Life as a Ghost

impossible songs

impossible songs

& impossible songs may be young marble giants

Life as a ghost

Strange to think that to some people, old friends, relatives or colleagues you can become no more than a ghost. A phantom who passed across their lives at one time or another and now has crossed over and is gone. You still walk and talk but for them you are gone, you’ve passed away into the sublime complexity and confusion that forms all of our histories and memories. Every so often there will be some chance encounter and you may for them for a brief moment adopt human form or then perhaps not. Remaining as a ghost is generally the easier option, particularly if dragging up the past brings unwelcome issues along with. I understand that for many people now I am a ghost, no more no less. At first I had difficulty with this and fought and struggled against my ghostly fate, then I met some of my fellow ghosts and things began to make more sense as I learned of their experiences. The real ghost stories in the world are all around you but are generally untold except between ghosts. The one sure thing about ghosts is that they stay dead and for them that is for the best. Maybe you think you’ve never encountered ghosts at all but it is probable you have and maybe quite unintentionally created some. Your actions, your omissions, your words, your indifference, your hardened beliefs bring the ghost world closer and make it larger every day. Of course I am as guilty as anyone of these things but now that I understand and acknowledge my own ghost life, it’s not so bad. Watch out for us.

They might be young marble giants.

We keep getting compared, and thankfully quite favourably, with the “Young Marble Giants”, gone but not forgotten. Terms like “stripped down” and “pared back sound” are used. I think this is down to Ali’s vocal style primarily and our relatively simple songs. What will the world make of the Roughboys remixes?




Dreaming about having a dream.

Ever have a dream about having a dream? Amid a houseful of early morning hay fever sufferers I drifted away into a deep sleep where I met some old friends and managed to convince them I’d met another old friend who was from a different dream. I woke up confused and not sure quite who it was I had met and where. When dreams collide, reality can seem a long way away and is hard to grapple back to. Hay fever does provide an expedient short cut back.

OOTB Face Painting.

A fever of face painting broke out at Thursday’s Out of the Bedroom in the Cannons’ Gait cellar bar. The usual musical mayhem was taking place when, as a result of a chance raffle prize win the face painting fury began. At the last count some ten poor souls were seriously affected.

The cat ate a pigeon.

Yes he did, and he left me the grotty task of picking up the remains from below Mz VW Golf. We’d noticed he seemed a little sluggish and disinterested in food and in being around us – he clearly had other things on his mind. The sad carpet of feathers and debris left in our car parking area is still lingering. Still his predatory presence does nothing to discourage the Woodpeckers, Wagtails, Green Finches and of course the Crows that return and feed, on a regular basis in our garden