ydyllynterym fantasy by Simon Aulman

bit of a hodgepodge but I like this one - it's the sweepings from the floor at the ends of several days, and the fact that lots of these tracks shouldn't be cohabiting on the same album is what I like most about it.

Yes I have reached the age when I am a member of various book clubs - and in one of these there's a music teacher - a man of my own age and quiet temperament who teaches in a school, he specialises in guitar(s) and piano. Because this particular bookclub meets in a noisy place we tend not to have a group discussion, you just end up having a long non-bookish chat with the person next to you. During our first chat it quickly became obvious that we were at opposite musical poles - ie he is a virtuoso musician, and I cannot play anything "properly". He said that thing that we have all heard several times thru our lives from proper musicians - ie that he actually regrets having learnt how to play his instrument(s), and wished his brain could be scrambled and he could start out again, unpolluted.

Years ago I wondered what this kind of thing meant. Now I know. I really have no wish to learn anything anymore. I meet people every day and have done so since the end of the first lockdown, and it suddenly occurred to me today that I have organised absolutely none of these meetings/groupings/liaisons/whatevers. Sometimes it feels like I'm just going along with these things merely to be polite. After a fairly trying and dull bit of socialising this morning i felt that wonderful coming-up-for-air release as I walked alone across Queens Park to Harbour Lights to watch the early-afternoon showing of The Souvenir Part 2 - which I thought was okay - six-out-of-ten-territory sort of idea - surprisingly well acted for a British film, but with the frequent Brit thing of "we'll write something very badly and everyone will think its badness makes it better than if it'd been any good" - or whatever - maybe a bit like this non-virtuosic album - except you're not meant to think anything at all - whatever you think is fine by me, I just know that if I really could play the guitar and keyboards it'd be a lot worse.

recorded over the last week or two (apologies to anyone unfortunate enough to have been paying attention and who gets a sense of deja-vu during a couple of the keyboardy tracks), photo Hampshire last week