All Change: Random Ideas & Incoherent Philosophical Doctrines    (The Separation Circle Blog)

Home Separation Circle song collections The Incomplete Cacophony Lumps & Bumps Emerging into the Brightness of the Day Let's Go Fly a Kite Laughs, Giraffes & Epitaphs Experimenting with Noisy Insects Y? Y? Y? Separation Circle News Separation Circle Interview Featured Song Videos Bad Tune Men - band of legend Bad Tune Men photo album Bad Tune Men press reviews The Arteks Complete List of Songs IRC Guide Blog The Book of Wisdom Words of Lesser Wisdom 100 Best Songs Ever Memoratble Lines from Songs  Photo Albums: Philippines 2008                            Scotland 2008                           Philippines 2010 Contact Us			Legacy	Monday 31st October 2011
			Another mild autumn day, which is just as well because we're still waiting for the leaking valves & joints on one of the living room radiators to be repaired, so the central  heating's had to be turned off for the last week.  From the shock of finding a week ago that I was heavier than I've ever before, that I was actually overweight, I've lost 2kg in a week and aim to lose another 8kg.  My plans have been set back slightly by on Saturday slightly straining a muscle in the back of my lower left leg which has impeded early morning jogging. Musically I've been relatively productive of late.  The song "Must Be The Seat" was written, arranged, recorded, mixed and published online all within the space of October 2011.  There has also been movement on "No Windows", written a year ago, delayed due to the reluctance of Nojit to record vocals but now entering the mixing stage.  Both songs feature challenging melody lines.  Both explore aspects of sexual attration which were questionable if not taboo during my childhood, and both do so with slightly unusual but rhythmically infectious & melodically appealing music, the adjectives used here reflecting my opinion at least.  Together with the recently recorded "Erosion", I hope that the finished versions of these songs will enter my personal 'A' list of songs I'm most proud of having produced such as "My Name Is Ana", "Glass Bubble Home", "Eastward from Krakatoa (Parahyangan)", "We Used To Fly (Don't Mention Its Name)", "Hesitate" & "Where Brick Fields Lay".  Recency is an effect of which songs tend to be uppermost in my thoughts.  What of "The Lines Are Down" and "Krog"?  What of "Retreat", "Clocks, Cobwebs & Chalk"?  What of "In Search of Cassandra, Princess of Troy" and "January 13th"?  "What of "Neighbourhood Watch", "Another Mad Message", "And You'll Be Like Clementine" and "Recognise?"?  and actually what of more recent songs like "Daddy's Girl Has Fallen Down", "Miss Japan?", "Victoria"?  I feel an unnecessary sense of obligation for completeness when making lists!  I suppose I'm scared of losing something valuable.  Perhaps I'm stocktaking.  In the overall scheme of things, how much does it matter though?  On some level I suppose I'm thinking of my legacy.  Further reflection makes me realise that my legacy is going to be pretty minimal.  Does a legacy matter and if so, why? We are born.  We live.  We die.  Before & after are mysteries.  ("Heaven, hell, reincarnate.  Some say you just terminate - and they might all be wrong."  [Reflections 1982]).  Life is a process of learning and being shaped, of interacting with others, with our environment, of ensuring survival as long as is possible and desirable, of procreating.  Maybe the desire to be remembered is part of our natural need for attention.  Why should we wish to receive attention after such a time as we need it (i.e. when we're dead)?  Perhaps it's about using anticipated future appreciation to make ourselves feel valued &/or significant in the present?  Maybe it's to compensate for ongoing feelings of inadequacy?  Once we're gone, (it would appear that) we no longer have any control or influence over any legacy that is left behind.  What memories of us that remain are the property of those who remember us or claim to, to use for their own ends.  There are a few people around the world who have heard my songs.  A small number of those people actually keep and treasure those recordings but with time whatever significance fades, just as I rarely if ever listen to the songs which were so important to me years ago, unless prompted to do so in some way.  There will be nothing to prompt renewed revisiting of my stuff.  Its value can mostly be to my own ears while I remain able and inclined to hear it.
			An Alternative History of Hartlepool United Football Club (This entry was originally made on the Vital Hartlepool supporters' website)	Saturday 4th June 2011
			Hartlepool United has its own glamorous history of course, although it's not always as well publicised as other clubs'.  * Our football ground was of course bombed by the Germans in the First World War and Rudolph Hess was sent to England on behalf of the Third Reich to apologise but unfortunately took a wrong turning and ended up in Scotland (doubtless attracted by the extremely attractive scenery & George's friendly ancestors).  * We also accidentally hung a monkey before it was clear that he was in fact our mascot but we made amends by electing him mayor of the town where he kept his promise to give free bananas to all schoolchildren.  * We have proven our popularity with other football league clubs by achieving the honour of having been re-elected to the football league more times than anyone else.  * We beat Darlo 3-0 away during a rather nice unbeaten run. I was in Reno at the time because I couldn't get a ticket to the match, and accidentally ended up getting married. Ah well. That's life. Eifion Williams' 2nd goal was rather spectacular. You really should see it - it was a whopper!  * The last time we played Manchester United we won 6-0, gaining revenge for a narrow defeat to the Busby Babies a few decades beforehand.  * Bob Newton played for us. Twice. That's not 2 games, that's 2 separate spells. 3 if you count an interruption by a period of incarceration. My schoolmate Ian Leigh (who played in goal for Bournemouth) told me a few tales about his encounters with 'Big Bad' Bob. (He didn't say much about the time when he played in goal under Harry Redknapp and knocked Man Utd out of the cup 2-0 though. I think he was more impressed with Mr Newton.)  * We used to have a fanzine called 'Monkey Business'. It was jolly nice. I wrote for it once or twice under the penname 'EddTheDuck' so that nobody would know it was me but would realise that I'm a pretty cool dude!  * We've got an unofficial anthem called 'Victoria!' which hardly anybody likes.  * We are Hartlepool. I said we are Hartlepool.  * My wife had her photo taken with Ritchie Humphreys. They're twins apart from being born a year apart (and to different parents in different countries).  * The club's name "United" celebrates the union of 2 towns, one called Hartlepool, the other called Hartlepool too (though it used to have 'West' in front of it).  * Ritchie Humphreys. Player of the century.  * Brian Clough's first management job was with us. It was all downhill after that.  * Billy Ayre gave me free tickets to get in. Lots of times. What a hero!  * Vital Hartlepool is a jolly nice website.  * We like to sing a song called "Two Little Boys". I know all the words except that mine are different from the ones everyone else sings. I don't understand how everyone else has got them wrong but never mind.  * We had a centenary year recently which coincidentally took place 100 years after the club was founded.  * We've got a wall.  * We help out other football clubs*** who are less well off (e.g. Middlesbrough 25 years ago) and more recently Billingham Town. [*** except if they're called Darlington]  * Fred Westgarth was our manager for quite a long time.  * The quickest ever goal in the football league was scored against us (timed at 0.45 seconds) and in the same game the oldest goalkeeper in the history of the world played against us, aged 103 years.  * On the subject of disasters, we've had a few of those ourselves - though we try to restrict those to scorelines. We've tried so hard that we've had countless embarrassing scorelines. But we keep coming back and we never say die here at Hartlepool.  * We never did find out who put sugar in our tea.  And the list could go on even further ..........
			How did you get into supporting Hartlepool United? (This entry was originally made on the Vital Hartlepool supporters' website)	Sunday 8th May 2011
			In middle school in Southampton when I was aged about 10 years old, a friend and I started to follow the results of the teams at the bottom of the then Division Four who, in keeping with their league positions, seemed to be losing all the time. He picked up on Torquay while I choose Hartlepool. Never one to follow the crowd, I felt disinclined from following the Saints or the successful teams of the time such as Leeds, Liverpool & Arsenal. It took me quite some time to actually establish where on Earth Hartlepool actually was (and still is, apparently).  A few years later, when I was old enough to start thinking of travelling around by myself, and noticing that Pools were due to play at Bournemouth, a mere 20 miles away, I decided to go and see the team associated with the name I'd been following on the TV results service for years. I witnessed, true to form, a 2-0 defeat for the team in blue and yellow but that did nothing to quell my ardour.  By pure coincidence, a few months after that, an uncle got a job at a hospital in Hartlepool and moved there with his family. I decided that it was time to visit that neglected branch of my family & invited myself up to stay with them for a couple of home games scheduled 4 or 5 days apart. As I waited for the turnstiles to open for the first, a passing Darlo supporter on his way to the visiting enclosure kindly spat a generous quantity of whatever slime it is that lubricates their unseemly mouths onto my not completely fashionable trench coat (which had not been doing a particularly good job of insulating me against the fresh winter sea breeze anyway) but this was more than made up for by the result, a 2-1 victory, and the opportunity to construct an impressive and almost never-ending sentence to describe the experience.  It was a slightly different experience a few days later as some men in red & green stripes from South West Wales spoiled my New Year's Eve by thrashing us 4-0. (While the return fixture on April Fool's Day proved to be doubly embarassing, the next home game saw us knock Crystal Palace out of the F.A.Cup - but I was sadly long gone and didn't get the chance to see that.)  If my loyalty wasn't already sealed, my next encounter with the team certainly did the trick for an impressionable teenager. The occasion was less than promising - an end of season fixture away at high-flying Aldershot with Pools almost &/or already condemned to the necessity of yet another re-election application. It so happened that Aldershot's ground featured (and maybe still does) a walkway inside the turnstyles which was used by both home fans, away fans and players - although I didn't realise this until I saw Billy Ayre walking towards me. He didn't realise either that we had already paid to get in because he promptly started handing out complimentary tickets to us. Bob Newton then appeared and locked me in something of a bear hug for a photograph to commemorate the day. After the match, I remember Bob Newton, standing with Wayne Goldthorpe, telling us that he was listening out for news on the radio of whether his "mate" Bob Latchford of Everton had managed to score his 30th goal of the season to win a prize offered by a national newspaper.  Complimentary tickets from Ayre & Newton became a regular feature of the matches close enough to Southampton for me to attend. Once I hitchhiked up to Scunthorpe for an evening match, got a complimentary ticket from Billy Ayre, left my backpack in the Scunthorpe club office (thanks Scunthorpe!), witnessed a 3-1 victory (YES!!!), camped overnight in my tent in a Scunthorpe park then hitchhiked home the following day. The only things I paid for were my food & the match programme. Those were the days!  I shall always be grateful to big bad Bob Newton & the late great Billy Ayre for going out of their way to hand out complimentary tickets and taking the time to talk to me as a young lad.  How many of my Saints supporting peers at school could say that their team's centre forward had given them a complimentary ticket to get into a match, then waved to them in the stand as he was just about to kick off the match in which he was to score the only (and thus winning) goal? I could say that!  pool.vitalfootball.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=9953&posts=14#M73486#ixzz1LkyrAYZc
			Shards & Fragments?	Sunday 17th January 2010
			Have just finished reading Michael Palin's 1980-88 diaries - a coherent, personal, personable, engaging & eye-opening account.  Am conscious how my own sporadic records of my life no longer show much of a sense of continuity, if they ever did. Work mixes periods of increasing frenzy with the tantalising promise of redevelopments.  At home, the sense of "Hesitate" is still around.  There is movement but it somehow feels a bit directionless and fragmented. Together with Nojit, I'm about 14 months into the transition from North London flat-dweller to East of London house owner.  I amaze myself with the increasing population of fitted wall-cupboards starting several months ago in the kitchen, but now also in each of the 3 toilets & the strange room, as Nojit has labelled our garage conversion, because of the slightly unusual & not totally co-ordinated decor we contrived for it.  We've done quite a lot of work in this period which has been something of an epiphany for me.  Dare I now call myself an ex-DIY phobic? "Forbidden" is on the back-burner with the arrangements of "Soak Through" (which until a couple of days ago had the working title of "Milee's Song") being the foreground musical project of the moment.  It's much simpler, almost pop-song like & commercial, than most of my more recent music - though quite how I label "Hesitate", I'm not sure.  It's good to surprise myself a bit, I suppose.
			And so this is Christmas, and what have you done?	Monday 4th January 2010
			A busy and varied Winterval, as the politically correct in Birmingham of a few years ago renamed the end of year & new year period.  Most recently assembling & mounting mirror cabinets & assorted other bathroom furniture, as well as assembling bits & pieces of music (including a bit of international collaboration with Malaysian Milee today).  The winter period began with the first Bad Tune Men reunion for about 15 years, more than 20 years since the the original split.  A brand new fairly terrible song to mark Mr Creepy's 50th birthday ("Not Dead Yet") opened the set, followed by "Krog" and "The Lines Are Down" and a 70s/80s punk/new wave selection.  Playing culminated with Ratty playing keyboards & me playing bass on "Mother of the Free", before dashing off to drive round the M25 & pick up Nojit after her first work christmas party, avoiding the worst of the snow.  A 10 minute car journey home from Romford extended to 3 hours through not missing the worst of the snow.  A flying visit to see the old folks at home.  A bicycle repair stand.  Quiet at work but still lots to do.  Another year over, a new one just begun.  Ongoing online conversations with Syd, newly discovered Mythily & as mentioned previously Milee.  A walk with Nojit through the ice and expansive mud and puddles with pond pretensions of Epping Forest north of Chingford.  Reading Michael Palin's 1980s diaries. And so into a new year in an atmosphere of apprehension.  Anticipation is an alternative which I haven't yet managed to key into.  My hopes remain clustered around writing & recording songs, with a resurgence expected in electric guitar parts.  "Artekulation" is a possible umbrella title if I go ahead and revamp some Arteks songs - I've had ideas about "The Empties" and more recently "All Change" but that's not exactly an album and I'm not sure how much further I want to pursue that vein. The arrangements for "Forbidden" remain elusive.  If I can get that right, maybe I could even revisit "Dark Shine".  I often feel I'm missing a clear vision of the way forwards.  Even newer songs, like "Forbidden", are in a way looking backwards.  To echo "We used to fly", maybe the past is the present's future. Returning to the "Simply the best" them of December, I do feel that (flawed as my stuff always is), I've produced some of my best music in the last few  years from the grating discords of "Glass Bubble Home" & "We Used To Fly (Don't Mention Its Name)" to the harmonic photo albums of "My Name is Ana" and "Eastward from Krakatoa (Parahyangan)". So what next?
			Simply the best	Wednesday 9th December 2009
			From time to time I am asked what I consider to be the best song I've ever written.  The answer to this question is easy although on reflection it's actually quite hard.  It depends what mood I'm in and it depends on what the criteria I have in my mind at the time for what "best" means.  I'm not sure that I'm even in the mood to try and define what those criteria are particularly accurately (if at all) right now.  "Power" comes to mind as one criterion, but even that can have many different aspects.  There's the volume of the music, the emotional resonance of the words or of the music or of both, and sometimes there's a rating in kilowatts.  Satisfaction is another criterion - equating to I suppose how much of a sense of pride I feel for having created a particular song.  And there are other more esoteric criteria...... do I mean esoteric or verbally elusive?  or both?  Anyway, my answers are different at different times of my life and vary according to the criteria.  In terms of musical power, "Glass Bubble Home" is certainly up there.  I'm also pleased with its musical construction combining aspects of simplicity with the suspense of alternating discords (in the verses) and some apsects of unpredictability (e.g. the time signature changes in the guitar solo particularly) - and with a rousing chorus and final catchline.  I remember having doubts about the length of the guitar solo when I was putting the song together but now I am completely certain that it's exactly the right length.  In fact I'd probably rate its guitar solo as one of my best ever.  (The guitar solo in the sequel song "We used to fly (don't mention its name)" is another I'm rather proud of - and actually that's another song I find myself wanting to listen to repeatedly.).  The catchline starkly and pointedly singsongs the consequences of fossil fuel dependency: "your life and my life are swept aside". The other song I'd immediately put "up there" alongside GBH at the moment qualifies in the more esoteric criteria category: "Eastward from Krakatoa (Parahyangan)".  The stepped crescendo chord progression of the verses.....  The faithful autobiographical narration of a simple, all-too-brief love story in complex and unusual circumstances.....  The pain of separation drawn out tortuously by a train seemingly indecisive about facilitating a final departure........ "Once more the train jerks forwards a few metres and then halts.  I watch you on the platform through the window, mute in pain."
			Madness, Politics and Insomnia	Monday 19th October 2009
			Buffeted have I been by the madness of others, including that of those supposed to support me.  Madness comes, like many things, in a variety of different degrees but often with a distinctly familiar flavour.  There's something to do with the challenging of or collapse of boundaries.  Different cultures set boundaries in different places which is maybe why things in different cultures can seem a bit mad.  The challenging of boundaries can come through intensity of pressures from multiple different directions.  Oh for a simple life.  Did I resign my right to that though when I signed up to a better paid job?  Managing people (1 or 2 of whom can be pretty challenging) at the same time as being managed, trying to respond to the increasingly vociferous demands of multiple masters - is this not a recipe for boundaries being challenged?  Add to this the possibilities of family...... Sometimes this sort of stuff seems to be labelled as politics.  Different people with different ways of thinking espousing their own agendas, manouevering in more or less honest and open manners.  It's perhaps no wonder that many people reach out in such circumstances to supposedly absolute truths which in fact tend to serve instead as sticks for the agendas of those who purport to interpret them most faithfully. I cannot resolve the madness of others.  Nevertheless I am left to find ways to resolve the trouble state of mind their madness engenders in me.  Thus am I found typing this blog entry in the early hours of the morning, trying to make sense of it all on a higher level, seeking by some sort of verbal expression to release some of the pressure on my temples. The "Miss Japan?" video which I completed last week encapsulates a madness I allowed myself to be drawn into 6 years ago.  Others have complained that it's too headache-inducing to watch, yet for me it remains strangely enticing, perhaps because of the familiarity, the depth of my personal involvement. Work on "Forbidden" feels unnecessarily slow.  Perhaps I'm just not in the best frame of mind to take it forwards right now.  Perhaps though it needs a bit of time to brew.
			Stepney Green	Sunday 27th September 2009
			By 8am I have left Stepney Green.  The morning air is gradually becoming warmer by the minute but cooler by the day.  The day eventually sees some work on "Harlow's Monkey" who has been sitting a little bereft for several months now.  I am not on a roll  Still, the website has been somewhat improved in the last week or so. I'm not convinced that I am the world's greatest blogger.
			Into Net	25 April 2008
			I am a rabbit, sitting in the road and once again I invite you to turn your headlights on me and once again you take my life away just for a few more moments just for a few more moments just for a few more moments and how did all those years slip past?
			Getting Autobiographical  (This entry was originally made on a 'reunion'-type website)	February 2008
			The dilemma: how to use this space? For nostalgia? For a progress report? To simply inform with an outline of present circumstances? To subliminally (or liminally) convey & reinforce values held, or purported to be held? To boast? To maintain, reignite or repair old friendships/relationships? As a confessional? For revenge? As catharsis or some other aspect of therapy? To provide a record of existence before the worms are fed or a final contribution to global warming is made? Or maybe a bit of each and more....... Before the essay, a contextually appropriate quotation from Roger Waters:     “There is no pain you are receding, a distant ship smoke on the horizon.      You are only coming through in waves. Your lips move but I can't hear what you're saying.      When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse out of the corner of my eye.      I turned to look but it was gone. I cannot put my finger on it now.      The child is grown. The dream is gone. And I have become comfortably numb.” I have been privileged to lead several lives within one. The earlier ones were not the happiest. Bitterne Park Middle School I was the awkward, musical, and by chance most academically intelligent kid in the school. Triumphs included playing a selection of Wombles songs to a mostly rapt school assembly as a farewell for Mr Sims, the music teacher. My most notable failure was, as a 10 year old, not letting the newly arrived Rebecca know about my major crush on her. King Edward VI School Highlights included landing & milking the plum role of Squire Blackheart in the school play “The Thwarting of Baron Bolligrew”, co-writing & performing guitar & vocals songs with Danny Hughes, twice winning the poetry prize, and that left-foot volley at the Sports Centre, 1 of my 4 goals for the ‘B’ football team in an 8-0 win against (I think) Itchen College. Despite these, for several years afterwards, I had occasional nightmares about being compelled to return to the school for another year. 18th Southampton Company of the Boys’ Brigade By contrast, in the BB I generally had great fun. Highlights included performing “Streets of Eastleigh” and “Mark White & the Seven Wharves”, the football team which I ended up captaining (which included Ian Leigh, of Bournemouth v Man Utd 1984 fame), running the subbuteo league, surprising myself & spectators by winning the Southampton-wide cross country race, & the camps with all the singing. Bitterne Park Backpackers The purpose of going backpacking is to help you appreciate not going backpacking, wisdom shared with a variety of co-conspirators around Hampshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, Cornwall & South Wales. Temple, the Arteks & the Marmite Babies Mike Lever remembered the Wombles experience & recruited me as keyboardist for his heavy rock band, Temple, even though I didn’t know what heavy rock was. After Paul Weller helped me realise that I was in fact a punk rocker, I formed the Arteks. Dave Thompson, Mark Atherton & I made 2 demo tapes, were interviewed on Radio Solent, & often gigged together with the Young Soliciters. For a few months, I rehearsed with Mike ‘Turning Japanese’ Hedges as the Marmite Babies & made the obligatory bedroom demo tape with an improvised percussion section & two cassette recorders. Supporting Hartlepool United From Bournemouth and that great day in Aldershot with ‘Taz’ Taylor & Keith Craig in April 1979 where the late great Billy Ayre gave us free tickets & I was photographed with flawed hero Bob Newton, through many dire years until the Cyril Knowles & Jo Jo Allon triumphs of the early 1990s, to the present Ritchie Humphreys ‘player of the century’ days (including the Millenium Stadium in Cardiff in 2005), occasionally contributing to the ‘Monkey Business’ fanzine as Edd the Duck. Southampton General Hospital, The National Hospital & St Mary’s Hospital In reality 3 separate but linked lives. Much valued support from Paul, Chris & Derek amongst others at Southampton General; at the National, recruiting singing partners in the forms of Thea & the stunningly gorgeous but amazingly approachable ‘Tufty’ Karen, a “Letter to America” to Esther, playing a pregnant nurse in front of a less than amused consultant neurologist; and following a crush to St Mary’s….. Bad Tune Men Journeyed to London in search of rare, like-minded musical collaborators & founded BTM together with Billy Forbes, a Scots squatter with an unintelligible Dundee accent & a similarly eloquent bass guitar, and Blob, the greatest drummer I’ve ever encountered. Billy left in circumstances which can best be described as ‘death’, and after some time & a demo tape Blob & I recruited Ratty, the bass player with the coolest credentials Crawley has ever conceived & Mr Creepy, the semi-demented horse-racing guitarist. 2 vinyl records were issued, the latter, the ’Jail Head Rack’ EP, being acclaimed both nationally (e.g. Melody Maker & Sounds) & internationally (on a German website) while soaring to the top of the Nonchalant Records sales charts. Stages were shared with Marc Riley (more recently of BBC Radio fame) & his Creepers, the phenomenon known as the Cardiacs, and Stump, amongst others. Irreconcilable musical differences kept the band together for 3-4 years. Lynne C Personal mentor, photographic artist, sculptor, unofficial & often unappreciated co-agent & co-manager for Bad Tune Men, careers advisor & girlfriend. City University Triumphs included performing the Wessex Carol, co-founding & leading the Speech Therapy Society, writing & performing the lecture scene in “The Wizard of %*&”!” and emerging with a reasonable degree years after my academic disaster at King Edward’s. Camden & Islington Having previously thought I’d learned to be a therapist, I arrived in Camden & Islington & started learning how to be a therapist. Support came in many different forms from (amongst others) Lena, Rob, Kim A, Keena, Lynne S, Nicki G, & Charlotte. My major achievement was in getting things moving a little with bilingualism. Centre for International Child Health Chris, do you think anyone really thought I knew what I was doing there? The London SIG Bilingualism & the National SIG Bilingualism Many happy memories & a real sense of getting things to happen with Aparna, Mandy, Mita, Samira, Cesca, Rita, Lina, Yasmin, Seema, Anshoo, Nisha, Amita & many others in London. Never have committee meetings been such fun. Great study days, outings & meals too! It’s also surely unusual to look forward to travelling to Birmingham but that’s what I did for the National SIG with Deidre, Tina, Sheila, Nasreen & Amita again. International Linguist & Traveller Achievements in this sphere include learning to speak several languages effluently, including Bengali, Thai, Indonesian, & French, with a smattering of Turkish, Greek, Hungarian, Hindi, Ilonggo, Tagalog, Slovenian & Japanese. Amazing experiences in Bangladesh (RIP Imran), Indonesia (hi to the Bandung 5), Malaysia (including the Rajendra family & gorjes Jeswin) & latterly the Philippines. Taoism & Shiatsu The guidance of Shivani, a Hindu, helped me find the Way I was looking for. Shiatsu has helped me to apply Taoist principles in a wide variety of ways which I hesitate to detail here for fear of sounding completely fatuous. The shiatsu residentials at Gaunt House in Dorset were uplifting experiences. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have been tutored by (amongst others) Paul Lundberg , Cliff Andrews, Nick Pole, Dinah John & Michael Rose, although Paul certainly didn’t always make it exactly easy. Psychotherapy groups I can never sufficiently thank Derek, the man who over the years has positively influenced my life more than any other & more than anyone else could understand. Powerful connections were also achieved with many other group members with whom life changing transformations were subtly made. The Cedar Centre Helen is one of the most well-adjusted, well-organised, well-focused, talented, hilarious, energetic & giving people in community development & I consider myself fortunate to have been able to tag onto just a few of the multitude of at the same time fun, educational & developmental events organised by her Cedar Centre. My present employment Here is a chapter which is still being written & the plot-line currently features a rollercoaster of success, suspense & uncertainty. It would be a real shame if politics destroyed the great team & infrastructure we’ve created, but who knows? #brit The most fun & supportive online international community I could wish to have been involved with. Thanks particularly to Mike24 for facilitating this. The Missus Who could have imagined that the child described above would find himself getting married in the USA to an incredibly beautiful, playful, affectionate international video star? The Separation Circle - continues. If you want to get in touch with me, please don’t hesitate to drop by & visit on one of my pig farms in the Outer Hebrides.
			So many places to write - but what to write and who will read it?	11 February 2008
			Monday at work.  Interviews.  Interview summaries.  Telling staff to cancel all their appointments because there's no water.  Getting together the figures which the commissioners should have had already but there was some breakdown in communication.  Putting off a different yet supposedly urgent request for data - a request which will doubtless soon revisit us.  Sounding out the intentions of the stronger interview candidates by phone.  Preparing for tomorrow morning's parents' group session. It was foggy this morning.  Maybe that's where all the water went........ This evening, no visit to the gym because it's the time of month to not go for Nojit.  Helping her take the first steps towards filling out a job application form - a painful and frustrating challenge for her.  Eastenders. No time for making music.  I listened to some of my songs in the car today.  It's now over a year since I recorded the wonderful "My Name Is Ana" and "Miss Japan?" Yesterday we went for a 5 mile walk in & around Cuffley, which is effectively a commuter village.  Photos helped to improve the mood after the great sulk of the forgotten ketchup.  I put up a new retractable clothes line on the roof terrace after we got home.  The previous one was, without consultation or persmission, disposed of by next-door's builders.  Admittedly, it had needed to come down as part of their refurbishment of the adjoining wall, but that didn't mean it had to be thrown away. Hopefully I'll finally get to go to Scotland with Nojit in mid-March.  We bought some warm (and rather expensive) rainwear suitable for hill-walking on Saturday. So where is the poetry?  Where are the songs?  Do they live in a separate compartment of my life, hidden in a hard-to-access basement beneath a stubborn trap-door?  Do they live?  Have they suffocated?  When shall I make the time to visit them and wean them upwards towards the light of day?
			Imran	11 February 2008
			Imran is dead.  He died about a month ago now.  I haven't really spoken about it much to anyone.  What shall I say?  Imran, you were there for me and helped me out when nobody else could.  I relied on you and trusted you and you supported me without question, even though many might rightly have suggested that I perhaps didn't deserve it.  I remember your mischievous and gentle sense of humour.  I also remember how you quietly and sensitively managed to wade between the many competing and frequently not particularly virtuous agendas of those around you, while not complaining about the difficulties of your own personal circumstances.  You were a rock.  Thank you.
			Thursdays	Thursday 13 December 2007
			I once wrote a song whose chorus started "Thursday follows Wednesday".   I like my songs to be educational.  The next line was "then you get the next".  Of course, it really should have been 'Friday' but unfortunately that didn't rhyme with 'vexed'.  Fortunately 'Saturday' didn't rhyme with 'vexed' either, otherwise there would have been a strong temptation to deviate from the strictly orthodox accuracy of diurnal chronology. Today is in fact Thursday.  Tomorrow will indeed be the next.  However I would currently dispute the 3rd line's assertion that "Every day's the same day" because Tuesdays are quite frequently not completely identical with Sundays, for example, particularly around the time of 2.30pm.  Nevertheless the song employed that line in fact as a figurative device followed by "They really get you vexed".  I am now starting to wonder whether in fact 'vexed' was put in to rhyme with 'next', rather than the other way around.  Maybe I should have stuck with 'Friday' at the end of the 2nd line, and then I could have had a 4th line such as "I did it my way" or "I'm looking forward to pie day", though this might have required a considerable amount of confabulated explanation later on.  Writing songs is jolly hard, especially when you do it in the yard, or if you're in prison and under guard, or when you're reading a birthday card.  You see, I'm a natural!
			BAD TUNE MEN YEA YEA YEA BLAH BLAH BLAH WOB WOB WOB NIK NIK NIK PORGONSHK PORGONSHK PORGONSHK	Thursday 13 December 2007
			I had a dream once.  There were three of those big round things and they all got up on their shoulders and told me to do the swamp. And then all the queens of places with names that begin with 'A' climbed up the stairs and cried and said 'now is not the time, now is not the time, now is not the time' until a man with one leg and no head told them to shut up. It was Tuesday, I think.  Fortunately I then woke up and the man with one leg and no head said "I think it's going to be OK" as he poured soup mixed with custard down his neck.  If you have enjoyed this supernatural dream, then you probably won't want to go to this website:  http://www.separationcircle.com/btm.html where you can learn more about things that have happened elsewhere very loudly.  If you like it, please send me some money & I'll do some more.  If you don't like it, please send me some money & I'll stop, maybe.
			Time	Saturday 1 December 2007
			"Time.  I think we're running out of time."  So ran the first line of a song called 'The Cracker Dance' by a songwriter called John Cook whom I used to know about 20 years ago.  I also used to know a songwriter called John Barnett-Hunt but he didn't, to my knowledge, write a song with the same opening line. Are we running out of time?  Of course we are.  Whether time itself is running out is another matter, but the quantity of it which we can claim to be in some way ours is doubtlessly lessening by the year, month, week, day, second etc etc. And perception of time changes.  As we get older, it seems to go faster.  Presumably this relates to some form of digital processing aspect of cognition where, as brain cells gradually die off (from the age of about 20, I read somewhere, though I suspect it may start earlier) the rate at which our brains process information slows so that, while time itself (probably) continues to progress at a constant rate, it SEEMS to be moving more quickly. So, not only is the amount of time we have left to us decreasing, but the rate at which it decreases appears to be increasing.  This would suggest that in the moments immediately preceding death, everything would appear to be moving incredibly quickly.  Reports from those who have had near-death experiences however seem to contradict this.  Maybe our remaining cognitive capacity recognises the risk to its very existence and puts all its energies into a bit of a digital processing spurt. Thought I had something more to say?
			Pain & Lies Viewed from a Spoilt Society	18 November 2007
			Across the continents I see deception once again.  Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive.  Not just the first time either. I see her pain.  I see her trying to anaesthetise herself & slowly killing herself in her strangely subsidised surroundings, hiding that she's subsiding, or trying to hide, at least.  Yet I see a familiar pattern.  Reverberations from my past resonate. This time, however, I am not alone.  I can consult and we can choose how much to reach out, whether to reach out, across the continents from my spoilt society to the web of pain and lies, where maybe another net awaits the well-intentioned but sadly deluded. Miss Japan?
			Invalid subject line - you cannot leave the subject blank	10 September 2007
			Today I was involved in the induction of new staff at work.  That went OK.  It's usually enjoyable to work with new & enthusiastic people.  I got in early & left late & on the way home the traffic was rather stodgy. There are so many things I'd like to write about, but so many distractions and the disorganisation of my thoughts usually impede my even starting.  But why write anyway?  To/for whom?  Maybe writing is part of the process of organising my thoughts and helping to make them coherent for myself. I'd like to write more songs.  In January this year I wrote & recorded a really strong song called "My name is Ana", proving to myself that I still have it in me.  The situation (like a much earlier song "Retreat") described a moment of inspiration, illumination, like that captured in my Mauritius 'streamers' photo which features prominently on the Separation Circle website.  So what next? I'd like to record Nojit's beautiful voice singing one (or more) of my songs.  Discipline (or lack of it) is an issue & obstacle for both of us in getting this done. We shall see.
			Verily 'tis a rollercoaster	8 September 2007
			Slow painful and uneventful climbing, then rapid ups & downs and before you know it, you're slowing down & it's time to get off.  Thus is life. People are crazy.  We like to think we're making sense but we are often unclear with ourselves, let alone with others, or we play games, we tell half-truths or downright lies, we get emotional, we get irrational and it's bewildering.  We despair.  We hope.  Sometimes religions can play a useful role in stabilising us.  Sometimes those same religions play an incredibly destructive & destabilising role. Truth is not absolute.  Fish are not always smelly. The clock ticks.
			Free Shoes for All 3 Legged Penguins	18 August 2007
			Languages What amazing phenomena they are! They help us believe that we can communicate with each other. Communication, like so many things, is of course, not absolute, although, like with so many things, many of us like to believe that it is (absolute). Languages are closely linked to cultures and their accompanying values, beliefs and perceptions. It never fails to amaze me how differently people, even within (supposedly) the same cultural group, perceive and view the world. (Supposedly, because homogeneity, in terms of culture, is probably also never absolute - although maybe I'm veering towards contradictions in terms here.) Love What is love? I remember in the 1980s hearing a song called 'What is Love?' and I thought that it might prove to be an interesting exploration of what the word, the concept, really means. Closer inspection demonstrated that this was not in fact the case. It's amazing though how, in many western cultures, the notion of "love" is used to justify so much (like the concept of God in many others) yet we don't really understand what we really mean. It can be so easy to say "I love you" - they can just trip off the tongue - when what we really mean is something like "I have a strong hormone-based reaction to your presence", or "I want to have sex with you" or "I need to be held" - a very self-orientated feeling, which is not particularly altruistic. I'm not saying that it's wrong, but just one of many different things which the word "love" can refer to. Others have written about this at greater length and with greater eloquence than I can manage - yet in popular western culture, it seems that the romantic and essentially self-serving concept of love predominates - a delusional belief that the other person will somehow solve all my problems without any effort involved on my part. It's a start, but not a particularly strong starting point of itself. Distractions Nojit is very good at providing these. I'm still learning about her ways of viewing the world. It's easy to believe that the ways in which we overlap make up the entirety of how she thinks and sees things, but I suspect that there is much more yet to discover. She laughs and jokes a lot. We have a lot of fun together. There are times when things are quieter, when one of us talks about something more important, deeper, usually something from the past, and the other listens. Sex THIS BIT HAS BEEN CENSORED. No-one's Listening In my late teenage years, I wrote a brief poem (which was meant to become a song and never did) called "No-one's listening". It was even published in an extremely obscure fanzine (which probably folded after 2-3 issues, as so many of them did in the late 1970s & early 1980s). Even in the knowledge that no-one's listening, there still remains the hope of being heard, so we keep talking. Or not.
			Hopes, Expectations & Roles	19 April 2007
			Science. Objectivity. Truth. These things were valued in my education and have continued to be valued throughout my working life.  I value them still, yet it seems that they can only tell part of the story in my limited but slowly expanding understanding of life, the universe and everything. The human mind perceives and interprets. Reality is filtered, diluted &/or coloured. On the output side, our actions surely experience similar modifications: (part of) the space between theory & practice. In my experience, I have seen the powerful effects of hopes & expectations.  Both relate to the cycle of success.  If we achieve targets, we learn to expect success.  If we consistently fail to achieve targets, we learn to expect failure - and having had our hopes raised, we experience disappointment.  Success breeds success.  If we consistently succeed, we aim for further & higher achievement.  If we consistenly fail, our rate of attempting to succeed slows & may stop completely.  It's vital therefore that targets are realistic, achievable, and setting them at the right level takes practice &/or expert guidance.  All of this relates closely to fairly basic psychological theories of behavioural learning. Expectations develop into roles.  We expect ourselves & others to behave/perform in certain ways and act in ways to ensure that our expectations are met.  Roles often become integrated into our sense of identity, our basic idea of who we are, and become fixed. In these ways, early childhood experiences in particular are incredibly powerful in shaping our personalities. Early successes or failures shape our likely behaviour patterns, our likely roles and our personalities.
			I'm a believer	18 April 2007
			There are of course no guarantees in life.  If you hold out for what you truly want and refuse to accept second-best, maybe you will have to settle for nothing at all.  Maybe what you truly want doesn't really exist.  Maybe you're just too fussy. But maybe, just maybe, you will eventually find what you really want.  And maybe, just maybe, it will turn out to be better than you ever dared to hope for.  And if it does, then you'll be in the same position that I'm in now. She is beautiful in exactly the ways I want.  She ticks all my boxes.  Where do I begin?  How can I hope to capture in words how amazing she is?  I can hardly believe it myself - yet here she is.  And she is going to marry me in just over 3 weeks' time.  She wants to be mine.  And I want to be hers. Maybe this feeling will not last forever.  Who knows?  I think both of us are going to try hard to maintain and nurture it though - so maybe, just maybe, if it's possible, it will actually get even better.  Time, as it usually does, will tell. I don't know whether there is a Goddess or a God.  I don't know whom to thank for my good fortune.  What I do know though, is that I love Nojit! :)
			Flying the Eagle's Nest    (On leaving a particular web forum)	9 April 2007
			It's not anybody's fault. I guess I too can be as guilty of being self-absorbed, shallow & narcissistic as ......... well, what does the mirror say? What do the journals say? I believe that I am fortunate in that I have been given an opportunity to depart through an exit door which seems to lead to a better, happier place, where dreams are shared & lived out, rather than worn as placards & badges. Shall I miss this place? It's difficult to see why. This has been a waiting room. Isn't 'purgatory' the name for another famous waiting room where cries go largely unanswered? If there truly is a Goddess, then I give her my humble thanks. I have learned much. I hope she will be with me as, together with my soon-to-be-wife, I try to apply my learning. How can I describe her in terms which can be understood? She 'ticks all my boxes'. She inspires me. She gives me hope. And I have a feeling that maybe, just maybe, I do the same for her. I dare not wish for more, yet I constantly find more in her. My only complaint is that she kept me waiting for so long! Conversely, the wait has helped me to appreciate her all the more. Therefore, instead of complaining about the wait, I should perhaps be grateful for it, for its heightening of my appreciation of my good fortune. May we both flow with the Tao.
			And again, why?	Tuesday 6 March 2007
			What do I hope for by writing here? Am I looking for appreciation? understanding? recognition? love? a response? or a lack of response? Am I seeking to communicate? or to fail to communicate? Am I trying to prove something to others or to myself? Am I trying to offload something or merely to exercise my thought processes (and fingers)? Do I yet understand my place in this world, as little Ana seemed to understand her place when I encountered her nearly 3 years ago in the Philippines? Trees grow. Trees fall. The water flows. The water rises. The water falls. So be it.
			Hartlepool United 3 - 1 Walsall	Monday 12 February 2007
			I had thought that our 13 match unbeaten run would surely come to an end in one of the 2 next games against 2nd placed Swindon Town & 1st placed Walsall.  Undaunted I travelled first to Swindon 9 days ago to see Hartlepool United, the team I've supported since I was a child, outplay a strong Swindon side and win 1-0.  With Hartlepool in their 3rd strip of yellow and green, the Pools fans were singing "it's just like watching Brazil".  While that may be just a slight exaggeration, I admired the sentiment and felt proud to see this small town's team playing in such a classy fashion.  Inspired by this performance, I travelled 300 miles through rain, cold, sleet & darkness back to the town I hadn't visited for more than 15 years.  So much had changed.  The town which, like its football team so often in the past, had seemed to be crumbling and dying, has, like its team been rejuvenated.  A 3-masted sailing ship stood proudly in the harbour just across the road from the new retail park.  Clothed in several layers, from thermal underwear, a t-shirt, a thick shirt, a fleece and a fleeced coat, I still found the fierce icy wind penetrating at times.  But I didn't care.  I had come back to salute and support my team, which had conceded only 2 goals in the previous 13 games.  I was therefore shocked when, within 3 minutes of the start of the game, they were 1-0 down to a piece of Walsall opportunism.  The 300 or so Walsall supporters celebrated but were quickly drowned out by the home support of over 5,000.  Hartlepool proceeded to play some simply delightful football, working for each other as a team: running off the ball, turning one way and laying the ball off in the other direction to a team-mate, and keeping possession well as a team with some deft touches.  After the early blip, the defence were fortress-like, with Mickie Nelson at its heart commanding the air, ably supported in the centre by Ben Clark.  My hero, Richie Humphreys, was awesome as usual, with tireless powerful running, taking all the left-sided throw-ins and many of the corners.  His right-sided partner, captain Mickey Barron, who had prior to kick-off received an award for his more than 350 appearances for the club, completed the defensive quartet with aplomb.  In the centre of midfield, Tony Sweeney & Gary Liddle were singled out for particular praise after the match by manager Danny Wilson.  The two wide midfield players put in eye-catching performances; Andy Monkhouse on the left, and the lithe, swivelling James Brown on the right, both taking on, teasing and waltzing past Walsall defenders seemingly at will.  Up front, Richie Buffalo Barker put in a solid performance as did Eifion Williams, who showed agility with the ball that I hadn't seen in him before.  Amazingly half-time came with Walsall still ahead.  I found myself thinking that even if Hartlepool lost that day, I would still be so proud to have seen them played this way.  Soon after the beginning of the second half however, a Mickey Nelson powerfully headed a Richie Humphreys corner towards the top of the goal only for the Walsall goalkeeper to tip the ball over the bar.  The sequence then almost repeated; again Humphreys' corner was powerfully met by Nelson's head - but this time the Walsall keeper could not stop it.  1-1 and we were all dancing and celebrating.  For a short period after that, Walsall came to life, before the normal service of Hartlepool dominance resumed.  Time was running out when Walsall conceded a free-kick about 10 yards outside the centre of their penalty area.  3 Hartlepool players stood over the ball before 1 tapped it sideways to another who stopped it for Richie Humphreys to left-footedly thunderbolt it into the Walsall net.  A 2nd sensational goal!  With a handful of minutes remaining, I anticipated a spell of furious Walsall attacking with Hartlepool's backs to the wall.  Admittedly Walsall tried but they were met by a solid defence and Hartlepool moved forwards almost as much - and on one of these occasions, young substitute David Foley fed the ball through to Richie Barker who looked offside but put the ball into the net.  The assistant referee's flag stayed down and a goal was given.  3-1.  A bit of luck - but these things tend to even themselves out and we had been hard done by earlier on.  There was no way back for Walsall and the celebrations began.  I forgot the cold and danced and shouted, my voice failing at times.  What a game!  What a team!
			"My Name is Ana"	Thursday 1 February 2007
			Behind the hotel in a muddy side road is a row of frail embarrassed shacks held up by rope and fervent prayers. For all her 10 years she's lived here. Rain drumming down on and through the rusty corrugated iron rooves. Swift rivulets are guided into stripe-like gushing cascades down upon the land. And she goes, laughing with her baby brother And she throws her ragged clothes aside And she goes, laughing with her baby brother And she throws her ragged clothes aside and they splash through the puddles Dancing, naked in the rain. Dancing, naked in the rain. Dancing. The rain will be gone tomorrow. Dancing. This chance may not come again for some time. "My name is Ana" she answers the foreign stranger. "I don't want to speak English" she explains. The sky has been wrung out, her clothes been dried by another sun-baked day. She proffers polite excuses then bows down to familiar household chores. He climbs the stairs to his hotel room. She may forget him. He will remember her. And she knows, what is good and what is not. And she grows, here on the edge of Bacolod City. And she knows, her place in this world. As she grows, will she recall her happy childhood days of dancing? Dancing, naked in the rain. Dancing, naked in the rain. Dancing. This chance may not come again. Dancing. Come on, let's go dance in the rain - just for today. Just for today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring or take away?
			Selected memories of the impressionable......	Monday 22 January 2007
			In the bleary early morning of London's Victoria coach station, as a 19 year old, on my way home to Southampton on my way home from my first trip to Hartlepool, a semi-drunken stranger singing Queen's "We are the Champions" in the men's toilets before offering me the words of advice "You know what you've got to do? You've got to keep smiling." Even younger, as a 12 year old schoolboy, climbing the lower slopes of the mountain Cader Idris in North Wales, stumbling upon a deserted stone cottage, venturing inside and finding desks with papers and photographs of a life left behind..... a fading anonymous museum - I wrote about this in my song "Clocks, Cobwebs & Chalk" ( www.separationcircle.com/lg&e.html ) More recently, only about 2½ years ago, in Bacolod City, Philippines, returning soaked in the pouring rain to my hotel, and catching sight of a young girl and her baby brother from a humble shack in the muddy adjacent side-road, exuberantly dancing naked in the rain. For all of their poverty, at that time they seemed free of cares - and a long long way from my life in London. It is this latest scene which has inspired me to write my first song of 2007 & I'm working on the arrangements at the moment.
			Miss Japan?	Sunday 21 January 2007
			Behind a thick veneer of honour & sophistication, within a palace's façade, sometimes run corridors of darkness & intimidation & forced unspoken sacrifice. What lies within your walls? Skeletons refusing to stay in closets suffer retribution from the queen & her man. You showed me slit windows, echoed screams & an invitation, but so much remains unseen.... Miss Japan?
			Saturday	Saturday 13 January 2007
			We are products of our culture. In turn, our culture is a product of us. I have travelled around the world and begun to understand a variety of cultures other than my own. This sometimes also helps me to understand my culture. Indeed, the phrase "my culture" can have a whole variety of meanings according to perspective. My cultural references are mostly British. As Howard Devoto wrote: "I know home is where the heart is, but I never get to learn where my heart is." In cultural anthropological terms, there is an increasing incidence of relative social isolation within western cultures. I plough my own furrow with the enablement of the society around me within the vast cultural melting pots that are London and the internet. Trees fall in the forest. Manic street preachers seek to convert parked & passing cars to adopt their man-made visions of angry gods unswayed amidst the currents of shoppers passing unlistening in their pursuit of materialism. The phenomenon of social communication strokes egos and simultaneously strengthens both links & barriers. We are the same. We are different. We are nice. We are good. They are not. Today is Saturday.
			I have either changed my mind or not.	Saturday 6 January 2007
			Legs	Friday 5 January 2007
			I have discovered that I have 2 legs - 1 on each foot.
			Capital Cities	Monday 1 January 2007
			Athens (Greece) Bangkok (Thailand) Cardiff (Wales) Edinburgh (Scotland) Jakarta (Indonesia) Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) Ljubljana (Slovenia) London (England) Madrid (Spain) Manila (Philippines) Paris (France) Port Louis (Mauritius) Singapore (Singapore) The above are capital cities which I have visited. Abu Dhabi, Dhaka, Doha, Istanbul, Rome, Taipei don't really count because I was just passing through....
			Parallel Universes	Friday 29 December 2006
			If there are other parallel universes, how & why did they go about lining them up to ensure that they were parallel rather than tangential or perpendicular? Reality is not as straightforward as we might at first or at second like to think. Truth is distorted by perception and biased by value judgements and other prejudices. So perhaps the question really should be 'why?'. And the answer should perhaps either be 'maybe' or a sort of silence with a wink.
			www.separationcircle.com	Monday 18 December 2006
			People. Love them or loathe them, you somehow can't quite get rid of all of them. A bit like fish really. And sticky stuff on the soles of your shoes.
			Hairstyle	Tuesday 12 December 2006
			I am wondering about trying a new hairstyle
		You have won a fish	Thursday 7 December 2006
		Well here we are.  This is a blog and you are reading it.  Why would you want to do that?  Is it because it is nice?  Yes, that must be it.  This is a nice blog.  Hurrah!  I have been led to believe that this will be a 3 column blog but so far I just can't tell.  I can only see 1 column.  Perhaps the other 2 are hiding somewhere. In case you haven't heard already, I've recently obtained my own domain name and I have a jolly exciting website set up which I am continuing to develop.  Apart from lots of jolly nice Separation Circle wisdom & music, there are some cunningly posted pictures of Jasmin & Irma & GorJes Jes.  I can almost feel your eager anticipation as you will me to reveal the address of this momentous website.  I bet you can almost feel it too.  OK, I shall put you out of your misery, and into someone else's misery instead:  here it is:  www.separationcircle.com The site is almost as nice as this blog. :-D
		Indonesia	Sunday 3 December 2006
		I realised today that I have never had sex in Indonesia. If this pattern is generalised throughout the archipelago, I fear for the future of the Indonesian people.
		A website	Saturday 2 December 2006
		I have found an interesting website. www.separationcircle.com What does it all mean?
		If	Saturday 2 December, 2006
		If I pause and listen, I can hear a number of sounds: the whirrings of 2 different computers in front of and beside me, sporadic drippings of the cold tap from the bathroom behind me and the largely muffled roar of traffic from London's North Circular road through the window to my left, which is strange as I tend to think of the road as being to the right.  Superimposed on top of all of these comes the chatter of my computer keyboard keys as I type, illustrating the expresssive aspects of my existence in its patterns; the pauses for either contemplation or general uncertainty, the sudden bursts of flowing energy, the occasional stuttering stops and self-corrections.  Once again, if I allow myself to listen through all of this - and these days it's rare that I do amidst all the assembled clutter of sound and vision - there remains the unanswered question "why?".  The simplistic punitive answers of the theistic religions have long been discarded.  In Taoism I have found a way of seeing how pieces fit together and in the bold assertion of His Holiness The Dalai Lama I have received affirmation and reassurance in my stated quest that "happiness is the very purpose of life", yet I still obstruct myself.  Is purpose the same as meaning?  When I truly allow myself to respond to the guidance of the Tibetan holy man, I find that the unanswered questions lose their significance.  I guess it's just a question of remembering to put aside to the unhelpful resistance provided by the traditional patterns of my history. "So count the stars, watch the clouds, breathe the air and let them go!"       ["My City Has Been Burned to the Ground" - The Separation Circle] I have spent a fair amount of time over the last couple of weeks developing my new website with my own domain name at www.separationcircle.com   I'm pleased with my work so far but feel that there is so much more to do.  Will the site however be like the proverbial tree falling in the forest if nobody visits it?  While it's not true that nobody visits it, I suspect that there are not many motivations for the few who do visit it to return. "So many many voices crying to be heard. Some spout whole questions.  Others just repeat one word. Everybody's shouting something.  Nothing seems too clear because no-one's really listening, so no-one gets to hear."      ["No-one's listening" - The Arteks] "Out of breath and out of petrol, the sands have fallen now. Though older is not always wiser, the choice is ours."      ["Clocks, Cobwebs & Chalk" - Bad Tune Men / The Separation Circle]
		Four Some Time	27 November 2006
		Once again, I have not written anything here for some time.
		Um	Saturday 4 November 2006
		"Freed from desire, you can see the hidden mystery. By having desire, you can only see what is visibly real."                                           [from the Tao Te Ching, chapter 1] After 12 years, the music for my song collection (or 'album') "Emerging into the Brightness of the Day" has been completed. This afternoon I have a shiatsu clinic.  Wednesday is having a hard time.  Jasmin is having a barbecue.  Nemah has considerable anxieties about the future. "Heaven and Earth are impartial; they treat all of creation as straw dogs. "                                           [from the Tao Te Ching, chapter 5] Woof
	Nothing new in my journal here for a while now	Friday 3 November 2006
	I haven't written anything new in my journal here for a while now.
	You're viewing your own journal	27 May 2006
	I'm told that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but why does flattery sound so much like flat battery? Is it preferable to assault and battery or assorted peanuts or a salt and vinegar crisp? Is there none of this which doesn't fail to not matter? Today would have been Friday if yesterday hadn't got in first. There are no shoes big enough for the man whose feet are excessively large for shoes. Truth is curved. Bananas are not always as yellow as you might like to think. Time is aubergine-shaped. My life resembles that of a confused fish except that it's different. You should never start a sentence unless you are sure that
	The owls are not what they seem	26 May 2006
	"Now that I'm out of touch with anger Now I've nothing left to live up to I don't know when to stop joking. When I stop, I hope that I am with you." [Howard Devoto] "People like you find it easy Naked to see, walking on air Hunting by the rivers, through the streets, every corner.... Abandoned too soon Set down with due care Don't walk away in silence. Don't walk away." [Ian Curtis] "I came along to see your face but the only thing I got from you was telling me this fantasy that you would always be with me I can tell you that it's true. I'm waiting here but it's alright. It's alright with me. You'd better believe me now. I guess it's like a mountainside. You've got to climb it to the top. Floating in a sea of dreams, the only thing that you can see is the view above the clouds. I'm waiting here but it's alright. Still it's alright with me. You'd better believe me now." [Jeff Lynne]
	Lapu Lapu	23 May 2006
	On yet another day when the sweating sun seemed to have effortlessly climbed to its zenith well before the appropriate hour, another day when anybody with at least a small amount of both sense and small change would travel in some relative degree of comfort in one of the variety of available public transport options, once again a tall balding middle-aged Englishman wearing token baseball-cap-type headgear could be found pursuing an erratic course along the eastern side of the principle north-south thoroughfare heading southwards towards the main collection of smoky, battered and grime-laden trading establishments which make up the centre of Lapu Lapu City. The erratic pattern of his progress could be better understood with an appreciation of his desire to reduce somewhat the folly of his chosen manner of progress by seeking to walk in the shade wherever this was afforded by the height of roadside walls or buildings or their elevated protrusions - at least above the level of his head, although a prominent scar whose presence was currently concealed by his headwear, was evidence that such protrusions were not always of the desired elevation. His choice of the eastern side of the road was born of the same desire but was foiled by the height already attained unreasonably prematurely, given the time of morning, by the source of the heat. It was Tuesday. The familiar daily cocktail of assorted grades of petroleum exhaust fumes which, in this particular corner of the continent, comprised the entirety of atmosphere's lowest stratum, swirled all around in a variety of subtle and not-so-subtle shades of black, grey and decepectively innocuous translucent, its kalaedoscopic dancing patterns determined not only by the noisily puffing jeepney exhaust pipes, but more delicately by the rhythmic suction into and expulsion out from each and every set of human lungs represented, including those of the intrepid or perhaps merely foolhardy traveller.
	If a tree falls...	21 May 2006
	If many trees fall in the forest and nobody is there to hear them, is this called deaf-orestation?
	Self-indulgence	17 May 2006
	Is this the real life or just a fantasy? caught in a landslide? no escape from reality. Open your eyes. Look up to the skies and see. I'm just a poor boy. I need no shoes because I've got these flipflops instead.
	Bucket	17 May 2006
	Why is it that you can never find a bucket when you need one? I suppose there are some exceptions to this. In fact if you have a bucket and you keep it in a familiar place, possibly with a conspicuous label saying 'bucket', and you check every day that it's there in the right place, and remember to return it to that place after each occasion of usage, you may find the frustration of fruitless bucket searches comes to an end. However I don't seem to have a bucket here in the first place. I left it at home.
	International time travel	15 May 2006
	Now I am somewhere else. I have travelled over seas and through time (well a number of time zones) to get here. I am wearing different shoes. On my feet. Obviously they are different to each other, since one is designed for a left foot and the other for a right foot and, as luck would have it, I have a left foot and a right foot too, connected to the bottom ends of my legs which are just long enough to reach down that far. I mean different shoes from the shoes which I was wearing before I did that impressive-sounding travelling. I'll go home later.
	Travelling	9 May 2006
	A lot of people talk a lot of rubbish. I try to talk a little every day. I find this makes it easier to stomach. Travelling is something which I shall soon be participating in. Staying in one place helps you know where you are. Conversely, so does not staying in one place. And then again both can hinder it too. What does it all mean?
	Shoes	9 May 2006
	This morning I got out of bed. I have started to notice that my day often beings in this manner. Where are my shoes?
	Tidying up	30 April 2006
	How much of my life is spent doing really pointless things such as asking how much of my life is spent doing really pointless things such as asking how much of my life is spent doing really pointless things such as asking how much of my life is spent doing really pointless things such as asking how much of my life is spent doing really pointless things such as asking how much of my life is spent doing really ....? oh god.
	Tenerife	29 April 2006
	Last night I slept quite well in my bed. This morning I have woken up. I have never in my life been to Tenerife.
	Turnips	16 April 2006
	Once again, I did not see any turnips today.
	Zoological gardens	14 April 2006
	"Oh I could fly 'neath the wings of the bluebird as she sings. The 6 o'clock alarm would never ring..... but it rings, and I rise, and wipe the sleep out from my eyes. The shaving razor's cold and it stings"
	Er	Saturday 14 January 2006
	Today I woke up. It is Saturday. I turned on my computer. I am writing a blog. This is nice. Hello. Here is a photo of Kajol. I think that today I shall write a poem. No. I have changed my mind. The End.