And on the first day ...

The trouble is, of course, when the holidays arrive there is an initial sense of deflation. "Oh", you find yourself thinking, "so this is what we were waiting for...". The morning comes, and lunchtime, and four o'clock ... and so the day wears on.

Spent some time in the garden listing Things To Do - a mixture of half-formulated projects from the past nine months, vague ideas, and good resolutions.

I work my way through the first 100 pages of the 'Penguin Book of English Verse' noting down interesting verse forms, poets I'd never heard of, poets I had heard of (and read) but who now seem rather more interesting. Eg? Gavin Douglas. I wouldn't mind doing some deliberately 'bad' translations riffing off the texture of his English (if that's the correct term).

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Boxcutter - interviewed in the new 'Wire' - puts me on to Pharoah Sanders (rhymes with "ganders" not "launders" as Ben reminded me once). Get hold of 'Summun Bukmun Umyun' and 'Elevation'. However, neither Caroline Records nor Music Mania in Brussels have heard of Boxcutter's new CD 'Oneiric'.

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Really like 'His Desiccate Ancestry' by Thomas Hummel in the copy of 'Fence' which arrived this week.

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"I come up for daylight and friends like whales come up for air" (Robert Wyatt at the start of the BBC bio-documentary last night).

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The street and the bread walking the girls hand in hand with a bird so blue above our heads in the new trees.