What Was The Week That Was?

The Civil War Bear came through again this week, allowing us to take over a room at the old Music Box rehearsal studios so we can use our Hot Press, stretch our canvases and generally use it as our office. That meant having to shift that bloody heavy thing again. This time our mate Dickie Jim was on hand to help me get it into the van and then into Music Box. It’s far too heavy for two people and we had to drag it a bit the result being that it’s a bit fucked. It still works, amazingly enough, but needs a repair. It doesn’t shut properly and all the connections at the back are loose. And it’s scratched to fuck.

I spent a few hours building tables and heaving the press onto Cait’s old kitchen table, ON MY OWN! I swear that thing is going to involved in my death somehow, I’ve seen it looking at me funny. It was alright actually, the radio was on and I enjoyed the peace and quiet.

i think there may be enough room in there for me to have a wee recording setup in there. That would be sweet as I haven’t done any proper songwriting or recording this year. I have about forty scraps of melody sung into my telephone, all of which would be lost forever were I to lose it (a very real possibility) so I need to start transferring some of these ideas to tape.

I had to set everything up quickly because I had a job to finish for a client in Brighton. I had made an illustration for a wedding using photographs sent to me by the best man and I needed to get it into the post. I was very lucky that the Hot Press still worked because there aren’t too many of those hanging about. I was also in a race against the dying of the light but I raged and I got there in the end, looks pretty good too even though I stretched it over the wooden frame in the dark.

The Los Campesinos! job is still ongoing. This week we had to deal with their American and Japanese record companies and all their territorial quirks. I’ve been asked to do an illustration for another wedding, this time in Australia. I think the theme will be Brian Wilson so I’ll enjoy knocking that one up. I’ve got an illustration in the Times today. I mocked up a cereal packet to advertise a cereal called ‘Credit Crunch’ (Now that’s satire). I think it looks pretty good.

I’ve also started working with a program called ‘Motion 3′ which is mindblowing. I’m going to start making videos for my songs soon, I can’t wait.

We asked our friend, Kirsten, to take some photographs of us while Mary is still pregnant. She is a great photographer as you can see here. We decided to go to Merthyr Mawr a place that Mary and I had tried to find before with little success. I borrowed my friend Ffion’s car and drove west for about forty minutes eventually ending up in the tiny Hamlet of Merthyr Mawr with it’s sleepy, storybook cottages, winding lanes and swaying cornfields. At the end of one of these lanes you reach the part we were looking for, the place where the trees give way to huge sand dunes that eventually, I assume , lead down to the sea. We picked our way down a sunlight spotted path, past the ruins of the mansion house, once the centrepoint of the lost village of Treganlaw and onto the famous dunes where parts of ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ were filmed.

It was a beautiful day and we had a great laugh together even though the sandhills were murder on the ankles (and I am pregnant after all). We stayed for a couple of hours before heading back to the car. Kirsten had spotted some cornfields and had always wanted to take pictures in one so we crouched amongst the tall leaves and stems and snapped away until I declared myself tired and hungry and that was that.

Yesterday I had to move our antique couch from the living room, into the van and over to the studio. I took four or five of us to get it in all those years ago but I had to do it on my own. I managed to gouge a couple of deep grooves into the hallway floor and I ended up taking the front door off but, with the help of a neighbour, I managed to get it into the van and it now sits proudly in the old ‘Box. Mary spent a few hours cleaning the windows and the window sills, oh, we’re nesting alright.

In the afternoon we drove over to see our friends Kevin and Beth who ha a baby girl, Nell, just over three weeks ago. She is beautiful and very well behaved, that’s the sort we applied for. keve and beth seem very chilled and Kev and I surveyed the garden and watched a bit of football while the ladies talked about contractions and pushing. The whole thing made us feel much calmer.

Oh yeah, on Saturday we attended a Parentcraft thing at Llandoch Hospital. It was supposed to be six hours long but we left after three. It was full of blokes with hangovers refusing to massage their partners’ backs, presumably because it’s not a manly thing to do. Well fuck that, I love giving Mary a squeeze and I don’t care who’s watching. So we left at lunch and got home just in time to watch Liverpool stuff Everton. Magic.