15 Oct 2020 Farewell, goodbye, so long, adieu etc. Bowing out. Too many other issues crowding in. I'm totally done at this point. It's been a good run though, 60 songs (thank God for collaborators to keep me rolling), 415 commented listens, a likely cabaret musical out of part 5090. And special thanks to @IA for our sealed in blood compact to each keep writing while the other did!

12 Oct 2020 still in housekeeping mode--urban forest to be trimmed tomorrow; hoping to get some listening in during the last part of this week.

11 Oct 2020 Back from Angorichina, pup cleaned and repaired. Tents packed. What did we have apart from the two teen grandkids? Gales. Duststorms. 2 inches of rain in 24 hours. Flash floods. Road closures. 19th C mine tours (legit, safe). 19thC mine tours (ours, exploring. risky. No grandchildren lost down the shafts. Liquefying kangaroo stopped us going into the adit with the bat colony). Unintentional fourwheeldriving. Lotsa arid scenery a la Colorado/Wyoming (I'm told). Grandkids satisfied and SURVIVED NO PHONE/INTERNET CONNECTION. Tomorrow I'll start listening for a bit.

2 Oct 2020 GONE OUTBACK UNTIL OCT 10TH! NO INTERNET CONNECTION!

2 Oct 2020 ...AND discovered I DID record (piano) Corvid-20 on 12 July! So I've added vocals and put that up as a work-in-progress. Now for a quick hunt of what ELSE I've missed before the IDL cuts us off! And lo...two classical piano pieces emerge from their hidey hole behind the door...

1 Oct 2020 at 0044hrs local time (Adelaide) AND the last new creation sprang out and is now up. Everybody needs a waltz! Not maudlin, fearful, melancholy but bright and happy, just for dancing to as the world ends around us!

30 Sep 2020 I discover I ended a day early. A measure of my rattled state of mind. Never mind, perhaps something more may come out, perhaps not!

29 Sep 2020 I'm amazed I've made it to 50 songs (and thank you collaborators for being there to vampirise on!) Even so, odd things pop out such as the Mongrel Boots song but I think, given what else is going on, they're desperate mayflies getting going while the going is good. 5090 ahs saved my sanity this year and I shudder at where I'm going to be when it shuts down. I think I'll keep on at setting more of @otagoseaburials title which actually correlate to the shambles we find ourselves in.

24 Sep 2020 Crawling along, trying to finish unfinished songs. Getting there but it's definitely stonewalltime for anything new. I'll try tonight to take @IA's advice in forums and just churn out some garbage!

21 Sep 2020 Another day, another baseless legal threat. Ho hum. Stepping past that--I have a collab with @crisp1. I like his lyrics. I've had the basic tune, layout, harmony etc in my head and on paper and on MIDI more-or-less for nearly two weeks. I've even got to the point of having a proper fakebook lead sheet to get me through the trickier lyric sections. So why can't I produce a halfway-decent oreven indecent recording? I think I'm starting to wilt, and Oct 1 looms!!!!

19 Sep 2020 Through the maze. Slowly catching up. Out of practice badly (tried something complicated on the piano....!)

17 Sep 2020 Reading this bio blog isn't really uplifting, is it? Still, all the miseries seem to be generating interesting music. Especially the @Mari Flowerbalm collaboration.

15 Sep 2020 Lots of house renovation. Anger at the personal and livelihood destruction in Victoria (Oz). More legal bunfights appearing on the horizon. Guess i'm just unbalanced. Trying to finish collabs.

5 Sep 2020 However did I end up with not one but six collabs that are causing me headaches (not to mention a 7th that's gone off to the collaborator to cause HIM headaches)? I'm just a guy who cain't say no, apparently. Well...that's what comes of reading other people's lyrics...

29 August 2020 Cleaning up old songs, remastering, one or two comments, not being very 5090 regrettably. Must be one of those moribund moments. FIVE songs now I need to work on, all collabs. Still, plenty of time yet. Today was warm and springlike. Tomorrow is gales, storms, freezing etc.

27 August 2020 Like yesterday, too much renovation work to do anything much...fitting cladding to protect the cob wall. The cob turns out to be proper mud brick, joints still visible. Sitting on a low 2ft high stone wall. I guess they had enough stone and lime for the start all round, then kept going with mud. Two storeys!... And a friend trying to remove wall tiles from the bathroom: yes! the wall is mud brick except where there was a doorway and that is bricked up with PROPER bricks! An adventure in every corner. Daughters (this is my daughter's purchase, bought sight unseen as she's stuck in Victoria the Plague State) are God's revenge on fathers for being men. Never forget: God has a pronounced sense of humour.)

22 August 2020 Whoever thought designing a bathroom could be so complicated? Perhaps it goes with a 167 year old building where one wall turns out to be cob (not my Mill, that is definitely Stone and anyway, at 176 years a lot older....), with a ceiling that starts at 6ft one end to 12ft the other. And so on. The magpie ahd another cat session but ate some dog food, hid from the aggressive magpie we think hurt it in territorial conflict, then eventually got over the fence and strode off into safer convalescent areas. Meanwhile we finally catch the cat and now have an enraged feral cat to look after until monday when the vets can take over. Never a dull moment. Two more feral half-growns to catch. There is a special place in hell for people who dump cats, un-neutered, in the wild to spawn more and eat all the birds.

21 August 2020 Things interrupted by noise outside--injured magpie fending off feral 1/2-grown cat. Chased the catten, fed the magpie, shepherded it into a bush for the night.

20 August 2020 No, i haven't vanished. there are two or three songs in process, but other life aspects liek renovations are starting to crowd in again and the weather is cold, wet, dismal and conducive to nothing other than hugging the stove.

16 August 2020 Oh the joys of bathroom demolition and all the strange and wonderful things one finds. So glad for shots, hand sanitiser, sodium hypochlorite, rubber gloves, faceshields, and rubbish bins. Our plumber is going to need the first hour of his arrival to get of his laughter (or weeping) out of the way.. (Daughter's new establishment)

14 August 2020 Seriously stressed out, and depressed at failure after last and best efforts spanning years. Still, we pick up, trust in karma (eventually) push the debris aside and move on. I'm probably more buried right now in the music than I should be, but at least it's holding me upright, if not wholly sane. Some things on the go, discovering more good music here and odd discoveries (where have I BEEN all these years...oh...that's right...working...surviving...) on youtube too. Incl. Mary James on banjo but the arthritis is starting to defeat me so no banjo in my future (was thinking about it when I was young like you lot....)

9 August 2020 To my surprise I'm actually catching up the collabs I'm supposed to be doing! I think I'm down to two to do at this stage! Or three. Or four.. Problem is I go in and read lyrics only and they just shout out at me and I can't resist! (Not Vogon poetry, of course)

8 August COLD and rainy and fog, just 1C short of cold enough to snow. Dank. One incipient flue fire. Sorted. trying multiple collabs. Listening and commenting some. Not hyper active but thanks to collabs the music is coming out. Legal threats suddenly in abeyance, for now.

4 August 2020 Not all days are disasters. Getting more music out, some of it old, listening a bit, organising some more collabs with old friends. Pleased with progress for a change. Only one legal threat in the last 3 days, a near-record!

31 July 2020 Another day, another fabrication and another legal threat. Gets very tiring after a while. other crises keep happening BUT....compared to what some of my friends, esp. US are going through, my life is an idyll. So I'll shut up (now, off to stick pins in a clay figurine. Well, it might work. I'll feel better for it.)

30 July 2020 Eight hours of trying to get a Government online thing working. Including long phone calls with (helpful) public servants trying also to sort out what the IT geniuses have done. The scenario turns out to be catch-22. "You have been unsubscribed because our emails to you are not getting through. That's because they are being sent to an inbox on a Government site which you don't know about, because you actually don't have that account and therefore the inbox doesn't exist. Which is why the emails we send to you aren't delivered."

29 July 2020 More boat work but things aren't as bad as I thought originally. Hooray.

22July 2020 Amazing how boring songs come out. I just couldn't resist. Also points to how forums and community can stimulate. Anyway, at least picking up my commenting. Boat work tomorrow and Friday then back to music. I hope.

21 July 2020 THings a bit better but still chaotic and nasties continue in the background. As if the virus situation wasn't enough. Not enough listening or new music--I'm trying a burst now of both to catch up, but two new songs seems to be my day limit. And i need to do more listening and commenting, not even at 100 yet...though I've accumulated some lovely downloads, a greater proportion than usual. Cold and dismal winter.

17 July 2020 (PM) Back, some music and listening tomorrow.

12 July 2020 Still not in a good way. But still, at least we're in currently covid-free, not locked down, thanks to clever lyricists I'm actually getting some songs up, I ened to concentrate a bit on my own stuff, but it's boat work and on the water this cold tho fine winter week coming. We'll see. I know others are doing it harder.

9 July 2020 Issues keep getting worse. The Melbourne COVID-19th stuff-up has just killed the Victorian snow season, which probably means our daughter's restaurant and her 11 staff to boot. Not much I can do except rant, and no point in that, it's not even a source of relief any more. Listen to music is all I guess...

7 July 2020 I don't know, the issues just keep rolling and I keep dropping more balls. I'm going to give up the outside world very shortly... Schedules have changed again, I'll be boat work on the weekend then away for another 3-4 days. I'll sea (!) if I can create something. In the meantime, there's some instrumental on the way.

5-6 July 2020 It has been an appallignly stressful and badly legal-time-demanding time leading up to a horrendous meeting on Friday. Three cheers for studio quality Tascam DR-05s, sez I, because the recording will nip in the bud the next bouts of legal threats. Ho hum. Another day, another threat. I thought I was clear on the 4th and did that song with @otagoseaburial's crazy lyrics. Now I'm stuffed again after a full day of concordances and extracts and time checks on who said what when on 01:43:20 of high quality recording (every whisper guaranteed.!!!) I'll climb back up tomorrow. But I am going to be in and out this week and next, with GRANDSON on BOATS! In the depths of winter but what the hey! So music and listening both will come in blips. Right now, it's off to bed again.

21 June 2020 Life is very stressed here. We're okay, but bushfires, COVID-19 are wiping out family livelihoods and we're in desperate support-mode. With all sorts of other thigns happening too, that no-one wants to know about. So I don't know how I'll go with 5090. I do know that my existence, stress and issues and problems fade into insignificance comapred to my friends in North America and my family in the UK. So my complaints and moans stop here and now. At least I've been producing some music.
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I KNOW I was here 11 years ago, in 2009! I've got the archive and opera to prove it! Anyway, I followed @Hummingbird in. 2016 & 2017 were pretty dire, and I missed most of FAWM2018, but 5090-2018 was great! Alas, great plans for 5090 in 2019 collapsed under survival's demands, as it were. And now, well, survival for all is the best one can hope, right now. Let's see what comes out. Perhaps a bit of loving rather than snide bitterness? Flying Tadpole had better watch out, in that case...

Occasionally paid musician, long-term unpaid satirist, paid-up internet junkie: in polite company as Tim Fatchen (quiet, serious, good dinner companion); impolite company as Flying Tadpole (loud, rabid, good kennel cleaner...songs marked [FT]).

A quick sampling of both Tim Fatchen & Flying Tadpole is on http://www.youtube.com/flyingtadpole , Or http://flyingtadpole.com will give you all the links! And the tip hat is sitting at http://patreon.com/timfatchen Throw a dollar in occasionally and get some extra music!