Hang on! I've just realised that my female protagonist is falling for the wrong bloke! I've written Boring Background Guy in such a way that all of a sudden he seems dark and mysterious. And a damn sight more sexy than the bloke I was planning for her!

Argh! Sexual tension and jealousy or just change direction? Hmmmm...

This is not what I planned at all. I thought I was making Main Bloke seem all New Age and sympathetic, but on re-reading it, he's just a bit of a wet fart. If I was my FP, I'd fancy the pants off the brooding farmer bloke.

Blimey. Well, there's no question that this story is going to require considerably more than 50K to finish it. I'm in awe of people who do manage to write a coherent story from beginning to end within the constraints of 50K...

A month or two ago, Tim got up early and drove to Brighton to record brass on Robb Johnson's new Christmas album, "The Ghost of Love". We've just got the package of finished albums through, and are listening through to it - it's absolutely brilliant.

It's a concept album, and if you're looking for a nice, warm, fuzzy, feelgood kind of a Christmas album to shelve beside Cliff Richard and Bing Crosby, I recommend you buy something else. (Personally, I'd recommend "Piepowder", but I'm biased...)

If, however, you are interested in some of the most poignant, funny and heart-wrenching political and social songwriting that I've heard in a *very* long time, then you'll be hard pushed to spend your £9.79 anywhere better than this. The tunes are catchy, the lyrics are incredibly well observed, and the playing is utterly brilliant. Obviously, I think the brass playing is the best bit, but that's probably because I'm utterly besotted with my husband, even after 19 years together. Yeah, well, that didn't actually come as a surprise to anyone did it? Not anyone who actually, you know, KNOWS us? OK, then...

It's a splendid album, and we've got a small pile to sell as part of Tim's fee for doing the recording.

If you're interested, we are selling them for £9.79 (free postage - it's too complicated, otherwise!). It's absolutely fabulous, toe-tapping and heartbreaking all at the same time.

I really should get round to putting together a website for Tim and listing all his album credits. There's quite a few by now...

I suspected that this might be the case. Woke up this morning to an even more sore throat, croupy cough and no voice.

I'm meant to be teaching, though, so struggled through with the aid of the little portable PA system that we bought a while back. I think that rates as just the most useful piece of audio kit we've ever bought. I've used it *loads* and it really saved my bacon today. In class, I'm spending a few minutes at the end of each lesson making the kids listen to different types of music that they might not have been exposed to before. Last week I played them some African vocal music. Some of them really liked it. More of them were left cold. This week? German medieval bagpipe rock: Schelmish.

They loved it. Sadly, I didn't have time to teach them how to mosh in a hennin. This is probably a good thing. However, I did have several children asking where to buy Schelmish CDs .... Thoroughly corrupted!!!

I awoke the other day with a desperate desire for a knitted alice band.

"AHA!" thought I, "a perfect opportunity to knit upon those cheap circular needles I picked up a while back in Lidl!".

So I cast on, and then tried to complete the circle and knit back whence I came. But the stitches wouldn't slide neatly up the back of the needle to get knitted as I suspected they ought. The flexible bit of nylon was thinner than the needle part and there was a bump where one joined the other. The bump was really difficult to get the stitches past, and I had to wiggle them over it using my thumb. As I was using uber-splitty 3ply cotton, this was not optimal. I didn't even finish the second row before I gave up and did it on normal needles and used a seam.

So my question is:

Iz I doing it wrong (as a Lolcat might say)?

Do all circular needles have this bump, or are they just useless needles? I am confused. I have seen other people knitting with circulars and it seemed much easier than I found it.

Just got "On a Winter's Night" as a download after seeing him do "The Snow It Melts The Soonest" (in a cardigan stylee*) on Jools Holland this week. I thought that I'd messed up my iTunes shop account when the first track I hear is this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elu0YZTWizg

Does it sound to anyone else like his finger slipped on the CuBase "sample rate" button? I had to look it up on YouTube to check that it wasn't my copy of iTunes playing silly beggars. But no, I think he intended it to sound like that.

Bizarre.

Rest of album sounding much better, though. This satisfies my need to buy a new Winter album every year (I bought Enya's winter one last year, and it was... just like all her other albums. Not a great success, but at least iTunes means that I didn't pay CD prices...)

* I do think that someone needs to inform him that you don't need to wear a cardigan and grow an inpenetrable beard to sing folk music, though. I'm all about the beards, personally, but his was looking a bit... Rasputin... on "Later".

Like the widget idea. Wish it was the right size to use as an LJ icon, but my brain is fritzed right now. I go forth to knit.

Realised the other night that I need more contrast between the city breakdown and the relative stability of the countryside, so have created an interweaving storyline about a survivor in London. Writing her story is far grimmer than I thought it might be, and I'm working hard to make sure that she doesn't go all "Mary Sue" on me.

It has also made me suddenly aware that my countryside story is not being told from the female main character's POV (as I had planned and expected), but mainly from the male's. I had previously thought him a fairly unsympathetic character, so I'm surprised it's working out like this.

I am having my moments of sheer "SQUEEEEE!" of joy, but it's also making me think very hard about what I'm writing and how it will be read. I'm very aware that a great amount of rewriting and editing will need to take place, and also that whilst NaNoWriMo asks 50K words of us, my story is going to take considerably longer than that to tell. But now that I'm over halfway to the nomianl 'finishing post', I find that I've invested far too much of myself in this project to just leave it be when I've done my 50K.

I'm realistic enough to understand that those friends of mine who have been published have not achieved this aim with just a quick NaNoWriMo attack. There's years of honing and practising ahead of me before I can even think of sending things to a publisher, but heck, it's something to work towards, isn't it? (And in the meantime, there's nothing to stop me Lulu-publishing my current scribblings once they are in a format I'm happy with.)

And to in the words of the wonderful film, "The Committments" - "it feels a lot better to be an unemployed musician than an unemployed pipefitter!"

 ... I just used the phrase "faecal stench".

Ewwww!

Also, many thanks to oreouk  for her timely phone call last night and help with identifying which London parks have fences that might be able to contain a rioting crowd.  It helps to be accurate.  But it has ceased to matter to the crowd, they're all dead now!

Cor, the feeling of power, I tell you!  Mwwoooohahahahahahahah!!!!

.

 Despite a raging case of the "I don't wanna!"s following on from a very long, and very involved Parish Council meeting, I have managed to do just over my 1667 words of Nanny Rhino this evening.  I finished at about 20 to midnight.  Well - it's still today, isn't it?

I am thoroughly encouraged to see that I've reached 25K tonight!  That's half of Nanny Rhino!

W00t!

I am now going to sit down on a comfy chair and dose off whilst pretending to read a gardening magazine.  Then I shall rouse when Tim comes in, fresh from playing Last Post at a British Legion screening of "The Dambusters" and subsequent jazz rehearsal.  But I shall not rouse for long - I hear my bed calling me...

 Fairly astonished to note that I have reached over 23K words on NaNoWriMo so far.  Even more astonished to note that it is not the word "banana" written out 23K times, and that the story does appear to be going somewhere.  

Where?

Could be Albequerque for all I know...  (although I don't think they'd have enough petrol for the flight).

I used to adore writing prose when I was younger, but I had a problem with keeping up energy for anything much longer than 5K words or so.  I would neglect the character building (I knew who they were and how they looked in my head, why bother to explain?) and had a distinct tendency for the unexpected plot veer, and Mary-Sue-ism.  I can't say that I've spent any time working on my fiction since those heady (and rather rubbish) younger days, but I have certainly done a LOT of writing.  I spoke to a friend of mine once, about extracting from my Indebtnet.com for a regular newspaper column.  He was a newspaper editor and was very keen.  Then I told him how much I actually wrote and he went a little pale.  Extracting the meat for a 350 word column from a weekly output of many thousands of words would not have been a fun experience, I expect...

So, whilst I've not been writing fiction, I have definitely been writing, and the ease with which I'm managing to keep afloat  with a reasonable level of aplomb has surprised me.  I am also rather astonished that I have been thinking about other large scale writing projects for when this one is done.  

maeve_the_red said "the first hit (1K) is free", and dammit, she was right.  Maybe I'll never be good enough to be published, but right now I'm having fun, and if I can produce fiction in the same kind of spirit that I produce music (I do what I do, and if you like it, hurrah! Money is an unexpected bonus...), then I'll be pretty happy.

Of course, it's right about now that I decide that a second, intertwining storyline would be a good idea for Nanny Rhino, so I'm now fleshing out another character.  She's in clothsprogs ' old flat as we speak, hiding from the gunmen.  She quite likes the colour scheme :-D

Tim just got a phone call from the lovely and talented beard-wearer, folk musician and all-round star, Roger Watson.  Those of you who have been following the home game may remember that Tim recorded a CD with Roger earlier this year, "Past and Present".

Roger just got notification that one of the tracks that Tim featured on - 'Peg of Derby' - will be included on the next cover disc of fRoots.

Cool!

We don't get any extra money for this, tragically, but hopefully a few more people will buy copies of a great CD :-)  And hey - in fRoots!  Never managed *that* working for EFDSS :-D

 Still on schedule.  Slightly ahead tonight as I was at a good bit and didn't want to stop.  I had no idea it could be like this.  The story has just taken off, and I'm having a lot of fun.  Have written a slightly stuffy vicar, and am currently in the middle of a news report about the upcoming (fictional, yeah...) fuel crisis.

Have fought mightily with temptation, and have given in.

My BBC reporter dealing with the fuel riots is called Cassandra Fairbourn (1).

Couldn't resist.  There's firing going on.  Toby could get hit at any second...

WHEEE!!!  This is fun!!!  (I suspect that editing is going to be more like eating a festering elephant with a teaspoon though...)

(1)  If this makes no sense to you, go check out this song - "Cassandra"   .  Actually, even if this makes perfect sense, go have a look at the songs, link pages and gig guide - they've all been updated today with some really cool links :-)

Interviewer: Do you think that there's just not enough religion around these days?
Bishop: On the contrary, I think there's too much religion and not enough faith.

I really like our Bishop, and I think this is an *excellent* example of why.  As I get older I find I am less tolerant of dogmatic religion, but my faith in the Divine just keeps getting stronger.

 Which is roughly the noise that my creative urges are making right now.

I decide that the songwriting has come to a bit of a standstill, so I'll make some room in my life for NaNoWriMo, which will force me to be creative in another direction, and hopefully get a grip on that tricksy muse of mine.

In the last couple of days I have written 8,856 words of my NaNo project.  I have also put on a really rather good Halloween bash for my children, neighbours and friends and become more than a *tad* drunk.  Also spent a good evening with new neighbours, drinking a not immoderate amount of red wine and get drunk *again*.  (This made my NaNo typing inaccurate, but was still very productive and surprisingly readable once sober).

And today, slap bang in the middle of baking cookies with my daughter, my fingers started itching for the bouzouki.  So I let the cookie dough rest whilst I wrote 3/4 of a song that has been brewing for about a year.

Wow.

I am also halfway through putting together a set of lesson plans for Tue/Wed/Thu about "tribal music" which will hopefully lead onto the children writing and performing a piece of music about their own "tribe" (however they choose to define that).

Wow.  In other news, the living room is also tidy and hoovered.  I wish I could bottle this energy and save some for later...

P.s.  Tim can't get his head around saying "NaNoWriMo", so has decided to ask, "How's your Rhino going, dear?".  This has lead to some bizarre rhinoceros impressions in the kitchen.  Apparently rhinos also like literature...  Mine is saving her Amazon vouchers to buy this year's Booker Nominations.  I sometimes think that my life couldn't get any stranger.  Then it does.  Huzzah!

 As I just mentioned, I'm not a big consumer.  We live out in the Sticks, so not much opportunity for "Retail Therapy" here, thankfully. We really only go into town when we *have* to.  However, yesterday amounted to "having to go into town".  We needed to do some banking and we needed to replace the PSU on Jared's portable keyboard.  Jared is currently having piano lessons, but our piano is in storage.  We've dug out an old keyboard and a titchy amp and he's having wild amounts of fun.  (I put most of it down to an excellent piano teacher - our new neighbour, Donna, who makes music outrageously enjoyable.)

He was borrowing a PSU from a different piece of equipment (guitar board), which we had failed to notice had a slightly different rating (don't ask me what I mean - I know that the "volt" bit was right, but the "milliamp" bit wasn't - more detail than that is utterly beyond me.  Ask my husband the electrician...)  To cut a long story short, the PSU, he went 'splody.  We needed a new one as Jared was starting to get rather jittery and starting to bash the table in an approximation of keys.  He spent his lunchtimes in the music studios at school last week, but this week he is on holiday, so his keyboard potential is somewhat limited.  PSU it is. 

So, we did the banking and then went to (DANGERDANGERDANGER!!!) Maplins for the PSU (them having more clue about the milliamp thing that the music shop, we reckoned).  We bought the PSU, no problem.  Jared "call me Jerry Lee" Walker is happy again.   I, however, have a slight consumerist problem when I walk past a display of USB to canon leads.  "Plug and Play", it says.  Connect a microphone straight into your laptop.  

Now, this is *actually* a bit of a glaring gap in my musical needs.  A wonderful friend who shall remain nameless (but his name starts with "David" and ends with "Peek") loaned me a Mac laptop capable of running Garageband a while back so I could have a play.  I had vast amounts of fun.  I remembered why I liked Macs so much more than PCs.  The only problem was that I couldn't get a live feed into the Mac without having to set up the rest of the music gear, which took away the "quick and dirty" element of Garageband which I liked so much.  Our music gear was all set up after recording our album, but it was just so complicated to record a quick instrument/vox track to remember how something went.  I used (and loved) Masterwriter for this for a very long time, but the problem came a while back when the iTunes updates started clashing with Masterwriter, and I could no longer use the quick record function (which was the bit I liked most, anyway).  Also, there was the problem that even when it was working, Masterwriter only recorded one track - no multitrack function available.  This was a bit of a problem for me as I like to work out harmonies and alternative parts whilst listening to a loop of the track in question, and then lay the harmony track over the top to see how it works.  Garageband could do this easily, but I still had that "no way of getting a live feed in" problem.  I could buy a USB microphone, and believe me, I looked at them.  However the price for something halfway decent was far more than I could justify for basically recording scratch tracks, and besides - we had oodles of really nice microphones.  Why couldn't I just use them?

So, when I walked past the "USB to canon" leads, I stopped and my mouth hung open.  I picked it up.  I put it down.  I picked it up and gave it to Tim.  I took it back off Tim and put it back on the display.  I told Jared that consumerism was a dreadful evil and that I didn't need it.  I picked it up again.  Finally, shaking my head and succumbing, we paid for it.  I didn't need it, and I hadn't come out for it, but I'd bought it.

I felt guilty as hell.

But then I got home, took out the Mac laptop and connected Tim's SM58 to the new cable and thence to the 'pooter.  I fired up Garageband.

And then I multitracked the first verse of "Canon Pertwee" in 15 minutes flat.   Today I have recorded "The Collier" with bouzouki and voice, mixed it down and exported it to iTunes where I can play it, convert it to MP3 and even burn it to a CD if I so desire.  All with a high enough quality to make it highly listenable.

Suddenly, I don't feel so bad about the purchase...

 I'm not a big consumer of multinational products.  I'm not a big consumer for a number of reasons - I violently disagree with the multi-national model of business, which drives smaller, local businesses under.  I believe that locally driven business is vital to the independence of our food chain and ultimately it's sustainability under the hammer of challenges which the future will be bringing us.  I also dislike the quality of products which multinationals offer - homogenized, sanitised and produced as cheaply as possible.

If you take all that as given, then I think you will see why I think that the BBC news item about the fact  that MacDonald's has withdrawn it's franchise from Iceland is a wonderful piece of news. They blame the economic crisis, but the simple fact that shipping a kilo of onions from Germany cost the same amount as a bottle of fine whisky seems to be reason all in itself.

I don't have an idealogical problem with eating burgers (the nicest burgers I've ever eaten were in Brighton - "Sam's" on the Steine...  Mmmmmm for the garlic and blue cheese...) but I do have a problem with a franchise which expects it's operators to ship very basic ingredients for hundreds (if not thousands) of miles and just swallow the cost.   I was also very heartened to see that the franchise operator is planning to open an independent burger restaurant and just source his ingredients from Iceland.  Hopefully this will mean that alongside the standard burger chain fare, he might see a niche for offering Icelandic treats as well...

Hurrah for a small model of sustainability winning out over multinational Yucky Food.  Yay!

I love my husband for many things.

I love him because his lopsided smile makes my heart skip a beat, even after nearly 19 years together.
I love him because he laughs at my jokes, even when they aren't very funny.
I love him because he has never been anything but completely encouraging about my art and music.
I love him because he is a great father.
I love him because when he says "let's build a house", he really means, "let me make your dreams come true..."
I love him because he understands that sometimes I need to lock myself in the bathroom and cry.
I love him because he understands that the middle of the kitchen is the perfect place to dance.
I love him because he knows that Pachelbel's Canon in D is (in my opinion) the most perfect piece of music ever written and will never, EVER talk over it because I want to listen and cry at it's perfection every single time I hear it.

And today, especially today, I love him because he understood why my heart broke in two when this happened:



Yes - that's my new bouzouki. The bouzouki I've been wanting for a year or more. The bouzouki that I've been playing and writing on exclusively since I got it. It fell over in a draft on tuesday and this happened.

I love my husband because he knows that we can't afford to replace it right now, so he said, "We've got nothing to lose. Let me try...".

It's taken him all evening, some woodglue, some specialist clamps, a thick brass fingerplate and an anglegrinder, but Nikolai is singing again. He's fixed it and he's fixed it because he knew how much it meant to me. I've cried in gratitude for my fixed bouzouki, my rescued songs and my wonderful, wonderful husband.

Nikolai now has a rakish brass plate along his headstock, and I think it looks a little like the bouzouki equivalent of a fencing scar... The plate doesn't leave enough room for a shoestring shoulder strap anymore, so we've tied it on with red ribbon - what better for an imperialistic, white russian bouzouki? I actually think he looks even better now, peversely.

I can't believe Tim fixed him.

Have I mentioned how much I love my husband?

We've had odd sort of temperature fluctuations recently. I've been trying to put the heating on for just a little bit in the morning to ease J. out of his bed (teenager getting up into cold room = teenager still under quilt until violently removed). But as soon as it's gone on, we've all been wandering around pulling out our collars with a single forefinger and making "Phew!" noises. Too hot. Heating goes back off, and J. is convinced that it's Not That Cold Really, and just gets on with the job in hand.

Today though, Tim was playing outside at the Cathedral Farmer's Market and decided that it was the first outdoor gig of the season to merit a woolly coat and a cap. Kind of amused to drop Tim off at Liam(UTMP)'s house to find that he'd had the self-same thought.

I've no idea what the temperature is outside at the moment (I packed my thermometer. Quelle suprise, eh?), but it's definitely nippy. I've put the heating on low and I'm rather glad of it in the absence of wood for the log burner. Brrr!

I'm off to do some knitting and watch some TV whilst snuggled under a blanket now. Hurrah!

P.s. After some thoughts about money, stuff and what hobbies we are likely to have time for in the forseeable future, we are having serious thoughts about selling on much of our serious re-enactment stuff. If you (or somebody you know) might be interested in a huge medieval tent, 2 oak pack-down double beds, a virtually brand new Ivor Williams trailer and lots of handmade medieval furniture, please let me know.

What?  You didn't know yesterday was Lincolnshire Day?  Well, I suppose we don't always publicise it well - we're rather fond of the place ourselves, and get a bit disturbed when lots of foreigners (from far flung places like Yorkshire or Cambridgeshire) invade us. 

I'm really fond of the fact that most Yellowbellies have enough pride in our county to have planned a day of celebration, designed and produced a county flag (which is VERY much in evidence all over the county) and staged lots of events in our beautiful county.  I was pointing out to Tim yesterday how much I love  that despite the fact we have such well-defined areas (the Fens, the Wolds, the Cliff-edge etc.) there really is no hatred or competition between the areas.  Everyone has a gentle laugh at each other, but all the areas have an extremely strong sense of being part of a greater whole that we are incredibly proud of.

I adore living in Lincolnshire.

We celebrated Lincolnshire Day by performing.  We had been invited to take part in a special concert at Spilsby Theatre, showcasing the best of Lincolnshire folk music.  We actually chose not to perform our own songs, but had a blast with some other people's:

"I Would I Were" by James Keelaghan.  Tim on guitar and vox, me on harp.  (Thanks to Tom and Dave C. who first introduced us to this beautiful song - we thought of you last night).

"Torn Screen Door" by David Francey. Acapella, Tim and I on vox in harmony.  (Thanks to Dave C for this introduction, David Francey rocks!)

"Camel" by Talis Kimberley.  (Who I hope will be pleased to know that it got a solid round of "Ooooooh...." before the applause.)

"Rising of the Sea" by Talis Kimberley (Me on bouzouki and vox, Tim on guitar and vox.  You could *hear* the intake of breath as people *got* it in a very visceral fashion.  It is something that's a very frightening prospect when you live on the fens...)

"Appleby Fair" by Talis Kimberley (Me on bouzouki and vox, Tim on double whistle.  This is my favourite Talis song, and I'm so pleased she allowed me to sing it!).

So, nothing by us, but all things that we are enjoying singing and playing hugely.  I also demo'd the Lincolnshire Great Pipes (which behaved themselves for once!  Astonishing!) and we did a surprise Christmas interlude as part of Piepowder, in honour of the fact that the concert will be broadcast at Christmas (either Christmas Day or Boxing Day, depending on schedules), this included our Lincolnshire "While Shepherds Watched" (Ttto: "The Lincolnshire Poacher") and "Good King Wenceslas, aka Jonah Louie").  Much fun and seasonally inappropriate!  The joy of advance recording, eh?

Then we came home to Post-Gig Pie which was good, too :-)

If you're interested in hearing this, I'll keep an ear out on BBC Radio Lincs for the broadcast details.  They do take part in iPlayer/Listen Again, so it should be accessible to anyone with a net connection.
 

It was a fab evening, the highlight of which was Paul Dickinson's "Sausage Song", which, frankly, has to be heard to be believed :-)