I’m quite a happy chap today, not only is it Friday but I managed to buy tickets, subject to a booking fee and a postage fee and an admin fee, to see Prince when he’s in London on 28 August… as close to my birthday as I could get. How sad am I, buying myself a birthday gift 4 months in advance?? :p

But you just know that it’s going to be a great show, even if I do end up sitting up with the gods (Block 410, Row R) I’ll be in heaven if he manages to squeeze Little Red Corvette, Peach or Raspberry Beret into his set list…come on wee man, I know you’ll be reading this so if you can, just one will do, call it a birthday gift and I won’t mind you not sending a card.

In other news I heartily recommend that you get your lug holes plugged with the melodic and quite frankly, sexy as hell, sounds of The Mentalists. Let me assure you, if you think these 4 girls sound good, just wait till you see them and fortunately it would seem these hard working girls are performing regularly so you have no excuse for not catching them live and reminding yourself what it’s like to go out, hear a great band and be unable to resist bustin’ a move. So, next gig is 18 May, Kilburn I expect to see you there, shaking your tail-feathers baby!

Psst… click here and spend 79p and by buying the track legit you’ll help make these girls famous (but not so famous it goes to their gorgeous heads!)

No musical interlude today folks, instead I want you to go visit another site instead of reading my drivel :p If you haven’t heard of www.sellaband.com and you like your music, what are you waiting for?

I’ve invested some shares in a band called LEOPOLD Go check them out, they have London gigs in Camden in May and The Metro in June

I was listening to the radio this morning, whilst having a cuppa and listening and watching the rain pitter patter in the garden, dripping in fat blobs from the vine leaves creeping over the fence and streaming off in a steady flow from the rose bushes. Then I heard the song that would become this posts musical interlude. It was one of those songs which said so much and it was sung beautifully. But just now, as I was writing the opening few words to this entry I heard Clifford T Ward’s voice as the song, “We could be talking” started to play. I thought about switching tracks but Clifford will have to wait for another time.

I decided it’s time to finally put a lot of the past exactly where it should be, in the past and move on. “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come e, bisogna che tutto cambi.” is a quote from Il Gattopardo (The Leopard) by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. It broadly translates into English as, “If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.” As soon as I read that line, in English I hasten to add, it immediately resonated with me and has almost become a personal mantra. Don’t be surprised if it ends up tattooed on me somewhere, which actually might not be a bad idea, if I could find an appropriate leopard image it could turn out quite nicely. Of course it would never work with an in-appropriate image

So, it’s really goodbye to a lot of emotions and people and hello to a lot of new emotions and people. Some of the new people will be old people, just different facets of them will be changing. If that doesn’t make sense I’m sure I’ll explain it some other time, I really can’t be arsed to start writing about my theory of the multi-faceted nature of homo sapiens.

So, I’ll leave you now with Bonnie Raitt singing, “I Can’t Make You Love Me” If that’s not a goodbye song I don’t know what is =)

Wooo Eeee! Someone has too much time on their hands! Well, actually, the reason for this impromptu post is because I felt I had to come mention my garden =) I had just made a cup of tea and was standing at the back door listening to the birds twitter and the flies buzzing around, the wind blowing through the trees. And it struck me how lucky I am to have this little oasis. it has to be said that whilst I’m envious of my neighbour who has many flowers and plants growing in her small scrap of garden, I do prefer how mine looks but I really have Winton and Bridget from upstairs to thank. When I moved in they pitched me with their vision for how the garden could look if we ‘joined forces’ and made one big garden rather than the usual 50-50 split, well, it is a 50-50 split but we both got what we wanted and with the shared area have a far better deal. Winton and Bridget are a Kiwi couple, I forget what Winton’s actual job is but it’s something to do with the environment and it shows from how he sculpted the garden.

I spent a little while this past week tidying up the garden and thinking what to try and grow this year. Now that I have moved the fuschia and I have the space for deeper rooted veg I’ve decided to try carrots and zucchini, 2 things I love to eat =) I’ve also decided for some colour, other than the roses I’ve planted some lilies, a mix of colours which should, if they grow, add a burst of colour this year.

Here are some photos of how it looks today, I love everything about it, right down to my ‘top cat’ style trash can :p

This impromptu posting also allows me to get in a track from an album I’ve been listening to and really enjoying again. When I moved to London in the late 80′s I had a few cassette’s I played to death, mainly old stuff that would embarrass most people but I still enjoy it. Bands like The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, Gallagher & Lyle, Toto, Rod Stewart, Paul Simon, Eric Clapton, Billy Joel etc. etc.

It’s funny, at work I mentioned an episode from when I lived in a civil service hostel, I was kicked out for coming back drunk one night and writing on the wall with chalk that the manager of the hostel was a woman of loose morals. She gave me a week to move out and in that week I found a flat share less than 10 minutes away, on the other side of Haverstock Hill and when I went to return the keys and get my deposit the deputy manager said that all I had to do was apologise and she’d let me stay. it never entered my mind at the time that an apology would have made any difference, I had embarrassed her and her authority would look worthless if she didn’t do something, or so I thought. Anyway I had already coughed up 8 weeks rent to move into the flat and I was looking forward to getting to cook for myself!

But I digress, as usual, from the point, which was back then I can remember the good times, laughing and joking in the Belsize Tavern with the jukebox blaring. Guns N Roses Appetite for Destruction was on heavy rotation together with this gem from Eric Clapton, Layla. I found the cd whilst rummaging through my collection and forgot how much I missed hearing them, I had momentary flashbacks to the pub, suddenly going back to moments when I had heard the musical intro as the jukebox kicked in over the crowd of the pub, they were good times. And lately, when one of Clapton’s tracks comes on my ipod as it shuffles its way through the play list, I look out the window of the bus, or around me in the tube or street and I think, 18 years on and things are feeling just as good now as I remember them feeling then. Back when I wasn’t worrying about what I was doing, I was just immersing myself into doing stuff, that’s where I wanna get back to, just enjoying the ride for as long as it lasts. Whose with me? If we share the ride we can reduce our carbon footprint, which means we can travel twice as far =)

So much for me thinking I could shut up talking about myself, I guess I’m a little devoid of other topics so I usually end up back on about myself. If I paid more attention to the press no doubt I could rant and rave about whatever is in the headlines, but then this would just be a blog by some guy who likes to rant and rave a lot… as opposed to a blog by some guy who likes to analyse everything he’s ever done or thought about doing… yeah I don’t quite know which one is worse either.

But, until I can think of something else to rant and rave about you’re stuck reading about ME, so get used to it and settle down =) I’ve been watching this show called ‘What about Brian’ a group of 30 something’s in various stages of relationships. Obviously you’re supposed to focus on Brian, after all it wouldn’t be called What about Brian if it was really about Adam, would it? So, Brian is 34, searching for that elusive ‘miss right’ never seems to find her yadda yadda yadda, blah blah blah… usual story everyone is stunningly attractive, no one seems to lack money or time, but still it’s slightly addictive, not helped by the fact I’ve downloaded (Oops! me bad) 2 seasons and have been watching them back-to-back.

In a way it’s a bit like the therapy I was seeking in an earlier blog, a lot of the ‘dilemmas’ that face the characters in the show mirror, to varying degrees, things I feel myself. Of course the reality is very much different from the show, for a start Brian is impossibly good looking, so you kinda have little sympathy for the guy who seems to have stunning girls fall for him in every episode and so far all I’ve gathered is he’s an expert in bed as after every one night stand the girls has swooned and gushed (pardon the pun!) about how great he was. Not for Brian the embarrassed fumblings as he struggles to maintain an erection and nervously hoping he could blame it on the booze rather than what was going on in his head. But minor quibbles aside, it’s a good show.

It’s reinforced in me the idea that I need to stop being so fucking nice, I need to stop being so obliging, being everyone’s friend and forgetting to be my own friend. I need to start being selfish, going for what I want and to hell with the consequences. But I also saw albeit in the show, the possible outcome of being that selfish.

Let me introduce the 3 characters (in alphabetical order) Adam, Brian & Marjory. Adam and Brian are best friends from when they were both knee high to a grasshopper, New Year’s eve they are both out, Adam has a date with an unattractive girl, Brian is dateless. Brian sees Marjory enter in a stunning red dress, they bump into each other and chat and flirt and they Brian chickens out of asking for her number and walks off. Later he decides to go see her, and as he fights through the crowd he spies Adam chatting to her, Brian goes to the bar and gets drunk. then Adam comes along and begs Brian to take the ugly date off his hands as he’s off with Marjory; he asks Brian is he’s cool with it and Brian, being nice, says yeah, it’s all cool.

Cut to a year later, Adam and Marjory are getting married and Brian realises that he’s really in love with Marjory and that the reason he hasn’t settled with anyone else is because he compares them all to her and they can’t compete. he realises he has to go for what he wants, his happiness comes first. He declares his love for Marjory, she’s torn between Adam and Brian, wants both. Adam and Brian fight and on the day of the wedding Marjory leaves them both and moves to Minneapolis.

The lesson to be learnt from that I guess was the realisation that I’ve had my fair share of Marjory’s in life. Girls I couldn’t have either physically or emotionally who I then compared every other girl to and dismissed without even getting to know them. I really was a jerk! I also learnt that there is a huge danger in just ‘going for what you want’, I can’t just wander around declaring my love for someone who is already in a relationship. The repercussions could be immense, of course it helps that in the show Brian and Marjory are both hot for each other, it would have been a pretty dull show if she had said, “Sorry Brian, I’d love to have an affair with you but I just don’t fancy you.” It left me in mixed feelings, of course on one had the romantic side of you wants ‘true love’ to win and Brian and Marjory to settle down, as you already know Adam doesn’t really want to get married. But then I also hated Brian for not leaving Adam and Marjory to give their relationship a chance, for all we know Adam and Marjory may have settled into a perfect life of bliss but instead, because Brian couldn’t live without letting the world know he loved Marjory enough to risk losing all his friends for. He obviously didn’t love her that much because he didn’t go to Minneapolis to be with her…What a jerk! Ifs, buts and maybes don’t make a future so there is no point putting too much hope in thinking they’ll guide us on to the promised land kinda sucks to have to accept that really, doesn’t it?

For this post’s musical interlude I contemplated ‘Your love alone’ the single from The Manic Street Preachers new album, you know the one, with the utterly, utterly gorgeous Nina from the Cardigans singing. Her inclusion rescues what one can only imagine would be a nightmare if it were left to the Preachers themselves, pretty much like most of their stuff barring their first album and the odd track here and there.

But instead I thought I’d leave you with a depressingly uplifting track from Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds album, No More Shall We Part. I won’t go into the story behind the first time I heard it, it involves Aurélie so you don’t really need to know much if you have read anything I have ever written about her. But anyway, this track, “Fifteen feet of pure white snow” is hauntingly beautiful, as is the whole album.

I really enjoy lying in a steaming hot bath while listening to this album, don’t ask me why but it really cheers me up. Whether you think the same I probably will never know but have a listen anyway =)