This time tomorrow, God willing, I’ll be in New York City. There to celebrate my birthday. The weather looks set fine, apart from Friday, which is forecast for heavy rain. That’s okay, a day for indoor activities; breakfast in the Cheyenne Diner on 9th, a gallery or two, a music store in the village, cocktails at Grand Central, dinner at Monte’s. Sounds dull? Not in this city. New York doesn’t do dull.

So, sixty. How the hell did that happen? One minute I was eighteen with the future, unknown, stretching to the horizon, then, before I had time to think twice I started to see the first signs for the exit.

Time then to reflect and catch my breath. Drop down a gear and pull over to the inside lane. Take it easy. Relax a little.

Forget about it. I’ll be where the lights are bright on March 3, in a favourite restaurant on Bleeker Street, raising a glass to a future that may not be as long, but with a lot of living yet to do.

Here’s to it. Cheers.

The creaking screen door bangs shut in the wayward wind, dust racing across the knotted boards of the porch to be swept instantly back into the empty road. The neon's transformer buzzes, the icebox shuddering as the thermostat cuts out. The grey stray opens its eyes, blinks, stretches - claws extended – then returns to feline dreams of stalking and saucers brimming with milk.

Overhead the power lines moan in the brisk northerly, criss-crossed and sharp against a sparkling blue sky, the clouds held back by the mountains some fifty miles distant. A car comes down the street but passes on by, the driver hidden in shadow and Wayfarers, a cap pulled low. In the seat next to him a dog sits, round-shouldered, eyes fixed ahead. The breeze through the open window flaps his ears, so at a glance, he looks like an old uncle wearing a snow hat.

Stacked against the wall are three red plastic crates, full with bottles; empties from yesterday’s surprise visit. The only other signs are the dried rings of beer on the tables, the piled-up crockery and glasses in the sink inside and the all-but-empty deli cabinet that holds the pies and fancies.

They came roaring into sight in an old Greyhound bus, leaving a trail of smoke the length of Main Street and would have set the population scattering had there been a soul around. As it was, they had to make do with a couple of cur dogs from across the tracks and a chicken that had jumped to freedom from the back of a farm truck earlier in the day. The dogs were too fly to get squished but the hen wasn’t so bright. Went running clean under the front wheels in a mess of clucking and brown feathers.

As they stumbled from the bus I could have sworn that they were a reincarnation of the Black Rebel Motorcycle Club from the fifties Brando movie, The Wild One. Except there were women amongst them. I counted them as they poured into the sunlight, making it forty-six the first time round, but then four more were hauled from the baggage compartment where they’d apparently been left to sober up. It hadn’t worked.

The fifty of them assembled across the street and after a brief deliberation, headed my way. I showed all I had to show around the place and after an hour of raucous, yet good-natured discourse, they left. Gone as quickly as they had come; strangers still, with no names given, none received, no comments written, no contact numbers left.

Today, it’s business as usual. Three fifteen in the afternoon and one visitor. Maybe I’ll close early and clear up yesterday tomorrow.

It’s a funny old world, this World Of Blog. As I mentioned two postings ago, I have recently been resting from the rigours of composition. So much so, that my small but loyal band of blog followers drifted off in search of more fertile terrain and all but faded away completely. And who could blame them?

Since my tentative return, the crowds have continued to stay away in their multitudes, with only the occasional visitor dropping by, having presumably taken a wrong turn and found themselves on the blog equivalent of a rutted farm track when they were really looking for a smooth, six lane super highway. But, ‘life in the fast lane, surely make you lose your mind’ as the Eagles once sang. Quite.

So, imagine my surprise when I clicked on ‘stats’ today, to discover that rather than the expected single figures – figure even - I had inexplicably been invaded by a coach load of trippers out for an afternoon spree on some misguided mystery tour. Forty-six people had turned up. Presumably driven by some mind-blown chauffer, baring an uncanny resemblance to Jim Ignatowski from the TV sitcom, Taxi.

Why? Nothing for two days, then out of the blue, forty-six. I guess I should be grateful, but once the spotlight has been trained, a person could get used to it. Soon addicted to the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, as Anthony Newley once wrote. Okay, it was only forty-six; some bloggers get thousands of hits a day, but please allow me to revel briefly in the attention.

I just checked and its still only forty-six. ‘Only’. You see; once Dame Fame waggles the fat backside of celebrity in your face, it can be never enough. Ah well. It was nice while it lasted. I just hope people are kind on the way back down.

Okay, so following on from my last account of how I may have passed the time over the last few months, the perceptive grumpybloke saw straight through the fiction and hinted that I had actually been engaged in doing bugger all. Pretty damn close to the truth my good man, but not entirely accurate.

I have, in fact, spent a good few hours hunched over a small scarred wooden table in my newly constructed studio at the bottom of the garden, pen in hand dripping Indian Ink, lamp burning, music playing, while I produced six illustrations for a band called Fields. Available on CD in your local HMV or similar sometime soon.

Now it’s been a while since I plied this particular trade. In the past, dating way back to my days at Decca Records before The Beatles broke up, when Brian Jones was still in The Stones and The Who were yet to release Tommy, I have earned a good deal of my living drawing and painting. In more recent times this activity has been pushed aside somewhat by matters of a more executive and overseeing nature, but, with my impending succession from the tyranny of a day job – a colleagues description, not mine – I am in the market once more. Therefore I was very happy to accept this commission; coming as it did from a designer I know who recently left regular employment to set up on his own.

Each drawing, measuring 210mm square, not counting preliminary sketches, took in excess of ten hours to complete with only short breaks interrupting the sound of scratchy pen on board. Frankly, I had forgotten how intense this process could be. Each time I glanced up at the clock, some phantom finger had moved the little hand on an hour and an almighty power had nudged the sun closer to the west. It’s a sensation similar to meditation where one's focus is directed onto one shrinking spot, blocking out much of the surrounding world, where its all-to-easy to literally become lost in the subject. So much so, that after several hours of separation from the finished drawing it can come as a mild shock to return and see what has been achieved.

Now this review can work two ways. It can be a pleasant surprise or a disappointment. It is easy to overwork a piece, so that it loses life, becoming dull and leaden. This is especially true of line drawings. Happily this only happened once during the production of these images, but despite the long hours spent there was no alternative other than to start again. In a set, if one isn’t working, making do just isn’t an option, if, that is, there’s time left to put it right. Luckily, this time there was.

Once complete, having been received with enthusiastic approval by all interested parties,
five illustrations have been incorporated into the CD booklet while the other is to feature on a 7” single release. So begins a revival in my contribution to arts and crafts. And long may it continue.

Well. It’s been a while since I pounded the keys to knock out a new blog. So where have you been? I hear you chorus. Chorus? Who Am I kidding? The small but loyal readership built up during the few months I was blogging have no doubt given me up, if not for dead, then at the very least, disappeared. How then, have I passed the time?

Maybe signing on as an ordinary seaman on a tramp steamer bound for Murmansk, sailing on frozen northern oceans, the mist clinging to the icy decks as we mariners peered into the gloom in fear of treacherous icebergs and ancient Norse sea gods risen from the depths and waiting in ambush? No.

Okay then, falling in with a band of roving tinkers to roam the byways and mountain passes of Transylvania, to peddle fine cloth from the Atlas Mountains, spices from the Indies and to ply our skills as repairers of copper cooking pots over the red hot flames of a roaring brazier in a forest clearing, Castle Dracula undead and distant, black against the setting sun? No.

Perchance a road trip revisiting Highway 61, from the iron-hard winter hills of Minnesota to the breached spring levees of Louisiana, to retrace the steps of troubadours through juke joints and bordellos, singing songs of field and factory, all the while dressed in bib overalls, a banjo on my knee and a cutie by my side as we rode free in my Buick 6? No.

Could it have been to the banks the Ganges, sweet smelling garlands around my neck, to sip golden nectar from a jewel encrusted cup, the day’s spent in shady meditation, the nights at the feet of wise and painted holy men, sharing the mysterious secrets of their ancient wisdom while maidens sang of love and told tales of paradise, their words spinning a spell from which there was no return? No.

Driven, a fugitive from the law, to skulk in the murderous, reeking alleyways of Paris, at the mercy of swindlers, whores and footpads, until robbed blind and beaten, I hitched a ride to Marseilles and sought out the high white-walled barracks of the Foreign Legion to sign away my past for the sanctuary of a mercenaries life? No.

Waking one morning to find, that while I slept, I had been transported into the body of Angela Merkel, the President of Germany, not understanding a word that was in my head and finding nothing to wear? No.

Damn. I would have liked to go on that state visit to Bulgaria.