pick up a guitar and strum (Sunday August 14th, 2005 - 21:17)

category: mmhuh?

Quiet weekend. Friday night I finally finished reading James Kelman’s You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free, one of the toughest books I’ve read in a while. It was slow going, living in the head of a Scottish man drinking away the hours on his final night in America, visiting a few bars in a little town, contemplating his 12 year stay in the country – working in a bar and then in security, cigarettes, his “wife” and child, his next drink, gambling, politics, jazz and blues, his next drink, cigarettes, his legal status, his next drink. It’s brings you down, tires you out, and annoys you. Hm.

Went to a half dozen bookshops and picked up Jasper Fforde‘s the Big Over Easy which I’m already a third of the way through – a light comedy in his quirky style, this time about the Nursery Crime Division in Reading instead of the adventures of Thursday Next however her name manages to sneak on to the page as I’d expected. The crime – how Humpty Dumpty fell off the wall; suicide or murder? I’m shivering in anticipation.

A couple of new books that I saw around that I need to pick up are Javier Marias’ Your Face Tomorrow 1 and Patrick Neate‘s City of Tiny Lights which I’ll no doubt be picking up in a few days if I keep going at the rate I’m going with the Fforde.

 
The guitar’s been getting a work out. The e chords website is a gem – good songs with little rollovers on the chords so you can see the fingering. I’ve been playing some simple little tunes like:
the Eels’ Mr E’s Beautiful Blues
4 Non Blondes’ What’s Up
Velvet Underground’s Sunday Morning
Ben Kweller’s On My Way
Oasis’ Stand By Me
and of course a bit of the JAMC, Lost Star and About You

F’s are still causing me grief but what the hey, I’ll get there soon.

 
Sunday morning was spent wandering around the backstreets of Paddington, looking at the sleepy houses, a kid with a pink stakhat in the middle of a road testing out the bell on her bicycle, the numerous people perched on their door steps sunning their legs while reading the paper, and smelling freshly brewed coffee drifting in to the streets. Gorgeous little tidbits of life so removed from the remnants of Saturday night still wandering down Oxford Street or sleeping it off at Taylor Square whom I bumped in to on my way.

Saturday on the other hand was sunny but contemplative. I went out to the Northern Suburbs Cemetery and sat with an old friend for a while.. can’t believe it’s been almost 9 years Narrelle.