Light.

Three weeks in the sunshine of Italy seems more than a month ago. It seems like some vague hallucination. Like a sick day – something my poor mother knows too much about again today. While I’m sitting here in the sort of strangely pleasant, weird light of a summer evening that’s just rained, she’s entombed herself under bedclothes within reach of a large plastic bowl. The place was strangely quiet and dark when I popped back just now.

It’s on ill days that you must realise what it’s like to be alone after thirty-five years of marriage. Except she’s not. But, y’know. I think she’ll be okay.

This past weekend has turned Bournemouth into an actual tourist destination. Twinkling sea and baking sands. Our annual visitor from Berlin, Anneka, said she’d never seen the beach looking like an actual beach before. She and Caroline spent a weekend afternoon on it, while I oddly left them for the music studio, middle of the blazing summer day. Like things ever change…

Truth be told, sunshine and summer or not, we’ve been in a bit of a daze since getting back. I’m feeling the need to winnow. What is winnowing? Don’t know precisely, but the word’s on my mind a bit this week. I think I mean pruning – cutting back the current crop of clients to redirect Momo a bit. It’s okay to do this, apparently. You’re allowed. It’s called Being The Boss.

Who knew this?

Thing is, all I want to do creatively is fiddle with tunes. Finish the album. Get the damned thing right. And, beyond that, just wake up on a day with absolutely nothing to achieve. No deadline. No goal. No list of things to do. No jobs waiting round the house. No meetings. Like I always say, meetings are the easy bit. Sometimes the fun bit But while I’m swanning around finger-pistoling, there’s no clever twit in the studio actually making stuff we can sell.

Well, I may be in a bit of a daze, but I climbed hard to be dangling my feet off this plateau and it’s good to catch a few rays and not rush on up the climb just yet. There are too many things to think about and too many people to think about. My brain is either contemplating the very large, imponderables (“..whither and why; shall we hither and yon?…) or it is simply obSESSED with getting the mix to work between certain bars of an electro-pop tune I first wrote eight years ago and still haven’t finished so that I’m happy with it. ..WHY doesn’t Logic have a Make It Sound Cool button?

Sadly, most of Momo’s work falls somewhere between these two scales. And that’s a bit I’m not really daydreaming about. It’s just kind of rolling on, giving me deadlines. Which is why I’m wondering – at the poncy ‘ponderables end – whether to edit some of the sectors I’m working in. At the other end, I’m still thinking it needs some extra shouty vocals. And I have four brass parts to write and a drum session to enjoy with an infectiously excited Mark. And casual offer of ‘will play sitar for coffee’ from Kev. …And does anyone know how to fix an 80-button accordion?

This much I’ve gotten to from all this vague, dream-like mental wandering and vaguery this summer: you’ve got to be in the optimum place, so far as you can get there. Find where you fit. Energies are finite, so stick ’em in the best endeavors for efforts. Prune.

It’s getting dark at last. Time to switch off these screens and watch something mindless. Up in London with Gel tomorrow, so I’ll need my best I Know What I’m Doing, Sure face on. And a loaded finger pistol.

But, thinking about it, am completely in the dark about why we’re going to this particular meeting. Sure it’ll be fun.