WHAT HE SAID

Sainsburys was pretty dead tonight. Must be something going on.

THE LITTLEST HOBO

NEW WEBSITE

I have made a new website www.tom-hall.org so I can prove I am all professional and businesslike.
To celebrate, I cut these two unknown session musos some slack and asked them to write me a simple and direct theme tune based around work. I think they've really knocked it out of the park. Nice job guys.

NEW WORD

Poo-merang. It was pretty funny at the time.

KEEPERS

It was record store day yesterday. Good on them. But I found a stack of awesome records outside someone's house for free, and you cannot beat free. Amongst the PiL, Talking Heads and Big Star there was an X record in there which made me super happy. Of course none of them are worth a thing really. Apart from the look on this pervy dude's face from the cover of 'Hot Hits 17', which is priceless.

OK

"The mega church"... Right. Got it.

BO NINGEN

Bo Ningen-ing.
Dark hair wizardry.

NOT QUITE RIGHT

This awesome ravaging of the good Doctor's name was in a cabinet of paraphernalia at Valerie Phillips' photography show. Apparently "Dr Thunder" is all the rage in Kentucky. Maybe it's their revenge for Stepney Fried Chicken.

'NUFF INDIE

CHEESE FLASH

Just a quick update about where we are with cheese now. After a few days draining in their molds, and a day or so drying in the open air, the cheese I made on Sunday is now developing colour, a creamy aroma, and a rind on the outside. This is all very good news. Now it's time to bandage them up and put them to sleep in a cool place for about three weeks I reckon.

I thought the maturing would take longer than that before but I found out it's basically just however long you can be bothered to wait. Three weeks should develop a good flavour, anything after that and the cheese gets milder, then past about two months, that's when you start getting your proper mature flavour building up. But quite frankly, bollocks to waiting that long.

So now I sterilize the muslin cloth, melt down some lard, and bandage the cheese up. I intended to show that process too but found my hands totally covered in lard pretty quickly, meaning I couldn't touch anything else like a camera.


This is the finished cheese, now wrapped in its final casing and about to be put away for a few weeks. Sleep well little ones.

SMELL MY CHEESE YOU MOTHER

Been talking, dreaming, imagineering about making cheese for some time. But Sunday was the day that cheese dreams took flight.
So here's a brief rundown of how to make cheese from my very kitchen. The final results will only be known in a couple of months time when it's matured. Apparently it'll be a hard Cheshire style, but I'm hoping it'll take on the characteristics of its surroundings too. So this will be a slightly poncy, (try-)hard, gentrified urban cheese then.

Heat a lot of milk. Add yoghurt (culture).

Add rennet, an enzyme extracted from cow's stomachs. But this is Vege-rennet. Less rank. Cleaner conscience. Give leftover milk to a cat.

Milk should set. Cut it in cubes. The white is curds. The yellowy clear stuff is whey... Yes way.

Line a collinder with muslin. Pour it all in to drain the curds from whey... Wahey.

Make a mold out of anything to hand. It needs a hole in the bottom.

Pack your mold.

Weight it down. Wait and wait and wait (over night). Then in the morning... CHEESE!

Then you have to do a whole bunch of other stuff over a two month period which I may or may not document if the mood takes me. Hope this was educational in some way. I wish I could say I learnt this from many months as an apprentice farmhand on a smallholding in the Loire Valley... But I didn't. Got it from the internets. And as I write this, I cleanse my pallet with Hula-hoops and Diet Coke. Vintage batch.

SUNDAY MORNING WHITE OUT

No need.

JOANNA

"And his hair was perfect"

BRANDED

Moodymann takes his Red Bull with Hennessy... And with bitches.

SOCKS

I wrote an ode to a cat called Socks on Cat Party, a blog made by Al de Mora. If you like cats, well, you're in luck. If you don't like cats, sort it out.

WELL, EARLY IN THE MORNING...

... About the break of day. I was walking to catch the train and encountered the biggest block of polystyrene I've ever seen. This one's a record breaker. No doubt about it. I gave it a poke to ensure it was all one piece and it moved as one. I was slightly in awe. As the righteous shrill biblical holler of Peter, Paul and Mary shuffled onto my ipod randomly at the same time, it felt like some sort of sign or omen. But I can't decide what.
When I got to work and youtubed that song still ringing in my brain, it came as a shock that Mary actually appears to be one of the most beautiful women ever to grace the still totally right-on and relevant gospel-folk (with slightly creepy Christian undertones) circuit. That's still going strong right? I mean I wouldn't wanna not be relevant in anyway. There's about three people reading this who I'd hate to let down. I imagined her as some sort of Mama Cass in a nun's habit type thing. But I was wrong. Dead wrong. I just needed an enormous piece of thermoplastic polymer to show me the way. Peter and Paul's combover plus goatee get-up is pretty out there too. I might try and bring it back. I've already started on the hair.

SMASHING

This is Scrap Club. Bit like Fight Club but with fridges.
I gave a telephone/printer/fax machine a ruddy good piece of my mind. Other objects included a table football game apparently once owned by Joe Strummer and a full porcelain bath tub and sink set. It was kind of weird. Felt fun, but in theory very easy to catch a stray sledgehammer to the face.
The red mist you can see is due to a printer cartridge unexpectedly exploding. It wasn't a physical embodiment of the unbridled anger in the room. Everyone was actually very pleasant.

BON

Les Calamites, Jacques Dutronc, Les Dogs.