paul capewell’s blog

“Excuse me, do you have a poetry section?”
“Uh, yeah, sure, its 821, let me show you where it is…”
“…Ah, yes, I looked there…If thats the poetry section then I’m a monkey’s uncle!”
“How do you mean…?”
“Well, I mean, there’s not a lot there… And what’s Rolf Harris doing in there?”
“Well, I would guess that he wrote some poetry at one point. Anyway, look, war poetry, Sylvia Plath, you name it.”
“I just need a list of poets, I can’t remember the name of one, and its for a crossword clue.”

And she wonders why we have Rolf Harris books in our poetry section. Pfft.

Anyway, the big excitement is that both HMV UK and play.com are pointing at June 4th as the release date for Ryan Adams’ next album, to be called Easy Tiger. Not sure how I feel about the name, but having a release date is bloody exciting. His website has been hinting at this title for a while now. I can’t wait!

I need to remember that even though I blog almost daily into my friends-only LiveJournal, that I do also have a blogger account. Hmm.

At the forefront of my consciousness this week has been work. The joys of working for the public sector. Or in the public sector? I never understood the terminology. Anyway, Buckinghamshire County Council is raping its’ libraries’ resources to put money into a call centre, amongst other things. I shan’t go into the details here, I’m far too tired of it all frankly.

But I will say this: while my county cuts library opening hours and book funds (to the lowest in the country – I’m almost embarassed to say that), a glance across the border into neighbouring Hertfordshire shows increased opening hours in almost every branch, and more up-to-date facilities across the board, along with the same catalogue system I have been trained on. Oh, did I mention they have vacancies right now?

Food for thought indeed.

In the past couple of weeks, I have not gone to a total of three gigs I had tickets for. I had a sudden burst a few weeks ago where I saw Biffy Clyro, Arcade Fire, and Future of the Left within days of eachother. Suddenly gigging seemed to be something I wanted to do again, after a long winter hibernation. Well, I booked a few gigs and got excited…. And then the days came and I felt too tired, or rather too depressed to go. And whats the best rememdy to that sort of feeling? Well, not sitting at home knowing you’re missing an artist you love, or thinking about the money you wasted on tickets, I can tell you that.

I’ll put a stop to it soon. In the mean time, it is almost light when I leave work now, which is a huge psycological step forward into 2007. The year is shaping up to be a good one, I feel. Twelve months ago I couldn’t really have said the same, so I’m glad I at least feel semi-confident of it this time round.

Tonight I’ve seen pictures of people who climb cranes for fun, watched a guy who constantly inspires me videoblog his proposal, and learnt of a (now fatal) train derailment on a route I take now and again, and will be taking in a few weeks.

Exhilerating, inspiring, sobering. I need this range of emotions to keep me sane.

Today, Britian finally got a dump of snow *I* can enjoy! I haven’t left the confines of my bed yet, other than to get coffee, but I am shortly gonna wrap up warm and go out exploring with Sophie and our cameras and see what we find.