Made off.

Made off.

Oh come on.

Come on.

..Mr MADOFF?

At a time of gigantic economic meltdown, a world-revered investment banker has taken unexpected extra billions from the banks through spectacularly simple swindling... and his name is Bernard MADOFF?

What is this, Dickens?

How bad is it all gonna get?

"Roit, mista Neerly-Madoff, heavens to goodness, the Peelers are roit on me tail to meet out some timely come-uppance. But only in fair response to some very hundreds of tiresome, tightly-type-set pages of detailed human reality and suffering, so it is. I so wish I'd thought abaaht the human condition sooner, so I do, and chosen to value me nearest and dearest over the fleeting fancies and phantom charms of the devil's jingle in me purse. Run, sir."

Well, you need a bit of Dickens at Christmas, after all.

Scenes from my life.

Scenes from my life.

1: The typical Momo working week:
Flight of the concordes does the French daydream.

2: The typical Momo weekend:
Top Gear drives the Ferrari Daytona around the Riviera.



>sigh<



..I've been almost fourteen hours at this ruddy Mac.

Forward and back.

Forward and back.

The moon was a striking crescent, low in the sky with a single evening star, as I popped out in the car earlier. Looked almost like a special effect, painted behind the silhouetted December chimney pots and roof lines. For yes, it is now the first day of advent - even if the dusky heavens looked more like an Islamic postcard.

Nearly Christmas.

So where did the year go?

Yesterday wasn't the bright, fresh start to the holiday season that today managed all day. It was a day to stay inside with the lights on again - gloomy and wet and windy. But, as I said chirpily to Jules while we head-downed through the chilly sleet of Petty France the other day, I'm still loving the autumn and winter vibe. Don't know why; it seems to fortify somehow.

Yesterday wasn't really a day to be cheerful, though. Yesterday was Dad's birthday.

He would have been 75. And he would have had a fit at what we'd done to his bedroom by the time dawn broke.

Caroline has made it her mission for him and for Mum - while she enjoys the festive snows of Colorado for a couple of weeks - to sort through his spectacularly time-filled room of memorabilia. Mike and Emma even gave over a whole Saturday to helping us strip walls and cart furniture away across town. It was a kind of fab day working together; Mikey hadn't been back to the flat in quite a while. We fed them too much afterwards to say thankyou.

But the weather, the memories, the date. I should have been some shade of maroon blue this weekend. But I don't really deal with stuff in that formal, respectful way. I mean, do I? With all that's going on as the year ends, I know there's plenty to weight the heart a little. And it is. I miss him. And probably only a bit as much as I'm going to.

But what can you do? If I didn't get on with the creative at hand, I might grind to a halt. Which I'm not sure I can do.

So I thought of Dad and I wondered where the year had gone and I thanked him for leaving the room in such an indecipherably dense state back at the flat. And I pulled on my headphones as the rain lashed against the studio windows and spent the day trying not to fall asleep in order to finish the loud, brass-heavy, entirely inappropriate electro madness of the tunes I'm trying to get mastered - figuring that yesterday was precisely the day for pushing on and trying to get things done and trying to prepare for new things.

And prepare for a big fat, jolly Christmas, surrounded by loved ones for as many days as I can get away with it. It was Dad's favourite, kitsch, colourful, loved-up time of year.

And I figured he'd be pretty pleased that I was too distracted with making music to wallow in loss or dwell on his unhappy birthday last year. That's what I figured. You don't sit still and remember Brian - you get on and do practical stuff, or you grin and whistle.

Which is what I continued to figure as I drove to the little studio out in the New Forest tonight, under the last new moon before Christmas listening to Metrophilia - a distinctly whistly, wistful tune - to drop off the final mixes.

You don't 'che.

You don't 'che.

Just touching base here to basically fill you in on a classic. Made my blood run cold, to be honest, but let's be fair, I can run but I can't hide. Mea culpa.

Turns out I talk in almost total cliche. Who knew?

Little survey on the BBC news site has flagged up, beyond any shadow of doubt, that I only know how to talk in the verbal equivalent of a finger pistol. 110%.

Now, you might say: 'No sh*t, Sherlock'. But - not being funny - the full realisation only dawned on me, actually, as I was ticking off the whole nine yards.

Just back from a meeting in a motorway service station - as is only natural in the stimulating and original life of a freelance creative - I can count a worrying number of them from this little online article that I used IN the meeting.

"Songsheet, pipeline, end-of-play roll-out scenario solutions deliverables." Literally. ..Although the day I DO use the word 'scenario', or - heaven forfend - 'solutions' >gaaakkk< I should have something lethal put in my drink, please.

At the end of the day, we're all only human, I guess.






..Although. Hmm. You'd think the least a bloody allegedly-professional writer could do is a rather cleverer job of writing in cliche - when actually trying to write in cliche.

It's no good just talking the talk... (ohshutup.)

Yes.

Yes.

..we chuffing can, apparently.

Overnight, America got its mojo back.

We've grown so used to the Bush administration's incompetence that we've almost forgotten about the little chap that's still apparently to be found in the White House. But the all-but landslide of Obama's electoral victory lastnight has, at a stroke, put America back where it wants to be: inspiring the world.

Now, stick with all this, because I'm not sure that today's a day to get hung about hyperbole.

I'm not sure it's being silly to feel a lump in the throat about it all, some five hours away at nearest landfall. ..I'm not sure it's OTT to shout OMG! out in the bleedin' street, to be honest - and I'm really not sure that words will cover the genuine significance of the symbolism.

Think about it.

America managed to find a man who was not only intelligent and considerate but inspiring ..AND willing to run for public office. And thin. And then it actually chuffing well voted him in to the highest seat in the land.

Oh, and apparently his skin colour's a novelty. Whatever.

Really. Just feel a little lightness about something groovy having just happened in politics for once. Feel no shame about the sentimentality. Because America just said no to the incompetent, narrow-minded, corrupt, basically hateful attitude of old fashioned right-wing Americanism. By one college vote under an official landslide.

Yes.
Whatever the combined circumstances, it did. And Barrack's retort to his well-wishers that this wasn't so much his victory as everyone's, because it was victory secured with countless counting hands and feet mobilising - that's simply true. For once, the rhetoric is kinetic.
Interesting, though.

In America, they've always proudly said that any idiot can get into the White House.

It seems that both administrations, incumbent and elect, have proved it beyond doubt.





..Bloody get in, Baz.

History.

History.

So here I am. Sitting up with a cup of tea, ages after I should have followed my instincts to bed, watching the waffly overtures of the BBC's coverage of the US election. They keep saying it's an historic evening.

First results are in and they're interviewing Ricky Gervais. Right to the heart of the action.

They're also showing squads of bloggers in Times Square, keeping the online momentum of the evening belting along breathlessly. I wonder what they're all banging on about? The concerns of the chap who's really at the centre of this election - Joe the Blogger? That guy speaks for me, sure.

Oh dear, can I face the tedium and adrenalin mixed? If so, it shows I might have coped with being an airline pilot.

I've even been scribbling in my journal, just to prove I was here on this 'historic night'. Like historians are going to be concerned with what I half-heartedly scrawled in my underpants on the sofa on the night the first black president of the USA wasn't elected.

Actually, a little voice whispered in my idle wonderings, while cynicism bellowed in the background something obvious about America 'buggering it up at the last bloody minute', that maybe - just maybe - Obama will win by a landslide. An actual landslide.

If he does, let's just accept it - it would be historic alright.

A president who understands disco.

Vote.

Vote.

Oh, crikey. Can we really get through this? This last agonising day? Sitting on our hands and wondering.

It's like watching football. Especially from my point of view, as a person who didn't even begin to understand it until he watched an international match - it's all so very real to your adrenalin gland, yet all so practically academic. How will it change my Wednesday either way? Really.

Now, if I was funny or creative, I'd punchline-out with something about the Glenrothes bi-election, and how I've been following it's every move and, oh, is there something happening elsewhere, etc...

But anyway that's on Thursday and I can't be arsed.

I'm just not looking forward to the radio coming on tomorrow morning and, y'know... finding out.

It's academic, you're right. These things are probably more important at local club level, again you're right. And the heroes on the pitch can sometimes turn out to be prize twits without a steadycam running along the touchline beside them. I know. ..I also know the US presidential elections should sooner have a baseball metaphor than a 'soccer' one. I know.

But my point is, we get very excited about England's chances of possibly one day maybe qualifying for an international tournament again, when all they stand the slimmest hope of ultimately winning is a trophy and some sponsorship.

The winner tonight gets to take home the Free World and the keys to our burnt-out, sitting-on-bricks economy.

And I so want that guy to at least have a fighting chance of being able to out-live Sarah Palin's time in the VP's office.

Gore-p.

Gore-p.

Almost-last shot of sharp-tongued Guardian critic Charlie Brooker's gonzo-gore undead mini series, Dead Set:

zombies in soulless shopping centre staring vacantly at zombies in Big Brother house, staring vacantly back out of widescreen tellies in Dixons or similar.

Nice work, mate.

Planks.

Planks.

I do sometimes think the British media would sink itself if left unchecked. Not that I'm sure who is actually doing the checking.

Vital, dynamic and creative this country's press and broadcast media surely are. Even world-leading they tell me - and after all, who can argue with Harry Hill's TV burp? But so many people manning its armada of little ships seem hell-bent on torpedoing the flagship - that big ol' Thames barge, the BBC.

My phrasing there is something that those with Auntie in their periscope cross-hairs would leap on as illustrating the point - who says the Beeb is Great Britain's broadcasting flagship?

They must resent the implication - and see it everywhere, probably.

"While we have to lash together ad revenue as creatively as possible to vigilantly tar the decks against sinking, the good ship HMS BBC simply pumps out her bilges with public finance. A huge, fat, free tax on the tuners-in. ..AND, while we're at it, they can promote cross-platform like no-one else. Bastards. ..Load tubes One and Two."

You can see their point, though they sound like they've been at sea rather too long. A bit like this metaphor.

Any brooding resentment of the corporation isn't helped by the fact that the BBC does seem to have always reflected the British beaurocracy of its day, like a true institution - middle-heavy, inefficient, even miopically self-cultural. ..And quote me on that, as it sounds dead clever, like what a sniping left-wing critic might column. ..Or is it the right-wing critics who really have it in for the liberal toffs at Broadcasting House? I forget.

Anyway, the point bearing down on us very slowly like a lumbering container ship is that I think this is the wrong way to see the Beeb.

---

The 'brandross beast' - which, incidentally, sounds like a new Sherlock Holmes adventure - may have exposed Russel and Jonathan as pratt-liable twits sometimes, but back-of-the-classroom showing off by the two over-confident popular boys is really a matter for the detention hall. Not the Commons.

Make 'em run round the playing field in their pants once or twice, maybe. Make 'em look into the eyes of the sweet old man they've been rude to and see the two softies blub, sure. Warm their backsides. But fire them? Fire everybody?

One of the most risible aspects of one of these essentially pointless squalls on the waters of popular entertainment is, of course, the personalities who suddenly clamour for the mic. The Unfunny.

We've had a parade of distinctly humourless people passing comment on how to make jokes this week. "A-HA," they light up indignantly, like Dr Alan Statham waving a triumphant finger at a resentfully witty medical student, "THIS is the problem with smirking and smiling and strutting about in funny wigs - it's dangerous. It's uncalled-for. It's... it's... funny. ..And this is where funny gets you. Hm? Who's laughing now? Hm?"

I've long thought that comedy is like sex - as soon as you're trying to describe it, you're missing the point. And the word 'responsible' kills it dead.

---

I think the BBC is an institution, alright. A national one. With all its problems, it's a bally British cultural cornerstone. Maybe filled with uptight, lefty nitwits who forget how lucky they are - though I doubt that's more than half true - but a thing to cherrish.

We should hold those who helm the Beeb to high account. Tell them when they get the chance to work there: "This is the bloody BBC, mate. Don't f**k it up." It's a woldwide brand like nothing else we own in the UK - like nothing else in the world, in fact. An idea of altruism. The ultimate service of communication. And it communicates an idea of Britain better than any tourist board campaign or political diplomatic push, by the way.
And radio without adverts? Sport and drama and movies and factual stuff without breaks? Full hours of content, not forty limping minutes? Surely brilliant that they found a way to do this. It matters to a nation's intellectual well-being that it can access some information without being force-fed consumer society values and pressures.

Adverts help sharpen the creative cutting edge. They're fun, put simply - and they help busineses sell things and build our once-comfy economy. Plus, ad breaks can be welcome relief, of course. But, chuff. Too much turns your brain to soup.

No, I think the good ship HMS BBC may need a sharp skipper inspecting her every winch and block, but she should sail on proudly. Let her navigate uniquely - she is a beacon of difference. If she should be challenged, let it not be by mean-minded pirates trying to break her up, but by the sheer creative excellence of her commercial counterparts, willing her to perform her best for the sake of the whole flotilla.
However romantic it may be, I just think there's something about the BBC that somehow sodding matters.

---

Okay, I'll come clean. The boat metaphor was inspired by an actual Thames barge - one I found myself sitting on, right in the heart of London last weekend.

Our essentially gorgeous former neighbour, Mary, introduced us to her very interesting new chap, Iolo, when we popped up for a night - and Iolo lives on an actual Thames barge. Big bloody thing. A snapshot of working waterways history from blunt bows to snub stern - and a fascinating new perspective on the capital. London does not look the same from the river.

Can't tell you how nice it is to meet people who see things differently to you. We seemed to chat constantly for 24hours straight.

Originality keeps us all afloat.

Pep.

Pep.

Hmm.

Have you seen the new Pepsi rebrand?

Not much fizz.

I like the idea of turning the blue-red wave into a smile - positive story, confident playfulness. Sounds nice on paper. . Just doesn't look nice on paper. Not to me, somehow. Looks like a student had a worthy go at it - a bit limp for the real world. Yet all at a mind-bending $1.5Billion roll-out. In the, ah, real world.

It's about execution. Which really comes down to exec caution, I suspect.

I was chatting with Gel over coffee in the Cali this morning, about how recession can claim some good agencies and businesses through really unfortunate timing, but also sometimes through their own lack of proper ideas when it counts. You have to have an idea. Everything is fed by the idea - the message you're strategising with.

Now, here is an idea that's falling down in the execution. And I'll just bet that the artroom guys went through eye-crossing variants on the classic logo to arrive at this boardroom-friendly compromise. They have my sympathy. But the end result - does it add to the brand or detract from it?

As a flat graphic - the core reduction of the brand's key memory-jogger, the logo - it kind of reduces it for me. Tries to add some pep, but takes away from the integrity of the simple classic mark.

I remember when they radically rebranded in the early nineties. One friend at art college memorably said it looked like "Pepsi from Back to the future". Kind of space age. Bold.

This one is just a bit... flat.

Now, if it was me. Yeah.

Daft Russian Constructivist, cold war graphics at spikey angles. Nice. All red and white and black. ..No, forget why. Forget the fizz focus groups. Just aim for the post-communist market. Bold move. New opportunities. If Coca Cola is the US dream, flip the appeal. Yeah.

Bear with me.

..Pepski.

No sex.

No sex.

Not tonight. Not on Channel Four, anyway.

If you missed The Sex Education Show which had been running on Tuesday nights at 8.00pm for six weeks, you'll have missed some scary pictures of STDs, some scarier stories from teenage Britain and some downright punch-drunk bravery in the face of a relentlessly frightening series of indignities foist on the plucky lads of Long Ashton football club.

Was there nothing these brave boys wouldn't step up to do?

I can't even bring myself to list the activities Anna Richardson put them through. Admittedly, I can imagine it would be hard to say No to such a jolly nice lady - but really. After girth confessions, fertility pots, infection swabs and sexual history memoirs, you'd think these Bristol tommies would just stay down. Leave it. Let the bell ring and be done with it. But no.

"Foreskin hygiene, gentlemen - an impromtu inspection with our nice lady doctor specialist here. Who's for it?"

Dunkirk spirit, lads. It was for the country. Makes my bottom lip quiver.

..Eeew. Leave it.

Anyway.

Well-earned night off tonight for the old chaps.

Drama.

Drama.

The Southwark Playhouse is a proper London thing.

It's a kind of post-industrial cupboard space under the tube line, tucked behind an old pub on the corner opposite a shining shard of South Bank offices. Arriving there to meet chums Jules and Angela on Wednesday night, I had no idea what we were about to watch.

How to disappear completely and never be found is the kind of metro theatre that simple shire folk like me imagine everyone in the capital goes to see regularly. Tiny venue, five players, energetic monologues and lots of metaphysical angst over modern city life. "You'll like this" Angela smirked, "it's about a brand manager losing his marbles."

It was, and I did. As I have. Too much of the absurd ad-speak dialogue between wide-boy protagonist Charlie and his cartoon clients and colleagues made some kind of sense. Not just to me with my (patently faux) brand consultant's hat on - I think to everyone. We all understand a degree of brandspeak; the issues of impression and idea and perceived value. And, though I've ended up having many serious conversations about it with clients because I think it's about helping people communicate more effectively... really. Doesn't take much to make the real thing sound like a finger-pistoling parody. A bit like Sarah Pallin. Except she uses shot guns.

We all laughed knowingly at the well-trodden themes of work pressures and self worth and public transport in 21st century London. After all, who isn't lost property? Who doesn't feel the ringing in their ears behind everything? The constant eye-twitching throb. "There's a blue sky over me, but the fear is on me" Carl from Underworld drones on their new album as I type. The intermittent grumble of underground carriages passing overhead just added to the performance as I sat there, also simply pondering how the fevering players each remembered so much script. The art of the ack-tor, darling.

It was the gala evening show, and as I sat in the intimate audience and watched the spotlit ideas unfold, grateful for an impromptu seat, I reflected on the shared pains of metro life and the coke-addled pressures of managing ideas - brands - at the expense of managing your own. ..Though chiefly, of course, I reflected on going back to sunny Bournemouth after just one night playing the metro life and feeling the coke-addled pressures of managing blah blah... I live by the seaside and I've never not been VERY grateful.

---

At the after-show reception, I found myself being remarkably restrained. Or perhaps even adult.

I didn't stop conversation with my friends mid-sentence with the words "screw you - there's a bloke off the telly". Nope, not me. I didn't even stop the conversation at the end of a paragraph with some lie about needing the loo. No. instead, I just kept talking to my friends ..and didn't run over to character acting star Andy Serkis to cover him in enthusiastic spittle with my Gollum impression. I didn't do it.

We'd all blagged tickets to this version of writer Fin Kennedy's play because of Julian's friend Kath, who's been a stalwart trustee of the Southwark Playhouse for years. The guys have mentioned trying to catch a production there a few times. I'd written some music for Kath's partner Steve some years back for his London Wall photographic exhibition - culminating in whistly Momo favorite, Metrophilia - and I keep trying to make it to one of their creative social events, often without success. Since Jules finds it hard to out-compliment Kath and Steve after fourteen years of mutual lovelyness, it's always nice to see them all together. Kath's energy at all she does is something Julian has long admired.

"I did well meeting them when I first came to London" he said quietly over a champers flute. I smiled. "Yes, you did." I paused, pursing respectfully - then chin-chinned: " So did they".

As we queued for complimentary scampi and chips, I added in a trying-to-seem-offhand voice: "Like the play pretty much spelled out, we need eachother, mate" ..also successfully not adding, in a bubbly blather, "- so let's hug it up, big boy. C'mon. No, no - c'mon..."

For various reasons, anyway, it turns out that Jules is on teasing terms with Andy.

"So," he apparently grinned at the Lord Of The Rings legend, "the new Tin Tin movie you're shooting - had to do much doggy method prep to play Snowy?"

Mr Serkis obviously knows Jules alright, as he merely shook his head - without saying: "you know it's Captain Haddock...".

I missed all this of course, as I was faithfully chatting up Angela.

---

I came home after a subsequent morning trying to frame a brief with Jules for a mutual client - a brief with no parameters, goals or current information, all of which we had to try to commission a PR guy with - to find a little drama had taken place back home.

The new porch guys have taken away our desperately tumble-down old porch. We're porchless. The house looks like its being demolished, with the sun-tan marks of absence on the exposed brickwork. Poor thing.

It's disappeared completely, never to be found. Thankfully.

Town and country birds.

Town and country birds.
I seem to have spotted a number of interesting specimens recently.

Putting them eagerly into my enthusiasts scrapbook I notice a subsequently intriguing cross-breeding of influences forming. Here then, without any in-the-field sketches, sadly, is a short list of birds that have caught my eye.

---

Bird #1

Helena.

Lovely girl. Risen to fame from nowhere, to become every politico-financial analyst's go-to gal. Everyone says we're going to her, apparently. Inevitable, they say.

Yes indeed, Ms Handcart is very popular right now.

So, amid the shrieking hair-pulling, the goggle-eyed blaspheming, the chicken gizzards-reading and mindless fax paper-throwing-around going on in most important office buildings and newsrooms at the moment, we've been looking for a little escape.

---
Bird #2
Andrea.

Another nice lass. Bit artificial.

Geek partner in crime, Chris, bought me - or perhaps the group - a desperately pleasing birthday gift this week. A box set of Star Trek. The original series, with Captain Kirk and pals - but super-geekily remastered with NEW special effects, so the Enterprise doesn't look quite as grainy and wobbly. I love the jobs some people find for themselves in uncertain times.

We've watched too many of them already, naturally. Not least because I spent much of yesterday feeling a bit crook.

We took ourselves out to the forest for a Sunday afternoon stroll and found a balmy summer warmth in the middle of October and squadrons of families in pratty safety helmets riding push-bikes very slowly along very very safe flat gravel paths through the trees.

The New Forest being more Walt Disney than Disney, with twinkling, babbling brooks and mossy carpets of green under dappled silver birch woods and golden autumn leaves flickering gently down through sun beams like confetti, we found a suspiciously stage-managed looking grassy clearing to lie down in. Had to shoo away the unicorns and little purring-winged fairy Kylies but it was okay. We slept under the clear blue sky and watched lazy vapour trails high above for a while, before stopping at a leafy evening pub in one of the many pretty villages on the wending drive home.

..Naah, it was okay.

Though I'd left the Mac up to do some work when we got home, by the time all that lovelyness had had a go at clearing my head and somehow failed, all I could face doing was watching another episode or two of daft, forty-year-old sci fi. Which strangely seemed to do the trick, eventually.

Captain Kirk is wedded to his spaceship, they keep telling us. It's ultimately going to prove to be a giant, alien-chick-porking fib, of course, but you can't blame him. The 23rd century is incredibly neo-sixties. In What are little girls made of, when apparent robotics genius, Dr Roger Korby, innocently tells former flame, nurse Christine Chappel, that he's not tinkered in android love with allegedly feelingless but conspicuously girl-shaped artifical companion, Andrea, you can see Mrs Roddenberry's boof-blonde character none-the-less thinking: "so why'd you give her QUITE so much eye-lash upholstery and heaving cleavage?"

Did find myself humming Everybody ought to have a maid from A funny thing happened on the way to the forum afterwards.

---
Bird #3

Jane.

Now she's a girl who's been on my mind a lot this year.

There was a telling moment on The Daily Show last week. A moving one, I thought. "I'm getting a little tired of certain Republicans telling me that small towns are the only places in America with values" said Jon Stuart, with restraint. "Do you know what New York is? It's ten small towns all piled on top of one another in the same building."

The battle for America's evolving identity does seem to pit town against country - small towns are real America, cities are slick, corporate engines of evil.

Well, it's hard not to scowl at Wall Street right now. And systemic corporate culture is no mere gloss to the American political system. But Jon's heart-felt jab made me think of one author and her seminal book - which is, in truth, a kind of love letter to the city.

Jane Jacobs was no trained city planner or architect. Just a regular Mom, perhaps not so dissimilarly qualified to Sarah Pallin. But, ingeniously using her eyes to look at stuff, she ended up collecting up what she saw into a book of recommendations to planners and people-space designers in the late fifties - The death and life of great American cities. It shook the establishment.

It was required reading on Caroline's urban design course. Except I found myself reading it on holiday in Italy - after Caroline had completed the course, and before she'd read it herself. As we bobbed in the Med, I found myself telling her with great authority about numbers of eyes on streets and the importance of mixed usage.

The main thing to have struck me, beyond the specific, embarrassingly No Shit, Sherlock observations she makes, critisising architects' science fiction daydreams that have little bearing on what people really do in their spaces, is what a love letter to the city it really is. How much the city can support not only life-giving diversity but humanising community. She writes with passion and inspiration. Even pride.

Thinking of all these different ladies here, I guess my point is that when you've escaped for a bit, there are real problems to go back and face. You have to find access to a space that effectively recharges you somewhere - so you can deal with real human being stuff more effectively. Find a little fortified courage to see things as they really are, not how we imagine them to be.

Far away from the stage-managed beauty of the countryside - refreshing and life-affirming as it is - the sharp end of modern human politics may find many of its answers in the city, the solutions to some real human challenges of living side-by-side.

That's Jane's Star Trek future. Once we've all stopped throwing ourselves around at odd camera angles and the financial deck feels a little firmer under feet, I think many American politicians would do well to consult her sooner than Ms Pallin and Helena.

Might stop a lot of us twitching.

---
Bird Appendix

Peregrine falcons.
Did you see the photos of the nesting pair on the Houses of Parliament this weekend?

What they doing there, then?

Sink.

Sink.

So, when we got in from circuits last night, there was a blinking blue light at the end of our street. Some sort of accident, cordoned off with stripey police tape and surrounded by emergency services.

We turned on the telly and there was Jon Snow talking with the controlled animation of a journalist helming a big story.

Then we felt a lurch as the house tipped suddenly sideways, pans clanging against the boiler on the swinging hanger and plates sliding across the work tops as we continued to put dinner together.

So this is a banking crisis.

A chuffing, sodding, frightening, arsing-great big one, apparently.

..Oh well, eh.

---

Yes, the accident was the British - and basically the global - banking system and the blue lights turned out to be metaphorical. ..Although we have had a surprising number of police incidents in our quiet little street over the years (..and they never tell you what's going on...).

They're yabbering on the wire this morning (by which I mean Radio 4, but that sounds WAY less dramatic) that the effective nationalisation of the UK banks announced lastnight is a seismic moment for western business. And it is. ..NATIONALISING the BANKS? The government becoming a major stakeholder in Natwest, Lloyds TSB, HSBC? Owning and controlling the FREE market economy?

Hang on, though. Does this mean, ironically, that in this time of evaporating investments, and governments around the world having to promise ordinary people like me that they'll guarantee a lump of their savings, should the banks just, oh I dunno, lose them, I have just become a major investor for the first time in my life?

As a UK taxpayer, can I go to the AGMs of all the banks now? Eat the free sarnies?

If I can, can I also ask them where exactly ALL THE CHUFFING MONEY'S GOING! Down a sink, or something?

Well, it is, kind of. Value is relative, isn't it; if no-one wants to buy your thing, it becomes worthless. And if banks are too nervous to lend things to each other in case they inherit a worthless thing from an unscrupulous chain of indifferent lending, then the money system grinds to a halt, because no-one can get the petty cash they need to buy things, lubricate things and keep things moving.

Yeah.

So.

..I'm trying to figure out the best way to work in the word 'plunger' here.

Twenties.

Twenties.

So here I am. Thirty-eight today, my passport tells me. As does the entire technical support staff of Facebook, apparently. Can't wait to see what they've all whipped 'round to get me. Those guys. ..Ooh, let's see - now, they know how much I love old funk records... or big books of poster design... or Parisian café culture, er... or sharp shirts - ooh! - or Berlin inter-war, realist cinema or... Dr Who, so it should be easy for them to choose something good...

Actually, I talk of German silent cinema but we did, in fact, spend most of yesterday in the twenties. In celebration of me taking a significant diary-date step nearer the end of my thirties. Hmm. Anyway - Joe May's syruppy gorgeous Asphalt, 1928, followed by Deutsch directorial legend Fritz Lang's M, 1931. Films so closely linked by time, place and production people, yet so different in dialogue - not simply because one's a late silent movie and one's an early talkie.

Won't bore you here, but you should see M in particular - launched the career of Peter Lorre with a quietly startling kangaroo court scene. ..Which you now can't help thinking is because a kangaroo's is a bloody odd costume to put a paedofile protagonist in - in any film. But you're just being silly. So stop it.

Anyway - again - here I am. Apparently older. Apparently almost none-the-wiser.

If you'd like to know, Caroline bought me a nice big book of graphic-type stuff, in a little-veiled attempt to make me stop using bloody arrows in everything I design. To little avail, perhaps, as I found a fair few in it. I'm also sitting here in a birthday shirt, of course, listening to another birthday CD - John Coltrane. Helpful stuff to write to, as I continue with the sumptuous come-to-bed copywriting for Halo's catalogue this afternoon, because I usually employ the clink of Martini glasses, a swinging walk and a wry wink whenever I'm making advances to my poor, beleaguered wife. So I, at least, am in the mood.

Other than that, I'm ignoring the screams of bankers and investment managers echoing from around the world and looking forward to a little mexican dinner at Coriander's tonight with Mater and m'lady. Whether we're facing a second Great Depression or not, I shall aim to stay chirpy in all things - because it seems clear to me that it's all good. It's all good.

However old I'm supposed to be.

Bed.

Bed.

I'm having a bleak, north European moment.

Y'know, the kind of style-life moment that, ah - how do I put it? - uncamouflaged tossers enjoy. People who still buy the Guardian to leave it lying around under a casual Penguin classic, and who feign interest in the US presidential race and who wish they could more easily afford a newer Audi and who have just rediscovered the idea of department store shopping, lingering around the leather Man Bag island. Y'know. People like me.

To be fair, I rediscovered the idea of department store shopping because TJ have recently pulled some all-nighters fitting new branding to every floor of Beales. With a little glow of pride, I stroked the neat, sans serif vinyl lettering and followed their clear signposting to the men's luggage department...

Right now it's raining hard against the studio window and the jelly lamps are pooling low, luminous warmth on the desks while I audition some new, stylishly bleak jazz album. The very cool and also stylishly bleak album cover is sitting beside me, teasing my designer's eye. And I'm sitting here typing a pointless string of thoughts that no one is likely to read, by way of enjoying sitting in this thinly metro atmosphere for ten minutes. And by way of putting off some homework.

I think I first heard one of these pieces on FIP. A station that I usually listen to in the rain, harking back to our last visit to the French capital when it piscened it down all weekend. Leucocyte, by the Esbjörn Svensson Trio, is a kind of sparing, jazz noodle with faint echos of Boards of Canada. Faint. And the artwork on the cover is a black and white linear repeat of the title in cascading deconstructions of Helvetica. Like a neat Letraset accident.

Yum.

Of course, sonic noodling about like this might create an atmosphere in which you can begin to consider yourself somehow… what's the word? ..sophisticated, that's it… while simultaneously numbing the thought of people in your home town having to sleep out in this shite Autumn evening. But it can all of a sudden make you throw a shoe at the CD player and want to turn on some ruddy lights. I mean, I'll be in an insomnial stupor before tea time at this rate.

It's good though.

---

The homework I'm putting off is a planning application. You heard me. For signage for a client. ..WHAT a pain in the elevations. I'm having to do drawings of the site and show how we're fixing the lights to the wall. Like I'd have the first clue.

I may, if I get it done in a while, do some more work too. I mean, why not? We're planning a John & Yoko-style bed-in all day tomorrow, to make the most of the gloriously lashing-shite weather with some old movies and a pre-emptive celebration of my birthday. I'll be, they tell me, thirty-eight. ..I mean, come on… so why not get some practical stuff out of the way now? Did I have some other socially explosive plans for my Saturday night?

Tomorrow's plan's an appropriate one, actually. When I haven't been stealing moments to embelish and over-work the branding for Momo's new album - in favour of finishing any actual music, it seems - this week, I've been writing words to get people into bed.

Long-time design chums, Halo, periodically invite me over to politely laugh at my jokes and give me briefs to write flamboyant nonsense. This time it's for a client of theirs that's a bedroom furniture specialist, for whom they're finishing a sharp new sales catalogue. I'm doing the sharp verbal intros.

Of course, I didn't like to say that I've been married for a hundred Earth Years and haven't had to concoct successful words to get people into the bedroom since before I was old enough to really manage it.

Hmm.

Anyway, some of the gang are in Brighton tonight, seeing one half of panto-gothic, vaudeville darlings The Dresden Dolls. I look forward to the Facebook pics. It means that much-loved, much-handed-around Harris mascot, Alice, is curled up in the cosy warmth of the evening's low, studio lighting, in her bed, just at my feet. And she's giving me those big, seductive eyes.

The ones that say: please turn off this bloody arthouse noise and make a fuss of me. Or get on with your homework.

Think I need a lie down.

Crunch.

Crunch.

Autumn. It's here. Breathe it in.

I'll be boring and say this again - it's long been my favorite time of year. Crisp, cold and bright or damp, grey and gloomy, it's the back-to-school season; the time of fresh starts. New blazers and pencil cases. And every year I seem to welcome it a little bit more.

But then, that may be because it's been a long while since we had anything other than a damp, vague summer that we were, by the end, keen to wave goodbye to in favour of a season that knows its mind.

"Hi, I'm Autumn. Changeable and chilly is what I do. That I know. You thought I was wan and reflective? Jeepers, get with the programme, you ass. No more. I've had it with poetry and bitter/sweet memories. Sheesh. That guy was a loser. What a bum guy he was at a party. Chuh. Turns out, with all the other seasons drifting about like lazy students, questioning who they 'really are', now I'M the most definite time of the year. Yeah, that's right, Summer - I get as much sunshine as you now. And yeah, Winter - I get the chilly freshness without the suicidal anticlimax of January. And hey, Spring - bite me. Daffodils are up NOW, you sad, dufus. Go figure. ..Now, who wants fireworks and baked potatoes and a big fat holiday season to look forward to...?" >cheers.<

Of course, if Summer and Winter ever wake up again, Autumn will get its ass kicked and be made to take off the baseball cap and sunnies. But I'll still prefer the definiteness of its changeable character.

---

I heard an interview with John Prescott on Today this morning. Gave James Naughtie a knock around. Jim sounded half exasperated, half amused, in that calming way of his.

Makes you think.

Where have all the definite politicians gone? All the Spitting Image characatures? All the party animals who say things like: "Oh, for God's sake, Jim..." and: "Pull your finger out and stop whining, everyone..."

I miss those guys.

I miss the guys who always looked like they had definite opinions and knew what they stood for, even if that could change in the middle of an interview. Where are all the loudly incredulous politicians with do-able accents? Nick Clegg, apparently LibDem leader, may have employed a Music Hall Funny Walk-type strutting to deliver his rousing 'We're heading to Government' speech here in Bournemouth, but that's not the same thing as being a real inspiration to Fluck and Law.

This is why, dare I say it, Sarah Pallin across the waters, is an ideal political leader - she has a costume and she has a funny voice. Caroline and I could both 'do' her in ten seconds. Genius.

But don't get me started on American politics. Current obsessions The West Wing, The Daily Show and Channel Four News are all blurring into one. I have no idea what's real and what isn't any more. Rather like the global banking community.

I'm confused, but I think it all has something to do with looking for change.

Money.

Money.

It's a gas.

A gas bag.

A big, fat, flammable bag of >BANG!< To say nothing of Crash - and only a dollop of dollar.

Too much bank for your buck.

Bad luck.

It's fall, that's all.

Feel the sheaves under your feet go

crunch.



Time for lunch.

I'm hungry. I'm famished. I'm ready

for a takeaway takeover. Taccos? Take cover

- remember, they're only thin flimsy shells.

But they fill up so well. With rich healthy smells.

So tempting and bulging and easy to undulge

without the niceties of cutlery. Just grab and eat

and feel the chille's heat.

And let the juice run down your hands and inside your cuffs.

Get stuffed.

Chew the meat and eat those greens.



Let's spend and be seen and chow down while the sun's high.

Let's order it all - everything off the sky blue lunch van.

I'll tell you now, I'm a meat and two veg man.


Don't hedge or hold back. Attack your pangs

with those conspicuous fangs.

Or how about sea food? Slippery, ugly, bulging and salty.

We can trawl for it all - net assets.

Campari and calamari? Maybe I have a yen for squid.



But, ah.

..Lend us a couple of quid.

Born slippy.

Born slippy.

Have you ever been to a festival?

I don't mean, have you visited Christmas. Or, have you observed Ramadan this year. Or bought a new sari for Diwali. Who hasn't. And I don't even mean, have you stayed in a tent pitched so close to someone else's that their beery exhalations will drive you mad enough by 3.00am to start you focusing on the 140BPM earthworks of the dance tent in the next field as a calming distraction. No.

I mean - have you really done a festival? A music festival. Have you, put bluntly, been mudded?

It's all very well saying you've had the courage to face a light drizzle to hear Coldplay and contemplate the meaning of suffering and brotherhood. Middle class thirty-somethings ensure everything's lightly drizzled while they contemplate how to cope with the family, albeit from the halogen, underlit warmth of their kitchens.

No, lightweight, I'm calling you out. You say you love music? Then prove it, Dave the rave. Prove it like we did this weekend - get your ass to Bestival next year. And abandon all hope of hygiene. Yeeaaahh. Whoop whoop.

----

All I can say is, the mud was flying. And sticking. And clodding. And splatting and splooting and glooping and plopping and slopping over everything thing everywhere. Like the red weed from The war of the worlds. Only brown. And wet.

Now, I've stayed under the modern equivalent of canvas countless times. Owned, errected poorly and damaged various tents over the years, and am quite happy to sleep at a funny angle with a randomly orthopedic earthlump under my intercostal wotnots; this, and the hopeless opacity of the tent material ensures you're up with the crows, stretching your arms manfully in front of the zipper flaps saying patently out-of-character things like: "Jeepers, I love this time of day. Just breathe it in... Ahhhhh. Who needs running water, eh? The trappings of modern life are just that, don't you think, hmm?"

After which it's usually custom to carefully step across a mile or so of dewy cowpats to look for a loo and a laté.

Having said all that, and adding the fact that I've found myself at various weekends away at events of some kind or another, it did seem odd to me, as we pulled my reasonably nice Audi thing off a reasonably good road surface into a reasonably abysmal field of shite, that I've never really, actually, properly been to a real popular music convention. Somehow.

The line up of acts was superb, put simply. The weather, however, was basically hideous.

It rained. Oh, Dive Boy, did it rain. But with the added hilarity, festival pundits, of high winds. As prepared as I felt for another weekend in the tent, I had not really - let's be honest here - thought about it at all.

I had not, for example, considered the possibility that the car would be anywhere other than ambling distance from the tent. Or, as it turned out, a clear country mile from the tent, up a tall hill spewing rivers of sludge. Or that it might be peeing down and shouting air sideways as we carried our many many bags of thirty-something creature comforts - linen-tinted duck down duvets, flower-studded flip-flops and beige casual slacks - this clear country mile from the gale-torn, cack-whisped peaks down the steeply sloping rivers of sludge. All to then try and erect our needlessly-complicated tent - or, as we preferred to think of it, our essential shelter in the weather-shredded, God-forsaken middle of nowhere.

I really thought, for one moment, we might not be able to stay there in that field. Even after carrying some much down there already, blistered, wet and fevered. I'm no particular lightweight with camping really, but the tent did look like it might simply never find the courage to stand up as Julian, Angella, Caroline and I looked at the forlorn shape flapping on the soggy turf.

We were like a trudging river of refugees from the routed and still-uncomprehending country of Jamieolivestan. Forlornly clinging to our chrome pepper grinders, mud-splat plastering our symetrical-smooth cuticle work. IPods helplessly screeching Viva La Vida from dangling headphones.

Me especially, now I think of it, because I was - to all intents and purposes - wearing a suit and a series of dress shirts all weekend.

----

We probably spent one out of the three days walking up and down that sodding, sodden hill. Carrying stuff. Heavy stuff. In particular, we were tasked with sneaking in our gas bottle because we were told at the rain-lashed trestle table at the grand entrance that we weren't allowed them on site. Or the boot-ful of french vino.
For someone relatively new to the natural comforts of camping, it's worth noting that Angella endured her basic training with dignity. And over the last two decades we seem to have spent so many weekends with Julian in our underpants or in sleeping bags, working out how to transport alcohol creatively or how to put together a ridiculous costume of some kind, there was never any possibility of us joining the streams of dislocated grumblers leaving early. This is what we do. And yes, it includes painting our faces blue if that's what's needed.

Of course, we'd started the weekend at his Mum's very nice crash pad in Cowes, over a distinctly civilised new world red in a fresh restaurant tucked in a cosy corner of the port. Much more the setting we're used to together, really and it in no way prepared us for the hardiness ahead. But wherever we are, we're usually laughing. Even if Angella says she only pretends to know what Julian and I in particular are really on about...

And, once eventually set up and worn out, we did have a reasonable campsite home. ..Riven with spewling mud off the hill in the distance, grant you, but somewhere to make a cup of tea. Which was good, because we'd have quickly been crippled victims of Credit Crunch Britain if we'd relied on buying refreshment...

----

Yes, Bestival is not cheap. Yes, the weather was a few steps beyond helpful. And yes, it all meant we moved around the festival like some medieval victims of pergatory, stuck in endless, oozing undulations of our own folly. But, quite apart from being a great excuse to watch good friends try not to fall face first in uncoagulated crap, it really was a terrific line-up of acts.

I've never had such a concentrated choice of cool on a menu before. From So Hot RIght Now, Hot Chip, to entertaining old-timers who still take it all a little too seriously, like The Human League and Gary Newman - we had a blast. Ahh, Nick. Nick the keyboard player with The Human League - how you stole it for us, with your headbanded, grimmace-faced guitar keyboard solos. Class entertainment; who knew where they were or weren't drawing the line - we just belted out Don't you want me so hard, we were photographed by The Times.

Pendulum buff-diffed their way through a typically energetic, cool set on the Friday night and Grace Jones made a surprise appearance on the Saturday evening. Which, can I say, was a remarkably great set - costume change with wind machine (as if she'd need it if she'd stepped beyond the skirt of the stage) every single song, and a right cool vibe to the tunes. Nice surprise.

We stayed up to see, of all people, the Stereo MCs - but after an hour of waiting in the Big Top, encroaching middle age got the better of us and we slooped and slipped back to bed. Shame. Similarly, we didn't even kid ourselves about staying out for 808State or Aphex Twin, at 3.00am or some silly such - but jeepers, how good to have caught all these guys if we had. Legends.

In truth, the abysmal mud probably stopped us reaching half the bands or DJ sets I'd hoped to see. Laurent Garnier, Gilles Peterson... ah, lots. Shame. Most sadly of all for me and the Cazster, we actually did hold out to see Maccers do her thing in the Bollywood tent, but it was more like a crazed rave with a Total Recall theme - freaks choking for air, covered in sweat. We just couldn't get in. Big shame. Whoop droop.

Our big Bestival tip was something else, however. The polka tent.

Yep, the polka tent. For the five insane minutes we were bootslapping in there, we took the place. And came out grinning and refreshed. Kind of like a musical pallette-clearer. Excellent. The polka tent.

But, grey skies, mud, mud and mud aside, the real winning part of the weekend musically was probably Sunday night.

The skies cleared. The rain dried up. The wind eased off. Stars began to twinkle over the Thirty Thousand Freaks Under The Sea, gathered faithfully at the edge of the main stage that evening. How prophetic that fancy dress theme had been. And how much effort people resiliated in their costumes, when it meteologically came to it. Captain Birdseye and his ten fish fingers were a crowd pleaser for me, but the clam heads did something for me to. And the array of fish heads, sea monsters, mermaids in wellies and bedraggle-tenticled octopi was heartening. There must have been something of a Dr Zoidberg convention on site too; sales of red latex gloves were obviously booming.

It was a hoot. It was a jolly, well-mannered giggle. Everyone was polite and festival minded. Painted, stuck-on or unrecognisably diving-belled or yellow-submarined, there was a muted happy vibe still bubbling under the grey skies until the Sunday evening weather eased. Neon fish bobbed over the sea of bobbing heads towards the front and giant smiley balloons tugged on behind. Julian found himself in an argument with a starfish that swore blind he was a banana.

As we scooched up onto the patio of the cafe above the main arena floor, to have seen George Clinton and Parliament live right then would have been epic enough. Two hours of these legendary (which means I thought they were dead) funksters taking over the stage and grooving to their own P-Funkadelia was simply a joy. Some girl gave me a glowy wrist band, I was grooving so much to We want the funk. I think she felt I needed all the credibility help I could get, stood there in my pinstripe jacket and evening shirt. Utterly mud-whacked. Bless her kindness on an old man.

But to segue that into Underworld, and to finish our festival experience with Born Slippy... As we shouted and raved and watched Chinese lanterns take delicately to the dusky sky, we felt our time together had been, in the end, very sure footed.

..But it was sooooooo good to get back to the sweet comfort of Julian's Mum's power shower.

----

Moving the car across the 'car-park', I nearly cried. I've never wanted a four-by-four so much before. But the knowing smiles on everyone we passed as I drove my pebble-dashed Audi through Southbourne on that tranquil, sunny Monday morning kind of prolonged the Bestival feel good for a couple of hours.

Fish.

Fish.

Breathe. Only one more daft weekend to weather before we reach the open waters of a clearer diary. I think. But this last one's proper daft. Daft with knobs on. Or barnacles.

Bestival.

Never been before. In fact, I'm not sure I've been to a festival with so much cool concentrated in one place, having never broken in to Glasto. Will they let me in?

The fancy dress theme this year is '20,000 freaks under the sea'.

Needless to say, I'm thinking the following:

1: I've only got two days or so to do a costume. Sh*t. Will think about it later.

2: I'm losing another day and a half from the schedule, to say nothing of a catch-up weekend. Sh*t. What the hell do I do for a costume?

3: George Clinton and PARLIAMENT?!! Sh*t! ..How do I find time to do a costume?

There's a fair deal of stressy swearing in there, I'll grant you. And if you know me at all, you'll know there's also a number 4: How do I get my new track played loudly by a top-name DJ? ..and do I really want to be dressed as a giant fish when I approach them?

Ah, professional challenges.

I'm in the middle of the creative for a hefty rebrand at the moment, besides the usual string of jobs, so I don't think my fish costume will be all that. But, thankfully, I have creative help on that project at least - Julian is a mercifully inventive and amusing person to be going with, even if he and Angella are even busier than we are.

Hmm...

"Hello my good festival gate keeper. Four passes... Hmm? ..Why, they may look like Somerfield baked bean boxes to you, my dear chap, but look more closely and you'll see that these tassels are obviously the tenticuli of the fearsome box jellyfi.. 'parkanywhereontheleft', right.

Help me. I'm sinking.