Alex James Is Unwell...
Spud, the big noise at the airfield, swapped a laminate for his helicopter so we could all get down to the Reading Festival. It's the Ferrari of choppers and there's no going anywhere now without wondering why we're not in the thing.
The next bit of life is always elsewhere for people in bands, so varying vehicular transport becomes an area of expertise. Entirely constructed out of luxury items, like jet engine magic buttons and leather, Spud's machine is the ultimate way of going somewhere else, but at the same time it puts mere places to shame and becomes the place itself. Posh.
A few days later we were lying in bed trying to define what "posh" was and decided it was "He who may take the day off if he feels like it." So I got up and went down the pub. The Earl Something in Clerkenwell, I think it was. A perfect day to be drinking again.
Maybe some migratory instinct is percolating deep in the hearts of all hopeless romantics in late September. Autumn is just beautifully lit. Anything white becomes De Chirico.
The seasons are a perpetual source of surprise to me. I never remember how cold it gets. It's like trying to remember what it's like being drunk or in love or on tour.
INCREDIBLY COOL this season is crap cheese. Anything processed, sliced, long lasting or individually wrapped is the Ferrari cheese. The Montgomery Cheddars and Colston Basset Stilton are rarely seen in the best houses these days. TUC biscuits and Ritz red are Ferrari cool served from the packet, and Ryvita can also be used, but only with Marmite.
It's also the best time of year for mushrooms. I'm pretty sure I can taste the wild mushrooms I ate last autumn even when I'm not thinking about them. I'm drawn to the new gastro-horizons of weird fungus, but the only place they appear every October here in WC2 is about one third of the way down the menu at The Ivy.
IT LOOKS LIKE Professor Colin Pillinger will have his Mars mission financed. Lord Sainsbury has been very supportive, which pleasingly means that in 1999 you can get spaceships from Sainsburys! At last, the homegrown Beagle II probe will put Britain on Mars(where it belongs).
We went to Sarm West Studios to record the sound of space travel to accompany an animated film of the Beagle's over-50-million-mile voyage. I reflected that we are merely cavemen on the shores of space, floating our tiny boat to the next island along. It's very hard to talk about space travel without appearing at least pretentious or at worst, insane. It's a metaphorical minefield, a loony magnet like a park bench or a dressing room.
IT'S FUCKING WAR on pigeons this week. They've shat all over my house. They're hiding their young in the walls and nodding around trying to eat flowers and being lazy. It's the spikes on the window ledges for them. It's gone too far.
It's another moody autumn day. I'm off for a stroll in it.