It's been a while since I wrote. I am sorry, but a tree just fell on our house. Plus, I can't really stay since I have to go and collect the newspaper which I can see rolling down the driveway, and could be run over by a passing car if I don't hurry (please note - I can't have my news squashed before breakfast). As if this wasn't enough, a miniature pig has chewed away the posts which support the house and unless I stop writing and flee, I may never leave this room again - the entire structure of the house is endangered by this cute animal's busy munching, somewhere underneath my feet. 

Not to mention the hens pecking at the back door, who have decided that the garden isn't big enough for them and as a result they will have to take over the entire neighbourhood - locust-like, eating everything which stands in their way. So far they have munched through every blade of grass in the garden, a plywood fence, and three sheets of recycled cardboard protecting the back door. I fear, as I type, that they are scoring a circle in the glass door with their beaks, ready to give it a sharp tap and gain entry. Once in, I don't hold much hope for the kitchen - every cupboard will be empty in minutes. It'll be like Mission Impossible III with better acting.

Also, I can't stay since I have had so many requests for friends on Myspace that I have to personally vet and examine each request by checking and re-checking them using a patented system of co-ordinated international databases which, when linked together with the Department of Personal Security's mainframe computer, determines the global threat level which at the moment is listed at 'light puce'. This threat level will only be increased when the current number of Facebook friends with birthdays in either May or September is multiplied by a negative factor of 8 and added to the current price of Sir Robert Falcon Scott's cabin - which did lie somewhere in the frozen wastes of Antarctica, but now commands glorious beach views and is close to a shopping centre and most types of public transport - available to you at a knockdown price with a hundred penguins thrown in.

So I would love to stay longer, and It's a pity I can't, but you see there have been unforeseen developments today caused by the mysterious disappearance of a packet of biscuits from the studio. This sad and tragic occurrence is one which I must say has come as a complete shock to me, but not - I must add - a total surprise. When I eyed the packet the other day, noting how few biscuits appeared to be inside, I got the distinct feeling that next time I returned to this very same packet, there would be fewer biscuits. And so it has come to pass, exactly as predicted. As a result, action will have to be taken and I may have to set out this afternoon to purchase a replacement packet of biscuits from one or other of the several fine establishments to be found down the road. It should be noted officially that The Teenager is not a suspect in this biscuit-related incident, being otherwise engaged, and I have passed on the relevant details to the appropriate authorities.

You might be wondering what I do when not on tour. Well, it's a very good question. And one which I would be pleased to answer when I have enough time. You see, as you can tell, it's so busy round here that every minute is filled with crucial, make-or-break decisions - forks in the road, lines in the sand and so on - sometimes it's hard to find time just to put finger to keyboard. I have been thinking of getting a Twitter account, but I can't understand how you are supposed to write 4000 characters every time you want to tell people you've just eaten a Weetabix or got out of the shower. Perhaps it would be better to post your ruminations based on thoughts had while eating a Weetabix in the shower. A Wordsworthian kind of principal, I suppose?

"I showered lonely as a man

Who hasn't had a bite to eat,

When all at once I munched upon

A cake of shining breakfast wheat"

That kind of thing, perhaps.

Anyhow, I must go since The Teenager is at this very moment ensconced in his bed, having come down with a nasty bout of what hopefully will be non-swine related flu. The common or garden, ordinary human variety will be fine, thanks. Symptoms are currently observed to be non-biscuit eating and watching Daytime TV. I just have to call Charisse or Deneece at the school office. However, I am not panicked - there is no cause for alarm, since the phenomenal medical excellence displayed in the Australian search for swine flu has been tremendous. The results of major tests are just in, based upon the expert diagnosis achieved by the doctor we visited at the local medical centre the other day. Here follows a transcript of the consultation:

Doc (to Teenager): "Have you swine flu?"

The Teenager: "No, I don't think so."

Doc: "OK, then, no worries."

In such a fashion medical science strides forward into the present century, unafraid to counter whatever new challenges are thrown up before it. If only that pig would stop gnawing the foundations I could make that phone call. I'll keep you in touch. In the meantime, stay calm.

Andy

It's afternoon in Los Angeles and Tom Petty's daughter, who lives across the road from where I am staying, is playing "It's Alright, Ma, I'm Only Bleeding" at massive volume. This morning she was playing David Bowie, so at least she's got taste. I have just come back from a Mexican restaurant - not expensive, more like a café - where Vince Vaughn was sitting opposite me. I wanted to ask for his autograph for The Teenager, since along with all that holy bunch of comedic actors such as Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson, Vince commands special respect from The Teenager and his mates. I don't ask Vince, because I think he probably won't want to be bothered. After he leaves, the waitress says he's always nice when people talk to him. Beck usually eats alone in a restaurant down the street, she adds, suggesting that I might find him there. I worry that I have given the wrong impression to her, as a celebrity stalker.

Driving past the restaurant, on the way back to the café which is opposite Tom Petty's daughter's house, I swear I see Beck all alone at a table, nibbling on a cheese stick.

I'm back in Lost Angeles, walking the streets which most prefer to drive. Stepping out on the sidewalk past secondhand clothes shops, drive-in barbershops, and stores selling rows of waving plastic cats. As the Beatles sing on 'Sgt Pepper', "It's getting very near the end". Phil Spector could concur with that sentiment too. There's a track from Paul's latest 'Fireman' album on the radio, and it sounds amazingly good. The bass, naturally, is transcendent. Don't let anyone tell you American radio is anything but good, when you are in range of an NPR station (in LA, it's KCRW).

I have played the last show of the tour, and an explosive one it was at that. Go and listen to 'You And Your Upturned Face' on my Myspace page and then tell me if you can guess why. The show was at an art gallery concert venue in a Carnegie library near to Rochester in Minnesota. Not far from Oak Center, if you have the live album which Rad and I recorded there. The General Store in Oak Center is an old vaudeville theatre, where the owner/farmer/concert organizer gets up before every show and gives a left-wing speech. The audience have come to expect it, in fact, and the day the live album was recorded was highly charged, with the Iraq war in full swing.

Tonight we're only a few miles away from Oak Center. The mood is more brightly coloured - artistic like our surroundings. The concert is focussed and the songs are fully developed. I guess by that I mean that, live, the narrative of the Garageband songs is now being explored both lyrically and instrumentally - Rad is playing them in a different way and I have found some new sounds in my little 12 string guitar - La Perina - which I have been looking for. The songs seem to flow into one another better than they did, and new songs from the next album are arriving in the set.

Everything seems fine at the interval (that's an intermission). 'Letter From T' works now, even without T, and 'Whole Thing' is dedicated to a friend who recently passed away - mutual friends of ours are in the audience tonight. So it's melancholy and thoughtful as well as celebratory. At the end of the second set, 'Hysteria' and Rad's accordion solo in particular, brings the audience to its feet - but it is 'Your Upturned Face' which ignites the controversy.

The final verse contains the lines 'Might your government still be the same/with a pitbull from Alaska and John F*cking McCain." That's what does it. Bang. Perfect scansion leading to the perfect storm. A white-haired man in the front row, who had previously asked me about my guitars and warned Rad that this place was a little 'left-leaning' for his taste, explodes. The lights come on and there's as much pandemonium as can be created in a small town arts centre, as the man starts yelling and roaring. The crowd sticks around to listen to the tongue-lashing I am getting for insulting "America's number one national hero", and the consequences I will face for doing this. Damnation. Hellfire. Nationwide boycott of my concerts by Veterans' Associations. Me thinking, "Am I just about to be punched in the face by a Vietnam vet?" This is when I need my Wisconsin possee. I concentrate on Repo. What would Repo do?

Then Henry from Stiff Little Fingers weighs in on my side, pointing out that freedom of speech is for everyone. This drives the white-haired man towards a state of near-apoplexy, and he storms out, smoke blowing out of his ears. Marie from the venue had been excited by us bringing the crowd to their feet, but right now she doesn't look quite so sure. The positive guys from the Mayo medical centre who had before the show so inspired me to tell stories of travel, are pumping my right hand, encouraging. An old lady smiles quietly as she leaves. All anyone can talk about is the man's outburst and my insulting McCain - the rest of the concert is ignored, because of a couple of words.

It's tough to find controversy, nowadays, but it looks like swearing - and insulting a hero of the right wing - will do it. In America at least. Since then, the venue has been inundated by emails. One lady who took an 8th grader to the concert (the child would be around 13 or 14) writes to say how horrified she was when I uttering the F word. She feels she has betrayed the trust of the child's parents. Myself, I can't help being impressed by the audience's attention to the lyrics. Some concerts, you think no one's paying the slightest attention to what you're singing, but this one seems to have been as carefully scrutinised as a Seamus Heaney poetry reading or the latest pronouncement from Alex Ferguson.

It's all art, in the end. It's rock'n'roll, and not a political treatise. Songs are often written as a visceral reaction to something, in a mood of passion of one kind or another. Kids can cope with swearing. War veterans should be able to cope with an anti-war stance. The heroes of war include the ordinary people.

So that's how the tour ended, in a shouting match somewhere in the mid west. A near-flurry of fists in a far-off outpost of Google maps. The week leading up to the last concert was not without controversy either. I didn't shy away from Chicago, staying a couple of days. Rad arrived and we raced through Racine, rocking the Yardarm until it swayed in gale force winds. A guy called Dean joined us with a percussion instrument made solely from goats' toenails. Next night was Prairie du Chien, with a stop off in Janesville on the way. The Main Entrance was the most musically strange show of the tour. I remember we played 'Band On The Run' and a mambo version of 'Groovy'. Someone in the audience captured it on a phone camera, and if I ever get the film I'll put it on the net. There was a real piano, a shouting man in the front row, and above all there was the James Joyce of Prairie du Chien (rhymes with "clean") sitting at the bar, smoking with an eye patch. Everyone partying past closing time and into Grandma's breakfast café late into the night.

Dubuque lies on the banks of the Mississippi, where steamboats lined up to take on passengers and it's one of our favourite places to play. This week's show was at the Silver Dollar and featured its great sound system and, for me anyway, a memorable 500 yard drive in Jerome's ancient Lincoln Continental.

Rad and I drove his Ford a long way in four days and nights. We talked a lot too - about Canada, Woody Guthrie, Billy Bob Thornton, Winnipeg, Peter Sellers, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, the economy, touring the UK, Carlo, cars and brakes and spokes and things. We've done Scottish accents and dissected many a musician of our mutual acquaintance. With love. Bianca and I picked up Rad at Austin airport and left me off at the same place a week later. Then Rad walked in during my first set in Wisconsin, and started playing straight away - now it is time to say goodbye again. I'm off to LA to spend a long time sitting in a streetcorner café waiting for Daniel Lanois to show up amongst the laptop-gazers, phone txters and coffee-sipping book readers. He's supposed to spend time in here, scribbling lyrics. I check myself - maybe it's true and I have turned into a celebrity stalker. Last time in LA I met Anne of Green Gables in this very café.

Shark called by earlier, and we chatted for a couple of hours. He has half of his as yet unreleased album on CD for me. I snort with derision at some vagary of the music business which he's telling me. Just as I do so, a lady's phone rings at the table beside us. She jumps up and runs outside to talk, coming back to apologise for her phone ringing in a café. No worries - it's just part of the modern experience, but this is the first time in recorded history that someone has apologised for their phone ringing in a café.

So that's where I am now, in a streetcorner café in the late afternoon, opposite Tom Petty's daughter's place. I am contemplating walking up Sunset one more time to windowshop the thrift stores and palaces of fashion, before downing a margarita and taking the big fat plane westward again. Where I will read either 'The Post Office' by Bukowski, or that new novel with the complicated title which I can't remember.

Tonight I will rise high over Venice Beach to cross the the Pacific, the dateline, and then descend towards Sydney. An hour or so in the airport and I'll be stepping out in Melbourne. Home.

I never could stand those oven chips.

Until next time.

Thanks to everyone for writing asking if all is OK after the fires here in Victoria. I'm outside the city of Melbourne but not so far into the country to be hit like the towns you will have seen on the news reports. Everyone's hurting, though, it's that kind of place. Here's my experience, for what it's worth.

*

Saturday was dreadful. Leaving a friend to the airport with the temperature above 30 degrees and rising. Only able to really breathe properly in the air conditioned airport, everywhere outside the heat is a suffocating wall. Imagine a massive hot air blower right in front of your face - forever. You can feel the tar melt beneath your feet as you bake in the desert wind.

Driving back home, on the outskirts of town, getting close to the hills, see thick smoke. Reaching home, there's a fire on the edge of the highway about 500 metres away from the house, across the gully. Right now it's only a small one but there's a thick plume of yellow smoke and the flames are right beside the train line, on the edge of the quarry opposite. Because so many people live in the area, under the trees and in the hills, the firefighters are closing down the highway, the railway and all roads around. There's a roar in the sky as two helicopters wheel into view and fly straight into the smoke, waterbombing the flames. They come back over our heads as we look up in fear and awe as they go to suck water out of the lake down the back road behind us, and then fly back into the smoke.

I remember in Belfast city centre, a bomb going off and knowing instinctively I had to run in the opposite direction to the blast. As I was running, with everyone else, the police were racing towards the explosion. Stays with you, that kind of feeling.

As the temperature heads close to 40 degrees that instinct tells me that we have to get our things ready to leave. You're supposed to make a decision to stay and fight the fire, or leave early with as few things as possible. It's easier to think about this, or contemplate it, than to actually do it. I still feel calm and in one way I am confident of staying and fighting, but standing up on the hill and watching the flames race across the railway line I don't feel so sure. We'd better get our precious things and pets together, ready to go. Teddies and the dog. A favourite shirt and family photos. $132 in cash.

Temperature is now well past 40 degrees - over body heat and it's getting hard to breathe. Sweat is pouring down my face and I feel giddy going up the hill to where my guitars are. Apart from family and animals you realise very quickly how few things are very important. I take drawings from loved ones, some unpublished things, a couple of guitars and aubergine, and my double bass bow. It feels bad leavingthe double bass, an instrument made in 1840 which I've had since I was 17, but walking out of the room taking only the bow, I tread on a dry branch which cracks and explodes in a cloud of dust. There's been so little rain here for so long that nature is a desiccated thing. The bow is just another piece of wood - loved and strung with horsehair, but the essentially the same thing. It'll be a reminder of the bass I bought in London and brought to Belfast and which sailed from there to Australia through the Suez Canal last year.

Sweat pouring off me and the dog panting for air. the chickens will be the last thing to be put into the car. They're cowering by their water bowl, I think the water's too hot for them to drink The Teenager is taking photos which I will post here, and we're sweeping up as many sticks and twigs as we can, any of which could set alight if embers start being blown our way. Pieces of glass too, which can set the dry grasses alight. Filling buckets with water and leaving them round the house. The water tanks I thought were full are almost empty, a trickle of brown water comes out of one. All the time the radio is plays loud with constantly updated information on the fires, and sirens go off across the highway. News of our local fire has reached the airwaves and the helicopters step up their relentless waterbombing as the smoke gets thicker. The wind is still blowing away from this house, up the gully.

From the balcony at the front of the house you can see right down to the railway line, where the fire has crossed the tracks. The firefighters are sill right there, - lights flashing, pumping water into the flaming bush - the Country Fire Authority are the heroes of the whole emergency. If the fires cross the highway or the quarry then a lot of towns will be gone. The temperature hits 46.5 degrees and the radio says this is the highest temperature ever recorded in an Australian capital city.

The heat is Biblical, and the skeletons of blackened trees after the fire has gone through look like photos of Operation Barbarossa, or a plague of fire. They are otherworldly and could be as easily in winter as in summer - it's the absence of colour which is most shocking. It's the death of nature.

There has been a change in the weather promised all day. It's something which happens even on moderately hot days (30 something) and is called a 'cool change'. The temperature will drop 10 or more degrees very suddenly - from one minute to the next. The radio predicts this cool change for around 6 or 7 o'clock, and that's an hour or so away. The forecast also says that the wind is about to change direction, which could be good or bad. By now hectares are burnt and whole country towns are on fire. People are dying in their houses and cars, running away and in hiding places. I can't imagine what the wall of flame feels like close up, or how anyone could withstand it.

Watching, waiting, preparing. Listening. The change happens. The wind starts to blow cool air, and the temperature drops to the mid-thirties, The firemen are winning and the sirens have stopped. Helicopters circle without dropping water. It's strangely silent - no traffic but the helicopters. There is still smoke, but only small areas of flame, not the line of fire which swept up along the railway line earlier. We gather together for strength, it looks like everything is going to be alright.

*

That was 7 February. Now it's a few days later, and the temperature is down in the low twenties. Pictures of devastation have come through from the country towns, and people are grieving for the dead and for their lost homes and livelihoods. Everyone's rallying round to help each other and politicians cry on the national news. I am proud to have voted for a Prime Minister and a Deputy PM who cry in public - I like to watch them being honest. Now they've got to legislate for the environment not treat it as another company on the stock market. There are floods in Queensland, while the reservoirs in Victoria are 32% full - that's 5% down on last year, just as last year was below the year before that. At this rate this place has six or seven years left. What you gonna do when the river runs dry? If anyone tells you that climate change is a fiction, you can laugh until you cry, because it's a lie.

Things are OK right now on the side of this hill, in the outskirts of Melbourne, but not in the countryside where the big fires are. 170 dead and the number is rising. Unfortunately, I think it's the way things will be - Leonard's songs 'The Future' and 'Who By Fire' have been going through my head, after the concert last week, as well as this one of mine,

"You got to drive real fast and drive real far
Because the weather's going to get you, wherever you are.
Don't choose the wrong way ...'

Finally, thanks again for writing - it means a lot. See you this year sometime. Whoever you vote for, make sure they're green - and if you see a firemen give him a smile.

On this myspace site, you can find some photos in the album called 'Fire'.

Andy x

10.2.09

I'm in the same room as leonard
he's kneeling on stage,
he's singing low
lower than you would think
sonically possible

it's a big room
and he welcomes us in
thanks us for our hospitality
with charm, charisma and
class

he - twice - describes his band with a
flow of great adjectives
incomparable
sublime
irreplaceable
acrobatic

all could apply to leonard
even the last,
as his 74-year old frame
skips lightly off stage
after raising his hat and smiling
from a heart as deep
as his voice

there are many hats on stage,
leonard's is pulled over his eyes and
removed between the songs
to acknowledge our applause
to put on his guitar
to thank the musicians

leonard recites lines from songs
before the band begins to play:
'a thousand kisses deep', and
'there is a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in'

tears come to my eyes
easily

now he's singing about
the moon and broken violins
love and solitude
intimacy and
fond farewells

old europe to his left
three angels to his right
north america the swing
in his step

each word is chosen
with care
every phrase delivered
lower than the last
beauty and
belief in all I hear

he says:

"thanks for keeping these songs alive
through the years"

thank
you
leonard

sincerely,

a. white

- - - - - - - - - - - -

Dance Me To The End Of Love
The Future
Ain't No Cure For Love
Bird On A Wire
Everybody Knows
In My Secret Life
Who By Fire
Chelsea Hotel # 2
Anthem
*
Tower Of Song
Suzanne
Back On Boogie Street
The Gypsy Wife
The Partisan
Hallelujah
A Thousand Kisses Deep
Take This Waltz
* * *
So Long Marianne
First We Take Manhattan
*
If It Be Your Will
Famous Blue Raincoat
Democracy

remembering john martyn. 'sweet little mystery' and a' that. it's hard to know where to start - probably rod's brother frank's record collection, listening to 'live at leeds' and 'solid air' upstairs at his place, blowing smoke out of the skylight and rolling up on the record sleeves.

in the 70s, punk bands came to belfast (punk bands who wanted their pictures taken by the barricades), and folkies. roy harper and john martyn, guys like that. they didn't care, they wanted the gig, man.

queens whitla hall, live in concert on the 'one world' tour. him sitting down on stage with his gibson SG and an echoplex tape machine, asking if anyone had something he could smoke, then singing 'small hours' for half and hour, virtually in the dark, loops from his guitar echoing round the uni walls. magic.

a few years later at robinson, 'grace and danger' playing on repeat. soundtrack for great times, romantic years, regular heartbreak too. 'couldn't love you more', great bass lines and cycling over cobbled streets to the record stall in the market.

supporting him at a gig on the renfrew ferry, glasgow. listening to 'may you never' at soundcheck. seeing his guitar fingers, how could I get on the same stage? later on being warned off talking to his (irish) wife. his mate was bigger than him and people said as soon as he came off stage the mate's job was to stand there and be hit like a punchbag.

another festival, in ireland somewhere, 'you a friend of billy fucking bragg? tha' english git.' him drinking more than should be possible. stories from a galway venue where he would install himself for regular shows'n'booze residencies. people stopped talking about songs, only about drinking and punch-ups now.

in chicago a couple of years ago a producer came to a house concert I played. he knew I would know his music - said no one in the US did. dragged me out to a SUV. he had just produced tracks with JM singing with mavis staples. told me he was the greatest soul singer ever came out of the UK. sat listening to tracks on the car stereo, agreeing.

got a text from a friend last christmas and looking at it my instant thought was that he had died. after that producer telling me he had had to decide between keeping a leg and keeping drinking, and chose the bottle, I thought he'd be gone. but the text said OBE not RIP. then an italian friend emailed me the lyrics of 'may you never' on the same (new year's) day. coincidence? somehow he survived, rewarded by the queen in the honours list. weird. why?

yesterday night and another text from the same friend - this time it read the way I remembered it the first time. John Martyn RIP. I'm listening to 'big muff' in this 40 degree heat. the door closes semi-discreetly and sends me back to that upstairs room, rolling-up on the cover of 'solid air', frank miming the guitar solos and me the bass, blowing smoke out of the skylight, belfast, 1970-something, punk about to happen.

I have tried unsuccessfully to find the last exciting episode of the autumn European tour journal. Written on the back of a large yellow envelope, it can't be far away. Until I find it, here are some courtside musings from the tennis the other night. A x

It's quiet in here - quiet in this blue and white space, with 14999 other people busy looking down on a blue and white rectangle. Above us only cloudless sky, with a small plane skywriting a happy birthday message for Jess. Jess is 21 today and she must be in here somewhere, one of the 15000 in the Rod Laver Arena watching the quarter finals of the Australian Open. Either that or, so I am told, she's in the new series of 'Home and Away' and it's an advert.

The unforgiving sun has been contained in a burning square surrounded by shadow, moving slowly across the court. It's early evening and the direct heat has subsided, but it's still radiating out of the plastic seats, concrete steps and every metal railing you touch. When play begins, the only sounds are the pick and pock of tennis balls, lost seagulls' cries and the small-engined plane drawing circles in the sky. All this built on the the mighty hum of the Rod Laver Arena, a constant low bass note emanating from deep within this tennis-powered spacecraft.

The women are playing at a superhuman level. They are hitting the ball faster than you would believe it possible. Dinara is Russian - statuesque, powerful and gangly at the same time; Jelena is Serb-Australian, with her face a transparent mask of tragic melancholy. She seems no stranger to sadness, but then this could be due to the fact that we know her personal story from her regular teary court-side interviews. Depression, parental abuse, 'nationality issues' are only some of the problems she has faced over the last few years. Her face, serious and expectant as she awaits serve, is framed in an enormous video screen hanging from the top of the stand, where we can see her careworn eyes and world-weary cheekbones in high definition. On the court we look from behind as she sways from side to side before unleashing another impossibly fast return. Luckily, when you're in the arena, it's easier to see the outs.

It's easier to see the outs - the blue and white court which mirrors the colours of the sky is sharply in focus even from well back in the stand. Yellow linesmen and ball boys and girls scuttle and crouch, the referee unseen under shade is less important than the cameramen who poke their lenses everywhere. The silence between points is absolute except for the beeps of digital cameras focussing and refocussing, and mobile phones making shutter-closing sounds. This makes the regular cries of 'Come on Jelena' from random individuals seem even more lonesome than they really are. As soon as a loner shouts, his or her cry is swallowed up by the silence. They don't even shout particularly loudly, as if they've realised what a bad idea it was a split second too late.

The players are now hitting the tennis balls so fast that you or I could not return even one of them. When you're standing in the kitchen waiting for the kettle to boil, cosseted by statistics, numbed by action replays and hypnotised by computer-simulations of yellow ball upon white line, it's easy to scoff, analyse, argue. A bit like English rock mag 'writers' giving Beatles albums star ratings (The White Album - four out of five - cheers). Out here, looking down on the blue and white rectangle with the sunlit square disappearing over the far side of the stadium, the ladies' play is beyond criticism, awe-inspiring, human.

By now, the one-engine plane has nearly finished the birthday message in the sky to Jess. Jelena's melancholy Eastern European cheekbones are flashing, and the Russian blows on her hands before crashing another serve into the net. I am watching a pool of water on the ground beneath my feet evaporate before my eyes. It's hot - 43 degrees today, the hottest day in Melbourne since 1939, and the third hottest day since records began. Long-playing records, I presume.

But her Slavic eyes are tired, Jelena can't come back in the third set. Dinara wins. There's no anticlimax, just sports writers scribbling as the girls shake hands and walk away from the blue and white square. We get up from our seats, stop clapping and start thinking about other things.

On the way out a champion surfer poses for photos with one of INXS. Men in blue and white striped shirts with white collars queue for drinks, and expectations rise for the men's game to follow. I turn out of the Arena and keep walking, across the river and through a field of coarse brown grass. The driest field I have walked through since records began.

hi everyone & happy new year

I am back in the australian summer so haven't been looking at the computer much. playing tennis and learning to new songs to play at the next shows, waiting for things to warm up. ok, it's 20 something so that's great.

you'll see there are some australian concerts listed now before I head to the US again for SXSW following release of 'garageband' there (they promise) so maybe I'll see you in t shirt and shorts soon.

I have just found a couple more stories from my on the road journal, last autumn in europe. I'll put them up on the blog in the next few days, here's the first from copenhagen.

oh - and there's a facebook site now here. I don't look after it but I will be sending it things. there were some other facebook sites going up with songs and pics which looked strange, but this one is cool.

ok everyone enjoy the winter wind, summer sun, wherever you are. have a great 09.

x andy

... just before setting off on tour I posted a short unscripted latenight intro to the new minialbum on this page, plus a clip for 'mean mofo'. also a track from the album called 'your upturned face'. I should have explained more clearly in the video intro that rosa parks was a black woman who refused to give up her seat on a bus to make room for a white passenger back in 1955. the bus is in the national civil rights museum which you should try to get to if you're anywhere near memphis.

ok everyone ... see some of you soon I hope and thanks for the orders for 'troubadour' we have in already

andy