This week I have been out of sorts - probably something to do with the looming Halloween, ghosts and ghouls and that kind of stuff when all I wanted to do was sit on a beach and read and chill with my belly folding over my shorts. But I was thinking back to something I wrote away back when this blog started - about writing and thinking and creating and songs and all kinds of stuff. And I wrote this, "when I was a boy I used to try and imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. That's not unusual I suppose. I am of that generation. Post war, baby boomer, watching the sixties happen, the Beatles and the Stones prodding me into looking forward to my teenage years, though of course 1966 ruined my life. And that time of my growing was marked by events; Neil Armstrong walked on the moon; I played in my first band; took a train to Marseilles then St Tropez; saw the Ziggy Stardust tour; Neil Young in Glasgow; Bruce Springsteen in Edinburgh; kissed a girl or two; learned to play the harmonica; learned to play a 1960 Fender Stratocaster which I still have; kissed another girl or two or three or more. But this is a list which is as long as its subjective and each event on the list is a nostalgic memory, probably less interesting than I remember - for isn't nostalgia a return to a place that never really existed, events become better in the re-telling. However, at no time did I ever anticipate who I would become and indeed what and where I would be now and had I decided not to fly would my creative life have happened at all?" Sometimes we have to STOP and say STOP, STOP and let me off, I need a break, a breather, a chance to rewind, wind up, recharge, re-energise - sounds pathetic, I know, but my batteries are flat this week and I need them to be charged because I don't have time for them not to be - if I was a dog, I would lie on my back and go, "hooo..." enough. But you don't need to read that - look at this instead. Isn't it amazing - I love glass, I always have and when I was in Australia I was introduced to some work. But it all takes me back. When I was 16 I hitched around Scotland with a guitar, with the intention of taking in as many folk clubs as I could during the Easter break. When I arrived in Oban the club opened at 10pm - a lot of hours to kill at 16, so I took a tour around the glass works. They were making little animals, you know the kind you could buy for your mum in the tobacconist/newsagents for only £2 - even though they were all hand made. But I had no money so I nicked a piece of glass from the "broken bin" and I still have it in the souvenir shoe box with the rest of the little treasures, like shells and stuff I collected, picked up and nicked (oh yes). But one day I hope I can see the glass of David Traub in the flesh - cos the pictures are great and I love pieces like this. Once when I was living alone in London I bought a hand made bowl in Greenwich market, from the maker who was very cute (for a few weeks). I still have the bowl (its blue and sits on a table in the living room) and it is still superb, still not a mark on it - one day I will post a picture. I should play Phillip Glass here, of course, but Glass bores the arse off me... honestly! When I first saw this video it was just the BFK - the bees-fucking-knees - "The eggs chase the bacon round the frying pan..."
This week I have been out of sorts - probably something to do with the looming Halloween, ghosts and ghouls and that kind of stuff when all I wanted to do was sit on a beach and read and chill with my belly folding over my shorts. But I was thinking back to something I wrote away back when this blog started - about writing and thinking and creating and songs and all kinds of stuff. And I wrote this, "when I was a boy I used to try and imagine what life would be like in the year 2000. That's not unusual I suppose. I am of that generation. Post war, baby boomer, watching the sixties happen, the Beatles and the Stones prodding me into looking forward to my teenage years, though of course 1966 ruined my life. And that time of my growing was marked by events; Neil Armstrong walked on the moon; I played in my first band; took a train to Marseilles then St Tropez; saw the Ziggy Stardust tour; Neil Young in Glasgow; Bruce Springsteen in Edinburgh; kissed a girl or two; learned to play the harmonica; learned to play a 1960 Fender Stratocaster which I still have; kissed another girl or two or three or more. But this is a list which is as long as its subjective and each event on the list is a nostalgic memory, probably less interesting than I remember - for isn't nostalgia a return to a place that never really existed, events become better in the re-telling. However, at no time did I ever anticipate who I would become and indeed what and where I would be now and had I decided not to fly would my creative life have happened at all?" Sometimes we have to STOP and say STOP, STOP and let me off, I need a break, a breather, a chance to rewind, wind up, recharge, re-energise - sounds pathetic, I know, but my batteries are flat this week and I need them to be charged because I don't have time for them not to be - if I was a dog, I would lie on my back and go, "hooo..." enough. But you don't need to read that - look at this instead. Isn't it amazing - I love glass, I always have and when I 
was in Australia I was introduced to some work. But it all takes me back. When I was 16 I hitched around Scotland with a guitar, with the intention of taking in as many folk clubs as I could during the Easter break. When I arrived in Oban the club opened at 10pm - a lot of hours to kill at 16, so I took a tour around the glass works. They were making little animals, you know the kind you could buy for your mum in the tobacconist/newsagents for only £2 - even though they were all hand made. But I had no money so I nicked a piece of glass from the "broken bin" and I still have it in the souvenir shoe box with the rest of the little treasures, like shells and stuff I collected, picked up and nicked (oh yes). But one day I hope I can see the glass of David Traub in the flesh - cos the pictures are great and I love pieces like this. Once when I was living alone in London I bought a hand made bowl in Greenwich market, from the maker who was very cute (for a few weeks). I still have the bowl (its blue and sits on a table in the living room) and it is still superb, still not a mark on it - one day I will post a picture. I should play Phillip Glass here, of course, but Glass bores the arse off me... honestly! When I first saw this video it was just the BFK - the bees-fucking-knees - "The eggs chase the bacon round the frying pan..."
