Monday 10 November 2008

on the train to St Pancras
Glasgow airport’s had an internal refit of sorts: the security hall is a vast improvement, but once you’re through that, every passenger now has to walk all the way through one of those dismal World Shopping experiences, a long snaking path through shiny overpriced nonsense. It’s very ugly and rather demeaning: now that your belongings have been officially deemed safe, all that you are left to be is a potential retail opportunity. Bleah.

Yesterday Mark and I had a look at a possible recording venue just a short walk from home. It has a wonderful bass-enhancing acoustic, and a chamber organ by Neil Richerby in situ, but it’s a bit heavy on the traffic noise from outside.  I’d had the bright idea in the morning of going for a bike ride, fuelled by a breakfast of porridge and kippers from Saturday’s market. Five minutes in when the hailstorm started, I wondered if it was really such a good idea. And six miles later when I hit a patch of wet leaves and fell off, I nearly regretted setting out. When I got home I shopped on eBay for Gore-Tex patches for the resultant rip in my waterproof trousers, and put all my muddy clothes in the wash. The lump on my leg’s gone down a bit now but last night it was quite impressive: I probably aggravated it by crawling around on the floor after our amazingly cute baby niece, who was visiting while her dad was in town picking up a BAFTA.