The constant dreams have now stopped, but I'm missing Millennium Mills an enormous amount. It's not just the adrenaline, I loved being in there. A very private world.

Here's the first of the Legacy background films.  I am constructing a solar powered toy rowing boat during a firework display.  Enjoy.

It felt like being back in the Legacy building, this dive - far too many similarities to be ignored.  I'm still working on what these abandoned spaces do to me.  Interesting.

Music by Blacksand, my band with Charlie Casey. Click here to hear more.  Our album Barn, winner of rave 5-star reviews and Record of the Week awards, is available on iTunes, but having just seen how ridiculously high Apple have priced it I wouldn't bother with that.  Either download it from Boomkat (at half the price and twice the quality) or contact me if you're after one of the last copies of the CD - this comes in a great Chris Bigg and Vaughan Oliver V23 designed embossed gatefold sleeve that will enhance your life for many years.

I have finished my Legacy installation.  At last the tease comes to an end, albeit some months later than I'd expected.

The Guardian is running a piece on it tomorrow - Dorian Lynskey came in to see the installation with me.  This makes him one only four people who will ever see it in the flesh.

I have written about Legacy on a separate page - click here.

100 solar powered rowing boats competing in the sunlight.  

This is just a test, and it works.  Good fun too.

I saw the flotilla going down the Thames for the Queen's Jubilee Pageant on the TV the day after I filmed this, and while there's no intended connection with that it did make me smile.  I did have a shocking 'oh bloody hell' moment a couple of weeks ago, when I stumbled across a real connection with the Jubilee that I'd have preferred to avoid, but how was I to know the Spirit Of Chartwell would interfere with what I've been surreptitiously beavering away at for the past few months?  Things should be back to normal now.  Well, more normal anyway.

This is half of the consignment of boats that arrived earlier this week from China.  I've still got quite a bit of assembly time ahead of me to put the remainder together - it's not complicated but when you've got 200 of anything a bit fiddly to build, that's ages.  It's either zen or really irritating, and I guess the zen trick is to convince yourself it's zen.

The boats will need to be partially dismantled again so I can get them into their final location as easily as possible, so this lot are only temporarily assembled.  I know they won't fall apart once the oars are attached properly, but I will have to do a bit of weatherproofing to keep the water out.

I am now wrapping up the preparation stages of my Legacy installation - there might be one more thing to check out, but I'm kind of there now with the preparation.  All will be revealed shortly.

3.30am - all alone in a strange place, just the way I like it.

I had just carried another four bags in to join the previous three.  Everything had changed for the worse, so it took me 8 hours to get to this point.  It should be getting easier each time but it's really really not.

Large deserted buildings make a surprising amount of noise and I knew no one else was in the place.  The ticking sound is water dripping through the ceiling.  Getting there.

Ain't solar power great?  If a bit cruel.

Legacy 10 preparation.  Getting there - I'm hoping all the elements of Legacy will come together by the end of May.

Rheingold, Scene II.  An open space on the mountaintops.

 

Music by Wolfgang Sawallisch and Bavarian State Opera, 1991 on EMI. 
Buy it from the great Harold Moore's Records: hmrecords.co.uk/

So the wonderful Mark Fry and Friends show has been and gone, and what a resounding success it was.  We'd all like to do more shows together, and judging from the reaction of the audience at Village Underground they'd like us to as well.  Watch this space.

From the heady heights of Thursday night it's back to the previous, slightly grubby matter in hand - nice grubby, rather than grubby grubby that is - Legacy preparation continues.  I'm glad it's been raining recently, fills the reservoirs.  Not enough for the farmers, but enough for me.  (See footnote below.)

Film below:  I guess you could call this Pre-Legacy prep.  I don't know the programme, just caught it on late night TV.  A lot of these old buildings are used as charismatic backdrops for TV programmes, which can be quite useful for planning, and it's always a buzz to see 'your' gaff on the telly.  The only reason I can think of recommending the appalling film Sahara is to catch its Pyestock moments - Cell 3 and Cell 4 both dolled up for Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz... I must say I pity the poor bastard assigned the job of getting the pigeon shit off everything before filming started.  

Why at least some of these remarkable places can't be preserved in some historically relevant way, rather than just knocking them down for lorry distribution centres or turning them into inappropriate flats is beyond me.  Go around the Ruhr valley and you'll see disused industrial works turned into art and public spaces that respect the history of the place.  A couple of years ago I live mixed John Cale's Dark Days installation in the old coal works in Essen, now partially art spaces and a kind of a park.  Families walking around, cafeterias, good buzz, while all the time the original coal machinery looms over you, reminds you how the place once was.  I might be being a bit naive - when I naughtily popped over a locked gate to see the coal works close up I wound up in the junkie's den, not quite the family atmosphere I'm describing - but at least they're trying something, respecting where it all came from, appreciating how it defines the area and the people in it.

Not so here in the UK.  Flatten it, move on.  I would say Rant Over but I haven't even started yet.

Footnote:  Someone told me recently I was being a right tease with the obtuse way I'm presenting what I'm doing at the moment, and to a certain extent I am, but there is a proper reason for that too:  I'm not even half way through setting up this installation - by far the most complicated thing I've taken on -  and if I made too much of a song and dance of it I'd probably have to abandon the whole thing.  I've been planning this for months, with tricky-to-research purchases from China, Athens and Argos, so abandoning it is not an option, especially as I'm way beyond the 14 day return period for Argos.

Preparation for my next project.

Carrying a 70 litre bag of J Arthur Bower's Multipurpose Compost up to a high floor of an abandoned building. This is the final stage of a complicated 3 hour journey carrying 3 bags.