It doesn’t need saying that these are very strange times: stuck at home for most of the day, allowed a trip to the shops, and a daily amount of exercise. Very grateful that the family are all healthy, our employers are being sensible, and we live in a house with enough room for three of us to work, rest and play without being on top of each other all day. Very aware that plenty of others are in a far worse situation.

We’ve been working from home for a fortnight, and that works fine (most of my colleagues are in Ireland and the US; our clients are spread all around the world). Schools closed last Friday, though, and homeschooling at the same time as working is challenging. The days and week felt very long; it’s a good while since I last slept 9 hours straight on a Friday night, but I managed it last night.

The sudden removal of all routine from the weekends is particularly strange: no Parkrun (and the realisation that I won’t get to 100 Parkruns at the turn of the year as I’d hoped); no dance classes or guitar lessons; no popping into cafes or going out for dinner; all gigs with the band cancelled; no Sunday afternoon trips to see kids’ film at the cinema; and no simply going to the pub for the evening. We’re even being discouraged from spring cleaning as the council’s bin service is under pressure (as an aside, Greenwich Council seem to have risen to the challenge and are coping well with extraordinary circumstances – it’s to be hoped that all this will result in a change of Tory attitudes to the importance and funding of local authorities…).

At the same time, the many encouragements to write a book/read a classic/take up calligraphy/learn a language/generally self-improve on social media have largely raised a hollow laugh; Monday-Friday I felt like I had even less spare time than before, even without commuting. There have been some diversions, though:

• A live-streamed Alasdair Roberts performance from Cafe OTO. I expect they’ve stopped doing these now, but it really worked – and made me glad I dragged myself there back in the cold days of January for a couple of gigs
• Working through a couple of records that have come in the post:
  • Shabaka and the Ancestors’ ‘We Are Sent Here By History’. Not bad, but no banger like the last Sons of Kemet album; a lot of it feels a bit tentative.
  • J Jazz Volume 2, from the BBE label. Really good Japanese jazz compilation from, as a friend on Twitter said ‘a parallel universe where the classic Coltrane quartet never split up’
• The Miles Davis documentary on BBC2/iPlayer. A familiar story but some new footage and interviews I’d not seen before. Would have liked a little more on the In A Silent Way era (a more important and significant album than Bitches Brew, if you ask me), but you can’t have everything.
• Working my way through ‘Bass, Mids, Tops‘, an oral history of UK soundsystem culture and related music scenes.

I’ve been trying to get out for the evening government-approved walk each day and have taken the opportunity to take some photos around the neighbourhood. I’m not sure how long I can keep this up without too much repetition, but it’s something to do and I’ve enjoyed the instagram interactions while stuck indoors afterwards – nice reminders that there’s a world of people still out there.

Things that diverted, engaged or otherwise distracted me in February.

• Jake Xerxes Fussell – I’ve listened to this pretty much every day since it appeared on Caught By The River.
• A half-term trip to see friends in Yorkshire, taking in the excellent Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
• A night at the Heavenly Social to watch a film about the Thames from 1986, and hear Michael Smith read – entertainingly – from his new novel. I’d like to see Thames Film again sometime; it was striking how much hasn’t really changed along ‘my’ bit of the river, despite de-industrialisation and the coming of glass fronted office and flat developments.
• Some photography noted:
  • I’ve been enjoying Ian Forsyth’s Room 2850 photo blog. The Seacoalers series really grabbed me; incredible that there are still people seacoaling in Britain in 2015.
  • These Ernest Withers images, tweeted by John Edwin Mason. I love the one of BB King in his shorts/suit.
  • This video of George Georgiou’s Last Stop project prompted me to order the book.
  • Niall McDiarmid’s London Fashion Week shoot for Vogue is a great look at multicultural London, far from the bits of town where LFW is usually found.

I tend to think that anything interesting achieved in January counts for double. The month started with a mildly-hungover bang as my band played ‘Park It In The Market’ in Greenwich Covered Market (above!). Fears that the cold would put everyone off proved unfounded, and a good crowd of locals and tourists gathered round while we knocked out some rockabilly amongst the classic cars; by halfway through the set my fingers had warmed through enough to play something like I meant to.

Next we played the biggest show we’ve done, to 600+ Elvis fans at the O2 Arena (ok, the Brooklyn Bowl in the O2 Arena). And then…nothing. Such is the glut and famine of gig bookings juggled with full time jobs.

I’ve been boring on about the joys of swimming at Charlton Lido for at least 3 years now, and I don’t intend to stop any time soon. This is the first winter that it’s stayed open since its refurbishment (and as a heated pool), and recently they’ve been opening late on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. The experience of swimming outdoors in the dark on a frosty evening is incredible: the air chilly, the pool warm, and – if you’re lucky (and swimming backstroke) – the stars and moon visible above. The dash to the locker and the changing room when you’ve finished swimming isn’t pleasant, but the feeling of exhilaration afterwards is unbeatable. And, of course, the smug sense of otherness as you do something that seems on paper to be fairly ridiculous, while most people are indoors, can’t be denied.

I saw J Mascis do his acoustic show at the Scala; as brilliant and frustrating as you might expect. The songs off his last kind-of-acoustic album stood up really well, and he played some amazing guitar. But all we saw of him was the top of his baseball cap as he sat on a low stool at the front of the stage. I’d forgotten what an attractive venue the Scala is, in parts.

Any month with a new Alasdair Roberts album is a good one, and this new album is sounding very good on early listens:

 

A quiet-ish October, settling into a new routine with daughter at school; the weather first autumnal with a late freakish twist for a Halloween that could have been in June.

A half term trip to the North Kent coast, notable for a walk along the beach at Seasalter, the consumption of – at various times – beer, coffee, fish’n’chips and doughnuts on the beach in Whitstable, and a visit to the Turner Contemporary in Margate for Jeremy Deller’s excellent English Magic.

Went to a PhotoForum event held at Calumet, featuring talks by Homer Sykes and Brian David Stevens, whose They That Are Left series is particularly worth looking at. It was great to hear photographers talking about the process of making their photos in a straightforward fashion, with a seeming deliberate de-emphasis on the technical side; it’s given me a nudge to think about taking more care in my photography – hopefully 2015 might afford more time to go out with a camera that isn’t my iPhone.