Sunday, January 22, 2006

sratgne ubt erut?

itns ti sratneg taht spedite het caft taht siht si lal mexid pu, oyu anc slilt ekam snese of ti!?

goodness gracious great balls of stuffing....

my word! an obstinate little bugger that merlot still, i think i got the better of it. a 'vino dell'amicizia' from the piave region it accompanied quite nicely some roasted pork loin with potatoes, stuffing, cabbage and some really quite sweet roasted carrots. very nice indeed and quite, quite un-italian. an english style sunday lunch, only served at 8.30 in the evening in italy.

got the keyboard to work, after a lot of stress and emails to roland, fluxlist, anybody i could think of. but, dear reader, if you can get past this excess of commas you may be amazed to find that i fixed the problem myself!

yes i did!

really!

i learned to recognise the difference between 'in' and 'out'. i knew something was up and it seemed that one seemed to have more letters than the other... i took the most letters out of the back of the keyboard and put the one with less in, and "hey tesco!" music!

of a sort anyway.

Now i just have to learn to play and to use the software.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

tinkle tinkle...the quincy jones of the avante-garde...

just bought a roland midi-controller keyboard. i found a little bit of unused space in the apartment hat had nothing interesting to gather dust on in it!

actually i'm very excited. i don't really play keyboards but to begin with i aim to elaborate on some 'soundsdcape' stuff and then who knows i might even try and learn to play.

the moby of mestre....

may the great gods of valhalla help us all!

"dum, dum,dum,dum,dummy,dummy, dum, dum"

aha....
a rather impertinent sangiovese di romagna to accompany my lack of dinner this evening.
i say old chums it's all rather a bit of a rum do if you ask me. oh rum, now there's an idea.
the truth is that there's just not really anything to eat in the house, well there is, it's just that we can't be bothered to cook it and last night's split pea and wheat soup (which was delicious even if i say so myself), well it just doesn't seem that appealing this evening. even the boys wolfed it down, mind you daniel was up at 3a.m. screaming and didn't go back to sleep until the middle of his breakfast at 7.45!
i remember the days before babies when 3 hours sleep wasn't that bad on a weekday, in the days of la tavernetta on via ca' rossa. fabio was supposed to close at 7.30p.m. but many an evening we've rolled out of there after 11 and on to the 'irish' about 200 yards away for some rather potent little gin and tonics.

ah, the bad old, good old bad old days - never quite sure how to look at them really - enjoyable at the time, horrible the day after, workin 8 hours on pure adrenalin, being unable to face food and whan glasses of water tasted like last night's booze and cigarettes.
actually, they were pretty good times it's just that i don't feel that bad that they're over. perhaps i'm growing up!

naaaa!

it's funny though, well not funny ha ha but funny / uncomfortable sometimes when people associate you with the quantity you can/could drink, how 'hard' they think you are, how off the wall. i am a pretty ordinary bloke, certainly in my eyes anyway. i'm not hard, or even violent (although if i do go off i know that i've scared a few people here - but it's only hot air) and i certainly have never classed myself as 'odd', 'wierd', 'crazy', 'wild' or any other of those vile little tags people like to stick on those who conform differently to themselves.
i remember coming to play in a band here in italy and the lads being stunned by that fact that i plugged wolf's semi-acoustic (orange crate!) bass into distortion and chorus pedals, didn't want to write down the verse/chorus structure of 'anarchy in the uk' on a sheet of squared paper just so we'd know how it went, and that i jumped around in the rehearsal room and on stage (when there was space). i was labelled then and have been by others as that 'english' style musician, the one with the wierd stlye! I am a belove average talent guitarist and an inept bassist but i like to jam and play around, and jumping around helps me keep time and disguises the fact that i'm only really playing "dum, dum,dum,dum,dummy,dummy, dum, dum" on the bass!

now where did all that come from then ( a dinner the other night actually..zz.zzzzz.zz, thank god for diego and jelena i'd say)

i was only going to write about having nothing to say.
well i suppose i didn't really have anything to say really, so i wrote it.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

pitchas

the pictures below are from my phone.
hence the superb quality!


.

Three views from the banks of the Canale Grande, this afternoon around 4.14


Two different views of Piazza Ferretto. What my telephone saw and what I saw! heavy night at Vapensiero. I walked home at about 3a.m. although I reckon I did more of a controlled fall than a walk..

Ho ho ho x 4

Sunday, January 01, 2006


me this morning?

aitch enn why

happy new year!

we've been very busy of late, hence the complete lack of anything on this blog.

let's hope i can find some time this year!