Antony Loyd - Another Bloody Love Letter

I just read Antony Loyd's 'Another Bloody Letter'.

'Another Bloody Letter' is Antony's second book. The first being 'My War Gone By I Miss It So'. Both books are sequential memoirs of his life as a war correspondent in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Iraq and Sierra Leone. He writes with experience from within the thick of battle to the raw devastation that seems to exist forever after in these places.

Both books also chronicle his parallel life as a heroin addict. He places himself clearly in centre of both books, and in a lesser writers hands this would be a problem. But Antony is such a skilled and open observer it is through his honest but fallible character that you breach the boundary to a unique empathy for the subjects he writes about.

In 'Another Bloody Love Letter' he drills even closer to the dark heart of his work by traveling to Sierra Leone to examine the circumstances surrounding the death of his close friend and fellow journalist Kurt Schork. In doing so he finds a little clarity on what draws some men closer and closer to the spectacle and sport of violence.

Antony writes beautifully, with great warmth and humour. He can detail in almost romantic prose the multitude of landscapes he travels through and then with great depreciating humour describe the assorted characters he meets. He draws you in and then confronts you with the bare facts. He positions himself and you the reader on the side of humanity but with the abyss of evil inches from where we tread. It is powerful stuff. This is real writing; dispatches from the hinterlands and killing fields of the modern age.

T

Go here to read more and purchase -

http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/biography/0,,2052256,00.html

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Another-Bloody-Love-Letter-Anthony/dp/0755314794

10 Miles

I ran 10 miles on Sunday. This is the furthest I have ever run. It was easy. In fact this Sunday I am going to attempt 13 miles..

My 10 miler was through the common to Walberswick from Haw Wood in Suffolk. Early morning. I left at 0650 and ran at a 10:12/ mile pace. I could have gone faster but the terrain for at least a third was sandy track, puddles and paths. It was a great run though.

I did 5 miles yesterday morning. Again in Suffolk. This time an 'out and back' from Haw Wood. And today I may head out to Hampstead for the 4.5 mile hilly route. But we'll see. I am busy, busy, busy.

I am thinking of changing my training routine. Currently I run 5 / 6 times each week and average 4 - 5 miles on each run. I am thinking of running less often but for more miles. Any ideas ?

T

Who Knows Where The Time Goes

Go here for one of the greatest songs that has ever been recorded - http://www.mediafire.com/?2fhj0dhimnx

This is 'Who Knows Where The Time Goes' by Fairport Convention.. Yep, that's Fairport Convention... Trust me this song will change your metabolism, make you smile and think about those you love. This is a perfect song. It is performed and sung with a languid, understated passion that to my ears is about as good as it gets. It is one of those rare songs where you know the musicians and songwriters accomplished what they set out to do. The place this song will take you is the exact same place this group of 1970's folkies intended you to go. This song is an aberration. An accidental time machine. In fact the song is about time and Sandy Denny is a Timelord.

The last time I was in LA my man Snoop Dog had this track on constant play on his pod (ipod). Happy memories of me and Dre and Snoop 'kicking back' with Richard Thompson's silvery guitar chiming through the Hollywood hills. Good times..

If it's good enough for Snoop. And it's good enough for me and Dre, it's going to be good enough for you too.

At the end of summer we acquiesce in to Autumn. I'm kinda desperate to get there; I need to know we made it through another season.

Amen.

T

Donuts

So. Last night I went running. I was planning 5 miles in 50 minutes. However, I didn't set up my Nike+ properly and ran the first 30 mins with no record.. But I reckon I did 5 miles in appx 50 minutes. I didn't set up my Nike+ cos as I opened my front door there was a middle aged man on the street outside our gate kneeling down doing something to the next door neighbor's cat. He looked up at me and asked if the cat was mine. I told him it wasn't and gave him the evil eye. He got up and walked down the road fiddling with his phone.. I ran around the block in an event to see where he was going. I found him walking into town. He was still fiddling with his phone but seemed rather innocuous from the other side of the road so I didn't confront him, in fact I don't think he even saw me a I puffed along on the other side of the road.

It was a good run, but I had been in Brighton earlier in the day for a meeting and visited the pier with my assistant Toni. Toni and I ate 42 donuts. Big proper donuts. We sat in a shelter, the wind and rain whipping past us, the sugar from the donuts stuck to our top lips and down our fronts. It was great. So anyway, the donuts may have slowed me down a nano second.

We are away again now in our caravan till Monday or Tuesday.

Go here and read this - http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/andrew_anthony/2007/08/by_happy_coincidence_comment_i.html

T

Bat For Lashes 'I'm On Fire'

Here is a fantastic cover of a Bruce Springsteen track by Bat For Lashes. I've not heard anything else by BFL; or rather I cannot remember hearing anything by BFL. This track, 'I'm On Fire' stopped me in my tracks though when I first heard it.

http://www.mediafire.com/?2i0vqny3gz4

It's great.

Is anyone reading this ?

T

Orange Lights

I have been running. And here are my runs..

14/08 Tuesday 4.38 miles / 10:09 pace - a good lunchtime run to Parliment Hill with Iain. All the other runners we see in Hampstead are so po-faced and posh looking. I feel like pushing them in the boating lake. Sometimes.

15/08 Wednesday 5.22 miles / 10:07 pace - the best run in ages. Back home in Chelmsford up the private road with Morgan. An evening run. Cold gusts of light rain. The orange glow of the street lights and some leaves on the ground. Autumn is coming and I feel fine. Let's write this summer off and get on with Christmas. Fantastic. I could have run all night. I felt 100% great. Loved it.

16/08 Thursday 4.33 miles / 9:47 pace - lunchtime to Hampstead with Iain. Hard work. Hot.

19/08 Sunday 7:08 miles / 10:07 pace - early morning run in Chelmsford up Beehive etc. I wanted to do 10 miles but needed to get back to bring the wife breakfast in bed. Not a great run. Chelmsford is hardly the most pretty place but this morning with the detritus of V festival and the usual litter and rubbish stuffed and scattered everywhere it was especially grim. Sweet wrappers, soft drink cartons and crisp packet after crisp packet, like flies buzzing around my head.

20/08 Monday 4.47 miles / 9:38 pace - lunchtime on my own to Abbey Road and then to the Heath. I felt strong and good on this run.

21/08 Tuesday 4.62 / 9:37 pace - lunchtime to Brondesbury with Iain. A good run that started with my legs and knees aching and creaking and ended with us both flying down the road, sprinting back to the gates of the factory. Iain reckons he was in the zone. I was just behind him.

T

28 Weeks Later

I watched '28 Weeks Later' last week. This is the Danny Boyle produced follow up to the Danny Boyle 'directed' '28 Days Later'.

I loved '28 Days Later'. In fact I would go so far as to say it is one of those rare movies that I consider or remember almost every day. The dystopian vision of a Great Britain torn apart within days by a the 'Rage' virus irked something in me; I often reflect on the empty London streets or the point where you see Manchester in flames as it is approached on the M1. The idea that our society could be as fragile as depicted. And that without the framework of law and order our morality becomes a mirage is is a bit of a theme of interest for me in recent times. It has, in a small part, influenced my thoughts on extremism which in turn has made me update my own liberal views on how to order and conduct society.

So. I am sorry to report that '28 Weeks Later' is a disappointment to me on almost every level. Where '28 days' excelled in an implied back story to push the vision of a dying Britain, '28 Weeks' very obviously dictates the full scenario; this being a Britain being 'resettled' by an American led NATO task force. The violence and terror shown in the first film, although pretty full on, was in pace with the rest of the film. The violence in '28 Weeks' is simply silly (a helicopter cutting a swathe of people down with its blades) and is there to satiate the standard horror film expectations. Robert Carlyle was kinda predictable and the two kids far too posh to be allowed on screen. It plays to as many lowest common denominators as possible; consequently it doesn't really have its own identity or the understated intelligence and ethos that marked '28 Days' out.

Many commentators, including Mark Kermode (the BBC film critic), believe '28 Weeks' to be a well made film making a great political point. Mark says "the film knowingly evokes the ongoing battles of Iraq, with the peacekeeping forces turning out to be every bit as dangerous and destructive as the insurgent infection they are struggling to contain.... To assume that the Americans are somehow complicit in and to blame for the daily slaughter of innocents in Iraq is both a dangerous simplification of the situation and an affront to the ordinary people in Iraq being murdered by these, usually foreign (and not American) psychopaths. It is also symptomatic of our lack of understanding and interest in what is really happening beyond our cosy world. To create a juvenile piece of work such as '28 Weeks' and then make a half arsed socio-political point, that plays again to the lowest common denominator - 'anti Americanism', sums up the thinking behind just another lackluster movie and also maybe our modern malaise as we slide ever so slowly into oblivion.

See here for Kermode's article - http://observer.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2073279,00.html

And this chap's review is good also -
http://paulbensblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/28-weeks-later-review.html

And another here also -
http://www.chutry.wordherders.net/wp/?p=1640

T

Silver Morning Branches

Here is a great track by Voice Of The Seven Woods. I just heard it on the Sean Rowley 'Joy Of Music' radio show on BBC London and it is very great. The song is called 'Silver Morning Branches' and is from their new album. It's a dark psych folk track that to me sounds just perfect as our summer falls apart and Autumn is looming (loaming..) fast on the horizon. It seemed to get dark real quick last night.

http://www.mediafire.com/?alzpdwfahfd

I ran, with Iain, to Hampstead Heath and back at lunch time today (4.32 miles / 10:02 mile pace). It was a really good run. Nice and quiet. A good pace. Hilly. A cool breeze and some drops of rain.

The view from Parliament Hill is always great and today there was a haze like curtain just in front of the skyline that made the buildings on the horizon behind barely visible. The whole of London was rendered in shades of smudgy white and grey.

Amen

T

The Ringing In My Ears

And then we came home..

Had a great holiday. Hard work. Weather was fantastic for half the time. Kids had a ball. I read some bits and pieces and watched a movie or two, listened to music and got wasted. Did some running. Ate food. Wore clothes. Slept. Argued and fought with the noisy people in the caravan next door.. etc etc.

The highlight though were my kids; the best bit was touching their cold sticky faces with the backs of my fingers as they finally stopped shouting for ice creams and 'accidentally' hurting one another, and blissfully watched Cars on the portable DVD player in the caravan after a hard day on the beach.

I am sure they perceptively change and grow in front of my eyes in a week like that. My boy seems more patient, my girl even more precious. They drove me occasionally mad; I can still hear their voices ringing in my ears. Which is good.

Anyway, a running log follows here -

11/08 - Saturday - 2.66 miles (10:30 mile pace) - ankle hurt. through the back roads in Walpole. Finished early. It was hot.

10/08 - Saturday - 5.53 miles (10:05 mile pace) - seemed longer and further. An out and back route from Walpole. Warm. A good run.

09/08 - Friday - 4.08 miles (9.46) - with Mike on the other side of the site to the 'natural healing place'and back. A great run.

08/08 - Wed - 6.32 miles (10:02) - a hard early morning run from Haw Wood Farm through the common nearly to Walberswick. The common was silent. Cold dew flicking up and hitting my shins until I hit the sandy track (see the self portrait above).

07/08 - Monday - 8.23 miles (10:11) - an early morning run to Walberswick from Haw Wood through the common past the 'great big house'. The best run of the week. I could have carried on and I think it was nothing more than habit that made me turn around and head 'home'.

06/08 - Sunday - about 3 miles with Alec. More of a run / walk. He found it quite hard.

05/08 - Saturday - the 'loop' from Haw Wood and back again. Not sure of the pace, but it was sub 10:15 and that's all that counts. Good run. Cloudy.

03/08 - Thursday - lunchtime run with Iain in London from Kilburn. About 5 miles. We were quite fast. We just headed out and then zig-zagged our way back to Maygrove. I think I prefer running in London to anywhere else.
T

Van Morrison

No one sounds as great as Van Morrison does. To me he sounds, on occasion, almost divine.

I've seen him perform live once. He was playing at The Royal Albert Hall in 1987; I was only 19 and was probably the youngest person in the audience. His backing band were Georgie Fame etc. He grumbled on to stage looking like a giant hamster stuffed into suit that was too small. He was pissed off and looked like he was only going to be around for 5 minutes. But then he scuttled to center stage. He glared at his band and at us the audience and he started to sing. He sounded majestic, proud, strong and cool as fuck. He took control of Royal Albert Hall. His band like his shadow behind him; menacing his words and voice like a some kind of bodyguard but kept at bay by the subtle flick of Van's podgy little hand.

I can't remember what he sang, but I do remember him stalking the stage during instrumental parts holding his microphone up to the sky like an aerial. His face rapt and grumpy as he waited for the inspiration from 'on high'. He was truly great.

I was listening to him this morning on the ipod on the way to work and his music gives me a connection to our landscape like no other music does.

I'm now on holiday. I will listen to Van some more as we spend a week in our caravan in the Suffolk countryside. The kids like the album he did with the Chieftains, 'Irish Heartbeat'. My 5 year old daughter calls it 'cowboy music'.

Check out - http://www.mediafire.com/?6tjxnn3c2zz

This is a track of Van's from his Veedon Fleece album. Veedon Fleece is currently being repised as a 'Van album it's ok to like'. So you never know you might like it too..

I am now 'off line'.

Amen

T