Fire versus Frost
It is a ferociously cold and beautifully clear evening with a fluorescent blue moon. The fire is burning with a dazzling brightness heating the dog grate to a yellow incandescence and threatening a state of possible melt down. I think it may have something to do with an enhancement of the "up draft" or maybe even an increased oxygen concentration in the air, but it is a phenomenon that one tends to notice in high pressure conditions. Natures convenient balance of effects no less. I have a theory that it is probably more likely to be due to the "up draft" and a change in pressure differentials, but I am just a romantic old fool. There is less oxygen about at this time of year because the northern hemisphere's contribution drops when all of the deciduous trees go to sleep. We are strictly carbon neutral on the fuels...man. So don't worry on that score.
I will be glad to see the back of 2004 even though it was a year when the Lab "The Group" released the best album since Dots and Loops. Even the sad loss of Mary Hanson failed to undermine Gane and Sadier's up beat genius though her absence is notable in some arrangements. Margarine Eclipse has to be the most inventive album of the year, with no real competition from the equally brilliant Zero7 the field has been left to formulaic and boringly conventional also-rans. Just a quick note on the Zero7 thing, I think I must be the only Z7 watcher that still regards Simple Things to be a marginally better conception than When it Falls though both are of course brilliant. Despite this ineluctable joy 2004 has proven to be largely an unlucky, stressful, and very unhappy year for me just as predicted. The number four is associated with death in Chinese culture and probably for good reason. Don't expect me to go into the gory details but it has been a rubish year for all of its work and emotional upsetments; think I have just invented a new word there.
Let's hope 05 will be more fulfilling. This year for Christmas I would like, and will probably get, A-micro-wave-oven...joy of joys indeed. One more day at work tomoz then its holidays until the 4th of Jan...oh no not again!!
A passing note of interest. Since July 03 (and as of today) I have ridden a total of 3,617.7 miles on my mountain bike, worn out one bottom bracket, buckled a £200 back wheel, and fractured my collar bone in a proper carnage miss-hap..not bad even for a "Sagittarian maniac" ah?
