Today's entry for the Happiness Experiment

Coffee with Dan Jones in Muswell Hill

Reading Jonathan Franzen's Freedom in the hammock chair

Doing English-French translation with N

Songwriters' Circle #4

David Gray
KT Tunstall
Ray Lamontagne

DG
1 Shine
2 Ain't no love
3 Babylon
4 Forgetting
5 Breathe
6 This Year's Love

KT
Other Side Of The World (Long distance love affair)
(Still A) Weirdo
Oi?? (Climate change)
Black Horse & The Cherry Tree
White Bird
The Entertainer

RL
(Winter of love)
Trouble

ALL
Morning of My Life

Bush Hall
with Neil B

Clips here

Starspot #222

Liam Gallagher (launch of Jim Jones Review album at Madame JoJo's 1.ix.10)
Mark Lamarr (ditto)

Creative Accounting #107

Inception = The Sting + Reservoir Dogs + Ocean's 11 + The Getaway? + video games

Brighton beach memoirs - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Underwater handstands on Saltdean beach, marvellously empty for a Sunday

Graffiti hunting around the North Laines

East Breakwater run with D - watching fish being hunted by gulls at the end

Mayorships

Present:

Victoria Station Train Crew Messroom
Scotland Yard
Department of Business, Innovation and Skills
15:31 to Horsham
East Finchley Library
Waterlow Park
Hainanese
Home Sweet Home Creative House
Maddens
The Old White Lion
Post Office N2
Royal Mail Delivery Office N2
East Finchley Smiles
Cash machine East Finchley
Boobas
Edgware Library
Hertford Road Bus Stop
Shippy Residence
Gertie Browns pub
East breakwater, Brighton Marina
Phoenix Cinema, East Finchley
Wingate FC
La Rugoletta, East Finchley
Home Sweet Home (N2)
Just behind my desk, being useful
Westminster City Council Town Hall
Julie and Miguel's home, East Finchley
The Stage Door, Apollo Theatre, Victoria
Pembridge Partners
Home Sweet Home Creative House
London "pied-à-terre"
Slutton Ground
Arts Depot
Westminster Cathedral
Lycee Saint Therese, Quimper
Place de la Resistance, Quimper
Port de Guilvinec
Chateau de Lanniron
River Odet
Portsmouth Pest Control
RHS Lawrence Hall
Artillery Mansions
Cherry Tree Wood Park
Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute
Finchley RFC
Leonie's Awesome Party! Woop!
St Anne's Church Courtyard, Wardour Street
Tommy Bring the Noise
Post Office, East Finchley
MacDonalds UK HQ
AGC Equity Partners
EasyJet repair yard, Luton
Poseidon Fish Restaurant, East Finchley
umbrella(s) outside channel 4
UOE
East Finchley Constitutional Club
Nicki's house
The Royal Oak, Muswell Hill
Parkway Walk (North)
East Finchley French Market
Kung's Chinese Takeaway
Our Lady of Muswell
The Bishops Avenue
Tosa
Finchley Spiritualist Church
Amici
Central House
Chorak
East Finchley tube - Platform 1
Eva's Polish Deli
Hughes Design
I Knit Weekender
Martin Primary School
Muff, Co. Donegal
The Bald Faced Stag + The Baldfaced Stag

Past:
Marina Square, Brighton
Looney Bin! Home

Fictitious creations:
Portsmouth Pest Control
Skynet (Europe)
Skynet GCHQ
The Slaughtered Lamb

Historic - Tuesday's Happiness Experiment entry

Seeing a Spitfire (at the Imperial War Museum) silhouetted against the sun

Chatting about forthcoming historical drama with Robert WC

Incredible Holland goal to get through to World Cup final (reaching back to the Goldsmids)

Back in business - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Chat with Graham Linehan (co-writer of Father Ted & The IT Crowd) about Quotables

Lunch in Exmouth Market at Moro with Zam

Viewing of CCTV Symphony taster in edit suite in Anglers Lane

Colemanball

"They [North Korea] collapsed like a pack of cards - and they did this in spades."
Vasos Alexander, BBC Radio 5 22/6/10

Punk

The day the Sex Pistols ceased to exist was the day they became important and relevant. That's always the case.

John Lydon

Japanese TV interview http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQxhbLPZVpI&NR=1

(sex pistols, punk, important, relevant)

Quotable

"the basic difference being that a novel is about interior life and a film about exterior life"
Martin Amis in The Guardian 26/5/10

Istanbul - Today's Happiness Experiment entry

The illuminated water of the Basilica Cistern

Drinking tea in the rain with U whilst watching the shipping in Gulhane Park on Seraglio Point

Watching a bird flying around the minarets of the Blue Mosque at night

Talking Turkey - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Flying over moored shipping off the coast of Istanbul

Hooking up by chance with Utku and his cousins for an evening of Turkish coffee, backgammon and hookah smoking

The piles of spices in the Spice Market

Boys and Men in Black - yesterday's Happiness Experiment entry

Watching N being chased and tackled by Saracens hooker Schalk Britts - and still making the try line

England rugby captain Steve Borthwick's generosity with a bunch of enthusiastic kids doing a training evening at Saracens

Watching French-like Israeli film Broken Wings

Starspot #221

Sam Taylor Wood, Aaron Johnson and black dog (Primrose Hill today)

Punk spirit

Punk was an idea. I try to make ideas happen. It was an idea that could change lives.

Malcolm McLaren (Edwards) RIP

Recent Happiness Experiment entries from the Old Country

Fri 2 April - Jerusalem

Visiting the Kotel with N and D (memories of my father)

Catching glimpses of the Easter action in the Old City around the Church of the Holy Sepulchre

An evening walk passing the abandoned old Jerusalem railway station (near the German Colony) - redolent of a heroic age

Sat 3 - Jerusalem to Bet Chananya

A blazing afternoon in the zoo - especially taken with the tamarins and other monkeys

Visiting Oskar Schindler's grave on my own, first visitor of the day to the Catholic Cemetery

Spotting the remains of a War of Independence convoy on the Jerusalem road at sunset (and a sign to the Burma Road) - memories of my dad (1976)

Sun 4 - Jaffa

Meeting Sandgold & Dafna in Jaffa - my first web-initiated real-life encounter

Touring the street art of Jaffa, above all the Rehov Auerbach derelict house

Jogging along the aqueduct in Bet Chananya - spotting parrots and poppies

Mon 5 - Caesarea & Petach Tikva

Paddling with D at the sea palace in Caesarea

Meeting my cousins Asaf and Guy for the first time, my older cousins Jaffa and Moshe after 15 years, and Ronen, Itzik and families after 34 years (my first trip to the Old Country with my dad)

Playing chariots with D in the hippodrome at Caesarea

Tues 6 - Or Akeva & Akko

A boat ride at dusk to give a view of Acre's walled old city across a dark wine coloured sea

Meeting up with Harold H, an old friend of Ma's, by chance 4 km down the road in Or Akiva

Lunch under the trees at the hummous stall in Bet Chananya, including lemon and mint drink

Wed 7 - Tel Aviv

Reading under a palm tree in a quiet court of the beautifully architected Ben Gurion airport

Playing basketball one-on-one with D in Bet Chananya

A display of Independence Day posters on the big slope at Ben Gurion

Recent Happiness Experiment entries from the Old Country

Tues 30 March - Bet Chananya to Negev (via Mishpa? Ramon to moshav Faran)

Lunch in the Ramon Crater beside rocks coloured with iron, culminating in desert tea

Off-road driving in Ohad's Range Rover

Bedouin tea in an open-sided tent at sundown

Wed 31 - Negev desert (Faran to M. Ramon) - Jerusalem

Spotting gazelles sweeping majestically along the dry river bed

Driving Li'am's desert buggy with U by my side

The perfect blue sky above a white desert canyon - colour of the flag

Thurs 1 - Jerusalem

Walking a section of Via Dolorosa

One of the waitresses (straight out of Delacroix -or is it Ingres?) in the restaurant over-looking the Old City at the Cinematheque

Reading Saul Belllow's To Jerusalem and Back

Quotable

"Frank Sinatra is the kind of singer who comes along once in a lifetime. Why did it have to be my lifetime?" Bing Crosby

Today's Happiness Experiment entry

Bet Hananya to Tel Aviv

Long jog along the stream followed by a dog

Reading Ministry of Fear on a grassy bank in the sunshine

Seder on a roof top beside Ben Gurion's house