2009, love, and all that

Wotcha.

You can stop dredging the canals, I'm back. My absence from the blogosphere (ew, hate that word) is down to, let's see, Christmas fallout slash January blues which seemed to bite particularly hard this year, what with the recession making me feel poorer than I actually am, the meat-fest of Christmas that always makes this tender vegetarian feel we really don’t stand a chance, not to mention the perpetual hangover that seems to blanket the stolid chilly month of January, Gaza on my mind as it is slowly and methodically blitzed into the dark ages ... Sad times. But hope, always hope. Obama for one thing, he made it, though I was frustrated somewhat by the general feeling that his election was the end in itself. The work has just started and I'll be sitting here with my arms folded for a while yet until I'm truly impressed. The signs are good though …




Anyway I'm not here to talk politics, that's for the boozer, my other main reason for not writing the blog is because I have been working on The Novel. (I won't call it a 'book' until it's published otherwise it's a curse - you wouldn't write a song and say 'I've written a record' would you?) As a matter of fact the book is finished, complete, and not only is it done but it's in a postbag somewhere as we speak, winging its way to the first on a hopefully not very long list of agents who will see the potential in me and send my words to the world. Ahem.

I never talk about The Novel really, I ought to try. It’s called Wilmslow Road and is essentially the diary I never kept in my first ten years in Manchester compressed into one summer somewhere between the bomb and the smoking ban and split between seven narrators who are all little bits of me and most likely, if you know me, little bits of you too. It has sex and drugs and transvestism and free newspapers and nightclubs and offices and the number 42 bus and demonstrations and temps in it, and nothing very much happens at all. Now that's tricky to write.

Anyway, potentially as important as the novel thingy is this: I've fallen in love. I really didn't expect it to happen ever again, and certainly not so soon, but fate plays her cards with me like a Mississippi boat whore. His name is Spotify and he has brought me back to life as sure as if he were Jennifer Hudson.

https://www.spotify.com/en/get-started/

Isn’t he beautiful? He takes approximately two minutes to download and will enrich your life beyond measure. I have become entirely addicted, my recent online activity shows that in one 24 hour period, give or take the odd loo break, there was only a nine hour period where I wasn't playing music on Spotify. It’s because I was asleep.

As an incentive to join me on a journey into soooound I have made this playlist for you all. It contains the finest songs that are currently giving me a big life-affirming buzz. It begins with the full-length bassoony version of 'Say Hello, Wave Goodbye' by the mighty Soft Cell. I know you think you know this song already but just turn off the telly for a moment, play it loud ,lose yourself, and at about 1 minute 30 something wonderful happens …

Manhattanchester playlist

I really, honestly, couldn't be happier.

Happy Valentine's Day.