I avoided writing or posting about David Bowie today, and turned down a couple of opportunities to talk about him because I feel as if I said it all on this day last year. There's a danger that I will spent every January 10th writing the same thing, so I kind of kept a low profile as far as the Bowie tweets and posts were concerned. 

That isn't to say that today passed by in a Bowie free blur, far from it. David Bowie is a part of my life and has been since I was a child. My MP3 player only contains his music and nothing else and I have been hoovering up radio programmes since the weekend and have just started reading Ziggyology: A Brief History of Ziggy Stardust by Simon Goddard (which is a bit slow if I'm honest). There are pictures of him all over the house and piles of books, videos and DVDs about him, and records/CDs of course, so it isn't like I don't miss the guy. 

Last year Mandi had given me the ultimatum that probably saved my life, I had to seek help for my depression or we were finished. At first I denied that I needed help but eventually I realised that I needed to sort myself out. I didn't carry on with counselling but I am still on medication and I feel better. On the morning of the announcement of Bowie's death I was sleeping in my daughter's bedroom and was shaken awake by Mandi with the news. It was only at the weekend prior that I had started taking medication and had to take time away from the day job at the law firm to adjust as I felt like shit. The whole of Monday was spent listening to the radio with tears in my eyes as they played nothing but David Bowie for the best part of the day, while at the same time glued to my laptop trying to write my thoughts down with two tabs open, Twitter and Facebook, and seeing how much love there was out there for the great man. If I can gather one bit of good from this devastating news it will be the fact that it repaired the rift between Mandi and me, and we were able to go to London and stand with the hundreds of people at the mural in Brixton and the Ziggy Stardust plaque on Heddon Street. 

Here's to David Bowie, there will never be another.

Further reading (red text is a link)

Written on the day the news broke.

Written on the day we went to London to pay our respects.

Two more Bowie songs.

One more Bowie song.

Comic piece I wrote about the Blackstar theories.

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The continued clean up of my Internet presence limps along with the deletion of my aborted audio version of this blog that I recorded in tandem with my daily entry in January and February. Apart from the fact that this was quite a time consuming exercise, it wasn’t financially worthwhile as it isn’t realistic to expect people to pay to download something every day (despite the fact that the audio blog was ‘pay what you like’ so in theory it was cheaper than the pound or more a daily newspaper costs) but I had hoped that people would perhaps pay a weekly or monthly amount as they would with a subscription. Another issue I had was that age old Internet problem of needing more than one email address for more than one account with the same website. I also had a problem linking two Bandcamp profiles to one PayPal account, so I decided that with my main account being more active the best thing to do was delete the audio blog to keep a clear slate. In due course there are a few things I will be removing from the Internet but they will be kept in my archive in physical form on the vague off-chance that someone will fancy a listen when I am dead and my audio recordings are donated to a library archive. The removal of my audio blog now means that I have two months of blogs with a dead link at the bottom, but editing my blog to update and tidy up dead links is an ongoing task that I will eventually get round to.

I haven’t done a lot worth writing about just lately, as most of what I have been doing is groundwork concerning future projects. Today I compiled a list of email addresses that I will need to issue a press release prior to the release of Bowie Day. With the right planning I should be able to devote the release day itself to live radio phone interviews and do any print interviews in advance for publication as near as possible. I’m glad now that I thought of the title Bowie Day as the day of the release can indeed be called Bowie Day. The fact that it is the great man’s birthday makes it even better. My original plan has been squashed because it was too elaborate even for my imagination to be honest; I had thought seriously about being in London on January 8^th (book launch day/David Bowie’s birthday) to do a few book readings in Heddon Street under the Ziggy Stardust plaque, whether people wanted me to or not. The other part of my plan was to conduct all of that day’s phoners (that’s what we call telephone interviews but you probably guessed that) from the famous phone box (pictured above) but I could see problems. People don’t tend to queue up to use phone boxes these days, or use phone boxes, but I could see it annoying at least one person and ruining the whole day.

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My to-do list for the week is already behind which isn’t a good sign considering it is only Tuesday, although to be fair I do have a get out clause having written ‘unless there’s a gig’ at the top of the page. It’s my fault for thinking that I could type up my book Bowie Day all at once, which was my job for yesterday and the job I tried to tackle with gusto today. In the end I managed about half of it due to having to do a bit of fact checking and tidying up a few clumsy sentences. I write longhand to start with, the old fashioned way using a pen and paper. The rest of the week mainly involves recording, a task I have rather ambitiously set on a one job per day basis. Once Bowie Day is typed up and saved I intend to record the audio book for release on the same day, and that was supposed to have been my job for today. Although once it’s done and dusted it won’t be released until January it is something I wanted to get out of the way as I didn’t want to forget about it until it was too late and I miss the intended release date of January 8^th. Before breaking up for Christmas I’ll be arranging all the publicity in advance so that I can dedicate the release date to promotional duties. The audio book will be available to download from my Bandcamp profile as usual, but I’m considering putting a price on it rather than the pay-what-you-like option this time. I’m also weighing up the pros and cons of doing a one-off public reading gig with a Bowie tribute band as the main event. My other idea is an evening read underneath the Ziggy Stardust plaque on Heddon Street as a busking event, only with words instead of music.

We are halfway through the year so naturally our thoughts turn to Christmas. When I say ‘our’ I mean certain sectors only, nobody in the real world of 9-5 Monday to Friday could give a shit about Christmas yet. While we eat ice-cream in our flip-flops, (although it is better to eat it out of  a cone), restaurants and pubs will be sorting their festive menus, card shops will be blowing the dust off the stock they put away last Christmas Eve, and in a studio somewhere it will be the season to be jolly, tra-la-la-la-la, la-la-la-la. One of my jobs this week or next is to record this year’s now traditional Dickens Christmas audio book. I have chosen it already, (weird to be reading Christmas stories in June) and it will be available as before as a free download with the option to pay if you wish. My original audio book of A Christmas Carol will be re-released as an album so you can buy all four chapters together, probably a week before the newer one comes out. Last year’s series of Steve’s LP Box was the final one, with episodes going out weekly, but unfortunately I didn’t have time to record the Christmas special. The whole thing is written but I need to record it, again it’s something I’d rather have finished sooner rather than later and release it on the same day as this year’s Christmas edition. All in all that will add several ticks to the to-do list and make December a very busy one. I keep hinting to Mandi that we’re skipping Christmas this year but she’s having none of it.

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