Doris

Doris (2003-2023)

It's been a sad week this week, I don't mind telling you. We lost a family member on Thursday. Doris had been with us a couple of months shy of 20 years when she took her final bow and disappeared behind the curtain one last time; walking into the vet's with a cat in a basket and leaving 30 minutes later with the same empty basket is something we've had to do on more than one occasion - but it never gets any easier. She was the sweetest natured animal I think we've ever had. Rest easy, little one. And say hello to Tom for us.

...

In other (more cheerier) news, Georgie is now officially 11½ carpet stripes long. Although he keeps looking for Doris I think he knows, deep down, she's not coming back...

P.S.

I couldn't not post my favourite picture of Tom: it was taken when we were living up in North Yorkshire and about to hang 'his' painting.

Thomas Earl Petty

I don't normally mark anniversaries around here, of the living or the dead, but two years ago today Tom Petty closed his umbrella for the last time. He was one of the few acts who I always wanted to catch live but for one reason or another the planets never aligned; though looking at his concert archive Petty's appearances on this side of the Atlantic were pretty few and far between. His first gig in England, June 1977, was opening for fellow American Nils Lofgren at Manchester Free Trade Hall. His last, July 2017, saw him headlining London's Hyde Park. A career arc, if ever there was one, bookended by two shows almost exactly 40 years apart.

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - I Need to Know (1978)

Thomas Medd

Tom (1994-2014)

It's been a sad day today. Tom went to sleep for the last time. I said goodbye to him early this morning before leaving to catch the London train. Not that he could hear me. Or see me. His recent diabetes had left him virtually blind and deaf. But when I picked him up and held him like a baby he knew it was me.

I told him last night (ahead of the vet coming this morning) how much we all loved him and that never a day will go by when we won't think about him. 'See you on the other side, little man.' He blinked twice. That's a date then.

Ginger

Tom was on hand at The Medd Gallery yesterday overseeing the hanging of his picture. As the title of Sonia Rollo's 'Lady Marmalade' etching would indicate, it's not actually him. But he does do that stretchy thing every morning when he wakes up.

Anyone wondering, like we were in the pub last night, just how many more ginger toms there are compared to their female counterparts - here's the answer and the science behind it.

We're going to see Martin Taylor next week at The Early Music Centre in York. We've seen him numerous times - he made my 50 odd gigs recently. Here he is performing Ginger with fellow stalwart Martin Simpson.





A big thank you to Phil Friend - Honorary Curator at The Medd Gallery.

Understudies

We've all walked across that zebra crossing in North London and recreated The Beatles' most iconic of album covers. But when was the last time you tried aping a Coen brothers movie poster?

Owning a ginger cat and living opposite a bearded folk singer, the idea for this photo shoot practically wrote itself.

Phil and Tom, everyone. Phil's the one with two legs.

                                                       

Tom

© Rober Palmer (c/o The Oldie)

Tom's getting on. We think he's 19; he may even be 20. Despite being recently diagnosed as having Diabetes he still has days when he thinks he's about four and runs 'round like a lunatic. But mostly, he'll go to sleep for the day and only wake up to be fed and watered. Whenever I write a new song I play it to Tom first; I always ask him to tell me if he's heard the tune before. However, when my guitar come out, he just covers his ears with his paws and plays dead.

But as soon as he sees the tree go up on Saturday he'll be straight back into kitten mode - 'helping' us with the lights and tearing up our paper chains; like he's always done. And that's just fine, because we know Tom probably won't be with us for many more Christmases; we just won't tell him.

(Thank you to Hannah Donovan at The Oldie)

Positively

Bob Dylan & The Heartbreakers

He calls himself a song and dance man; though these days his critics tend not to concur. I dug this b**tleg out last night and was pleasantly surprised to hear that as (relatively) recently as 1986 Dylan still had chutzpah. In spades. Maybe it was having Seargent Petty on parade with him that night, but Positively 4^th Street never sounded so, well, positive.

Bob Dylan + Tom Petty: Positively 4th Street

Iron out

The news today that the iron is being dropped by Monopoly will surely have John Waddington spinning in his grave. Don't get me wrong, I like cats: some of my best friends are cats, but a cat has no place on a Monopoly board. For what it's worth, I'm always the top hat when I play; any future moves to axe my titfer of choice will be met with the appropriate measured response. Let's just hope, for everyone's sake, we never reach that point.

Dodgy

Apologies for the delay in starting 2011, but I've not been well. Like you wouldn't believe: I think I did Christmas and New Year on autopilot - however, normal service has now been resumed. And for that I can't thank my very own Florence Nightingale enough for being there when it mattered (I guess that's what they mean by that whole 'for better or worse' malarkey).

Anyway, just got time to say that we've now got tix for the first gig of the new year. Dodgy (Nottingham Central Fri 21 Jan), it must be said, probably released the most consistently fab grooves of all the Britpop movers and shakers of the time. If you want three essential albums of the early 90s you can forget Oasis and Blur; The Dodgy Album, Homegrown and Free Peace Sweet capture the (don't worry, I'm not going to say the z word) very spirit of that whole TFI Friday buzz that defined the fag end of the last century. Bostin.

I interviewed Nigel Clark a few years back and remember telling him that this was the best song he'd ever written. He didn't disagree.

The feline models at the top of the page btw are our very own Tom and Doris, who proudly posed for Phill Jupitus' Pets In Band Tee Shirts gallery.

We've arrived (and to prove it we're here)

So, we're at the 'new place.' It feels good and it feels right. Apart from the last tearful look 'round to make sure we'd left nothing behind (and the equally tearful goodbyes to friends and neighbours) the whole moving process went pretty much like clockwork; unlike many things in life these days.

Thanks to the Number One Son and his fair maiden we're all broadbanded up and are now looking forward to the mammoth task of getting straight. Last night saw me handling cooking duties (rustic meatballs, since you ask) with Mrs M looking beautiful and toasting our new future. Meanwhile Tom and Doris were doing that exploring thing that all cats do when they've been beamed up to a new planet.

I like it here.