The Secret Supergroup of the Forbidden Music Room

Another little animation adapted from one of the graphic chapters in Small Town England, this one highlights the slight culture clash between crap teen windbandery and groovy East Midlands hard rock combos. It's all true except for my hair - in reality it wasn't quite that yellow.

The Girlfriend Who Moved To Scunthorpe

Small Town England has various little graphic novel elements that tell bits of the story. This small clip has been adapted from one of the illustrations in the book - the tale of The Girlfriend Who Moved To Scunthorpe.

http://www.smalltownengland.co.uk

Phil Collins as a Writing Tool

I'm sitting in the Genesis Cafe on Blackstock Road, trying to write. A Phil Collins album - possibly a greatest hits package - is blithering out of the speakers at very high volume. Because of this I have to go inwards, block out the outer world. Focus. Must not hear Phil. Must only hear my inner voice and the pulsating sonar of the muse who is currently marooned on a rock in the middle of a vast dark ocean. Now the cafe bloke is making a smoothie and Phil is drowned out by what sounds like an early Cabaret Voltaire track, but is actually a liquidizer. Ah, the calming sound of everyday domestic implements that sound like northern industrial electronica.

But I'm now worried that by blocking out Phil I have somehow allowed him into my subconscious and he will return at a later date. Like in my dreams. Or when I'm trying to think of something to say at a job interview. OK, that last one isn't very likely.

I have to leave now. My mood has changed. 'One More Night' has come on. I can't take it any more. I wonder if this bloke has a license to play Phil Collins like this? Strangely, there are now two other people in here, both French/Belgian women sitting at different tables nattering on their mobile phones. Phil's siren voice must have lured them here. Now they will be stuck with his songs in their head for the rest of the day and they will hate this country and not know why.

Remembering where I put my paints and what the sky looked like

After many months staring at the wall or out of the window I finally got my paints out last week and made some marks on a canvas. It's a landscape about landscapes really, based on the image I have in my memory of looking down over the wondrous CaherMacrusheen fields in Doolin. My inspiration/motivation has probably come from the fact that I've got two paintings in an exhibition at the Bernie Grant Arts Centre in Haringey - my portraits of Rivelino and JFK - and hanging around with other artists is always a good way to get things moving again.

Writing in a MacDonalds on a Saturday morning

I'm upstairs in a MacDonalds on Kingsland Road in Dalston, sipping at weak foamy coffee in a paper cup and trying to write. Procrastination is high, thanks to the decent Wi-Fi service and the newspaper. No matter how much I try to concentrate, my mind slips and I start reading about forthcoming football fixtures and surf various sites looking for Christmas presents for the kids.

Next to my laptop is a notebook with my list of weekly tasks for the next few months. I only drew up the list last week but I'm already behind. My eye strays towards a man on the other side of the restaurant. It's late period Leo Tolstoy, drinking coffee and eating a donut, content in the knowledge that he's already written great books and can soon go back to his own time via a pan-dimensional wormhole in the smelly toilets. He'd have been better off going further back in time, where coffee and donuts would have been cheaper.

Crappy Christmas music blares out from the speakers. Tolstoy gets up and stares out of the window. A woman to my left is writing what looks like a dissertation on an old Compaq laptop. Further away two middle ages people talk vaguely about shopping and TV programmes. No-one is eating burgers or chips. In fact, no-one is eating anything. McDonald's has become a drop in centre for drifters.

Tolstoy is now staring at me. I sense the possibility that he'll decide to kidnap me and take me back to the 19th century. It would be interesting but I have presents to buy. Books to write.

The Crow Road - A Walk in Roxeth

Last week I went on a walk with deep topographer Nick Papadimitriou and the writer/producer John Rogers, as part of their radio show 'Ventures and Adventures in Topography'. Each week they pick a different part of the Greater London area and do a walk, usually aided by a book from the early 20th century.

Our walk started at South Harrow station and ended up a few hundred yards away in a crow-infested patch of parkland.

The podcast is here

Rebuilding The Temple of Ying From The Ground Up

I'm not entirely sure why I'm posting on here again. And I can't remember why I stopped back in 2004. Probably something to do with the speed of service on Blogger back then, or the user interface on Typepad. My Typepad blog became an online version of my old Smoke newsletter, with mundane local news and little Zen newsflashes. I do still like writing those reports but for some reason it's harder to get into the slightly cutesy mindset required to properly pull it off. And it does seem as if the whole local non-news news thing is now being done to death much better elsewhere, on twitter/facebook etc. I've doen the odd post on Twitter but so far I'm stuck in a slightly bewildering cycle of kids, beer, old records and the sound of lorries. Plus I've got so many websites with my work stuff on that I've sort of lost track of how I reveal myself online.

And I just want a change, obviously. I've been staring at the Typepad 'Compose Post' area since June and haven't come up with anything. I't's Blogger's Block. Or Writer's Blog. Blogck?

But I'm back mainly because there are a load of blogs I like - some great writers and artists - on here and I can re-engage in a community again. And the really great thing? No-one has *ever* looked at this blog. The only way is up...