everything merges by Simon Aulman
Again please give your dominant index finger a rest and there is no need to press "play" because you will only have to press "stop" immediately afterwards - it's been so long and I am still trying to remember how I made music - though come to think of it, the way I used to make music was so devastatingly unsuccessful that perhaps it is better that I have forgotten. Maybe let's draw a veil or shroud or tarpaulin or six feet of earth over my previous 60000000 albums - in the words of Tony Hancock as he drank the evening's first bottle of vodka, "this is just to get the dust out my mouth".
Despite what it sounds like I am playing this music very loudly because I want to drown out the sounds of petrol bombs and atom bombs and sirens because I was alarmed earlier today to hear that tonight's "riot" in Southampton is due to happen literally about 50 yards from where I live, and the counter-demonstration is due to be held just across the road from it, in the park in town where everyone gets murdered.
That puts the kybosh on my plans this evening to go to the cinema. Instead I shall stay indoors and make another album or two. Really, this country ..... what a mess. I've never been hugely patriotic, and I've never hated this country - I just feel more and more detached from it. But I do love watching what is going on. How is this all going to end ? I can't think of the last time I needed someone to do something and they actually managed to do it.
Take this morning. On Monday I'd walked to Shaftesbury, and I was still a bit sore this morning, so I just planned a short walk - start at the Rosie Lea tearooms between Brockenhurst and Lymington and then walk across Beaulieu Heath and through Beaulieu and then over to Blackfield and then to Calshot and have a swim.
So I got on the first bus to Lymington. As the lady-computer announced that the next stop was the Rosie Lea Tearooms I pressed the red button and things went ding and the red light lit up - and the bus just kept on going - right past the stop. I was stunned. No I wasn't. Nothing surprises or disappoints me anymore. There was no point in shouting down to the driver (I was on the top deck of course) or pressing the button again, because if I got off at the next stop I'd have to walk back along that very busy narrow road that doesn't have a pavement or verge and I'd be killed.
So I turned round and smiled at the woman sitting behind me and we carried on - the red "bus stopping" light glowing all the way to Lymington Hospital, when someone else pressed the button and this time the bus stopped. When the bus reached the High Street, that's where I decided to get off - I went downstairs and I told the driver that I'd pressed the dinger and he'd ignored it - he stared straight ahead and said that he can't hear the dinger - so I said that he seemed to hear it every time everyone else dinged it.
I wasn't cross or anything and I wasn't rude - I've done far lowlier jobs than bus-driver and I've cocked a million things up every day and I know that it is intended that us Brits fight among ourselves and meanwhile the rich get richer. So I made sure that I ended up by saying that it really was All Right - in fact I was glad that he'd driven right on past poor old Rosie Lea because now I was at Oxfam Books, just five yards away across the pavement.
He told me that if I cross the high street and waited 20 minutes then he'd be driving the bus back to Southampton and I could have a free lift to Rosie Lea. But no I said - no no no - thank you and that is very kind of you - but I wouldn't dream of putting you to so much trouble - I know of amazing blackberry-dripping footpaths that can take me back to Rosie Lea and then I can take it from there. And that is what I did. It was a very happy day - spoilt a little by this slightly Unhappy Ending (the music) and now, with it just gone 7pm, I shall close all the windows and put the Do Not Disturb and Please Clean My Shoes signs on my front door and go to bed - I'm currently working my way though every episode of Columbo on my bedside DVD machinery - what great days they were, back when Columbo was on the Force and every crime was solved and all the riots were all about Vietnam and things that were ten thousand miles away, not just down the end of my fucking road.
recorded this evening, photo Spinnaker Tower (Portsmouth) and tower blocks (Southampton) and docks (Southampton) and refinery (Fawley) and Isle Of Wight from Pepperbox Hill near Salisbury a while ago
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incidentally I notice that when I released my previous album last night Bandcamp didn't send out any of those auto-generated emails that used to tell my followers about the happy new arrival - for all I know they have now abandoned the practice of bothering fans about album releases - I am as relieved as you are
