50

Fifty years old.

For the first time since I was about twelve I celebrated a birthday with parties of a sort. On the Saturday prior I invited seven local friends and their families to join me and remarkably all said yes... there was me with a whole line up of substitutes and none got the call. Now, clearly, if I didn't invite you and you're fairly local then you were eighth on my list, promise.

Anyway, since my sister moved back to the UK we've travelled over numerous times to see her in South Wimbledon / Raynes Park, and driven past Fish! Kingston every time. I love fish, and having looked at the website it was a no-brainer.. top quality fish and chips plus other fishy dishes, mmm. As it was the food was exceptional, even better than I had dreamed! And the company, wow, wonderful, a lovely collection of people that I would spend the rest of my days with, thank you for coming out!

The following Saturday it was back to Suffolk to celebrate with my mum, Cheryl's mum and sister plus two. Tilly's, Halesworth is a 1920's themed tea shop. They recently started serving Friday and Saturday dinners and these were just as incredible. Brilliant grub and it looks like we'll be returning for mum's 80th in the new year: result!

As part of the celebrations I did some drawing:

I also tried to find 50 things I love but went slightly over..

Board Games	Books	Film	Food & Drink	Miscellaneous	Music	Music (cont.)	Places
Agricola	The Archbishop’s Children	Woody Allen	Beef Brisket	Apple Mac	4AD	Stephen Jones	Alte Lohnhalle
Andean Abyss	S T Coleridge	Luc Besson	Bread	Arsenal	‘A User’s Guide’	Jay Jay Johanson	Berlin
Boggle	Norman Collins	The Big Blue	Cauliflower	Badminton	Barry Adamson	‘Love My Way’	Bracken
Bruges	Dictionaries	The Billion Dollar Hotel	Champagne	Kevin Beattie	And Also The Trees	Billy MacKenzie	Bushey Park
Carcassonne	The End of the Affair	Blue Velvet	Cheddar	Blessings Roses	‘As Requested’ / ‘Mean Streak’	‘Making Plans For Nigel’	Dresden
The Castles of Mad King Ludwig	Richard Ford	Caos Calmo	Cheesecake	Blossom	Belasco	’Malicious Love’	Firenze
Codenames	Frederick Forsyth	Frank Capra	Chick Peas	Cricket	The Beloved	‘Mesopotamia’	Forests
Stefan Feld	Gabriel Garcia Marquez	Double Indemnity	Chocolate	Driving	Bjork	Mew	Fuchsias
Glass Road	Jean Genet	L’Enfer	Crumble	Gerbils	Broken Family Band	Morrissey	Hills
Le Havre	Graham Greene	Foreign Land	Epoises	Hedgehogs	The Cure	Conor Oberst	Lakes
Hawaii	Samantha Harvey	The Hairdresser’s Husband	Fish & Chips	David Hockney	‘Damaged Goods’	The Passage	Le Havre
Hive	Susan Hill	Alfred Hitchcock	Gruyere	Ikea	’Dear Heart’	John Peel	London
Kiesling & Kramer	Babs Horton	Jim Jarmusch	Jacket Potatoes	Ipswich Town	‘East St O’Neill’	Placebo	Lugano
Lewis & Clark	In The Springtime of the Year	Kitchen Stories	Kleftiko	Just One Sentence	David Eugene Edwards	‘Postcard’	Normandie
Memoir 44	John Keats	Fritz Lang	Lemon Sole	Charles Rennie MacIntosh	Dead Kennedys	Silversun Pickups	Otranto
Ora & Labora	The Last Letter From Your Lover	Leaving	Malbec	Margaret Merrell Roses	Annie Eve	‘Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others’	Portman Road
Railways of the World	Henning Mankel	My Life As A Dog	Panna Cotta	Claude Monet	Gene	‘The Song From Under The Floorboards’	Soldeu
Rialto	Moscow 2042	Paris	Pasta	August Rodin	Vic Godard	Spearmint	Stockholm
Uwe Rosenberg	Jojo Moyes	Manuel Poirier	Rice	Scottish Terriers	‘Headache (for Michelle)’	David Sylvian	Streams
Splendor	Haruki Murakami	Jean Renoir	Rosemary	Alfred Sisley	'Heaven Sent’	Tracey Thorn	Suffolk
Ticket to Ride	Ivan Turgenev	Russian Ark	Rib Eye Steak	Snow	Kristen Hersh	Tricky	Tarn Hows
Tinner’s Trail	Mario Vargas Llosa	Trop Belle Pour Toi	Salice Salentino	Swatch	‘I Don’t Even Know If I Should Call You Baby’	The Unthanks	Trees
Tzolk’in, the Mayan Calendar	William Shakespeare	Western	Scallops	Swimming	Idlewild	The Villagers	Worlingham
Twilight Struggle	The Wilderness	Young and Innocent	Whisky	Frans Thijssen	The Incredible Shrinking Dickies	M Ward	Zurich

Birthdays

So Mrs Hora has another birthday today. It's the 31st she's had since we've been together, wow! The children came in, way too early, but the collection of pressies was good, some books, secateurs, earrings, massager thingumajig, top and I've promised to get her 'band in a box' software so that she can jazz along with full backing. We had a family breakfast together too, the first in quite some time as we're all over the place when it comes to getting up.

Then a good march to the tube and off into Bayswater to meet up with Thierry, Helga, Ennio and Wim who are over for a week from Berlin. Thierry has been one of our best friends for so long. I bought a video of The Beloved he'd recorded in Paris way back and then when Cheryl was teaching at a language school in Lowestoft the French leaders told her about their friend Thierry who liked the same sort of music that she did. They gave her his address and it was the one I'd got the video from, obviously!

He moved over to London with Carole and we went and visited them and that was that. We followed them around various homes; Puteaux, Milan, Gladbach and Berlin. He and Carole got married. Cheryl was maid of orleans, I mean, honour. And we drove the piece montee down from Bayswater to Alfriston. We had to break off the top bit to get it in our Renault 5, thus dooming the marriage. It lasted quite some time to be fair. Thierry and I set up Peaceful Fish Productions in 1999 and he's still giving the world advice on film finance, film music and that sort of thing. He has yet another project starting up that I may be able to do some writing for, could be very useful.

They'd brought presents for all of us including an incredible Belgian Easter Egg, and Josie and I got a tinned gherkin each... plus the perfect napkin for me to use whenever we see my sister's husband Heinz again. We had a pleasant lunch together before the others all took off to go to Harry Potter World. I really wasn't up for it so returned home alone where I've managed to scape my shin falling down the stairs in the middle of some games reorganisation, ouch. Never mind. I fixed the shelf in Basti's room and managed to load it up with books giving additional shelving for games in the box room, hurrah! The others are all off to Brick Lane for some more food so I've no idea what time the taxi I'm driving will need to be at the tube, could have done with an early night. Not that there's anything to get up for tomorrow of course!!

The Beloved

When I was younger, so much younger than today... I used to write to the bands I loved whenever Peel gave out an address on air. Through that I managed to correspond over time with Elizabeth Cocteau Twin, Morrissey, Dick Witts of the passage as well as forge two life-long relationships. The first of these was through Steven Burrows of And Also The Trees, and I've driven them around Europe on eleven of their last twelve tours, great fun! The other was with Jon Marsh of The Beloved. In their Peel days they were indie pop and for me were as perfect as I now believe Spearmint are. There are several songs I listen to over and over; L'Amour Dure Toujours, Seppuko Glory, and Idyll, plus their two Peel sessions: one of which was the most played Peel session of whatever year it was... yes, I jotted all the sessions down in those days.

When they moved into the house arena I loyally followed and found massive enjoyment in so doing. Dancing to proper dance music rather than indie pop was so much much easier and man did i like a good groove in those days. I loved all the remixes of their tracks, and Jon's remixes of others' work too: Depeche Mode, Alison Limerick, Blur, Nyam Nyam, to name but a few.

It's been a while but we've stayed in touch and today we met up for the first time in a while, chatted on about respective life problems, footie, music, had coffees at the RFH in the sunshine and then went shopping in the Speedo shop in Covent Garden before having lunch at Eat Tokyo just round the corner from Jon's studio. Jon's children managed to April Fool first thing, taping up the underneath of his mouse with him only realising upon the third restart of his computer... hilarious! Excellent to catch up, also interesting for me to be up in town too. It's been a long time but I managed it all fine.