Well, after 26 hours traveling we finally made it to our new home for August here in a remote corner of Tennessee at about 11.30 last night. We won't be going via Atlanta again... the double security at the airport meant we had to check in our luggage twice and do the whole 'shoes off, laptop out and everything gets scanned' thing twice.

But we're here and it’s lovely – really comfortable. The family have quickly got used to the new surroundings. We’re really grateful to Cindy and Sigmund for making us feel so welcome. We had provisions and even freshly baked cakes and cookies waiting for us. Been here less than 12 hours and we already feel very much at home. They even left a keyboard for me. Hope to write some of my very own 'postcards' while I'm here.

Coming over I was wondering if maybe we should have gone to Estes on the way. But from the journey we made yesterday I think it was the right decision to come straight here. Besides, we’ve a special friend keeping us up to date with events in the mountains here Thanks Sue!

Looking forward to doing the shopping and perhaps the family’s first visit to Coldstone! We’re not going to over do it today tho.

S.

This time tomorrow I’ll be packing probably. I hate packing so I always leave it to the last minute. Then, I'll be getting up in two hours time to fit the children’s car seats to the enormous ‘multi-purpose vehicle’ that’ll take us on the first leg of the Hawkins family vacation… Gatwick Airport.

Everyone’s still so incredibly excited. Poppy said the thing she’s looking forward to most is having a snack on the plane. I hope reality doesn't disappoint because I read this today…

"I finally figured out what 'Delta' stands for: Don't Expect Legroom on This Airline!"

I guess it doesn’t matter too much for her little legs.

S.

Just finished tracking a new song Sue and I wrote a few weeks ago. I love the way it’s turned out. It’s the first time I’ve got the new studio working fully and it’s been fun having it come together at last. 

The song – The Greater Part – has already become my personal summer theme song, playing in my head throughout the birth of our little Barts. It’s become like a friend sticking with me through a difficult, anxious, wonderful, miraculous, beautiful, exhausting time. And it will always be special for that.

My favourite bit is the boy band outro. I was tempted to say that I got ‘Take That’ to do the backing vocals on the outro. But that wouldn’t be totally honest. There is a ‘Take That’ connection tho’ which I might tell you about some time.

Here’s the track anyway if you’ve got a moment to listen. Hope you like it.

And here’s the lyric. Thanks so much Sue.

S.

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THE GREATER PART

There is sunshine
And the rain pours down
On the sinner and the saint
There’s no predicting
What will come
Life is joy and life is pain
When it feels like the darkness won’t end
Jesus you whisper again

Chorus:
The greater part is being cared for
You're close and I am loved
The greater part is peace so pure
It must be from above
No matter what I do
This life is light and shadow
But even when it breaks my heart
I know the greater part

Like a vapor
This life goes
Now I’m here but I’ll be gone
Yet in the middle
Of it all
I choose faith and I press on
When it feels like it’s all tragedy
I will hold on and trust you to lead, cause

Chorus

Bridge:
I won’t resent these tears
I won’t resist these trials
I believe that you are good
And this is only for a while… and

It’s the middle of summer and Britain’s suffering record rainfall, rivers bursting their banks, whole towns cut off in floods, transport systems paralysed, engineers battling to save 500,000 homes from going without drinking water and electricity, many properties under 5-6 feet of water, panic buying, civil disorder and the biggest deployment of emergency services in peacetime Britain. And the rain keeps coming with more flood warnings.

They say it’s because the gulf stream (a major high level weather system) has moved hundreds of miles south, causing a shift in climate. Well, something’s up.

I always thought that living by the sea might be a disadvantage when global warming bites, with rising sea levels. But it suddenly dawned on me yesterday that having somewhere for rain water to go might be a good thing.

Hope we don’t bring this weather with us to Nashville.

S.

Big milestone... the tooth fairy is about to visit Poppy for the first time.

Message to Father Time: a man of your age really should be taking it slower.

S.

Last week my tech boys sent over some new kit on trial… a UA1176 and an RME Fireface (since my Multiface is knackered). They already feel like old chums sitting in the corner of my studio smiling. I’m loving them both. Today I should be getting a set of Dream converters (ADA-8) from Prism to swap out the Fireface until Orpheus arrives in September. It doesn’t get much better than that. I’m two-thirds through tracking a song Sue and I wrote just before Barts (and chaos) arrived. It’s already sounding a step up from where it was before.

Thinking of Holly and Guy today. Welcome little Violet. Looking forward to meeting you. Barts is also looking forward to having a new chum. When I told him about you a minute ago he smiled and dribbled milk all down his front.

S.

There’s an air of excitement at the Beach House tonight. Two weeks today we fly to Nashville. Cindy Morgan is kindly letting us stay in her beautiful home just outside Franklin for a month. We’ll be using it as a base to introduce the family (incl. little Barts) to my American friends, doing loads of chilling out BBQing and swimming, sightseeing and eating out and generally enjoying small town life and getting in some writing when I can creep out the house (we’re just 10 minutes from BBMP writing rooms).

We hope to get up to the Smoky Mountains for a few days in the middle. Last year, when we had a lovely holiday at home, there were days I could almost smell the sweet air up there. It’s cool to think we’ll actually be there in a month’s time.

The children have packed their hand luggage more times than I can count, they’ve played ‘planes’ longer than it takes to fly there and back, and as I type I can hear Moo lying in bed practicing his ‘American’ lingo.

Earlier we were watching America’s ‘Dancing with the Stars’ and Poppy was wondering if we were going to meet them all on holiday. Sweet.

I guess I’m just as excited as any of them.

S.

Sometimes I feel like I’m working my way through the Apple store. The thing is, they sell great stuff and it arrives quickly. So it’s pretty tempting.

Lately my drag bag (a rucksack on wheels with a special compartment for my computer) has been looking a little out of place in the City. It’s great for creative meetings and for whizzing through airports but I’ve recently become a member of the Institute of Directors, which has a strict formal dress code in their club facilities in the West End of London (Pall Mall) and in the City. Florescent blue doesn’t totally work there.

So, it was time to look for a bag that makes me look like the PC guy on the Mac adverts. It arrived today, less that 24 hours after I clicked ‘checkout’. The nice thing about buying it off the Apple store is that even tho on the outside it looks boring, very boring, inside it’s everything you’d expect from a Mac product: there’s an air padded pouch designed to fit my MacBook Pro, places to hold my iPod, DVDRs, my cell phone, power supply, free sign up to a tracking service that tells me on a website exactly where the bag is if someone steals it, etc etc. all concealed in a large-ish bag that looks like any other corporate handout.

I wonder how long it will be before Apple come out with their own brand of PC?! Now that would be iBoring.

S.

here we go...

YouTube

Go Ross!

S.

... is when the cups in the dishwasher are still warm when I go down to get beverages in the morning.

I must have gone to bed far too late.

S.

Here's something I read today that reminded me of so many of my cowriters....

S.

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GENIUSES PRODUCE

A distinguishing characteristic of genius is immense productivity:

• Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents, still the record. He guaranteed productivity by giving himself and his assistants idea quotas. His own personal quota was one minor invention every 10 days and a major invention every six months.
• Bach wrote a cantata every week, even when he was sick or exhausted.
• Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music.
• Einstein is best known for his paper on relativity, but he published 248 other papers.
• T. S. Elliot’s numerous drafts of "The Waste Land" constitute a jumble of good and bad passages that eventually was turned into a masterpiece.

In a study of 2,036 scientists throughout history, Dean Kean Simonton of the University of California, Davis found that the most respected produced not only great works, but also more "bad" ones. Out of their massive quantity of work came quality.

Geniuses produce. Period.

Dan stood up at church yesterday and read a passage from Colossians, introducing it like this:

"… and this is what Paul said to the people at Colossal".

Colossal? Wouldn’t it be cool to live in a place called Colossal! I’d call my house ‘Legend’. And my road Dudeville Crescent. It would be a massive house with turrets like Amberley Castle, pillars like the White House and stone lions guarding it outside like at Trafalgar Square.

I’d say to everyone in a deep sexy voice, “Hi, I’m Simon from Colossal.” And raise my left eyebrow like Gil Grissom on CSI does.

S.

Last week's Sunday Telegraph mag had a big article on a new restaurant just 10 minutes away from us in Littlehampton. We just had to go there for lunch today to see what it's like. Here’s its website.

Well, the place is just stunning. The most wonderful culinary event to have hit the South coast for years. Casual posh nosh. Chips in a bucket with freshly caught sea bream on a bed of aubergine purée washed down with a glass of champagne.

I've always said this place needs a smart fish restaurant. Thank you guys for making it happen. And with style. We’ll definitely be back to East Beach Café. It would make a great place for writing anyway.

S.

Britain's been getting Icelandic weather. I'm not kidding. This year the whole summer show has moved south. It's July and we’re getting floods, gales, twisters and horizontal rain. We usually only get that December to March. The other day one place up north got like a month's rain in half an hour. They still can't get back into their homes. I'm telling - you it’s crazy here.

Looking on the bright side, I guess it makes life interesting for people who are holidaying at home this year. Like taking your whole life on a cruise ship. Shame we can't turn around and go the other way.

I'm glad I don't live in Iceland tho.  The weather sucks.

S.

I need a wind turbine. I just do.

Had an extra two seats fitted to my 4x4 (SUV) yesterday.

I feel like a real Daddy now.

S.

My studio's RME A/D D/A converters broke last week. At the time it felt like a disaster.

I heard yesterday that Prism (as in supplier to Abbey Road) will lend me some high end boxes until their new product, called Orpheus, arrives in September. Orpheus is performing better in tests than any other Prism product to date. So in a few days I will have their Dream ADA-8XR converters in my studio. Nice.

Every cloud....

S.