Went to Poppy’s Harvest Festival service at her school yesterday. Just a wonderful occasion. I’ll put up some pics shortly.

Today there are two parties – one for Poppy and one for Moo. Looks like the next few weekends are packed with parties. I can now see how the whole Westbourne social machine can so easily get up to full speed without much effort at all. If we’re not careful our entire week could be filled with seeing the same group of people.

One of today’s party is at the home of someone I think I knew from my City days. Except he’s still there and commutes weekly. Rather him than me.

Yours feeling like I’m about to negotiate a ‘things’ black hole,

S.

Had a cool few days preparing for my next Nashville trip. As always, I feel totally unprepared. But the ideas are coming thick and fast. Seems like I’ve a million other things to do before I go. But I can’t wait. Seems like an age since I was there last.

One cool thing happened today… looks like I might be joining the faculty at the University of Chichester to teach songwriting. Just got an email from the head of music who’s excited about having a ‘real’ writer on staff. I’m excited about that too.

Maybe I could use ‘Cheeseburger Soup’ as a model template?

Yours thinking I better brush up on my quavers and crotchets,

S.

A cowriter and friend of mine from Nebraska e-mailed me to tell me she was making cheeseburger soup. I’ve not heard of this before. So I typed it into my new turbo charged revamped SongTools4Mac prototype. Here’s what it came up with:

Cheeseburger soup
Be part of a group
Turn up the tunes
I'm ****** as a newt
Catch twenty two
Goody two shoes
I know what to do
In a dugout canoe
O cratered moon!
I’m eating for two
Baby it’s true
Cheeseburger soup

So there we are. I can totally hear Natalie Grant singing this one.

S.

Can’t believe it’s just a month to WAJ. I’ve always felt so privileged to be able to go along. This year’s will be my 4th year in a row. People are freaked out by this weird Brit comes all the way over to the US just to go to WAJ. But I do.

There’s something very special about the whole WAJ thing. Sue has done an amazing job over the years to build up a community of wonderful caring people. It’s gone beyond being about just the writing, although that obviously remains the main focus. For me it’s about friendship and connection to a group of people in another continent that share the same passion I have to use their craft to glorify God. And I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be signed if it wasn't for WAJ.

This year I’m tying in going to WAJ with a couple of weeks co-writing in Nashville. Just worked out that way. With both Poppy and Moo starting new schools it’s been brilliant for me to spend some time this month at home, helping to provide some sense of stability and getting involved in the school runs and stuff. But I’ve missed my Nashville chums (not just the ice cream).

Well, not long to wait now. I can’t begin to imagine how Sandra’s feeling about having two weeks on her own with the kids and a bunch of crazy people to prosecute. I’ll have to come back with something special.

Yours dedicating this blog to my lovely wife, Sandra. Thank you.

S.

Just on the train home from another wonderful day in London at HTB with Tim Hughes. There was so much stuff there. HTB (home of Alpha) have new established a wonderful School of Worship. They’re just about to launch an online community alongside it. That will be fun.

Although there was a lot of great stuff to help worship leaders aim for excellence in their stage work I think there’s still a real opportunity to help equip worship writers here in the UK. I’ll be in touch with Tim and his colleagues about that. The idea of WAJ UK lives on!! A lot of the people that I met at HTB today said that they would be interested. I’ll keep you posted.

Yours thinking that I’ll be doing well to get back home this side of midnight.

S.

Sandra takes Moo to swimming classes on Friday mornings. One of Moo’s exercises involves a 3 foot piece of highly floatable tubing. It’s about three inches in diameter and made from some sort of bendy plastic injected with air. They come in a variety of colours and Moo’s favourite is white. You can tell which one he’s been using because each week he bites a large chunk out of it. Hungry work, swimming.

Anyway, the reason I’m describing it in such detail is because it doesn’t seem to have a name. Sandra ran up against this problem a few lessons ago. When they were being handed out, Sandra pointed at the pile of tubes and asked if she could have Moo’s (somewhat worse for wear) ‘woggle’. And it worked. Moo got his white, half eaten, three foot buoyancy aid. Since that week the use of the term ‘woggle’ is now common place among the mothers and children at Moo’s swimming club. Even the teacher refers to them as woggles.

The harsh reality is that they are not woggles at all. A woggle is something a boy scout uses to tie his neckerchief around his neck. Sandra admitted tonight she’s a little worried about this: By misleading the class could her reputation as a prosecutor be under threat? I’m sure she’s ok. It’s only a woggle after all. Or whatever it’s called.

Yours thinking I must take him swimming myself sometime,

S.

I’ve noticed something about my life: it’s circular. It’s like God looks down on something like Google Earth and puts pin points on the planet saying – “let’s put one here so that when he gets there he’ll get that warm familiar feeling”. And my life somehow rotates around those points. It can be geographical places like Felpham, The Hague, Boston, Denton, St Louis, Cool Springs, Port Harcourt. Other connections are more conceptual.

Yesterday was yet another example. I had a really important meeting in London and when they told me the address it seemed strangely familiar. I looked it up on Google Earth and it zoomed down on the area of my childhood home. It turns out that these people live two streets away from where I spent the first 10 years of my life: Where I put my parents through the excruciating early stages of learning the piano, roads I walked to school down, places I used to play, the house of my first girlfriend (at 10!), and the school I went to when I was Poppy’s age. Yesterday, after too many years to mention, I actually walked past our old family home to get to my meeting from the station. How weird is that?

And then, it transpires my main contact there is a girl who up until a few years ago was signed to a label in the same building as my publisher and knows a bunch of people I hang out with when I go to Nashville. In the leafy suburbs of North London? Golly.

Now the probability of any one of these things happening is pretty slim. But for both to happen. Well, that does give me that nice warm familiar feeling.

Yours wondering if this happens to anyone else,

S.

Less than a month after hols and here I am once again totally slammed.

Today was one of those days when I worked like crazy but nothing seemed to gel. Like one of those bad dreams when you’re trying to go somewhere but something invisible is pushing you further and further back. I generally don’t beat myself up too much if I make a mistake because in most cases I can put it right. But if I don’t even notice I've made one... that does worry me. I start to wonder what trail of destruction I'm leaving behind me on God's beautiful planet.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve had a moronic few days catching up with my tax. Today I sent a spreadsheet with last years tax data to my tax accountant with all the dates sometime in 2008! Now, I know I’m working in the creative arts, but even the deepest chamber of my right brain would normally have picked that one up. PC fans might be happy to know it was a bug in the Mac version of Excel. I’m saying nothing. Except of course that if Apple had written Excel in the first place they would have included an ad-in that would be able to work out my tax for the next decade anyway. To the penny. Then file the returns and badger the tax authorities until I got my rebates.

OK I've just alienated about 90% of the readers of my blog now. Nice one Superhawkins.

Yours thinking I might have an early night tonight,

S.

It's 7.30 on Friday evening and I'm chilling on the bed in our guest room, watching the sun go down. Sandra's getting ready to go out on a girlie night. As I type, Poppy’s talking to Sandra in the bathroom, trying to eeelongggatte her 'staying up' time. Here's what they're saying –

Poppy: I love drawing and snipping Mummy
Sa: Yes, you've made some lovely pictures at big school this week haven't you
Poppy: Mummy, can we draw a picture of Mickey Mouse tomorrow?
Sa: Oh, that would be nice wouldn’t it
Poppy: Yes. Can we draw a picture of him on the toilet?
Sa: Hmmm, let’s talk about that tomorrow

Yours glad our first full week of big school is over,

S.

It’s autumn. At least it was the day before yesterday. Yesterday was summer still. But I’m looking forward to autumn now.

My feet telling me I need to wear socks, finding heavy dew on my shoes, driving up past red and yellow trees to the pumpkin fare, long shadows from an amber afternoon sun, feeling the cold night seep into my bones as fireworks race to the sky on bonfire night, the cracking floorboards as radiators cool for the night, heading into the woods with the smell of mushrooms, moss, bark and fallen leaves, noticing white breath in my eyes for the first time, a chill blowing through the car boot sale, cutting through leather potatoes skins on a paper plate with my fork, carving a hot steamy Sunday roast chicken, the first taste of homemade lentil soup, digging out a scarf from deep within my wardrobe, the sting of crisp air on my face cycling to work to a disappearing moon, wearing my dusty green Wellington boots to dig the garden, sipping chilli hot chocolate around flickering flames, dancing shadows on the walls of our drawing room, the smell of wind blowing down our chimney once again. The pebble dash points of light from the star of our Christmas tree on the horizon.

There. Blog and object writing all in one go. And it’s only 6.35am.

S.

We’ve an odd week this week – Sandra’s on an advocacy course a couple of hours away so it means that she’s taking Poppy to school in the morning and I’m doing the school run both ends of the day - Moo in the morning and both children in the afternoon. It’s weird because I still have a huge preference to get big stuff done first thing in the morning, even after three years out of the City. And this morning I found myself having to deliberately slow myself down.

Moo and I had about half an hour between breakfast and jumping into the car to his Montessori. I was thinking I could do some emails, plan my day, maybe write something, do some songtools or whatever. But Moo wanted to play. As I sat down among the primary colours of the play room, this little dribbling man came climbing up over my legs and onto my lap, breathing into my face his sweet toddler scent and wiping porridge all over my polo shirt. As he squeezed his little bottom next to mine he pointed at Poppy’s quarter sized guitar and in his own way (not English as we know it) he asked if we could sing something. So we sat there for half an hour singing his favourite nursery rhymes and I found a cool new riff on Poppy’s Toys R Us steel string tuned to DADGAD. So we both got what we wanted.

I suddenly thought how precious these moments are, when my little boy isn't itching to go off to play with his mates, not getting lost in an X-Box, not chatting on the internet or playing football. He just wants to hang with his Dad.  I need to make the most of this time.

Yours realising that his little stuff was probably today’s big stuff for me,

S.

Sunday lunchtime and Sandra and Poppy are out at Poppy’s first social engagement from big school – a birthday party at the home of one of the children in her class. Her invitation arrived before she even started going to the school. Her whole year (35 children) was invited to the parent’s large country house about 20 minutes away. Sandra took Poppy’s swimming costume, just in case.

I fear that the party is more about sussing out the parents than the children enjoying themselves. There seems to be a big social whirl surrounding Poppy’s school that for some parents becomes more important than the school itself. Parents are mostly from titled backgrounds or they’re successful business people. Either way, they are not short of a bob or two.

Mothers actually get dressed up in designer clothes to do the school run, arriving to a car park full of 4x4s (SUV’s) or German made convertibles. I actually heard that one parent deliberately hitched their new powerboat to the back of their 4x4 to do a school run just to show it off to other parents outside school.

We’ve decided we’re not playing that game. Obviously. It’s silliness. But the challenge will be when Poppy comes home and wonders why I can’t buy her a real pony for Christmas. And a field, stables, saddle, whip, outfit, etc..

Yours hoping it won’t be as bad as I fear,

S.

The new routine has started. Poppy went off to big school. We are all feeling a little more grown up today. The day started 45 minutes earlier than normal just to make sure she’s there on time. We’d hate to be the cause of her getting off on the wrong foot.

It’s a bigger event for us than we expected. She’s been suffering a little over the last few days as well… just not quite herself. I said a prayer over our early morning snack and she asked if she could say a prayer for me. First time, so sweet. We all ended up saying prayers for each other, even Moo (a long list of ‘God Blesses’).

Anyway, as I left she was all dressed up in her summer school dress, a grey and red blazer and shiny black shoes. I took a few pics and hope to post them later on.

Yours nervously,

S.

Hmmm. So Universal Music Group are buying BMG Music Publishing eh? By the end of the year I could be signed to the biggest music company in the world. Does that mean we’re going to have the biggest Christmas party? Now that could be fun.

Yours thinking there’s a lot to happen before it really does happen,

S.

P.S. We had "Dancin'" another five times on the way home yesterday before Moo fell asleep and Poppy finally asked me to turn it off!

Just got to the studio after taking Poppy and Moo to school. It’s a special day – Poppy’s last day at Montessori. She took in presents for all her teachers and a little something for all the children at going home time. I’ll be picking them up later. So it’s a short day for me (9.15-3.30). Helps me focus on what’s got to be done.

When we were at Disney we caught the Disney Parade, which was magical - all the different characters on spectacular floats with flames, lights, moving heads of dragons, exotic costumes, sparkles and great music. It was a track produced by Robbie Buchanan (one of my producer heroes) called ‘Dancin’’ which was pumped through a great sound system for about 200,000 people of all shapes and nationalities to bounce up and down to. Some people had children on their shoulders (I had Moo), some were jumping up and down and others were just swaying to the groove of the music.

Well, that was the track we had on this morning. I put it on to lift the spirits of us all as we set off on the 20 minute journey to Chichester. And of course, the second the track came to an end, both Poppy and Moo would demand ‘AGAIN DADDY!’. So yeah, we played it about 6 times as the children both jigged around in their car seats in the back of my car as I was sitting in the front following chord structures, the bass line and production template in my head. It then struck me that, as well as being a cool opportunity to participate in our children’s lives, this 40 minute car trip could actually be productive (in a bouncy sort of way).

Yours still feeling like I should have done a million other things by now,

S.

Do I really need to tell Poppy his name is Pluto before she starts big school on Thursday?

Throughout our house we have Italian door handles. I changed them all when we renovated the house because the old ones were manky and they look a lot cooler than the stuff I found at the local hardware store.

Three of them have matching locks and, in true Italian style, they don’t always work: the two sides of the lock handle come off with the minimum of tugging.

After we bring Monty into our bed for his early morning snack of milk, banana coins and dried mango he loves to dismantle the lock on our bedroom door. This is ok because it gives us an extra 5 minutes peace and it keeps him from pouring hot tea over everyone.

The other morning, we were going down to breakfast and I couldn’t find the larger part of our bedroom door lock. I looked under the bed, in the gap between the bed head and the wall, in the duvet, under pillows, everywhere. It was just not there.

A couple of hours later, I heard a laugh from Sandra as she was changing his nappy (diaper). She’d found the three inch piece of missing metal lurking in the theatre of devastation. Yuk.

Yours wondering if the true cost of cool is really worth it,

S.