TIME ZONED OUT

In a vast and impressive London loft. This is clearly the reason for the title 'best man'. Three 40th birthday parties, five beds and a grand total of sixteen hours sleep in six days. Typing impossible as said loft only has trendy up-lighting, which is rubbish for actually seeing anything, but fantastic for looking vaguely human after previous sentence experience. Now must resume charging my entire life gadget by gadget on one adapter plug. Later.

JAZZ UK

Back in the world of real people, my feature on what it's like to be a British jazz musician living in New York is in the November issue of Jazz UK magazine. You can find Jazz UK at most UK jazz venues, jazz record stores etc, and online here.
(To go directly to my article click here. )
It's a great magazine covering what's new, good and happening on the UK jazz scene (and I say that without bias, as I've been reading it for years) so now you have two good reasons to check it out!

ALL TOO SIMILAR

Unfortunately I re-loaded Sims 2 onto my laptop whilst a was sick a couple of weeks back, and what was meant to be a minor distraction through a few days of coughing, has become, just as it did the last time, more of a lifestyle than a game. Which is exactly why I uninstalled it two years ago....

The warning signs are back. Yesterday in Bloomingdales I tried to right click on some annoying people who were blocking the escalator and move them a few paces to the left. And as I walked along the street happily humming random little tunes, everyone else seemed to have blue bars and thought bubbles above their heads....

I have started to run my own life like that of a Sim - keeping careful control of the basic necessities, and trying to give some time each day to my aspirations so that my own bars stay the right colour and I'm making good general life progress. But when something disturbs this plan, I feel my mood changing and my white bar changing to green then red. The TH has lost his passport and we are flying to Europe on Wednesday. He tried to enlist me in a turning-the-flat-upside-down operation yesterday, just as I was gaining a cleaning point. He had no idea why I immediately had a hissy stamping fit in the bathroom, and to be honest, how could I explain?
('I can't do that now, I'm gaining a cleaning point! Then I have to gain a creativity point, and then I have to check on my Sims to keep my entertainment bar topped up.....')

Today it is clearly time to uninstall, but not until I've clicked on the TH and then on the washing up by the sink......

Midtown at midnight. Humidity is high and a fine mist hangs low. The discarded trash pile up of today in desolate cross streets. And grown ups crouch in doorways preparing for tomorrow. 

ELECTION AND FEVER

Coughing, sneezing and feverish. Also have a sore tooth (nothing new there then.) So aside from apartment viewings (currently only ones with a pillar in the living room - I just want one, ok?), jazz class and the unmissable spectacle of my ex-boss from the RFH performing at Mo Pitkins the other evening (which was much fun), have been pretty much staying indoors.

Apparently Mercury is in retrograde. This, amongst other things, allegedly sends 'communications, travel, appointments, mail and the www into a general snarlup'. Possibly not the best time then to be planning my trip to London on the internet, sorting appointments for whilst I'm there and dealing with a general mail backlog. A fact borne out when I had to spend the entire morning tracking down my hairdresser and hair straightener, who have both left the salon in London I've been going to for ten years. I did track them down eventually. One of them to Australia..... Terrific. Don't you just hate it when people demonstrate so absolutely that they have their own lives, and you just don't figure in them.....

There is a midterm election here tomorrow, so TV is an endless stream of baffling political broadcasts. Nobody here advertises what they can do, merely what their opponent can't do. In almost every ad, there is much overuse of the phrase 'unqualified to be comptroller' about the opposing candidate. I have no idea what a comptroller is or what the qualifications are, but every time I hear the word I am reminded of kids TV programmes such as Thomas the Tank Engine, (in which case I guess the qualifications would be that he needs to be fat and know a little about trains), or Trumpton, where I imagine Mr Comptroller would shuffle papers all day in the Town Hall (qualifications - being able to get to work at 9am on the dot and sing a catchy little theme tune about his busy paper-shuffling-life).