Some day soon I'll perform alongside these objects which are inanimate and animate simultaneously.

When I get to rehearsing my first steps will be to find initial boundaries, main ingredients and remember the continual interchange between making, listening and observing. 

This is my orchestra just now
a small collection of
battery powered motors
phone vibrators
small speakers
dictaphones
contact microphones
a hand-made bowed psaltery (under the desk)

Analogue synth-maker and tape machine hacker James Pearson will join me soon for sonic experiments in speciation and heterosis.

​His synths..

Over the last week or so we've been thinking about sites for planters to fill with seeds and eventually edibles. Bob Dawson and I had a walkabout and identified between twelve and fifteen sites around the town that would be excellent places to put planters and maybe some more benches nearby so that people could enjoy the views over the town, the river, the abbey and so on.

We also looked at the Greyfriar's garden with its herb allotments begging to be tidied up and replanted with something approaching the original herbs. So far so good except for a nagging trend for institutions to throw health and safety and other bits of red tape at you when you try to do something simple and beneficial. They always want you to be constituted which immediately bogs you down in time wasting trivia. It probably comes from a hierarchy of people covering their arses but nevertheless. The way I look at things anyone putting obstacles in your way should set out to find solutions and fix it. They are after all being paid. Fortunately we have a new Community Council with good people on board - do-ers rather than paper shufflers - so I'm confident that with this umbrella body we can provide good things for the town without too much bureaucracy.

I also learned about food sovereignty. In simple terms this is defined as a food system where the people who produce, distribute, and consume food have control over the policies and mechanisms of food production and distribution but in practice it's a complex field. ​Obviously we're not near this yet. What interests me is the notion that there's some kind of human right going on whereby people should expect the state and its offshoots, like councils, to provide, facilitate and promote access to healthy nutritional and inexpensive food. I'll pick away at this in the weeks and months ahead because I'm not seeing much from 'above' and what I do see comes mainly from the excellent work of schools and the NHS, as you'd expect from dedicated professionals whose vocation is to care for people and thereby develop a civilised society. The easiest and best thing councils could do is stop junk food retailers from setting up in Borders towns. I suppose you could argue that it's what people want. I know a few middle aged men who want strip clubs and massage parlours up the High Street but I can't see that happening. 

​Here's a rough plan of the sites we identified for veggie planters in 2025. We had the idea of making a sort of accessible trail that people could follow and take rest at various points. The sites are un-named and in blue - hopefully you can distinguish them from the other markers.

​I've been busy figuring out the ins and outs of agriculture and food growing in the Borders, especially around Jedburgh. Here's what I've found out. First, farmers are very friendly and interesting people but they're hard to pin down. Must be part of the job. I did establish a few contacts to talk to later and discovered that some farmers here are looking into regenerative farming, which I assume has to do with soil sustainability and the wider ecology around land use. I wonder if that's why younger people seem to be becoming more interested?

A small group in the town is interested in local food growing, so we'll begin by identifying sites around the town to place planters, tell people what we're doing and then plant food that people can pick when it's ready. What I like about sitting down with others is the different ideas that people come out with. One idea that came up was to eventually establish a trail around the town where you could visit the planters and maybe have benches at some points along the route. There's also been a suggestion to look at growing herbs again in Greyfriars Garden, where in the 15th century Franciscan monks would have grown medicinal herbs and plants for dyes and so on. Maybe even some kind of Physic Garden. There are a few hoops to jump through but so far the signs are positive. 

​I did some historical digging to find out if there were ever any peasant's revolts in the Borders but couldn't find any records. Maybe we could stage and film a (non-violent) modern-day peasant's revolt that makes unreasonable demands of the powers such as sustainable and diverse food growing, care for the soil, wildlife corridors, carbon capture, getting rid of land use for shooting. Then maybe proceed to a suitable field and burn some effigies. Fun and games. 

I’m enjoying the initial stages of the Fallow Project, working with Artwalk Porty, the research and planning within the town and in the hinterland.
 
My first move has been to try to put together a small group in the town to look at how we might start small scale but visible food production. Some call this guerrilla gardening (but we’ll come up with our own name so as not to upset people). The idea is an extension to the amazing flower displays in the town whereby we introduce small planters of food and maybe herbs, attractively presented and dotted around the town so that people can help themselves when the food is ready to eat. There’s a substantial support network in the Borders so the precedents are there. Apart from the polytunnel at the school I don’t know of any small scale food growing in Jedburgh which puts us at odds with most of the other Border towns.
 
I’m also getting in touch with farmers and figuring out what I want to ask them. I’ve been reading a lot about global agriculture and the food ecosystem, in particular George Monbiot’s excellent positioning work Regenesis which offers a fairly bleak assessment of out current position with respect to land use and food production. I suppose what I’d like to find out from farmers is how they see their work within the constraints and conditions imposed by climate, government policies, the global food markets, financial considerations and so on, and what they see as the future of sustainable food growing.  I'd also like to find out what they would see as the future of agriculture if some of the constraints were removed or changed.
 
At the other end of the food chain, the cooking and eating department, I’m pleased to see that there’s a cooking initiative coming to town from a Glasgow based group Outside the Box.
 
As for en eventual art work let’s wait and see but I’m fascinated by Monbiot’s discourse on the supreme importance soil and how we, in his own words, treat it like dirt. He has a podcast on his book on Spotify which is well worth a listen. The things that go on beneath our feet.

This one is a lap steel slide, a Gretsch G9220 Bobtail Round-Neck Resonator to be precise. It's a good guitar, well made, sweet tone, as metallic as you'd expect but there's enough wood in the sound as well. It projects well, is  comfortable and responsive to play. It records well. I haven't used the internal pickup much but it seems adequate. I don't know how it compares to the very expensive models but I can't imagine they's be much better than this Gretsch. You can hear it on my acoustic albums Honeyfield Road and Broken Landscapes over on Bandcamp. 

​One day I'll buy a Weissenborn because there's no imitating the sound of that wonderful instrument.

This is the Gretsch 9221 Bobtail, a straight up resonator, all metal. It plays as well as the 9220, reliable and a clean sound. I bought this used and had to take off the front to make some adjustments to the resonator. To get the steel sound you need to play a little more towards the bridge. Internal pickup - seems fine. It's a good one for trying out different tunings, free improvisation or straight up Appalachian tune-making. I play some tunes on my acoustic albums as well as on Outside, my album of free improvisations for acoustic guitars, again on Bandcamp.

I'm a bit slow in the visual arts department. For a start I don't have the time to do my primary projects and establish a practice in other things that require my full attention. But over the years I've managed to get to grips with some aspects of collage, photography, book folding and linocut.

Recently I went to a printing workshop with the very wonderful Georgie Fay. https://georgiefay.com/ where I met some other  artists involved in printing and bookmaking. Georgie's idea is to establish a club that meets regularly and eventually to set up a proper print workshop in Earlston. For this session we met at the Little Art Hub in Galashiels https://www.littlearthub.org/, a white space paid for by multi-year finding from various bodies. Jedburgh has nothing like this and the way things go in this cold, cold town is unlikely to see such a hub in my lifetime.

Anyway, I've always wanted to print, mainly to generate artwork for albums and posters and maybe zines and folded books so when a dear artist friend Sue Higginson-Bell recommended this workshop I snapped up a place and had the time of my life. I'd do this at home but you really need a large space to set out all the different clean, dirty and wet areas and of course you need a press. A good one is expensive and takes up yet more space. I won't go into the details but what I love about printing is the uncertainty. It's like wet darkroom developing when the print emerges from the tank like a fish you've just dragged up from the depths of the ocean. You're never sure what you're going to get. Then there's the repeat processes where your original print is modified and reprinted in different ways. It's similar in spirit to some of the recording techniques I use in building up a musical composition. Not to forget the amazing power of colour, nuanced by all the subtle textures that find themselves on to the print. I'm hooked. Here are some of my efforts with all the usual beginner's mistakes - thumbprints, smudges, light bands where I didn't pull the print evenly through the press, letters back to front and everything the wrong way round (some of these were happy accidents in the end). 

I can't play saxophone but I am fascinated by the music of John Coltrane. I was watching some footage of his 'Last Performance at Newport 1966' and apart from being mesmerised by the wall of sound he produced, which Hendrix managed to do as well, I was struck by how physical the whole performance was. He was a big strong man and he laid into that microphone like it was his last sacrifice to the Gods of Music. Sonny Rollins was the same. They're not pretending to be something else. That';s the way you have to play those instruments. It must be in the nature of saxophones, the way you hold them and point them away from you towards heaven or wherever. I've never managed to warm to playing guitar like that. You either end up gyrating around with an electric like a dodgy rock star or if it's an acoustic you end up rocking about with that orgasm face they put on to squeeze some kind of emotion out of the moment. Nah!