Last night I had a dream. I dreamed was alone in the frozen white wastelands of the Arctic. There was no food. I spotted the skull of a seal, with the brain still in it. This I knew was the only food for miles. Just then, a polar bear appeared in the distance. He stopped in his tracks, and we locked eyes. He was hungry too. I turned and began to run. I could hear his feet thundering behind me. Of course I knew he was much faster and it was only a matter of time before he caught up with me. Right before he pounced, I turned around and said, ‘look, I can share this with you! How about I break a bit off and share it with you?’ He stared at me for the longest time, sizing me up. Then he slowly broke out in sly smile and said, ‘okay, why don’t you do that?’

There was a big snow storm last night and today, and much of the East Coast of England lost its electricity. My beach was covered in snow, which is a rare and beautiful occurrence. We had no power in the house from midnight last night till about 3pm this afternoon. But with periods of sunshine to drive my solar panels, and a light northeasterly wind turning the turbine on my mast, I was able to keep working in my renewable energy-powered lifeboat studio, warmed by a potbellied stove burning hexagonal logs of reconstituted sawdust. Boy do I feel smug!

new Thomas Dolby photo by NKGuy  [nkguy.com]

A slight correction about the Lucas thing that my friend Paul Sebastien pointed out to me: he’s actually not aware of any movie plans, and was just talking about the live action TV show that George had talked about in an interview with an Australian TV station a while back. Paul is only working on the games side, and I know from past experience that he’s very professional and discrete, and would never leak confidential secrets, even to a close friend.

Sorry to throw a bucket of water on it, Star Wars fans: I should have chosen my words more carefully given the ultra-sensitivity of your blogosphere!

We’re running a t-shirt design contest for my Feb 28th gig at the Union Capel, Islington, London! There are details on my Forum.

I’m in Tiburon, CA, jetlagged and wide awake at 5am. I’m looking across the Bay to Angel Island and the city of San Francisco, which is glittering under the first glow of the dawn. It’s a bit weird coming back here this time, but I had some administrative things to do. I chose to avoid my ‘home town’ down the Coast, and yesterday when I had some time to kill I explored some places I’d never been: the Marin Headlands, Mill Valley, and the Bay Model in Sausalito. This is a 4- acre scale model of the SF Bay, built by the Corps of Engineers to simulate the twice daily flood and ebb of the vast estuary every 14 minutes. Of its 1600 sq miles of water, 2/3 of the Bay is under 18 ft deep. A lot of this is down to the ‘hydraulic mining’ done in the Sierras during the Gold rush in the late 19th century. You can see all the little eddies and backwaters. The model is rather serene and lovely, and very interesting to a sailor like myself… or anyone trying to escape from Alcatraz.

My host is friend and former collaborator Paul Sebastien, who over the years has worked for Xbox, Playstation, and now LucasArts. Last night he was telling me a little about the forthcoming Star Wars-related TV show, movie and online games—very cool indeed. I’m not a huge fan myself (and definitely not a gamer) but it sounds like Mr Lucas has got his head into a good place. I met him several times when I was working on a movie in the 80s called [name suppressed to protect credibility!] and he’s a decent chap, but I could have done without the last three SW movies.