Star Blog

First day back behind my desk properly and the grind is on in earnest. Trying to get a lot done too because as of tomorrow I'm neck-deep in book-writing. Today that has largely meant bill-paying - including the dreaded tax, or the Fucking Shirt Off My Back, as it is officially known around here - and other important clerical sundries, such as filling in Life Assurance forms (in case I cop it, at least the wife and squiddlies will have a roof over their heads, even if they have nothing to eat and no clothes to wear).

Also, spoke to Scott and Sian at Classic Rock. Seems the Syd piece went down well, which is good news. I think it's the best thing I've done in ages. The fact that they think so too means more to me though. We talked about what I will do next for them. Can't say what yet but here's a clue - it's someone big. Literally, metaphorically, name-wise, fame-wise, oh come on, it's obvious, isn't it?

Also been rifling through your emails. There's quite a backlog due to the hols so not entirely sure where to start, except to say that a lot of you that have bought Star Trippin' are now starting to send me... reviews, I suppose you'd call them. Which is a first, especially as some of them are so perceptive. I will definitely get round to running through some details (of these and others) over the next few days.

Meanwhile, a quick answer to Steve Arnison, from Kettering, and Paula Johansson, from Leeds, who both ask more or less the same questions: are there still signed copies of Star Trippin' available via this website? YES. Or have we closed down the operation now that the book has become available in the UK in shops like Waterstone's, HM and Virgin? ABSOLUTELY NOT!

The answer is, you can still get signed copies of Star Trippin' via this website (cheque, credit card, even old-fashioned cash, if you like, just click the Buy Book button above). How long this will last for though it's hard to say at the moment. When the book first came out in May (when this site was launched) there was an instant rush to buy them all up. Then there was a pause, probably not coincidentally while the World Cup was on, during which time the rush slowed to a trickle. Since then, it's been up and down like a toilet seat. Rush, trickle, rush, trickle...

The bottom line is this. We began by offering 3,000 one-off copies via this site, all at a special £3-off rate and all signed personally by me. Most of them have now gone but there are still close to a thousand left, so if you do want one - break out the moolah now, kidz. Cos once that 3,000 are gone, that's it! No more! Ever!

I also notice that there have been signed copies (obviously procured originally from this site as no-one else has them) being flogged on Ebay for ridiculous amounts of money - up to 10 times what we sell them for! Which is OK, if that's what you want to do with them once you've read 'em. I had no idea though that an autographed book (least of all by me) would attract so much attention. There must be some very sad cases out there. Bless 'em...

Exhausted. Still recovering from my so-called 'break'. Woke up dizzy and sick. So did Linda. Took the kids out to Waitrose and filled a huge basket-on-wheels with stuff, intending to cook it when we got back. Never got round to it. Instead, fed the chortling brood then collapsed on the couch while the kids ran wild in the garden. Our luggage is still outside in the hallway, clothes spilling out of it. The only thing we've managed to unpack so far are the two Buddhas we bought from the far out shop in Blandford - and the statuette of Quan-Yin, Mother of Compassion, Safe-keeper of all Children (and also, say some, the mother of Buddha himself). Well, you've got to get your priorities straight.

Once upon a time, I would return from a holiday feeling totally refreshed, brimming with ideas for fantastic stories and full of plans for the future. Now I come back and I can barely get out of bed. That's what having three small children will do to you. There's all the deep and endless love and wondrous joy too which those of you without children will never know about, and for which I pity you because it's the biggest, best feeling ever, no argument allowed. But what it takes out of you is also huge. It simply eats up the days. And nights.

It's for that reason that I am probably going to go away while I try and finish writing the Axl book. I've actually found myself a hotel where I can rent a room to work. It's only about half-an-hour's drive from where I live, which means I can still have dinner at home each night. But the rest of the time I'm going to be there, away from the sound of children learning how to live large (itself the largest, most all-consuming sound there is), bashing my brains out over this keyboard.

It's got to be done. Because apart from all the love and joy and exhaustion and whatnot, the endless toys and games and demands for attention, the little darlings need feeding too. Bless 'em. So it's the laptop flophouse for me. As for my poor wife, the last time I looked she was busy thumbing through the Yellow Pages looking under 'S' for Supernanny...

Well, we're finally home. I must admit, I've missed being here. Missed being able to use my own computer to log on, missed being in touch with the outside world. Missed the smell of my own shit. Predictably though, now I'm here I wish we were still on holiday. Wish we had discovered the Secret Beach a lot sooner. Wish I had been more patient with (and less worn out by) the children. Linda and I are already planning the next holiday...

In the meantime though, it's back to work - with a vengeance. One of the first letters I opened from the mountain of snail mail waiting for me was from my accountant, Damian, telling me how much I have to pay the taxman this month. Fucking hell! The long and short of it... I am now flat-arse broke. This in turn means two things, a) I have to start seriously hassling all the people that owe me money, and, more important, b) finish the next book pronto.

Which reminds me, it seems Ross Halfin's little joke about me doing a book on Syd Barrett, plus my own references to the piece I wrote about Barrett for the next issue of Classic Rock has mislead a fair few of you into thinking I am actually writing a book about the poor bastard. For the record then, I AM NOT WRITING A SYD BARRETT BIOGRAPHY.

I am, however, writing a book about someone who makes Syd's so-called 'madness' seem like a bit of a headache the morning after one too many alcopops - namely, my old sparring partner, W. Axl Rose. My occasional running jokes about the nonsense old Waxy is currently getting up to on his comeback tour notwithstanding, this is actually going to be my serious attempt to try and put the feller's extraordinary story into some kind of proper perspective - i.e. the life, the music, the man, the bullshit, the brilliance, the bathos. The full banana.

At the end of the day, who is this guy? And why - why? - is he like he is? I'm gonna try and tell ya. And no, it's not about payback for 'Get In The Ring' - that song made me a lot of money 15 years ago. In my own way, I'm rather proud of it. Except for the fact that it's not that great. Certainly not by classic GN'R standards anyway. It's not even the first time a pissed off artist put my name in a song. (That honour goes to Gary Numan - another story for another time.) No, this is going to be a serious journey and even I don't know yet what the final outcome will be. I promise you this though - it wont fuck around.

In order to complete it though I'm gonna have to bury my head in work for the next few weeks. For a writer, that's a double-edged sword - it's as exciting as it gets for a wordsmith. It's also as boring as hell for all those that have to put up with him while he's doing it. By the time it's over I almost always vow I will never do anything like it again. So much so, in fact, that right now, as I think about it, I worry that I wont be able to deliver. That I'll crap out halfway through, out of gas, my balls completely deflated. It's happened before.

Except this time it's personal of course so that can't happen. Instead I'll probably just shave a few more years off my life in the process. Will it be worth it though? You can be the judge of that when you get a chance to read it some time next year.

Meanwhile, I'll be coming up for blog air. Whether I'll be making any sense though I can't say. Again, you'll need to tell me. Which reminds me, I notice a lot of you have been sending emails while I've been away. Some of them even quite good. I'll be getting round to them over the next couple of days. First though, I've got to go and dig out my old writer's shoes. I'm gonna need them...

A Eureka moment - a beach that apparently no-one else in all Dorset knows about, or not many know about anyway. The old girl in the village shop told us about it after we signed a Masonic pledge never to reveal its name or exact whereabouts to anyone - not even you. "It's so remote," she whispered, "that you even get nude sunbathers there sometimes."

Bloody hell. At first I thought this was her way of inviting us into the local swingers club but no, she meant what she said: a remote beach even closer to us than wacky Weymouth but that hardly any bugger seems to know about. OK, it's got pebbles instead of sand but that's what sandals are for, right? And it toughens up the squiddly-diddlies, too. Teaches them that life isn't all about sandy beaches and stealing crinkly bits of paper from daddy's wallet to pay the candyfloss man.

Actually went swimming in the deep blue-blue. It was fantastic! If only we'd known about it a few days ago. Never mind. We're going home at the end of the week and very soon this will all be just a memory. In the meanwhile, we're going again tomorrow and this time I'm seriously considering going topless...

And so it goes on... yesterday we went shopping in Weymouth. Very classy, in a Blackpool in the 1960s (but down South) sort of way. We prefer it to Bournemouth though because Bournemouth is now Home of the Students and if there's one thing you really don't want when you're carting around three young kids it's being surrounded by students. Only being a few years out of the 'children' bracket themselves they find it physically impossible to recognise the needs of those sad buggers with pushchairs and make trying to walk down the street with one like going the wrong way up the track at an F1 meeting. They come hurtling at you at terrific speed as they run, drunk and drugged and sex mad through the streets from one Gap to another, and don't even say sorry when they send the ankle-biters scattering in all directions.

So Weymouth it is for us. There's sand and burgers and candyfloss and grabber-machines and sticks of rock. No wonder I'm sleeping well at night at the moment - a few hours of that and I'm practically in a coma. Shopping wasn't too bad there though, not once we dumped the girls inside the fossil shop. Something for everyone in there (everyone who likes necklaces and bracelets and shiny stuff) and peace and quiet for me and Linda for five minutes while we strolled around outside staring at the tattooed ladies and pot-bellied men - then realised we were staring at our own reflections in the shop windows...

I have been fortunate in my working life, in that it is has taken me across the world and made me a witness to some of the most - for want of a better description - rock'n'roll events in living memory. I was there, for example, standing at the side of the stage in Philadelphia when Led Zeppelin went on at the US version of Live Aid in July 1985. I was there, too, at the old Marquee in Wardour Street (sadly long gone now) when Guns N' Roses (the real Guns N' Roses) played their first UK gig in June 1987. I was also there at Donington getting pissed backstage for eight bloody years running. But never have I been anywhere quite so senses-shattering as the Teddy Bear museum in Dorchester, Dorset. If you don't believe me, check it out, hairy dudes, at www.teddybearmuseum.co.uk. Just tell me it's not the coolest.

What's that, you say? My brains are beginning to be affected badly by Farmer Shepherd's scrumpy? Hollyhocks to that! Besides, you haven't see Beatrice, his teenage daughter. If it wasn't for the fact that her boyfriend, Harold, looks like a 6ft 8ins teddy bear himself I'd be tempted to describe her in more detail. As it is, I'll be lucky to get anymore of these blog entries done on her computer now that my wife has seen her too.

Tomorrow, by the way, it's the Dinosaur museum - also in Dorchester. Fuck me, they know how to live it up down here...

"Ooh, ah!" as me and Farmer Shepherd say as we sit there drinking his 'home-grown' cider of an evening. "Ooh, ah! But it's a lot of weather we've been having lately."

Yes, still officially on holiday. Was spared the beach yesterday though after the deep purple blisters on my shoulders and chest were diagnosed by my wife as being the first stages of skin cancer. Was sent instead into Blandford, the nearest town, to pick up supplies from Ye Olde Tescos. I like Blandford, it's full of women, young and old, with hardly any clothes on and that deep tan you only get from living so near the coast, and boasting the kind of curves they only grow down here in Dorset. And they all look at you and smile when they hear you talk, full of pity for the fact that you are obviously an out-of-towner with no idea how to milk a cow or have a proper punch-up at closing time. Except of course there is no closing time. Not out here, matey.

Now I have to go and get my beauty sleep. Tomorrow is another big day. We're off to Dorchester and the Teddy Bear museum. You think I'm joking. I wish I was..

Apologies to regular readers of this blog. As you will have noticed, these past few days have seen a 'radio silence' - i.e. no entries at all. This is because of some technical glitch which neither my ISP nor my media-mogul brother, Gerry, have been able to rectify. Something to do with the fact that the family and I are temporarily sequestered in what is known locally as the Back Of Beyond may have something to do with it. The only reason I'm able to write this is because the owner of the next farm along in the valley we are hidden in - name: Farmer Shepherd, I kid you not! - has kindly allowed me to use his lovely teenage daughter's PC for five minutes. The lure of cash money has helped persuade him to let me do this a few more times over the next few days but expect further 'delays', as we media power-brokers say, while we continue what my wife and I laughingly refer to as our holiday.

Fortunately, this unexpected break has coincided with the fact that I haven't actually been doing anything much to write about - not unless you enjoy reading about driving through 102 degree heat to the beach with a car-full of screaming kids. And I very much hope you do because that's what the rest of this holiday is mostly going to entail, I'm fairly sure.

You have been warned.

Finished Syd. Pretty pleased with it. Especially as I finished it with plenty of time left to go out with the family today and get scolded by the sun. Once upon a time, I used to sit around all night writing. Now I try and get the job done in human hours. Never used to think it was possible. But then I never used to think a lot of things that are actually cool were really cool. Now I am wiser. And older. The two go hand-in-hand of course. Shame. I really could have done with some of this knowledge earlier. Like a couple of decades earlier.

Got back and cooked dinner - roast chicken, salad and chips. A proper Saturday night by the seaside holiday meal. Linda and I even had a couple of drinks. Whoa! Steady, next we'll be putting on some of those rock and roll records and dancing around like negroes.

Actually starting to feel like I'm on holiday. Now I'm gonna go and join my wife on the couch and see what the goggle-box has to offer. Might even break out a DVD. The baby might even stay asleep long enough for us to finish it. Some kind of heaven indeed...

Got a very nice - and totally unexpected - email this morning from Paul Brannigan, the editor of Kerrang!, complimenting me on yesterday's blog entry about Syd Barrett. 'It's really nice,' he wrote, 'and incredibly rare, to read words that cut through all the bullshit and crocodile tears in this business.' Blimey. Paul went on to wish me well with my return to Classic Rock. What a gent. In fact, I was so moved I sat there for about five minutes just staring at the computer wondering how to respond.

Just then another email arrived, this time from Peter Makowski, who is currently on holiday in Thailand. He also had something nice to say about yesterday's Syd rant. Which was especially interesting as these days Pete combines being a legendary rock writer with running the show at a rehab centre down on the English south coast. As he says, Syd's case was just the tip of the iceberg. 'In my game we see lot of people with secondary mental problems getting into drug-trying to self medicate. Then the doctors give them prescription drugs and they get worse, even suicidal - i.e. Cobain, Hutchence. Since Care in the Community (or throw them out in the street unless they are lucky enough to have loved ones who have the patience and strength to look after them) came about we have seen a rise in mentally vulnerable people left to their own devices.'

The fact that I then had to carry on with the Syd story I'm doing for Classic Rock definitely put a new, er, slant on the story. God knows what they'll make of it when I finally finish it but there certainly wont be too much 'interstellar overdrive' going on and probably far too much of the help-the-aged about it. Oh well, someone's got to say it, it might as well be one of their own...

Got to about 5.00pm with that and couldn't take anymore. Decided to go and do some last-minute shopping with the family instead. The shops are all open late here on a Friday night. One long, child-screaming raid on Next later (only the classy stores for us) and we piled back to the car with something for everyone, including a white hat for Linda ("I look like a sailor!") some pink fold-away sunglasses for the girls ("Daddy, quick, look at me!" "NO, look at ME!!") and a bagful of T-shirts and whatnots for me and the boy. He's only seven months old but it's amazing how much we have in common clothes-wise.

The sort of thing, in fact, poor old Syd never got round to. OK, he wrote 'See Emily Play', and no-one will ever be able to take it away from him. But I know whose daddy-style sandals I'm glad I'm standing in today.

Spent most of today working on the Syd Barrett story for Classic Rock. As I mentioned before, I have a ton of stuff on file for various reasons - and you only have to look around on the internet to find a ton more. Started out writing the same kind of stuff you've probably read yourself these past couple of days - he was unique, a huge inspiration to subsequent generations of musicians and music fans alike, he was an acid casualty, blew his mind out on the good stuff then 'retired' to a basement in Cambridge where he ballooned and lost his hair. Blah blah blah.

No doubt I'll have to include a fair bit of all that in my piece too. But what really came across to me today was how little, if any, that whole acid-rock-tragedy thing has to do with what really happened here. By the time Roger Keith Barrett died, he was 60 and suffering from cancer. He had been going blind for over 10 years, because he had diabetes and didn't - couldn't - take care of himself. Since his mother died in 1991 he had lived alone, you see. Poor cunt. And we're supposed to care what David Bowie or the bloke who's not in Blur anymore or whoever has to say about it? Fuck off. What do they know? And as for those twats that used to knock on his door just to get a peek of the freak...

No wonder the family are having a 'small, private' - i.e. no Pink Floyd members invited - funeral for him. Barrett may have been in a pop group for a few years back in the 60s, but that wasn't who he was for the vast majority of his life. And no, he wasn't a 'crazy diamond', cheers lads. Just a man, without a plan. Same as all the other poor sad cunts that live on their own down the road.

You wanna know what it's like to be sad and mad and all alone? Don't worry, that's one question we all get round to finding out the answer to sooner or later. Syd just got there sooner, that's all...

My old mate Mark Blake from Mojo emailed me this morning to ask if it was true my Syd Barrett book would be out next week. Very funny. (This is a reference to the fact that when John Peel died I put out a biography of him.) Then I remembered that Mark was actually writing a book about Pink Floyd at the moment, so I emailed him back saying I thought he would surely be the one 'bashing out a quickie', as we say in the trade. Ha, ha. Then he called me. "No," he said, "I'm not joking. Ross Halfin told me you were doing a Syd Barrett book."

You've gotta love him, though, right? Sadly, I missed the great man himself when he called me this afternoon ("This is your hero. Call me!") as I actually had the phone switched off while I tried to enjoy the sun - that is, walked around boiling like an egg, the ankle-biters screaming at me from all sides. Then when I tried to call him back the mobile refused to give me a signal. By the time it came back on again it was time to put the nose-bags on the children. Or try to. "Daddy, this makes me sick!" I lead the life of Riley, I do.

Finally got away for five minutes and turned the laptop on. No messages from Scott at Classic Rock (about Syd). He's probably still on deadline, poor bugger. I used to hate deadline week when I was editor. Nothing ever gets done on time and even when it's over it's never really over. The first day the finished new issue actually came out Ross would be on the phone. "Shit cover," he'd say. "Why didn't you use one of my pictures?" Happy days...

Did get an email from Cookie Vance though, telling me it was actually Tommy's birthday yesterday. 'If the old git had still been with us he would have grizzled and grumped his way through a celebratory dinner telling us his career was in the toilet and he was all washed up,' she wrote. 'Maybe the news of Syd Barrett's death would have stopped him in his tracks but then again maybe not, as he was pretty single-minded when it came to being a grumpy old fart.'

Which is why we all loved him, of course. I never knew he was born under the sign of Cancer though - just like me. I always said we had a lot in common (apart from that voice of his, of course, and his hair, and his money, and his fame, and... well, you get the picture).

Cookie also told me how when The Who played Hyde Park the other night, she was going home in a taxi and the driver - a heavy metal fan - started going on about the Friday Rock Show and how Tommy was the greatest DJ ever. Then started humming the Van der Graf Generator theme tune. She didn't tell him who she was, though - then regretted it the moment he'd dropped her off and sped off. What a small world, though, eh? Game of two halves, over the moon, sick as a parrot, couldn't make it up, guv.

It's true though, isn't it?

Supposed to be having a holiday, or at least taking some sort of a break, but keep getting drawn back into doing other things. Like, I just had the afternoon planned out when my old china Trevor White from Planet Rock called me on the mobile to tell me Syd Barrett was dead. "That's nice of you to think of me," I said. "That's all right," he said. "I always think of you when someone dies."

I ended up doing a 10-minute interview for the station which they then aired a clip from on their hourly news show. Very good I was too. Then a few hours later they replaced it with a quote from John Mulvey of Uncut. Cheeky bastards. Actually, the one they should have had on there was Nick Kent. He wrote a great Barrett piece in the NME back in the early 70s. But then I bet Nick took more acid than I ever did. And I sure as shit took more acid than Mulvey.

Poor old Syd though. Acid was never the problem, of course. Not really. It was what was already lurking inside that did for that poor bastard. The same as for most of us, one way or another, if you think about it.

Anyway, the whole thing got me thinking. Next thing I was looking on my laptop to see what Barrett-type gear I might find there. I put together a huge Pink Floyd biographical-promotional thing for EMI a few years back when they released the 'Echoes' compilation, which entailed going down to the EMI Archive in Hayes, where I spent a couple of days going through every single newspaper and magazine cutting Syd and/or the Floyd ever had. As a result, a lot of it ended up on my computer - over 20,000 words just on Syd alone, including interviews with him and all sorts. An enormous amount of press considering he was already talking to trees in monosyllables by the time the Floyd had penetrated the charts.

Sat there reading some of it - finally decided I wanted to write something of my own. So I called Scott Rowley, the Editor-in-chief at Classic Rock, and asked him what he thought. He said he thought it was a good idea and that he would get back to me tomorrow with a more solid idea as to what he would actually like to see. So that was good. Managed to talk my way into spending more so-called holiday days actually working. Syd wasn't the only one who was mad.

Changing the subject... Cookie Vance tells me she only ever reads this blog, Ross Halfin's and Pete Townshend's. Quite a compliment. Never having actually seen Townshend's blog though I thought I would give it a squint - which I did just now, before writing this. Cookie's right. It's good. How refreshing to read a proper rock star who actually has something to say - and isn't too worried what people will think to come out and say it. Check it out at www.petetownshend.co.uk.

Don't forget to come back here though or my business-degree brother will never forgive me...

No blog this past couple of days as I was down under the deep blue blanket of sickness. That is, not sleeping at night but not being able to stay awake in the day. Feeling down when I should have been feeling up and vice-versa. And before you start sending me any more how-to-get-the-most-out-of-your-genomes emails, fellas, please, give me a chance. Sometimes its necessary not coping. Or if not necessary then, well, interesting. Let a man enjoy his tottering feebleness. For a few days anyway.

Meanwhile... what is this nutter from Dublin called Noel wittering on about, asking whether I want to be remembered as a rock music 'guru' or 'forgotten as a washed-up reaching for ideas kinda guy'. Neither, thanks, chief. Though I can't stop people having their memories, the only ones which ultimate concern me are the ones my family will have. Nothing to do with rock music or ideas. Though no doubt some will have those too. Just as long as the keep them to themselves.

Then again... what is this the deeply mysterious Cookie Vance (yes, one and the same) sends me? A website where it is possible to mess with your mind without recourse to nasty illegal chemicals. Check it out, headshop cronies: www.devilducky.com/media/47884/. Don't say the lady didn't warn you though.

And so... yes, it's the start of another week. And I'm supposed to be on holiday. Well, sort of. I don't think I'll actually be allowed near a beach or anything cosy like that until the weekend. But I have been doing a lot of gadding about in preparation. Grooming the horses and loading up the wagon with bullets and biddles, sending the wimmin and chillun on ahead (I wish). In fact, I was feeling better all round until I happened upon Ross Halfin's latest diary entry on his own rocktastic website. Something about me bleating on about my wife not letting me play Judas Priest in the house. You what! At least I don't sit around the house all day pouring over the collected solo works of Bruce Dickinson. Ross has always loved everything Bruce does, and was devastated when he left Maiden to go grunge in the 90s (when everyone was doing it). But of course he doesn't really like people knowing. Especially as they're such good friends in 'real life' too...

Two magazines waiting on the doorstep when I got up this morning, both with good news in - for me anyway. The first, Kerrang!, who have run an edited version of the Red Hot Chilis chapter from Star Trippin' in this week's issue, along with a plug for the book and this website. How very gentlemanly of them. That'll be that nice Luke Lewis, the features editor there. I served under his father, Alan, in the war, you know, when he was General of Sounds and I was just a foot-soldier trying to earn my stripes. Seriously, I owe a lot to Alan. Without whom... And now that I've mentioned that his no doubt embarrassed son will probably never speak to me again.

Second mag was Hard N' Heavy, le top French mag, who have run a piece I wrote for them on the Return of Axl and his Stars In Their Eyes Guns N' Roses. Even sweeter, Renaud Doucet, Monsieur Le Editor, has also run a very cool piece about Star Trippin', along with pic of book and plug for the site. Now that's what you call tres bien.

All downhill from there, though, as I returned to the treadmill of trying to work on the book. Got so far, just getting quite pleased with myself, when my daughters returned home from school with two friends - plus my eldest daughter's teacher, Lyn, and their friends' mum, Penny. Followed a little later by Lyn's teenage daughter, Charlotte, back from her piano lesson. Cue: madness. Screams, laughter, stomping up and down the stairs, and then an all-out assault on the garden. The kids were really noisy too. So the book had to be adjourned. Not that I minded really. It's a lonely life being a writer sometimes and it's not everyday I get to sit around surrounded by smiling, chattering women. In the end it did get a bit much for me though. I felt a bit like the Howard Hughes character in The Aviator - I couldn't quite keep up with what was going on. So I took off in my jet. That is, I took the dog out for a walk. A long walk...

A hard day spent trying to do the right thing, no matter how difficult or painful. That meant beginning with a proper work-out. There was a time when I used to go to the gym every week at least twice, usually much more often. It lasted about five years. Then I started to get gym-rage - big muscles, tight buns, very bad temper - so took up Tai-chi instead. That also lasted about five years. It definitely worked better than the gym, in terms of my temper, but I ended up losing most of the muscles.

Then, god help me, I spent about five years in a complete tailspin, no gym, no Tai-chi, no-fucking-nothing-what's-it-to-you-cunt. I can't tell you why, not here anyway in just a few words. But the result was a gain of three stone and about eight inches around my waist. No muscles, very bad temper, short-life.

Then something happened. Got a little wake-up call. More than one, actually. So now I'm trying to get back to some sort of semblance of health-and-fitness. It's working too, but it's working slowly. I've lost 10 pounds in the last few months. That would be good if I didn't need to lose about 40 more. Still, I'm trying, fucker.

That's not all I'm trying to do. I'm also trying to free up my mind. Not through Tai-chi, though I'd like to get back to that eventually, but through simply having the courage to do things my way. Sounds easy. It isn't. Not if you want to earn a living too. But that's the goal. I measure my success in various ways. Today that meant making a few calls, sending a few emails, putting myself first in a few situations I haven't had the strength to in the recent past. The type of calls and emails that never really go down well with the receiver, but that if you really don't give a damn about actually seem to work well for you.

Then this afternoon I tried to work on my next book. I'll tell you about it another time. The point is, I tried to get some serious writing done. Sometimes this works, sometimes it doesn't, even after all these years of calling myself a writer. Today it seemed to work most of the time. Then I felt sick again and had to knock it on the head. I'm still suffering from some sort of bug.

All in all then, a good day, I suppose, except that I know I am still sick, on a number of levels. But doing my best to cure myself, in a number of ways. Why do I tell you this? Why are you still reading? If you know the answer to one you'll know the answer to the other. Till tomorrow then...

Woke up to hell-and-damnation Black Sabbath thunderstorms and blessed, sweet... rain! Thank god, I couldn't take another day sweating in my freaky sandals. Only problem, some sort of bad-mutha bug has got into me. Tired, dizzy, sick... wet. Ugh. Sat here at the laptop with my eyes rolling round in my skull. Most attractive. In the end I went back to bed. Just got up again half an hour ago feeling worse than ever. I obviously need drugs. So put the kettle on and find a nice big mug, grab a tea-bag and get ready to imbibe, baby...

Got a couple of emails that made me smile though. The first from Oliver Ambs in Zurich, who says he just finished Star Trippin' and 'liked every word of it'. You my man, Ollie. Goes on to say he is 36 and never got Kerrang! and that growing up in Switzerland in the 1980s 'meant to believe that Krokus was the best band in the world and AC/DC their cover-band'. Then shares some gossip about Def Leppard, saying they were recently booked into the local 15,000-seater arena in Zurich but had to downsize to a 1,500-seater theatre - 'and it was not sold out by the way'. I'm starting to think Ollie is a rock critic on the side...

Email of the day though comes from Scandinavia where Patrik Hellstrom tells me one of the daily newspapers there claim that upon arriving in Oslo last week, an official from the New Guns N' Roses camp ordered the promoter to phone every major modelling agency in Norway inviting their models to come to the show and hang out with everybody's favourite rock pugilist, Axl. The models, the story goes, would receive VIP passes for their 'trouble' and all expenses paid. Patrik ends by asking: what do we call people who have to pay or give gifts just to meet women?

I'll leave you all to ponder that one...

Another strange day. The heat is melting my mind. Was still in the shower when the gardeners started firing up their chainsaws again and strutting around with their shirts off. By the time I came downstairs my wife was putty in their large, brown, grass-stained hands, fetching endless cups of coffee and talking loudly about anything that popped into her awestruck head (cars, tattoos, dishwashers...).

Meanwhile, I've been trying to write something for Classic Rock. Yes, I'm back. It's been two years since I last worked for the mag but, finally, I'm feeling the tug of love again. I'm pleased. After five years doing my best to build it up, I was completely burnt out. I needed a break from it and it sure needed a break from me. But now I'm back - and felling much better for it, thanks, doc. Especially as I'm not running the show anymore. Just another writer. Doing his best to write something worth reading while you sit on the bog in the morning. That is, when the heat subsides and the golden men of the garden down noisy tools long enough to let me...

A very long strange day in which I got almost nothing done. At least, not workwise. Instead, three men turned up at 8.30 this morning to install a new security system in the house. You wouldn't think something like that would take too long. After all, we don't exactly live in Buckingham Palace. But no, something like that will actually take ALL DAY CHEERS MATE. Meanwhile, you turn into a tea and coffee machine. Or in this case, given the stupendous heat, a running lemonade dispenser.

Well and good. At least the bad guys now have one more hurdle - after the wolf hound - to surmount before they can get their hands on my... er, books? CD collection? Well, whatever it is the bad guys want.

Just to make things more interesting, however, for some reason known only to the Tattooed Love Girl I call my wife, we also had two guys stomping around the back garden all day, putting new fences up and generally posing around in shorts. Is there something she isn't telling me? Don't know, too busy making fucking tea...

I did get near the office at one point but just as I clicked on the email to see what's up, the dual sound of drills and chainsaws struck up in weird concert and the next thing I knew what's left of my brains were jiggling out of both ears. Gave up in the end and just sat around in a sweaty heap, writing cheques for amounts I can't afford. Still, the garden looks nice. One day I might even be allowed to sit in it for a while without some child or woman trying to get my attention. One day when I'm too old to enjoy it...

The heat, the infernal heat... I can't stand it. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have it too hot than too cold but days like today just aren't meant to be in ye old England.

Been trying to work, trying to write, trying to keep my head straight, and it's just impossible. At least in places where it's meant to be this hot, like LA, you've got air-conditioned everything. Here you can't even find a fan to buy when the weather gets like this.

What must it like being at The Who show at Hyde Park today? Bloody horrible. Might not be so bad tonight when they come on, especially not if you're pissed or stoned or whatever. Sitting here right now though the sweat is dripping from my fingers right onto the keyboard, making it impossible almost to hit the right keys.

In the background the kids are screaming, crying, fighting, begging for their water bowls to be refilled. Fuck it, I'm gonna fill the bath with cold water and throw them all in. Then I'm gonna stick my sore head in the freezer. And close the door...