Strange, had  never been to Chichester until we played open-air in July, then I was back a few weeks ago. Mrs Harley and I stayed in a harbour-side country house hotel for three nights; took in the Festival’s “Singin’ In The Rain” on the middle night. Went with high hopes – it had received 5-star reviews everywhere you looked. We give it 4. Sometimes the leads forgot to be American. Spent an inspiring few hours exploring the Roman Palace at Fishbourne.  The countryside surrounding Chichester is calming, not wild like further west; the city itself a southern Cambridge, we thought, without the great halls of learning. The cathedral is splendid, of course. Outside, I sat to take in the magnificence of it all, then my stomach turned, slowly and achingly, and my top lip snarled in silent disbelief at the sight of a guy climbing down a ladder  from the top of the steeple. I have awful acrophobia – it’s my one big phobia, heights. The fear manifests in a wish to fly. I want to dive and cross the roads to reach the roof of that building over there, without touching the ground. Like a bird. I know I am human and it won’t work, so I dread being close to balconies higher than, say, the fifth floor. Watching him, Spiderman personified, brought out suddenly a groan from the back of my voice; then his mate appeared. There were two of them, twenty feet apart, descending almost vertically. “That’s the perfect job for you,” Mrs Harley mocked. I heard “aaarrgghhh” emitting from me, involuntarily. And yet, I couldn’t take my eyes off them.  On the tower, still a hundred feet up, there seemed to be four or five men in the team of steeplejacks. They were casually breaking into their packed lunches, apparently. All just part of a normal working day. “Well, I don’t suppose they could stand on stage in front of huge crowds and perform like you do, “ Mrs H spoke consolingly. I wasn’t sure. From where I sat, they were Supermen.

Charlie the gypsy tree man came and cut back our 500-year-old yew tree; looks grand now in its conical state. It dominates the 1/3 acre cultivated garden at the back of the house. It’s a good garden, mostly planted by us over the 21 years we’ve had the place. I dug the fish pond myself with a spade and great help from Dale, a local gardener. There are Koi in there 15 inches long, bought by us as new-borns. There are 20 feet high trees planted by us as saplings. Much has changed over those years. Much has been given life and later extinguished by fork and saw, to be replaced with more, new life. To the side, there is an acre and a half of apple orchard, cherry plums, greengages and hazel. The cherry plums are falling in their thousands. We bag them up and freeze them, and the neighbours come across and bag them up for their own use (jam, apple crumble…). Cooking apples and a few eaters, all falling in the high breezes we’ve felt in east Anglia this summer. The wasps are at the windfall cherry plums now, and hopefully a flock of fieldfares will revisit in the winter to devour the cookers left to soften and rot for them. My favourite spot in all of this land is the ¼ acre of wild wood, crammed with unkempt beech, elm and cherry, with masses of hazel that desperately needs coppicing. Charlie will come back early Spring to cut them all down to the stool. A lot of light will be let in for the first time in half a lifetime, I guess. That won’t please us all, but it has to be done, or the hazel stalks will grow ever longer and fall aside, breaking the stool apart and eventually dying. They will shoot by July, anyway, and their new life-cycle can begin in earnest. It will be worth waiting for. Am trawling eBay etc. in search of a small, wooden boat for the big pond. They are rare, like hen’s teeth. Surprising, that.
To Bree – Channel tunnel and a long drive. I have a deep love of Belgium. Along with everything else (the kind people, the great cities, like Antwerp and Brussels; the breath-taking towns like Ghent and especially Bruges), theirs is the best food in all Europe, maybe the world. Before Poperinge, I spent a night in London to see “Journey’s End.” Superlative. Very powerful. I read R.C.Sherriff’s play for either O-level or A-level, but not since then. It was a major coincidence that I booked tickets for that night, and drove to Poperinge the next day, to stay among the same trench-lands he’d written so poetically about. Had Stella Day’s “Guide To The Somme” with me, but actually didn’t get that far south. Next time, though…..
Saw Ypres, and many cemeteries. The big one, Tyne Cot, is awesome in its magnitude. Hard to take it all in, really. The young men of so many countries were shipped out there like sausages from a factory, to almost certain death. It was mad, of course. And wicked, but probably not pointless.

Some walnuts are falling already. I check on them several times a day if I’m here. I want them before the squirrels get them. Broke a few open yesterday. Deliciously sweet and flaky. There’s so much food around for them now, the squirrels don’t go near the traps. Empty hazel shells litter the patches around the big pond. I know where he lives.

Someone was asking why Skegness, which holds many, will be a 3-man acoustic show, and The Stables, which holds relatively few, will be a full rock-band show. That’s what the promoter has booked with my agent. That’s it, really. Will try to organise something a little special for the rock band shows near Christmas. Can’t think what right now. May need a suggestion or two.

Rochester soon. The Cathedral. What a thought. Keeps life interesting, that’s for sure.

Good to see Sandra from Hamburg at Poperinge, with Gilly and Stefanie and Hans from Holland. They wondered if anything special might be included, but I explained that it was foolish to burden seven thousand people in a Market Square with obscure tracks, in order to please a few. I get an hour at most outdoor events, and I don’t want to lose them through self-indulgence. I filmed the Poperinge masses as they sang the “Riding The Waves” refrain. Trying to find a way of sending the 1.8 gb file to Andy, my webmaster. I’m no Techie. Going to need advice on that one.

Wonderful to hear that Stewart Griffin’s boy Jack is fighting back with such a vengeance. Stewart said he would. A dad knows about his son.