Time Will Crawl...

I'm just enjoying BBC4's excellent evening of Brian Eno documentaries when who should turn up on the doorstep at Swipe Towers but the very man himself. He's hotfooted it over from the Long Now Foundation where they've been having a spot of bother with their 10,000 year clock, apparently. Do I have any spare AAA batteries? Well, obviously, I know it's an emergency and the clock is a very sensitive piece of equipment - I mean, the last time Brian forgot to wind it over the weekend, he came back in on Monday to find it was running 300 years slow; could play havoc with your video recorder could that - but does it *have* to be done right now? I ask him. I mean, what's a few decades here and there in the grand scheme of things? Besides, it's just got to the good bit where you're pouring Paul Morley a beaker of tepid ribena and telling him how you got the sound of a badly damaged crow on "An Index of Metals".

Brian stroppily wafts his feather boa about a bit before sulkily saying he supposes not and then goes all withdrawn and begins to sketch a protoype for a new Humber bridge made out of milk bottle tops and half full sanatogen bottles in his notebook - I must say, it does look like an exciting project; especially if he can get it to make an ambient beeping noise every 30 minutes. That should go down well in Grimsby. Oh well, I suppose if it's that important to you I can always take a couple out of the large vibrating egg - although Olga will *kill* me if they're not back in by tomorrow evening. It's her turn to sit on it you see and they don't have them in the former Soviet Republics. Well, not ones that aren't radioactive that is.

Brian's face lights up as I hand it to him and he promises to work *extra* hard on the ambient link pieces he's been putting together for the new album. And with that, he's off into the night clutching a large vibrating egg before I've even had a chance to tell him how much I like his new palm leaf head-dress...

L.U.V. on ya,

Bob