View from my back garden.

Yep, I’m finally feeling settled into my new home. It’s not very big, what I call a widower’s bungalow, but it’s enough for me and has a back garden up behind it with a nice view over the valley opposite. And it has a short drive, a private parking space where I can leave my new old car. It’s a change because my last 3 homes had nowhere to park, one of the main reason why I gave up having my own vehicle. The garden gives me a space to sit outside and enjoy the peace (it is so quiet here, very little traffic, no children, no loud music ‘cept mine). And, of course, my mother is so glad to have me living just across the road and I pop in for quick visits every day when I’m here and am close should she press her emergency button if she falls or something.

My living room.

Inside it’s quite compact and simple : a living room, a bedroom, a bathroom and a kitchen, both the latter well equipped. The only thing sorely lacking is storage space so I’m using my mum’s empty garage as my big cupboard, for all those things I don’t really need on a daily basis. This includes some surplus furniture, boxes of books, my second keyboard, amplifiers, etc. It’s the sort of place you need to keep tidy and uncluttered or it soon will become unliveable. It’s fine. And now, within the last hour, the men from Calcutta and Mombai have got my BT line working properly so I suddenly have the internet back and my BTVision for TV recording and watching. Wonderful.

The neighbours seem fine too. The old lady on one side sounds like the grandma from the Catherine Tate Show but is really quite nice. I hear her playing her piano from time to time. And the man on the other side I have known for years because he painted portraits of two of my dad’s dogs back in the day. And then of course, there are the seagulls. We have two pairs nesting on neighbouring roofs and they’ll be attacking us all each time we go out once their babies are born. One silly pair tried to make a nest in front of my garden shed – I had to break that one up. After all the shed contains all the garden furniture and the barbecue. And I’ll be needing all that stuff when the British summer finally arrives : I think it’s on June the 15th this year for three days.

My new car (not new, 10 years old) outside my new home.

Thanks to my lovely family, I suddenly have a car. How I’ve managed to live in this fairly isolated part of the world for 20 months without wheels, I don’t know. Well, I do. I’ve been burning up my bus pass and my railcard. But the buses aren’t that frequent and the trains are 10 miles away and only any good for long journeys. So, I am over the moon to have the extra freedom of a car again and hopefully I’ll be able to afford to keep running it. Should be OK because it’s a small Japanese hatchback of the type that go on and on and we know where it’s come from and it has only done 69k miles so far.

So, of course, I had to take it out for a first spin. I went to see an old friend who doesn’t live that far away but getting there by bus and train takes ages. And, the icing on the cake, the sun came out.

The Saxon market town of Crewkerne.

I headed for the small market town of Crewkerne via the back lanes up over downs that give a long view onto Lyme Bay. It wasn’t a long drive but meant spending time in three counties, Devon, Dorset and Somerset. Crewkerne was founded in the times of King Alfred and it looks steeped in history as you drive round its narrow streets. Besides being the market for the local farmers it was a centre of cloth manufacture right up to the nineteenth century, specialising in sails for big ships. These days it still has a little industry including the smallest car factory in the UK, Aerial which produces small, light sporty cars and employs just 7 people.

Shute Barton, a surprise in the middle of nowhere.

On the way back I decided to forget the map and main roads and tried to navigate by sight and direction, keeping mainly to back lanes. There were some lovely views from the top of hills which the main roads tend to avoid with fields full of young animals with their mothers everywhere. I went round one bend and was suddenly confronted by a magnificent structure, Shute Barton, a rare remaining example of a fortified medieval manor house. Belonging to the Pole family for generations, it is now in the hands of the National Trust and apparently you can rent a part of it for you holidays.

Although the price of petrol will restrict me somewhat, I am going to enjoy this summer having a little drive around my area, exploring off the beaten track (and bus routes). Plus it will make it easier getting to Diabetic Research Network meetings and band rehearsals and such events as the Hawkwind gig in Bridport in a few weeks time. Life is going to be that bit more interesting.

My youngest with his family on a rock in Beer.

If you live in the South of France, why would you want to come on holiday to Devon, UK in early May. Must be totally mad!! But not if you are my youngest son Nat and his family. They make an annual trip here each spring to visit me and my mum. I also go over and see them over there at least once a year but my mum can’t travel even down the shops so if they don’t come she doesn’t get to see them. Because I’ve down-sized to a single man’s bungalow I can’t have them stay anymore so they rented a lovely 3-storey house on the sea front just across from where the sea destroyed a load of beach huts and made the national news just the week before.

Even at eleven some plants can dwarf you as young Kali found out.

The week before the weather had been diabolical so I was worried about their stay. Luckily the South of France had been suffering from similarly inclement weather so they weren’t expecting the sort of glorious sunshine they’d had at Easter last year. Coming from a rural,mountainous area they are quite used to physical activities and were quite happy to undertake long cliff top walks like to Beer and to Lyme Regis as well as enjoying the shops and cathedral of Exeter and the amusement arcades and charity shops both of which they don’t see in France. And wave dodging and climbing and jumping around the edges of the sea front kept them busy too.

At family meals they enjoyed some English-style meals they don’t eat at home from pie and chips to roast with roast potatoes and all the trimmings to stir-fries and home made hamburgers. And of course then there were a few meals eaten out from crab sandwiches to all day breakfasts and cream teas. And they livened up my quiet, childless street playing ball and climbing fences to retrieve it when it got kicked out of play. My mum smiled widely as she tried to speak to them – they only speak French – and really enjoyed seeing them again and noticing how they had changed since last year.

My son’s partner wasn’t really on holiday and had to spend quite a lot of the time glued to her laptop but she got out a bit. And of course, Nat and I had to have a couple of nights out including Saturday with the Limehouse Lizzy band followed by an hour or three in a seafront pub.

All in all, a great week. And all agreed, it wasn’t long enough.So a fortnight next year I think.

The Bowd Inn, just outside Sidmouth, a brilliant place to eat.

My new place is not quite this big but similar idea.

So, tomorrow is a big day. Firstly, the LASTWIND album master is going to FLICKNIFE RECORDS for manufacturing. The album is out on May 28th on all the major internet sites like iTunes, Amazon and loads more PLUS in all good music stores worldwide. In case you don’t know, it’s called RETURN OF A SONIC ASSASSIN. It’s already up there on some sites ready for pre-order. I know cos a friend from KAZAKHSTAN has already found it.

The other big thing tomorrow is moving home. Not very far, about one mile, from my town centre apartment to a bungalow on the edge of town and opposite my mother’s place (so as to be able to keep a good eye on her). I haven’t got too much stuff to move and I’ve been quite radical about throwing stuff away. So it’s a man and a van job – I hope there’s a second man or I’ll be roped in for some carrying.

Anyhow, one of the main upshots of this is that I will be off-line for 5 or 6 days waiting for BT to come and re-connect me. So don’t expect another post till next weekend. By then I will hopefully be thrilled with the success of Chelsea against Barcelona. Then my youngest son arrives from France with his good lady and their 4 children for a week’s holiday here – they’ve rented a lovely house on the sea front. Life is never quiet and never boring. See you soon.

Given our typical April weather, I hope my man's van has got a roof!!

Mill Cottage, Lymington, in the New Forest.

It used to be said, prior to the Children Act, that to provide education for unruly and criminal teenagers, all you needed was a large country house staffed with ex-Paratroopers. And it was true that the boarding schools for boys with emotional and behavioural difficulties that I worked for in the nineties meant living in some beautiful spots. Here are the three houses I lived in between 1991 and 1997, three really pretty places.

The first one, Mill Cottage, was where we lived when I was Deputy Head and then Head of Southlands School on the edges of the New Forest. When we drove down the muddy lane that led to this house the first time, we were greeted by a roe deer and its young that were sleeping in the porch. The house came with a lot of land bordering a mill stream and king fishers, herons and barn owls were seen daily. We kept a herd of Angora goats that were always escaping no matter what fences I put up and my sons loved the freedom of their mobile home in our field when they were at home. It was a truly beautiful spot but I earned the respect of the black kids from Brixton at the school who thought I was really brave to live in a place with no pavements or streetlights.

Treehaven Cottage, Middle Marwood in the wilds of North Devon inland from Croyde Bay.

When I got head-hunted to become Head Teacher of Chelfham Mill School in North Devon, I looked for a similar beautiful spot and found one about 5 miles north of Barnstaple. Again we had land with a stream running through it and a lovely lawn dotted with fruit trees. Getting there was quite difficult as it meant wandering up a succession of very narrow lanes with tall hedges. It was so quiet, but perhaps too quiet for my wife who didn’t know anyone and felt quite cut off from the world while I was working long hours at the school.

Langley Farm, Uffculme. Near the M5 junction 32.

To try and keep my wife happy, I found this lovely place down by the Tiverton motorway junction. What a place, umpteen rooms, large lawned gardens, a floodlit tennis court, heated outdoor pool and a small lake. There were plans to run an upmarket B and B for French tourists but getting to France easily was part of my wife’s plans, particularly as our youngest son had moved back over there. So, in spite of living in this mansion, things didn’t work out. Mind you, the place did have one downside. The neighbours were large factory-farmed chicken sheds with thousands of birds in them. And they attracted thousands of big black flies which infested the thatch of the building and would constantly try and get in the house. Not very attractive and hard work to deal with.

So, my wife went off to France and I moved to a village house in North Molton and that was pretty much the end of that marriage. Living in a beautiful house isn’t everything. And, in fact, within a year I was living in Bristol, living in a city for the first time in 25 years. And was it good to be back there !!!

Spurgeon's Tabernacle, the large Baptist church in West Croydon where my father was Assistant Minister.

When I was young Sunday never seemed like a day of rest, mainly because my dad worked at the church so it wasn’t a day off for him. Or for us. It was more busy than a school day and lasted longer with more time in school uniform. We had to go with dad quite early and then hang around for Sunday School at 10. We then marched in to join the main church at 11 which would go on till at least 12:15 and with luck we would get home in time for lunch at one. In the afternoon there was Sunday School again, this time at the local Mission Hall which was my dad’s responsibility. Home from that at 4:30 we had to leave the house again at 6 ready for the evening service at 6:30. Finally all would be over at about 8, home in time for bed. Even in the gaps we couldn’t play because it was Sunday and because we were wearing our best clothes. No wonder Sunday was not a favourite day.

A Welsh Border Collie - needs to run about 10 miles a day.

When I was 12 we moved from South London to Sidmouth in Devon where my dad had been appointed minister to a small church. At first the same Sunday pattern continued but, after about a year, my father bought a Welsh Border Collie from a farmer who told him it needed about 10 miles exercise a day. During the week this was no problem for my dad who could fit dog walks easily into his schedule of visiting old ladies, giving funeral services and leading various other meetings. Sundays was the problem. Dad had no spare time on Sundays. So, after a few months of getting the dog trained, I selflessly offered to carry out the task every Sunday afternoon and would take the dog, Laddie, up onto Mutters Moor above the town where he could run to his heart’s content. In this way I avoided afternoon Sunday School at least and, as I got older, could smoke a few cigarettes and find some lost golf balls which I could sell at the golf club house to pay for the smokes. A wonderful solution and Sundays were less of a downer.

Sunday football on the TV - a wonderful idea.

When I was older and had a family of my own I tried to keep Sunday as a day of rest, a true day off. Saturdays often meant shopping trips and other home jobs to be done so it was good to keep one day where you could laze about a bit, if that is ever possible with young children in the house.

Of course, in more recent times we have had the advent of football on the TV on a Sundays, perhaps the only good thing we have got out of Sky TV. I’ve always been a lover of that, an accepted reason for men to sit undisturbed for 90 minutes on a Sunday afternoon. For many years, as a manager of residential units for badly behaved teenagers, I would have to take my turn in round the clock, round the week rosters. And the only time I was truly unhappy being on duty was that Sunday afternoon slot, missing the match.

A sign of how much this had entered our culture was my dad. He was a man who wouldn’t have a TV in the house for years. And then, when he finally accepted it, it was never switched on on a Sunday. But, once he was retired, he knew he was missing something. I bought him Sky TV for his 70th birthday and for the last few years of his life he would switch on around 3:45 to watch the match. Very restful he said. Not half!! And I’ll be stopping my house packing this afternoon to watch my team play Spurs in the Cup Semi-final. Go Chelsea !!!

Saxon Road London SE25 - How it looks today.

Here I am, collecting boxes and getting ready to pack up my small home ready for another move. Having come down to live in a small seaside town in Devon to be near my ageing mother, I’ve now actually found a bungalow in her street and I’m moving there very soon. Each time I move L think this will be my next to last. I say that because, when my mother has passed on, I do intend to buy my final home on the coast just outside Edinburgh, my favourite city, and home to my eldest son and his family.

But, let’s face it, I’ve always been a gypsy and I’ve moved so many times. Saxon Road (see above) was where I lived from the age of 3 till the age of 9, one of the three homes I can remember living in in South London. Then when I was 12 my parents moved to Sidmouth in Devon which I found heavenly for a while till I finished school and scooted back to London as quick as I could.

La Simonette, our happy small farm for 5 years in the South of France. With my two sons and two dogs.

I lived in Beckenham, Woolwich, Bromley and Chelsea in a period of 2 and a half years and then in Easton, Totterdown and Clifton in Bristol over the next 18 months (having got married in between times). But the countryside was calling and North Devon was the next destination where we lived and had two children in Chittlehampton, Chelfham, Umberleigh and Barnstaple.

It became time to move to France, August 1978, where, after travelling around for a bit we settled in the small village of Le Pegue for a few months before moving to a lovely small farm, La SImonette (see above) where we had 5 happy years just outside the truffle capital of Richerenches.

My dad playing with my boys in the pool at Buisson.

I had a business that was going well and the boys were growing up and we had the chance of moving into a converted mill just outside the village of Buisson and stayed there for 6 years, years that flew by as we were very busy working hard and playing hard. But suddenly the Australian owner of the business went bust and I drove back to the UK to find work, firstly in Devon and then in the New Forest in Hampshire. My wife and youngest son came to join me but after three years (and several addresses) I was head-hunted to run a school back in North Devon. My son went back to France, my wife went back there too, I fell out with the school’s owner and ended up in Bristol where my eldest son was now living.

Lovely Woodsmoke in Abbots Leigh just outside Bristol, my first house with Liz.

In Bristol I gained a new partner, Liz, and over the next 8 years we lived in 7 different places together, 3 outside the city and the rest in the area of St Andrews and Montpelier. These houses got bigger and bigger as we tried to have room for her children and mine (when they came to stay). And then I got very ill and suddenly that was all over. I finished my time in Bristol living alone, first right in the centre and then in Bedminster. Then in September 2010, I retired and moved to Devon to keep an eye on mum.

If you followed all that, a simplified version, there were in all about 40 different addresses where I received mail. Have I had enough of moving………..I’m certainly stripping down what I carry with me these days : two men and a van will be enough to move me. And my next move will be my last (he says, optimistically).

My music attic - I'll miss it when I move in two weeks time.

I’m quite a prolific song writer and people sometimes ask me where I get my ideas from. I’ve no idea really but I know when I sit down at my keyboard it’s usually not long before I’ve found a new riff. When I do, I record it, usually as an electric piano sound. Then I start looking for a second and third riff which could go alongside it and record them too. That’s usually enough different parts for a song although I might look for ideas for a beginning and an end a bit later.

Stage two is usually trying to find a simple drum pattern that works for the different parts, usually using one of the hundreds of such patterns I have stored in my keyboard. And then it’s on to one of my favourite parts of the process – working on some bass lines, nothing too complicated but lines that give the song its rhythm and pace and link into the drums and the eventual melody. In fact, it’s usually the bass line that helps me find the melody line of the song.

I'm surrounded by natural beauty down here in Devon.

I tend to leave the new tune at this point and, depending on the weather as much as anything, either move on to another job or go out for a stroll. Walking around I find myself humming the song and getting ideas on its speed, ambience and the subject for the lyrics and nine times out of ten I have the song title before I get home.

Coming back to the song the next day I may have forgotten some of the ideas but they gradually come back as I move on to the structure and arrangement. Now I am back working with LASTWIND and with a working band I tend to be thinking of who will play what and what keyboard sounds I can actually play live, often whilst singing. So I try to limit the different keyboard sounds to 3 maximum which can then be replicated live with no problem. But of course I am also thinking of the two guitarists. Again that’s easiest approached by thinking of the old tendency of a rhythm guitar and a lead guitar although it never ends up being that simple all the time.

Once I have recorded those parts in and am happy with the structure, I move on to recording the vocals which I try to do in not too many takes. Generally I have the song title and subject and two or three lines and I improvise the rest often keeping my first attempt for its freshness then making a few corrections having listened back. By this time the song is pretty much finished for now. I like to leave it to stew for a few days at least and then come back to it and then I will make quite a few changes to the structure, the speed, the overall feeling and the different parts of the arrangement, playing around with the mix, various effects and other tools in the ‘mastering’ suite of my recording software : I increasingly use Garageband, Apple’s free gift to Mac buyers. It’s fine for demos and you can get a pretty good overall sound and it’s so simple to use.

By now I will have a demo that I can send to the other band members to listen to. I don’t expect or want them to slavishly copy exactly what I’ve done but they all can have a pretty good idea of my idea for the song so its not hard work for them to bring their skills to the piece.

And there, we are nearly there. They record their parts, we mix all the finished tracks, we agree on the mix of levels and sounds and we have another song finished and ready to be played to the public at large to see if they like it.

LASTWIND 2006. I think the 2012 version is going to be louder and have a wider repertoire.

Hello. This is my life.

Hello. Nice to see you. Shut the door please, there’s a bit of a draft. Let me tell you about my life.

I live in this chair by the window so I can see out into the garden and watch the bird’s feeding on the bird table and the plants change as the seasons pass. I know there’s a nice view out the front but I haven’t seen it for years. In fact, the only time I’ve seen it in the last few years is when they’ve brought me back in the ambulance after a stay in hospital. I don’t like going to hospital. And then one of the times  I picked up that nasty bug and nearly died. Every time I go there I’m frightened I won’t come home, they won’t let me. I want to die in my own home.

In fact, the last time I went out not in an ambulance was when I went to my husband’s funeral, 10 years ago this July. It was a long time ago, I have to think hard to remember him and life before. My life has been like this for a long time.

I live in this chair. It goes down so I can make it like a bed at night. I only get out of it to go on the commode which is nearby. I use my walking frame to help me make the few steps and it tires me out and I’m always worried someone will walk in while I’m sitting there. I still have my dignity.

And people do walk in. For a start there’s the agency carers, I have three every day, for my breakfast, lunch and supper. They are meant to come for half an hour each. Some of them I have over quite a long period so I get to know them and we become friends. But then the rosters are changed and I lose them. And even so, often the rosters are suddenly changed and new ones I was getting to know are moved. A lot of them are foreign, Eastern European, and they are usually very nice. But sometimes I don’t think they can understand me and I have difficulty understanding them.

I have a small bowl of cereal for breakfast and toast for supper and a little something cooked for lunch. I like to have fresh fish but not all of them know how to cook it so then I have eggs if I know they can cook them, scrambled or poached. When I have new people I get them to open a small tin of macaroni cheese which only has to be heated up a bit and anyone can do that.

I have my own personal carer I pay for who comes in most days and checks on my health and hygiene. She’s been doing it for years and I couldn’t do without her. And my son does other things like shopping, changing my morphine patch and chatting to me about what’s going on in the world and our pasts. And from time to time I get other visits, from my daughter and her husband every couple of weeks or so and from time to time other people from my past.

I have my radio, my books to read, my digital photo display……….I’m generally quite happy with my life until it is upset by something and then I find it hard to cope, my heart starts racing.

At the moment they, nurses, want me to move into my bed. They’d like me to go into a home or hospital but I don’t want to. I’ve got nasty sores from sitting down all the time so they want me off my backside so the sores can heal up. I wasn’t happy before in the bed. I couldn’t see out the window, couldn’t read a book. All these little things matter to me. I haven’t got much in my life but I can be happy with what I’ve got if they leave me alone. But these sores hurt badly too.

Myself December 2011.

When I first retired from my day job and moved down to East Devon, I was sure I would have the time to post a blog everyday more or less. But as time has gone on I seem to write here less and less. Either I’m away somewhere and too occupied with my travels or, particularly of late, I’ve been too busy with my band, LASTWIND. That certainly has been the case recently as we have been moving towards completing the new album.

The Jurassic Coast down below.

Mind you, the last couple of weeks I’ve been laid a bit low by a throat and ear infection that arrived from nowhere but seems to have spread around the population – I’m off to see the doctor again shortly as the antibiotics don’t seem to be doing much. And then, I’m going to be moving house in three weeks, not far but to a neat little bungalow in the same little close where my mother lives. She is increasingly in need of various sorts of support and attention and, as I moved down here to keep an eye on her during her last chapter, it seemed that living very close was probably a good idea.

Late winter on the coast.

And then after that minor upheaval there is the annual visit of my son Nat with his good lady and their 4 children. They’re renting a house on the seafront for a week and that will be an enjoyable time for all of us. So, you can see, finding the time to write the blog is not always easy. But the good weather is coming, I need to get out and walk most days and I will see things that I want to blog about. There have been things all winter really but a lot of them have been things from the news which always end up being miserable. Or politics, which always makes me want to rant what with our present government or the thought of a Republican president in the US or the sliding into extinction of the Euro or the development of the dual giants, China and India………….

I will be writing quite regularly on a variety of subjects of interest but not every day.