Star Blog

Writing this nearly a week later it's hard to remember what in hell was going on last Thursday but seeing as I said to come back...

Actually, I remember now. I was halfway through my week of hell. Yes, another one. This one was definitely unplanned for though. In fact, it should have been the other way round, that was the idea anyway. Wife took herself and the squiddlies up north for the school half term break to vist relatives, leaving I to swan around doing my loose-hipped thang. When the idea was mooted, I pictured myself strolling round Oxford perhaps, large Cuppa Cappa in hand, visiting old book stores, gazing at gazelle-like foreign students choking on their cigarettes, the boys even prettier than the girls.

Ho fucking hum. Most days I was up by six, working by seven, keeping that tune going til seven in the evening when I could be found slumped over a tray eating salad leaves and stuff (another belated bid to fight the death rays), and in bed some nights by 9.30, god help me where did all the good times go, Ray? The only times I managed to stagger out the door was to walk the dogs and, on Wednesday, to run like the wind Bullseye to London to record this week's CR radio show. Oh, and to have a meeting about a Forthcoming Secret Project with Chris and Scott. Ssshhhhhh...

Anyway. This particular day I also interviewed a couple of the good guys - from my old mates Marillion, about their early Fish-era artwork for a forthcoming CR-related feature. Which I really enjoyed. But not before I'd first hammered out a 2000 word piece on AC/DC, from Bon to Black Ice, as Alexander the award-winning hep cat editor of Metal Hammer put it. God knows what he thought of the finished article as he hasn't been in touch since. I am taking this as a good sign, fingers and toes crossed. Though you never really know...

... some of the faces that still float around in my mind's eye whenever I'm having trouble sleeping again at night... the female writer for the music paper that liked to get belt-whipped by the singer of the famous metal band while he fucked her. All was going well until he dumped her on the eve of the release of his band's new album. Guess what? That’s right, she reviewed it: gave it two stars. She's long gone now. The band's still going strong though.

Or the photographer who specialized in photographing female rock'n'rollers. Photograph them then fuck them, that was his motto, he said; or if they wouldn't do that then at least get some good pictures of them with some or all of their clothes off. For fun at gigs he would conceal a small sure-shot camera in the palm of his hand and use it to photograph up the skirts of every female he met in a short skirt, which at metal gigs meant pretty much every female he met.

Ah, those were the days. But they weren't all such fun. There was the bar tender backstage at what was then the Hammersmith Odeon who would keep those of us that couldn't be bothered to actually watch the band amused by doing card tricks. Like all bar tenders everywhere, though, he was only as interesting as the next drink he poured you and many was the time you saw your pathetic life trickling away in the reflection behind the bar, laughing at his non-jokes, stifling yawns as he made your ace disappear and reappear up his arse, waiting for the band downstairs to hurry up and finish so you could get onto the party where all the really interesting people like the ones mentioned above would be.

Your best friends were never the rock stars they were the people that worked for them – the cleaners up. The tour manager that time in Coventry after the Iggy Pop show when the irate bloke appeared in the hotel lobby looking to collect his fiancée from Iggy’s room, threatening to kill anyone who tried to stop him. Howard, who calmly picked up a wine bottle, smashed it against the wall then placed the jagged edge of the neck up against the bloke's quivering throat, stopping him dead... the roadie who warned you the band was going to send a tranny to your room and not to answer the door; the personal assistant who kindly left you $200 in cash at the hotel desk to help you pass the time till your plane took off when the band decided to leave without you early one morning in Nowheresville... the record company press officer who stuck her tongue down your throat and played with your balls when no one was looking like you weren’t the biggest loser-scrounger-trumped-up-groupie ever.

Was any of it real or did you just dream it? You're dreaming it now...

Live from 2pm UK time today, the greatest rock radio show anywhere in the UK that goes out today at 2pm...

www.rockradio.co.uk

Wife and babbas leaving tomorrow to spend a few days up north with family, so today was a mix of working on Bad Company and spending a bit of time helping them get ready. Boy had a birthday party to go to this afternoon so I met the girls from stage school and took them for a MacDonalds. Broke my no-wheat-and-dairy thing by having a MacChicken Sandwich meal (with mayo) with them. Tasted awful. Didn't say anything though as eldest girl says it's "the best thing in the world". You try and bring 'em up right...


I also cooked a casserole for their dinner tonight, put some washing in themahcine they are gonna need and walked the dogs (applause here please). Then I legged it back to the cottage to get on with some work, which is where I am now. About to quit though as my typing figers are about to fall off. Bad Company not done yet, obviously, but, hey, I'm doing my best. Actually, if I was really doing my best I'd stay here until the early (late) hours getting the bastard hammered into shape. Fuck that though, it's Saturday night and all the editors are away from their desks so why shouldn't I be? All right...

Old Buddhist joke taught me many years ago by the great art guru Peter N. Lewis...

Old man go into forest
walk for mile
look for tree
CUT TREE DOWN!
Old man make tree in chair
Old man sit on chair
suddenly...
LEG BREAK!
Old man fall
Old man DIE!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Still think of you Pete...

In a doomed bid to get some 'us' time, wife and I drove out to Challows this morning, the warehouses in the field where we go mooching sometimes to look for secondhand furniture, cheap foreign toys, weird trinkets and odd whatnots. They sell everything, even old school hamburgers from an authentically greasy white van - the latter pleasure though only at weekends, double drat.

I bought three old paperbacks for 50p each - Dublin 4 by Maeve Binchy, a three-in-one Maigret novels by Georges Simenon, and Hellbox by John O'Hara. All this in the full knowldge that I may never get round to reading them. We gave up after that and went home to eat sausages. I was back at my desk by 1pm transcribing a Simon Kirke interview for this Bad Company feature I'm currently toiling over for Classic Rock. I hate transcribing. Fortunately, Simon tells some great stories about Ye Olde days so it wasn't toooo painful .

Then at 6pm I was on the phone doing another interveiw for the Metallica book. I'm not trying to be super msyterious about it but right now who or what it was or is really has no bearing on anything useful I might have to say, you honour, so, er, forget I even mentioned it OK. Then I got some up and down emails. Lots of up, one down. So why is it only the down mails you really linger over? Sometimes I regret being only human...

Bad night's sleep. Long day's work. Bad back from running (at the wrong age). Now one of the children is crying. Some good emails though, which always helps. Though not when one of the children is crying...

Was sitting in the car in the rain in the car park of yonder village pub this afternoon with Steve the TV producer, and I was telling him about being at the Download festival this year and how so many of the younger bands kept telling me what an "honour" it was to meet me, and how so many of them called me "sir", as in, "It's an honour to meet you, sir." And he said: "What's it like being a living legend?"

I paused and thought about it and realised I didn't know the answer. I told him the truth: "All it really does is remind me of when I was Yesterday's Man back in the 90s." There was a long time back then when even those people that had heard of me pretended they hadn't. When none of the new grunge bands actually did know me. When even I felt the whole Mick Wall thing was hackneyed and out of date, blown up and gone, gone, gone.

But things change, whether you want them to or not. Suddenly I'm That Guy from That Place who knows about Those Times, all of which sound and look good compared to Now. I wonder how long it will last. Then realise it's not how long that counts, just what is. Or isn't.

Just one of those days. That's what I keep telling myself anyway. Youngest daughter is ill, throwing up all the time, and wife is also down with the flu. None of this should really impact on my work, as I have my vanilla prison to retreat to (in theory) but of course it all does. That and the sudden icy cold.

I did manage to get a few hours in at the cottage but even they became sidetracked by an ongoing dialogue with Nigel the owner over my heating costs. Unlike the last time I stayed here Nigel has stipulated that I pay my heating costs on top of the rent. OK. In order to try and keep them down though I have bought myself a new calor gas heater. Safe, clean, efficient, and a hell of a lot cheaper than paying for a boiler to be on all the time. I thought. Nigel, who is a good guy, can't seem to get his head round this development though and I'm not sure why. I asked if he could show me how to operate the boiler so that it's only on when I need it and this has somehow degenerated into him informing me he's going to have to check the insurance to see if it stretches to cover 'portable gas heaters'.

Oh dear. I'm sure he means well. I know I do. It is a bring-down though this sort of thing. Especially on top of regular phone and text updates on family illness. I'm here - supposedly - to try and get away from such things. Possibly a desert island next time then. Assuming there is a next time, which there won't be if I don't get cracking on this bloody book.

Finally got my eight hours last night as I spent it at the cottage. Wrecked by nightmares, though, and the fact that something weird is happening to my phone. Fucking T Mobile. Always when you really need the bastards they let you down. Like O2 and the rest. Fucking technology. It's all luxury items and no help whatsoever when the deal really goes down.

Drove home this morning and forced myself to mount the running machine. First time since Tuesday, naughty boy. Just long enough, in fact, for my legs to forget how to respond and leave me staggering through most of it. Kept waiting to hit that 'groove'. It never came. Just the pain. Still, at least I did it. Something must be better somewhere for it, right? Deep down outside.

Then this afternoon I came back to the cottage to try and polish off the Fairport Convention feature I was supposed to have finished last week. In a hurry with this one because I've also got to finish off the Bad Company feature that was also supposed to be delivered last week. When I say 'finish off' I do of course mean 'start'. Meanwhile, more technology blues, old and new school. The cottage TV keeps flashing up a window saying it needs a new Sky card. Told Nigel the landlord and he peered thoughtfully into the distance and said something like, "Hmmm, yes, must ring Sky about that... or something." I am not holding my breath as I stab hopefully at the remote. Worse than that though, the poxy casserole dish that comes with the cottage is so old and knackered that the pork casserole I've had bubbling away in the oven all afternoon has come out with dirty black bits of dish-leavage all over the food. No dinner for daddy tonight then unless I fancy another baked bean omlette and I really don't. There surely should be rules about stuff like this. But then I expect the usual (holiday) occupants don't need telly or cooking facilities, preferring to spend their (holiday) evenings in the pub or making sweet (holiday) love on the floor (horrid holiday-less thought).

Back to square one then. Again.

Terrible night. Exhausted by several nights of dog-and-kid interrupted sleep, wife and I deliberately went to bed early. That is, BEFORE 11pm. Got iaway with about an hour and a half's kip when SUDDENLY the DOOR flew OPEN and THERE was THE BOY!

"Mummy, I am wet!" he wailed.

Jesus Christ, he's wet the bed again. OK, no need to have another panic attack, just do what you need to do. Sheets, towels, Vanish cream, kitchen roll (wife), all the while comforting the boy (me). 15 minutes later we are all back to semi-normal EXCEPT now DADDY cannot SLEEP!

Shiiiiiittttttttttttttt... It was just gone 1a.m. when it started and there I was, still awake, aching with exhaustion but unable to keep my eyes shut, at gone 5a.m. Wife had given up and left me in disgust, still reading with the bedside lamp on, to sleep in boy's bed (with boy). Even the dogs had buggered off somewhere darker and quieter. Fortunately, I had Rogewr Lewis's new book, Seasonal Suicide Notes, to keep me company. I recommend it thoroughly. Now there is a writer who has SUFFERED for his ART. And lived to tell them all to FUCK OFF!

Finally - FINALLY! - I blacked-out. Only to be WOKEN again SUDDENLY by an irate wife BARGING through the door on a mission to get the kids ready for school at the same time as registering EXTREME DISAPPROVAL at my inability to stay asleep long enough for her to join in.

All of which meant today went pretty much to hell. I mean FUCK it. ALL. I can't function like this. No one can. Decided the only sensible course of action was to get my arse back to the cottage. To work, notionally, in reality to try and get a REAL early night. Not that I have been completely dysfunctional today. I did write a review of a Hawkwind album this morning while I was still hovering in my underpants between consciousness and deep space (perfect Hawkwind reviewing mode, actually). I have also sent a couple of million emails to various IMPORTANT personages. And I did deign to pick up all the dog shit from the garden, stick another stake in the newly erected wire fence (done to keep the dogs away from the plants, which they like to chew, toothy fuckers) and generally tidy up my disgusting office before I fecked off.

Now I'm here, contemplating some sort of bacon and baked bean omlette for dinner as I can't be arsed to go out the door again, and wondering if a very (very) small Jameson's might be just the job to send me on my way towards the wings of zedsville when I can finally manage to pull my soiled clothes from my bloated, rapidly ageing body. I wish it would hurry up and get dark.

A Metallica day yesterday, speaking to someone who knew them in the old days via Skype in the morning - my first time, very impressed, specially with the webcam aspect - and travelling to darkest Soho in London to meet up with Xavier Russell in the evening. Xavier is the son of film maker Ken, and a film editor in his own right. More importantly, in this context, he is absolutely the guy who not only introduced me and several thousand others to the music of Metallica in the 80s, but he actually invented the term 'thrash metal'. That's what Lars told me anyway and Xavier doesn't disagree. If you think about it, it figures, 'thrash' hardly being the way an American would describe a very fast and extreme form of rock. (It was known as 'speed metal' before X came along and gave it that special nomenclature.) We sat in the French House pub (v.famous Soho drinking hole) while we talked, drinking lager and summoning up the ghost of famous former French House patron, Jeffrey Bernard, while trying and almost succeeding to remember what it felt like to be 25 again. Made me realise how much I still actually love this part of London. Something you wouldn't have found me saying in public for about 14 years now.

Sat on the train going home happily merry, looking at the books I bought while I was waiting for X to turn up. I had an hour to kill and spent it crusing the rare and second hand book shops in Charing Cross Road. Totally can't afford it, totally couldn't afford not to buy the £3 paperback of Alan Clarke's diaries and the, uh, sshhhhh, £30 copy of the first edition Post Office by Charles Bukowksi.

Between times, went off to record this week's CR show. Scott Rowley was this week's guest and he's always good value. As the man who replaced with as editor in chief of the mag he's taken it from strength to strength over the past five years. He always chooses good tracks to play too. This week it was Ain't Got No Money from Frankie Miller's The Rock album, which I hadn't heard for, literally, decades, and Buckcherry doing Purple's Highway Star, which I'd never heard before. BTW, there is now a podcast of the show you can listen to via the we3bsite www.rockradio.co.uk

Today was a quiter day. Had to review a Steeleye Span mutli-CD collection and a few other things which I didn't actually manage to do, including getting on the running machine. Don't know but something in me just snapped on the train home last night. I care - a LOT, as Faith No More once sang - but suddenly I have my winter coat on and that brings on a certain don't-give-a-fuck-ness. In a good way, though. It doesn't hurt to let it all come down now and then. Specially when you've been pulling on the rope for so long and so hard. Not to let go, just to - let - it - happen - as - it wants - to - baby. If you can, while you can, before, you know...

One thing about the cottage - no early starts due to recalcitrant animals or errant children. Not so far anyway. Still up by 7a.m. eating my wheat-free Honey Crunch flakes, soya milk and nana, squinting at BBC Breakfast news as they waffle on about politicians' expenses. I don't get it. What, some people out there find it shocking that these cunts fiddle their exes? What's the point of being an MP if you can't do that? Besides, only a twat doesn't fiddle their exes. Shows gumption and good horse sense, if you ask me. Smart fuckers and that's what we want from our duly elected, isn't it?

Anyway, all that went out the window as I had a nice long argument with T Mobile about why my mobile no longer gets a signal when I'm home, which I was by 9. Three quarters of an hour later I was padding up and down on the running machine trying to forget the whole thing and not quite managing to. They will get their come uppance though when I tell them to shove it and go back to useless fucking O2 and pick up a nice useless iPhone.

The morning picked up though when I went to have coffee with Stephen the TV producer. Nice guy, big plans, some of them apparently including me. Now I'm the kind of person that tends to look so far down the throats of gift horses my head pops out of their tail-swishing arses. But this guy seemed... all right. Like an English Larry David. No, that's not right. But fun. Kind of guy I could see myself enjoying being around, making up stuff with. We'll see.

Then it was back to the office at home to interview someone over the phone for the Metallica book, as I don't have a landline at the cottage office. Don't ask who I was yacking to as I'm not getting into details at this stage but someone who told some very good stories. If this keeps up, I might actually have a half-decent book to write. After that I had to build this week's Classic Rock radio show. There's a new issue just coming out so this was the easy bit, with loads to pick from in its pages. It gets a little harder to choose tracks after a few weeks, having picked the bones pretty clean by then. But right now there's still plenty to play with.

Once that was done and sent I took the dogs out for a bracing run (slow stroll) over the clumps. By the time I got home the sky was all different kinds of red and white-gold, mind-blowing, and I actually felt like I might rest my old arse. Long enough to cook dinner and think about a deserving glass of red anyway. I didn't have to think for long...

Another flying start to the week. Up at 6 this morning with the dogs, who are able to go straight back to sleep as soon as they've done theior business, unlike me, left sitting there drinking tea and staring out the window at the dawn struggling up through the dark. Cut to the doctor's surgery by 9, the final appointment for my ears, curing my tinnitus by syringing the bastards, then lopping drops into them these past two weeks, between regular 'steamings' with Olbas oil and self-induced ear-poppings. Oh, yes, it's been non-stop party time again here at Wall HQ. But at least I got the all-clear at last today. My drums now as pearly white and good as anybody's, what? WHAT?

Straight from the doctor's to Vanessa's acupuncture parlour. People ask me why I do this. People always ask such stupid questions. I give stupid answers. "Cos it's either that or the roof with the semi-automatic and the 10 O'Clock News," I tell them in so many words, if I can be bothered which I almost never can.

After that, had intended to go back to work but got seduced by the hot autumnal sun and the fact that I worked all weekend anyway, so me and wife and boy went for a little jaunt to the shops, a new pair of jeans to buy. Black, waist 32, down from 38 this time last year, and a top that wife said looked groovy. There might have been even more to it but boy was driving us mad, insisting we call him John Barrowman and making us buy him more dinosaurs.

Now, here again, working, surroudned by quiet cottage, cold early evening light and the prospect of chicken and vegetable soup for dinner and a set of Steeleye Span albums waiting to be listened to and reviewed. All I need is my bow and arrow and a tankard of Mead and my sparks will be ready to fly again, oh yea, oh diddly-de-deh...

Well here I am again, back in the cottage I wrote the Zeppelin book in, and it feels like... yesterday. Especially sitting here typing like this in what for anyone else (on holiday) would be the utility room but for me (at work) shall ever be The Office. The only difference from last time I was here is that I have a laptop with wifi now which means I can still blog regularly, oh lucky you. And the TV has gotten much bigger. Which would be something except there are now even less channels on it. I can fix that but it would cost dough and I'm here to make it not spend it, or as little of it as poss.

Going now. Back later. This is just the start...

End of the week and so, inevitably I suppose, given the accelerated fibulations of the preceeding seven days, it has all come juddering to a halt. Well, not so much a halt as a leaving-of-the-road-at-the-wrong-speed-and-ending-up-in-a-pile-of-leaves. It began, as ever these weird late days, all too early.

Actually slept OK last night but woke up this morning like a tramp on a bench, smacking my whiskery lips and squinting with one eye, soles of my un-shoed feet flapping like lids. Forced myself into the shower, just to try and get my head pointing in the right direction. Then drove to the cottage to pick up the brand new Calor gas heater I bought yesterday that doesn't work, to take it back to the store - again. This was the third time in 24 hours and I was starting to get twitchy. Certainly not the way I want to start my Fridays, coming on all consumer king with the local populace of marble-eyed shopkeepers. Luckily, Andrew, the guy, was a good egg and this time we sorted out the problem good and proper and off I went again, heater and new gas tank balanced on my back.

Got home and settled down to write my Pentangle story then noticed my Blackberry flashing. A message from T Mobile telling me my email service wasn't working on one of my accounts. Cue 45 minutes on the phone to some very friendly, very helpful bloke from technical support who... couldn't fix it.

Never mind, there isn't enough day to play with today to worry unduly. Back to my Pentangle story. The door burst open. It was wife and boy, back from the shops, beaming. Big news, there was a [FILL IN NAME OF CHILDHOOD GOODS YOURSELF, I WASN'T LISTENING] and can we have it, can we, can we, can we???? No and a thousand times fucking no! Oh all right...

Back to the story. That's when I noticed I was starving, close to death in fact, the evil faints upon me if I didn't eat something BIG immediately. I did, however, sit at the laptop while I ate it, trying to at least get my quotes and dates and background and every other damn thing except the right words in order for when I was finally ready, at which point, mouth still full, the Blackberry started flashing again.

Well, this went on. And on. Until finally it got to nearly five, the rain was coming down, inside and out, and I gave up. Retreated with the dogs to the nearby hills, pounding over green and dale ignoring the rain, the pain, the game, whistling an ancient yet frighteningly familiar tune. Tomorrow, I decided, I really am off to the cottage. That will take care of the Pentangle story and a lot of other things. Straight after that I'm onto the Fairport story, which I also might get done this weekend if I play my cards right. And after that, I'm reviewing some re-released Steeleye Span albums. See a pattern emerging? Somehow, through the magic of getting older and supposedly wiser, I have turned into that bloke what knows about that smelly old folk rock stuff. Fuck it. I am glad. Good preparation for beginning the Metallica book, I feel. Like deep sea diving before getting ready to reel in the big fish.

Meanwhile, I'm sure someone out will there know, though possibly not someone reading this but just in case: whatever happened to the great Ashley Hutchings, and why did he leave Fairport just as they finally broke the mould with Liege And Leaf, then did the blinking heck same with Steeleye just before their 'chart breakthrough' with Gaudete? And what is it Ashley knew back then that he can tell us about now, when we really need it? And can you still get it on CD?

Interviewed Dave Pegg on the blower this morning for this Fairport Convention thingy I'm doing. Gor blimey, wot a life! Playing with Bonham in A Way Of Life, then the Fairports, Nick Drake's Bryter Later, John Martyn's Solid Air, Jethro Tull, lots of others lucky to have him. Now back with Fairport, gigging every night and telling stories, a walking history lesson, 61 years into it and still smiling through it all, like you do when you've seen too much.

Went for a run on the machine after, just to clear my head. Came back to Earth renewed and intent on sorting out a Pentangle feature I'm also writing at the moment, or supposed to be. Me and all the trippy old folkies, eh? Yeah, bruvver. Beats bleating around with whoever the new haircut are this month, I tell ya. Less money, more riches.

Day began to fall apart though after that. Pentangle got tangled, plans to move into the cottage got waylaid again, partly due to a new Calor gas heater which didn't work followed by its replacement also not working, partly by me not finding the vibe. The sun had all its clothes off though which made the evening dog walk a different pleasure. Still needed that glass of red come nightfall, though. Just the one but most gratefully received. I wont say I deserved it as I don't like that word 'deserve', it forgives too many bad mistakes, but I did feel better, wife and I making the most of a piss poor night on TV before calling the whole thing off early and going to bed. Which is where I'm off too now, soon as I press 'send'...

The days are getting longer. This one started around 3a.m. The usual after-dark combo of kids, dogs, whatevers keeping me awake long enough to worry about falling asleeep again and not waking back up. I had a phone interview to do at 9a.m. with Simon Nicol of Fairport Convention and I wanted my head straight for it. There are very – very – few bands left that I actually like that I haven't either interviewed many times before or aren't already dead. Fairport are one of them. Never having even spoken to Simon before, I was interested to learn what it would be like. Turns out he's much posher sounding than I'd imagined, though what I'd imagined I don't know – a slightly more rustic, olde English speaking voice, perhaps? Though god knows why, as he comes from London like me. Anyway, we had a very nice natter for half an hour, and you can read all about it in a future edition of Classic Rock's offshoot publication Prog.

Afterwards I just had time to eat something before rushing for the train to London to record this week's Classic Rock show. Would have fallen asleep on the train if it hadn't been so cold. I hate it when people keep going on about winter being here now. It's autumn, a wonderful time weather-wise, and I want to enjoy that fact. But this was winter-cold, blue and hard. It was also pissing with rain by the time the train pulled into Paddington.

Anyway, did the show, finished early for once, which meant I still had time to get home and finish off the final piece of the book-collection jigsaw, the author's introduction. Found it a struggle for some reason, talking about those days – the 80s and early 90s – trying to find reasons for things that really had no reason at the time. Thank god I didn't know then that 20 years later they would be collected in a book, I'd never have been able to put anything down on paper. And it was all paper then. Paper and typewriters and ribbons and tippex. Writing the Marillion book in 1986 I went through three typewriters and maybe 50 bottles of tippex. Delivered the whole thing in a shoe box. Ah, those were the days. Thank god they're gone...

Too bizzy to blog, the last couple of days have run away like horses over the hills and I don't mean Charles Bukowksi's, I mean the ones that somehow fit right up my arse on certain windy occasions. Must be something in the stars, there's no other way I can explain it. Today, for example (don't ask me what happened the previous 48 hours, that memory is long gone) I managed to fit in building this week's Classic Rock rado show with organising a Fairport Convention interview, writing the final - final - bits of the book compendium thingy, reviewing albums for CR, sorting out the press release for the US publication of the Zeppelin book and moving around breathing without falling over too many times.

I am not complaining. I am simply in awe at my powers of persistence, despite the lack of firepower in the brain department. After all these years and lifetimes and little murders and humiliations and buckets of shit we've all had to eat, it seems I simply have to sit here in the one spot without moving and stuff just somehow gets... done. I'm not saying it's prize-winning, I'm just saying that at the end of every day there it is, a miracle, no other word for it. The only time I make a mistake when I decide, like I foolihsly did tonight, that I must be due a good night's kip, or even half a kip.

No, sir. Dogs. Kids. The wind. The rain. The pain, the game. You name it. By 3a.m. I was wide awake and driving wife mad by turning on the light and reading. Didn't get back to sleep at all. Just fell into a nightmare-enriched fever. As you do. Maybe it's my age. Maybe this is how the world really ends. Not with disease or crippling but just lack of ability to sleep. Followed by not wanting to be awake. Except, of course, when I'm here and I can't help it.

I was supposed to be moving back into my 'cottage' today. Same place I wrote the Zeppelin book in, about to become my so-called sanctuary where I do the same for Metallica. Except, I never quite made it. That is, I drove there in the afternoon as planned to meet Nigel, the landlord, to grab the keys and give him his cheque, but he was so excited by the prospect of having me as a tenant again he couldn't actually be bothered to show his face and simply left me the keys in the door. Which, actually, I realise, is, I suppose, some kind of compliment, but left me feeling strangely... strange.

Anyway, I'm too busy to get in there yet and get, um, busy, so instead I spent the day getting the stuff I need together for the imminent move - clothes, bed linen, desk, chair, boxes and bags of research, special lamps and heaters and kettle and coffee machine and what's left of the old and getting older by the minute brain. Wife can't wait. She keeps telling her friends all about it. "The first time he buggered off and left me, it was all tears. But then I got used to it and this time I CAN'T WAIT! It's GONNA be GREAT!!"

And it probably is. For her. Poor me though, having to fend for myself, working on the greatest biography of Metallica ever written, possibly the greatest book ever written, let's be fair, while somehow seeing myself through the worst of the coming dark winter alone and lonely all on my own. Jack on his Todd.

Meanwhile, the witch has had me back in the garden erecting a dog-repelling wire fence around her precious shrubs and plants and whatnots. It looks quite good, actually, now that it's done and my back is broke. Which for some Freudian reason reminds me I haven't had a drink all week. I suspect this could be the perfect moment to break that particlar quacking duck. Something red. In a large glass. And the hell with the rest...

Spent the day nodding off in front of the laptop, trying to stay awake long enough to polish off the last of the bits and pieces that need doing for the collection of old stories Orion are putting out in the new year. Ian the editor suggested coming up with not just new present-time intros but some in-hindsight new outros too. All good, just so time-consuming, trying to remember a) what the hell was really going on at the time those things were written and b) what happened next. Awful lot of Googling going on for the latter, far too much staring at my fingertips and arse-scratching for the former. Finally got there in the bitter end though, inch by accidental-on-purpose inch, like a drunk stumbling across a busy motorway and somehow making it to the other side unscathed. Well, so's you could see anyway...

As I am writing this retrospectively, I can't remember what happened next in terms of what I actually did on Friday night but I suspect an armchair, a small table in front of the TV and a plate piled high may have been involved. That and a long series of zeds, if you get my uninterrupted drift...

Up again at 5 this morning, couldn't even grab a snooze on the couch downstairs this time though, the rats of my mind running too fast on their wheels. Eventually gave in and made tea and took it into my office. Put Radio 2 on and that awful old hoor that presents the dawn chorus show was on, gabbling on and on about any old crap she could find to read in the papers. Play a fucking record, you old hound. Certain women of a certain age, well, they're like certain men of the same, a bullet, six feet of earth and we'd all be a lot happier.

And so started my busy-busy day. The only time I got out of the office was to go and see Vanessa the Magic Acupuncturist. Worth her weight in old Chinese gold, she is. Applied the Moxo just show, shoved some needles into the right so-and-sos and off I went, like so. Feeling a lot better, that's the key. The only other times I was let out was to walk the dogs, which was good, actually. Caught the hilly Clumps just as the sun was sinking and the newly round moon was shining high, the landscape like a movie set. I'd never experience anything like it if I didn't have dogs to walk, the sky blazing red and grey and white and gold, then blue-black, the moon shining whiter and whiter as it hovered just over our heads.

Now here I am back here, listening to Japanese music over the internet, wondering if I have the energy to finish the one thing I meant to do today but never finally got round to, and realising... possibly not.