Guitar, tea, coffee, sticking things into scrapbooks, my wife's pregnancy, Haiku, cooking, Polish food, sea-swimming, reading newspapers endlessly, travelling, worrying about carbon footprints, cycling down country lanes, canoe-dling, rock-pooling, wood-chopping, secondhand baby-clothes shopping (not secondhand-baby clothes shopping)
my son, Jasiu, at the start of each day, waking up, then seeing his Mum... both of which are now a reality, since he was born at 8 minutes past midnight, Monday 3rd September, and they are now both HOME!!
Low, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, Starmarket, Ella Guru, Explosions in the Sky, A Silver Mt Zion, the Cure, Def Leppard, American Music Club, Isotope 217, 65 Days of Static, Mono, Eluvium, Only If You Call Me Jonathan, Neil Young, Ariel Kill Him, Leiah, Pixies, the Firebird Suite, Braid, the Promise Ring, Texas is the Reason, Stapleton, Kate Rusby, Bonnie Prince Billy, Palace Music, City + Colour, Alexisonfire, Sense Field, Hot Water Music, Mojave 3, Myslowitz, early Lemonheads, Kristen, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Fugazi, Refused, Fleetwood Mac, Sevens + Nines, Jawbox, My Awesome Compilation, Mogwai, Stina Nordenstam, the Sorts, Iron + Wine, Appendix Out, Sonic Youth, Dinosaur, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Radiohead, 310, the Dirty Three, Iron Maiden, the Boxhead Ensemble, the Sea + Cake, Tortoise, Archer Prewitt, Sam Prekop, Air, Archers of Loaf, Lambchop, the Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, the Appleseed Cast, Spy Versus Spy, Reiziger, the Van Pelt, the Crystal Committee, Pedro the Lion, Drive Like Jehu, Rocket from the Crypt, Below the Sea, Lagwagon, Propagandhi, the Blake Babies, Pods, Piebald, Newton Faulkner, the Dears, Show of Hands, Yourcodenameis:Milo, Funeral for a Friend, Woe, Pullman, Sonna, Polaris, Boy Sets Fire, Cobalt, Kevlar, Jejune, Chamberlain, Split Lip, Shift, Hallraker, Beacon, Steel Rules Die, Captain, Minor Threat, More Fool He... my guitar and ME
Rain, the Page Turner, Climates, Betty Blue, the Return, Paris Texas, Badlands, Almodovar, the Virgin Suicides, the Piano Teacher, Ma Mere, Lynch, Lost in Translation, Star Wars (natch), Babel, Pan's Labyrinth, The Jerk, Tess, Breaking the Waves, lots more besides, anything new, anything good
Louis Theroux, Saturday Kitchen and the Hairy Bikers
Paul Auster, Raymond Carver, Hariku Murakami, Jim Crace, Steinbeck, Bernhard Schlink, Bukowski, pretty much anything published by Harvill, Charles Schultz, 'The Adventures of Hucklebury Finn', The Bible, 'Catcher in the Rye', Satish Kumar, the Sun magazine (not the grubby newspaper...), C.S.Lewis, Jules Verne, Barbara Kingsolver, Hunter S.Thompson, Roald Dahl, H.G.Wells, Hemmingway, Garrison Keillor, W.G.Sebald's 'The Rings of Saturn', Spiderman, Calvin and Hobbes, Kahlil Gibran's 'The Prophet', John Fowles, Asterix, Nabakov's 'Lolita', , Jason and the Argonauts, Charles Fort, Graham Greene, Kent Haruf, William Maxwell's 'They Came Like Swallows' (beautiful), Ted Hughes, Jean Vanier, Henri Nouwen, Robert M.Pirsig's 'Zen & the Art of Motercyle Maintenance' (thanks, Dad), Angela Carter, Margeret Atwood, Tove Jansson, Stephen King, Tama Janowitz, John Wyndham, Rabelais' 'Gargantua and Pantagruel', Isaac Bashevis Singer, Chekov, Anais Nin, 'Peter Pan', Federico Andahazi's 'The Anatomist', Milan Kundera, Henri David Thoreau's 'Walden', Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' and 'I Sing the Body Electric', Tolkein, 'Frankenstein', Fungus the Bogeyman, Fortean Times, Henry Rollins, and, finally, best of all, Don Bajema's 'the Boy In the Air' - check it out, it'll save your life
Spiderman, Jean Vanier, Charles Fort, anyone involved in L'Arche, anyone who has a newborn, anyone who can hunt for mushrooms successfully, Ian Mackaye, my Grandfather, Wujek Stasiu, Neil Young