Just watch, I'll go in again tomorrow and they'll all have it....

 
Sun 13th January 2008 

As predicted, getting up for my meeting on five hour's sleep was a poor idea, although I didn't expect it would render me this pathetically ill. I am fully all about the snivelling right now...

I went for a walk with Rachel for a couple of hours to try and clear my congested head and to explore different places that we'd like to live in. We walked round all the nice bits of the locality for hours and Rachel pointed out that everywhere that I said I thought we should live was really near one church or another......

Sue came over in the evening so that we could finally watch the DVD that she bought me for my birthday the year before last. It was a compilation of artists paying tribute to the lives and music of Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie, and whilst we learnt lots about the aforementioned, it was also reconfirmed that Springsteen is a legend and that Bono is a berk..... 

All suggested remedies for pathetic snivelling quivering mass syndrome gratefully received.....

I wasn't feeling bad yesterday, far from it, I was perfectly content, and we had a lovely night with a bunch of cool people round and some ace food - I was just aware at the back of my mind at the end of the night that during the day I had achieved nothing, or at least that was how it felt....

Today however was ace, I made an appointment to look at a new yard (the Beamsley-yard era is drawing to a close, best party it up whilst we can) and then we bunced over to Manchester to play a gig at the Dry Bar, which was ace..... it was without a doubt the best gig that I've done with the band, the gremlins left us alone entirely to do our thing and the fairly crowded crowd was enormously responsive, with melodramatic cries of 'encore' as we finished and round upon round of hyperbolic back slapping.... There's a section in 'Look at that Cloud' where I don't play any guitar so I had chance to queef off this cheeky snap....

I saw Jonny Britton as well tonight, an old friend from school - I remembered as we were sound-checking that he lived in Manchester, called him up and asked him what he was up to, and he was in a bar round the corner..... he made me laugh lots and lots and lots....

It is however once again 5am, we've just got back and I have a work meeting in six hours......

Whatever it was I probably didn't do it...

Its 5am. We have just returned, in convoy, from our gig in Oxford. Despite getting paid as much as we usually ever get paid, we made a loss, because we had to hire a van, and even then it wasn't as big as our bus so we had to take a car as well. Our dismal finances have suffered, and our carbon footprint for today must be huge - a two vehicle round trip from Leeds to Oxford to play a 40 minute set to about 60 people. Hmmmmmmm....

The gig was ace, not without its faults, as with all Vessels gigs, but to my ears our vocals are getting better, and I really enjoyed singing tonight - especially in light of last week's particularly virtuoso catawalling in London. I came off stage feeling that as long as the planet forgives us, it was well worth the trip.

The picture shows Dr Matt Loveless. You may remember him from our enforced stay in a hotel at Gatwick last November as we were trying to get to Minneapolis to make our album. Matt is a sociology professor from Memphis who lives and teaches in Oxford, and at the time was trying to get to Atlanta to see his ma. What I didn't mention at the time was that she had been involved in a car accident and that Matt was trying to get to her as quickly as possible for fear that she might not survive. Suffice to say the cancelled flight and ensuing delay was the last thing he needed, but in spite of that he was ace company. Well, having only arrived back in the UK from the US some three hours prior, he came straight to tonight's show, and saved us the awkwardness of asking by telling us almost immediately that his ma had pulled through and was on the road to recovery. Then, as was to be expected, he was awesome company once again.....

All suggestions for a planet friendly Vessels welcome...

 
Wed 9th January 2008 

We rehearsed early today, so that we could be done in time to go and see 'Earth' at the Hyde Park Picture House, our local art house cinema, which is only minutes from both the rehearsal studio and the yard. The film was immense, basically a feature-length compilation of footage from the BBC's Planet Earth series, but with Picard instead of Attenborough, and with the Berliner Philharmoniker instead of Sigur Ros. Highlights included: a nocturnal standoff between a herd of elephants and a pride of lions filmed in night-vision, and a similar standoff in the daylight between a starving polar bear and a Walrus colony (collectively - a 'pod'). At one point, when referring to the Arctic summer, Picard said that it would get cold again after 'a few brief months', but surely all months, or at least those on Earth, are about the same length? It's ok though, he redeemed himself almost immediately when describing humpback whales harvesting plankton in the same restricted time-frame by saying that 'the boon will be shortlived'.

To represent the repetetive yet varied nature of my life, today's picture shows Tom at this evening's rehearsal, captured using a bottle of Schweppes 'Canada Dry' ginger ale (special edition with free spirit measuring cap) as a lens filter.  

We need to get to Oxford for a gig, but nobody told the van. Help required....

Edit: Some of my sarcasm is slightly misplaced, as the BBC concert Orchestra performed the music for the original 'Planet Earth' tv series, not Sigur Ros - they were only featured in the British television trailers.... 

 
Tues 8th January 2008 

Szymon came back today - he's been in Poland for the holidays, it was ace to see him, and he appears to have mostly recovered after his high speed journey through a car windscreen. We hung out at work, and then later when we were doing internet things at the yard he showed me some beautiful paintings by a Polish artist called Zdzisław Beksiński, my favourite of which was this fairly intense depiction of a couple embracing....

The picture shows Tom in the studio at tonight's Vessels rehearsal, captured using a bottle of 'Old Jamaica' ginger beer (made with fiery root ginger) as a lens filter.

It seems we cannot have both secrets and peace of mind.... 

This morning I started back at work for the first time after the holidays, on about three and a half hours sleep - the stuff of genius. I was like a placid zombie toddler, useful for nothing more than making coffee, babbling a bit, making more coffee, taking all day to tidy and vacuum the office, and falling asleep on a chair in the corner.

When I got home, after tidying up the studio with Lee on the way, Tom made dinner and I passed out on the couch, snoozing happily with my lovely laptop which has returned to me after its brief Christmas respite in a Devon bender. I meant to post a picture of the office, resplendent with its freshly vacuumed floor, but I found this picture of me asleep on my camera when I downloaded today's pictures. Either Tom took it, or my camera has developed a mild sentience and has taken my blog to heart.........

I am now going to bed, at a reasonable hour, and I suspect that I might be about to get more than four hours sleep in one night for the first time this year............ 

 
Sun 6th January 2008 

This has got to stop. Rather than lying in this morning to catch up on some sleep, something that has been lacking in the past week or so, I elected to rise foolishly early and mission into Soho for breakfast. The journey back in the van, from London to Leeds, accompanied by the various sounds of Tim's esoteric CD wallet, went by like a sleepless dream; the markings on the motorway passing in front of my eyes like the steady motion of a hypnotist's watch, the line between dream and reality lost in a blurry, repetitive haze...

At home I did various things and saw various people, but the key thing, that can be reported when blogging with hindsight, is that at 5am, when I should have been unwaveringly comatose, I was still awake to reply when Helena texted to ask my advice about insomnia.....

Message me to sleep dear friends.....

Sat 5th January 2008 

I've been fortunate enough in my time to visit some amazing cities: New York, Paris, and Bilbao all spring to mind as places where the romance and inate charm of the cities have captured me and drawn me into their atmosphere and vibe. London has never done that for me before, perhaps because it's never been as much of an adventure as the aforementioned because it's so much closer to home; but last night I was finally enraptured by the magic of the Big Smoke. Maybe it's because as time has drawn on I have more and more friends in the city, to the point where a visit and a night out, with pretty much all of them at once, contradictory as it may be to my previous statement, made me feel really at home....

The gig went well, we were good in some ways and dire in others, and we spent all of our pay hiring a replacement amp-head for Lee when his blew in soundcheck, but a fairly packed Notting Hill Arts Club seemed to enjoy it. However it was everything else that drew me in. Twenty or so of us went out afterwards to celebrate Kat's birthday - the bars were lovely, the walk through Westminister to Rachel's place was ace, and the location of Rachel's parent's place was unbelievable. Her father is the Dean of Southwark, and consequently has a beautiful rustic yard next to the Tate Modern. The picture shows the view of Saint Paul's from her bedroom window. After a magical night out with an immense crowd of people, we went back to Rachel's, climbed out on her roof with cups of tea, and stared at the view across the river.....

Immense.

Yeah but we got them right on the album......