dag 1152: The Fearful Symmetry of Life

I had to drive 22,222 miles in order to take this photo.

dag 1133: Where do baby beams go when they die?

I have been buying music lately and in some sort of real breakthrough for me it isn't Swedish music.

Månen hänger lågt

Bill Nelson - Getting the Holy Ghost Accross ****:

I originally bought this on prerecorded cassette and it quickly became one of my favourite albums. I tended to only listen to tapes in the car and this was without doubt the tape I played the most. Since I got my first CD player I have been on the lookout for this on CD but no shops ever seemed to stock it. Some years ago I found out it had never been released on CD and that there was a group of fans trying to get people to sent requests to the record company to try and get them to do the right thing and release it on CD. I sent them an email and kind of forgot about it until a few weeks ago when I spotted it in HMV in Leeds. I had been considerring getting a Ramstein CD (because the bass player plays a Sandberg bass), but when I saw this I felt duty bound to buy it as I had sent the record company that email some years back. I hadn't heard it for many years and although it did sound somewhat dated I had heard the songs so many times first time round that it seemed instantly familier to me. It reminds me very much of the Simple MInds album Sons and Fascination. If you liked that album you will definately like this.

Nine Inch Nails - Downward Spiral **:

I was busy trying to think of a good name for my new musical project and each time I wrote one down I googled it to see if anyone had already used it. One of the names I came up with was Downward Spiral. It turned out that it is the name of a Nine Inch Nails album so I looked it up on Wikipedia and read a few reviews on amazon where in general people were saying it was one of the all time best albums of al time. I saw that there were 2 version of the album available at the moment. One was the standard one and the other was a 2 disk special edition. The special edition was quite a bit more expensive and I knew that if I ended up really liking this I would kick myself if I didn't get the special edition. The album was recorded in the house where Sharon Tate was murdered by Charles Manson and that kind of made me feel that this album might actually just be someone trying to be controversial. I opted for the lower cost version and after a couple of plays it was the right choice. There are a few good moment on it but mainly it comes accross as someone trying to break a few bounderies. I was looking forward to hearing Hurt (the last track) as I realy like the cover of it that Johnny Cash did and that is saying something as I have never liked anything else I have heard by him. Unfortunately the NIN version just isn't a patch on the Johnny Cash version. I may play it again occaissionaly but on the whole it was a bit of a let down, whcih is a shame as I liked the Quake music that Trent Reznor did.

Muse - Absolution ***:

Since getting my new bass I have joined the bassworld forum and really enjoyed reading a lot of the threads. One thread had a few people discussing how good Muse were so I thought I would take their word for it and give them a try. They both said how good they thought the album Absolution was and as it had a song called Stockholm Syndrome on it this seemed the best one to give a try.

The openning track was amazing and I had to play it over a few times before moving on. I got as far as Stockholm syndrome and thought it was all great. It was one of those albums where I keep getting to the end of Stockholme Syndrome and then having to start again from the beginning. I have to admit that the first 5 songs are so good that I haven't actually played th whole thing through yet. The music seemd to me to be pretty unique, but then I realised that it did remind me of another group - one that I didn't know particularly well, and then it came to me, it was Queen. They remind me of Queen, only they are heaps better than Queen were - in my opinion anyway. So well worth checking out if you don't yet know them.

Emmerhoff and the Melancholy Babies - Electric Reverie *****:

I spotted this CD when I was browsing through Virgin Records in Leeds last week. I was looking at the ELP CDS and this was next to it. I liked the cover picture and I liked the fact that the name had the word Melancholy in it as I seem to be really into melancholic music at the moment. I was sensible and didn't buy it there and then - I went back to work and looked for reviews. The reviews were all good so I bought it the next day and was not at all disappointed. The album features a cover version of the song Cowboys by Portishead and it has to be on the best songs I have heard. I feel that it surpases the original. It is worth buynig the album just for this track, but the rest is really good too and it gets better with more plays. I decided that I just had to send them a myspace friend request and not only did they accept, but they put a message up on my myspace page which I think is pretty decent of them. I should also add that I felt that the trees on the cover looked like Scandinavian trees and I was right as they are from Norway.

Robin Guthrie - Continental *****:

I first heard one of the songs from this album when I spotted Robin Guthries myspace page. It sounded just like the Cocteau Twins but minus the exquiset voice of Elizabeth Fraser. I new it was only a metter of time before I bought this and I ended up downloading it from iTunes after failing to find it in Leeds. It is great music to listen to while working so that what I have been doing. In fact it is possible that I have listened to this album more than all the others reviewed in this post. I should also add that Mr Guthrie has a jolly enjoyable blog.

Big Star - Third***:

This Mortal Coil covered a couple of songs from this CD on their first album (It'll End in Tears) so I thought it would be good to hear the originals. There are 2 tracks from this album on the "It'll end in tears" TMC album and as the TMC covers are usualy pretty different from the originals I had no idea what to expect of the originals. It turned out thet the originals were pretty similar to the ocvers and wher I thought Howard Devoto was probably being pretty left field in his singing on Holocaust - it seemed to me that he was just trying to be as close to the singing on the original as he could. All in all I liked both the songs that TMC covered and I quite liekd a few others, but this is not an album I have felt compelled to return to much. I prefer listening to It'll end in tears as the other songs on it are beter than the others songs on Third.

There are a few more new bands I have spotted and may be making a few more purchases pretty soon. Reviews will no doubt follow at some point.

dag 1126: The world is sinking through the ground

A few recent internet related problems in the Nelson Mandela building at the Björk Bjiggler Critical Mass HQ (Northern) combined with a general lack of available time have prevented me from posting over the last few weeks. Things seem to have sorted themselves out a bit so I can once again put finger to keyboard and produce some more prose full of insight and thought - or maybe not.

First of all it is about time I drew your attention to the fact that we now have a new blog layout which, to the non internet savvy, means that it doesn't look the same as it used to do. As with most things that happen in my life, it did not come about due to me being proactive, but reactive. I logged in to write a post one day and was presented with a message saying I could either carry on with the blog as it is, but miss out on the all the new features that are being introduced or upgrade to the new format and be able to make full use of all the wonderful new features. There was an inviting link to click on to start the upgrade process and a message next to it warning that all template customisations would be lost. As our template had been heavily modified over the years I thought about this for a bit (ok for quite some time actually - I am not very good at making decisions at the best of times). Eventually I came to the conclusion that the only way forward is to keep up with the times and move on rather than staying stuck with the old ways and getting left behind. So I clicked the link and ended up with what you now see before you. At the same time I decided to start using blogger comments (these weren't available when we first set it up), which means we have lost all of the old ones I think it is better to have them integrated rather than being separate and its probably better to do it now than in the future which would mean even more comments getting lost. If you can remember any comments that are missing please feel free to re-enter them against the appropriate post.

Since the last instalment my new Sandberg bass arrived from Germany. It seemed to take quite a while for my order to get processed, but once it had been shipped it only took 2 days to arrive. The box was huge and filled with airbags which surrounded and protected bass, which was inside the Sandberg gig bag that is supplied with all Sandberg basses. Opening up the gig bag was pretty exciting as I finally got to see my first glimpse the bass I had been waiting for for the last week or so. I chose the bass based on the picture on the left, though I new mine would have a black rather than a pearl pick guard. I thought the bass looked good in pictures, but in the flesh I think it looks even better. The first thing that struck me was the quality. Every component just oozes quality in both design and build. I just had to have a play and was also amazed to find that the bass was practically in perfect tune - I only had to adjust 1 string slightly. The violet burst colour is much darker in reality than the picture and will go perfectly with the type of music I will be playing with it. I was a bit worried about how I would get on with 5 strings as I had only ever played 4 string basses before, but so far it hasn't seemed any harder to play because of that extra string. Now I want to get a smallish bass amp (got my eye on a Phil Jones briefcase) and I must say I also wouldn't mind getting a few of these EBS pedals (their amps look pretty good too) - nothing to do with them being Swedish of course!

I've also got to think up a name for my new band - then I can start recording stuff.

Dag 1104: I must have been blind

While pondering over how my new "This Mortal Coil" style musical project would start I dug out some of my old recordings from when I had a very small and very basic home studio setup. I soon realised that the music I was making back then already was pretty similar to TMC. Not many people heard what I recorded then, but I did send a four track demo to Home and Studio Recording magazine and when it finally got reviewed one of the comments was that the music was pretty sombre.

Back then I had limited equipment and recorded using midi, a 12 input mixing desk and a 4 track portastudio. I only had 2 synth modules (Roland D-110 and U-220) and I found that if I tried anything with too many parts they wouldn't be able to cope and timing would go to pot and various notes would get dropped. So rather than go about trying to write a load of new songs I decided to revisit my original collection of songs and re-record those that I liked the best.

In those days I used to subscribe to Home and Studio Recording Magazine and when editor Paul White left to become editor of the newly founded Sound on Sound I started a subscription to that magazine. HASR fell by the wayside, but Sound on Sound kept going and is still going strong today.

I started a new Sound on Sound subscription around a year ago, and it was in the December issue that I spotted The Korg Micro X.

I managed to get one of the limited edition white ones for my birthday. It arrived last week and I am really impressed with it.
I bought it without ever seeing one or hearing one in the flesh so it was a bit of a risk, but it has turned out to be just perfect for what I needed.
I have a number of other synths, but most of them are either monophonic, or have limited polyphony or are locked away in the attic.
This one is small and has a really neat case to keep it in and has some great sounds.

When I first switched it on I held down a chord and what sounded like a whole band started playing. Although the quality of the sound was awesome, I was initially a bit put off as my first thought was "This is one of those home consumer thingies that provides the accompaniment automatically". But I soon realised I was completely wrong. These patches are just showing what can be done using the built in dual polyphonic arpegiators. The possibilities are endless, and, I have to admit, it is great fun just going through all these patches and seeing what you can come up with.

For the style of music I want to record what I really need are some really good pad and string sounds and it didn't take me long to find quite a few that sounded similar to those used by TMC. It got me thinking that I would probably add the odd guitar part with my Shergold, which I haven't recorded anything on yet as the 1980s synth music of Strange Devotion did not require guitars. This then got me thinking about what I would use for bass. Before, I played all the bass parts on a keyboard and although they filled in the bass regions of the song, they didn't sound like they were being played on a bass. The bass guitar is quite often prominent on TMC and Cocteau Twins songs and I realised last week that, even though I've only just got my new Korg, if I was going to do this thing properly I also had to have a bass guitar and I needed one now.

once I was...

I used to play bass in a band when I was student and at the time I had a red Yamaha bass which I had really liked that hadn't cost a fortune, so my first thoughts were to get one of those again. I looked on the web and saw plenty of reasonable priced Yamahas, but the body shape was different to the one I had had. The new ones seemed sort of space aged to me and I didn't like the look of them. It didn't take long to find some Fender basses and although these were more expensive I thought I might be able to stretch to one, as after all it is unlikely that I will ever buy another bass again. The Fenders I had seen were made in Mexico and the world wide internet soon informed me that the Mexican Fenders are not the ones to go for as they are made of cheap parts and the ones to have are the ones that are made in USA. So I started looking at these. The trouble is they seem to be about double the cost of the Mexican ones and my initial budget was set at half the cost of the Mexican ones. I kept going back to look at various cheaper models, but the name Fender just seemed to be stuck in my head. By last Monday I had realised that my new bass had to be a Fender and it had to be made in USA.

I then started looking at the colours available. The first guitar I ever bought was a fender copy with a sunburst colour scheme and a white pick guard. It cost about £25 and it was a piece of junk full of buzzing frets. Most of my friends had similar guitars or basses and ever since then I have hated guitars in that colour scheme. It was obviously copied from Fender as most of those available seemed to be that colour. However I spotted a colour called Orange Sunset that only seemed to be available on the USA made Fender basses and I was instantly smitten. The trouble is this option adds another £100 to the cost so we are now looking at around £1,000 for a new bass. I didn't really see how I could justify this.

On Tuesday I decided I had better go and have a look in Music ground in Leeds to see what Fender basses they had in stock. Maybe they would have a second hand Precision bass in Orange Sunset for some ridiculously low price. On the way there I called in at Northern Guitars and had a look at their selection of basses. They didn't have too many and they were all budget makes which were all very reasonably priced. I could have got a perfectly decent looking one for under £100 pounds, but of course I didn't.

Instead, I went over the road and had a look at the basses in Music Ground. They had a good selection and plenty of Fenders. They had a fair few "made in USA" ones, but I just couldn't get that excited about them. I didn't really like the colour schemes of the ones they had, but I realised that not only did they look pretty similar to the Mexican Fenders, but they also looked pretty similar to all of the many fender copies that so many budget manufacturers make. I decided to go upstairs to the Music Ground guitar museum to cheer myself up. I had a good mooch around and spotted a Fender bass that used to belong to Sid Vicious. This was in terrible condition and parts of it were held together by sticky tape. I thought it looked pretty cool and I wondered how much it was worth.

I went back to work and realised that I now felt that the only bass that would do was a Fender USA Precision Bass in Sunset Orange and I would just have to save up for it by working plenty of weekends. All of the websites I could find that offered this exact colour and model of bass did not have any in stock so I kept googling away to try and find one, when I came across the bassworld forum. Someone had bought the exact same bass as I wanted and had posted some pictures up of it. It is truly an item of beauty and I just knew we were made for each other.

However, while reading through the forum I saw the name Sandberg a few times. The name sounded Swedish, but it seems these basses are hand crafted in Germany and quite afew people had written good things about them. I saw that in the UK they cost around the same as the Fender I had originally lusted after, but I read that they could be bought from Germany for quite a bit less. This lead me to this German Site which had a number of Sanberg basses available. The cheapest one in stock was much cheaper than the Fender and was in a fantastic Violet burst colour. I looked at it over and over again fro the next few days and yesterday I finaly added it to my basket and checked out. So 5 strings of glorious bass are currently getting ready to be shipped over and I can't wait to have my first go on a hand crafted Sandberg 5 string.

To celebrate I had a great eveing out with Adrian and Guy in Harrogate. We started off at the Hotel Du Vin with a few Absolut vodkas with assorted mixers and Adrian and Guy had a few games of pool while I relaxed in a very comfy leather sofa.

That's a bad miss.

We then moved on to the Drum and Monkey where we had a very nice meal of assorted seafood and then home to our respective beds.

I got home to find that the copy of Filigree and Shadow by This Mortal Coil, that I had ordered from amazon last week, had finaly arrived. I originally had this on double LP and haven't owned a record deck for around 10 years so this will be getting quite a few plays in the morning.

Dag 1092: Bithday Special

As usual, it was my birthday on 1st feb, and as usual I felt less bothered about it than the last one (apart from being bothered about the incremental effect it has on my age).

As we get older we have more idea of what life is about and what it has to offer, yet we also find that as we get older we have less chance of making dramatic changes to our lives.

Mr Hammill once said/sang "It's a hallmark of adulthood that our options diminish as our faculties for choice increase" and I think that sums it up pretty well.

My last post was written a couple of months ago, but since I got round to adding it to the blog I have been listening to pretty much nothing but This Mortal Coil, though I have been alternating this with Victorialand by The Cocteau Twins. I was an instant fan of the Cocteau Twins when I heard their first LP and have bought everything they released since. I can remember that when Victorialand was released I thought it was quite a change in direction for them and was leading towards the style of music that they would become so well known for. Like many LPs I bought back then I bought the pre-recorded tape version so I could play it in my car. My first car was a very battered and unreliable Renault 5 which had both rear side windows held in place with glue and masking tape. I remember driving to Leeds with Adrian one day and putting Victorialand onto the tape player. I remember him saying that it was probably the most depressing music he had ever listened to, but I can't remember what I put on instead. I hadn't thought of it in that way before. I realised that it could possibly be thought of as depressing, but I tended to find that if you are feeling a bit low listening to this sort of stuff can actually make you feel pretty uplifted. I find the music on Victorialand beautiful and something that one can get become completely lost in. I once went to a wedding where Victorialand was played as people entered the church and it seemed very fitting and appropriate.

When I first bought a CD player Victorialand was the first CD I bought to play on it. For some reason I never bought any This Mortal Coil on CD and my original copy of their first album It'll End In Tears was a pre-recorded cassette. The tape has long since worn away and I hadn't listened to it for years so I purchased it from iTunes last night as an extra birthday present and am listening to it as I write this.



As I mentioned in the last post, whenever I start listening to This Mortal Coil it makes me want to make music like that. However, making any sort of music at all is not really possible at the moment, partly due to lack of free time, but mainly due to the fact that all my equipment is stored away in the attic and various wardrobes. It is not really practical to get it out as by the time it was all set up I would need to put it away again. But all this listening to TMC and Cocteau Twins has made me really want some way of recording some music again. I also had the dilemma of what to get for my birthday. I always want more music equipment, but there is no point buying any if you have nowhere to put it. The answer was provided when I read through december's copy of Sound on Sound and I saw that Korg must have realised there is a market out there for people in the same boat as me. When I read about the Korg Micro X I felt it could have been made specially for me. It is small, but doesn't have small keys it has full size keys, just less of them. It also comes in a custom plastic hard case so it can easily be put away neatly, but best of all it contains sounds from their top of the range Triton synths. Editing small synths without many buttons is often a chore, but this one comes with a USB cable and some software to enable all that to be done from the computer. The SOS review mentioned that as well as the standard black case, the micro X also comes in a limited edition white case. Not only does it look far better in white, but as it is a limited edition, if I can get one I can feel all the better about the whole thing. However if I can't find one I will need to listen to even more TMC to cheer me up.

I spent the weeks leading up to my birthday trying to find a white micro X 50. It seemed that not only were the black ones pretty hard to get hold of due to their popularity, but the white ones were almost impossible to find. Digital Village advertised both on their website, but had neither in stock. Another site I had brought from before had the black one in stock, but no mention of the white one. Every day I looked on the Digital Villages website to see if they had got any, but they were always out of stock.

I began to worry that the limited edition white ones may have already sold out, but this just made me all the more determined to get one (I must me a marketing mans dream come true). The day before my birthday I emailed the other supplier to see if they had any plans to stock the white ones. They said they has spoken to Korg and they would be able to get some in 2 to 3 weeks time, and I should order one straight away to ensure I get one. I didn't really want to wait that long so after a few hours weighing it up I emailed and said I would like one of the ones they will get in. They said if I looked on their site I would see that the item was now listed and if I ordered it now I would get one when they got them in. I didn't like the idea of my card getting charged so many weeks before the item became available so I told them I would order it next week instead.

Before leaving work that day I had one more look on the digital village site and the status on the white micro X had changed to in Stock. It would have suited me better to have bought this after the weekend, so it would have appeared on march's statement, but I had the chance of getting one without waiting for another 2 or 3 weeks so I bought it. Once I had gone through the process I checked the item again and it was now showing up as out of stock again. The order has a clause saying the stock level on the web page may not be accurate so either they had just got 1 in that day and I had got it or there was an error and they didn't actually have one in stock. I wasn't likely to find out until the next day so I went home.

Next day I had an email to say the order was accepted and a few hours later another saying the item had shipped. There was also a tracking number. This morning I looked that up and my synth was officially out for delivery. Around 12:30 the status changed to delivered, so I have a brand new white limited edition Korg micro X waiting at home for me. I guess Strange Devotion will now be on hold (though in reality it has been since I left Scotland) and I am now looking forward to attempting some melancholic yet ultimately uplifting music inspired by TMC.

These birthdays may not be quite so bad after all.

There's ice in the cauldron, so look out now.

dag 1086: hope blisters eternal

This post was written sometime towards the end of last year but my old PowerBook died on me before I had the chance to tidy it up and publish it. You will see that the bit at the end has actually been superceded by my latest post.

I have been spending some of my down time over the last few weeks looking things up on wikipedia. I think the principle that anyone can create new articles or contribute to existing ones is great. Since I first heard about it I have wanted to contribute something, but haven't found the time or the right subject as yet. The things I have been reading about has included musicians and groups I like and I am amazed at the amount of information people have contributed. My wanderings have included Peter Hammill, Kent, Nick Drake, John Cale, Cocteau Twins and This Mortal Coil. I can still remember the very first time I heard This Mortal Coil, I was driving along Penny Pot Lane listening to the radio for a change when they played the Song of the Siren - a cover of the Tim Buckley original. I instantly recognised Elisabeth Fraser's distinctive voice when the song began and I initially thought it must be a Cocteau Twins track, although it was different from their normal stuff. It was only when it finished that I actually heard it was This mortal Coil, and I wondered if the Cocteau Twins have split up.

Fortunately they hadn't (though of course they did do so later on).
This Mortal Coil wasn't a band as such, but a collection of musicians (mainly from the 4AD record label) that got together to record cover versions with various original pieces thrown in for good measure. The whole project was conceived by Ivo Watts-Russell, the founder of 4AD, who liked melancholic music and put together a band to play original music as well as cover versions of some of his favourite songs.

That melancholic music will surely cheer you up.

I bought their first Album, It'll End in Tears, and was amazed by it. Although it featured different singers, musicians and instruments it definitely had a certain mood about it which I think pretty much matched the kind of mood I have always liked and wanted to create in my own music (though haven't really managed it as yet). I bought the next two This Mortal Coil albums (both double) as soon as each was released - Filigree and Shadow, and Blood. I thought they were both fantastic. It was great hearing their cover versions of songs I already knew, but it also introduced me to some songs that I had never heard the first time around.

I kept looking out for the next TMC release, but it looked like the project was over and I ended up rebuying the originals on cd or from iTunes (where I bought Blood and the Sixteen Days/Gathering Dust ep shortly before leaving my contract in Scotland). But while reading all about TMC on wiki I discovered a link to a small piece about a group called The Hope Blister.
It seems that there was another TMC album after all. Although the band name had changed and it was the same musicians playing on all tracks, this was essentially a TMC album. It featured a set of previous TMC musicians, it still featured cover versions and, as I discovered once my copy arrived from amazon, most importantly it sounded like a TMC album.

For me the stand out tracks are Spider and I and Hanky Panky Nohow.
These are the last 2 tracks and seem to flow together as if it was always intended that they be together. Spider and I was written by Eno and I have never heard the original. This version is very relaxing,
starting off with strings and exquiset vocals and gradually transforms itself into a cacophony of banging drums and feedback in such a way that you don't notice the transition. This flows seamlessly into Hanky Panky Nohow, which is written by John Cale and taken from his Paris 1919 album. This is a track I did already know and Paris 1919 is generally considered to be John Cales finest album. This version is great, but does seem to lose
itself a bit towards the end, but I think that is just that the first half of the track is so good that it is not possible to keep that going for the whole track. The lyrics to this song are amazing, yet I have no idea what they mean - they just seem to fit together really well.

Hearing this John Cale track reminded me that
a) I hadn't listened to any of his music for ages and
b) I still hadn't managed to see him live yet.

A quick scour of the web resolved both these situations as I ordered the newly remastered Paris 1919 cd and his latest CD Black Acetate (I had seen John Cale perform a couple of tracks from this on Jools Holland last year). I also spotted that he will be playing a few dates in January - the nearest to my current location was Sheffield, so after rallying round all my concert going buddies I ordered a single ticket.
So if you see a bloke looking sad and lonely hanging around near the front of the stage it'll probably be me so why not say hello.

Nothing frightens me more..........

Dag 1084: in the bag

Last night was my first gig since leaving my native Scotland - well ok slight exaggeration, it was my first gig since leaving my 4 year Scottish based contract. The last one was Gary Numan at Glasgow University and as I arrived so early I managed to get a place right at the front and took some pretty decent photos using my phone. The camera on my phone no longer works, but I now have a phone sized 5 mega pixel Canon Ixus so I thought if I can get to the front I will be able to get some even better quality photos. Some of the gigs I go to don't allow photos, but you can often get away with it if its is a big venue and/or large crowd to hide amongst. I thought I should be ok taking photos as I had noticed that the John Cale website had recently asked for people to send in photos they had taken at John Cale gigs so that some could be included in the packaging of the soon to be released live cd pack entitled "John Cale - Circus Live".

So I printed off the instructions on how to get to the leadmill from their website and set off down the M1 in search of junction 33. As I headed up to the roundabout at the end of the parkway I new my instructions. Take the 3rd exit, then turn left at the mini roundabout, then left again and then turn into Leadmill road and there the famous Leadmill will present itself in front of you by means of a glowing red sign - simple.

So I turned left and looked out for this mini roundabout. One didn't appear and After going through a couple of sets of traffic lights I got the feeling that I was heading out of town and had maybe missed it. I turned round and drove back looking for this mini roundabout, but still no joy. I began to think that maybe the directions were out of date. I had now driven past the station twice and the website had also provided instructions on how to get there from the station, but I hadn't bothered to print those out as I wasn't going by train.

So I ended up back at the big roundabout and wondered if maybe I should have taken the next exit which goes into the centre of Sheffield. As I waited at the traffic lights I already knew I was wrong and should have gone back towards the station, but I was committed so 10 minutes later I was back at the big roundabout and heading back to the station. It was now 15 minutes after the doors opened so I just thought I may as well park in the station car park and ask someone. I did this and was at the leadmill front door about 30 seconds later - why didn't I do that first time round?

I handed my ticket in and noticed a sign saying "The Artist has requested that no one smoke during the performance". I guessed Mr Cale must be thinking about his health and not wanting to go the way of Roy Castle. It also meant I had a chance of not going home with clothes stinking of smoke.

Once in the room I noticed that the stage only had a couple of people next to it and they were towards the left side so after depositing my coat I made a b line for the spot right in the middle. The layout seemed to consist of a back row for guitar, drums and bass and then a front spot on one side for when he was playing guitar and a front spot for when he was playing keyboard on the other side, so I was right between the 2 with the drums right in front of me. I had watched the John Cale performance on Jools Holland and had noted that the drummer was pretty good so all in all it was a good spot and I should get some great photos.

Just before 20:00 someone walked onstage to stick down the set lists. These were easily in view of the few people that had now claimed spaces at the front so he asked us not to look. We did as he said, until he had walked of and then all craned our necks to try and get a glimpse.

I couldn't read all the track titles as they were upside down, but I noted that heartbreak hotel was second on the list and quite a few old songs were scattered in there, though I couldn't see any tracks listed from Paris 1919, and a few others I thought he might do didn't seem to be their either.

At the end of the gig I could have got one of these set lists - they were handing them out, but I didn't see the point of getting one, but now I see that if I had got one I could have listed it here. So I'll try and do it from memory and list it further down. I did count them, though, and there were 20 (including 3 for encores).

It began to look like things might be about to start and I heard the sound guy telling the guy that stuck the set lists down that John had decided to swap the order of the first 2 songs. The other guy looked like he was about to go and rip up the first set of sheets, but the sound guy said to just leave it as it was. Then the background music faded and the heavily treated drone of a viola faded in. This went on for some time and then 4 guys walked on the stage and there was John Cale a foot or 2 in front of me. I had first attempted to see John Cale toward the end of the 1970s and although I had a ticket my parents didn't let me go. It had taken me about 25 years to finally get to a John Cale gig.

As soon as he was on stage I thought that he had a certain presence about him that is often present in successful musicians. It made me wonder a bit what it was like being as good as he is, yet be playing in small venues like the leadmill. I also wondered what it was like being in his band - whether he got really mad at them when they made mistakes or not.

They started off with Heartbreak Hotel, as expected, and it was pretty different from any other version I had heard. The vocals were heavily affected and the chorus had oooos instead of the "I could die" line. In al it was pretty tame compared to his original recording of it and very tame compared to the live video I saw where he was pulling up stage tiles as he was singing it.

Then came the second song (that should have been first) and I can't for the life of me remember what it was (why didn't I take one of those stupid set lists). I seem to remember that I enjoyed it more than heartbreak hotel though and thought swapping them round was probably not that good a move.

If I remember correctly it was Helen of Troy next and there followed a number of other tracks from that period.

There was also a selection from Black Acetate and by this point I was really enjoying the music. All the musicians were great, but the drummer was particularly good. I am definitely not a drummer, but there is a style of drumming that I prefer and would play if I could play the drums and John Cale's drummer matched that exactly. I found that even during songs that I didn't know or that were different arrangements I was tapping my hands in the way I would have been playing and it just seemed to match how the drummer was playing - it was quite amazing.

After great renditions of Outta the bag and Perfect there was an acoustic section during which we were invited to eat our sandwiches. For these track the bass player played an electric upright bas and the drummer fixed shakers to his feet and sat on, and played one of those boxes that I had seen used at the Paco De Lucia concert in Edinburgh.

All too soon they began singing choruses of "Goodnight goodnight" at the end of Pablo Picasso (if I remember correctly) and then left the stage.

They came back and plaid Dirty Ass Rock and Roll. This wasn't one of my favourite album tracks, but the live version was great. I expected them to go into the next of the 3 encore tracks (and I think the backing musicians also did), but John Cale signalled for them to leave and I though that might be it, but they did come back on and performed Hush (if I remember correctly) from Black Acetate followed by the song listed on the set list as Chorale. I had never heard this track before, but it was brilliant with some great singing from the whole band and it was a great song to end the show with.

All in all a thoroughly good gig and I ma sure my gig going buddies of the last few years would all have enjoyed it, even if they didn't know any of his stuff already.

So what of these stunning photos that I was expecting to take?

Mr John Cale has left the stage.

Well I usually wait for someone else to take a photo before I do just to see how the land lay first. Near the start of the gig John Cale seemed to have noticed something he didn't like in the audience and one of his security crew went over and made them put their cigarettes out. He then took up a position at the side of the stage and spent the rest of the gig scouring the audience. The first time a flash went off he shone a torch at the offending fan and told him not to do it again, so my camera remained in my pocket until just after the band left for the last time, when I took the above photo just before a heavy black curtain just about knocked me out as it fell to the ground blocking off the stage from view.

As far as the set list goes, so far I have remembered the following songs and they were roughly in this order. If you were there and can add any of the missing songs or correct the order please leave a comment.

The set list as far as I can remember:

Heartbreak Hotel
Can’t remember, but I think it is from Black Acetate
Helen of Troy
You know more that I know
Sold Motel
Big White Cloud
Outta the bag
Perfect
New Song

Ship of fools
Save us
Pablo Picasso

DirtyAss rock and roll
Hush
Chorale


The concert finished pretty early (around 21:45) so I had time to collect a chicken fried rice from Knaresborough on the way home. My plan was to have a vodka and sprite and eat it watching Jonathan Creek just like in the old days. It almost went to plan, but I had no sprite so I had to have my Absolut vodka with coke, and it just doesn't taste as good. Also the chicken fried rice wasn't very nice so I only ate half of it.

Dag 1076: äpple eller apelsin?

As this is the first post of the new year we'll start with a topical quiz which is open to non Swedish speakers only.

There is just one question and it is: "Which of the Swedish words in the title means apple (äpple or apelsin), and for a bonus what do you think the other word might mean?"

You may be thinking that äpple is the obvious answer as it looks most like apple, however if you heard them both spoken you may think apelsin sounds closest to apple (as the character 'ä' is pronounced 'e' (as in end) and the 'le' at the end is not pronounced as the 'le' at the end of apple. So äpple is pronounce a bit like 'epp lay' and apelsin is pronounce like 'apple sin'.

The correct answer is, in fact, äpple and apelsin is Swedish for orange.

One of the things a like about the Swedish language is that lots of words have origins that describe what the word is (i.e. it says it on the tin). Oranges originally come from South China and apelsin means apple from China.

OK, so how did we get onto the subject of apples?

Well, I am currently on the last day of a 3 day opsware course and am writing this during the breaks. The course is in a hotel near Leeds station so I have been travelling in by train. I have always considered myself to be quite a relaxed easy going sort of guy who doesn't get annoyed that often, but something went wrong this morning. There are a number of different carriage layouts in the ancient trains that are used on the Harogate to Leeds railway line. The best ones are the ones where you have 2 seats on each side of the aisle all facing the same way. The worst ones, which I hate with a vengeance, have seats in groups of 4 that face each other. Some carriages are like this and there is a table between the seats, but on these particularly crap trains there is no table, and the reason for this is that there is no room for a table. In fact the seats that face each other are so close together that it is difficult to sit in one when there is no one in the seat opposite you, but if there is you can forget trying to sit there unless the other person doesn't have any legs.

So, this morning I was waiting on the platform and up rolls the train (late as usual) and I notice it is one of the crap trains - so that sets the day off to a bad start straight away. I got in through the door and noticed there was a section at the end of the coach which had a rack for luggage and next to it was a double seat with its back to the window facing towards the middle of the carriage. To race down the carriage and plonk myself into this seat, was with me the work of a moment, and as the train set off I had my headphones on and was immersed in playing my PSP. Each time the train stopped no one sat down next to me as I think the fact I am playing on a PSP gives me the same status as a leper, so all was well - until we reached Burly Park station. Some bloke got on and sat down next to me. This in itself was not even close to being a problem. I don't mind one bit if someone sits next to me, and I was quite happy right up until I heard a crunch. The bloke had an apple and seemed determined to make as much noise as he could eating it. Even though I had my headphones on every last crunch of that apple seemed to force its way through to my bones in the same way that the noise people make with their finger nails on a blackboard does. And to make things worse this apple seemed to be never ending. Each bite of the apple made no impact on the amount left at all. That apple lasted all the way from Burly Park to Leeds including a long stop waiting for a platform to become free, and by the time we finally got there I was thinking pretty bad thoughts about that guy next to me. As I mentioned earlier, this sort of thing never used to bother me at all, so it must mean that I am officially becoming a grumpy old bloke.

And just to tie up any loose ends with the story I have just spilled my orange juice drink over my prized new Apple MacBook Pro.

Dag 1059: Happy Hogmanay

The wind is blowing outside and it is new years eve yet again. It is 8 minutes to midnight and I am in bed already because I don't like new years eve and there is no way I'm going to stay up past midnight tonight - no matter how awake I am. Some people probably don't like new years eve because they don't like going out, but I do like going out, just not on new years eve. It is far too busy and there is too much expectation about the whole thing. I don't like doing what is expected of me, I like doing what I feel like doing at the time, so new years eve is one of my least enjoyable nights of the year.

I think I also need to say that this year the TV has been about the worst that there has ever been over an xmas/new year period. There hasn't been a single new episode of Poirot, Miss Marple, Midsummer Moiders or any other program that I usually enjoy watching over the smas/new year period. One of the only saving graces is that there is a brand new Taggart on on Wednesday night. There have been a few good things on BBC, but they have been pretty much all comedies and they have shown them all about 3 times each to try and pad out the scedule. Fortunately I managed to get a Nintendo Wii which has filled in all of the many times when there has been nothing good ojn TV, but the downside is that I am now suffering from Wii Arm.

It is now 2 minutes past midnight and as the fireworks are going off all around, despite the adverse weather conditions, I am reminded that most countries on the earth, as we know it, seem to have come up with some derogatory term or other for most other countries. If some people from another workd were to decide to come up with a suitable term for us earthlings they would probably come up with something like:

Garlic eating, jockstrap wearing, carpet munching, cross dressing, whale blubber sucking, goat milking, tree hugging, double crossing, religious bigotted, crystal gazing, war mongering, armchair shopping, pulp fiction reading, tea drinking, sun worshipping, surrender monkeys.*

*Apologies if I have missed any of the stereotypes you may fit into, but there just wasn't enought room for them all to be included.

Dag 1056: God Jul!

Or as they like to say in Bohemia "Vesele Vanoce".

Christmas has now come and gone and it is some time since we saw any posting action round about here. My initial excuse was that my trusty PowerBook had developed a strange fault with it's screen which made it look as though some sort of static interference was going on. It was just like the sort of thing you would see in some sort of sci fi film, or something, where screens were being affected by static interference from outer space. It made it very difficult to see anything. I bought a couple of CDs recently and it was very hard trying to get them imported into iTunes. I managed it in the end after several reboots.

While I was without a useable computer I did start a couple of posts (one of which is the next instalment of Snowblind - if you remember what that is) and I will hopefully be getting round to posting them up in the near future because Santa and his minions have brought me a brand spanking new PowerBook for Xmas - only now they are called MacBook Pros instead. This one has got one of the all new intel dual core chippy things in it and I must say it is faster than a fast thing that is travelling faster than it normally does. I have had a go at Quake 4 with all the options turned on and it works a treat - now I just wish I had the time to actually play Quake 4 from time to time. This is the sort of thing that you need to be working away from home to be able to do.

Santa and his heard of goats also brought a couple of Wiis, and as he bought them nice and early I was able to sell one of them on eBay. The profit from this just about paid for the brand new tyre that needed replacing on the trusty Volvo after someone in the household managed to bang it against a curb and pop it. I think there is some law that means every time I get the chance at making a bit of spare cash something will crop up that costs just a little bit more than the amount I have just made.

Well its not all doom and gloom because a kindly and altruistic Bulgarian property magnate sent this link to me and had nearly everyone at Björk Bjiggler Towers rolling in the aisles.

For some reason I couldn't see what was so funny.

As well and the new computer, the Jultomten was also kind enough to bring me a Vew Do Zippy balance board which has taken me back to my skateboarding days of yore. These things are great and it should enable me to return to my former sylph like frame that I used to have before I started eating too many chicken fried rice's from Mid Calder.
I haven't actually had a chicken fried rice from there for about 6 months now, but I have probably been making up for it by stuffing my face with loads of other rubbish as my stomach doesn't seem to have got any flatter since then. In fact, yesterday I came to the conclusion that the reason I have not lost any weight is because I don't have any scales. If I had some scales than I could weight myself everyday and keep track of the amount of weight I'm losing. Without the scales my weight will just flounder around and I'll never manage to get any thinner.

Most of my postings are written out in draft first and then pasted into blogger for final editing before being published. I have done this one in this way and have logged in ready to post the thing only to find out there there is an all new version of blogger that I didn't know about before that brings it into ones google account now. There was a big button that allowed me to begin the process of upgrading my blog. So I clicked on it and it said this would take a few minutes. After a while it said "I still haven't finished transferring your blog so go away and I'll send you an email when it is ready". This was about 30 minutes ago and I still haven't had this email so when you finally get to read this you will know that:
A) this blog is now an all new improved google blog rather than an old blogger one
B) this may not actually have been posted until some time (maybe a day or so) after I actually wrote it

In fact it took about 2 hours, which means I probably have what is known in the trade a pretty hefty blog.

So in the mean time hope you all not only have a "gott nytt år" but that you also manage to get all of your shoe related problems sorted out in 2007.

Dag 1008: Into you like a train

I have been on a few trains of late and I have noticed a few things.

The first thing that I have noticed is that when people arrive at the station they seem to claim a spot to stand on.
They find their spot, which is not too close to any other person, and they just stand there. I presume that most people are hoping that their particular spot will be close to a door once the train stops. Occasional I see someone change their spot, but usually I find that once they have got their spot they keep it until the train comes into view. Once the train appears round the corner and slowly creeps up next to the platform I am reminded of the show Run Ararnd as a number of commuters will suddenly decide to move top another bit of the platform. It is all done with a great sense of purpose and gives the impression that the people who have suddenly decided to move know exactly where the train is going to stop. My only thought is why didn't they just go straight to the spot when they first arrived? Presumably they were trying to catch out other commuters in some way.

The other thing I noticed is that, as the station I leave from is unmanned, people need to buy their ticket on the train. The conductor starts at the back of the train and works his way forwards. Each time the train stops at a station he start at the back again. This means that by the time the train gets into Leeds the conductor never actually makes it to the front of the train and if you don't manage to get a ticket on the train you have to queue up to buy one at the barrier (which can take up to 15 minutes).
This means that people who need to buy a ticket will try and stand at the end of the platforms that will be nearest the back of the train so they can try and get on through the back door first and get a seat as near to the back as possible, thus increasing their chances of securing a ticket during the journey. I started off this way and soon became very stressed trying to make sure I sat near the back. Sometimes I would stand at the back and wait for the conductor to come so I could get my ticket and then find a seat once I had secured my ticket. Once I had my ticket I could relax, but as time went on I found more and more people were trying to sit near the back and there was the added issue that sometimes the conductor would just sit in his room at the back doing soduko and wouldn't start coming around until around halfway through the journey. I also found that on a great many occasions the conductor would announce that his machine was broken so he wouldn't be able to sell anyone any tickets.

After about 3 months of putting up with this train induced stress I finally got my photo taken in one of those booths and got myself a month long ticket.

Now when I arrive at the platform I walk right to the far end where the front of the train will be and get the seat nearest the front. It doesn't bother me whether the conductor is selling tickets or not and I can spend the whole journey relaxing and playing on my PSP.

This afternoon I caught the train back as usual, but noticed that although the train was full no one sat anywhere near me. The 2 rows in front and behind me remained empty though a great many people were standing. I couldn't understand why no one wanted to sit near me. I was beginning to wonder whether it was because of the wicker basket full of rotting fish I had with me, when I heard a voice in my head. It said "Hello Dom, it's me; the spirit of the blog. You haven't done a Weekly Woss Weport in ages and the people are getting restless. No one will sit near you on the train again unless you do a Weekly Woss Weport." I explained that I was usually too tired to watch the Jonathan Ross Show these days and didn't see how I could do another one just at the moment, thankyou very much. At this a few of the passengers nearest to me got out of their seats and moved away. The spirit of Blog said "You have to do a mini Weekly Woss Weport otherwise no one will ever sit near you on the train again".

I was tempted to tell the spirit of blog that I would far prefer it if no one did sit next to me and why didn't he go and annoy someone else instead, but for some reason I found myself agreeing and so here for 1 week only I present the new look partially featured mini Weekly Woss Weport.

As usual I missed the beginning, but while I was getting ready for bed I heard Wossy talking to some guy out of Doctor Who who is now in Torchwood. I haven't seen Torchwood yet, but I did tape the first episode. I'm not 100% sure, but it sounded like there was some sort of talk about homosexuality going on - didn't get the full drift of it though and by the time I was tucked up in bed with my trusty 1920s style powerbook there was a clip of the Mighty Boosh being shown. It was the one that featured Obsidian Blackbird McKnight and a rather good one that is too. Then to the sound of Babooshka being sung by the poofs and their pianos on walked a rather efeminately dressed Noel Fielding and a rather more bearded than normal Julian Barratt. They were interviewed by Mr Woss and it seemed to me that Mr Woss didn't know that much about them. He asked them how they came up with the name The Mighty Boosh and they came up with some reply about Noels brother having big hair (a bit like Adrians used to be), but I personaly think that there is a different reason for calling it that, but I don't think we should be going into that now.
They managed to get through the interview and that meant that it was time for the final guest "Emma Thompson".
She has been on before and I don't have anything to add here so feel free to read the post on this site entitled "The return of the useless napkin bandits" to find out all about her.

All that is left of this special mini Woss Weport is to see who the band is.
It turns out to be Gwen Stefani. I have never heard any of her music before, and once she had sung a few notes I realised why. She sang some song out of The Sound of Music or something that seemed to have been beefed up to try and make it trendy. Some people may have found it trendy, but that doesn't include the music staff on Critical Mass, who are of he opinion that she wasn't actually singing live. Each time there was singing with no music she seemed to hide here mouth behind the microphone, which is probably the best place for it.

Dag 1006: My name is Siem Anym

I have been working on the next chapter of Snowblind (which is provisionally entitled "Snowblind III - this time it's for real") but due to various work commitments it is not quite ready for publication. So I'm just doing a quick round up style blog entry to be going on with.

First of all I should bring your attention to the fact that Critical Mass has now been going for over 1000 days (assuming the number I put into each title is accurate - it would be interesting to know how accurate these are, but not interesting enough to work it out).

I haven't been buying much in the way of CDs or DVDs lately, though I have bought the latest Kent single Nålens öga which is for charity (this should be read in a Nicey style accent of course).

Anna Ternheim - 28 Maj 2005

I also bought Seperation road by Anna Ternheim (who Adrian and I saw supporting Kent last year in Stockholm).
This arrived just before I was due to drive to Slaley Hall for a few days away so it had its first airing on the journey there and I was so impressed with it that it was the only thing I listened to for the whole time I was away.
Not only is the album fantastic, but Anna is also one of my friends on myspace - cool.

It is now almost 6 months since my contract in Scotland finished and I started this one in Yorkshire and I have noticed a number of changes in my life:
- I no longer fly each Monday and Friday, so I have stopped getting Eurobonus points which means I only have enough points for 1 more free flight to Sweden and the knock on effect that my Gold status will soon disappear.
- all my synths and recording equipment are locked away in various wardrobes and the attic so I only get to play the piano and my guitar at the moment (and that isn't very often).
- although Jonathan Ross is back on TV on a Friday night, I am now so tired each night that I can't stay awake late enough to see it, which in turn means no more Weekly Woss Weports for the foreseeable future.
- no more going out in Edinburgh with my chums during the week.

Mr Cloudhand and I have been saying it is about time we went to see another concert (the last was Goldfrapp in Edinburgh) so I have been trying to think of all groups that I haven't yet seen, but would like to see before I die (I realise he may not want to see all/any of these - we may end up seeing a group that one of us has seen before anyway).
John Cale - In 1978 I bought a couple of tickets to see him, but wasn't allowed to go
King Crimson - nearly seen them a few times, but never quite managed it (though I saw Robert Fripp at the Futurama in 1980)
Eva Dahlgren - last time I was in Stockholm she was playing a free outdoor concert the day after we left - bugger!
Shirley Clamp - not sure if she does tours
Eskobar - Akways seem to find out about their gigs after the event
Van Der Graaf Generator - Hopefully I will manage to see them when they tour in 2007
Pink Floyd - seen a tribute band, but would be nice to see the real thing
Toyah - she was my fave rave when I was a teenager (until her 3rd album came out and she went all poppy)

On a final front (ear), I have just discovered technorati and thus I have to put the following link into my next blog posting or something in order to get it working.
So here is my Technorati Profile

Dag 982: Snowblind II

Before going to bed I hooked up my iPod to the sound system installed in my isolated cabin in Northern Sweden, turned up the volume and listened to some Kent while I unpacked all my cases and started to assemble the scientific apparatus I had brought with me. As I fitted the pieces of equipment together I felt excited at the thought of the work I would be undertaking over the next 7 days and the time flew by. As midnight passed and the song Månadens Erbjudande was coming to an end I realised how late it was and how tired I was from the long journey that day. I went to bed and was asleep before I had even had chance to turn the bedside light out.

The next thing I was aware of was the alarm on my mobile phone going off and interrupting one of my often recurring dreams with a start. I got dressed and went into the lounge expecting to be able to continue setting up the apparatus. However, this was not going to be possible, for it lay in pieces all over the floor. It had been smashed to smithereens while I had slept.

I stood motionless for the next five minutes, though it seemed like much longer as the questions piled up in my head. Who could have done this? How did they get in? Why didn’t I wake up from my sleep in the next room? How did they find this cabin? Its location was not only secret, but no one should have even known I would be going there at this time. The one question that bothered me most, though, was why somebody should want to prevent me from performing my work here?

I examined the door, but it was still locked and there was no sign of any forced entry. Likewise, all the windows were locked shut, again with no evidence of any tampering. The only possible explanation was that someone had a key to the door and had locked it on there way out after committing this surprising deed. But the lock had been custom made and I should have had the only key that would open it.

I unlocked the door and looked out. It had snowed after I had arrived so there was no sign of my footprints from the day before, but there was single set of fresh footprints leading up to the door and a single set leaving at a 45 degree angle to the ones arriving. I put on my outdoor clothes and started following the footprints that led away from the door. They led towards a large boulder that was about 400 metres from the cabin, and passed around the left side of it.

I followed them around the rock but there they came to an abrupt stop.

A few feet away from the last footprint there was a patch of red snow and next to the red snow was a man lying face down and not moving. I looked around but could not see anyone else or any other footprints; however I found that 2 words had been written in the snow and the fore finger of the man’s right hand was still in the indentation of the last letter of the second word.

This message was the last act of the dying man and must mean something to someone, but it didn’t make any sense to me. The message was simply “Red House”. Was this the complete message and who was it meant for?

I turned the body over and saw that the blood was coming from a hole in the region of his solar plexus. I felt in his pockets to see if I could find any identification. I found a passport, a wallet, a copy of the key to the door of my cabin and small piece of torn canvas. The passport was in the name of Professor Guy Dubh from Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis and his wallet contained some currency, a mixture of Euros and Swedish Krona) and the boarding passes for a flight from Malaga to Stockholm from 3 weeks earlier and then Stockholm to Luleå from 2 days ago. The piece of canvas looked like it may have come from an oil painting, but it looked very old and the paint was cracked. On second inspection I saw the name Laury painted onto it in feint strokes.

The name Laury meant nothing to me, but something else reminded me of a strange incident that had happened when I was on holiday in Spain a few months before.

The Spanish police had come to the door of my apartment one afternoon asking me if I knew anything about the man who was renting the apartment next door. I said I hadn’t even been aware that anyone was staying in that apartment and wasn’t able to help them. I later heard that it was being rented by a Professor of Art from Brighton who had been murdered by a single shot to the solar plexus. He had managed to crawl across the floor to the coffee table in the room in which he had been found, and had picked up a postcard from the table, which he was clutching in his hand when the body had been found.

The postcard showed a green field on a bright sunny day and in the middle of the field was a single building.

It was a red house.

Dag 968: Snowblind

I awoke with a start and waited in silence for a few moments to see if I could sense what had caused me to awake in such a fashion. I heard nothing, so I rolled out of bed and looked out of the window. Although the sun was not yet fully up, I could see that the snow was thick all around and all that I could see was white; covered by the heavy fall during the night. It must have been at least minus 12 outside, but thanks to the triple glazing on the window, I was warm enough inside.

I looked at my watch, it was after 10:00 am and I had slept in. After a quick shower and a breakfast of knäckebröd with cheese, ham and tomato, I got dressed in my thermals, put on my outdoor snow suit and stepped outside into the virgin snow. The first thing that struck me was the silence. This was the third day since I had arrived at this house in a remote part of Sweden and I still wasn't used to the absolute lack of noise. The house was 7 miles from the nearest neighbour and the silence was so complete that it is not possible to imagine what it is like without experiencing it for oneself. It is said that the silence can drive some people to the edge of madness.

I checked that the packing I had done the day before was complete and tied securely to my skidoo. There was no need to lock up the house, so I started the skidoo up and rode due north. After 3 hours of travelling I stopped for a quick lunch and then set off again. I should really have left an hour earlier so I needed to try and make up some time.

I arrived at my final destination at 21:15, tired and hungry. I parked the skidoo and took the cases into the cabin that was to be my home for the next week. My first task was to get the fire going, and then I could think about getting some food ready. I decided to prepare a quick meal of pytt i panna with some beetroot, which I washed down with a single small glass of ice cold O.P Andersson Akvavit.

I now had 7 days in which to solve the puzzle that was the whole reason for my being sent here. It is a puzzle of immense proportions, which one cannot even begin to describe. I had first been told about it 11 years before and I had spent all that time preparing myself for the time that had now arrived. For the puzzle is of such a complex nature that it can only be solved within the Arctic Circle by someone born on the exact date of my birth. A few others had tried and failed and I knew the ramifications could be far reaching if I were to follow in their footsteps, but as I sat by the fire all I could wonder was what dark mysteries fate would bring to my door that night.

Dag 959: Andalucía when will I see you?

When it is snowing out again.

I have recently returned from my annual trip to the Spanish Lourdes, which explains why there has been a distinct lack of postings on the old Critical Mass for a while.

A week before I flew out it was announced on the news that due to a foiled terrorist plot people would no longer be allowed to take hand luggage on board flights into and out of the UK. Instead they would only be allowed to take tickets, passports and money provided it was in a clear plastic bag. We were informed that this was likely to stay in place for some time. To me, it seemed like a knee jerk reaction that would do little to alter the likelihood that any particular plane might get attacked, but would most likely cause a lot of distress to many passengers; who could end up having things they would normally have taken in their hand luggage stolen from their suitcase after checking them in.

I spent the next few days posting letters of complaint to the BBC “have your say” topic about the new security restrictions. I would normally put a link in at this point, but this particular “have your say” topic has disappeared from the BBC website for some reason.

Anyway, by the time I came to travel the restrictions had been reduced to something a bit more sensible and I was able to take my laptop in my hand luggage and the plane didn't get blown up and all was well with the world. Apart from the fact that I left my zip up sweat shirt in the overhead locker due to the stresses involved with making sure we didn’t forget everyone else’s zip up sweatshirts and other belongings.

Booking the hire car had been a bit of a balancing exercise. We would have a lot of luggage so needed to fit all that in for the 2 trips between the airport and the apartment, but apart from that the car would be little used and a small one would fit us all nicely. I could have rented a Clio for about £200 pounds or a Ford Focus for about £260. So, did I want to pay an extra £60 in order to have a less stressful time packing the car on 2 short trips? I decided not, so I went for the Clio.

On arrival we were actually given a Fiat Punto and upon locating it we noticed a man trying to pack his luggage into a Ford Focus in the parking bay next to us. He was complaining that he had a Ford Focus at home and had got all his luggage into it with no problems on the way to the airport, but it wouldn't fit into this one. Each time I have visited Spain I have been surprised that the boot space in my hire car has seemed smaller than I would have expected it to be. My theory is that hire cars in Spain are actually built with smaller boots that the same car would have if it was not destined to be a Spanish hire car. So far I have seen no evidence to refute my theory so it must be right. I had the usual stresses trying to get all of the luggage into the car again, but as always, I finally managed to squash it all in. All of the passengers did, however, end up with various bits of luggage and push chairs etc. on their laps. But 20 minutes later, after turning left at the BMW garage, going under the cable cars and past the lighthouse, we were parked outside the apartment and we didn't need to worry about packing the car again for another 2 weeks and a day.

Once the car was unpacked and the electricity, gas and water turned on we always go en masse to the supermarket to do our main shop of the holiday (after that I just go on my own each morning to get what we need for the day). I always like shopping in foreign supermarkets so this first supermarket trip always gets me a little giddy. One of the things I notice while in Spain is how we get ripped off in the UK with the cost of cans of pop. A can of Sprite at home tends to cost 50p or higher. In the Spanish supermarkets they cost 31 Euro cents each. That is around half the price we pay. Also while we are on the subject of Sprite I should also add that Sprite bought in Spain tastes different to Sprite bought in the UK. They both taste good, but the Spanish version tastes better than good. The first time I ever saw Sprite was on a school trip to Athens and I really liked it. When it became available in the UK some years later I started drinking it, but it never seemed to taste quite so good as it had in Greece. I guess they must have changed to formula of it in the UK to make it taste more like what us Brits think lemonade should taste like. Well, personally I would rather they didn't do things like that. If a drink that used to only be available in other countries is introduced to the UK it should be left exactly the same as it was in the original country. If they want to change the taste, they should give it a different name and make it be a different drink. And while we are on that subject, I hate the way that the UK will start importing a foreign type of beer and then suddenly they stop importing it because they are now brewing it in the UK instead. Only now the UK version of the drink tastes nothing like the original version. It never taste as good once they start getting brewed over here so stop doing it - you stupid breweries.

Fortunately for now I am able to get real Lapin Kulta brewed in Finland from Beers of Europe and I can get real Baltika brewed in Russia from www.tesco.com. Thanks to Paolo and the Blue Blazer in Edinburgh, I have a Baltika glass (which I keep in the freezer), but I don't yet have a Lapin Kulta glass. Does anyone know here I can get one from? Email me at the usual address (and just putting Finland down is not an acceptable answer).

Right so back to Spain – a place in which, I am reliably informed, the rain stays mainly on the plane. Once the shopping was done and we had unpacked everything the holiday could start, and I could sit in my favourite place on evening 1 of the holiday.

My favourite place in Spain

Back in the dark, dank and ominous opening few months of the year the staff of The Cloudhands Weekly Expectorant presented me with a radio controlled shark as a birthday gift. I had decided that the best thing to do with it was save it so I could give it its first airing (and dunking) in the pool in Spain. Although I didn’t know at the time, this was to become known as Operation Chorizo, and I am pleased to report that Operation Chorizo was a complete and resounding success, though, unfortunately, the video evidence was lost due to operator error. And, I don’t just mean that one session of shark footage was lost. Footage was taken on 3 separate sessions and none of it survived, due to what is sometimes referred to as Klum Sithum Syndrome.

Now, I may not have driven over any lemons while in Spain this time around, but I did discover the delights of ITV3. This enabled me to watch an episode of Taggart pretty much every night before going to bed and meant I only ended up watching one of the many DVDs I took with me. You may recall from a previous post that I planned to watch Steget Äfter one night on the balcony and that is exactly what I did. The film was thoroughly enjoyable and sufficiently different from the book to make it count as story in its own right. Books generally have far more happening in them that can be fitted into a 90 minute film so invariably bits have to get cut out and in this case a whole key feature of the book was changed which enabled the story to be easily converted into 90 minutes and also removed a part of the book that would have been quite difficult to have on film – namely a man dressed as a woman that no one realises is actually a man until it is too late (I hope I haven’t ruined the book for anyone).

I watched thw DVD on my laptop, on the second Saturday night of the holiday while sitting on the balcony in my favourite position (see above - I should add that it isn’t really a balcony as it is on the ground floor, but I don’t know what else to call it). I had a few glasses of Absolute vodka with Sprite and then a Salame pizza from Papa Luigis along with a glass or two of cava. I should add that while I was in cultural nirvana watching my highly intelligent production (in Swedish with English subtitles) the others were in the apartment dumbing down to the culturally inept “How do you solve a problem like Maria” or whatever it’s called.

Other holiday highlights included the now ubiquitous lightning tour of Fuengarola Zoo followed by the forking out of money for overpriced toys (that I’ll probably never play with again after the holiday) in the gift shop.

a big cat

The hot suny weather was only interupted for a couple of hours one day by the appearance of a bit of mist, but as you can see it wasn't enough to make us fret.

look at those shores

We carried on the tradition of sticking to the same restaurant for every meal out (namely La Dispenser in Cabopino) until the last day when we had lunch at Giuseppe’s (also in Cabopino) instead. I had a very nice burger with barber queue sauce, though it was a little under cooked for my liking so I shall be asking for mine to be well done next time we eat there.

The only other thing to report on is the in car music. We had a bit of Shirley Clamps first CD to bring back memories of our first trip to Spain and we had a bit of Shirley Clamps latest CD, but for the majority of the time it was Snö by Eva Dahlgren that compelled itself to be played. The CD has grown on me exponentially since buying it, it is simply one of the best CDs I own. I didn’t want to play it on the trip back to the airport as there was a risk that I would forget to retrieve it when we returned the car so we listened to Shirley Clamps Favouriter På Svenska and true to form I forgot to retrieve it when we returned the hire car.

Still, I consoled myself with the fact that I could easily order another copy, but I would also be providing the next renter of that car with the chance of hearing some music they might otherwise never have got to hear.

I have been back at work for a couple of weeks now and it now feels like an age since I was soaking up that Spanish sun. Peter Hammill is playing in Gateshead in a few weeks time and I would like to go, but I haven’t dared ask yet.

Farmer John wants you louder and softer.

Dag 951: Dark Angels Scream......

The moon shone obliquely through a crack in the curtains sending a shard of light into the centre of the rug that had Sergels Torg written into the pattern at one end. The window pain rattled in a sudden gust of wind and I walked over to the window and moved the curtain to one side allowing me to look out.

The sky was cloudless and I could almost see to the end of the garden, but not quite. A sharp crack caused me to look to the left, but all I could see was the stone wall that ran down that side of the garden. I held my breath for a moment as I looked to see what could have made the sound, but I saw nothing move. On the other side of the wall a fully grown fox was hiding in the undergrowth with senses on full alert. It had been sleeping in a wooden crate full of leaves a few days before and when it woke up it was too late to get out of the create as a lid had been put on it and the crate was swaying as it was being carried by 2 men onto a dark red 2.4 litre pathfinder land rover with a large scrape down one side. The land rover had driven for 2 days before reaching the village, where the crate was carefully taken out and the contents tipped onto the county communal compost heap. The fox had waited under the compost until the land rover had driven off and then slowly made its way to where it now lay in hiding. No one living in the village knew it was there and that was the way it was going to stay.

I closed the curtains, put another log on the fire and went into the kitchen. I took a glass, which had been made in Finland, off the shelf and walked into the utility room. I opened the freezer door, put 4 ice cubes into the glass and took out the bottle of Swedish vodka I had recently bought in Spain. It was covered in a thin film of ice and, as usual, I found it hard to unscrew the lid and my hands became very cold. I eventually got the lid off and poured enough vodka into the glass to just reach the top of the ice. I then returned the bottle to the freezer and took out a bottle of Sprite from the fridge. After filling the glass to the brim I put some macadamia nuts into a small bowl and returned to the lounge.

I felt the heat from the fire as I sat down and thought about the song that I needed to write. But that would have to wait, as I was about to watch a Nordic thriller on the television. As the opening music played and I took the first sip of my drink I wondered what dark mysteries fate would bring to my door that night.

Dag 907: Paris on principle

There seems to be a new craze in the town of blogland at the moment and that is posting stories about trips to Paris. Any blog worth its salt is currently beguiling us with tales of bravery, resolve and triumph in the face of adversity from Paris. I'm not going to let the fact that I haven't been on any recent trips to Paris stop me from getting with the program. So here is the story of my school trip to Paris from arouand 1980 (give or take a year or so). No names or places have been changed to protect the innocent.

I was about 16 or 17 at the time and the night before we were due to set off for Paris I went to a disco at St John Fishers School in Harrogate. I have no idea how I came to be going to it as I didn't know anyone at that school (or it’s sister school St Aidens). I also can't remember who I went with, but I do remember that during the disco a girl called Harriet came up to talk to me and we ended up dancing together until the disco ended (so I probably didn’t spend much time with the person I went with – sorry).

I asked if she wanted to see me again when I got back from Paris and she said she did, so suddenly I wasn't as excited about going on the trip as I had been the day before.

I can't remember which airport we flew from, but it was probably Leeds/Bradford and I do remember that we landed at Charles De Gaul airport in Paris. I was a bit of a hippy back in those days and quite liked a band called Gong who had a number of French band members so I had already convinced myself that I would be bound to able to find a shop that had some Gong bootlegs in stock – there’s nothing like setting your expectations ridiculously high before a trip somewhere is there?

We collected ourselves and our bags together at the airport and piled onto a couch that would take us to our hotel. Once we got there I remember that it seemed more like a block of apartments than a hotel. The room I was assigned to was actually 2 rooms (you had to go through one to get to the other) and the first room had 2 single beds and the second room had 1 double bed. The bedding didn't match on any of the beds and the furniture looked like it had been bought from a junk shop. There were 4 of us in these 2 rooms so we decided to have a rota system so each of us only had to share the double bed once (or something - I can't actually remember how many days the trip was for).

From here on it all gets a little hazy. I can't remember the exact order that any of these things happened, but they all did happen, so I will list them in no particular order. No doubt other things happened too, but I either can’t remember them or don’t want to remember them.

We had a trip to the Palace of Versailles. I had a song by John Cale called “The Hall of Mirrors In The Palace At Versailles” so I was a bit more interested about this trip than I would otherwise have been, but not much. I seem to remember having a hot drink in some café somewhere as part of this trip and it may have been raining.

We went on a trip to some church that was up a hill and the roads were cobbled. I bought a hot dog in a French stick with mustard on it. It was the first time I had eaten one of those things and I enjoyed it very much.

On one of the coach trips the coach took us through the main red light district. We were all fascinated and gawped at all the prostitutes.

There was a group of girls from a school in Bath staying at our hotel. We got friendly with them and I got friendly with a girl called Daphne who had a big jumper with a banana on it (like the Velvet Underground album cover) that her Gran had knitted for her. I remember she slept in our room on the last night and I let her sleep in my bed while I slept on the floor - I hadn't forgotten that I was meant to be seeing the girl from the disco again once I got back home and wasn’t about to be unfaithful to a girl I wasn’t yet going out with.

Me when I was a bit of a hippy in Paris

We went to the Pompidomp Centre and there were various buskers and street acts going on outside, which I found pretty cool. I saw a French hippy with a really nice multi-coloured striped hat on and I tried to ask him where he got it from, because I wanted one just like that, but he couldn't speak English and I couldn’t say much in French so I had to give up none the wiser.

We wanted to get some booze to drink in our hotel room one night so I went out and successfully procured a small bottle of Pernod in my best French (which wasn’t saying very much). I then tried to by a bottle of Lemonade and could only manage "Je voudrai un boitaille de lemonade pour to take out" which just brought me a blank stare. I can't remember what we ended up drinking with the Pernod.

The Hotel didn't do food at night, but it did do breakfast (as far as I remember). All our other meals were eaten at the Moulin Rouge restaurant and we paid with vouchers we had been given when we checked into the hotel.

One night I was looking in a shop window and I noticed a man dressed as a cowboy standing next to me. He had very tight jeans on and he had something that looked like it may have been a truncheon inside the jeans going down one leg almost as far as his knee. I was pretty sure it must have been a truncheon – I certainly wasn’t about to hang around to find out.

A couple of guys went into a strip club and got fleeced by being made to buy an extortionately priced drink each and to make matters worse they reported that the stage was empty for the whole time they were in there.

By the end of the trip I felt pretty pleased with myself because I had learned all I needed to know about buying and using underground tickets in Paris.

That is about all I remember apart from the fact that I didn't manage to find a shop selling Gong bootlegs, but I did find and buy a couple of official Gong albums that I didn't already have.

Dag 899: What level of standby do you use?

A few weeks ago I was listening to radio 4 on my way into work.
It was the Today Show and they were discussing how bad it was to keep your electrical goods (such as televisions and DVD players) on standby mode when not in use. There was an expert being interviewed who was basically saying you must always turn everything off fully and never leave them on standby because it is much better for the environment.
The presenter asked her what you should do if you have an item that loses its memory settings when it is switched right off.
The expert replied that in such cases it is ok to leave the item on standby, but make sure it is on a very very low level of standby.

I don't know about you, but none of my electrical items have levels of standby, as far as I know. Maybe they do but I just haven't found the setting switch yet. Maybe all my electrical stuff is set with its standby level to ultra high so that they actually use more electricity when they are on standby than they do when they are switched on.

My advice to you is to go round and turn down all you standby levels to the minimum possible value.

Dag 891: det spelar ingen roll

You may have noticed that I have been providing occasional sustenance for those living in a world devoid of quality biopic film reviews by delivering timely reviews at critically opportune moments, thus helping the film going public in general. However, you may also have noticed that while I have been paying homage to the genre of film I have been sadly neglecting the humble book.

This is probably because I haven't read a book (i.e. a fictional story) for around 2 years and this blog has only been around for about that length of time. It is a shame I haven't read one for so long because It is quite possible that in my lifetime I have read more books then I have seen films (though it is also possible that I have seen more films than read books - I've no idea one way or the other to be honest) but, regardless of that, I feel, it is about time we had an official björkbjiggler book club posting.

I have been interested in books since the very first time I became interested in them and have always had one on the go. The thing with books is that it isn't just reading them that is enjoyable, but it is just as much fun buying them and looking at them on your bookshelf. The contents of a persons bookshelf probably says a lot about the person whose books they are.

I may not have finished a book for the last 2 years, but I have had one on the go for the whole time. I started reading it during my last holiday in Spain and haven't yet finished it. I have bought quite a few books since that one, but I can't start reading a new book until I've finished the previous one (in fact that statement is not quite true, it should read - I can't start a new fiction book until I have finished the current fiction book - I am allowed to read non fiction books while I am still reading a fiction book because they don't interfere with the plot). The book I currently have on the go is Detective Inspector Huss by Helene Tursten and there are 3 main reasons why I haven't yet completed it:

1) It is a bit heavy going - this allowed options 2 and 3 to creep in via the back door (as it were)
2) Sudoku - I used to read on the plane each week, but then I started doing sudoku instead
3) Family Guy - I used to read in bed every night until I discovered Family guy and now I watch and episode or 2 of that instead

So I am in a pretty sad state of affairs, book wise, but this week I have decided to break the stagnation and get back into books again ("hooray" I hear you cheering). And I have just bought 3 books and 4 cds to celebrate my return to literary prowess.

Now for the science part:
So how did I come to be reading a book that is a bit heavy going? Because it is set in Sweden and written by a Swedish Author, of course - nincompoop. Almost all the books I have read over the last 5 years have been releated to Sweden or Scandinavia in some way (they have also all been detective novels).

Now for the book review part:

Last week I bought 3 books and 4 cds, but I also bought a cd and a dvd in Sweden recently so I'll include those here as well:

The Books (3 for the price of 2 at waterstones):

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time: Adult Edition (Paperback) by Mark Haddon

This was recently recommended by Adrian and I had actually thought about buying it when it first came out after hearing about it on a radio 4 program. At that point I had never heard of Aspergers so had no interest in it from that perspective and I also didn't like to think that a dog had been killed, so I didn't buy it at the time. However I have become interested in Aspergers over the last few months, and have been reading a good book about it on the train over the last week or so, so now seemed like a good time to get over the fact that a dog had been killed and get the book.
The first thing I noticed about the book is that the first chapter is chapter 2. I think that is really funny so I know I am going to really enjoy the book and I can't wait to start reading it properly - the trouble is I haven't finished my current book yet. I tried to find my current book last night, so I could try and rush through it, but couldn't. Maybe if I can't find the book that means I can go on and read this one - I would just have to make sure that if I ever did find that book I threw it out straight away.

There is also a children's version of this book which I may buy for my children.

The Man who Smiled by Henning Mankell (paperback)

This is the latest of the Inspector Wallander novels to be released in english, but it is not the latest in the series - it is from earlier on. It annoys me a bit when they do this because I like to read books in the correct order. I bought all the other Henning Mankell books as soon as they were released in English in hardcover, but I didn't get this one straight away so it is paperback. It is also the first time I have watched the film of the book before reading the book. I bought the DVD of this (Mannen Som Log) when I went to Stockholm with Adrian last year to see a Kent concert. While I was buying this DVD he was probably in some park in Stockholm pretending to be a tree or something. You may have noticed him. Anyway, I really enjoyed watching the film. This is one of those stories where nothing particularly spectacular happens but it was great all the same. Reading this book after watching the film will be a bit strange. I can't think of any time when I have watched the film before reading the book - it has always been the other way round.

Calling Out For You by Karin Fossum (paperback)

This is the fourth book in this series. I have the other three but have only read the first two so far. I really enjoyed the ones I have read so far they seem very true to life rather than the exagerated thenes you tend to see in Hollywood films and I felt I could really imagine what made the characters tick. I admire the fact that she doesn't just write about normal people with happy normal lives but includes a variety of characters (e.g. criminals and mental problems etc) and she really makes you feel you know where they are coming from and why they make the decisions they do. Nestor tells me I must move on now.

The CDs (from cdon.com - I've always had good service and really quick delivery from this company):

Eskobar by Eskobar (CD)

I've only listened to a couple of tracks from this so far. They were fairly mellow and acoustic rather than rocky, but hopefully there will be some rocky ones in there too. When I bought my first Eskobar CD (There's only now) I got into most of the tracks pretty quickly with the remainder taking a while to get into. The next one I bought (A thousand last chances) took me much longer to get into and I suspect this one may be the same. Not that it matters, because I always enjoy the process of getting used to music by a great band (which Eskobar certainly are). I haven't managed to get to see then live yet, but they are on my list.

Liebeling by Andrea Johnson (cd)

There was a track by Andreas Johnson on a trigger happy TV soundtrack cd I bought years ago and I had been thinking about getting this cd ever since, but never got round to it until I saw this at cdon.com for 4.95 euros so I thought now was the time to get it. I have only listened to the first track so far, and I played it 5 times in a row - glorious! I'm sure I'll get round to playing the rest at some point.

Äventyr EP by Eva Dahlgren (CD)

This is the first of the new batch of CDs that I listened to. It is the first new Eva Dahlgren music I'd heard for years and I was a bit worried that her music may not have been as good as it used to be. However I really enjoyed it but the downside is that it reminded me I have not managed to go to a concert of hers yet and don't know what prospect there is of me ever managing it. When I was last in Sweden it was announced that she was playing at a free concert in Stockholm 2 days after I was due to fly back home - bummer!

Snö by Eva Dahlgren (copy protected CD)

After enjoying the EP it was time to move on to the album. Eva Dahlgren's last studio album (Lai lai) was release around 6 years ago and was so good that I just didn't see how she could ever produce anything even half as good again, so I didn't buy this when it first came out last year - I was scared of listening to it. I started off with the first few tracks and thought it sounded good, but nothing special, but as the album progressed it just seemed to get better and better and during track 9 (Det som bär mig nu) I felt the same as when I first listened to Lai Lai. That tracks was as good as anything on Lai lai and I have played it many times since. The album as a while is reaqlly growing on me butg I just have to keep going back to track 9 again and again. In conclusion a fantastic album and easily up to par with the ground breaking Lai lai.

If you haven't heard any music by Eva Dahlgren buy Lai lai (if you can get hold of it and Snö.

It doesn't matter if you can't understand the words because the music is out of this world.

Buy them and you will know. And then buy some jewelrey by Efva Attling.

The Swedish purchases:

Favoriter på Svenska by Shirley Clamp (CD)

Some years ago when I was browsing in the music/DVD section of NK I noticed that I really liked the music they were playing. They had a stand on the counter marked "Nu Spelas" which had 6 empty CD cases on it. So while I listened to the music I examined the 6 cd boxes to see if I could work out which was the one that was currently playing. I could have simply asked someone, but I didn't feel up to taking the easy option, so I carried on trying to work it out. I ended up thinking that the most likely one was Den Långsamma Blomman by Shirley Clamp so I risked it and bought it. When I got chance to play it I realised I was right. This music is probably well and truly classified as pure pop music and it is not a genre of music I would normally touch with a barge pole, let alone listen to, but it had something different about it that I really liked - in fact you could say it had a certain "quelle heure est-il" about it. Shortly after buying this we went on holiday to Spain and this CD never left the cd player of our hire car. The music is really uplifting (apart from "Jag fick lånar en Ängel" which can reduce you to tears even if you can't understand what she is singing) and goes really well with the hot, bright sun and holiday atmosphere. Every time we played the CD after our holiday it reminded us if the holiday. So on our next trip to Sweden I bought her next CD (Lever mina Drömmar) and that one stayed in the CD for our last Spannish holiday and now reminds us of that one. Our last Spanish holiday was two years ago (which is when I started reading my last novel) so when we went to Sweden this year the first thing I did in the NK music section was to look and see if there was a new Shirley Clamp CD to take with us to Spain this year - there was, so I bought it.

This one is different from the others because all the songs are cover versions. I even thought I may not like it, but as soon as the first song came on I knew I was wrong. The album isn't as upbeat as the last two, but the songs are great and are made so much greater by her fantastic voice. The CD opens with her version of "It must have been love" by Roxette . The original song is great and very well known, but this version just seems to take it to a whole new level. The only downside to the CD is the inclusion of a Leo Sayer song - but that is easily skipped and the rest is great. The highlights are:

- När kärleken föds - It must have been love by Roxette

- Öppna din dörr - I've never heard the original version, but it seems to be by Tommy Nilsson

- Tro - Tro by Marie Fredriksson (fantastic song - Marie is also the singer with Roxette)

- Hur sköra vi är - Fragile by Sting

I am already looking forward to driving thorugh Spain with the windows open and this CD blending in with the hot spanish air (though the other Shirley Clamp CDs will also be getting another airing too).

Steget Efter by Henning Mankell (DVD)

I haven't watched this DVD yet, it is still sealed in its wrapper. I am really looking forward to seeing it, but I want to wait until a really good time to see it. I may save it until we are on holiday and watch it on my laptop. This is based on the book One Step Behind by Henning Mankell and it was while reading this book that I realised just how good his books were. While I was reading this book I thought it was the best book I have ever read. When I watch this I will have an ice cold Absolut Vodka with sprite and a bowl or two of top quality snacks. .

"It doesn't matter how we cry our tears,
the answer is a whisper in a far away world."