Today is the first day this summer that the attic is too hot to sit in. Not so much because of the sun (it’s actually been pretty hazy mostly) but more because the wind’s from the wrong direction and it’s just a still muggy mess up there. So once again hurrah! for PowerBooks and wireless networking.

So I’m sitting in the living room, on the sofa, winding down after my afternoon ride. Sixty kilometres, up the Culm valley and back down the Exe one. Very pretty. Not that I noticed too much, being such a ‘bloke’ and all. There was a roadie in front of me all the way down the Exe valley, started off about forty seconds or so ahead as I left Tiverton, and I had him almost caught when I veered off up Stoke Hill. So that felt good, pegging a roadie racing type cyclist. If I’d really tried I could maybe have caught up to him before Exeter, but if I did catch up with him I guess I’d have felt obliged to maybe ride with him a while, and really I am no cop at that. Ten years or so of riding solo does that to you I guess.

Anyway, this morning’s mail brought a copy of the new Felt compilation ‘stains on a decade’. It’s typically minimal and of course is magnificent. It’s a prelude to the reissue of all the Felt albums on CD over the coming five months. So there’ll be two a month. Get your cash ready. Also in the mail was the new album by Gravenhurst, which I am greatly looking forward to playing once the attic cools down.

Current head music for bike rides though has been a mixture of stuff: snatches of the Wild Swans, whose ‘Incandescent’ retrospective is due in the coming months; mostly that line about courage melting like ice in a glass and the various swells of sound that they did so well; also some of the new Clientele album, specifically that line in the opening track about becoming cold (or is it old, or both?); and finally the line from the new Clem Snide album where Eef Barzeley sings about the summer coming with Al Green and sweetened ice tea. Yum.

posted by duke harringay at 6:00 PM

Well, I sat in the sun too long, and then took a bike ride with C, so my arms are tingling a bit and my face is a bit redder than it really ought to be. Oh well. I wore a hat some of the morning too, so the peak cast a shadow over my face, but I bet I still look like one of those Irvine blokes. Ha ha. At least I’ve not been wearing any Speedos. I don’t even own any Speedos, or any kind of swim wear in fact…

Just spent a hundred and thirty dollars on comics at Fantagraphics. They are apparently hard up against it financially and could well collapse if they don’t get some cash sharpish. So they’re appealing to all comics fans to go buy more books… seems a decent enough appeal. No special offers or discounts or anything like that, but whatever: anyone even vaguely interested in comics should pop along and spend a bit of cash. I mean, I’m hardly a comics aficionado (in fact I’m largely comics igonorant), but Fantagraphics has been a godsend these past couple of years, helping to add richness and vibrancy to my shoddy life.

Uh, so yeah. Comics. I re-read Adrian Tomine’s ‘Summer Blonde’ collection yesterday. It’s a great book. Oh yes it is.

Okay, I can’t spend anymore time in front of this screen. The smells of someone else’s barbeque (just the smell of the coals or whatever, not actual cooking) are wafting through my window and making me hungry.

posted by duke harringay at 5:39 PM

A window of sunlight this morning, so I figured I’d stick on a pair of shorts and sit and have breakfast in the yard. Carrie laughed and said it’s just as well we don’t live in Irvine, or I’d have been in my Speedos. That’s Irvine, west coast of Scotland, not Irvine California, incidentally… Irvine, where at the first flicker of sun the blokes don their Speedo trunks and sandals and venture out to the supermarket for beer without considering where to store their cash, Speedos not being renowned for their wallet pockets after all.

Well, the window of opportunity lasted long enough to get through a bowl of muesli, a mug of Echinacea and raspberry tea, and the last thirty pages or so of David Goodis’ ‘The Moon In The Gutter’. Now the cloud appears set for the day and the wind is getting up once more. Back to normal.

posted by duke harringay at 10:38 AM

I guess I should update this. It’s been over three weeks since the last entry, after all. That’s nearly as long as I was without a bike to ride, which was no joke. Oh no sir, no joke at all. My legs all but seized up, and after riding only short rides yesterday and today I feel all sore and tired, but that’s a good thing, right? Right.

So yeah, I finally got my new bike. It’s blue with a bit of white and a tiny bit of red and it looks great. I was scared riding it yesterday because it was the first time in seven years I had ridden a bike with rigid forks and it was all super-responsive and I thought I was just going to fall off the first time I tried to get out of the saddle. Not really a lot of fun. And every time I took a hand off the bars to take a drink or, ahem, clear my nasal passages I felt like I was about to wibble, wobble and fall down on the road. After 30 kilometres or so though it felt a lot better and today’s ride felt terrific, like I’d been riding it all my life. Except now my shoulders and neck hurt because obviously my riding position is slightly different, so I’m pulling all my muscles in subtly different directions, which is a big blah of course, but hey ho. I would post a photo of it here, but I’m aware that my wittering on about it is surely boring enough…. Is more boring than this blog usually is.

We have a week of school now. Yay! A week away from kids and more importantly a week away from irritating issues to do with budgets and worrying about what the hell I’ll be using to start my new digital photography course in September. Ho hum. And then of course our Head has decided to bugger off to another school at the end of term, so everything is kind of limbo. I don’t know that I really care anymore, I mean, if I ever did. I just wanna teach my classes and then sod off home so I can do Other Things. Like write this. Or write Other Things that I wont go into here, suffice to say I am striving to set aside a couple of hours each evening to hammer these keys, leaving words about ghosts and suicide murders and 1984 hidden away somewhere on this shiny silver machine. Cue David Essex song.

Or not.

Someone suggested last week that we could save money at our school by just deciding to not appoint a new Head Teacher. I think it’s a great idea. We could all take it in turns to do some of the tasks that Heads do (and what DO they do anyway? It’s one of those jobs where if you ask you’d get that condescending smile and pat on the shoulder and an ‘oh it’s far too complicated to go into right now’) and everything would be, in the words of the Love Corporation ‘a groovy world’. Yes indeed.

Or not.

I wish it would sunshine. It feels like it’s been rather grey and nondescript for so long, although the sky is fairly blue as I type, so I should shut up really. Oh, but it’s still windy. I don’t remember a day when it wasn’t really kind of windy. Not in the past three weeks anyway.

Great, now some fucker’s car alarm has just started up right outside the window, adding unwelcome accompaniment to the aforementioned Love Corporation. Cars should be banned. They suck.

Hurrah! John Carney has just sent in a new contribution. As I’m sure you all agree, this is a cause for some celebration, John’s articles being just about good enough to fill the gap left by Kevin Pearce’s retirement from writing. I should go read it and get it up on the site sharpish…

Oh, and Sethe, yes, send in your pictures of the Things You Make and I’ll try and do something with them. I like the idea of answering questions using only one band’s song titles… maybe I’ll play that game sometime. If I have the time to play games anymore, that is.

posted by duke harringay at 8:12 PM