2003-10-06 - 1:43 p.m.

Sychronicity...it’s happening again.

We’ve just recorded what was originally intended to be a mini-LP, but has mutated into a half a proper LP, but that’s a different story. It’s going to be called “A Fistful Of Seahorses” anyway.

The most difficult thing about this first lot of songs was writing the lyrics. For some reason I had an urge to write songs about whistleblowers and wannabe-whistleblowers. It’s not a very rock’n’roll or even insipid indie urge to have, and it’s therefore quite hard to come up with credible pop lyrics on these subjects...at least that’s my excuse: it’s quite hard. So if I didn’t get it, don’t be too harsh with me.

Somewhat inspired by the Enron scandal (it’s taken quite a while to write these songs) + also somewhat inspired by the fate of Roberto Calvi. My dad seemed mildly obsessed by this at the time, which in retrospect is not that suprising. My memories put my age at nine or ten, but the fact that Roberto Calvi was found hanging under Blackfriar’s Bridge in 1982 would suggest that I was in fact 12. It’s not a strange to bang onto a 12 year old about that sort of thing but I wouldn’t put it past my dad to try and engage a nine year old in a conversation about the Vatican, Italian freemasonry and a highly suspicious suicide, er, anyway, enough of the family background.

So to cut to the chase, one of the new songs “Under Blackfriar’s Bridge” is about...Roberto Calvi, albeit in a rather loose and shallow way*. As you can tell from the catchy chorus that goes along the lines of “Hanging in a bag under Blackfriar’s Bridge, you don’t need a doctor to know I’m sick. Pockets full of broken bricks, you don’t ‘need a doctor to know I’m sick.”

But the weird bit is this: in the newspapers this week it’s been announced that the police have re-opened their investigation into Roberto Calvi’s death, the Calvi family having not been entirely convinced by the original verdict of suicide. They’ve finally managed to convince the authorities that there is enough evidence to warrant re-investigation...

And while Enron was a bit enough scandal in it’s own right, we’ve had our very own full-on whistle-blowing scandal courtesy of the Hutton inquiry.

Snowpony; we’ve got our finger on the pulse. Before it even happens.

That’s all I can say for now. The rest is still covered by the Official Secrets Act.

*great qualities in women you hope to meet at parties, but not necessarily the qualities I was aiming for with these songs.

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