I really am. I've run out of money and I am seemingly out of sanity as well. Last night I looked out of the window and it looked like the Taliban had taken over the street - three 4 X 4 Pick-ups outside in our parking spaces with the resident white van in it's usual sacred space. It was the neighbour and his builders' mates. What makes it irritating is that if you or your friends park where he likes to park or his wife, then he's running up and down the road mouthing off at you to move your car. So, yesterday, when my wife couldn't get her tools out of her car because of this hypocrite and his mates I looked out of the window. I must have had a little episode because the next thing I know I am shouting at them all, and really about to jump out of the window and take them all on. It was insane. I was frothing at the mouth according to my son who wrestled me to the floor.

I think I am truly losing the plot.

Yesterday afternoon, after spending 5 annoying hours on fixing my websites, I went down to the woods in order to get some air and sun and to put a deer fence around one of my prized Xmas Trees. This one is in a little wooded strip next top the fields where we used to have our horses, and also unfortunately next to a busy road and opposite its layby, where nosey tradesmen sit in their white vans taking your car registration for some reason.

After I'd cut the stakes (really badly) and hammered them in I put the wire fencing around them. This took some time as there were four different pieces of wire that I had to loop together. As I was kneeling down tying this stuff into one piece around the tree stakes I heard a rustle of the leaves behind me. I thought "That sounds like an animal - or a very light person..." The obvious candidate was a pheasant, who are "a-stepping" at this time of year. I looked round ever so slightly so that I could see out off the cormner of my eye - I seemed to see a birdlike shape. I carried on tying the wire so as not to frighten whatever it was away, and sure enough I heard the rustle of the leaves continue towards me.

Then, these two peacocks came strutting past me about two feet away, and stopped and looked at me. I said "Hello", they looked at me, and carried on walking, up to the fence by the road, then round to my old hedgecuttings heap and the grave of our old cat, Lutard. Fascinating they were. They disappeared off into the tangled wood further up the strip and then eventually came back, walked past me again and off round the small pond that forms there at this time of year. Fascinating. What a pleasant encounter next to Paranoia Layby Hell.

I am planting trees. I am not very good at it but I am better than some people (who put logs underneath the tree to get it to the right height, which of course prevents the roots from going downwards and so kills the tree). The deer have been incredibly vandalistic - must be the rutting time again.

A gig approaches this Sunday for the Skinbat Scramble... then one on 12th April which looks like it'll be The Ghost Lilacs again, maybe The Old Dolphin Brigade...

...I had a meeting at a record company office (which I think got our point across), drank a lot of beer, had the moon and Pole Star (if that's what it was) pointed out to me by my son as being in a spookily Islamic reminiscent formation (I once had a ring lent to me featuring that same configuration by a beautiful woman in Sevenoaks in 1979 - she took it back...), watched a rugby match (what's happening to me, watching sport?) and discovered that a local record shop had sold 3 of my CDs, which means I can just about pay the credit card bill this month.

And I/we listened to The White Album - all the way through... they were pretty good those Beatley People weren't they?

I have left this profile largely unattended recently due to Xmas and New Year and the fact that this time of year is a real drag for me as there is no money/work/respite and so I have little to pass on that isn't just economic woes and that's a real drag. But besides loving Xmas anyway I have managed to drag myself through a rather strange month of January. Whilst occasionally I see photos of Goth Models having a wild time posted up on the profile I have been ploughing on (in December at least) with doing a few gigs and going to other gigs. One thing I did plan to do was get our lyricist Norrie Thornton (from across the road from us) out on Xmas Eve to witness our The Forum's Xmas Acoustic Night performance (where I hoped to perform one of his songs he wrote for us), but what with his poor health, being unsteady on his feet and the icy weather making the paths around The Forum into ice traps I decided not to bother him and wait for another day. He was also a bit like a badger in that you would only see him in the street at odd times and the rest of the time he wouldn't answer his door. So, Xmas Eve arrived and we did the gig (The Ghost Lilacs) and it finished early as it started early, and off to The Ragged Trousers we all went and had a nice time before seeing Dave Salisbury off at the train station. I later went to Midnight Mass (my second gig of the day!) to ring the bells before the service and as I had a rather forlorn friend with me who wanted to attend the Mass I stayed. When I got home at 1am, there in front of our front door with a note and a piece of green tinsel around it was a fine bottle of Merlot, left by Norrie sometime around midnight (as it wasn't there when I left at 11.45pm). Next day I left his Xmas Cake in a biscuit tin outside his door. Then Xmas came and went, and apparently Norrie was seen in the street by my wife and also by the old lady next door, but I reckon it was his ghost. I went down to the woods and planted our Xmas Tree (later attacked by a rabbit) near to Daisy's grave and the weird cycle of the year in the wood started to grind round again very slowly. Things got incredibly cold around about the 9th January and some weird animal woke us up on an eerie moonlit frosty night of Christina Rosetti's evocativeness, with almost human cries. It came and went over the next few nights and seemed to be retreating into his immensely overgrown garden each time.

And then the new album by my band the Skinbat Scramble (curiously enough, titled "Remains") came to its final stage and all the discrepancies that creep into projects of this kind simply because people have such intense feelings about what they are doing distracted me.

About a week later I noticed on my way back from getting some hens' eggs in the woods that Norrie's Xmas Cake was still outside his door. I took it back home and opened the tin - it was in perfect condition, what with being sealed in a tin and the incredibly cold weather. I got suspicious and soon ascertained from the neighbours that no-one had a firm sighting of him for at least 10 days, and I had noticed that his recycling bin that was full of empty bottles had not been put out (ie. it was still by his front door). I went round the back of his jungle of brambles garden calling him and got no reply. I then called the Social Services and got an answerphone (it was a Sunday) but then just phoned the Police. For once they didn't mess around. They broke his door down as soon as the Ambulance was there, but he was dead inside the house. Been there for days in the outside temperatures he had in his house due to the broken window where the Blackbird used to come in to visit him. They took him away. I gave his Xmas Cake away.

We heard nothing until I saw some people coming out of his driveway about 10 days later - his house had been sealed up by the Police. One of them was a lady from the Bank who are dealing with his affairs (this was last Thursday). She said that his funeral was the next day, at 9am, 30 miles away! None of us who had looked out for him for these past 20 years could attend as a result of the distance and short notice. Curiously, on last Friday he came into my thoughts for about 20 mins while I was sanding down windows, and I realised afterwards that it was around the time of his funeral. I then had to drive miles to get my daughter to Eastbourne (coincidence) for her driving theory test at 5.45pm. It was bitterly cold and as I drove along looking for the place the test was at we went past the Pier in the sunset's dying light and my daughter remarked at the starlings flocking patterns flying around it. I dropped her off and parked and killed the hour waiting for her by wandering up to the Pier. It was soooo cold. I walked round to the end of the Pier and there I could hear birds' tweeting coming up through the floorboards - that is obviously where the flock of starlings had gone - to roost under the Pier on the girders.

I went back into the arcade on the Pier and put 10p into one of those 'piles of coins about to tumble' machines and watched it start promisingly and then get assimilated by the clustering banks of coins without even a shimmy or a tremor from the ones at the edge. There seemed to be something significant about life in that short sequence. That was the only 10p they got out of me that evening. I went itno a Polish shop and was unable to buy any of their beer as I was skint, I then walked past a Lap-Dancing Club and went into a cycle shop with security cables strung across the shop at head height. My daughter passed her test. We went home.

I dreamt a couple of nights later that I was in a garden with Norrie chasing Guinea Pigs about that were escaping from a hopelssly constructed cage. He was protesting that he had to drive to Sidhoop or somehwere, which I thought was odd as he'd not used his car for 20 years and it sits even at this moment in his drive completely overgrown by brambles. There was a massive thunderstorm overhead with no rain falling. I woke up, thinking that the dream must have been his spirit moving on. That weird animal has not been heard of again. His house is still overgrown, sealed up. We were going to play The Forum's January Acoustic Night on the 25th but it was cancelled, so we are now doing the February one instead. We will be playing some of Norrie's songs that we recorded for him.

The Goth Models are still crazy. Brad is coming over soon for a Sons of Quag rehearsal for a future Paris gig, and I have had my first very productive rehearsal with a couple of guys I know who are helping me out to finish my unfinished tracks that I have been writing. I am moving on but it's been a strange, strange Xmas and New Year. I wish Daisy was still here.

It's a very strange life.

Yes folks, that's my bank, and that's us. The bank is stealing my money wholly unaware (I believe) that if they push me over the edge they won't just get the £200 they've stolen off of me this past few weeks BUT that they will also lose about £25,000. Let them find out the hard way I say if they ae going to behave like that.

So, moanings aside, last night was the last night of the year of the Nifty Nights... and it was one of the best (see the Nifty Eagu & The Glo-Pilots blog entry "Nifty Gigs and Associated Wanderings"). Heat From A Dead Star returned, Chop Chop Bear Touch appeared for the first time, and Split Record played too (they are all about 14 years old). The Skinbat Scramble played one of their bet sets to date. A member of the awesome Windows Clack from 1978/1980 was in the audience. It was a beautiful, cold, crisp day and the night was even colder - very Chrismassy indeed. Somehow we didn't freeze in the venue. We're off to The Forum again on Friday to see Nifty Night stalwarts Rachel's Got A Flamethrower support the amazing Rolo Tomassii. I really can't think of much to say as I am bit worn out from the weekend and I've still got an amp to move to the storage depot this morning. The famous Skinbat Scramble parachute is still hanging from The Forum's ceiling.

Well Niftyettes and Little Mes everywhere, it's almost Xmas. I would just like all you to know that besides my being a Muppet of Magnificent Proportions, and having had a few "arguments" with some of you earlier in the year, and besides the fact that NatWest Bank are fining me for every little bit of money I give them, and besides the fact that generally everything is pie-shaped and there's many a mixed metaphor in the pear-shaped, Nifty is STILL here.

Yes, I know, that's amazing isn't it? But what is truly amazing is the fact that it started to dawn on me the other night at The Forum's Stable Night when I went there to witness a "25 minute epic piece" played by none other than Nifty Discoveries (yes, I stood outside their rehearsal room at Dudley's and waited for them to finish and then marched in and demanded that they play at least 15 Nifty Nights) How Soon? Sweet Achilles. And they won (The Stable that is, and it's just dawned on me what their "Horse Gobs Man" blog was a pun on.... oh dear...)!

But also, in the process I bumped into an old friend I went to Canterbury Law School with (Kelly), and an even older acquaintance (and ex-Glo-Pilot) Simon Tuohy [which was good because he's an awesome guitarist and I have been meaning to try and inveigle him into a band with c'est moi again for about 9 years now], and also the wonderfully pretty Sabrina who actually asked me for permission to take photos at my next Nifty Night. How amazing is this? Besides being declared "so uncool it's cool" by Kevin Bishop and Peter Blake (well, how am I meant to know that Kev was holding his hand out to shake mine in such an odd position I thought he was making a rude gesture - strange dudes these young metallers I can tell you...?) I have girls 30 times younger than me wanting to talk to me... at a gig,, in the freezing cold. Weird. And I was going foxhunting that night (in the dark Kev, in the dark) too.

Well, naturally it all tied in with the HS?SA horsey metaphorical hybrid references, but as they "won" the vote (and I didn't vote to show my impartiality) it means that the whole evening is going to be repeated like a fold in time and space in the New Year (which is good, a bit like the Rolo Tomassii gig). And I am going to be anticipating said physical remorphances this Sunday with my Next Nifty Night, and then I am going to burn NatWest Bank down (again, and again, and again...). The flotsam intellectually and reflectorily speaking is that THERE IS GROOVINESS still extant in the Universe and I can barely believe that I had the wisdom to forego the Porsche and the balding bleached hair mid-life crisis and instead plump for hanging around The Forum and encouraging all these talented youngsters to get up there and forget about "pleasing the audience" and just do what the hell they are most visceral at at the time. And that IS happening, so Le Grand Nifty il est tres plus plaisirily about that,

Oh yes. Just call me Niftex when I chuck you in the pond, Drooglettes.

More to follow after the gig...

PS. It's just occurred to me that this year of Your Niftiness, 2008, we lost BOTH of Jimi Hendrix's drummers: Buddy Miles and Mitch Mitchell. And last year we lost two Gong drummers (Pierre Moelen and Pip Pyle)as well. What a momentous year - the torch must be handed on to the next generation.

One of the coolest drummers and nicest guys on the planet has left us, and also the most unpretentious rock star I've ever had a conversation about the virtues of church bells bronze versus Art Blakey's cymbals with: Exit Stage Left Mr Mitch Mitchell. You will be missed...

What a guy!

It's been a long time since I've had back pain but things have caught up with me recently: what with the low-lying stress of not having any money and debts ticking away, irritating automated phonecalls offering to eradicate debt "if you have a regular income" (if I had that I probably wouldn't need to eradicate the other!), an exhausting week in Paris culminating in a gig at a Cabaret (yes, the Entire Family were in the band), pulling up overgrown nettles at the allotment gave me the first nasty twang of pain between the shoulders. Then my daughter's birthday party necessitating the house being completely rearranged and pot plants etc moved about - my back threw its card in and now I have a very sore spot between my shoulders. I thought I had got past the danger zone this morning but I unwisely tried to reassert the spials holding the clothes line-up with my 14lb sledgehammer and something nearly snapped... in my spine. Ouch!

Anyway, I have also had an old friend track me down on MySpace and we have come up with the idea for a new version of the "Tale of the Titanic" involving a well-known blues artiste. And we did another gig on Sunday and we were rocking. Maybe things are "progressing" in some "distant manner"? Also, Simon ex-Windows Clack is finally getting his hands on some of their old recordings from a MySpace Friend of The Longtails - so there might be a Windows Clack Profile up on MySpace before long - I hope so!

Now I am burbling, but I am really only writing this blog to see if my fingers still work.