MADELEINE'S HEP HERD

Stelarc eat your heart out - I've had a useful physical enhancement, replacing bone with cobalt-chrome alloy! My first hip replacement (4 weeks ago) seems to have been very straightforward. The second one is due before the end of the year. I'm extremely hopeful that I'll regain a lot of energy once I'm free from the pain and the drugs - until the arthritis finds a new playground! Right now, I get tired very quickly, am walking with two sticks and not allowed on buses or in black cab-type taxis in case I dislocate the new joint sitting on low seats or getting on board. This make things very frustrating as my head is as full of ideas as ever and I'd really like to be in my studio much more. It's made even more of a mess of the house than I usually manage. I have several aids for sitting at the right height, for picking things up and getting about, we've had to use the mattress from the sofa bed to raise the height of our bed. So the sofa frame is now cov...

Both life and death have been getting more attention than the virtual world recently. At the end of April I lost an old friend to a sudden heart attack. David Johnson first came into my life in the early 1980s as my brother's composition tutor at Napier College. He was a composer, musicologist, performer, teacher, arranger and a square peg in a round hole (a bit like me). We didn't always share the same outlook on life but friendship isn't really about being the same. It's the differences that make it interesting. To see the worth in those differences while recognizing the similarities is to find a friend. I'll miss David's singular opinions and his impressions of characters from the Goon Show. His obituary in the Guardian describes his public life at least as well as I could. This photo was taken in December 2007 (hence the Christmas party hat) and is the most recent photo I have of David. I may post more when I dig out the pre-digital archive. As I said...