E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

Eyewear loves music, as you probably know, and loves a good list.  Given the London BBQ moment, here are ten songs - arguably the greatest in the rock/pop canon - that go with hot times.  I should add that I am of the opinion that rock/pop has two key themes: sex and love.  Here then 10 recommended blistering summer songs, G & T optional: 1. '99.9 F' - Suzanne Vega 2. 'Mesopotamia' - The B-52's 3. 'Sex On Fire' - Kings Of Leon 4. 'Blister In The Sun' - Violent Femmes 5. 'Summer of 69' - Bryan Adams 6. 'Summer's Cauldron' - XTC 7. 'Whole Lotta Love' - Led Zep 8. 'Real Cool Time' - The Stooges 9. 'L.A. Woman' - The Doors 10. 'Sister Havana' - Urge Overkill

Heard It On The Grapevine London has two settings: rubbish weather and Tropical.  Either it is rainy, gloomy and muddle-through intermittent sunny, or it is blazingly humid - which it is now.  We are in the throes of 28 degree weather+.  This is wonderful, but also, given the Sargasso that is the Tube, semi-deadly.  It's been a good time to watch The Rum Diary , a sultry, oddball film that is a strangely moving portrait of three SNAFU'd writer buddies in 1960 Puerto Rico, written by Hunter S ., and produced by J. Depp .  It has a brilliant character actor turn from Michael Rispoli , who should play Bob Holman in a biopic.  The film also features a splendid Amber Heard , who is as fine a starlet as one could wish for, in London or the Bahamas.  Readers of Eyewear from Day One will know that when we kicked off in 2005, the subject was about weather, too.

England is enjoying the hottest October 1st on record today - it is set to be 29 Celsius in some parts.  With the sun comes a sense of simple satisfaction: heaven to be alive at this time, in this place.

Is there anything better than sun?  Not the sun, mind, but sun, singular.  Sun.  As in getting, taking, catching.  Today was sunny in London.  Fully and completely sunny.  22 Celsius.  That is almost miraculous - a barbecue Spring moment of extreme grace.  I sat out in both the back and front of my flat, following sun.  I read some Hazlitt , on Familiar Style, the new Adrienne Rich , some Jessie L. Weston (she has a marvellous style!), and ended with some April poems from David Lehman 's delightful The Evening Sun .  I also read some newspapers, and other books, one on rhetoric, but leave that for another day.  I sometimes wore my UEA ballcap - but mostly I am red-faced for the seeking of the very highest good: sun.

Eyewear is a staunch supporter of the Olympic movement, and, as a Canadian landed in London, is wide-eyed at the lack of British interest in the Vancouver Games , about to begin in a mostly snowless environment that beggars belief. The British like their hardware, and their medal haul at the summer games were impressive. They don't do snow that well - leaves on the tracks slow them, snow halts the nation. Winter does not inspire athleticism here, but weary hunkered down stoic getting on. So it is, Team GB aims to win three medals. Meanwhile, the big story about Canada's team is two-fold: a) they've never won a home Gold: and b) they have created a scientific project to plan to dominate their own games. That seems oddly inhospitable, but it was time to do Soviet-era science on the bobsledders. The Winter Games are good spectacle. Cool eyewear, Velcro and Lycra. Stupendous spills. Rocketing pucks. May the flame never go out!

I thought I'd stop blogging so much, but the world keeps turning. A few quick things - I hear Tom Chivers has a book of poems out. I'd like to know more about this - can someone send me a review copy? He's such an active presence on the London scene, but I don't know his poems as well as I'd like. Want to see what he's put out there. Also, was in Selfridges the other day for their 50% off sale, and spotted Ben Wilkinson's poem on the ceiling by the Blink counter. There are poems which I selected by young poets all over the store, hope some of you spot some of them. I also wanted to say that Amazon's just delivered the two new Penguin modern classic reissues of those first two key Susan Sontag books of essays, Against Interpretation and Styles of Radical Will . They look great, and readers of Eyewear who don't know these books should get them - Sontag was, of course, one of the first to think seriously about popular culture in English - m...

It seems that summer arrived today, in London - with the 20 Celsius weather. Finally! People are out, dressed like it's August in Cannes, or Miami. No time to blog, really. I was just so delighted with the sun and blue sky. Below, an unpublished poem of mine, written last summer in Canada, to celebrate this day. Laurentian Lakes My brother and his wife come down to the lake Late, vegetarians with their barbecue; but The fuel is gone, so they drive off with my wife In their car, leaving me alone with the lake. Well, there are the Germans ruining the water With their attempts to break it, and the spine-turning Girl-guard tilted up against the shack, Glassed-up and closed. I look out At the copied trees, and rocks, then double-back To her, young and caught like a hook In the pages of a novel that might not quite be A book, but is a story, flowing over the locks Of each chapter-ending, that stop-start Editors like, because it jumps like suspense; Fish jump too, for flies; bats curve in...