said yes. But then said ‘…but I think these things are done so much better in deeds rather than words’. And the second half of her life has been an inspiring testimony to one who could have been bitter but who chose instead to live the possibilities in her life to the full. What a remarkable spirit. I will remember the way she described winning a BAFTA and getting her pensioner’s bus pass on the same day. At the end a clearly emotional RE came to realise that Liz Smith had been served vegetables at his mum and dad’s fruit and veg stall at the top of Portobello Road in 1946. My eyes moistened.

On Saturday I did very well not to succumb to temptation. Either age is reducing the desire for a good time (I hope not and think not) or age is telling me not to risk the long-term for the pursuit of the instant. What would my speech to 250 willing participants at The One Life exhibition at Kensington Olympia have been like had I done so? I suspect the answer actually has less to do with age and more to do with the dreadful cold I seem to have caught. I hope it doesn’t last four weeks like the last one. My resistance is low and it screams to me that I should be exercising more.

I am missing my daughters like crazy. Little Izzy spoke to me on the phone and kept saying ‘airplane’ to me. This is how she knows that daddy gets to France and it is her code for saying ‘daddy, when are you coming home?’ Soon, my darling, soon…

I must find out more about Oli Barratt whom I met through my good friend Adam last Thursday. He seems to be a networking entrepreneur extraordinaire and I would like to know more about he has become successful. I think he and his connections could be very useful in my new book. But I hope I have something to offer him? Bad networkers do it it for personal gain. Good ones do it for mutual benefit – although the motivation for doing so should always be through a genuine interest in the lives of others first.

Music of the Day: - The new Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam single.

Walking and thinking - multi-tasking!

2007-02-28T05:27:00.000-08:00

Conscious of all the random thoughts I jotted down yesterday I took a 4 mile walk at 8 this morning and tried to make a mental note of what jumped into my head:

What must it be like to be a woodpecker with a headache?

I really fancy some Green and Blacks white chocolate (need subsequently satisfied)

If you have a little money and want to make more, act like you don’t have any

Freedom is freedom from the need to be free

Can you make love with your ego?

Staying alive is a lot less fun than being alive

You children are to you when you are old as you are to them when they are young

The inevitability of gradualness

Is it possible to sell a house, from offer to completion, in under two months?

Going to a café in Crystal Palace for a coffee and noticing that every single occupant (around 10) was speaking French. And preferring to listen to them than read The Guardian or Private Eye.

What came first – morality/ethics/empathy or religion?

Thinking of a photo of Lily, Isabelle and Daisy (7,2 and 5 months respectively) and hoping that it will be a woman’s world in the future

Realising that the rain stopped just as I left the house and started again just as I shut the front door. Sometimes things are ‘meant to be’.

Remembering my 2-hour conversation with Prof Mark Brown yesterday. Do jobs exist to which nobody is suited? I extrapolated the argument in my mind – do people exist to which no job is suited? And why don’t we put the two together – the people to whom no job is suited and the job to which no person is suited? Or are we doing that already?

Which comes first: the heart or the head?

Emotionally committing myself to a project on mood and music. And then uncommitting myself when I got home.

Thinking of the thrill of entertaining 60 people for 2 days in Germany last week. How nice it is when clients are honest and say – ‘let’s have some fun for two days and get everyone to know each other better’.

Realising that I hadn’t thought about sex for two hours. Or about all the people I know who are being unfaithful.

I need more positive thinking stories

I must buy ‘Conceptual Blockbusting’.

I sometimes feel like I am living my life through other people and that can be a healthy anti-dote to my monstrous ego

What happened to Maple Road Market, Penge?

Who is the world’s greatest sportsman or woman? (Federer)

Isn’t it strange how the music you listen to last before you go to bed is still in your head the next morning (Vangelis’ ‘El Greco’)?

Extreme nervousness about selling London house – disconnection from my favourite place, a tighter connection with a place I am not sure I want to be connected to at all.

Thinking about property at all actually makes me instantly unhappy

What is this thing called love?

2007-02-27T02:29:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about things I have written in my books and at the moment I am very drawn to something I wrote in my Positive Thinking, Positive Action book. In that book I wrote about stability and risk zones and in particular that many of us who take risks in life need some aspect of our life that is very stable. I have been thinking about this a lot this evening (Monday 26/2) and why many who have serial affairs are also very tied to their domestic conformity because it gives a framework around which to live. In other words we can only take risks when we know that there is a stability zone to go back to if things go wrong - it is safe to take a risk because there is always something stable at base. In fact the paradox may be that those who practice serial infidelity may attach more psychological nourishment to their stable (married or not) relationship than the wholly faithful partner. Of course, the apparently faithful partner may be a tearaway too but has learned to keep a secret!

As I think about this I realise that I am targeting my comments very personally. And I wonder who, among those who read this, imagine that it is targeted at them? That matters less than the person I am thinking of who maybe needs to take a risk because the stability is stifling them. Who are you?

I have had a huge pile of random thoughts over the last few weeks which I always record in a notebook , and I will drop them all here – for future reference:

‘Only engage, and then the mind grows heated. Begin it, and the work will be completed’. John Anster 1835 translation from Goethe’s ‘Faust’

Being more than a ‘never’ person.

Out of the box…but within the box’s container

Loveland (float on).

If I was a jazz musician I would want to be called Ecclestone Wainwright the Third.

‘What we call luck, what we call chance, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. If you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready." Will Smith

The thought that everyone is having more sex than we are is what gives many people all the purpose they think they need in life. Life becomes a big catch up job after the age of 40. I am fast believing that this is the most sexually active of all age groups. It’s just that at that age we have learnt not to tell to tell everyone about it. Remember John Betjeman at 90 – ‘Any regrets John?’. ‘Yes, I wish I had had more sex’. 40 is the new 90…

No regrets, no tears goodbye…death terrifies the person who has a guilty conscience about his life - someone who has not lived the fullness of it and its possibilities.

Do you have opinions or are you a prisoner of your opinions?

Would the internet have survived without pornography? And why did the number of women accessing pornography on the internet grow by 40% last year? By 2010 women will have caught up with men.

Number of women I know who admit to watching pornography = 1. Number of men I know = Almost all of them.

Why does MS Word not recognize google in its spellchecker?

Advert in The Times quoted in Frankl’s ‘Doctor and the Soul’ – ‘Unemployed. Brilliant mind offers its services completely free. The survival of the body must be provided for by adequate salary’.

Jealousy is an emotion of possession, not of love. (Frankl as well – both noted on the tarmac while refueling at Ankara airport – a good use of ‘dead’ time).

I want to re-read Douglas Coupland’s ‘Microserfs’ and ‘Generation X’’ but I have lent it to the person who is currently having an affair with... The person doesn’t know I know. And the three dots doesn’t know I know.

‘Learnt a new word today – ‘Interiority’. It means being inside someone’s head’. Coupland.

The whole town is laughing at me.

Sexual love transcends everything. Those who love truly do not feel jealousy. Their concern is for the happiness of the other person.

I think of those who are bursting with the desire for love and are totally loveable but whose easy loveability makes them perversely unattractive in the long term to so many – Deborah?

Barry White. Teddy Pendergrass. Eugene Record.

Places I want to work in this year – Baku, Almaty, Sarajevo, Paris (UNESCO) – Jenny can you help?

And Haiti – Judith, too late?

Number of books I want to write this year – 3: ‘The Idea’, ‘The intrapraneur’, ‘Playing at work’.

Phrases I dislike – ‘it’s a no-brainer’. It is for you because you are not using your brain.

Pull the strings and I’ll wink at you. I’m your puppet.

Make peace with the taxman.

Work with Mark Brown?

I hate airports late on Friday evenings.
I love airports on Monday mornings.

And I cannot wait for Mediterranean summer.

Desert Island Discs

2007-02-26T06:55:00.000-08:00

My Desert Island Discs – for the benefit of any American readers this a longstanding radio programme (over 50 years) where the well-known get invited to talk about their life and play the music that they would like to have with them if they were stuck on a desert Island- you are allowed eight. You also get to choose a luxury and a book (The Bible and the Complete Works of WS come gratis).

1. Right Off – Miles Davis

The opening track on his ‘Jack Johnson’ album. At 25 minutes it means I get loads of Miles but it also features John McLaughlin (Britain’s greatest ever guitar player) and Herbie Hancock (the dirtiest keyboard sound you have ever heard on this track) at their best so I get three greats for the price of one. The Penguin Guide to Jazz suggests that in 50 years time this album may be seen as superior to Bitches Brew and In a Silent Way. I agree. Reminds me of 1990-91 and living in Dulwich Village and doing things I shouldn’t have done but glad I did. Mike where are you now?

2. We’ve Come Too Far To End it Now – Smokey Robinson and The Miracles

I listened to this almost continuously when I wrote my first book and managed to name a chapter in its honour. It was the most unhappy time in my life (writing the book blocked out the depression) and I loved the sentiment of the title. Those who know me will know why the time was so unpleasant. Is there a greater piece of sweet soul? I see writing a book on positive thinking at a time when I was so low as a kind of divine providence. I was forced to pull through by having to be in a positive frame of mind to write the book. A ‘why’ to live for.

3. You’ve Got To Have Freedom – Pharoah Sanders

I love this track and I love the album it is on. It would make me momentarily happy when alone. A man who has kept his music interesting and innovative into his 70’s. And a spellbinding live performer. Great trumpet playing from Eddie Henderson too. The ‘Journey To The One’ album it comes from is joyous but it is actually a very important one too. It is probably the album for me that closes a great era (1950-1980) for black American music – my first musical love.

4. Umbarabauma – Jorge Ben

This is a floor stomper from one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century. I bought a 4 CD compilation of his music with about sixty tracks on it and there is not one weak one on it. I chose this one partly as a symbol of hundreds of Brazilian tracks I could have selected. Great music from a nation which must be the most naturally musical on the earth.

5. The Great Curve – Talking Heads

Off the Remain In Light album which is by far their best. They were a great band and stood out in the weakest era for popular western music since the very early 1960’s (I refer to the early 1980’s). This track has absorbed almost every musical influence with great African-style backing vocals and powerful guitar (King Crimson’s Adrian Belew from memory) to the fore. There is nothing like this music anywhere, ever.

David Byrne of TH is also responsible for my love of Brazilian music through his series of Brazil Classics compilations in 1989-90. Buy volumes one and two if you want a great introduction to Brazilian music.

6. Folk Song – Garbarek, Gismonti, Haden

I am a big fan of the ECM sound and this is a classic example of it. Garbarek is, after Rollins, the best unaccompanied saxophonist around and Gismonti one of the great multi-instrumentalists. I saw Garbarek live a few times in the 1990’s and he was terrific every time (I managed tears at one of his performances). I saw Gismonti too, doing a solo show in Southampton and on here it is his guitar playing which is so beautiful. This track is the opening piece off Folk Songs which every person I have played it to has gone out and bought immediately. The standout track from a stand out album. Best described as classical jazz.

7. Oh Girl – Chi-Lites

I had to have something from either the Chi-Lites or the Delfonics and this just edges it over almost any Delfonics track. Beautiful songwriting from Eugene Record who wrote loads of great tracks and doesn’t get the credit he should. Had he been at Motown…This appeals to the highly sentimental side of me which craves real love.

8. Starless and Bible Black – Stan Tracey Quartet

British Jazz’s finest moment and a piece of Jazz I would defy anyone to dislike. Tracey played with all the greats as the resident pianist at Ronnie Scott’s in the 1960’s. But in 1964 he produced a jazz classic ‘Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood’ and this is a magnificent piece from that album. I remember the first time I heard it was on a documentary about him and they set this track with panoramas of the London Skyline by night. I was transfixed by the connection of image and music and remain so to this day. This was a great era for British Jazz but of course no-one realised it at the time. What Joe Harriot was doing was ahead of Coltrane and if you don’t believe me and you are a jazz fan buy his two albums from the very early sixties – ‘abstract’ and particularly ‘freeform’ which features great playing from Shake Keane too. Also Indo-Jazz Fusions.

If I could take only one piece on my Island then ‘starless’ would be it and I know I would listen to it every night, look at the stars, remember the image of the London Skyline and cry my eyes out at the thought that I may never see it again. I would die of melancholia eventually.

Book: The London Encyclopaedia
Luxury: Piano – I could teach myself Stan Tracey’s piano parts!

Of course it pains me at what I have missed and there is little from after 1990 which is a shame because there is so much great stuff from the last decade. But it probably does reflect my love of black music from the Americas and evocative European sounds. The biggest gap is British rock and I am sorry I could not include Colloseum’s ‘Elegy’, Bowie’s ‘Moonage Daydream’ or something from Led Zep. Maybe if I do this tomorrow they would all be in there. No Coltrane, Dolphy, Marvin Gaye or from the modern era Nitin Sawhney, Suba or Anouar Brahem either.

I have gone for highly emotional music first, figuring I would need it on the Island.

Germany, Andrew Neil...

2007-02-25T07:53:00.000-08:00

I have had a good week. I spent it in Bad Neunhar, Germany working with the Kyoto Protocol team. Of course, professional etiquette means I cannot divulge what we did but I was enormously impressed by what they are doing. One thing the trip did do was to cement in my mind that Germany is actually a very attractive country and its people very friendly. Of course to Brits whose minds are still locked in the past this may be antagonistic reading but compared to my two current bases of Penge and Pezenas the lack of dog mess and the pride in civility and civic buildings was refreshing.

I have come back to the UK presented with a business opportunity that may shape the rest of my life. I may have to give a few things up, including some of the foreign travel but this may be exchanged for increasing mental stimulation. And I can continue to write.

I am not a big fan of Andrew Neil although I do think the paper he used to edit is by far the best of the ‘Sundays’. I did however enjoy his selections on Desert Island Discs which included some Miles, some James Taylor and the end to Abbey Road although his classical selections were unimaginative (Tchaikovsky’s ‘Violin Concerto’ apart). I was surprised and pleased by his choice of The Pet Shop Boys, the defining pop group of the 1980’s – those who read this and know me may be surprised by my saying this but they were the zeitgeist group of an age which has defined a more confident 21st century Britain. Music tells me a lot about people, and perhaps as a writer about people I should not be so quick to categorise, but I do read a lot into people according the music they listen to. Some Desert Island Discs can be dreadful due to the lack of stimulation presented by the musical choices. To that end, Digby Jones, the former head of the CBI was the prime offender. And I remember the most disappointing castaway being journalist Robert Fisk. He clearly had fallen victim of ceasing to be part of the world due to his over-concentration on one aspect of it. He came across as a self-justifying bore even if I have some sympathy with his views.

For my and perhaps a few readers’ amusement I shall shortly deliver my own selection. I can guarantee the inclusion of Miles Davis and Pharoah Sanders but the other choices will be tough. What to leave out? At least two American soul tracks, something from Brazil, a classical piece and some rock have to be included.

I seem to be growing ‘Moobs’ – man boobs. Back to the swimming pool.

As I re-read this blog I notice that almost all paragraphs begin with ‘I’. What does that say?

Barbie

2007-02-16T05:20:00.000-08:00

I hadn’t really noticed my daughter’s birthday presents until yesterday. I was cooking lunch when I saw her playing with a doll dressed in tight fighting black gear and carrying what appeared to a whip. And there it was - ‘Dominatrix Barbie’ – converting innocent 7 year old minds to the joys of sado-masochism. I wait for ‘Hooker Barbie’, ‘Massage Parlour Barbie’ and ‘Torture Barbie’. Some sick mind out there is already working out ways to get this done.

Anyway happier thoughts. Today is another beautiful day and confirmed that, in the South of France at least, spring is here. At a guess it is around 20 degrees and the sky is the kind of dark blue that you don’t get in the UK. I went for an early cycle ride and then spent the morning looking at houses and driving around picturesque French villages. I will only buy something that is brand new. Perhaps one of the things about the ageing process is that I like perfection. When I buy a house I like the idea of not having to do a thing to it and that nobody else has touched it. The afternoon, which is when I am writing this, is being consumed by completing a tax return, hence the reason I am writing this rather than doing what I should be doing.

On Sunday I leave France again to go to London en route to Germany. Five days with UN climate change offshoot and then back to London for 2 weeks to chase up my house sale and to get writing the next book. I am afraid my carbon footprint is immense and this year I really must follow my plan to do far more journeys by rail than plane.

Track of the day: Na Balada Do Rio Salgado – Nacao Zumbi. The best live band I have ever seen.

Van Morrison

2007-02-13T04:08:00.000-08:00

I write this to express what I think about Van Morrison – and to provoke some response. At my friend Brian’s on Saturday night we stumbled across TOP2 and watched Van Morrisson perform the most dreadful piece of guff with Cliff Richard. Something about God. It instantly took me back to 1989 (when this song was a hit) when an old girlfriend took me to see him live. It was the worst concert I have ever seen saved only by the excellent Georgia Fame trying to breathe some life into the show. And when Lonnie Donegan came on to perform a couple of dire skiffle numbers I broke. I actually found it offensive because he made no attempt to hide his contempt for the audience. He came across as an extremely arrogant man. I accept however, that some people, including my partner for that evening think he is great live. To me it was like watching someone who got bored 20 years ago and hasn’t had anything else to do since. My snapping point was when I bought his Avalon Sunset album at that time. A shocker because of its banality.

To balance that I have enjoyed some of his albums – Moondance, Astral Weeks, Tupelo Honey and previous readers of this blog will know that I have a very soft spot for his song Natalia but I just find him extremely bland. I suppose I never really felt I was listening to a front rank performer. I think ‘Them’ and particularly his baby blue track are great and they demonstrate what he is capable of. As I get older my listening becomes more varied and inventive and I just find myself unstimulated by his offerings. I think he appeals to the part of Ireland that looks to middle America for its musical inspiration. And I think he appeals to that part of America which sees Ireland as a glossy holiday brochure. I do like Ireland myself but I find the sentimentalist view of it nauseating and I am glad to see it fast disappearing. A standing joke among musicians is Van’s inability to choose top ranking musicians (with a few exceptions such as GF) because of his fiscal tightness and I wonder, if he had done so, if his music would sound more vigorous. It needs it.

I remember going to a Danny Thompson (Pentangle, John Martyn, David Sylvian) gig once and his repartee extended to a few VM digs along the way which got me thinking about the lack of credit say John Martyn gets compared with Van Morrison. To my mind JM is in a different class – nothing Van Morrison has done gets near to Grace and Danger which I am delighted to see has just been re-released and has been given 5 stars in Mojo, Sunday Times and others. I reviewed this album on Amazon a while back.

My mother

2007-02-12T07:53:00.000-08:00

I am back in France after two weeks away in Tbilisi and London. Next week sees me off to Germany so I have a week with my daughters before the next bout of work. But in the meantime I am preparing for that, doing my tax return (late – they have given me until 18/2) and also doing some work on the next book project. It is warm here and today I think we have settled on the idea of buying a newly built house. This is of course an anathema to middle class english inhabitants who buy up the old places. That is before they realise they are freezing cold in the winter and are often in flood zones. We have friends who have to live in one room in the winter because of the cold.

Anyway my mother. My mum has fallen obsessionally in love with a polish opera singer aged 31. She offered to be his ‘manager’ about 9 months ago – getting him gigs and so on. She has never managed anything in her life (although no bad thing as I always say to try something new). He agreed – desperate for work and started to sing in Conservative Clubs etc. He was also giving her singing lessons at £25 per hour – one a day (which my naïve father was paying for) and it turns out that she was having a lesson every day of the week. He, because he needed the money and she because she wanted to be near him. Anyway the longer this supposed ‘business relationship’ went on the more it became apparent that he was taking her for every penny he could, and I do not blame him, while she was just wanting to be attached to him. Apparently he never even kissed her. Anyway things have come to a head because he said he was moving to Southend (I presume to escape) and then when she threatened to open an office in Southend he announced he was moving to Europe.

At the beginning of January he went off, with it transpires a girlfriend of his own age who is pregnant and they are marrying in the summer. My mum ended up chasing him around Europe, having a fight in a Brussels hotel with the police having to be called and is now en route to Munich where he is singing in the next couple of weeks. I don’t think he knows she is coming. His mother has banned my mother from the wedding and, if she could, Poland altogether. She is blind to the warnings of her family and totally blind to the fact that she is making the biggest ass out of herself. Plus they are fighting over custody of some hideous 4x4 which he claims is his and she claims is hers. I suspect it is his. I have missed out some other stuff – regular humiliations in front of friends, my mother spending vast fortunes in Ann Summers to make herself sexually alluring, quaffing vast quantities of cheap red - no doubt to numb the love pain and 10 grand spent on a man who has no interest in her. The strangest thing about this is I am not the least surprised and neither is my sister. The only one who seems to know nothing about this is my father who is sat in the middle of it all. She spun him a yarn about going to Germany to sing Gershwin in a Berlin Jazz Club. My god.

I did something I don’t normally do too. I am not a great film watcher because I do not have the attention span but I did enjoy ‘Sideways’ at my friend Brian’s on Saturday. No doubt the excellent burgundy he offered for refreshment relaxed me sufficiently to make it agreeable.

Album of the day: White Noise: An Electric Storm – Delia Derbyshire. A free download of this seminal 60’s electronic album is available on the internet.

Delia Derbyshire

2007-02-09T06:48:00.000-08:00

Sometimes when you get older you start to believe that the things that have always interested you may start to run out of new stimuli. Music in all forms (perhaps excluding opera) is my great passion and I sometimes wonder if there is anything left to listen to. Then something new comes along and I find my listening taking a new path.

Last night, not feeling well, I put myself to bed at 8.30 but woke at about 11.00pm and put the television on. Right after newsnight a programme was announced exploring the work of the BBC Radiophonic Studio in the 1960's. What a great programme this was and what a joy to hear of a group of musicians who had not been given their due recognition. But the real star was Delia Derbyshire who, although she did not compose the tune applied her genius mind to the construction of the doctor who theme and to many other jingles, theme musics and whole compositions. Anyone who is interested can visit her website where you can hear extracts of her sounds. She also released a number of electronic albums in the 1960's many of which have been re-released. This great pioneer of electronic music is now dead but not before a new generation of electronic musicians had given her the praise she rightly deserved. I will be purchasing very soon (once house is sold!)

This is what I love about music. There is a never ending supply of new (to me) sounds to choose from. Such a shame that so many 'listeners' wallow in the banal and unchallenging.

TBILISI

2007-02-07T10:34:00.000-08:00

Written at Tbilisi airport:

It is Saturday 7.30 am – 3 February as I handwrite this blog for annotation when I get back to the UK. It seems strange that a European country should be 4 hours ahead of the UK but it’s position North East of Turkey, bordering Chechnya and as the gateway to the ‘Stans’ explains its importance the US and Europe. Add Russia’s strong desire to keep its cousin within the old Soviet brotherhood and you begin to see why this fiercely proud country of only 3.5 million people retains such a strategic role in Eastern European affairs. This role is an historic one with Georgia having been invaded by almost everyone over the last two thousand years. It’s unique language (one of only 14 alphabets in the world), is a key reason why it has retained such a strong cultural identity.

The thing that I notice most in Tbilisi, it’s capital, is less aesthetic and cultural and more practical – the terrible driving. It is almost impossible to cross the road and in particular the main street (Ave Rustaveli – Rustaveli being a great Georgian poet). I saw an old woman, apparently almost unable to walk, suddenly break into a full sprint to negotiate 8 lanes of traffic moving at 70kph and some much more than that. Imagine trying to cross the Marylebone Road at rush hour with everyone’s speed doubled and you have some idea of what it is like. Tbilisi itself (1.3 million people) is a mix of old soviet architecture, some shiny new buildings, crumbling mediaeval style homes in tight knit lanes and housing estates that look 3 times worse than Parisian banlieux.

The Georgian’s are an hospitable, welcoming people in the streets (‘welcome to Tbilisi sir’ everywhere) and they have a strong hearty cuisine and a history of reasonable wine production. Customer service is however appalling and based on the French model – ‘here’s your food, eat it and don’t ask me anything’.

I have been training border monitors and admin staff in working under pressure. The border monitors work on the South Ossetian border. South Ossetia is a semi-autonomous statelet desired by both Russia and Georgia and a cause of regular and mounting tension between the two. The seminars I ran were full and the English of course immaculate. I even sold some books too. So I am pleased to report a successful trip. Next stop is Germany later on this month.

Music: The latest Anouar Brahem album – Le Voyage De Sahar.

Child's Play

2007-01-28T06:52:00.000-08:00

Just a quick blog today as I pack my bags and head for Tbilisi, Georgia for the week. Yesterday was my daughter’s birthday party and we had it in the house. 13 crazy children running around and trashing the place and making tons of noise in the way that only pre-teens can. It took me 3 hours to clear up in the evening. They are all such a confident bunch and as I watched them I revised my list of things that all children should learn to do by the age of ten to make them confident adults. I came up with the following:

Swim
Speak another language
Ride a bike
Ride a horse
Play a musical instrument

The first three cost almost nothing but most children can probably only ride a bike. Speaking a foreign language opens up a part of the mind at a young age that I think helps young children to see the world in a much more open-minded way. It is puzzling me why our schoolchildren (in the UK and France) are not learning Chinese at the age of 5. They would love drawing all of those little pictures. Make it fun for them. Age 10 or 11 is just too late for this sort of thing.

I also appalled myself as I watched these children by dividing them mentally into the ones I do like and the ones I don’t. Only natural I suppose but I have to report that the 2 english ones there (apart from my own) were by far the worst behaved.

Over the next two weeks my blogs are likely to be less frequent but I hope to report ‘live from Tbilisi’. A mad place. But a great place.

Song of the day: Natalia – Van Morrision

Excellence

2007-01-26T02:50:00.000-08:00

I was going to tell the tale of my mother chasing young Polish men around Europe today and it will make a fine story but I save it for the appropriate moment – which is probably at the moment of bankruptcy, consummation (unlikely) or divorce.

But today I want to say something about excellence in two very different fields. Caroline returned yesterday afternoon and I went to pick her up at Nimes airport just after lunch. I spent the morning cleaning the house and while I did it I put BBC Interactive on so I could have the Federer-Roddick match on while I cleaned. Every generation produces a sporting genius and in our era we are lucky to have Roger Federer. Roddick had been playing very well and more than a few experts thought he was playing well enough to beat Federer. It went to four all in the first set and after that Roddick won two games. It has been described as one of the greatest performances in Grand Slam tennis and having watched and enjoyed a lot of tennis over the years (it is my favourite one-on-one sport) I have not seen anything better. Let’s rejoice in genius. I write on Positive Thinking and always say that so few of us ever realise in reality what we are capable of with the gifts we have been given. Federer has – and I freely admit that his ability is a birth gift - and seems to be able to find new parts of himself mentally whenever he has to.

Excellence also exists in the world of art and art commentary and in Andrew Graham-Dixon we have a commentator who continues the TV legacy of Kenneth Clarke. BBC4 have recently started his new series on religious art and this week he took us through Byzantine treasures. Perhaps this series is not quite as great as the one he did on Italian art a few years ago (and clearly that is his first love) but nonetheless it is streets ahead of anything else in its genre at the moment. He ‘reads’ a painting or sculpture back to the viewer without pretension and with absolute involvement in it’s ‘story’. I remember around ten years ago he described a Vermeer and all the possibilities that lay within the picture and he was totally comfortable shedding a few tears at the emotion of it all. A man totally and sincerely in love with his subject. In the era of the autocue it is great to see someone who can bring you with him into his world through his language. Of course, that this programme should be on BBC2 rather than BBC4 hardly needs to be said.

Music of the day is the latest Gotan Project album ‘Lunatico’. Better even, I think than their first album ‘La Revancha Del Tango’ which was great. I saw them live in the courtyard at Somerset House a few years ago and they were terrific.

Woe, Woe and Thrice Woe

2007-01-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

I was in a beautiful sleep last night, ably assisted by two excellent glasses of a vin rose pre-bed. When at 3am my eldest daughter Lily woke me to announce that her first tooth had fallen out. Of course this then provided a cue for her to climb into my bed. I got back to sleep to be awoken 20 minutes later by Charlie the cat wanting to be fed. This was 3.30am. I refused, exit disgruntled cat, braying around the house at his dissatisfaction. And then at 4.15am my naughty youngest started calling ‘daddy, daddy’ in soft tones, growing increasingly louder as I failed to respond to her initial calling. Enter child number two into daddy’s bed. Sharing a bed with naughty youngest is like trying to sleep on top of Medusa’s head. I finally got back to sleep at around 6.30 am and the church bells of Pezenas sang ‘get out of bed you lazy sod’ about an hour later. Which I duly did. So it was then a small rush to get Lily ready for her 9am piano lesson followed by ballet in our nearest major town, Beziers.

We got to piano and the teacher’s house was shuttered and the gate locked. No piano lesson. A large espresso gave temporary revitalisation and we shot off to Beziers. When we got to ballet Lily then started crying and telling me how much she hates ballet. So we came home. Please forgive me if I say that I bought a very good bottle for tonight which I shall consume and enjoy as a palliative cure for children blues. I love them dearly though.

I am so tired that I shall have to postpone the story of my mother’s current love for a Polish man half her age (who has no interest in her) and possible financial crash because of it until tomorrow. But it is a good one!

Today music is irritating me so no recommendation. But I am pleased to report that the Birmingham Post is allowing me the right of reply to the front-page story they printed last week.

Cat Racing

2007-01-23T06:25:00.000-08:00

I have always enjoyed reading diaries and the three I have enjoyed the most are: Alan Clarke, Chips Channon and Jeffrey Bernard. Bernard’s pieces are not what you might call a diary – he would be a great blogger now if he could ever summon up the motivation to do it for nothing. I think great diaries and indeed autobiographies are best written by those who were close to the top of their chosen profession but who lacked the ruthlessness to really go for it. Very few of the greats write well of themselves because they are always trying to protect their reputation – even up to the end where the legacy becomes all.

I have just finished my annual dose of Channon and Clarke and I am currently reading some of Bernard’s last musings – ‘Reach for the Ground’. Not as good as his previous collections of which I have two but still very, very funny. Described as the longest suicide note in history he tells great stories of excess and impropriety. As a great gambler he tells a lovely story about what he and a group of friends had to do to get their gambling fix when snow had caused all of the horse-racing to be abandoned. They set the whole of an upstairs landing up of a large Battersea flat as a mini-racecourse complete with hurdles, water jumps etc. and at the end of the course they left a tin of opened salmon. At the beginning of the course they lined up a row of cats and one of them ran a book so that bets could be placed on winning cats. He tells another story of Metropolitan Police excess when they came to arrest him for running a book at the Coach and Horses pub in Soho. 12 policeman came to perform the arrest of, as he says, ‘little me’. I have met very few policemen and women in my time and with honourable exceptions I am always underwhelmed by them. But perhaps my favourite is how he came to be sacked from the Sporting Life. He was a little inebriated and was – how shall we say it – ‘unwell’ at the moment the Queen Mother was coming out of a lift and he was going into it. I believe she may have had to buy a new pair of shoes.

I am rather attracted to the world’s of shits and charlatans and I wonder why.

Song of the day: Funky Nassau – Ray Munnings

Two bubbles burst

2007-01-22T04:43:00.000-08:00

Last week I was on the front of The Birmingham Post. My agent in Birmingham had issued a press release detailing the work I had done with the City Council as a means of promoting my new book on anxiety. Anyway The Post interviewed him and made up a story around which around 2% was accurate. They claimed I had delivered stress counselling to 700 Birmingham City Council housing workers. I have never counselled anyone so I do not know where the story came from. The referred to me as one of Britain’s leading workplace psychologists (which is fine!!) and a local rent-a-quote person described me as someone ‘who probably doesn’t come cheap’. And they topped the piece with an editorial slamming the council and the human resources department who had employed me. End of contract. End of the best work I had done for years – I really felt I had a made a difference to a number of people’s lives. And all of this through ignorance and a desire to sell newspapers. To quote Private Eye – ‘never let the facts get in the way of a good story’.

The heat bubble has burst here in Pezenas. And I really ought to be happy about that because 22 degrees on Saturday is a rather stark warning of what is to come. I like the heat but really only at the appropriate times of year.

I have sold my house – in fact two offers in one day. The inertia of agent one (Asshetons in Penge, SE London if you are interested) prompted a change of agent (Your Move in Crystal Palace) and they delivered four viewings immediately, two of which have put in offers. I do find property tedious. All the English people sit outside the Café Des Arts here in Pezenas (a dismal café) talking about property profit and renovation quoting from all of those programmes on the TV. I keep away but I am sure it bores the French too. I don’t agree with the French lifestyle much (too inert for me) but on this point I am with them. Although I notice that the prices of property go up by about 20-25% in the summer months. Who can blame them for taking advantage of gullible Englanders?

Song of the day: Showroom Dummies – Senor Coconut.

Does 'living' make dying easier?

2007-01-18T02:46:00.000-08:00

In my blog profile I put one of my interests as the sudy of acceptance of death. For many years I was terrified by this but I think I am coming to terms with it. I think writing books on positive thinking have helped me - they have certainly driven me to do more with my life but also to enjoy some of the things that are already around me that I was previously ignoring. I actually would love to write a book called 'how living makes dying easier'. Emma, if you are reading this - what do you think! Anyway my blog today just consists of a few quotes (some are mine, others attributed) which suggest where I am coming from:

‘When you came into this world you were crying and everyone else was smiling. When you leave it, if you give life your best shot, you will be smiling. And everyone else will be crying. But they will be smiling too’. (me)

‘What we call luck, what we call chance, is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. If you stay ready, you ain't gotta get ready." (Will Smith)

'The greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return' (Nat Cole via fellow blogger adam - http://simplepleasures3.blogspot.com)

'At the end of my life I want still to be standing up rather than on my knees. To say that I stood up to the world and had a go rather than letting all the opportunities I had slip through my hands' (me - in my book 'Make Your Own Good Fortune')

'Growing old gracefully? I want to grow old disgracefully!' (Mae West)

The death of two greats

2007-01-17T05:09:00.000-08:00

Today jazz music mourns two losses – two indisputably great musicians. Alice Coltrane and Michael Brecker. Alice Coltrane was not given the credit she deserved given her marriage to JC, and she did devote much of the later part of her life to the legacy of her husband. But in her own right she made some great Impulse recordings, particularly Ptah: The El Daoud and the Warner recording Eternity. She was musically very close to Pharoah Sanders (whom she collaborated with) and will be best remembered for her introduction of the harp into jazz which gave her music spiritual colour. The spiritual edge to her music and JC, Pharoah and Archie Shepp too are where I get closest to complete musical bliss.

Many believe Michael Brecker to be the best tenor saxophonist since Coltrane. His influence is huge because he could play in a variety of idioms and sound great in all of them. I even noticed him on a Parliament album recently. But he wasn’t a musical tart. Just a great musician who was open-minded enough to test himself out in a wide variety of settings. He completed his last album two weeks ago. It will be a spine-chilling moment when I buy my copy of it.

May they both enjoy the long jam session they have now begun.

Song of the Day: Blue Nile – Alice Coltrane

On the beach

2007-01-13T13:52:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered what you might do if you saw two women making love in the sand-dunes by the beach on the Mediterranean and you had a six year old and a two year old with you, seeing what you were seeing? There are times when you are happy to explain anything to your children and other times when you need a breathing space to prepare a form of words that might express what you to say in language that doesn’t add three-hundred supplementary questions to the one originally asked. So you want to know how I dealt with this? The answer is that I didn’t have to. My eldest daughter who normally manages to ask relentlessly acute questions at any time saw what was going on and carried on with what she was doing. As did the lovers. One of them was about 18 and the other around 55. Sometimes things are beyond our radar – even the highly developed and receptive radar of children. As for me I quite liked the idea that two people were able to have alfresco sex in the middle of January although the reality of an air temperature of 21 degrees at this time of the year is terrifying. There were people swimming in the sea and had I been ten years to the good I may well have been in there myself. But what was beautiful about the day were my daughters telling me how fantastic a day they had had by the sea. They were exhausted by the end of it. Message for parents who don’t know how to get their children to sleep – get them in the fresh air for about six hours. The investment of 6 hours in the day gets you 4 hours in the evening and possibly a mini lie-in too. A great return.

Thinking of Georgia (with link to swimming) as I am at the moment I remember the last time I was there. It was November 2004 and the hotel had a pool which the enthusiastic receptionist had assured me was heated although she said they would have to clean it. I watched the pool cleaner spend around two hours meticulously cleaning the autumn leaf debris out and then I got a call to say it was ready. The possibility that I may need a covering of goose fat and more than my speedos for company had not occurred to me. I stuck one hand in the pool and watched it turn a colour that has only been recognised by scientists in the IKEA paint laboratory. Not wanting to let the ever-willing hotel staff down I did the British thing of diving in and instantly felt my heart seize up so much that I thought it was going to shoot through the roof of my head. My muscles solidified so much that I could barely swim. Two lengths later I was out with assorted Georgians and Russians looking at me like I had three heads. I am not sure if my genitalia have ever been the same again.

Only one gripe today and the was the dog that managed to de-faecate half a metre from where me and my daughters were playing on the beach. The owner of this ‘dog’ – it looked more a furry rat – watched it’s deposit and walked on. No clearing up, no apology and a disdainful look at me which said you shouldn’t have children on the beach when my rat needs to go to the toilet. I realise there are many French people (mostly young) who find this as repulsive as me. But there are many (mostly middle-aged and upwards) who care for no-one but themselves with no sense of social responsibility. Fraternite n’existe pas ici.

Song of the day: Irma Thomas: 'Baby Don’t Look Down'. (one for the lovers)

Chips Channon

2007-01-12T01:16:00.000-08:00

Every year I read the ‘Chips’ Channon diaries. For readers who don’t know him, he was a major light on the London aristocratic social scene in the 1930’s and 40’s and he chronicles an age that does not exist anymore. This was a world of country house weekends, London balls, bibelots, champagne and excess – the world of Emerald Cunard and Diana Cooper. He was an MP for 25 years, though did nothing of any significance there. The gift he had was to be able to gossip, absorb and digest acute observations and then write them in his diaries. I can best describe them as ‘discretely indiscreet’. Perhaps the best thing about him – and one of the key reasons for his lack of political success – was his backing of wrong horses. Munich, Chamberlain, Butler and so on. He did grow to love Churchill but was well aware of Churchillian weaknesses which we tend to have forgotten in his recent (and of course wholly justified) deification.

I say all this because I awoke at 5.30am this morning, minus bed partner and opened his diaries for their annual read. Two hours of bedded bliss before the children demanded cartoons, cereal and general entertainment. I must admit that I could have quite happily spent the day in bed reading. Nonetheless in one hour I washed the floor, loaded the washing machine, did last night’s washing up, emptied the cat tray and prepared lunch before dropping Lily at school and Izzy at the child-minders. And so here I sit at 10.00am on Friday morning guiltily wondering whether to go back to bed and read or to work. The puritanical side of me knows what the answer will be. Shame.

Talking of reading, my heart always sinks when someone hands me a book and says ‘you will love this’. However, what it does do is help you understand how other people see you. My father sees an image of me that has never changed. He recently said those fateful words while handing me a book ‘Penguins at Play’ by the late Harry Thompson. I had read his excellent biography of Peter Cook but I found this tedious and cricketing-cliché ridden. I am not much interested in a ‘man’s world’ – public school types playing cricket in Argentina and Antarctica. I wish he stopped to think for a moment that I am not like him. He for instance does not like Chips Channon because he disagrees with him and cares not for Chips's vanity. I rather enjoy reading about people and opinions I disagree with. Far more mentally enriching than re-enforcing your own ‘world-view’ all the time.

No musical recommendation today. I will enjoy the peace.

The real 'Georgia on My Mind'

2007-01-11T11:33:00.000-08:00

The promise of foreign travel is the work equivalent of royal jelly to me so I was thrilled to see two emails from clients new asking me to work in Tbilisi, Georgia at the end of the month followed by Germany in February. I have been to Georgia before (both Batumi and Tbilisi) and loved it and I cannot wait to get on that plane. Georgian Airlines of course so one has to hold one’s breath a little. On my last flight to Tbilisi there were four people on the plane and I got upgraded to business class. Not that it really mattered in such emptiness. I feasted and imbibed relentlessly and watched the snow-topped peaks of the Caucasus. Marvellous.

I am with the children on my own for two weeks after dropping Caroline at Nimes airport at lunchtime today. It is so warm at the moment that I can actually see us going for a picnic at the beach on Sunday. Otherwise we will go to the ‘barrage’ lake inland which has a rather nice picnic area when it is not infested with untethered dogs.

I had an urge to listen to Archie Bell and The Drells ‘’Soul City Walk’ and contacted soul brother Nigel to see if he could email it across. He duly did and it was as I remembered it and so for that it is my ‘song of the day’.

O yes – did I mention that the Christmas bills all arrived in an unfriendly pile (what is the collective noun for lots of bills arriving at once?) this morning. I felt like Colonel Kurtz – ‘The Horror’.

Jazz

2007-01-09T06:16:00.000-08:00

I am on musical fire at the moment sparked by blogger chats with fellow bloggers adam and brian. After a jazz chat about Gil Scott-Heron yesterday I started to think about all of those great musicians I have seen live. And I reminded myself of Sonny Rollins and how he doesn't get the dues. He is one of the last greats from the 1950's and possibly the greatest ever unaccompanied saxophonist (perhaps only Garbarek comes close). I listened to his 'Next' album today - a late one from 1972 but a gem and one that is underrated by the Penguin Guide to Jazz. I love his album 'The Bridge' too. I like the way that when he has nothing to say musically he says nothing. So he went off by himself for a while, spent time sat by a bridge and came out with 'The Bridge' at the end of it. His version of 'God Bless The Child' on it is a great demonstration of his unaccompaied playing. The times I saw him live he always did the showstopper 'Don't Stop The Carnival' (popularised by Alan Price) and at the age of 70 (as he then was) his lungpower was remarkable.

So I have spent the time I should be writing checking Amazon rankings for my books (the writer's disease I am afraid) and loading up my itunes with jazz classics. I listened to StarPeople (Miles) which I loved from the early eighties as well as Tutu and Amandla - not a great album but Mr Pastorius is a great track.

I feel guilty for saying how great the weather is because it cannot be normal for the South of France to be experiencing 20 degrees in early January. Today was t shirt weather and wonderful it was too. Perhaps the carnival weather prompted me to listen to the carnival-type music of Sonny Rollins. It really is worrying that I can sit here in my office in Rue De La Foire, Pezenas with the window open, a warm breeze kissing me and a dark blue sky spread over the rooftops. I wonder if the sea is warm...

I hate to say this but certain aspects of the year have started very well (apart from one which I alluded to in a blog a few days ago). It seems that someone may want to buy my house and I have also secured a great contract to do some psychology based work in London and Birmingham over the next few months as well as a nice piece of work in germany next month. In March I am off to Kosovo again. Now all I need is for my new book on anxiety to sell. My good training friend Nigel gave a copy to his wife and it seems she loved it (Nigel would say if she thought it was rubbish). In fact she liked it so much she handed in her notice yesterday. Changing her life I think.

I got a junk email from 'Frank Tyson' today. Cricket historians will know him as the man who destroyed the Australians in Australia in 1954-5. He faded as quickly as he appeared. Rather like Steve Harmison it seems although unfortunately his success did not come against Australia. Currently nobody's success is coming against Australia. I think the difference is that Australians see sport as 'life' whereas we see it as 'sport'. That's the only way I can account for their continuing competitive excellence.

Album of the day - 'Next Album'- Sonny Rollins

Black Music

2007-01-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

I spent much of the day considering infidelity and the way it is perceived as ‘a man thing’. Of course statistics say that as many women are unfaithful as men so I wonder where the perception comes from. Are women more secretive? Are men more arrogant and therefore don’t want to see what is in front of their eyes? Do we tend to ignore problems in relationships until it’s too late? Or, do some men just say that it is easier to live with a happy woman than an unhappy one and let her get on with it? Being male I cannot answer for women. I struggle to answer for my own gender. The hardest thing is to answer for oneself.

I realise that my new year blogs have a sad tinge to them and I wonder if I am being affected by the news. As a massive fan of black American music I am saddened by the death of James Brown. To steal a phrase of Miles Davis’s if you could put the history of black America in four words it would be ‘Dr King, James Brown’. He was that important. And today I read belatedly of the continuing incarceration of Gil Scott Heron. I saw him live 3 times in the early ninetees. Twice at the Jazz Café and once at the Clapham Grand. The Jazz Café gigs were marvellous. His song ‘Beginnings’ is one of my desert island discs. He is now in jail for a minimum of two years for violating a rehab order (to do a show a show with Alicia Keys – Gil she ain’t worth it). He is now HIV I presume as a result of dirty needles. I watched him on a BBC programme on YouTube ‘Hard Talk’ filmed in 2001. He was great as a speaker but he looked a shell. What must he be like now?

There really is only one joy to being in France currently and that is the chance to spend a lot of time with my daughters. I am sporadically writing my next book and flitting in and out of inspiration (as I usually do) and playing with Lily and Isabelle. They are joyously happy although Lily is showing signs of the mood swings that inhabit my world.

Song of the day: the album ‘The New Folk Sound of Terry Callier’

Paris Hilton

2007-01-04T07:41:00.000-08:00

I have sold the same numbers of copies of my first book as Paris Hilton has of her first album. I leave you to try and guess how many that might be. I suppose you are either thinking that must be a lot or, if you have heard the Paris Hilton album, you might be thinking that it is awful and that no-one could have possibly bought it. Should I resort to Hiltonesque publicity stunts? I remember going into Waterstones in Birmingham about a year ago to see if they had my book on their shelves (the kind of sad, narcissistic things authors do) and I walked into Jade Goody fans waiting for the arrival of Britain’s Britney to sign copies of her autobiographical tome. I wonder if she read a few passages from it to entertain the hordes. Now that would have been worth watching. The English language massacre live from Waterstones, New Street.

My New Year’s resolution is try and avoid using exclamation marks. The more I see them used, and the more I look back at my writings and assess my own use of them I realise what they are for. They are a cue for the author to say to the reader ‘I have tried to write something funny here, which hasn’t hit the mark so my use of the exclamation mark is a suggestion to you that you might like to chuckle a bit more than you would have done but unfortunately a bit less than I had hoped you might when I wrote it’. In other words the exclamation mark is a humour substitute.

I have used up a year's supply of cynicsm in my first blog of the New Year. All will be joy from now on. A happy one to all readers.

London was great for a month and now I am back in Pezenas, France. I have a month before the travels begin to write the book I want to write. ‘The Idea’ is coming…

Song of the day: The Cinematic Orchestra album ‘Motion’

London

2006-12-13T08:56:00.000-08:00

A surprise today. I went to my publishers to talk about new ideas and copies of my new book rolled in as I was leaving. I called back later after a bout of shopping to collect a few of the books. It’s called ‘Don’t Worry: How To Beat The Seven Anxieties of Life’. A real thrill and it makes the agony that was the reality in writing this all worthwhile. Is it good? I could not possibly say. Well maybe I can! I like it.

I remember when I started this blog, quoting great 30’s diarist ‘Chips’ Channon who said there is not point in having a discrete diary, one might as well have a discrete soul. I have to break the rule. Commercial confidentially forbids me from divulging the topic of the book I hope to write early next year. But I am exhilarated at the freedom the style and content of the book gives me. As soon as I can I will share its format with you.

I took three hours out to walk around London. A couple of circuits of St James’s Park, The Mall, St Martin’s Lane, a bit of Oxford Street, Covent Garden and The Strand. I wonder how many people who spend their days amidst all this ever reflect on its lustre. I spoke to a friend of mine recently who loves the countryside and cannot work why anyone would want to live in a city. I asked him why and he said he needs room to breathe, to collect his thoughts and get some energy back. Cities do this for me. I can visit the country for a day and enjoy it but I have to admit that after a while I am twiddling my thumbs. Urban environments and in particular the greatest city in the world give me my energy. I like the great mass of humanity and all its creations speaking back to me in a way that the countryside cannot.

An enjoyable talk with Caroline and the babies on the phone. They will be joining me in London for Christmas. I cannot wait to see their joyous faces when they see the effort I am putting into decorating the house. In the evening my good training partner Nigel came down from Hull to stay the night so that we could discuss writing and training projects for the next year. We are writing a couple of pocketbooks for publication next year and met to hone in on content. Also to plan how to market ourselves better to the UN and other agencies after the success of our Autumn excursion to Kosovo. We imbibed a little in the evening to celebrate my new book. I gave him a copy of it as well as a terrific biography of cyclist Tom Simpson (‘Put me back on my bike’) who died while ascending the brutal Mont Ventoux in the 1967 Tour De France.

I realise as I look back at previous blogs how negative I have been about France. There are many things I do like about it – and after all I am currently educating my two children there. In the summer the south (and I am 10kms from the coast) is heaven writ large. Heat, Humanity and the pursuit of leisure combining together to form a sensuous feeling of oneness. Both my children will be fluent in English, French and Spanish. I say to my eldest daughter that if she can speak a second language (which she already can) and play an instrument (which she is on the way to doing) she will always be ok for a living. The world needs multi-linguists and wherever she is she can always busk. I recall writer Laurie Lee first inspiring the busking thought in me as he described earning his living in the 1930’s playing his fiddle in Southern England and then on the way down to Spain.

Finally I end today’s blog on a sad note. I went to see the house which my great-grandmother was born in and which I mentioned in my last blog. It is no longer there. Replaced by a hideous block of 1970’s flats courtesy of some ‘planning’ fool at Bromley Council no doubt. I texted my sister to let her know and I am sure she was as disappointed as I was.

Song of the Day: Everybody Here Wants You – Jeff Buckley

Tea and Toast

2006-12-11T09:16:00.000-08:00

I think I am one of the world’s lucky people. This morning (a Monday) I was able to go swimming at Beckenham Spa at 9.00am when the rest of the world was at, or on their way to work. Afterwards I had a cup of tea and some toast in a café while I read the paper and then went home (London home) and started work. I am not lazy! I worked all day yesterday and will probably work until about 9.00 tonight. But the point is, when I am not running seminars I can choose to work when I want. I work sixty hours a week, I am productive, but for the most part I decide when I do the sixty hours.

As I was of thinking about others trudging to work and how lucky I am not having to do it I reflected that my career choice is actually right for the kind of person I am. I think that many actually want the routine that their work gives them although in their worst moments I am sure they have the ‘let’s chuck it in and go and live on a Scottish croft’ thoughts. The point is that happiness in work comes from a good match between the job you do and the kind of person you are. But it does mean you being honest about the kind of person you are. I live a financially precarious life of feast or famine because of the nature of the work I do and that would not suit many people. I like it because it is what gives me some ‘snap’. Choose what is right for you. And believe me – you can make that choice.

When I return to the UK I realise what a fantastic time we are currently having in this country. I believe that the huge influx of young French, Polish, Scandanavians and so on is a great thing. It is a reflection that this country is dynamic, entrepreneurial and creative and provides great opportunity for those who want to take it. If I compare the energy here to the lack of it in France where I currently live then I begin to understand how fortunate we currently are. I hope it carries on. I am not a rabid free-marketeer but I do think the more that Governments keep out of our lives the better.

The happiest day of the previous week was the visit to my sister on Saturday. I saw my niece for the first time. A ball of gurgling, farting, eating contentment at six weeks old and a real treasure to watch. Of course memories of my two daughters at such sweet ages swirled around although I missed much of my youngest daughter’s first few months because of work. Motherhood has inspired her and her partner John to become genealogists and they have tracked our family trees back to the early 19th century. It turns out that my Great-grandmother, was born in 1875 at a house 500 metres away from my current London home. I am heading round there tomorrow to have a look at the house. Having this information means I can go to Bromley Library and get more information about her parents (my Great-Great Grandparents). In the afternoon my father and I went to watch rugby, his local team Havant against Henley in a cup match. Havant lost (just) in one of the best games I have seen for years. I can’t bear all the machismo around the rugby (drinking games, songs etc.) but I love the spectacle of the sport itself. So my gripe this week is just about the overall hype surrounding football. The so-called ‘beautiful game’ is played by less than beautiful people. And at least some of the supporters are myopic in the extreme. There is a world out there!

A crucial day tomorrow as I meet the Editorial Director of a major publisher to present my ideas for future books. I want 2007 to be a year of writing and considerably less travel. My suspicion is that it will be a year of a lot of both.

Instead of my song of the day I have included my Christmas Selection. A fairly understated selection so probably best listened to after an extended period of gluttony (Christmas evening being a good time). I have tried to span the decades from the 1950’s (Yusef Lateef), 1960’s (Stan Tracey), 1970’s (Lou Rawls, Gilberto Gil, David Crosby), 1980’s (Ben Watt, David Sylvian whose solo work is criminally underated, Orchestra Baobab), 1990’s (Moondog, Anouar Brahem, Shelby Lynne, Mazzy Star), noughties (Lambchop, Faithless, Olu Dara, Seu Jorge).

Song Artist

Some Things Don't Matter Ben Watt (Pillows & Prayers Vol.1)
Flora Gilberto Gil (Luar)
Coumba Orchestra Baobab(Pirates Choice [Disc 1])
Una Mujer Seu Jorge (Cru)
Plum Blossom Yusef Lateef (Eastern Sounds)
Neighborhoods Olu Dara (Neighborhoods)
Fade Into You Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)
Orpheus David Sylvian (Secrets of the Beehive)
The Daily Growl Lambchop (Is a Woman)
Traction In The Rain David Crosby (If I Could Only Remember My Name)
Crazy English Summer Faithless Feat (Outrospective)
Fujiyama, Pt. 2 - Lovesong Moondog (Elpmas)
Comme une absence Anouar Brahem (Khomsa)
Starless And Bible Black Stan Tracey Quartet (Under Milk Wood)
Leavin' Shelby Lynne (I am Shelby Lynne)
Trade Winds Lou Rawls (Classic Philly)

I get tired of profits of doom speaking about the state of modern music. It is as good as it has ever been. The tracks from 90’s and the noughties stand up against music from any era.

Schoolchildren

2006-12-05T05:03:00.000-08:00

I learned a great lesson yesterday. I worked with a group of schoolchildren who sit on the student council at their school. They are at a very tough school but professional etiquette means it will have to be nameless. What I got was what I didn't really expect. They were a reasonably confident group, seemed to know quite a bit about the world and could express themselves - aged between 11 and 17. What many couldn't do was read properly. The greater confidence that young people have is heartening. And I wonder what effect the lack of reading skills will have. Given that young people always 'shape' their environment I suspect that for many it will not hold them back as they will shape the world the way they want it. Confidence and an ability to express yourself takes you a long way. But I wonder why the skills were so poor.

I am in Birmingham for the week. It has always been unfashionable to say so but I actually like Birmingham. It has energy, modernity and a completely regenerated area around Broad Street. This is sited around the huge number of canals Birmingham has (you probably already know that it has more than Venice). And I get more work in Birmingham than any other UK City. And it is only 90 minutes from London by train (why would anyone drive here?). When I talk about Birmingham to people abroad they are amazed to learn that it is the UK's second largest city. It really has no profile.

I bought a children's book which everyone it seems is recommending - 'You are a bad man Mr Gum' by Andy Stanton. I cannot see it's appeal but I am hoping my daughter can.

I am looking forward to Christmas. All the family in the UK. Christmas in London. I am beginning to not like France much. It feels like the whole is far less than the sum of its parts. It lacks creative energy and its people seem to lack initiative. I am not the first to say this (and many of the french I meet abroad say it too). As these are the two things that I value above almost anything else in places I go to I think I know the basis of my dissatisfaction. We are considering a move to Montpellier - I think the best city in France for youthful vibrancy and we hope that will do the trick.

Track of the day: Soul Sacrifice: Santana at Woodstock (I bought the DVD for a fiver).