...and me as well, but it's over.
Now a rest is appropriate, you may like to hear what happened once a lifetime's practice at playing with fire and doing so once too often is leading to a radical change in outlook on life.
I don't know if the bang was inevitable but the log needs to adapt. Indeed this has begun. Some people may have noticed, nobody asked for it. Anyway, there's no rush.
Women are taking turns to lighten an arduous, enjoyable task. More than half a dozen did so on Day Four. The flat's been filthier for ages than usually I cared to notice, knowing when the break came the job would be a long one, but now it's in hand, it's trashing time again.
A fifth day may end the kind of moments you seem to have even more mess than progress as piles of moved clutter get bigger, if you live somewhere small and are no good at getting rid of things until you're sure there's no more use for them.
Most bands and singers keeping me company are ones I'm getting to know better or discovering for the first time. 'Scissor Sisters' helped me deal cautiously with a food can long forgotten at the back of a high cupboard. The tin was leaking ... you don't want to know.
Someone kept an eye on me. While painting her windowsill she liked the music so I coloured her Pink with 'Try This'. Maybe trying an album that's sometimes bitterly raw but extremely raunchy was risky.
 We've had rain, the day wasn't hot, a flat nearby has often been rented by attractive loners. The jobs the most recent and me were doing meant much sweat and few clothes. The distraction was nice, but this is Shivaree -- who cooled me down. It's Ambrosia Parsley, to be accurate, in a photo by Melanie Nissen. What a fine trio her band has become!
On hearing 'Who's Got Trouble?', which came out last April, I wanted more and helped myself, then agreed while out shopping and drinking coffee with Ambrosia's sentiment that 'I Should Give You a Shot in the Head for Making Me Live in this Dump'. There are personal dumps and shared worlds. This one seems worse in some ways than in 2000.
The last task of the day took nearly as long as a third dose of trouble. Here we are:
"Now, five years and over half a million album sales after the I Oughtta release, Parsley and Shivaree return with a question first sung in a fantasy nightclub, circa 1942: Who’s Got Trouble? (Zoe). Michael Curtiz’s timeless Casablanca is the inspiration for the album’s title and lead track, and the answer, sadly, is all too familiar. (Studies show that while it may accurately describe their politics, registered Republicans typically shun movies in black & white.) The track’s evil siren has an appetite for lust and a lust for world destruction; recognizing a willing patsy on Pennsylvania Avenue, she preys. Little surprise then that the next 40 minutes are raked by excess, deceit, escape and wrenching loss."
That's straight from the Shivaree web site.
Nobody needs my own political comments, but the new album's among the saddest and drily funniest I've heard this year.
'Trouble' is no dull political bash anyway; it alludes to some people in power on occasion. More importantly, Parsley, Duke McVinnie and Danny McGough are far-sighted, put the album in a context and can do pretty much anything as musicians. Leaders come and go. This kind of work lasts.
'Trouble' gets dark sometimes, sure. Here's an extract:
"I will go quietly
I'll leave my speech
Hold down the mystery
With a throat full of bleach
And I won't go talking now
Not even a sigh
I'll sleep on a broken bough
With a nail in my eye
And I won't hear a beat again
I will go quietly
But I'll stay screaming inside your sleep
I'll stamp out the moon and I'll shear all of your sheep"
There's no screaming in or before this last song.
'Trouble' is a gentle record. It's a strong one and Ambrosia Parsley has a beautiful voice. This isn't a review, just a suggestion that if it's new to you, you might enjoy this courageous album -- like tomorrow, while there is one.
I've rarely been more optimistic, but that's probably a story for next month.
3:40:58 AM link 
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