Echoes of Flavio's Ghost Dreaming

Well, what did the New Year bring?

For me, the sense of dread, the dozens of WhatsApp messages between members of my family and friends checking whether the others were safe, the phone footage on TikTok of the city I grew up in being bombed, the friends abroad celebrating the violation of my original country and the apparent toppling of a tin-pot dictator, kidnapped or arrested (take your pick) and now standing trial in NYC, accused of a whole pile of stuff he probably didn't do -none of the bad things that he did do, apparently. Interestingly, only one of my friends (an ex-girlfriend, friend of 40 years +) currently living in Vz was celebrating, although many of those Venezuelans abroad were. I told this friend about my concerns about the consequences and repercussions of this not just for Vz but for the whole world. She's now not speaking to me.

I'm no fan of Maduro, but I fear what's to come after this. Whenever the gringos have done something like this (Chile, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc) the outcome has been five or more years of extreme violence, tens of thousands of dead. I would not like to see that in my original country.

It's been a rather strange week.

Winter finally coming, what gets to me is not the cold (and it hasn't been _that_ cold) but the darkness, the short days, it becoming pitch black night in the middle of the afternoon.

And then there's been the health issues. Or rather, the not knowing what's going on.

A few months ago I started having back pain. I also noticed that I had tingly feet and my ankles were a bit swollen. This can be caused by various alarming things so went to the doctors. They said it could be one of various alarming things and sent me for an ultra-sound scan, which was inconclusive. Then to a CT scan, a PET scan and finally an MRI scan, the results of which were never released to me or to the GP. I insisted and they sent me to UCLH for further checks - blood and urine tests, then a cardio echosonogram, then a full body MRI. Appointment to discuss whatever comes out of those, next week. On a day, of course, I had told them I would not be available so I had to scramble to sort that out.

The worst bit, thus far, is not knowing what's going on. But then, thus far, neither do they know what it is, so just a matter of patience. Wait and see.

Went to get my guitar back from the menders today. Well one of my guitars but the one I've had for nearly half a century. It is a Yamaha GC15d (which I paid something like $1200 for, back in 1976) of the time when Yamaha had set out to make good concert classical guitars. But they chose an old Spanish standard for the distance between axles in the tuning machines of 39 mm. Every other classical guitar in the world has a distance of 35 mm. There is only one maker of guitar tuning machines in the world that makes them to 39, in the USA. Instead of the 30 or 40 quid that a reasonable tuning machine would have cost me when the originals broke, had to pay close on $150 and... they weren't very good. So they had to be replaced when they broke, hardly more than a year since I bought them. So we had to improvise.

The 'mender', Mike Cameron, is an instrument luthier and repairer who must be, like the guy running the Camden Coffee Shop (which is not a café but.. well, a coffee shop where he sells coffee), one of the legends of Camden Town. His workshop is an Aladdin's cave of instruments and he, who is now 80, a trove of anecdotes and information. His solution was to take a normal tuning machine and cut apart the individual tuners; the way he did it it's quite hard to tell that that is what he did so I'm pleased. I've had, as I mentioned, that guitar for nigh on half a century so I'm glad it still is a working instrument.

'A Moment's Thought', one of my own little pieces, played live at the kentishtowncityfarm on 17-10-25

Guitar is a Yulong Guo Chamber Concert

#guitar #classicalguitar #kentishtowncityfarm #kentishtown #livemusic

I'm playing a recital at the Café Palestina up the road from here.

"a short classical guitar recital with
Flavio Matani
at Café Palestina,
53,, Fortess Road
An evening of Classical Guitar music with music by J S Bach, Fernando Sor, Alonso de
Mudarra, Diego Pisador, Antonio Lauro and Flavio Matani.
Date: Thursday, 25 September 2025
Time: 7:00 pm
Café Palestina,
53, Fortess Road NW5 1AD
Admission £10 - paypal flavio_matani@mac.com
Info and tickets: flavio_matani@mac.com -
info@cafepalestina.co.uk
"

Trying to convert old iPhoto libraries from twenty years ago to a format I can more easily use these days. 50 GB, so taking days to do this! Also as the photos keep popping up I run into friends who are no longer with us, some who seem to have disappeared or decided we are no longer friends, couples who are now mortal enemies of each other... and also friends who still are friends and memories of good times past, so there is that. It all feels quite strange, looking at these snippets of past lives.

After the little scare when booking the flight back from Miami on the NY, I decided that, expensive and a faff as it now is, I should get British citizenship, after all these years.

Why hadn't I done it before? Well, until 2016 that didn't seem necessary, with me being an EU citizen. But then I learnt that half of this country kind of don't want me here (I know, I'm being a bit melodramatic there). On the night before the flight back the airline wouldn't let me check in online because 'I needed a visa to enter the UK' and I 'needed a return flight' out of the UK. That night, let's say I didn't sleep much. There's been a couple of other things that have made me think I really should look into this.

I tried to fill in the forms online and then I hit what seems a very minor obstacle: they want the _exact_ date of first arrival in the UK. Well, I came here first on a Caribbean Airways (national airline of Barbados) flight in... sometime late June or early July? 1986. You don't keep airline tickets from 38 years ago. Plus the airline went under the year after I came so no-one there to ask. I entered the country as an Italian, EU citizen, therefore no stamps on my passport. I should imagine the Home Office should have the passenger manifest for that flight so I daren't make up a date and then be told that I forfeited the nearly two thousand pound fee because I put false details in -can't afford that!. Later I learnt there is a lot more to that, apparently you should declare even minor parking or traffic fines, etc. So it looks like I need advice but -lawyers are very expensive! I don't think I can afford that and the nearly two thousand pound fee. So I'm at a bit of a quandary, waiting to see whether I can find more information about this. It is clear that at this point in the game I will be spending what's left of my life in this country -unless something really, really major happens. So it looks like I'll be needing advice on this.

Apart from health scares (there's been a couple of these in the last couple of weeks and I'm due for a CT scan next week), an interesting end of this week. I got a call (several calls and a voice-mail message) by this lady who needs a ’Spanish style guitarist’ for a function (her 80th birthday). I said I was not exactly that; I do not play flamenco, etc. She said she was aware that I was a classical guitarist, Would I be free to play (unamplified) at that garden do? How much would I charge? I said £250 and she jumped straight back ‘yes!’ Which made me think I should have said £400, but there you go. I’ll have to prepare a few biz cards to give out at that thing, see whether I can get more custom of that sort. Summer is normally very very slow and I very often just scrape through September, so this is quite welcome.

A different week. It's the small things.. like something called 'plantar fascitis' (if it is that, the doctor's examination was all in prose, words not physical), which is an incredibly painful foot that makes it a challenge to walk. And trying to renew my driving license (as I'm incredibly old by now, twice as old as I ever though I'd be) and the form arrived in the mail says I can do it online. The form online says I cannot do it online because they need to change the photo, go to a post office. The post office says they cannot do it there because. And that I have to send the application by post. With my passport. Hm, that doesn't make me very happy. Will have to investigate more about this and what options there are for me.

What a strange counterpoint between the very extremely alarming news coming from... out there (waves vaguely at the world outside) and the relatively hum-drum or at least quotidian river of life in my corner, quietly sliding past in guitar lessons, practice, local goth clubs at the local rock pub, walks to the Heath or down in the general direction of that there London. Posting pictures of sunsets that nobody sees, posting clips of my guitar playing that nobody seems to care about. Reading, again in strange counterpoint, a fantasy book with minor gods who intervene in the affairs of humans for the next Bibliogoth and also Naomi Klein's 'Shock Doctrine', with its resonances with the nightmare currently about to unfold in the world. Enjoying a bit of coconut sorbet ice-cream and talking to a few friends, walking down the South Bank in the night but also driving up the M1 to my school of Tuesdays when it's still dark and I'm only 10% awake if that. The river of life's currents continue their sliding by, relentlessly.