On The Border

Woke up this morning to thick fog. 

I was dreaming , there was a guitarist and Cher , and he was playing in various styles and she told him to play like Carlos Santana, I thought there is no way he can just play like Carlos Santana without the right guitar and amplification set up.

He started to play and I thought it's nothing like Santana , it sounds like birdsong. This went on for a while and I then realised it was my alarm clock which wakes me up with birdsong. It's the first time for me , I think , that real life and dreams have meshed together so closely . I really don't know if that is a good thing. Is this real life or is it just fantasy indeed?

Obviously the multi style guitarist got me thinking of "Guitar Jamboree" by Chris Spedding , he is a brilliant guitarist but it's just a novelty song.

I finished Tony Hawks' "Piano In The Pyrenees" which turned out to be more about his attempt to build a swimming pool while integrating into the local French community , culminating in meeting up with a former lover. I hope it worked out.

Next book I've nipped over the border with George Orwell's "Homage To Catalonia" about his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. It is grim and the pages are huge blocks of text making for difficult reading but it is providing an insight into what happened then.

Now to work.

The Piano Is In The Pyrenees

I am half way through the book "A Piano In The Pyrenees" by Tony Hawks, and while it is extremely entertaining , the piano got there after a hundred pages without too much trauma, apart from a Luton Van meeting it's demise. The thing is it's a bit like writing a 500 page book on the titanic and a hundred pages in it's on the bottom of the Atlantic. I suppose the film did start a bit like that.

Anyway this is just one of Tony Hawks books (all worth a read and great fun) and some fun stories about an English man relocating to a house in the Pyrenees , the scrapes he gets into and the characters he meets.

The weekend is here and I am not sure what is going to happen. 

I am working through "The Killing" on BBC iPlayer and , if this is really the right word , enjoying it. In the past I have worked so many people who will not watch a program with subtitles, they really don't know what they are missing do they?

As I mentioned "Titanic" I've included "The Unsinkable Ship" from "White Star Liner" by Public Service Broadcasting.

A Piano In The Pyrenees

As you can see the posting to this blog has dropped significantly since I started posting on Vocal here , so my writing has increase but not here. 

This is my first August post and it is the first day of the new Football season , and Preston North End (my team) are playing Hull City. They signed Jamie Thomas after he impressed in a friendly against Bamber Bridge so I really hope things go well for him.

Book wise I picked up "A Piano In The Pyrenees" by Tony Hawks (not the skateboarder) about buying a house in France and getting his piano there. This is a bit more sedate and gently funny , than my recent books "Maroc" by Daniel Easterman and "Nightworld" by F Paul Wilson, both excellent but I felt I needed something a bit gentler.

He is responsible for lots of humorous books based on odd premises.

Also you can see this is very short, but you can follow the Vocal link if you want some more.

Music wise I have have been listening to a lot of different things but lets go with Matthew E White's "Rock and Roll Is Cold"