Happy New Ear

Aloha and hello, my beautiful followers and fellow travellers,

A happy new year to you all. I hope you spent it wisely... New Years being one of those over-hyped holidays one walks a fine line between trying too hard (ramming into an overpriced club to get cruelly drunk) and not trying at all (me, most years).
Its come as something of a shock that people are actually reading this, so I'm endeavoring to effuse a bit more. To be more effusive. More talking.

I'm back in Brighton, again, for the final preparatory furlong before heading to sunnier (& sweatier) climes. And as if to speed me on my way, old man winter has gone to town with ridiculous amounts of snow and some properly cold weather to boot. My flat here in Preston Park being a drafty old tree-house at the best of times, I've had to resort to wrapping myself in towels for my evening meditation. Yes, moan moan bloody moan... its all fine really. Had a rather nice walk (read: hobble) around the park today, including a wee commune with the trees at the far side. I should have taken a photo really, it would have made more sense and I'd have avoided you lot thinking me mad. Madder. Whatever. Anyway, buses cancelled, nowt to do but busy oneself indoors. I've a stack of delicious looking books that I've accumulated over the christmas-hols, including a cracker entitled 'A history of Walking', which I'm in two minds to save for Freetown.

Casting out to my various SL-contacts (actually fewer than I'd thought) for possible connections when I get there. Don't particularly want to be mooching around on my lonesome, at least not all the time. No doubt I'll attract plenty of attention. The real question is: Do I take my guitar with me?

Reviewing a book for the house Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 'The Invisible Empire'. Catchy, and not bad either. The author is a former sussex PhD in Anthropology. It's a sort of mix of discourse analysis (how do texts represent the world?) and Ethnography (here is the world, as I saw it), about the debates around immigration and place in the East End of London during the early to mid-90s and early-to mid 00s. The Invisible Empire of the title is basically a reference to how public discourses about Britishness gloss over the violent history of the British Empire, and instead focus on things like the abolition of the slave trade, liberal reform, tolerance, trade etc, and in so doing, exclude ethnic minority histories and claims to belonging. Sort of thing. Anyway its right up my street, using lots of postcolonial theory and Gramsci and Foucault, although it could do with some pictures. The one on the cover is cool, a photo of the old gateway to the East India Docks taken in the late 19thy century. Must remember to include pictures when I write my book. Someone remind me, please?

D