Very bad at blogging lately. Just want to let folk know who don’t follow twitter and haven’t seen me that everything is going brilliantly. It’s working for me and all my hosts as far as i can tell. I’m going to be in birmingham early next week and still working on being in leeds soon plus lots of bonus goodies!

And i’m loving blogging on my nokia n8 while sitting in the sunshine on the steps of Tate Britain 🙂

Sent from my phoneOriginally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

That had I been Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch or Rebekah Brooks, I would have known everything that was going on in my media empire and no wrong doing would ever have happened “on my watch”.  I would have created a culture of honesty, transparency and respect for the law at all times.

Likewise, If I had been a senior police officer like Sir Paul Stephenson or John Yates I would have acted with excellent judgement at all times, listened carefully to all advice I was given and instantly known whether information was being kept from me.  I would be able to spot corrupt officers with ease.

If I had been Jonnie Marbles I would have thought carefully about the possible negative repercussions of my throwing a custard pie at Mr Murdoch and kept the shaving foam in my bag.

If I’d been Gordon Brown, I’d have spoken out about the invasions into my family privacy a lot earlier.

If I’d been George Bush on 9/11 I would not have sat there reading “My Little Goat” I would have acted immediately and decisively.  The whole of al Quaeda would have been tried for war crimes within days of the atrocity.

I never make mistakes, never make a choice today that might look different in the context of tomorrow, never behave out of self-interest and it’s very very important to me that you know that.

 

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

“Drag people to your circles to follow and share” No! too much hassle.  Give me a simpler way to categorize people – I’ve got 500 people sitting in my “Find and invite” list and 400 who’ve already added me.  Do I really have to drag and drop each one?  Is this the best interface they can come up with?

This thing is crying out for an API so that people who haven’t been intimately involved in it’s birth can think about how to add some value to real users with a large and diverse network.

I see the value of circles, of being able to slice and dice my social graph, for example, I’d like to be able to have geographic circles – automagically create one for a set of large cities that I give you – London, Birmingham, Leeds, Paris, San Francisco, Austin blah blah blah.  But go through my whole list and drag and drop them all in the right bucket? nuh-huh.

At least give me some keystrokes or alternative user interfaces to do mindless, repetitive tasks.  In fact, don’t bother, I can’t be arsed with the whole thing – I’ll maybe go back to it when it’s had the edges smoothed off.

 

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

This trip is really whizzing by, I can’t believe it’s two weeks since we were wrapping up on recording Hopscotch Requiem in Martyn’s living room.  It’s really an amazing thing that Martyn did – getting 10 muso’s together who’d never met before and holding a space for us to collaborate and make something in such a short space of time.

He’s put the first mix on Soundcloud.  I can’t listen to it properly yet, it feels like the kind of thing that was great fun to do but is for other people to enjoy for now, I need a bit of distance or some time on my own with a good pair of headphones!  But if you’re into vaguely ambient, sometimes discordant, improvised noodling (or even if you’re not and want to know what that stuff sounds like) do take a listen and let me know what you think.

Maybe try Grocery List which is, y’know, the Clark’s grocery list and Requiem’n’stuff

 

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

I’m in Nottingham (right now in the @fibrecamp basement studio at Lacemarket House – very chilled and lovely) and staying in town at least until tomorrow.  I’m aiming to be back in London for Wednesday afternoon, I’ve a couple of things I want to do, I’m hoping to get to see Hugh MacLeod on Wednesday night and I think it’s about time I showed my face at Tuttle again.  Then I’m up to Shrewsbury for next weekend and my nephew’s 21st.  After that, it’s probably time to see my pals in Birmingham or Leeds.

So anyway. Ideas please for the next few days, Monday and Tuesday.  Something between here and London?  Probably not too far east or west, but I’m open to suggestions (ie Birmingham wouldn’t be too far west, but Wales might be this time)

I need to have a look at all those people who said “Let’s do something” when I first announced the trip, but whom I haven’t contacted since.  In the last week I’ve put three things in the diary for August: A spot of boat-sitting in Kent; the Dark Mountain Festival in Hampshire; and the Bude Jazz Festival in Cornwall at the end of the month.  I could do with a top-up of work in between, so anything you’ve got that might be a day or two, whether it requires face-to-face contact or not would be most welcome.

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

Today and tomorrow I’m doing a tour of innovation spaces in the Sheffield area as part of my participation in CollaboJam on Wednesday.  

I’ll be stopping over that evening but from Thursday morning I’m open to suggestions again.  There’s nothing to say I can’t stay somewhere else in Sheffield.  Or maybe somewhere nearby in Yorkshire or the East Midlands?  Or perhaps somewhere further afield again.  I have no commitments at the moment except to be at a family do in Shrewsbury on 23rd.

Would you like me to come and see you?  Do you have something useful for me to do, for which you might be able to cross my palm with silver?  Do you have a spare room or sofa or know someone who’d welcome a houseguest?  If you can answer most of these with a yes, please do get in touch: DM me on Twitter or Facebook, email me lloyd dot davis at gmail or give me a call 07919182825

Here’s some of the stuff I do, if you’re not sure.

Thank you!

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

I really enjoyed spending some time in the mornings out with Martyn & Mary’s boys.  We had a great game of cricket with an empty cider bottle for one wicket and a crushed milk carton at the other end. (We also had a quick game of pitch and putt another day as well as getting to play with the trainset!) 

It’s been a while since I wielded a lump of willow and I was never any good at it in the first place but I don’t think I embarrassed myself too much.  I did though come away a little sore in the shoulder after trying to show off my bowling technique.  At drama school I didn’t pay enough attention in the “how to fall while stage fighting” class and so ended up with two dislocated shoulders.  This injury very rarely gives me any problems in any of the work I do now.  Sometimes they get a bit sore if I sit typing for a long time in the same position, but that’s about it.  I just don’t do anything that requires me to wind my arm around in a full circle.  Showing young boys the correct way to bowl however requires full mobility – and I can do it, for perhaps 4 balls, but after that it starts burning and I can’t manage much more than an over without going “owie”, rubbing my shoulder and looking round for sympathy. Sympathy from pre-teens? Nah.

Luckily I can still run like the wind and catch a ball hurtling towards the boundary one-handed… pfffftt!

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

After some scorching days in Glasgow, I’ve found some more reassuringly Scottish weather.

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

Martyn Clark organised and recorded a collaborative album of improvised music with me and 10 other artistes in his living room in (roughly) 48 hours.

Megan and Stephen Appleton drove around the south-eastern coast of Angus for an evening, including an excitable encounter with flying puffins.

Two very different experiences with my hosts so far, one of them planned (only a little) ahead, the other a spontaneous end to a wet day in the summer holidays.  But this is the reason I’m out on the road – to help people do the things they want to do but somehow haven’t quite done yet.  To give people an excuse to do something a little out of the ordinary, or a *lot* out of the ordinary – it’s up to them.  It’s up to you.  Let me know if you’ve got something that my presence would let you do or even if you suspect there maybe something waiting to be drawn out.  

Note though that this was not part of the deal when Martyn and Megan invited me to stay – in both cases it emerged out of knowing that I was coming.  An invitation seems to be enough to start the creative process…

(Photo: me at dusk at the Clark kitchen table by Martyn Clark)

 

 

 

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous

The first night of my odyssey took me to Wood Green to enjoy the hospitality of my very good friend Francesca Elston, her adopted family and then a little later, Dr Hadfield and his hyperactive puss.

It all felt very normal, ordinary people that I spend time with in London anyway.  Just for some reason not going home at the end of the evening, because i don’t have one of those any more.  Or rather that this was now my home, the wherever I lay my hat kind.

In the morning I went into the Centre for a little while to leave my stuff for the morning while I went out to buy a ukulele case and to spend some time with someone precious.  Naturally, in the few moments that I was at the Centre I managed to be asked to perform briefly, by a lady who’d just bought a uke herself. It’s a hard life being me.  

The very quick personal packing I’d done when not thinking about where big items were going to be stored left me with a stuffed suitcase, a big green plastic bag of odds and ends and a case-less ukulele.  I was ashamed to be carrying Samantha (that’s my concert uke) naked through the streets since we left West Kensington, but she doesn’t fit in the little gig bag I have for Daren (the black, Gibson-shaped uke that I took to the US) and the hard case that she does fit into is occupied by my ukulele-banjo (who doesn’t have a name).  So I headed for Hobgoblin in Rathbone Place and we had a mooch through various gig bags and cases.  The problem is her hips.  Samantha’s quite a curvy girl (it’s one of the reasons I like to keep her under my arm of course!) and she finds it difficult to squeeze into the tiny spaces that sopranos put up with.  Eventually we found a hard case that fit her hourglass figure perfectly.  Kerchinnng!

After a delightful secret rendezvous in Marylebone I headed back to the Centre to rationalise my bag and suitcase usage, say my goodbyes and trundle off to Kings Cross for the 15:00 to Glasgow Central.

 

Originally posted on Lloyd’s posterous