This month just like every month I vow that there’ll be no unnecessary expenditure and that things will be done smarter moneywise. My due dilligence is really as a result of my US holiday which is moving to the forefront of my mind, in spite of the rand strengthening now I’m sure it’ll be as weak as Budwaster beer when November cometh and I depart for DC.

So I’m trying to build on good habits without compromise:

I will continue to exercise, to yoga, to eat properly, to drink decent tea and the best coffee!

I won’t penalise myself socially but I will continue to be fussy, anything that messes with my routine is just out.

I will exercise restraint in shopping malls, restraint with a capital R.

I won’t buy music for at least three weeks and when I put a coin tha machine it won’t be make up music sex extravagence just a sensible purchase to establish or add to the mood.

No dvds, that can wait until the US of A except for one to keep up a tradition with a certain someone who I always buy a dvd for her birthday

My other weakness is alcoholic units, I consume less than I buy, this is tricky but perhaps nothing for a few weeks and then just beer and wine that sparkles. I bought peach puree now to try to make the perfect Bellini, it’s so hard to find but I’m trying Woolies babyfood to see how it goes, should be interesting. Nothing excessive although I’m inching for a few single malts but I’ll try to wait.

No clothes, no shoes although I will have to get the new Liverpool supporters shirt and I will have to buy a few fantasy league football teams if we choose to play either the Telegraph’s or the Times’ fantasy football.

And that’s how I weakly set goals. I’ll let you know what I scratched and what I managed to succeed in achieving.

Footnote:

We will be playing the ESPN Soccernet version – it’s free, it’s simple, it’s FREE! So go create a team and check for the You’ll never play alone League and join us.

Erik Truffaz’s Quartet takes us into the last week of July.

We wish we could have it written into our employment contracts at some stage in our working ‘career’ that we will no longer be able to attend meetings that go on beyond the 60 minute threshold full stop. Additionally, we will not endure more than six PowerPoint slides including the agenda.

If at any stage we could have that cemented into the fine print, our cup would runneth over. Yesterday, we got asked why we sign into the yoga class with our own pen, amused we said it was just habit which is what it is, pens and a note pad for doodling while they are dawdling and the slide animation numbs the brain. But these incessant meetings have now subtly begun to modify our behaviour and yes it was only a pen but what about our discontent and our muddled jargoned flashed diction, we are a health warning waiting to happen.

Thankfully another month will pass before the next four to six hour meeting is upon us and this one will take place in pastures greener and farther away from the ocean, we are benevolently battling to contain our enthusiasm.

Moving swiftly along, come Friday and what are we into this week?

1. Dionne Warwick she’s made us smile, made us think about how we grew up listening to those tunes and even made us sing along on the short drive to the office.

2. We are fast running out of Revolution tea but that a problem easily fixed, this week was dedicated to the white tangerine flavour which is not as good as the Southern Mint our favourite but this week it did hit the spot.

3. Browsing the winter sales and trying on expensive coats, the plastic is on ‘standby’ mode as we try to conservatively spend with our November DC holiday in mind, and as the days go by we are looking forward to it more and more.

4. We enjoyed Pelman 1,2,3 it wasn’t brilliant but there was enough to keep our attention focused.

5. And we do need to mention these things, places, people and teams: Rain’s scented sticks have us sniffing trying to figure out what smells so nice; the Mount Nelson’s Sky Bar lamb hamburgers; the champagne company we’ve been keeping; the Hitchcock book we’ve bought; that bicycle we seldom ride but took for a spin on Tuesday; the Winter sun and our discipline at keeping our good habits going and how could we forget Caviar’s Tuna Caprese and, and, and the Yankees who were a perfect seven this week.

The Friday playlist – it’s all Dionne:

1.You’ll never get to heaven if you break my heart

2. Another night

3. Are you there (with another girl)

4. Promises promises

5. Make it easy on yourself

—
I’ve had this song playing for most of the week, I tweeted it but then that is a very limited audience, in spite of many requests to follow women who want me to register to see ‘their’ photographs, I can’t reciprocate in kind so I never accept.

I’m not a huge Matthew Herbert fan, the big band album is really nice in places but mostly it lacks flow and harmonic intent. But I’m always taken by this song, just that first soulful lyric: ‘Everything’s changed, everything’s changed the closer I get to the top the more it feels strange…’
I hear that line and I just have to listen to the rest of it, it always strikes a chord and the message sways in my head and often repeats.

Everything’s changed
Everything’s changed
The closer I get to the top
The more it feels strange
Everything’s moved
Everyone move
The closer I get to the drop
The more that I lose
If and or when I might stop
Please do not follow me
If and or when I might drop
Please don’t swallow me
Turning round
The sound of falling
Everything’s new
Everything’s new
The closer I get to the drop
The more my vision pulls me through
Somethings the same
Somethings don’t change
The passing of others below
Always remains
If and or when I might stop
Please don’t follow me
Down
Please don’t follow me
If and or when I might drop
Please don’t swallow me
Please don’t follow me

“Matthew Herbert Everything’s Changed lyrics”

Footnote:

The Yankees went 20 games above ’500′ yesterday that’s always a good sign.

The Gloria Jean coffee shop nestled next to the Wordsworth Bookstore in the Waterfront have planned synergies that just work. It’s our regular lunch time coffee gig, it’s a 10 minute walk from the office, the macchiatos are great and we are surrounded by books and the creatures who browse them; and Wordsworth has a really good selection generally of both.

Today I spied a Hitchcock coffee table hardcover on sale and bought it, a steal for R60. The books talks about his life and the movies. I love Hitchcock not all of his stuff is consistent but there’s much to appreciate and to collect.

In leafing through the book I was instantly drawn to an outtake of a conversation with Ingrid Bergman during the filming of their movie Under Capricorn.

‘…By the next day she had calmed. “Okay, Hitch,” she told him, “we’ll do it your way.”

“It’s not my way, Ingrid,” Hitchcock replied. “It’s the right way!”…’

Sometimes the right way just takes precedence.

I’m looking forward to a weekend of low energy, low key relaxation, of keeping the blinds down and doing largely nothing other than reading a few pages of a book, opening a half decent bottle of wine and that’s it.

It hasn’t helped matters that I haven’t been sleeping properly and I need to get back into that happy routine of not fighting the bed at three in the morning.

The last few weeks have been draining; one way or another they have left me feeling a little bereft of ‘spontaneous’ energy which I can only get back by going back to home base and the self and then building the old mojo up again. Admittedly it hasn’t been all bad, I’ve been in the loveliest of company and its been rewarding, however the wheel turns and Monday arrives far too quickly leaving me with that subdued despondent feeling of resignation that I’ve run out of time and then my reality stubbornly just perpetuates itself; the working week feels unbearably long and my focus is lost and I clock watch and YouTube in between getting things done.

There is one thing that has been scheduled and it is Saturday’s VH1 Top 100 Count down, the count down varies, last Saturday, we a happy collective found ourselves in the 302 lounge drinking whisky and trying to guess what would be the number one, one hit wonder of the 80s. It was so much fun, trying to predict the next song, discussing and dissecting each other’s choices. One week on we still can’t figure out how Flock of Seagulls made it to number two; I’m not sure what Saturday’s count down will be but lets hope it’s a good one.

 What was the number one, one hit wonder of the 80s?  Here’s an alternate version.

Playlist for the week?

Been all over the show musically this week from Americana to Easy listening, this Friday I’m easy-over but I did stumble upon an interesting band, Troll:

Texas Bossa Nova (Just BRRRILLIANT! this one is)

California Poppy

They very eclectic but in a good way.

A couple of days ago I picked up Richmond Fontaine’s 13 Cities on sale. The last album I bought of theirs which was my first was, The Fitzgerald, even though they’ve been going since the mid 90s.

I read good things about The Fitzgerald and thought that I would get it in the US, in fact it was just before I had left for a conference in Dallas and I had imagined that I would have been able to track down most of their back catalogue as well but as it turned out they never heard of Richmond Fontaine.

On route back home, I went into the Virgin store in Heathrow and to my surprise I found the album.

As I was browsing with it in my hand one of the assistants who was my age, enquired if I had heard the latest Tindersticks noticing that I had the Richmond Fontaine album. He told me that he had recently saw them play live and that it was quite brilliant; I bought the Fitzgerald, as I already had the Tindersticks. It was ironic that the one person with a sound knowledge of ‘Americana’ worked in an ‘in-transit’ record store in the UK where as nobody in Dallas knew what I was talking about when I asked them about Richmond Fontaine.

I gave up trying to find more Richmond Fontaine but yesterday our paths crossed again. Thirteen Cities feels like a continuation of where the Fitzgerald left off even though there’s an album between these releases. If you close your eyes, you feel like you are caught up in the mid western lives of the characters which are so vividly being described in these three minute songs.

In an office it’s an escape especially with your head phones on as it affords you a mental retreat to an alternate reality.

I have always loved the warmth of their music and the richness of the lyrics even if the subject matter is far from easy, still, it is beautifully and transiently described, as much of it poetically, articulates a sense of drifting.

Today is the second day in a row that I have my Richmond Fontaine albums with me, it’s bitterly cold and I’m feeling isolated and they make sense – and once again I’m wondering if it was meant to be, that our paths have crossed and realities have once more become entwined when I least expected it.

And then the music mutes all thought and all I’m feeling is the melody.

July 2009