Bill Nelson Diary

The first day and the first diary entry of 2005. Not started out too well...Our home is without heating or hot water due to the gas boiler finally giving up the ghost. It's been troublesome for a couple of years now but this morning was making terrible grinding noises...it sounded quite dangerous. It gave up providing hot water two days ago and we've had to boil kettles to get enough hot water to allow even the shallowest of baths. Today the heating has quit too so the house is shivery cold. I'm about to go out and attempt to buy a couple of portable heaters but I'm not sure if there will be any stores open, it being new year's day. Of course, getting a heating engineer to come and look at the problem is a frustrating task at the best of times but the combination of New Year's day and the long weekend makes it impossible...It will be Monday before I will even be able to speak to an engineer. The boiler needs replacing though. It's been less than reliable since Emi and I lived here and has been repaired many times at quite a cost. It's a cheap, badly made gas 'combi' style boiler fitted by the man who converted the property from its cowshed origins. Since living here, we've discovered that he'd spent the absolute minimum amount on such essentials as plumbing, heating and so on. Poor quality products and equally poor workmanship. He converted the place to sell at a profit, rather than to live in himself, and much of the house's charm is purely cosmetic. At this point in time, the boiler is only one of several major problems and it seems that I can no longer avoid an extensive and expensive series of major repairs and renovations. All essential items too, not things that can be put to one side.

Emi not feeling well today either. And my daughter Julia and her family are about to arrive to stay with us for a couple of days. They'll need to bring lots of warm clothing and patience whilst the kettles boil for bathing. The Asian earthquake/tsunami disaster continues to escalate. Impossible to grasp the enormity of the thing. Terrible scenes on the television. I'm about to begin a new piece of artwork to donate to 'The A Gallery' in Wimbledon who are holding an art auction on the 12th of January to raise funds to help the victims of the disaster. I've already purchased a frame for it...all I need now is to make a decent drawing. The U.K's response to the tragedy has been tremendous, millions of pounds being raised by the general public and the government now pledging 50 million, I believe. (About 70 million dollars in U.S. currency?) Whilst magnificent, this effort needs to be maintained as the problems created by this literally earth-shattering disaster will continue for some years.

Perhaps I'm being overly pessimistic but there definitely seems to be a negative force at large in the world at the start of this new year (or at the end of the previous one).The Asian earthquake is, of course, the largest and most prominent manifestation of this but I feel it filters right down to more mundane things too, and not just my household heating/repair problems either. I have several friends who seem to be going through some quite dramatic changes in their personal lives at the moment. Four or five people that I can immediately think of. There's definitely a feeling of trepidation in the air that is hard to dispel. Maybe it's just my own downbeat interpretation of things, or perhaps a case of the winter blues.

Emiko and I spent new year's eve with our neighbours and friends, as usual. A good time had by all with lots of nice food and plenty of wine and champagne. We all watched the Jools Holland Hootenannny tv show but felt it had lost some of it's usual vigour, maybe because the guests were not particularly exciting. Eric Clapton was about the most major artist on show but his guitar was far too low in the mix. Eric comes in for a fair bit of critical stick these days but I have to admit to having a soft spot for him. I was inspired by his work with John Mayall and also Cream, back in the 'sixties, like so many other guitarists of my generation. He's still capable of an exquisite turn of phrase and has his own recognisable touch and style. A personal voice.

Really feeling the chill now so will set out in search of an open B and Q store, try to buy a portable heater of some kind.

Monday, 27th December 2004 - 10:30 AM

'Ghosts of Christmas Past and the Haunted Halls of Winter.'

The snow that arrived in parts of the U.K. over Christmas didn't materialise in our neck of the woods, just a vague but pervasive misty melancholia...as cold as snow but much less pretty. My foolish attempt to dispel this non-sparkling mood, by the employment of Bacchanalian revels, sensory satiation, rich foods and barrel loads of wine, failed miserably, only serving to increase the girth of my waist and therefore adding to my air of general discontent.

I seem to have suffered a reversal of Ebeneezer Scrooge's seasonal transformation, entering into the Christmas spirit with the very best of intentions but merely ending up where old Scrooge initially began, bitten and infected by the 'bah-humbug' and sick with some nameless dread. I have various theories as to why this might be, the marking of my 56th birthday perhaps, the neither here nor there but miserably grey weather, the cynical, corporate marketing of Christmas and the rude, jostling, shopping-manic crowds in the cities. Or... perhaps it was my visit to my birthplace of Wakefield on Christmas Eve Morning that triggered the malaise.

I was born in Wakefield on the 18th of December, 1948 (exactly one week before Christmas), as regular readers of this diary will probably be aware. The austere but sunnily optimistic post-war Yorkshire of that time now seems an entire universe away from today's mad, bad world. Of course, I ruminate on this at fairly regular intervals in these pages and so ask my readers to forgive me if it appears that I'm, once again, about to push my boat out into yet another nostalgic tributary of the river of time. Well, I am and without a paddle too. The reason I'm so fascinated by all this is that I can't imagine my current living, breathing adult self, my 'here and now' 21st Century persona, actually being present and active in those long ago times and places. And yet I know I was there. I have proofs, recollections, emotional baggage, etc, etc.. but the phrase 'Memories Only Dreams Now,' (to quote one of my own titles), becomes increasingly appropriate to my condition as the years march on.

Perhaps it's my perpetual failure to get a grip on this 'time' mystery that drives much of my creative work. The strange and beautiful thing is: The more water that flows under the bridge, the more that time ticks through the clock...well...the more dark and compelling the mystery becomes. No wonder we feel the need to create a god who creates our universe when we are constantly, inescapably, slaves to the act of creation ourselves, perpetually creating and re-creating our own individual worlds, our external personalities, blindly, entirely, by ourselves. No miracles, no magic, no heavenly interventions, just accidents and coincidences, chance encounters and seized moments. But...we are born pattern makers, dreamers, romanticists. Sometimes the patterns we make, the dreams we dream, are more than we can handle, maybe that is why we attempt to abdicate the responsibility of our existence and pass the parcel to some nebulous unsuspecting deity. "Here, Lord, you hold the baby, it's way too fuckin' scary for me..." And so it bloody well is.

Heaven and Hell, Birth and Re-birth are not supernatural after-life concepts, theological abstractions, whatever, but are here and now ever-manifesting processes. Our inherent nature is to 'make,' to 'bring into being' and our private and personal history is simply one part of that ongoing process. We are all self-invented phantoms, a fusion of longings, imaginings, sperm, egg and ectoplasm. To be is to desire, and vice-versa. But (and forgive me again), I'm straying far from the subject of my aforementioned visit to Wakefield, though not too far, I hope...

I'd read, in the Yorkshire Post, that an area of waterfront by the river Calder in Wakefield, is to undergo a dramatic transformation in 2005. Old riverside warehouses are to be converted or demolished to accomodate apartments and so on, the usual, familiar urban renewal. Sometimes the environment benefits by such things, but even when it doesn't, you can be sure that the developers do. So...I decided to spend Christmas Eve morning wandering around Wakefield with my camcorder filming things that remained from my own distant history before they vanished forever under the dust of redevelopment. The waterfront area was familiar to me, particularly in relation to my 1960's teenage years when, as an art student, I'd walk alongside the river on sketching and photographic expeditions. Lynne Holiday, a girlfriend of mine in the late 'sixties, used to work as a sewing machinist in that area at a small factory called 'Everstand Light Clothing.' I would walk down Kirkgate from Eastmoor, under the railway bridge by the ancient little tobbaconist's shop that also sold pocket sized pin-up magazines ('Spick' and 'Span' and various Harrison Marks nudie publications), then out along Thornes Wharf to meet her when she finished work in the late afternoon. I can picture the building she worked in quite clearly in my mind's eye, Lynne coming out of its main door, still dressed in her blue work smock. For a while, we were madly in love with each other. We'd met at the local 'Mecca' dance hall, the 'Locarno,' which I've mentioned before in this diary. I'd asked her if it was OK for me to dance with her. She looked a bit like the girl from the New Seekers. (Was it Judith somebody? Can't remember) Anyway, Lynne wore a mini-skirt and a shiny black pvc mac, a Cathy McGowan fringe and heavy black eyeliner, the fashionable look of that era...plus she had rather nice legs, if I recall correctly. Afterwards I walked her to the bus stop at the top of Westgate. I did my best to charm her before she caught the bus to Lupset Estate where she lived with her parents and older brother.

Our next date was at the ABC Regal Cinema in Kirkgate. Then I took her to see me perform in a local band, 'The Untouchables' I think we were called. And if I remember correctly, the gig was at a working men's club in Wrenthorpe. I'd pursuaded the band to play 'In The Midnight Hour' and 'My Girl' which were pretty hip tunes at that time, although they also did some more basic rock n' roll, Chuck Berry, etc.

Lynne and I were both 'Mods,' initially, but we gradually evolved into prototype psychedelic hippies, albeit of the fashion boutique variety rather than the festival-going 'great unwashed' type. She, being a seamstress, made my first kaftan for me. It was made of a gold lame type of material and had applique flowers stitched onto it and silver and gold braid...quite glamourous, a sort of Hollywood kitsch kaftan. I once wore it on the bus going from Eastmoor to Lynne's house in Lupset. It was a jaw dropper and I felt a little uneasy as I walked down the bus, all eyes turning to stare at what must have been an unusual sight in Wakefield in those days. Lynne wore a most un-PC fur coat (an old vintage one that she bought second hand from a stall on Wakefield market...), under this was a psychedelic patterned mini-dress that she'd created herself, lots of beads and bells, little silver dolly-bird shoes, a kind of 'Biba' hippie look. We were quite a cool looking couple and maintained a fairly serious relationship for about four years, I think...Some pleasant memories. We actually had a 'bottom drawer' in which we stored the things we'd need if we got married (which we'd talked of doing, despite being very young). At weekends we'd buy tea towels, pillow cases and so on, to store away for our proposed life together. We sometimes gave Lynne's parents a few shillings to go out and play bingo so that we could have the house to ourselves for a spot of fireside fumbling. (Always more delicious for its furtive nature. Stocking tops still in evidence as this was just before the popularity of 'tights.' Our teenage lovemaking was sweetly salacious and often soundtracked by the best soul music known to man.)

Of course, we never did get married, or even engaged and, after a few years, the relationship fell apart. We were completely different souls in the end, 'though there must have been something between us for a brief, candle-flickering moment of time. Nevertheless, those were golden days in many ways, times of discovery. Anyway, I should write about these things in much more detail in my autobiography...and I intend to do so, this year hopefully, time permitting.

Anyway, back to Christmas Eve morning and the current era: When I eventually arrived in Wakefield after a lengthy, snarled-up-in-Christmas-traffic drive, I discovered that my camcorder's battery was without power. Very strange as I'd charged it up at home before leaving. Maybe it had been accidentally turned on in its bag. Whatever the cause, no filming was possible so I instead opted to walk around the town, seeing how much of my childhood memories were still standing. This proved to be a depressing activity.

I parked in 'The Ridings Centre,' an 'eighties shopping mall actually built on the site of the old Locarno dance hall in Southgate. As I moved through the crowds, I tried to imagine where the actual dancefloor had been along with the balcony from which Ian Parkin and myself had gazed down at the girls twisting and twirling under the mirror ball stars. We were generally too nervous to ask them to dance with us. Instead we'd listen to the music coming through the big Altec Lansing speakers...still rock n' roll music in the earlier days (Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, etc.), but then...the Twist and eventually Motown and Stax and Atlantic soul. By this time I'd found the nerve to ask girls for a dance, 'though I was still quite shy. Nevertheless, I'd practiced my moves in front of my bedroom mirror, grooving to Junior Walker And The All Stars, The Miracles and Wilson Pickett. I'd even managed to pull off a kind of James Brown spin/turn-around that looked pretty impressive under the glamourous dancehall lights. I'd also equipped myself with a pair of green and yellow checked hipster trousers, op-art belt, two-tone shoes and a flowered tie from a trip to London's Carnaby Street, back-combed hair a la 'Small Faces' and the rest...I'd cultivated a pretty hip image. I looked forward to those Locarno nights and felt liberated from the world of my parents.

Nowadays, that once hallowed and hip space is a shopping mall occupied by the usual mix of high street stores, one of which is WH Smith. I walked in to browse the local history book section last Friday. In it I found two new-ish, locally published volumes dealing with Wakefield's history. I purchased both of these and then walked out of the Ridings Centre, pausing to reflect on the fact that the actor William Hartnell, famous in his role as the very first Dr. Who, had been filmed standing in front of the old Locarno foyer door (which is now the main entrance to 'The Ridings'). This was for the movie 'This Sporting Life' back in the late1950's, in which he played a fairly major role alongside Richard Harris. A couple of the buildings that stood opposite the now demolished Locarno still remain, their upper stories intact and almost original, if somewhat dilapidated. I clearly remember the coffee bar that used to stand on the corner here with it's wall-mounted miniature jukeboxes at each table, Bobby Darin's 'Multiplication' song booming out over the heads of customers, windows steamed up in winter, lights blazing within.

I then walked past Wakefileld Cathederal towards the market and glanced across at the 'Bullring,' a sort of roundabout in the centre of town that had been familiar to me since early childhood. The early 'fifties modernist/deco buildings that curved around its furthest rim are still standing but have recently been 'renovated' in a most unsympathetic fashion. Their red bricks have dissapeared under a bland concrete rendering and the properly proportioned, original windows have been replaced with brutally unsuitable ones. I turned down the narrow passageway that runs by the side of the Cathederal towards the marketplace. Memories reside here: In a little area to one side of the passageway is a stone plaque set into the paving which commemorates the Wakefield Civic Trust's renovation of the area. The stone plaque was actually inscribed/carved by my art school sculpture master, Mr. Knaggs, in the 'sixties. (I think his first name was Henry..?) He had been commisioned to carve it by the Civic Society and I'd watched him work on it in the sculpture room at the art school. The stone still bears his mark, a small letter 'k' carved in the lower right corner. I don't suppose Henry Knaggs is on this earth anymore but I haven't forgotten him... I really liked him, he had a thick beard and smoked a pipe and there was something genuinely compassionate about his personality, despite his occasional rages. (These rages were generally directed towards Tony Cumberworth, a student who had attended the same school as myself, Ings Road Secondary Modern, but who had seen art school as a possible escape from either the army or factory work, which was the usual destiny of many of my fellow schoolboys.) Mr. Knaggs had low tolerance for those students who saw art as an 'easy touch' but was supportive of those who evinced a calling. He was also a passionate UFO enthusiast and gave me a photograph of a primitive cave drawing which he claimed was of ancient astronauts. A group of fellow students and myself once tricked up a UFO photo and told him we'd snapped it down by Thornes Wharf. He eagerly believed our story and sent it off to a UFO magazine, thinking it to be a genuine sighting. I felt very bad about it afterwards but I can't remember if we ever revealed our deception to him. I've never forgiven myself for that.

After pausing to reflect on the stone plaque and its associations, I walked on to the market. I recalled the oid Victorian market hall which had been pulled down in the 'sixties, during my art school years. The original building held many childhood memories for me and I recall that I was upset to see it knocked to the ground back then. I had watched its replacement being erected and, in fact, sketched it in my art school sketchbook. (I still have the drawings.) Nowadays the modern market hall that usurped the original Victorian structure is quite dilapidated and sad too. It seems like only yesterday that it was built, shiny and strong, seemingly indestructible. I was angry with it, back in the 'sixties, as it seemed responsible for the destruction of the warm old Victorian market hall I knew from my infancy. But now, on Christmas Eve of the year 2004, I felt pity for this once shining example of 'sixties modernist optimism. I wandered around the stalls inside the building. There was still a bookstall called 'Stringers.' This little family business had operated from the market hall since the original Victorian building of my childhood memories...my mother used to buy me American superhero comics from there, early DC stuff, the 'golden' and 'silver' ages of those publications: Batman and Superman (obviously,) but also The Flash, Green Lantern, Adam Strange, Aquaman and Wonder Woman. And many others including British heroes such as Marvelman. How I looked forward to those Saturday morning trips to the market with my mother and grandmother.

Other than the fortunate survival of 'Stringer's' stall, there was not much else to recognise from the past. A stall selling Goth-Rock merchandise was surreally out of kilter with the place, offering black metal skulls, dark dragons and so on. From another stall I purchased a large red Christmas gift bag to put some of Emi's presents in and then moved on into the open-air market, through the doors at the rear of the hall. For a brief, tantalising moment, the sky attempted snow...but only for a moment. It soon turned to icy rain. I walked between the rows of stalls, not many people shopping despite it being Christmas Eve. No hissing kerosene lamps suspended from the rafters of the stalls, no traditional sugar pigs, no hot chestnut sellers from the distant past, no Santa Clause selling little gifts from his sack by the rear of the market hall, just a few poorly dressed stalls filled with cheap and nasty tat. Even the shoppers looked hard-bitten and dour. At the back of this area, the original food market hall still stands...Smaller than the main market hall, it is a lone survivor from those early, pre-'sixties days but now in a terrible state of repair. How soon before this old building too gets the chop? I remember my mother shopping in here...was it 'Alum' the butcher? She bought fish here too, 'finny' Haddock usually, which my grandmother liked, poached in milk. As did I.

Out of the market area and around to where the art-deco bus station once stood. Now nothing stands there, not even the cheap steel and glass bus shelters that had been erected a couple of years ago when the original brick bus station and its deco clock tower was demolished. Just an open space, a bomb-site of a space, empty of use and purpose...destroyed by insensitive and corrupt council planning departments rather than Nazi aeroplanes. (Wakefield was targeted in World War Two, not very long before I was born.) No doubt a new shopping mall or block of apartments will fill the space before too long. And on and on, through the town, noting the few features that survive from my past, wondering what my father would make of it all if he were able to come back to this world from the beyond that he entered when he passed away in 1976. My heart ached with a sentimental, stupid, tender sadness, stricken by nostalgia's poisoned dart, swooning in melancholic ecstasy...lost in time and space.

I walked back to 'The Ridings' car park, went up to the floor where I'd parked my car and, after a moment spent gazing out across the grey landscape surrounding Wakefield, drove out of the city, aching down deep inside. Not done yet though. I drove out to Eastmoor Estate where I had grown up. I located my parents old house, number 28, Conistone Crescent, and tried to picture things as they once had been. If I were to tell you about the most perfect Christmases of my young life, they would be the ones I experienced at this address. They were the very definition of a 1950's classic Christmas, fabulous beyond imagining, despite my parent's modest working-class status. The houses (actually flats), on Conistone Crescent have changed somewhat in recent times, many of their deco window frames and doors being replaced with stylistically incorrect PVC units. A few dwellings have the 'proper' look though, retaining their original windows and doors, though, sadly, not number 28 which has been christened 'Two Hoots' according to a nameplate beside the front door. I wonder, will a 'Bill Nelson, musician' plaque one day adorn my childhood home? (Oh, all is vanity..!) Hardly likely and probably as architecturally unsound as those damned PVC windows. Still, I can still see my old bedroom, to the right of the front door, where I built Airfix model-kits of Spitfires and Lancaster bombers (and later, American AMT kits of hot-rods and custom cars). Also visible is the old living room with its half-bay window in which my parents used to erect our Christmas tree each year. My Dad's brick radio shed is still in the side/back garden too. These were all originally council flats but are now privately owned. Their owners have renovated and 'modernised' in all kinds of strange and innapropriate ways. Fake Georgian half cart-wheel windows in an early 1950's deco facade? Lordy, lord...whatever happened to style?

And so I left the crumbling ruins of my infancy, childhood and teens and drove off to Leeds where I called upon Rick Harrison of Music Ground to wish him the best of the season...then home to wrap Emiko's presents and plunder the wine. Christmas morning was blessed with gifts, an Armani evening jacket, Lalique Cologne in an exquisite bottle, a copy of Bob Dylan's autobiography, a pair of cufflinks with toy robots on them, a unique tie that Emiko had specially made for me from some vintage 1950's fabric that she'd found at her mother's house in Tokyo last year and which has a colourful print of a cowboy riding a horse on it... (a real 'Kid With Cowboy Tie' item which I'm very proud of). Also some Neal's Yard cosmetic items to keep me looking the right side of 120 years old. A lucky boy in so many ways. And then lunch at Steve and Julia's house, bucketloads of wine and the eventual, inevitable oblivion. Oh, and back at home, some middle-aged seasonal nookie...well, it is Christmas.

Boxing Day: Emi cooked a seafood lunch for Elle and Elliot who came over to spend the day with us. We watched 'The Road To Hong Kong' on DVD, one of the later 'road' movies, Crosby and Hope and Dorothy Lamour...even Frank Sinatra in a brief cameo. Not as enjoyable as the earlier ones though, but mindless enough. I got a shoulder bag from Elle and a copy of 'Jazz Anecdotes' (a book by Bill Crow), from Elliot. Plus other bits and bobs.

Today, Emi is back at work at the flower shop...my mother and brother are coming over to visit on Wednesday and tommorow (Tuesday) we're at Steve and Julia's for a supper get together with friends. Soon it will be New Year's Eve and yet another beginning. Last year was intense with recordings and live performances, this year will be far less so, I think, but probably no less frought. Weird vibes in the air at the moment though and I don't know quite how to dispel them. I'm probably doing myself no favours right now either, locked as I am into some internal black hole or other. Music making and the rest may seem like fun, (and most often it is), but it's also a struggle, usually with myself. And I'm a formidable opponent.

Rain hammering the window as I write, icy rain. News of a terrible natural disaster in Asia, a Tsunami which has killed many, many thousands of people and devastated several countries. Horrible scenes on the tv news, nature's grim indifference to human fragility. And I've got the audacity to moan about architectural faux pas in Yorkshire? I'm ashamed of myself, and rightly so. I'd sent a Christmas email to David Sylvian, four days ago...I'd captioned it 'Yuletidalwave.' Four days ago, before all this happened. Weird and terrible...God help us.

Moments of real peace are rare and precious but never lasting. Our lives are spent searching and wishing for such moments and, in between, we fight demons. Exhausting. But, as the Japanese say: "Endure!"

Wednesday, 15th December 2004 -- Early Afternoon

I've had no appetite for the diary these last couple of weeks, being enveloped in a kind of post tour fog, interrupted only by panic-stricken attempts to catch up with Christmas shopping. As usual at this time of year, Emiko is working longer hours at the flower shop and has little time available for the seasonal preparations. The responsibility for gift buying, card sending, food foraging and all the rest, is mostly mine. Inevitably, aspects of it, particularly card sending, gets left to the last minute although I have managed to get two parcels off to my pal Frank Olinsky in New York. I've been busy making and framing a series of ink and coloured pencil drawings to give as gifts too. Time consuming this as I have to be in the right mood to produce drawings and my lethargic state of mind has been unhelpful. Have managed to create nine so far though, all nicely framed.

My new song, 'The Ocean, The Night And The Big, Big Wheel' still languishes unfinished on my hard disk recorder...the victim of the above mentioned lethargy. That and a struggle with its lyrics. I seem to have backed myself into a difficult corner with this one and need a clear head and more time to pull it together. Too many distractions at the moment. My notebook, however, continues to fill with new song titles which may one day become flesh and blood tunes. I really ought to be exploring my Roland GR33 guitar synth unit too but, once again, haven't found the inclination to be selfish enough to shut out the outside world with all its Christmas lights and mad crowds...I need to lock myself away in my recording room. Later though. Get Christmas and new year out of the way first, put on more over-indulgent, desperate to lose myself in oblivion weight and then embark on a remorse filled, self-disgust fuelled purge of intense work and creativity. It's the usual dumb cycle for me at this seasonal juncture. A kind of insanity ringed by fairy lights and jingle bells, a frustrated search for an ecstatic moment that never seems to arrive.

My 56th Birthday is two days away now...I hardly dare contemplate it. 60 is just around the corner and, judging by how supersonically fast this last year has flown, will be here before I know it. And, deep inside, I'm still the lost, wide-eyed little boy that knelt beneath the family Christmas tree in the early 1950's, slowly working his way through a pile of shining presents, toy trains, dinky toys, space ships, ray guns, cowboy hats, books and sweets, happy and oblivious to the world outside my window. And now? Impossible to say...the more I discover myself the less I know. I'm my own biggest mystery.

A few weeks back now, I took part in an academic seminar devoted to the place of the guitar in the world's popular culture. It was held over a weekend at Leeds University's School Of Music. I enjoyed the experience much more than I thought I would, thanks to a friendly and inquisitive audience, some good questions from interviewer Simon Warner and a 25 minute performance of instrumental pieces taken from the tour set, It all made for a pleasant afternoon out. I was also inducted into an institution/organisation known as PopuLUs, a loose, international association of academics, writers and artists who believe that music matters. I've also been invited to the opening of a permanent Peter Blake exhibition at the University's School Of Music which will take place in the new year (February, I believe) and will be opened by Sir Peter Blake himself who will also give a talk. I've enjoyed his work for many years, since my art school days in the 'sixties, in fact.

Health not been great these last few weeks, nothing particularly new there I guess, the usual tensions and stresses. Maybe I'm just the worrying kind, like my mother. Sunshine pouring through my studio window blinds as I type, unusual as the days have been grey and misty-damp of late. The afternoons are seasonably short and the town's festive decorations switch on early, magically, whilst the endless crowds move like foraging ants from shop to shop, loaded down with their bags full of purchases. Looking at the afternoon crowds, you'd think that none of them had work to go to. Maybe they haven't and the offices, factories and workplaces are all empty, only shop assistants being employed by the world.

Just finished reading Sarah Hall's excellent 'The Electric Michelangelo.' I'm now reading Ronnie Scott's memoirs of the British Jazz scence of the '40's, '50's and '60's. Bought my grandson Luke a little, half-sized acoustic guitar yesterday, a Christmas gift and an attempt to introduce him to the joys of those six magical strings that have given me so much personal pleasure throughout my life. Maybe he'll take to it, maybe he won't but it's good to give him the opportunity to discover what difference a noise makes.

A special holiday wish from Bill and Emiko.

I ought to get back to my Christmas preparation duties. Meanwhile, A VERY HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A PEACEFUL, HEALTHY NEW YEAR TO ALL READERS OF THIS DIARY from me.