Tag: personal

A Week With No Phone

I lost my iPhone last Wednesday while walking the dog I’m looking after while some friends are away. I’m gutted and so angry with myself for losing the iPhone while in the park – I doubled back twice to try and find it, but with no luck. I dropped into O2 the next day, and got a replacement SIM card, but no replacement handset as I’ve honestly no idea what to do.

I should just get a cheap handset and use that for the summer until I’m able to get an upgrade, but honestly a crappy phone will only frustrate me at this stage, because I’ve gotten so used to a phone doing what I want it to do. There’s little things that smartphones like the iPhone do that just make my life easier, and I’m not sure I’d be able to deal with the lack of those features.

Thing is, I’m so very broke at the moment, and there’s no way I can afford to be thinking about getting a new iPhone to replace the one I lost. It’s frustrating.

It’s also the longest I’ve gone without a phone since I got my first mobile phone back in 1999. It’s made me realise just how much of my social and working life is organised through my phone, and just how unreachable I am without it. I’ve seen only a small handful of my friends in this past week: Anna I arranged to meet up with in town at a specific time and place, while chatting to her on Facebook; Adam got in touch through twitter and skype to arrange to go for a swim. Aside from that, I’ve been in touch with people through the ‘net in various ways, but I’ve not actually had the same ease of contact to arrange to meet with anyone. I guess I didn’t realise just how much my phone has become an integral part of my life, and how much of a hindrance a lack of a mobile is in modern life.

It’s just taken as a given that you can be reached at all times on your phone, or that a voicemail will get to you. I’m trying to talk myself into just getting whatever crappy handset I can afford, and just deal with it as the result of being an idiot and losing my phone. I think it’s the 2nd time I’ve ever lost my phone in over 10 years of owning a mobile phone, and I don’t even have the excuse of having been drunk.

Front page of The Times: ebby, Gaba & David Cameron.

I spent the last two weekends in London for various reasons, but the main reason for the trip last weekend was to see the lovely Gaba Kulka play her first London gig. The Tuesday afterwards, we got coffee and some food and chatted before walking down towards the tube to go our separate ways. I was heading off to meet @Somhairle before catching my flight back to Ireland.

Suddenly we realised that there was a gathering of photographers snapping away in front of us, which was a bit bewildering to be honest, and looking around, I spotted David Cameron walking along behind us. Snapping him walking into his first day as Prime Minister.

I even remember saying that the photographers probably zoomed right past us to get the shot of David Cameron, but apparently they didn’t and we’re splashed over the front page of The Times, as well as making the Daily Mail.

Very random.

Gaba’s gig was absolutely wonderful though. If you’ve not checked out her music before, do! I’ve posted about her in a small way on this blog already, where you can check out three different songs from her.

a little recording session

The wonderful Anna Lee was around Galway yesterday, so she came and joined the family dinner I was having with two of my siblings. After a post-lunch walk on the prom, we came back to my house and listened to some music and caught up a bit. But she offered to work the desk for some recording work that evening too, which was wonderful, as a fresh pair of eyes sorted some of the random things I’d set up badly and helped iron out some of the wee quirks with my recording setup.

Being able to just relax into the role of the performer, instead of trying to do two things at once, was a really lovely feeling. I got to chill out and just focus on giving a good performance of the tracks we were going to lay down quickly. Ended up working on three tracks in total – just vocals and piano takes of The Best Of Me and Maria, and re-taking the lead vocals and the piano line on Take Me Away. I was keen to keep all the work that Meadhbh had done on the latter track, as her vocals are just beautiful on it, but I really wasn’t happy with the guide piano and vocals I’d laid down for her to sing off.

Maria I’d never recorded before, and I’m really pleased to have a nice little demo of it done at this stage, as I can go to the other arrangements I’d sketched out for various instruments, and see if those lines will fit the way I think they will. As it turns out, re-recording The Best Of Me in the key and tempo I now play that song in was really helpful too in terms of further instrumentation, as when I was listening back to the best of the takes, I could hear the other parts I wanted in the track. I have some arrangements for that to sketch out on some manuscript paper, but I think it’s a ‘cello and viola I’ll need. I’m not sure – I’ll need to tease it out a little bit more.

I’ve not listened to those takes again yet after last night, but I’m going to leave them to listen again fresh later this evening after I go and play some Samba drums with some kids from Youth Work Ireland as part of their fundraising day. The LGBT youth group I’ve been volunteering with for the last few years, shOUT!, are under the umbrella of YWI, so helping out the main body helps keep the LGBT youth group going.

There’s no-one here, and tulips everywhere.

i travel
all around the city
go in and out of
locomotives
all alone
there’s no-one here
and people everywhere

only if a ship would sail in
or just someone came
and knocked at my door
or just (or just)
SOMETHING

Parts of Björk’s Crying rather aptly describes my days lately. It’s been weird. I have to travel to Dublin to spend any time with people it seems. I don’t think I like that. I’m spending way too much time alone I think – so much so that I don’t even realise how much time I’m spending in just my own company. Most days I’ll say maybe three or four sentences to someone who’s not serving me in a shop or café or something. I guess I make up for it when I do go to Dublin and hang out with people there, but it just makes the return to Galway each time more frustrating. But I guess that’s what happens when there’s a big exodus of people from a town.

I do like my own company, and I’m very used to it, and it is making me write so much more. I wrote lyrics for a whole new song today that was sparked off by two short lines I’d noted down in my phone a few days ago. I even have a rough idea of how the melody should go. I’m at a point where I have way too many songs not recorded even in demo form – more than half of them aren’t recorded in any way at all. I need to get more on top of that.

I spent this evening post-Doctor-Who looking at tweaking little tiny things on my website, which just drives home the fact that I need a proper, better design for it, which is something I’m not able to do. Then I was doing re-takes of the demo vocals for “friday night friendships” which I’d sketched out quickly a while back with terribly off guide vocals. I’m getting more used to recording myself, but it’s still not ideal, and I’m finding it a bit of a pain sometimes when a good take is messed up by shitty recording, or whatever.

The thing I wrote today I’ll take a look at again tomorrow and see what I think of it. I’ve another two half-written lyrics sheets in a notebook, and a few more songs kinda half sketched out. I really have been on a big writing spate over the last year or so. I think I’ve written more in the last year than in the last 20! I’m not all of it is any good, but I’m gonna try at least demo everything so that I can listen to them from outside of the performer space, and see what I think.

Anyways, while I was in Dublin recently, I got to enjoy the beautiful tulips that are in the park in Merrion Sq. Dublin City Council were taking submissions to rename that park, which is currently named after Archbishiop Ryan. I don’t think I ever called it that in the first place – it was always just Merrion Sq to me. Or the park with the Oscar Wilde statue and beautiful tulips:

tulips tulips and daffodils tulips in the park tulips and daffodils

Photos: easter chocolatey goodness

I took photos of my Easter chocolate this year, just for the hell of it. I was home alone on Easter morning, before going off to spend time with my brother and his family for dinner that evening. I wasn’t feeling well, so eating loads of chocolate perhaps wasn’t the best idea to be honest. Nevertheless, nothing could possibly stand in the way of me and a Ben 10 easter egg:

Photo on 2010-04-04 at 13.50

The kids from a show I was playing piano for bought it for me, as a thank you present. It’s possibly the greatest thing I’ve been given ever (well, in the last week anyways). But I have a feeling that the flask will go to my Ben 10 obsessed nephew instead. The chocolate in the egg itself was a bit gross, but who cares! It was a Ben 10 egg!

My sister was home for the weekend, and gave me a beautiful little Lindt chocolate bunny, which I just can’t bring myself to take out of the gold foil. It has a bell! It’s just too damn cute! So it’s still sitting on my desk beside my computer.

Photo on 2010-04-04 at 14.36

Lastly, my folks gave me this big dark chocolate bunny, which was absolutely gorgeous. Just delicious. I started into it at lunchtime yesterday, and finished most of it today. I’m not sure it’ll last much longer. It wasn’t the prettiest bunny to look at, but that doesn’t matter so much because it was just so damn tasty.

Photo on 2010-04-04 at 14.52

The other thing that arrived this past week was my prize from a random Marina & The Diamonds competition on Twitter run by Heineken Music. I rather casually answered the three questions, and didn’t expect much more from it, but it turns out that I won! And a copy of Marina & The Diamond’s wonderful debut album, The Family Jewels winged its way to me along with a lovely tshirt and tote bag. Happy out. :) So here’s a photo of the shirt: (yep, it’s backwards as I took it with photobooth on my iMac, and couldn’t be arsed switching around the image.)

Photo on 2010-04-03 at 23.50 #4

So, if I’m being really honest, I guess the Marina package was the best thing I got in the last week or so.

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