Saturday morning with baby L.. He’s so mobile now its scary, and with his new wee teeth has a very simple checklist of things to do with everything he comes across:

  • Can I eat it?
  • Can I rip it?
  • Can I climb up it?

If the answer to all three is “No” then he moves on to something else. All items in the house are being tested with his checklist, including guitars, feet, cables, friends, sofas and D.’s weekly TimeOut.

I’m writing this post on the laptop I used to record “Angels In Drag”, and wondering if I should have some kind of sentimental attachment to it, which of course I don’t. Its a dinosaur now – a first-generation Titanium PowerBook running Mac OS 9, whose screen is littered with lines of broken pixels. Digital items are hard to bond with – why is that? They often look lovely, but that’s not enough. I have never felt the same way about a digital camera as I did with my old Fujica – it belonged to my grandfather and I took every photo in my teens with it. I brought it to Japan, and it was a travelling companion in early tours. Then one day it just clicked shut and that was it. Downstairs I have a box of all my music relics – and the nicest things in there are without a doubt the 8 and 16 track reels of tape. They look positively regal beside the hopeless little DAT tapes and faceless hard drives… Still, its the thrust of our age – smaller, more data, more disposable.

I’m hooking up with Foy Vance later today – what a whirlwind his life has become, and you’d better watch out! Just Google the name and all will be revealed.

When I was in Bangor, I had a great chat with Jules Maxwell, a huge inspiration to me and a great musician. He’s going to produce my next record. We were talking about the future of music, and both came to the conclusion that there is an inevitable shift towards music being free. So my next release will be a free download. Simple as that. The mercenary amongst you may be wondering, “So how do you make your money then?” – well, its easy… merchandise, touring, use of the music for TV etc. I’m going to try it and see. Put up an art pack that you can download and print out that accompanies the music… Good idea or not? We’ll have to wait and see. Most people think we’re nuts, but I say wait five years and read this again.

I did say in my journals two years ago that tea would make a major comeback… and I can hardly open an edition of TimeOut without seeing some article on the latest teahouse in London.

The baby talk has reached a point where its too cute to ignore anymore – I must go and play with my wee boy.