Shiny, dead good work.

Shiny, dead good work.

Thought I'd check in as an excuse to stop, collapse in a chair, mop my brow, beg a cuppa, and fain looking dead busy and important. ..Any of this worked so far?

In the week running up to a little Momo show, everything does inevitably get a little telescoped into too little time, and Momo does tend to dish out various other random creative things to deal with at the same time. So that I have to pause carefully every ten minutes to think of my name.

Typical would be this afternoon's itinerary, I suppose. Starting with a precursory website design analysis for a possibly nice new client running a successful art gallery business, I am now prepping mixes for the show on Saturday. I shall then be popping to good ink management partners The Print Room to stroke some extremely, almost absurdly, nicely-specced print for a high profile international (no-pressure) mailer, before wandering the industrial estates of Walisdown to find The Bay 102.8 to possibly boob about on air for ten minutes aroud 6.00pm, talking about myself annoyingly. And at undoubtedly great odds with their normal playlist. Before then wandering the same industrial estates looking for tonight's rehearsal rooms I secured only this morning for a bash through with the beats boys tonight.

Don't think I'll get time to finish sanding that hall wall we stripped in a wild-eyed, unplanned frenzy at the weekend.

Of course, blogging out a list of pretty tediously small-time chores in an attempt to look busy and important so feeble that you might actually want to hold me and cry for me and then hold me out at arms length and look at me squarely and then through tears and with a shake of the head ask what happened to me and then hold me again MIGHT appear to be an un-smart choice on my part. Even reaching the FOOTHILLS of credibility has taken, like, SOOOOO LOOOOONG, Tim; stop acting like such a desperate loser. Which is sweet of you.

But have you stopped to think, eh, that MAYBE, just MAYBE, yeah, I couldn't help myself and then took such a long time to type it all out as I thought it / think it all through out loud on the keyboard here that by the time it's obvious and incriminating I have not only lost the time to go back and correct it and fabricate indifference but also the will and the memory of where this was going and of how to use punctuation       Oh, >?<

Huh?

Well look. So I'm on the radio apparently. And then we're doing a live music show on Saturday or something and someone's told me that we're actually sharing a BRAND RUDDY NEW RUDDY TUNE at it and some very nice chums are actually traveling half way around the planet to be there and to fill our home and the little Momo studio with merriment at it all so, y'know… I'm just trying to keep up and keep enjoying it. Fnaffle condescendingly all you want. You can still come along. Like you have anything better to do.

But while you're there, could you confirm that 'condescending' does actually mean 'ascending'? Because it should, come to think of it, shouldn't it?

But yes. A new piece from Momo if you make it down to Sixty Million Postcards this Saturday and are actually prepared to stay up for it. This is actually true. You WILL hear it and it WON'T be online any time soon afterwards.

The usefulness and scale of my creative career may be unbelievably limited, but I can at least promise something on Saturday night that will be dead good.

Especially if you're there.

Momo:tempo's Electro Pops Orchestra ride again

No Fun vs Momo at Sixty Million Postcards, Facebook event

PS: And all the more because some nice man has just delivered a very shiny new pair of classic Oxfords for my get-up. Good work.

---

Red, white and blue.

Red, white and blue.

I saw them twice this week. The Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team, The Red Arrows. I must have seen them nearly fifty times in my life, of course.

I can picture a much littler me waiting on the clifftop somewhere along the long sweeping coastline of Bournemouth's Poole Bay, perhaps holding dad's hand or watching mum scan the skies impatiently – as least as much a child as her offspring in such moments. Waiting. Waiting for the minute-perfect arrival of the nine Gnats, then Hawks – WHAM! – suddenly streaking overhead in awsome precision and control, as their engines scream unrestrained excitement.

Or standing in the rain at one of the Hurn air shows, hoping the clouds would clear just enough for the chaps to do their magical stuff, hanging off eachother's wings with the most exacting trust, to show faithful crowds what human skill can do.

It's been said that the Red Arrows team have always enjoyed flying at Bournemouth. They're very polite chaps, so I doubt they'd tell us it was high time we got them a new portacabin to sleep in at the airport anyway, but still. I can say from various experiences that, at least from very very low aeronautical speeds and from the more reassuring vantage point of Always The Right Way Up, this neck of the woods is a pretty one from the air.

And this weekend it seemed to be a perfect amphitheatre for aerial action as ever it was. Unprecidented rain and flooding and terrible visibility broke dramatically after Bournemouth Air Festival's first apocalyptically washed-out day on Thursday, and Friday dawned bright and clear and warm – the bay twinkling blue from Needles to Old Harry's, and clouds receding to the very roof.

That Friday afternoon I watched the team from Chris and Laura's splendidly front-row vantage point in town, close to the very cross-over of the Lunatic Flying Straight At Each Other that they do, to bottom-twinging applause every time, and directly under the heart they draw a mile high in the sky for everyone with their smoke trails. Never else does burnt diesel bring a tear to the eye quite like this.

Then on Saturday, we took my aeronutty but currently house-bound mother out to our collective back garden on Southbourne Cliffs – on another day of impossible meteorological changearounds from miserable low cloud to glorious summer skies. And seeing the exact same display from the Arrows as the day before but from the edge of it was even more thrilling; when they peeled off across the town at the end of a wide manoeuvre, they were roaring right over our heads. Seeing the lead four start their Strip The Willow, or whatever country dance thing it is they do, from underneath was a lesson in flight precision – those chaps moved in such harmony it looked like CG. Unbelievable. Inspiring. Thrilling. Every time.

---

Someone behind us received a phone call. She was not the sort to hold in news, it seemed, and she leaned into our little gathering as we played festival radio and said simply: "One's crashed."

We looked at eachother. Then up at the clear blue sky again.

---

By now, you know the story. As much as we do. Red Four, Flight Lieutenant Jon Egging, came down in the pretty riverside fields along the Stour, just south of the airfield. Turning back off the runway as he peeled away in a final sunburst for the hardcore fans waiting to see the team land, his Hawk T1 just didn't stay in the air, losing altitude fast as it arced towards the ground. Jon didn't eject. He did put out a mayday, so he knew something was wrong. He appears to have instinctively stayed with his aircraft to ensure it went down safely away from the houses of Throop and Castle Lane.

The Red Arrows don't do crashes. Flying since 1965, there have been only a handful of fatalities – and only in 1971 was that in an actual display. The loss of a pilot at the controls of a Red Arrow display aircraft is a shocking piece of news. Across the UK people are feeling it, and here in Bournemouth, flowers have been left piling up against the lion outside the town hall. Up the slope in the entrance of the old hotel building, the council has had to double the number of books of condolence opened to Flt Lt Egging's family and to the Arrows' wider family. People care about these people.

And it's because they aren't simply entertaining, of course, they're inspiring.

What they do is about endeavor – about the pinnacle of human skills. We can't imagine ourselves doing what they do, even as we daydream about it. And, as the primary marketing front end of the Royal Air Force, they are impressively effective brand ambassadors – those red white and blue trails do more to make people feel quietly proud to be British than almost anything these days. They are, in short, a comfort.

What comfort there is for Flt Lt Egging's widow, Dr Emma Egging, must surely be partly found somewhere in that – in her husband's skill, professionalism and bravery. In his service.

Every time you hear of another young life lost in the front line of our armed forces' work, you probably find yourself thinking the same as me – why did we have to lose another life of that calibre? Of that self-control. Of that knowledge. Of that commitment to service. We need these people in society. Some might be tempted to say now more than ever.

We do need them. And no matter how bloody unjust their premature loss when it happens, nothing can stop them doing one of the most important things they do and can't help but do. Because it's precisely that calibre of person that will put themselves in harm's way in order to serve, and in order to live life to the full. And in so doing, they do indeed inspire.

It's cruelly ironic. Paying such a high price for being prepared to step up. But it's these people who we will remember.

Red Four, you have certainly made your mark. On the sky, and on the mind's eye.

Amazing. x

---

Back to real life, please.

Back to real life, please.

How are you feeling? Back to the same old routine? The comfortable numbness slowly warming back through you? Me too. Great, isn't it?

Only, I'm now not sure if you get it from keeping your telly box on or turning it off.

..I think maybe I'm a dispassion native now; I can Not Really Care About Stuff all on my own, with or without headphones in or TV blaring. Look at me, a media age child all grown up.

For a few nights last week, however, I fear I may have caught a glimpse of real life.

I know! Me! ..I confess it here because I trust that you're broad-minded and will understand; better out than festering away in, eh. But I did. Even as Twitter blazed away with hysterical headlines about London burning and I instinctively poured the cold water of anti-hysterical scorn on the dramatic language, I could not tear my attention from the live pictures of what appeared very much to be homes and livelihoods actually burning to the ground in London. For no apparent proper reason at all. Other than that we appeared to be all suddenly climbing into that handcart that we'd all been repeatedly told we would be taking to hell one day – like some prearranged geno-suicide signal had finally gone out. ..But, I mean, who sent that memo? Or tweet. I didn't get it. DId you? I'll bet you did. You get everything.

I wasn't ready at all. There was no orientation for this Armageddon team challenge – I had no idea it was scheduled for last week. Yet – bang! – last Saturday people were kicking things in in Tottenham and by the middle of the week England was apparently efficiently destroying itself, and dancing on the smoldering debris. All apparently gone like clockwork, just as in the practices. Which I'd also missed.

I felt like such a fool, not knowing what my tasks were. This is JUST why I always get voted off teams pretty soon after the jokes start to wear thin.

---

But ACTUALLY, it turns out that Mad Max: Beyond Millennium Dome is not reality after all. It is, apparently, too soon to tear the body panels off our cars and strap dead cats to our heads and start wheel-spinning in circles in the NCPs waving spears. Which seems a shame.

True, we can't seem to get our economy to grow at all, perhaps slightly because the world economy is shaking apart with tremours that just won't stop rumbling away underneath its current foundations. True, there is still a bigger gap between the wealthy and the poor here in the UK than anywhere else in the always-claiming-to-be-developed world. True, there are still groups of people all over the country that feel so disconnected from the idea of owning a part in the country's life that it looks like they feel disconnected from owning their own lives. True, no politician in Westminster seems to have words to come anywhere close to connecting those people back to the rest of us. True, this is true in cities all over the world. True, poverty eventually degrades dignity and hope back to animal fears – especially when it is also of education and mental empowerment. True, some people get very used to pissing about and taking stuff sooner than making stuff.

And true, when you feel that you have nothing to lose and nothing to work for, you find a certain kind of bitter freedom lurking in the limbo of it – one that might enable you to give riotous thanks when that limbo is actually at long last broken when something – anything – kicks off down the street. The thrill of change can be intoxicating. Especially when it involves free stuff.

But it's not the only truth.

What is hearteningly truthful is that most people in Britain do own their own lives. Of course they do. They do value their freedoms. Do pick up a broom to not just clear up and start again but to help each other clear up and start again. And you can bet your future on the truth that most young people get it too. In fact, an awful lot of them know the wisdom of the streets a lot more than you do. If you're tempted to use phrases like 'generational moral vacuum' you're not just a bit wordy, you've also been watching too much telly. It's probably you that's disconnected. And by you, I obviously mean me.

Because something else I've realised this week that seems to be unshakably true is that I am a reasonably useless arse who knows very little of the real world. It's no revelation, you understand, but a reaffirmation.

---

You may have done your own version of this during last week, but I spent much of it expending emotional energy pacing in circles declaring things uselessly at the TV, the computer screen and the radio. The riots made me feel a lot of stuff and think a lot of stuff and shout a fair bit of stuff but not do a lot of stuff. Which at least involved not nicking a lot of stuff either.

I want to teach some kid to read. Some kid who could end up leaving school without the ability to analyse themselves and their world if someone outside the self-defeating bureaucracy of the education system didn't step in and help. But who. And how? I'm no teacher. Teachers, I thought, would make excellent teachers.

I want to hug Tariq Jahan for appealing for calm mere hours after his son Haroon had been murdered by hit and run in the riots in Birmingham. And so do you, and so do so many people of all communities up and down the country – a fact that doesn't just validate his inspirational courage, it illustrates it. He shouldn't have had to demonstrate his character under these circumstances, it's clearly just who he is – as a man, as a father and as a British citizen. We cheer him on because he represents values that are important to us. Which is why we want to sob for him and for the family of the two brothers killed with young Haroon that night. But he doesn't need me echoing more empty praise when his son is dead. He needs the justice of free, peaceful streets where he lives.

I want to go to a police station and tell them they're bloody heroes for stepping up to serve their communities in the most thankless of roles, doing it so often as they do with such heart and intelligence. Even as I want to beg them to not give in to the emotional pressure to feel that their job is some sort of military front line – a place with the strategic imperative of Them And Us. Tottenham's gun crime might feel like the front line on some Tuesday nights I guess, same as Baltimore or who knows, but the army's terrifying challenges under fire are fundamentally different to those of the civil police service, even when you have to wade into petrol bombs and bottles and fight – with your life and all your wits and discipline to protect our free streets. But why would your average experienced copper need a flimsy-limbed oaf like me to helpfully point out any of this to them?

I want to go to every kid in the nick after the weekend and drag them by their prison tag to a mirror and shout over their shoulder in their face: 'Don't you realise what you're capable of? You're a freaking human being – you're amazing, you bloody idiot. You're unique in the sodding universe. Stop acting like you don't give a shit and that you're not part of the rest of us – own your own life. Stop acting like a victim everyone wants to punch'. But, as they might politely point out, what the flying fuck-a-ding-dong do I know?

Because I really most want to stand in front of that mirror alone and shout in my own face: 'And THIS is how you're going to make a practical difference to the people around you', and know what it is.

But I can't, it seems. Not yet. Can you?

I'll bet you can. You live in the real world. You're already doing it. But feeling a bit useless when you've already been given all the essential tools you need for independence and confidence that so many youngsters are fighting to find is also part of real life across the UK. Loads of us feel uselessly disconnected from each other. We don't know how to connect our values and hopes to people who appear to act so differently. So angeringly differently to us.

This feeling, in all its different expressions across the British classes, is something that unites our kingdom. But I think there may be a way out for every one of us from that entrapment of feeling:

True freedom is having the confidence to serve.

..I know this. I just don't know where I could or should serve effectively.

When you appreciate the profound value of service – the ultimate respect that it is – you are likely to love the person you notice serving you. And when you demonstrate that gratitude with returned service, they may love you back. Because, after all, love is service. It's something you do. Something you build society with. But it's only real and true and effective when you do it as an instinct, or at least decision, and an end in itself, expecting nothing back directly.

The geniously simple truth, though, is that respect, service, love, all start with the conscious use of two very powerful everyday words – powerful precisely because of their easily-overlooked modesty – 'please' and 'thankyou'. And don't you dare laugh.

This is essentially all I learned from my parents, boiled down into two words. And, as the riots unfolded on the TV in the background, my mother was having her knee replaced for free by the UK's National Health Service and was being calmly served by indefatigably caring professional medical staff, helping her to recover into a chapter of new freedom for her, after years of painful limitation. She spent most of her time in there saying thankyou.

The challenge modern Britain is really presenting us with, even as so many of us give thanks, is how to use our freedoms to serve eachother's.

I shall ponder this some more as I slip back into the comfortable oblivion of responding to my own life's little fires to fight.

---

Du vingt.

Du vingt.

Content.

An interesting word to see written down; how do you imagine I'm saying it?

As a noun its meaning can, in one very specific context, be strangely at odds with the same word pronounced as an absolute adjective – for when it comes to internet marketing, content may be king but it's also a killer for feeling content. Internet marketing is never content with the amount of content you feed it – it's voracious.

Are you in any way at all still with me?

My convoluted point is simply that Momo's marketing is basically starting to pile up an implied world of things I need to apparently start putting my back into creating. It's daunting. And every current independent music artist feels it. There's so much opportunity out there. But it is, as ever, opportunity to do, like, WAY more hard work.

I have most recently responded to this imperative in the only way I instinctively know how: By doing the opposite of that and clearing off – vacating the grid for a couple of weeks and creating very little content at all.

I have, in fact, been con-tent. Or avec tente, if you will – for we have been enjoying a few smooth roads, bon-marché campsites, and plus-swank hotel rooms of France.

---

The lovely first lady of Momo and I have been celebrating something special. But the ubiquity of modern news is such that we could not escape some awareness of events that were at the opposite pole of human experience to ours in that moment. Shocking, heartbreaking stories of tragedy. ..How are any of us to respond to such things? Ever. But especially when you are in mid-toast of something brilliant.

Perhaps, I think, with judicial use of sober reflection and mental compartmentalising.

If there is ever a time to give thanks it is the moment you are aware of just how good and how precious your current moment is. For wolves will steal it at any opportunity – even in apparently safe places. In the foothills of the Alps, or the island woods of Norway, or an expensive London flat.

---

We have been celebrating an anniversary. Ours. Twenty frankly gobsmackingly gone-fast years since our wedding day, on an August Saturday in 1991 in Sussex. Everything I do by Bryan Adams seemed to last as long that summer. And many of the friendships already so well underway then and showing support on the day, are still amazingly on-going today and supportive today.

I suppose a marriage is like any other business; you have to create the very best content you can for it. And guard it jealously. We reinforce the brand idea of our marriage all the time in countless goofy ways. Brands are, after all, built on behaviours. But we've mainly been very lucky. And the best thing I know to do in the face of another day of good luck is to be grateful. And to try to show it.

After twenty years of successfully convincing a frankly remarkable woman to keep living with me and being incredible nice to me, here at the little dawn of a new chapter of new opportunities for us both, I have felt okay about stealing a few moments together – to toast our current and past happinesses, to remember but keep at a sensible distance our sadnesses, and to feel, for at least a short while, something to be cherished indeed.

Content.

x

---

After School Dance Club.

After School Dance Club.

When I was fifteen, there was a place in town that I might well have considered a kind of mythical land of adventure; an exotic place of fabulous willowy creatures and strange ancient sporting customs. All for reasons that would have been obvious at the time, twenty-five years ago.

Sitting in Bournemouth School For Girls yesterday, however, I felt decidedly odd. Not because I'd blindly followed a faulty Satnav into the middle of the playground or anything – little as I know the backroads of anywhere north of the Cooper Dean, you understand – or because I didn't spot one lacrosse stick while I was there.

No. It was at least partly because when you don't have kids of your own, schools become weird places to walk around out of hours. ..Or any hours.

You know there's a whole industry of community normally swarming around the corridors of the place, swilling up the walls in sudden buzzing torrents of scruffily-branded pupils when bells ring out of the blue; a place as active and familiar to its thronging inhabitants as anything they've ever known of the world. A world in itself; self-sufficient and self-referential.

A ritual, diurnal chaos that parents navigate like harassed ambassadors of other countries – people who constantly roll their eyes and proclaim their adult homeland far away and how this isn't where they belong, yet move as fluently through the cultural rites as any four-foot native.

But by four in the afternoon, the same space is an almost-instant ghost town. Haunted by just the occasional uniformed small person, looking as spooked as you to find themselves in the unnerving netherworld of After School.

---

It also partly felt odd, as I sat on a very school-ish stacking chair in some new arts wing of BSG, because at four in the afternoon on a Thursday I should be making stuff I can sell. Not sitting in some new arts wing of something, listening to other people's kids talk about building 20-meter revolving mushrooms in the Lower Gardens.

Now. I told myself that Momo's whole remit is to be open to apparently-daft random opportunities and that the invitation from little local think tank Conurbation 2050 to pop along to their presentation to council members at the local girls' grammar was just such an on-brand random O for my business. Most especially because I do seem to have a thing in my bonnet about the town and its future, and the chance to shoot my mouth off about What I Reckon was too vainly tempting to pass up.

---

The first couple of hours saw presentations from two levels of ages from local schools about what we should do with Bournemouth. To anyone with any passing knowledge of the local press it will come as precisely zero surprise that every single project proposed for the future of our seaside town by its represented young people was to be built on the site of the Imax, or Waterfront building.

To anyone with a slightly longer knowledge of the local press it will come as no surprise – and, in fact, serve to illustrate well the likelihood of being able to build a metro system under East Dorset – to have heard one old town servant tell the room later that at the 25th birthday of the Bournemouth International Centre this week, someone actually turned up to complain that the BIC should never have been built in the first place. (I believe this chap's wise political response was something like "FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LET IT GO.")

The point in this time together was, however, really to see what the current generation of school folk really think of where they live. And I was heartened, as much as anything, by how much I recognised those young people. As cybernetic and otherworldly as media portrayals of post-internet age tweeners seem to be, I saw the same bunch of sincere and ordinary young humans I went to school with up there. Except the ones I went to school with were now sat in the audience, feeling as secretly bemused as me to be apparently responsible for everything now.

And I must say that one or two of those ideas presented by my generation's offspring were rather tempting to possibly just pinch.

---

Then came our presentation as a loose association of local ne'er-do-wells – or in some cases, rather-done-wells – to reps from the Bomo chambers. Most of whom had been inexplicably 'warned off' by the famously open-minded and community-spirited leader of Bournemouth Council for some political reason or other. "Will make for a slightly more interesting film version of this" said co-organiser Brian Jenner to me with a grin.

We would be sharing some essentially loony ideas about flying cars and space tourism or similar with a handful of weary, largely apparently elderly councilors – attempting to get chaps who have been serving the local community's pressing village green dog poo issues since the 1970s excited about the practical plans for Bournemouth's monorail system and hydroelectric offshore energy farm and sub-oribital space ladder attraction planned in earnest for 2050.

When I got up at the very end and, just slightly demented from fatigue, began to extol the virtues of community drumming and how dance can unlock business innovation and – most importantly – my Branded Bomo Artz! Smock For Every BH Citizen initiative, I could see I was possibly losing one or two of them. Which, in one or two cases would have had me feeling for my mobile and the emergency services speed dial.

---
No. Of course, distorted comedy vignette aside, these guys are committed public servants and have a thankless, gradually exhausting task. I get it. And lord knows I respect it. It takes a hardy and committed soul to step up to public life and the spread of members who gave up their time to listen lastnight included some personalities you'd be grateful to have on your side in any issue. It's just that some of them have been in the local political groove for a committedly long time and have certain peccadillos of perspective. Some of the fresher council faces who joined us in that half-empty school hall I thought represented some heartening new outlook.

I mean, I'm really only good for shooting my mouth off with no qualification. I get that too. But my hard-earned experience at doing anything whatsoever in public is the ability to do it with gusto to almost nobody in an empty school hall somewhere. Which must count for something, right?

Sometimes the creative road takes you to odd places and claps its metaphorical hands to get you to sometimes literally dance. And when it comes to the creative life of this neck of the woods, I am prepared at least to do the odd unco-ordinated jig if it will have some kind of effect as a fertility dance to the seeds we're trying to sow in people's minds about the possibilities around us as we ponder the future.

I think there's a lot of potential to unlock in this part of the world, and I'm happy to turn up and drone on about it if kindly asked.

---

Below is my little speech about the cultural hopes for the future of our inspirational but politically annoying part of the world. A very-much work in progress that barely touches the issues. I will write a full manifesto about it soon, no doubt. Mean time, many thanks to local innovation legend, Matt Desmier, for furnishing me with a few uncharacteristic Actual Facts and to Brian Jenner and local MP Tobias Elwood for foolishly inviting me along to hear a bad example of speech writing.

See what you think. And feel free to read out loud in my slightly pompous over-sincere faux-posh Southbourne accent.

---

Inspiration and innovation:
Re-imagining the heart of the south coast.
How arts and business can encourage a clear vision for Christchurch, Poole and Bournemouth.

As we consider all these ideas and plans and exciting thoughts for the future of where we live, I often feel quite encouraged that so many people have so many big ideas for the place. Over the sumptuous breakfasts we've shared at Conurbation 2050 gatherings, I can feel quite inspired.

But I think there is one issue that ties all these different things together; that presents itself as a fairly immediate challenge, but also as a potential solution.

The one question that I believe hangs over everything we’re thinking about today is: What is Christchurch, Poole and Bournemouth’s vision?

Now, to ask such a question is not to question all the hard work and ideas already going on in all our local authorities to address that every day. But, you see, I don’t believe that it is my local authority’s job to give me a vision. I think it’s our local authorities’ job to cleverly facilitate and focus and amplify and encourage my vision. Your vision. To tap into what’s already true about where we live – the resources, the people, the potential. To help it work better.

And I think the way to unlock our vision for the heart of the south coast is to champion ways to bring together business and the arts. And do it obviously.

--

The challenge I think we really face is one of branding. Now, branding is a fairly soulless media word that media types themselves shy away from because it can confuse – but branding is none-the-less the challenge we face because it is concerned with perception; how people see us. And how we see ourselves.

A brand isn’t a logo. It isn’t a typeface or a tagline or a tee shirt. It isn’t a product – it isn’t even an initiative. A brand is simply an idea in someone’s head about you. About your business. When someone says the name of your product, what’s the first impression to drop into the mind of the listener? That’s your brand.

So the question is: What do you think of when you hear Christchurch, Poole, Bournemouth? And just as importantly, what do potential customers hear?

..It matters, because it’s silly human impressions that guide our decisions. It’s my daft romantic notions about a place that make me want to go there on holiday, or not.

Our job as local stakeholders is to clear the way for the very best ideas and impressions of our part of the world to connect with its audience.

And I think the very best people to help us do this are the creatives.

--

This is already a place of great creativity and media work – did you know that? A place where arts and business are already working together. For example:

Right in the heart of the area, on the busy borderland between Poole and Bournemouth, we have two world class universities. Bournemouth University is home to the National Centre for Computer Animation which provided more CGI artists for the film Avatar than any other single country (54 in total). It’s also home to the Centre for Digital Entertainment and the country’s only Centre for Excellence in Media Practice.

Earlier this year, Bournemouth University and the National Centre for Computer Animation was held up as a prime example by Ian Livingstone OBE in the government-backed NESTA report into skills for the visual effects and computer gaming industry.

Last year the Academy Award for Visual Effects in a Motion Picture went to BU graduate for his work on the film Inception.

Meanwhile, Arts University College at Bournemouth graduate Simon Beaufoy won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Slumdog Millionaire. One of Simon’s previous films, The Full Monty, was written whilst he was a student at the institute and only narrowly missed out on an award.

Turner Prize-winning artist Wolfgang Tilman is also an AUCB graduate, as is internationally renowned rock photographer Andy Earl.

Significantly too, the Academy Award-winning visual effects studio, Framestore CFC, who have produced effects for all of the Harry Potter movies, Avatar and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory amongst others and have studios in London and New York, are so enamoured with the graduates being produced by these two universities, they are opening up a third location here in Bournemouth.

And David Sproxton, Founder and CEO of Aardman Animation, employs more graduates from the two Bournemouth universities than any other location in the world.

Meanwhile, the more than 100 creative and digital agencies locally boast some of the best in the business – award winners in their fields, from web, to advertising, from games to marketing.

Dance SouthWest based their exciting new school, Pavilion Dance, right in front of the pier approach in Bournemouth’s historic Pavilion Theatre – creating a dynamic new facility drawing dance students and other creatives from across the south right down to our seafront to learn and share their art.

And while The Lighthouse attracts and encourages arts coverage to the area like no other venue between Southampton and the West Country, the BIC has placed itself firmly on the big name music and comedy grid, bringing audiences in to see some of the biggest names in pop and TV – even as the Christchurch Regent Centre does more to champion local theatrical talent and independent film throughout its packed schedule than perhaps
anywhere else in the region.

But besides the media talent here in Christchurch, Poole and Bournemouth, the area is also home to a burgeoning creative scene for practicing artists of all disciplines – painters, poets, writers, sculptors and musicians, with new bands and music acts searching for venues locally all the time. Between the music hubs of London, Brighton and Bristol – right in the middle is our conurbation. With a lot of creative people trekking past it.

People are meeting in upstairs rooms, cafes, empty retail space, small live venues and in front of big stages to celebrate and invest in the arts right here, where we live. And a lot of people from beyond the area already know this.

The trick is to realise its potential, and do all we can to make it obvious. To enable it to bring our brand alive.

---

The practical truth is that brands are built on behaviours. If we say we are an area ideal for business, we must provide an effortless, well-connected transport and business infrastructure. If we say we are a tourist destination, we must provide the very finest hotels across the age and budget markets, and we must give tourists ample reason to spend time and money here.

But it is the arts and culture that hold the key to this. It’s the writers, designers, artists and performers who will create the buzz about being here – not simply by providing more of the attractions themselves, but by having the skills to articulate the idea of the area to potential investors – from family tourists, to international business. To help us speak in the right tone of voice to the right audiences.

If we realise this – and the potential of it – then we must behave accordingly. We must let it feed our vision, let it make our vision obvious. We must provide facilities that not only encourage big creative business to relocate here, but which encourage the creative individual to work here. And we must build those facilities in symbolic locations – purposeful, obvious and proud. A place very obviously friendly to innovation.

We have a vision for the area as the creative heart of the south coast.

A vision not for an elitist niche, but for everyone. A cultural reputation that would inspire business and tourism across the board. An eminently deliverable vision – because it would be tapping into something already happening here, already true. Built from the ground up – from the individual pixels of people practicing their art, being who they are, professionally and personally, right here in the colourful crossroads of the south.

A vision of our area as one where anyone can find ways to tap into their potential. Find inspiration. And more than that, something vital – encouragement.

We believe that throwing strategic weight behind arts, culture and media would bring the heart of the south coast into focus as internationally as it would locally – the outlook we should be aiming for as we look ahead to 2050. Or even 2015.

---

Showing off local talent.

Showing off local talent.

It was a good headline from the Echo this week, as they previewed Tell And Show in Wednesday's edition. For, it seems, there was indeed a lot of local talent showing off at Champions at our little event lastnight.

Now, almost a day later – and already into rather different and pressing creative Momo challenges – I essentially just want to pass on much love and thanks to all for a joyful evening, and for how everyone's love for the vibe made a weirdly wet Sunday night very warm.

Firstly, to Suzy of Strawberry Fields Represents for creating such a madcap night. A highly original rosta of arts and music on one night's poster our seaside town has not perhaps seen before – and she made it happen for everyone. Her enthusiasm and encouragement for so many creatives seems quietly superhuman sometimes.

But a swiftly-following and sizeable thanks too to you if you made it down. Or even just made it obvious you wished you could have joined us.

The enthusiasm from everyone was immense and wonderful. I can speak for the whole gang, I feel, when I say that we loved giving you a blast – and that you felt it. To all the Momo amigos in particular who turned out to cheer on a chum – it's unlikely I didn't tell you in a soppy delirium that I love you at some point lastnight, but if I didn't, I meant to. ..Which doesn't make you less special than you thought if I did, you silly sausage.

Props too of course to all the artists I met and was able to introduce to everyone. To Sally and the big-hearted vowels of the Funky Little Choir; to demure young songwriting talent Adam Dupree and the immense family of his, believing in him so much they've secretly been building him a web presence to help market his obvious talent; to the consummate entertainment professional Ishmael and the thought-provoking word-dextrous talents of the Poets Republic, for opening up the night's imagination early; to the impressive, synth-geek brothers Newport, Neil and Dave, who felt like instant comrades, inviting us on stage to muck about all over a new tune of theirs – a huge, adrenalin-goggle-eyed, multi-drumming high for everyone to end the night on. Class. I must say thanks to Paul for helming the sound so coolly with a tricky mix to say the least, and to Tony at Champs for letting us in in the first place.

And a special thanks too to one of the key people in the line-up – Rupert Southcombe, for DJing just the right tone and segueing together the whole warm, groovy, quirky personality of the show from behind the decks. A legend.

Yet, among my sincerest thanks must go to the boys. The gentlemanly talent on stage with me lastnight was a humbling comfort for an undisciplined show-off:

To Simon Mellish – for adding an incomparable percussive extra dynamic to the whole groove of the show. A drumming legend, serving our sound on an exciting new level.

To Pat Hayes – slide supremo, for not letting his international trombone talent be phased by a fool flailing his arms just to his right.

To Tom Walsh – for making it through hail and storm and broken tree all the way to Bomo from the capital, to still blow the horn with such infectious enthusiasm.

To Mark Crowe - for stepping in on sax as a pro so seasoned, he simply rode with the madcap attempts to combine electronic daftness with real musical skill.

And then, of course, to John. Mr Herbison is the talent I lack – the horn band leader, not merely sourcing and then guiding the ensemble, but slaving over interpreting the parts – bringing them to life with the harmonies and dynamics of a world-class talent. A demur one it is a privilege to feel able to rely on on stage, and in studio.

But lastly, to Mark. If Mr Adkins were any more encouraging to Momo, I'd have to salary him to try to assuage my sense of grateful indebtedness to him. Over many years of playing together, I have always felt safe in his sense of groove and style behind the drum kit. That he and Sharon and Beth want to cheer on Momo:tempo quite so enthusiastically is just an honour. His excitement, as a cynical old brummie, is an essential fuel to my enjoyment of what we've done with Momo so far. And hearing those beats come alive… Amazing.

---

I said to someone lastnight that I think I honestly felt as much enjoyment having a legitimate platform to introduce and encourage other people as I did having one to introduce and encourage me. What a thing – to be handed the opportunity to stand in front of a few folk and say: Have you heard about this?

Forgive me for being an emotional booby for a moment, but how many times can any of us say that we find ourselves in the most natural of places – right where we are most being ourselves and feel most at home? In this life, perhaps not often.

I can at least say that I know what it feels like, however. Because, in our random little show on a rainy Sunday night in Bournemouth, I felt it lastnight.

And I think it showed.

---

BHBeat: Momo, Funky Little Choir and more of Bournemouth's creatives 'Tell and show'

Strawberry Fields Represents: Music, poetry, film and art – huge success for Tell And Show with Momo.

Room for excitement.

Room for excitement.

It is little things that usually make a person happy. Don't you think?

A very well-timed cup of tea, or a nice word from a client out of the blue, or finally buying a new pair of socks. Or someone asking you all about you for an hour. Or having some of the finest local musicians surround you in a small rehearsal room playing your tunes and making them sound basically ruddy exciting.

Yes, all is very simply well in those uncomplicated moments.

Momo is actually in the middle of developing a global event brand – a great project opportunity that's affording us the chance to pull out some production stops for an international client. Good work for the more sensible end of the business.

Meanwhile, we're also putting the finishing touches to our Tell And Show event at Champions on Sunday night and it's a slightly different challenge. For one thing, as a neighbour said to me this week, the line-up sounds like a whole festival. And I have to stage manage it into an evening.

But yes, part of that particular challenge involves turning up in the local paper and doing the odd little interview all about Momo, and getting to rehearse with some real musical talent. To say that Mark The Drum and I are excited this morning after lastnight's full run-through is a bit of an understatement.

And I've just signed off the payment on the production copies of The Golden Age which should arrive tomorrow. And I believe Mark The Print is delivering me a large poster this morning too. In fact, I believe some new shoes are even arriving by delivery this morning – so vanity levels are up a bit chez Momo.

Still, as exciting as all this creative work is, it's still as much work as it is play – which comes with lots to organise and deliver well. I just hope I have enough mental room to do just that.

Will keep you posted.

BHBeat interviews some bloke from Southbourne

---

Lyndey & Blair airs

Lyndey & Blair airs

In about twenty minutes from now, I'm going to miss a TV show. And it's a shame, because it's one I've worked on.

Yes, Lyndey & Blair's Taste Of Greece goes out on SBS One at 8.00pm tonight – but in Sydney currency. In UK money, that's 11.00am, and geo-blocked to foreigners like me. So, despite the show's entire focus being relaxing with good food and wine, I shall be psyching myself up to do the next job over coffee. But I shall toast, none-the-less.

As has been said in numerous places now, the show has naturally turned into a fitting memory of young Blair, who's sudden death in April still brings me up short when I think about it, despite the fact we never met. Felt a bit like we did. And it's just stomach-pit odd to think that he's gone. Especially when you see how full of sunshine and beans he and the whole show is.

I do hope Lyndey finds some joy in the screening of this first episode. But I'm thinking of her right now, and how broken hearted a mum will feel watching it, so soon after events.

---

On a personal note, I've loved developing the tunes for this production. Most of it was written in the dark dark months leading up to Christmas, in Momo's jumbled temporary studio upstairs, but they're pieces that rank amongst my favourite. So, understandably, I'm chuffed to be taking the wraps off them at last and sharing a first selection online from an hour-long bootleg album I'll be pressing into the hands of my poor chums.

To check out Momo's own news story on the show, with links to the official site and, of course, the new music on the Nuevo pages, just hop on over to the Promo story here.

Time for coffee, then.

Here's to the sunshine.

x

Creative qualifications.

Creative qualifications.

I don't have many qualifications. Not the sort that make me sound as if I've spent proper time really memorising some proper-sounding stuff. You know. Like English students do, to help them later in life in pub quizzes.

I have a bit of paper somewhere that tells me I have a full degree in graphic design, I know that. But I was never sure exactly what an academic badge in a subject so fluid it would let me write about Star Trek for a final year thesis would really do to impress a Cambridge don, for example. I think they're all more likely to be secretly into Doctor Who.

Going back to a place of learning today – and specifically the first place of learning in which I was exposed to the frightening possibility of being expected to look for professional creative work after my time there – I am reminded of my ignorance and inability to memorise stuff.

Anything.

My name.

What I'm supposed to be doing instead of this.

---

I've spoken at Arts Institute Bournemouth once before, at fine artist and fab tutor Sarah Grace Harris' request. It was a couple of years back at least and I think I presented diagrams or something. Confused us all. Today, I simply showed a lot of examples of something I do still drool over – pretty typography.

If you're a Foundation student just starting out on your creative journey of exploration, you might not have yet considered letterforms as gorgeous things to play with in your work. And after today's little rambling chat from me, you might well now know just why you'd not considered it.
But I hope I'd gotten just one or two type nerds hiding in the group just a little piqued with a sense of possibilities.

Thing is, as I sat in the slightly imposing, even academic-looking lecture theatre alone for ten minutes, I felt as unprepared and unqualified as I ever did back in the summer of 1989, getting dressed down by the course leader for mucking about with music instead of knuckling down with my studies.

Twenty-two years later, the vibe around the building – in fact, much of the paintwork around the building – hasn't changed at all it seems. Not for me, anyway – despite all the impressive additions and new cafe outlets. Sarah's office desk is more or less in exactly the same spot of floor as my desk was back then as a student. And not just mine, but that of fellow student and frequent critee, Tim – who was, all these years later coincidentally with Sarah and me and our other halves at her mum's house at the weekend. Gassing on with me about music. How things play out. And how some things don't change. Some quietly wonderous things.

But, though I still distract my graphic design work with musical daydreams, and music work with typographic daydreams, and though I'm still not sure what I really know about artistic discipline – I do now seem to have perhaps one important qualification at least. Experience. A bit of it. And it feeds my creative enthusiasm, at least.

Something I'd like to find ways to pass on.

---

Nice, therefore, to also spend time with Bournemouth Creatives on Wednesday night. A place of significant enthusiasm for the arts. And perhaps for that reason at least, I felt qualified to be there in the half light of the ol' Winchester, swapping creative stories with people a bit like me:

Playing about in creative matters and still loving it. And still learning loads doing so.

---

It's business time.

It's business time.

Can't be sure, but I think I was on the radio this week. Even more implausibly, on a business programme.

I know. You don't need to say it.

Of course, Brian Harries, on the very good-hearted local station Hope FM, had no idea who I was or what my credentials as a businessman were likely to be, as I perched opposite him in the sumptuous Romanesque marble-and-drapes surroundings of Studio 1 in the roof of the YMCA in Bournemouth. And after explaining it to him on air for a bit, I'm not sure he was any the wiser.

But he did kindly let me attempt to be funny for the shameless majority of an hour on his lunchtime programme, on Tuesday. You know, in that way of mine that would get you sighing: "Ah, Mo..." with a little empty look of pity, before you go get on with some real work. You know the way. You do.

Brian firstly introduced me as his long-lost twin.

"So, explain it to me, Timo," he then said, looking be squarely and beardedly in the the eye, "how does your business survive?"

Now, a lesser man in my position would have frozen like a severely under-RAMed PC being asked to suddenly process a high definition broadcast-quality final render of an entire Pixar movie. Not me.

I simply said cooly: "Some creatives feel that it's good to specialise and get really good at something. That's not me." And looked him straight back in the eye like this made sense. Holding in the strong urge to additionally blurt out: "Titting about on the radio like this doesn't help me knuckle down any, mind."

What a pro.

Despite this, Brian was generous in his warmth and welcome of my particular brand of unrehearsed 'personality'. And he described Momo's music as "stupendous", which I politely asked the work experience lass, Paige, to write down somewhere obvious.

So thanks to Brian and the Hope FM crew for inviting me on and not throwing me straight off, and to Suzy at Strawberry Fields for once again being my schedule's personal Shuffle function.

As I posted on the Business Show FB wall later, don't let Brian Harries' wan elfen translucency fool you, he is not so easily upstaged.

Listening as I type to Annie Mac on Radio 1, I don't know why I ever imagined that Momo would make more sense on a popular urban electro dance music show. Really.

---

In words and tweed:
Sort of playing the Day of Hugs festival.

Well, when your publicist asks politely on Monday morning whether you can do a gig on Friday evening, you don't immediately say yes, do you? Not when you'd told the band we all had a couple of months before any live dates and we might as well all go for G&Ts at the Swell Chaps Dead Creative Bar instead of practice.

I wish band life was like this for the Electro Pops Orchestra. Lounging together everywhere in casual sartorial brilliance like an eclectic gang of hipsters in a series of knee-bucklingly-cool Mad Men social scenes. If I can muster the costume and photography budget for the boys, we will spin this fable in the publicity shots.

In reality, the boys are too cool to be just lounging around within reach of Kimmerage on Good Friday evening and I stepped into the fray intrepidly alone. Sans cool gang to do most of the work for me.

But yes, Momo:tempo did play an exclusive pre-season, out-of-the-blue, boutique set at the Friday night warm-up to Dorset's very friendly Day Of Hugs festival, Easter Friday night.

We didn't exactly bill it as a Berk & A Laptop set, but I shall be doing so from now on. Entertainment can, it turns out, sometimes be portable, even for an electronic musician.

What the punters made of Momo's assertive electro-pop cabaret at half-midnight in a blacked out tent in a heavily socialised haze, lord knows. But I'm well used to that look. Somewhere between What the hell is this happening in front of me and: Is it wrong or at least too soon to admit liking this? To say nothing of: Is it me or is that actually tweed?

I may produce a range of Momo-branded tees:

FREE
YOURSELF
FROM THE
FETTERS
OF
CREDIBILITY.

[Download Momo:tempo at…]

Best bit may well have been watching everyone try to process all this while I belted baritone Yiddish lai-lai-lais at them, arms flung wide over the relentless international theatre of The Travel Writer. Was worth it just for that.

Ah. Who wants to fit in anywhere anyway. Not when you're already having fun.

Look out for more live dates soon.

The sea.

The sea.

Sometimes life is like being afloat on a raging sea in a little rowboat, just trying not be washed overboard.

So sang Neil Hannon in a song that has always made me think of my father – a tune called Charmed life.

Dad spent much of his time living with the attitude of someone who considered their life to be a charmed one, and did it with a touch of theatrical cheek reminiscent of this twinkly Divine Comedy song. Shame I never got to play it to him; I remember him for that thankful, upbeat attitude more than I do for the slow debilitation of his last months, or the many trials he took on in his 74 years.

Of course, typical of his instinct to combine a little theatre with a little passion and a little pragmatic risk-dodging was his life-long affinity with tall ships and his apparently equally life-long avoidance of the sea.

---

Now, whether you ever set foot on a real boat or not, Neil's simple lyrical point rings instantly true. Metaphorical boats seem to have figured often in my private journals over many years – despite the fact that my own idle affinity is with flying.

I've spent some of the last few days, however, literally trying not to be washed overboard, somewhere off Plymouth. ..While taking careful extra risks to wash some things very definitely overboard, on the shameful occasions my brave belligerence with the methodical Cardinal Chunder briefly caved.
Four nights bunking in berths with some old friends and bobbing about with a couple of new ones was a healthy alternative to another embattled week in the bunker; I took my journal and jotter pad and didn't feel the urge to touch them all week. Hanging off sheets and hanging onto my breakfast filled each day's imagination sufficiently it seemed.
---

I'm grateful to the good skipper King and the rest of the gang for inviting me help crew a another remarkably organised demi voyage – this time aboard a beamy 44-footer. Because, apart from all the fun and fine cheeses, sailing reminds me of the need to feel a little pushed.

So much of our modern life is comfortable, even when we feel justified in moaning about it. Physical effort is a good perspective-giver – and, much like running, sailing cleverly uses the body to get to the brain. It hands out numerous contemplative life lessons in its careful risks and little co-ordinative demands.

Effort and teamwork dawn on you as costly concepts when a boat needs getting home safely in all weathers and all stomach conditions. If you don't stop mewling over the gunwale and start winching the mainsail to wind, who will?

Another kindly member of the crew, is who. But the fact remains, it makes you realise that you too are another member of the crew.

Naturally, much of the time British weather will pack in far more different life lessons afloat than life itself will dish out in the same time – stretches of plodding calm with little wind in the sails can last for a long time in daily life, but just a morning off the Eddystone lighthouse. And at the end of four days of bare-boat chartering, if you're able to afford it, you're highly likely get to go home to a stable bed and pull the warm sheets over your head.

When life breaks a wave over your bows, it's unlikely to be so easy to dry out, I think.

---

I'm prepping to steal one of the bank holidays to mix an album version of the tunes I've written for Rampage's last major TV production involvement – Lyndey and Blair's Taste Of Greece. As you may have heard me say, it's been a thoroughly positive project for Momo, producing some of our nicest little tunes and I hope the bootleg soundtrack to a few friends' summers this year. And part of the feel-good on screen was young Blair himself – Australian TV chef Lyndey Milan's charming, buoyant son.

An actor and voice-over artist and clearly fit young chap in his late twenties loving life – and bringing a very likeable amount of it with him wherever he goes, it seems. It worked nicely in the show and I've certainly been hoping to meet him for a beer one day.

Today I had an email at tea time that blew the wind out of my sails a little – for in the small hours of Sunday morning, Blair died in Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred hospital. Apparently of acute myeloid leukaemia, more or less out of the blue.

---

Not knowing Blair myself, I can say little. Other than that this is still shocking news. My heart is sincerely with his mother and family, which seems to have included a lot of people.

What can any of us do in our little rowboats, when all we want to do after some weather is get carried away by the tide?

With sadness, I think of Blair and trust that all those who have felt swamped by this week's sudden news will remember the life and the theatre and the fun he brought them sooner than the sadness of his premature leaving.
We make sense of the sea largely by sharing experience. And always we survive the sea by pulling together. Somehow. Despite how we're feeling.
A little helplessly, I say: bon voyage, to a bon viveur.

x

---

Blair Milan: Sydney Morning Herald.

Whole minutes of heroic work.

Whole minutes of heroic work.
55 of them. Or was it 53?

To be honest, I was concentrating so carefully on getting over the line without giving up and sauntering over to shake hands with the crowds, I forgot to look at the clock.

And this is how you can tell a winner. As I rounded the last corner and could see the pier, two kilometers in front of me, I realised that it should be just at this point that the instinct to Really Go For It should kick in. The winner would think this without thinking.

Whereas the average me, at this point, will think: "Oh, come on – we've essentially done it; let's give up" and go on to instantly think about cups of tea and a nice sit down. I had to fight this instinct right the way up to the finish line. Crowds leaning over the barriers cheering us all on for the last 100 meters didn't so much spur me on as galvanise the more motivational forces of pride and shame to stop me from pulling up with a sigh and wandering past the clock checking my nails to join the medal queue.

But, yes – on Sunday morning, I joined with a heartwarming Pier Approach-ful of other semi athletes and hobbled round with my gammy leg to complete 10K in 55 minutes. Or possibly 53. But without giving up. A personal best, from someone who hadn't run more than twice round a sports hall without stopping for fluids in his life, a week before the Bournemouth Bay Run. Can't complain.

---

Of course, as I carefully pointed out to Nick, co-founder of Team Daisy, I was clearly showing them some love of significant proportions by turning up and joining in.

Not merely by agreeing to run ten whole kilometers without pulling over for coffee at any point – only pretending to peel off and sprint oh-so-amusingly into Urban Beach as the masses thronged by the famously congenial seafront bar – but more significantly by agreeing to the team dress code. A tee shirt.

Wearing tee shirts with shorts takes me back to games lessons at school. This is not my best look. The fact that I will now be appearing in umpteen photographs looking, at least in my head, like I did in the famously incongruous photo of me sitting next to, I think, Daley Thompson in an inexplicable sponsored sporting something when I was 13 is an act of generosity indeed.

In this absurd captured visual moment, Daley looks muscularly bored and vaguely humiliated by having to sit anywhere in frame with a skinny sweat-slick-fringed sports-shy sweets scoffer who any legendary decathlete should rightly have despised. I'm pretty sure he could sense, with finely-nuanced instinct, the unmistakable presence of the haunted fear of balls and of catching and of winning.

How did an icon of physical prowess and country-representing determination find himself sitting next to the sort of despicable underachiever who would try to worm out of games at every opportunity, play talentlessly in the appalling school band just so he could use his 'music' badge to whiningly jump the queue for lunch, and who would go on to get Bs in Art and English Language O level and be too apathetic to be proud of the two feebly best grades of his life? I almost disrespect him for doing so, had he not had some contractural obligation with his sponsor.

Well, so I tend to feel like that guy on the occasions I'm forced into an ill-fitting tee shirt. And trying to compensate with charisma is an often ill-advised tactic, just making it all worse, somehow. Really, it's best you weren't there.

Still. Despite the inner demons and a dicky pull on the calf before I even crossed the start line, I'd say the chance to be a part of Team Daisy was a great honour. Nick and Emma attracted 20 runners to join in, from clouds of friends across the country who all swooped in to stand with them in their incomprehensibly hideous hour of need. And they've already raised over eight grand for their chosen charity so far.

Sitting in their sumptuous garden that afternoon, marquees groaning with friends and food and music and love, I felt a bit inadequate next to their decathletic-like heroic efforts. How anyone loses their first child in labour and turns it into an athletics team and a garden party and photos in the Echo and nearly ten grand's worth of giving is just humbling. And, in a way, empowering. If you have a will, life can always find a way.

So, as I start a new working week and attempt to scale the mountain again, I shall do so with a little more determination. And a few days of slightly fewer carbs.

And I will remember little Daisy. Lovey, though you didn't even get an hour to make your mark, you've still made a difference to lots of people. And lots of people will remember your name. I'm proud to have worn it on a tee shirt.

Good work, poppet.

---

( PS: Since discovered my chip time was 54:32. Climbed a mighty 18 places from the start to the finish, coming in 571st out of over 1300. ..And go on. Click to pics 1 and 2 on this page of thumbnails for the proof that we were actually there. I should have followed Nick's brother's lead by turning up in a comedy wig and moustache, appearing in the middle of all the team shots and not actually running the race. Seems obvious now. )

QBST.

QBST.

At last. Sound a little horn that sounds like a bee playing a swing number in a little bee big band that sprays multicoloured pollen from the brass – the winter is over.

Bloody nora. What a long one. How long ago do bright young days of summer seem? The clocks going forward on Sunday morning has given the evenings a properly surreal sense of light and spring jollity, distinctly at odds with all we've become meteorologically accustomed to and with just about everything on the news.

Blossom in the garden? Fragrant fecundity on the air? Grass clippings on the garden path? Has the world gone mad?

Maybe. For in these times of upheaval and change and shifting social points of reference, I may be adding to the entropy of comfort.

Sunday morning I ran eleven kilometers in about an hour.

Me.

I know. Apologies for continuing to upset your understanding of the world.

---

Don't feel too destablised. I plodded unathletically so you wouldn't for a moment feel you couldn't have done a more impressive job of it, had you seen me pass by. But, y'know – it's further than I've ever run before without wising up and jogging off left into a café.

The Bournemouth Bay Run is next Sunday, and at least I now know what the distance will feel like. Of course, I bet I'm the sap who stays back with the two slow ones in solidarity for the team, while the others pee off for the glory. But still, I'm hardly doing this for glory, am I. My surest way to sporting glory is the one I've always instinctively adopted: don't turn up in the first place. Lord, yes.

---

Still, the underlying nagging surreality of just about everything at the moment is there in the gorgeous weather too, it seems. For working here in the new studio with the windows and door open, birds twirpling and insects carousing and blooms swooning in the breeze, does all feel weirdly, oddly, disturbingly akin to working in the original shed – the one in my parents' garden – more than twenty summers ago.

Which doesn't feel much like having a job, it has to be said.

Sure, Typo has me busy with various honest bread & butter projects of graphic design and brand comms, while the wider creative To Do list includes some potentially groovy Momo-ey things ahead. So I am holding onto a sense of adult responsibility by confident fingernails, as always.

But… I dunno. The breeze isn't filling the sails sufficiently at the moment, somehow. I recline at the tiller with a beer and squint up at the masthead as the wind arrow swings lazily against the blue canopy of sky sweeping overhead and it's all very restoratively relaxing – but that drooping mainsail is a bit of a disappointment.

---

I think, in fact, it may turn out to be case of Quarter End Droop. Which there are sadly no mineral supplements you can take for.

What I mean is, that we have just three days left of the first quarter of 2011. Goodness knows why I now think in businessy fourths of the year, given that I work in the garden drawing boxes and playing the keyboard badly, but there we are. I am none-the-less psychologically at the end of a chapter this week. A pretty mentally full and, QED, tiring one.

And, as any professional athlete will tell you – and as I can now say from some experience – when a finishing line rounds into view you can basically start to give up.

Thing is, of course, there is much to be doing – Q2 is idly threatening to be a whole new tank of colourful goop to wade through, for which I must be prepped, trained and ready. Momo has gigs to prepare for in June, and sonic sessions are due to start on the great follow-up LP for Tempo next month – about which I am very excited, naturally. And along with all that hoo-hah goes branding development and video production ideas and band practice and costume hunting and… the whole bally shooting match, potentially. To say nothing of all kinds of other creative funny business to engage in while attempting to pay at least some of my bills with a semblance of dignity.

All of which really could turn 2011 into a slightly crazy year by the time the summer's been shooed away by the next bleak midwinter. Man. I'm tired just writing that paragraph.

But from here in the spring garden, all that seems a long way off and not quite real. As I look up at those sails again, I am reminded of the depressing thought that the only way they will be filled is if I take a very deep breath myself…

Well, while this is a dispiriting thing when you're only a quarter of the way into the course and you're already knackered, I am reminded at least that not only is the sun out and the days longer, my aerobic fitness is improving all the time.

>breathes in sharply<

Comic Sans Relief

Comic Sans Relief

This is one of the reasons why I shall always love graphic design:
http://crmag.co.uk/hgAR3d

Whelm meant.

Whelm meant.

How whelmed are you?

You can see where I'm going with this. Are you over or under?

I for one currently feel suspended in a sort of twilight world weirdness, by being a little overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. You'd think this might cancel out into a happy equilibrium of being comfortably whelmed. Well whelmed, if you like. But, ah, if only us human persons were simpler creatures.

Actually, give us a few simple things and I think we are simple creatures – a tickle behind the ear when we fancy it, a regular spot of tasty tucker and a new Ikea book case to doze in front of and many a human would be docile and complicit, I'm sure. Being fairly sure the house won't explode inwards on top of them might help the siesta too.

But right now, I'm caught in this nether world of mute stress. And I wonder if it's because I may be currently thinking about things at too many levels at once. ..See? There's another one.

Not clever levels, you understand. Even D:Ream's enthusiastic keyboard player could quickly lose me, had he gone too much further over the event horizon in lastnight's Wonders of the universe. Properly clever I am not.

But from pictures around the Pacific rim, to voices across the Middle East, to the backdrop of our national story, to the tapestry of our little town, to the seismic testimonies of the individual lives around us and the daily tasks ahead of us, I could easily feel so overwhelmed by the complex narrative of everything that I feel practically powerless. Reactively demotivated. Sofa bound.

How the hell would I cope with worrying about my children on top of all that?

Probably the same way I cope with worrying about my social life – by putting all my efforts into keeping the near-impossible equilibrium of trying to get them to laugh and trying to get them to stop laughing. That might keep me mentally occupied until they left for uni. Not that they ever would.

Honestly, I am considering never leaving my little creative bunker.

After all the talking and thinking and feeling and not feeling and making tea and humming and hahing and pacing and list-making and pencil end-chewing and hand-wringing and even bell-ringing – what to actually DO? Where, I mean, to start? ..With… everything.

Bah.

If anyone has any good ideas about where I can actually turn out to be any ruddy practical use, would they forward them on, please. Otherwise, I shall continue to stand back and do my bit by trying not to be some clumsy oaf in the way of all the real humanitarian talent. Ask me to pass something to you. I might manage that. ..So long as you explain clearly what it is and where I can find it and what the difference is between my arse and my elbow.

And this is probably what it means to feel whelmed. For the ancient word actually means to be capsized. Taking shelter under your upturned boat, in fact.

Except.

Except I have actually decided to cautiously crawl out from under my upturned life raft and be a bit Forest Gump about the whole thing – by mutely starting to run.

A little person called Daisy will be on my mind as I run, and though running is not much practical help for anything, it is at least a response that involves the heart as well as the hands and feet.

http://www.justgiving.com/timo-peach/

You know CPR, right?

Taking the plunge.

Taking the plunge.

I have, it seems. And only six weeks late.

Now, now – don't come over all Kevin McCloud on me; what's a few more days of going quietly demented in a cluttered upstairs room? Mr Rochester's misses did it happily for years without anyone finding out. I'm confident I had a good fortnight left in me before I'd set fire to myself in the attic.

But ring out the damp towels and perhaps a few bells, for I am in no need of being hosed down – I have taken the above mentioned plunge and am writing this from the glorious and modest new environs of Momo 2.0, with the first fresh cafetiere duely decanted.

The Momo Grados, the durbek I haggled for very ineffectually in Cairo and the old Illy tin of pens are all symbolically in place around the new working space – and I've played the first musical sounds through the studio speakers. I chose a little Horrace Silver, to make the place sound instantly cool and chic and sophisticated. In the forlorn hope that this will all one day rub off on the puttering boob swinging around in his chair in the middle of all this pre-ambling ambience.

I'm in.

Yep, the old desks will need replacing and we have yet to install the ordered chaos of a wall of shelves, to say nothing of anywhere for you to sit were you to drop in, or of any of the half ton of creative crap still strewn around the surprisingly large new bedroom upstairs. But still, like Flynn, I am in. And typin'.

---

If I don't shatter something expensive and somehow irreplaceable on this very sophisticated slate floor within the week, I shall ask someone high up somewhere for some sort of certificate of unbelievableness. And also for a few smart rugs, while I'm asking.

And I have yet to test the fortitude of the sound restrictive technology built into this little music fortress for the sake of the neighbours – tootling jazz tunes don't really push the bottom end. But here on a Sunday morning, I haven't the courage to take Deadmau5 out of the safe sonic confines of the little CD radio player we've had him in during decorating; the big monitors will have to wait for a dead Tuesday afternoon or something before being warmed up any.

Still, all this fussing and fuddling about aside, I shall be coming to work tomorrow morning for the first time in eight and a half years to a working environment that looks half way professional.

I do, yes, miss the bright orange room I played in for a decade. But don't kid yourself any more than I will be that this very slightly more grown-up-looking space will not be a glorified play room. On the contrary – stand back, this is what I do.

---

First bit of work won't be musical, however. If I can relocate my missing director from his lengthy travels around the globe, I believe we have a signature tune to finish for our new travel series, but otherwise the next important thing on the Momo:tempo agenda is… a new album.

Yes. Believe it, giddy fan. Have a sit down.

And yes. I. Am. Excited.

But… Before making a sonic start on all that, I suspect there is a bit more notebook-carrying & scribbling to do, as well as a spot of new-software-installation-nightmaring to do.

And besides, today I am modestly attempting to develop a proposal document for an entire arts festival.

I tease with this, of course. And yes, of course, it's an idea with such sizeable practical ramifications that the chances of I and the fledgling team gathering around it blanching at the delivery schedule of it at some point early on are very high indeed.

Yet. Sometimes you feel compelled to give up a few weekends to build an ark in the garden.

Nope. No bloody antelope usually turn up, I know. Which is usually a good thing if alligators and the entire arachnid family also follow suit.

Then again, whether it's been raining a lot lately or not, there is simply a time occasionally to take the plunge and dive right in. The time for piddling in the shallow end is over. It is time to jump over the side.

..Now. If someone would like to tell me what all this means, you shall find me in the kitchen making some more coffee and choosing background music.

Welcome to the future, gang.

---

End of the beginning.

End of the beginning.

I am onto disk four.

Over the last couple of days I have, between working on comparatively noddy music cues of my own, been working through the quadruple box set of John Barry: The Collection.

Latter-day Bond composer and arch Twitter wit, David Arnold, referred to him as The Guvnor. Many called him a legend. His family and friends simply knew him, I think, as a very funny Yorkshireman.

I know him only through his music, as the bloke who first managed to intrigue a rosy-cheeked childhood Timmy with the idea of actually liking orchestral music. Took a long while, but it was John Barry's scores that helped sow the seed of understanding for me, I think.

And I guess, if we know someone only through their art, then their death can't connect too fully; their art is still with us. Still, the idea of such a character and talent and big name of British cinema gone through a heart attack this week is sad news.

---

What was it? In the cloud of acclaim that swells around many an accomplished obituary, what was it about John Barry's music that could stand a chance of connecting with a thirteen year-old filling his head with Street Sounds electro and Kraftwerk, for example? What made him 'great'?

Five Oscars, four Grammys, the odd BAFTA and Golden Globe, and decades'-worth of iconic film names against your own – including eleven Bond flicks - might make you feel pretty great. By all accounts, John didn't change with the success. Perhaps true Yorkshiremen don't, whichever part of the world they live and work in.

I think, trying to analyse it in the back of my head since Monday's news, it comes down to one very vague word: atmosphere.

John Barry did that magical, mercurial thing so essential to film music, and any affecting music – he created atmosphere.

---

Yes, but how?

I guess it starts with a natural and – if I dare say such a casually diffident thing about such an arguably beyond-angelic human gift – reasonably straightforward ability to write tunes. Barry always created very recognisable melodies and comfortably flowing themes.

Despite the 20th century's laudably conceptual efforts to bash a good tune to bits in the desire to see music, as everything, in a new way – and as much to simply overthrow the naff, I should think – the power of a good tune is as strong as ever. And crucially, it is often at its strongest in the context of a dark, flickering movie theatre.

There is something weirdly compelling and affecting about a ruddy great riff repeated uncomplicatedly or a huge theme turned over and over against pictures on a big screen in the isolation of I Payed HOW Much For This Ticket?! attention. It gets to you. And the simpler, the apparently often better. Weirdly, given how much you're giving it attention.

I suspect strongly that Barry knew this. And I suspect it was on instinct when he looked at a movie scene, as much as any conscious strategy as a composer.

His arrangements of his simple tunes are always elegantly calm. Even when making a drama. Everything sits in its place in the orchestral pallet in a very considered way. Everything feels reassuringly deliberate.

Perhaps you could argue that his music is a pleasing synthesis of old fashioned and contemporary, which to audiences in the late sixties and seventies worked a particular kind of magic – since taken a little more for granted.

His ability to create something musical you could take out of the theatre with you – a hummable, recognisable theme – is old school, but his lack of snobbery in the face of a consistent time signature or a repeated phrase, more in keeping with a bit of pop music, is of its more modern time. He may not have been drawn to make arch modernist machine-like music like a contemporary such as Philip Glass, but Philip Glass is an acquired taste to say the least. John Barry makes sense to everyone.

---

Melody, clarity, consideration, structure. Fine, fine and blah, blah. Composers stuff – excuse me while I YAWWWN. But where is the spark of magic? What makes it, if there is one? Where am I hearing it, at least?

I think for me it might turn out to be something buried in the man's psyche as a jazz musician.

Yes. Everyone likes to claim or demonstrate the understanding to bestow the influence of jazz. Everyone secretly wants to be a public clever-dick. Lord knows I do.

But it's simply true that Barry was, as a musician, a horn player. And no-one plays the horn without being surrounded by an awareness of jazz.

Interesting then, isn't it, that one of the signature sounds in John Barry's arrangements is the strings - it's those strings, baby. They speak for him all the time. He puts those big tunes right up top in the mouths of the strings. Not the horns. Not usually. Why?

It comes back, I suspect, to his presumably innate sense of atmosphere. Strings are the orchestral cat-gut short-cut to atmosphere and emotion. They just are.

But when you put that together with a very calm clear structure of sound AND an understanding of how jazz harmonies zing like no others, you have the ingredients for some true cinemagic.

---

Though I risk boring you sideways with the little 'knowledge' I have on any technical subject whatsoever, it is worth noting that jazz likes things to clash. Notes in particular. Personalities often. Budgets and expenses almost always.

But on the piano keyboard at least, you can see the energy a clash of notes creates. A typical 'jazz' chord essentially shoves in a fistful of notes in the middle. But it's because those notes in the middle, making a brain-tingling something are actually notes at the top, but dropped down into the energy of the chord.

Whuh?

Scales. Doh Rey Me Far So etc. A musical key has eight normal notes in it from one octave up to the next. If you number those notes, a typical pop music chord uses notes 1, 3 and 5 to make a basic, essential harmony. Ta-daaahh. Music. Harmony. The very outer gates of writing a tune.

Now, up top, notes 6, 7, even 9 – yes, 9 – start to add a weird flavour to the harmonies. They don't play ball with the main notes. They sort of subvert them. Accent them. Annoy them, but tickle the brain. And they unlock different progressions of notes and harmonies that start to do arguably more interesting things than safer pop harmonies.

There's a whole debate there. And ultimately, you're sometimes in a conspicuously jazz mood – say, when making a cafetierre and reaching for am intellectual-looking book… as if you ever get time for that – and sometimes you want to be able belt out a karaoke chorus. It's all good.

The relevance of all this unschooled music waffle is that John Barry took some of those troublesome, jossly, Jolsony, clashing jazzy notes out of the scrum of a smokey piano chord, scrubbed them off, suited them up, smartened their hair, straightened their bow ties and placed them elegantly into the mouths of the strings.

When everything is calmly, harmoniously structured, to very deliberately and with no fuss have the violins descend semitones or sustain the minor seventh, creates tension. A very controlled, deliberate kind of tension.

It creates atmosphere.

Jazz, respectfully subverting the mainstream.

And just occasionally doing something bare-facedly sassy with the horns section as well. I mean, come on – James Bond's own theme is a sudden riot of swing chutzpah. It's bonkers. And it grins from ear to ear.

And, though Monty Norman's name is against that particular piece of legendary music, I suspect privately he simply wrote the almost-naff guitar riff. I'd put money on the belief that it was John Barry who wrote the swinging blast of horn section finery that kicks in after it.

Masterfully instinctive. Warmly clever. Reassuringly witty. Universally likeable.

What a legacy to leave behind.

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As I consider all this at the start of a new creative year for me, I am beginning to wonder whether my own staggeringly more humble musical abilities and achievements are facing an end too. The end of their beginning.

Or are we ever past the beginning of our work and learning?

I don't know. As a musical great closes his book of work, I feel like I've barely opened mine, even after all this time.

Or maybe it's just that listening to his music makes me feel as excited as a kid all over again. I can certainly feel quite an atmosphere.
John Barry – a creative inspiration and example. Here's to the future.

Take the A game.

Take the A game.

I did my best at circuits tonight. Made a bit of effort. Gently pushed myself to reclaim some of the positive mental altitude after a slough of December.

I came home and gave a little speech, inspired by a gently inspiring chum in a quiet, bohemian pub lastnight, about bringing my A game to things from now on.

I received a phone call less than five minutes later asking why I wasn't at a meeting. With the minutes from the last one. Everyone was there. Waiting.


What we've learned from all this: Bring your A game or don't bring yourself. And don't be a natural and complete bum head.

Good work so far, 2011.

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