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Neil before Janice

Tuesday 14th October 2008

...except after C. Or something.

It's now 2am and I've been on the go pretty much all day; up this morning to do a phone interview with (I think) the West Sussex Gazette; then into town to do a down-the-line interview with Radio Bristol (ostensibly to plug the Bath gig which is, as I said yesterday, sold out, apparently, but hey ho); then off round town to do a bit of shopping, then meeting up with Clara and Astrid (Greta having been farmed out to Grandma for the evening) to go to dinner with Neil Gaiman, who's in town again as part of the promo tour for The Graveyard Book, which went straight in at No.1 on the New York Times Best Sellers List this week, and rightly so.

The first thing I noticed about Neil is that he's looking rather more kempt than I'd ever seen him before.  For years he's been famous for his mop of curly black hair, which generally looked as if someone had thrown it at him.  This evening (or rather yesterday evening now) it was trimmed (although still longish) and raffishly swept back.  Rather suited him.  We were joined by Neil's God-daughter (more of a Gothdaughter really) Hayley and her young man Alex, but not, as had been a possibility, by Neil's actual daughter Holly and her young man, er, Alex (confused?).

The conversation turned from meetings Neil had had earlier in the day with People I Couldn't Possibly Name, about Projects I Couldn't Possibly Discuss, to the project Neil and I have been mulling over for some time which, since Neil's now mentioned it in a couple of interviews, I Guess I Can Now Discuss. 

Neil and I have been planning to write a musical together for about two years now, and Neil confessed that the reason he's been mentioning it in interviews was to put pressure on himself - and on me - to get on with it (same principle as me blogging my weight-loss progress, I suppose).  We already know what it's about, we have an idea of the plot, I've even written a couple of putative songs for it, we just have to set some time aside and crack on with writing it.  As you may have noticed, I haven't exactly been luxuriating in spare time just lately, and Neil's officially The World's Busiest Man, so it's going to take some organisation on both our parts to get this together (living on opposite sides of the Atlantic doesn't help, either).  In any event, since Neil now seems content to let his many thousands of bloggees get on his case about the show's progress, I guess it's okay if all twelve or thirteen of YOU guys hassle me about it as well.

After dinner I parceled C&A (hey...!) back into the Smart car and lumbered off to BBC Western House to do more PR, this time on Janice Long's Radio 2 show.  The interview took up most of the first half hour of the show and by the time you read this it'll probably be up on the BBC iPlayer (It's not yet, so no direct link, sorry). I'm interested to hear it myself to see if my Scouse accent comes creeping back during the conversation, as it often does when I'm talking to someone else from the Pool... 

Fresh lunacy awaits me on the morrow, so off to bed.

 

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hmmm...

Monday 13th October 2008

So I weighed myself as soon as  got up and it looked like 21st exactly, which would have been down two pounds from last week, then I tried again just now and it's showing 21st 2lb, which is the same as last week.  Bugger.  Not sure why this is as I haven't eaten or drunk anything in the meantime.  Anyway, we'll call it 21 2 to be on the safe side.
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this is the guy

Monday 13th October 2008

... who's gonna win it

As I've said, I've been a bit obsessed with the build-up to the US Presidential election; it's been a nerve-wracking couple of weeks, but I think this may be the guy who finally wins it for Obama:


What's particularly special is his behaviour once he gets inside the meeting. There's nothing so uncomfortable to watch as a guy who's slowly realising that that Brilliant Joke he's come up with isn't actually funny in the slightest:


In other news, apparently our gig at The Rondo on Bath this Thursday is already sold out. Encouraging stuff from my point of view but possibly disappointing for others; for what it's worth it's often still worthwhile turning up to ostensibly "sold out" events as there's always someone whe doesn't turn up.  If you are in the Bath area and you didn't have a ticket yet, then at least it's not too far for you to come to the Bristol gig four weeks later...
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clone wars

Friday 10th October 2008

It looks like Clara's debit card - the one she has for our joint account - may have been cloned.  By a stroke of luck I happened to be showing her how to check statements online using the Lloyds's internet banking system when I noticed a payment to Play.Com of £179.99.

Now I don't THINK Clara's bought me a surprise present worth £180 from Play.com and is now covering her tracks, but if that IS the case she's sticking to her guns and has very gamely cut her debit card up and ordered a new one.  In the meantime I'm not sure if we're going to get the 180 quid back or not.  One line of enquiry which could definitely be pursued would be to find out which address the whatever-it-was-that-cost-£180 was supposed to be delivered to...

 

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on the rails to Aberystwyth

Thursday 9th October 2008

(Only people who paid a lot of attention to Crimes series 3 will get that reference...)

So yesterday (as in Tuesday; it's now 2am) I was on at Aberystwyth Uni, a great gig marred only by the extraordinary hassle involved in getting to and from Aberystwyth.  As anyone who's ever tried to drive there will know, there simply isn't a route which makes even the slightest amount of sense.  Either you go straight to the end of the M4 and drive round the South Wales coast road - which takes you about sixty miles out of your way and isn't anything like as big and wide as it looks on the map - or you head north around Newport and start slogging up and down what are officially A-roads but which are basically mountain tracks, for about a hundred and twenty miles.  It's nuts, and makes one wonder how Aberystywyth ended up where it is in the first place.

I tell you what, when you look at a road map of Britain it's pretty obvious which bits the Romans couldn't be arsed with.  Most of the major road routes in England are still based on the Roman supply lines; take any two towns whose names end in -chester or -cester and there's always an A-road stretching between them like a taut rope.  The minute you're over the border out of England you're farting around on these fiddly little paths, winding around like fjord coastlines.  

So sod it, this time I got the train. Still took five hours each way but at least this time I was asleep.

Actually, last time I played Aberystwyth Uni, back in November 2006, I drove home the same night, which is nuts on one level (didn't get in until about 5am) but on the other hand, it was the night of the US mid-term elections, and listening to Five Live's coverage of the evisceration of the Republican party helped the miles fly by, I must say. 

I'm kind of mesmerised by the US Presidential election at the moment, to the point where I'm only dimly aware of political goings-on in my own country, although to be fair to myself, the outcome of this election will probably impact at least as much on the future of my family and me as any political event back here in Britain, so it's only to be expected that I should take an interest.  Trouble is, that's all I can take; it's a distressingly helpless feeling, being so invested in the outcome of an election in which I don't have a vote.  Things are looking pretty damn good for Barack Obama at the moment, but I find I daren't hope too much.  One factor in all this is that Presidential Inauguration Day - January 20th - is my birthday, so at least one year in eight, my birthday sucks.  Not this time, please; turning thirty-nine is going to be traumatic enough without having to spend it watching Grandpa Simpson taking the oath (with the knowledge that, when he inevitably keels over, it's Maud Flanders who steps in).

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Well done our kid

Monday 6th October 2008

Now that's what I'm talking about...

At 17.28 today, Daniel Painter emails:

hi mitch, another loyal generic completist fan here just reminding you that you haven't posted your weekly weight update thingy yet. ok its only been 4 and a half hours but your not usually late without having given prior reasoning so i thought i'd give you a little prod via email. hope every things going well.
 
also since this is my first email to you i'd like to say how much i enjoy your work and i'm impressed with this accountability you've set up with your fan base. as far as i am aware its never been done before by anybody else of note, so congratulations. and on a similar note, having seen live before and after this...endeavour(?) i can say that the difference is noticeable.
 
but to the nagging briefly, more podcasts please and what's happening with the sing like an angel album
 
your overly observant fan
Daniel Painter

 

There you go, that's exactly the kind of support I was looking for.  Well done Daniel Painter.

And as it happens I DID weigh myself this morning, but it was very early this morning as I dashed out to do another bunch of radio interviews (on which topic more in a second), so I didn't have time just then to log it here OR at WW, and by the time I'd gotten back it was time to get on with some admin stuff (it's VAT return time again, and the entrepreneurs among you will understand quite what a colossal pain in the arse that is), the which I've just this minute finished. 

My endeavours have not been helped by the fact that my little PDA thingy (Palm LifeDrive, to be precise) appears to have croaked on me, taking my diary with it.  I've managed to re-constitute my schedule by consulting back-up files and my manager's assistant (hello Naomi) and have emailed and/or texted everyone who ever books me to get them to check their own diaries for upcoming appearances by me which I may now not know about.  They're not being very swift in replying, which means either a. I HAVE no upcoming gigs (and I'm fairly sure I did), b. they haven't checked their inboxes lately or c. they're using this circumstance as an opportunity to cancel all my gigs without having to tell me.

Meanwhile I shall move my diary over to iCal, which means I can read my diary on my iPod.  Just read, mind you; if I actually want to amend it in any way I have to take a note and do it when I get home.  Unless I get an iPhone, of course...

In answer to your question, Daniel, the album Sing Like An Angel gets its retail release next Monday (October 13th).  Also next Monday, or rather in the early hours of next Tuesday morning, I shall be doing a bit on Janice Long's late-night show on Radio 2.  I'm particularly pleased about this as I generally listen to Janice when I'm driving home from gigs; I like the fact that she still plays all the same records she used to play on Radio 1 on Sunday evenings back in the 80s (lots of Icicle Works and The Mighty Wah).

Oh, and today I weight 21st 2lb, so down another couple of pounds and through the three and a half stone barrier.  

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alive and ticking

Saturday 4th October 2008

...well not ticking as such, but hey, it's a good pun...

I've got a Casio G Shock.  You may remember they were terrifyingly hip about ten years ago, big lumps of dayglo plastic on velcro straps.  Mine isn't like that. I got it about five years ago on eBay (in fact, hang on - yes, I've checked and you can see it on the cover of Crimes Against Music) and it's stainless steel.  I like it because it looks like a bit of Cyberman.

After about two years its battery packed in and I searched in vain for someone to change it.  I took it to jewellers, electronics suppliers and watchmakers and no-one could figure out how to get it open.  The last guy I asked suggested hacking off the plastic seal on the back with a big knife, "It'll work but it'll never be waterproof again..."  I declined, as one of the G Shock's best features is its excellence as a scuba diving watch (it has a countdown timer that's particularly useful for decompression stops).  Not that I'm ever likely to go scuba diving again in the near future, but at the time there was a possibility that I still might (this was in the pre-Greta era) and so, rather than be ruined for all time, the watch went into a drawer, to be replaced by the cheapo plastic one I bought from a stall on Tottenham Court Road, whose eventual disintegration necessitated the purchase of the watch I bought myself as a reward for losing two stone, as discussed at inordinate length here.

Anyway, our recent house move has resulted in a lot of things getting lost - hopefully to re-appear if we ever get around to emptying all these cardboard boxes - and some other things being found, among them my deceased G Shock.  Alongside the watch in the drawer in which it was found, was one of those miniature tool-kit-in-a-credit-card thingies which I probably got for Christmas at some point.  One of its miniature tools is a tiny little screwdriver, of the sort people use to fix eye-glasses; seeing it next to the G Shock I was struck by the thought that it looked just about the right size to undo the little screws around the watch's edge...

It was indeed the right size, and after having removed the plastic trim (which the aforementioned bloke had suggested slicing off with a knife; has he never heard of screwdrivers?) I removed the strap mountings, exposing the retaining screws which held the backplate on; off it came, revealing a silicone rubber seal and a battery which I managed to prise out and identify as a C-2016; a brief trip to Maplin's later, I inserted a fresh C-2016, carefully replaced the silicone seal, reassembled the watch and now it's as good as new.

I relate this story as I find that the simple act of resurrecting my G Shock has given me a greater sense of achievement than almost anything I can remember...  I'm not what you would call "handy" or "practical" (no, really - every shelf in every home we've ever lived in has been put up by Clara, even if she was eight months' pregnant at the time) and so this rare instance of doing something with tools and NOT ballsing it up completely fills me with a strange masculine pride I'm not used to feeling.

 

Oh yeah, the tour's going great, by the way. 

 

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On the road again

Wednesday 1st October 2008

"she said Lord have mercy on my wicked son..."

The feeling on the first day of a new tour is a bit like the feeling of getting ready to go on holiday; you're running round writing lists and trying to make sure you've got everything you need in the car, and you still know that you'll set off, get halfway down the street and then remember something vital you've forgotten and have to turn round to get it.

Just finishing off what I think is my last pre-launch task; compiling a new letting-the-audience-in CD.  I'm going with a selection of bootleg mash-ups as I think they're quite funny and imaginative (the good ones, anyway) and might get the punters in the right frame of mind.

What I CAN'T decide is what tune to actually come on stage to.  Last year we were using the theme tune to Mr Benn (get it?); don't want to use that again but I'm not sure what else to go with.  I keep leaning towards this but I think that might come over a bit arrogant.   I'll think of something.  Wouldn't be a big deal to change my mind after the first gig anyway.

Right, here we go then.  See you soon?

 

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back on course (I think)

Monday 29th September 2008

Weigh day, and after a brief moment when it looked like I'd gone up to 21 8, the scales decided, in their inimitable fashion, that I was actually about 21 4 or 5, so that's good. Probably.
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oh well

Friday 26th September 2008

It was fun to dream

Further to my last entry about my appearance on George Lamb's BBC 6 Music show yesterday (which can now be heard here - it starts about 2 hours 10 minutes in) and its apparent effect on my MySpace stats, Penny Broadhurst writes:

 

Hi Mitch,

Read your latest blog. Alas those 150,000 extra plays are just a result of Myspace completely screwing up their new Myspace Music player launch - I normally get 60-70 plays in a day and my player was (and still is) showing 60,000 plays for today ...whereas Oasis and Coldplay's players were showing around 60-70 plays the last time I looked. Ahem.

Glad you're getting lots more press and interest, though.

Penny x

Ah well, never mind.

 

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