<img align=left alt="an Alaskan Moose, yesterday" src="http://www.alaskawebs.com/adsa/thumbnails/moose.JPG"></img>In an attempt to discipline myself and get The Undone Things in my life done, I have decided to ban myself from going out to any clubs or gigs or social gatherings for the time being. Or even going outside of Highgate. I hope people are understanding and, as ever, Don't Take It Personally. Which is fast becoming my catchphrase.
If I had the money, I'd do what Proper Writers do, ie lock myself in a shed or hotel room, or jet off to some foreign clime. Nothing hot, of course. Perhaps Alaska. Somewhere with moose. There, I'd rent a cottage away from urban distractions, refusing to come out until the Undone Things are well and truly done. So right now, I'd like to be treated as if I were in Alaska, and not Highgate. Hmm, I appear to have "Caroline Says" in my head.
In fact, Highgate is one of those odd parts of London that can FEEL quite remote. It's not so difficult. Not if you pretend the tube station and busy Archway Road (aka the A1) aren't there. Not if you concentrate on the crumbling gothic side-streets, labyrinthine leafy lanes, woods and parks and people getting lost on the way to the Cemetery (what else is Life?). And the slightly scary nocturnal yelps of the local urban fox could, in a sense, be moose-ish. In a completely untrue sense.
I've been treating this room too often as a Dressing Room in which I prepare for Going Out, and then a Rehab Clinic in which I recover afterwards. Nothing wrong with that, but all I've done recently, rather than doing the Undone Things, is just worry about the fact I still haven't done them yet. There's also the problem of when going out, people will ask you what you're up to. Next time I do go out, I'd like to say I've actually DONE the things I'm "currently working on" this time. As it is, I haven't been enjoying myself much at clubs and gigs of late purely because I know I'm avoiding getting on with the Undone Things.
My principal Undone Things are commissioned writing. Writing words and music for Bid / Scarlet's Well and Fosca, words for Smoke Magazine, and words for something else (non-musical) that I don't want to tell anyone about yet.
The other large Undone Thing is the clearing out of my surplus possessions, so being in the moose-bothering cottage in Alaska wouldn't help that anyway. It's an ongoing process, but I really don't want it to be ongoing much longer. I won't offer them on the web this time. Albums are a bit cumbersome to deal with in terms of picking up or mailing. Not when there's an awful lot of them. So despite my previous misgivings, it's off to MVE with everything that I can't put on eBay. Perhaps the staff will let me go out of the shop and wander around Notting Hill while they check the vinyl condition: that's the part I can't stand. The branch in Camden has a bearded man who kills my kind for our soft pelts, so I can't go in there any more.
I seem to have an awful lot of Ian Levine hi-NRG 12"s and compilations. Miguel Brown's "So Many Men, So Little Time". That sort of thing. Is that even worth taking to MVE? I recall buying them all for about 10p each in a MVE bargain basement as it is. Taking them back there seems the height of sarcasm. Or tautology. Tautology & Sarcasm – the OMD album title that never was.
One of Mr Levine's Record Shack compilations is a mispressing, amusingly, and instead features some version of "All By Myself" by an unspecified male ballad artist.
