Well I am back, sort of.  Think half my brain is over the Atlantic somewhere. 

 

First impression - Where the fook is the summer??  It is bloody freezing, rainy and windy.  This wasn't in the script.  I was expecting a balmy late summer enjoying lazing in the park and beer gardens of West London and the countryside of Dorset.  Shite. 

 

And why can't I enjoy a fag in the pub.  OK, that's probably a good thing, should really give up again.  Maybe next week.   Forgotton how flippin expensive London is.  What else, O there is a new bloke at Number 10, Cameron is no longer flavour of the month it seems, and the £20 note looks different.  

Tomorrow I head for home via a quick stop over in Miami.  Back Wednesday, Inshallah

 

I am looking forward to getting back to dear England, regular bowel movements, a decent pint in a proper English pub, catching up with Friends, getting my motorbike on the road,  the BBC, Adam and Joe on XFM, decent English music (that isn´t Robbie Willams and that utter twat James Blunt*), and a bacon sandwich with HP sauce.

 

Anyway, it's been an amazing experience...

 

 

 

 

Quick note>

 

I am ok as not due back in Lima until Sunday morning.  In Arequipa currently, in the south

Flight out from Lima to Miami is on Monday.  But quake may delay my trip home as roads into the capital are damaged

 

Update>

I am one of the lucky, spoiled gringos who travels around the country and stays in good properly built hotels.  Please spare a thought for the poor of Peru in Pisco and Ica, who have lost their homes and all of their few belongings, and are suffering the terror of some powerful aftershocks

A very sad day as Tony Wilson dies at the criminally young age of 57.  

 

Tony Wilson had vision, courage, a huge ego but the smarts to go with it.  He leaves a massive and important legacy - the brilliance of Factory Records, the music of New Order and Joy Division, the Happy Mondays, the importance of design in promoting music, the chaos of the Hacienda.  It is sad to see most of the Factory mavericks who were involved alongisde Anthony H Wilson passing away : Ian Curtis, Martin Hannett and  Rob Gretton. 

 

Tony Wlson also had the academic prowess to present the music and ascetic vision of Factory and it´s acts in a broader context, while retaining  a staunchly Northern England outlook. Cambridge educated,  he was one of the few people who could adequately articulate Ian Curtis¨s lyrics in a neo classical context. 

 

Shame he and his partners were so terrible at business - if it wasn´t for such heroic acts as pouring hundreds of thousands into the Hacienda, but not running a parallel Dance music label to offset the losses, famously making a loss on every copy of New order´s Blue Monday, a record which became the biggest selling twelve each ever, not signing either The Smiths or Oasis, and refusing to give bands either contracts or promotion - Factory and the Hacienda might still be around today.  But it sure wouldn´t have made for such a great story, and the feature film 24 Hour Party People inspired by his life is one of my favourite films

 

 I feel gutted, both at the loss of such a great man who gave me the soundtrack to my life, and angry at the cancer that killed him within six months 

 

 There is a good BBC Newsnight tribute here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rlFwScEjUk