Long break since my last scribble- been busy recording, drawing,attempting to get a life. Been wondering recently if I'm not getting a bit too cynical for my own good. I recently borrowed the DVD of "Before Sunset", which I did actually see at the cinema but didn't remember too much of as I was more preoccupied by the woman I was with. I didn't expect to have much sympathy for the characters, even though they're about the same age/mentality as me. I was expecting a load of "boo hoo, I'm in my thirties and life isn't working out quite the way I'd hoped". But they were drawn sympathetically enough for me to go and buy "Before Sunrise", which I only saw scraps of on a plane when it came out. Again, I expected them to be cliches- "ooh, I'm in my twenties and isn't life a big adventure !". But there was a lot more to them than that.

The bit that hit me most in the older incarnations was Ethan Hawke's character talking about aspiring to his "better self"- the one that cares for his son and endures the alienation he feels towards his wife. But the loneliness and the recurring dreams about Julie Delpy's character he describes are really moving. It contrasts quite sadly with his younger self saying that he knows he would be a good husband and father, but doesn't know if he could face dying without excelling at something. The fact is that he succeeds in all those things, but at the cost of his own happiness. Who knows, maybe he's a lousy husband ? We only get his version, and perhaps he then proves it by going off and shagging La Delpy again- we don't know of course, as the second film leaves that particular one unresolved.

I often feel that my own concerns are crawlingly trivial by comparison with those who have kids and marriages to maintain. But what can I do about it in the meantime ? I don't know if my present way of life and mentality makes those things impossible. Who has that degree of perspective on themselves ? If you sit down and try to deconstruct it you end up just depressing yourself. So you may as well crack on.

It's a drag when you go to see a film and suspect that the person you're with isn't enjoying it. Hey ho. Just saw "The Squid and the Whale", which shows a middle-class family breaking up. It's set in the eighties, and the older of the two sons is an awkward git about the same age as me, so there's a superficial resemblance at least. The parents, the father in particular, are archetypal baby-boomers- self-absorbed, over-intellectual. What he passes off as honest "rapping" is just self-indulgent twaddle. That's where it diverges from my experience. I never wanted for anything, emotionally or materially. Didn't stop me doing me doing the whole rebel bit, which I often still feel like I haven't grown out of. Suppose that events just come along and slap you out of those sorts of mindsets.

If all goes well, the latest Photoshop doodle should be here- another old one enhanced with the Devil's technology. I know that Iggy Pop is a little more musclebound these days, but he's remarkably unchanged in every other respect.

Great weekend with friends around here on Saturday night. Tonight's music is Bill Evans and Jim Hall again- "Undercurrents". Dreamy jazz guitar as it should be, and sublime piano.

Thank God for "Scrubs". Even when you feel as abject as I did by last night it can always put a smile on my face. Thanks to my divine colleague Vani for the loan of Series 3.

Stinking hangover today, cured by coffee at the Trockel and Ullmann cafe on Downing Street. Lovely place, why is it closed so often ? Looking forward to having a few mates around next week and then playing in Yorkshire the week after.

Current contender for best opening verses of all time, from "Calling It Quits", by Aimee Mann-

He's a serious master
shake his hand and he'll twist your arm
With Monopoly money
we'll be buying the funny farm

So I'll do flips
and get paid in chips
froma diamond as big as the Ritz
then I'm calling it quits

No idea what she's on about, but it's just great, and continues to be for several more verses.

I was back in my old neighbourhood of Mill Road in Cambridge, and I must say I miss it. There are loads of shops to browse in, places to buy your food where the staff smile and don't appear to hate you/their jobs. Met about 4 people that I knew and chatted about the price of cheese. Then back to Arbury/King's Hedges, where there is fuck all apart from road, one pub that I would consider drinking in, and the default facial expression is the scowl. Hey ho, the realities of the housing market dictate that this is my home now.

Been listening to Neil Young all evening, and thought I recognized the guitar sound-then realized it was the sound of my new Gretsch, what I bought partly because Neil played one. It's sweet, but it growls. Fenders are such pussies by comparison, they put up no fight whatsoever. Isn't she lovely ?

Utterly knackered again, though if I had got slightly less pissed after playing at a mate's Dad's birthday the other night I suppose I would attract a little more sympathy. Also played at APU last night- 20 minutes to try and get the attention of an indifferent crowd, armed with a malfunctioning guitar. Not good.

Nothing profound to say I'm afraid. Been listening to Bill Evans, now the Stones, by way of contrast. Any women out there who resemble Kate Winslet and share my interests in musical obscurantism and caricature are welcome to accompany me to a quiet drinking establishment some time. Don't all mail at once, mind you, we don't want the site to crash.

It isn't often I'm awake before 7 AM, usually for the wrong reasons, but today I was. Having been gigging/drinking for the previous 3 nights, I hit the hay fairly early last night, and woke up about 6.45 as a result. I could remember my dreams, usually a bad sign in recent years, but wholly pleasant this time. I felt perfectly content.

My sister nags me that I see things as being really average or really crap, and it's certainly true that I can name the times when I've felt really happy, so they must be fewer in number. Isn't that how it should be ? Food loses its allure if it's on a silver platter every day. I certainly don't feel miserable most of the time, though. There's just constantly something I feel I need to be getting on with- all pretty selfish in nature. I don't have anyone to provide for other than myself. What's selfish about not squandering your talent, though ?

Contentment and happiness are two different things, but maybe they get closer as you get older. For me, happiness is still a pretty fizzy thing. Being in love, playing in a good band, listening to the McGarrigles singing "The Swimming Song". Contentment usually goes with silence. One time recently my flat and block were completely silent, just the sound of traffic on the main road, quite distant. It reminded me of my parents' old house. My own mental chatter just ceased. That is a simply blissful feeling. This morning was a kind of cross between the two, so that's how it's eked this out of me.

Holidays rock. Seem to have spent the greater part of my time off so far on my own, but can't really say I care. Solipsism rocks too. Spose my job involves a lot of "people-handling" so that must explain it. Plus I'm just a wanker. Going down to London tomorrow to see an old friend and his new wife, so there you go, I do have room for other humans somewhere in my life.

Was going to do some work on the book of drawings I've been doing tonight, but I've done loads over th elast few days. Plus it's after 10, the Byrds are on the stereo.............Would have a drink, but want to be up bright and early tomorrow. Middle age and sobriety rock.

Just been listening to a very earnest radio documentary about ASBOs, whilst reading a Guardian article about "the New Snobbery". Must say that I find it hard to take a sympathetic view on the topic. Since moving to Cambridge, people who, I'm afraid to say, yes, were wearing shellsuits and baseball caps and speaking in broad Estuarian accents, have swerved cars at me, thrown beercans, lit cigarettes and bricks at me, verbally abused me and jostled me. My offence ? Erm, walking. Cycling. Existing. Not looking like them.

The radio show interviewed some kids who had been ASBO'd when younger and they sensibly suggested some shock revelations. Give kids something to do. Discipline them better if you are a parent. A social worker suggested that before using ASBOs, young children could be encouraged to sign up to "behavioural contracts", promising not to do "simple things" like scream in the street and throw stones. Wow.

I haven't met the parents of the kids who've given me grief. I doubt they're pleasant, in general. I don't doubt they're working-class. I don't doubt that they are poor, and that they have to cope with pressures which prevent them from exercising strong discipline. Or maybe not- I was fairly horrified when I saw Frank Field, who for years was Labour's leading guru on welfare reform, saying on TV that he'd reached the conclusion that the only way to deal with antisocial people was to ghetto-ize them.

I can only compare it with my past experience. I grew up on a middle class street just down the road from some estates. Any aggravation I remember I would put down now to kids being kids towards each other. As a student in Glasgow I spent my first year in a hall in a working-class area quite far from campus. We were given advice re behaviour which basically amounted to "don't rub it in" (they're long term unemployed and Catholic- if you're neither then keep quiet about it) and "watch your step" (there was only one pub considered safe for us). Violence in Glasgow is always implied very subtly but powerfully, apart from in areas where heroin has removed the rule of law. I still have the naive notion that, as those were the dying days of grant-maintained tertiary education, my fellow students and I were from a fairly broad range of society and didn't actually represent inherited privilege to the people of Maryhill.

I suppose that polarisation exists a hundredfold in Cambridge. But I still resent being a target for random oubursts of "proletarian" rage. What have I done ? And look at your lot- materially, is it really that bad ? If you have a car to swerve at me, then sorry, you are not poor. If the problem is simple lack of respect or lack of a culture of respect then I just despair. Like I said above, the rules of respect are fairly elementary (I would swear to make that more forcefully felt, but, to exemplify the notion of respect, I will refrain). If it's lack of opportunity, then I have a couple of suggestions- try attending school, and try voting. They're both free ! And if people's notion of how those two institutions relate to them is so eroded then I really don't know what to suggest.

Another weekend come and gone- blink and you've missed it. Good gig at the Cambridge Folk Club on Friday. Some of my students from my TEFL dayjob came along, and I think were a little nonplussed by the contrast of having to survive the bar of the Golden Hind, followed by the folkies sitting down quietly to listen upstaits. Tried some blue humour, which I think may have been the wrong idea. A few eyes popped. Will probably be at the Barking Dog open mic in Bury St Edmonds on Wednesday, so see you there if that's your manor.

Sometimes Photoshop just seems to easy, but then it doesn't really differ all that much from the "colouring in" I used to do with pen/ink and watercolour. It's just musch faster and cleaner.

Just watched a DVD of "Heathers", a film I very clearly remember seeing when it first came out. Had forgotten some aspects- the dreadful 80s sound and colour, Christian Slater's abysmal Jack Nicholson impersonation. But still feel the same amazement that the American media didn't grab hold of it 11 years later, in the wake of the Columbine shootings.

Given that it depicts a character in a black overcoat pulling a gun in a highschool canteen and shooting two jocks, it sure beats whatever Marilyn Manson might have been dribbling about in 1999. OK, slater's character actually fires blanks at the jocks, for which he is only suspended- maybe the whole idea seemed so absurd at the time that the writers could only imagine a response so trivial. Or maybe his being expelled/arrested might have just brought the narrative to a premature halt. Go figure. He then goes on to actually kill several fellow students, with Winona Ryder's unwitting conivance, disguising them as suicide. The film in general is fairly fucking absurd, but hey, it's allegory, dude.

Maybe the extremities of absurdity and the large swathes of pseudo-sociological guff that often comes out of the characters' mouths meant it was all too much for the shockjocks and rentaquotes to take in. Maybe they'd just forgotten it. But how on earth could such a loaded (literally) tale have been so overlooked ? In many ways it's a brave attempt to confront the very issues that would eventually contribute to Harris and Klebold doing their stuff.

The main thing I remmber while watching it aged 17 (same as the characters in it) was amazement at just how rich and overdressed they looked. They all had cars. Musselburgh grammar school looked kind of tawdry by comparison. And though i had my own issues with "popularity" (or lack of it) and adolescent notions re love, death, revenge et al, I was glad I wasn't in an environment where it was quite that stoked, plus with real guns lying around. Fuck only knows what it's like now in the wake of Columbine- if British schoolkids are lucky, they'll be at a stage where "Heathers" just looks like some very dated pre-pre-precursor to "Buffy", and not like everyday life.

So it seems like the solo singer-songwriter style is more popular than it has been for about 3 decades. How odd. The main thing that I wonder is not why this is so, so much as why do people choose to adopt it ? I'll admit that when I first started playing the guitar I was emulating fairly obvious idols- Neil Young, Nick Drake, Van Morrison. But you quickly realise it's a very generic and very over-suscribed genre. You see the same stereotypes at every gig/open mic- willowy hippychick cooing nothing much at all; wounded bloke extracting revenge in song; babyboomer who's just recently found time to reconnect with his/her younger self. I suppose even if they're not old enough to really remember it, they still have that general revulsion towards the tawdry, overproduced sound of the 80s. If they're not too old they'll be tired of dance music's domination- if they're older then they've probably always hated it. Certainly sampler or sequencer-based music can't claim precedence anymore just due to being innovative. It's part of the furniture and has ceased to progress fundamentally, plus people like Beck crossed it with "real" music so effectively that the battle-lines aren't as stark as they were. So what can a poor boy do to differentiate himself from the rest ? 1- Spare us the angst, go out and live a bit, 2- Try to write about other people than yrself, 3- Think about why you've chosen to write and play your own songs, rather than just sing someone else's. I recently asked a girl at an open mic what kind of songs she wanted to write- she looked at me like I'd asked her for the code to the human genome. Why bother if you've got no fucking idea why ?

Listening to "She Hangs Brightly" by Mazzy Star, the latter half of which I used to find fairly tedious, but I've played fairly constantly since I got a CD copy a couple of years ago. Hope Sandoval tended to sing fairly flat, but her voice is so lustrous and sexy, combined with the stoner musical setting, it still kills me.

Wrote another song today- another outpouring of verbosity, this time of the somewhat wounded and bitter variety. Butit's actually about the futility of writing wounded, bitter songs. Come to my gigs, where the fun's at !

Might I just say as well that Kirsten Dunst is awfully pretty. I know there are many millions of men who think the same, but thought I would chip in my own ha-penny's worth. G'night for now.

I recently discovered a couple of old pencil-sketches during the year I lived in Grevena, in northern Greece, of the singer and bouzouki player from a local folk band I used to go and see quite often. Thought that, ten years on, it was high time I finished them. Brings back good memeories, though I must admit through the haze of collosal amounts of booze. They're below, since I couldn't figure out how to upload themn with text.

Had a bit of a funny turn last Friday at an open mic night. A guy (English) was singing "Caledonia" by Dougie MacLean, and a Scottish acquaintance behind me started singing along and asked me if it reminded me of "the Old Country". I'm afraid I snapped at him that it meant fuck all to me. Honestly, it doesn't. There are plenty of things I miss about about Scotland, but things like that just can't get past the underlayer of English in me (Brummie and Yorkshire parents). I'm afraid if you put my soul under a microscope, the greater part will consist of tea, toast and constant apologising for no reason. Not hugely fond of that either, but we do what we can.

Blimey, I actually seem to have a readership, even if it is just the two buggers that I work with. The 15,000 figure was a stab in thedark, I admit. One of the neo-cons in the Independent claimed something even lower (if you can consider 15, 000 "low")- I vaguely remembered looking at the iraqidead site a few months ago and seeing 12, 000. Of course that was a few months ago, and the scale of destruction in the meantime has pushed it up to a level I wouldn't even have dared to suggest without checking. 33, 000 people............. why are phrases like "a city the size of Peterborough" only used regarding immigration and not this ?

It was screamingly obvious right from the start that Britain and America didn't have a post-war plan. They had to mobilize quickly to exploit the momentum of the all the dodgy "evidence" of WMD they had, in lieu of UN backing. What a lethal combination- the American desire for a quick fix and the British ability to implement a discreet bodge.

See even the neo-cons are chorusing we should get out of Iraq. Just took 15,000 Iraqi dead, 2000 Americans and 200 (?) British to jog them along. Up til then, I was reluctant to join the general leftie slagging of Tony Blair, but from the minute Baghdad fell, I thought he can just fuck off, the pious, naive little prick.

I am NOT an all-purpose sceptic. When he supported the invasion initially, I hoped and prayed he was playing it the same way he did the 1997 election. For the two years between his election as Labour leader and then, his silence was deafening, but it was a Trojan horse. When the elction came around, he just suddenly produced a whole array of policies from his inside pocket and just blew the Tories away. Scoff all you like, Trots, but without him we would still have had Tories in power for at least another term. I hoped that once the invasion was over then there really would be WMD piled up behind the schools and hospitals, though my overwhelming suspicion was that there wouldn't. And of course there weren't, in fact.

So, reasons for his back ing it ? Could be

1) He believed whatever trumped-up evidence of WMD Shrub and Rummie showed him, and thought we had to avoid a Chamberlain appeasement situation. Verdict- naive little prick, resign now.
2) He doubted whatever they showed him, but still thought that it was worth deposing Saddam's dictatorship, if it was done for it's own sake, not oil. Verdict- naive little prick, resign now.
3) He somehow thought he could sneak nice, fluffy policies into the neocon agenda once Saddam had fallen- "Hey, guys, could you take your mind off the oil for a moment ? I want to send that nice Clare Short over to give them, y'know, electricity and running water." Verdict- naive little prick, resign now.

Went to the launch of a new Nick Drake biography last week, and have been thinking again about characters like him. I'm like any male muso- look through my CD collection and you'll find stuff by loads of doomed characters who died young- Gram Parsons, Tim Buckley, Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis, etc ad nauseam. i like to think that I do take them on their merits, without the attendant mythology, and in most cases I think I do. Tim Buckley actually does very little for me, I haven't listened to Joy Division in years, Jim Morrison without the Doors was crap and vice-versa (take it from me, I've heard both the recordings he made without them and and them without him- they're dire.)

Nick Drake.............I have periods where I think he was over-rated and I should have grown out of it now. But he just creeps back in. Maybe because he's dead and never got the chance to soil his image with crap material- not that there isn't some crap on his albums (the instrumentals on Bryter Layter, drippy nonsense like Thoughts of Mary Jane and Way to Blue). His music has just drawn me in- he's one of the few people who I could tell you what I first heard, and where (sitting in my bedroom, proabably drawing, age 16,listening to a radio documentary about Island records- they gave a 5-minute life-story and played a snippet of "Fruit Tree"). When I listen to him now, it feels like I'm giving time to someone who's too honest and inscrutable to cope with usually, and who you feel a bit guilty about brushing aside. Does that somehow still romanticise his young death ? Don't know.

Handy hints for home-recording musicians- don't leave your microphone preamp switched on and leave it indefinitely- the same thing that makes it very hot will cause it to eventually burn out completely. Oops. Just pray to God the mic itself is OK- that's the expensive bugger.

How divine is Souad Massi ? Truly I am in love. Buy everything by her- if an Algerian woman singing in French and Arabic over North African/Gypsy/singer-songwriter music sounds like your bag, then she is it. And the sound of the oud is just the most luscious instrument. Other sounds of the moment- Fela Kuti, The La's, Donovan (quiet at the back !) and Muddy Waters.