RNLI, Whitstable

 

Charity Collector

 

Green Hair

Passing thoughts drifted through my head last week like clouds through the windy sky... 

I remembered working in a Bed and Breakfast in Brighton as a cleaner when punk first came to the town. Horrible job, actually. The owner, a woman who I got on really well with, asked me to look after it for the weekend while her family went away. The permanent residents (men on the dole) went out to the pub on the first night, came back, fried up the breakfasts for the whole weekend, and ate up all the food.

At 5 a.m. I had to charge around Brighton looking for eggs, bacon, bread and milk so I could make breakfast for the holidaymakers. Urgh. I managed to do it just in time.

I had green hair, dyed with food colouring: it dyed every pillow that I rested my head on. No need for tech tracking!

Tina Weymouth

 

Baby Brain

Well, I suppose you can't challenge the science, but I completed my MA when I was six months pregnant with my second child, and passed my driving test when I was nine months pregnant (she was a week late). It was the 5th attempt; I hadn't managed to pass when I wasn't.

I'm writing this because I'm doing lots of housework today; woman's work, you know. So I'm all cross about everything.

Unused Art

Quite often I get asked to illustrate various things, and the drawings don't get used. 

Same with music: I've got all sorts of collaborations that never see the light of day; they are all on a computer upstairs. This is a series of drawings that I did for a music video.

Cogs, Ratchets, Daffodils

It's interesting the way that memories and experiences recalibrate suddenly when you have a change of scene, then return to 'normality'. For some people, going somewhere else is better than a thousand therapy sessions. Sometimes, I think therapists throw a bunch of explosives into people's lives, and then simply go home for a cup of tea. It's not them who have to live with the consequences of their sessions. Sometimes, it seems the people whose lives they have disrupted need more therapy to recover. And so on, and so on. Anyway, I am probably prejudiced after having so many conversations with people who have been victims of the fallout from therapy sessions their children or partners have had, and yes I had a very good counselling session at one point, but I think that might be a slightly different thing.

Maybe because I'm arty-farty, the stuff that I do acts as a form of therapy in itself. So I should shut up, really.

What I meant to say is that I've returned from being away with a sense of calm and clarity. Before I left, I felt that someone had attached a drawstring to my face and pulled it tight so my features were scrunched up in a bundle of worry. Everything that passed my senses overloaded them and folded into the confusion. It's easy to forget that you have inner strength; when it comes back, it's a bit like being ironed from within and meeting the world with ease.

I know it won't last long; life will throw its spears again: the most important thing to remember is to get away when it happens, and clear my head. The machinery returns to its 'reset' mode, reboots, and normal function returns.

Meanwhile, here are the Trent Park daffodils, looking absolutely gorgeous and smelling gorgeous too.

Bang

This hotel has very loud doors; when they close, the floor shakes. I was awoken just after 6.30 by my neighbour leaving their room but it was a huge relief, because I'd been having a nightmare about the University where I used to work. 

Someone had moved into my office; they were a ceramicist, and they'd filled the drawers on the desk with blocks of fresh clay. This is the result of becoming over-engaged with the Channel 4 show The Great Pottery Throwdown, perhaps. I was able to rescue some tiny things from one of the drawers, but there was nobody around to ask why it had happened. The University was functioning, with assistants at the desk, security guards and all of the people-machinery to keep it ticking over, but there were no students and no lecturers. That this seemed so frustratingly normal might give you an inkling of how it feels to work in HE at the moment. Talking to people who are still in these places, you get the feeling that they are standing on one of those cliffs in Norfolk that are being brutally reclaimed by the sea.

It's going-home time and the sun is shining! What a lovely day to wake up to.

Newspaper and Cheese Scones

It's the last day of songwriter's exile and I suppose if I were a sculptor, you could say that I've cut the quarried granite blocks to shape and just need to join them and finish them.

I went for a walk this morning very early, thinking that I couldn't write another song in this location, but just as I was thinking that, and idea slid into my head from some brain branch where it had been perched waiting, so I came back and started working on it.

I've stopped again because I became stuck in a mire of trite rhymes, and I'm not aiming to write the message inside a Hallmark greetings card. It's OK, I have done enough for now. I compiled everything this morning and was shocked at how something that has felt so intense has resulted in so little material- but then I remembered that I have been writing lyrics too (until I got to the trite rhymes bit), and if I thread the lyrics on to the music, or vice versa, there is something there to work with. As for this morning's idea, it's almost like taking back a bit of treasure to gloat over when I get back home; this one, I don't want to finish so quickly. I want to savour it, which is the exact opposite of the tumbling-out of ideas for the other songs.

Isn't it wanky, a non-famous person like me burbling on about songwriting as though I am Burt Bacharach! Ha ha! Actually my favourite songwriter is Lionel Bart, because he could do everything, lots of different styles, and still sound like him.

Going out early was a mixed blessing: I thought the Grainger Market would be bustling, but in actual fact when I got there at 9 a.m. it was still yawning and didn't want to get out of bed. It's a strange mixture of harsh and sleepy, this city, and has been invaded by what must be sites of money laundering activities. I counted loads of Newsagents but not one single newspaper within them: lurid-coloured bottles of pop and shelves of sweets and crisps were lined up as far as the eye could see. There were no customers. It was worse than an indie merch stall, seriously! And the vacuum: 'What's happening in the world?' I don't know, have a sweetie!'. I know we are all supposed to scroll through ads and shouty headlines on our phones, but I wanted to unfold a rustling newspaper next to a cup of coffee, and read articles juxtaposed next to each other. That way, you can digest different perspectives that have been through some sort of gatekeeping process, even though you might not always agree with the gatekeepers' points of view. It took me ages to find one but finally I did, and I sat in the café with a giant cheese scone (Geordie caviar) and failed to complete the crossword, which felt like utter luxury.

It's started to rain out there: there are drops of rain clicking agains the window because it's windy too. Outside my hotel room I can hear the cleaners whooshing about with their Henries, and in adjacent rooms they are running water to clean the bathrooms. The sign on my door handle says that I am asleep and don't want to be disturbed. There wasn't a sign that said 'I am writing songs and don't want to be disturbed', otherwise I'd use that instead.

This morning's song is hovering about but I can't let it land just yet. I've arranged to meet Pauline at lunchtime, so I'm going to read a crap detective novel until then. 

Ta-ra pet-lambs!

Hexham, and a Vacant Head

When I opened the curtains this morning, it was a beautiful sunny day. It looked so enticing out there that I decided against hiding away and writing songs, and walked up to the station and caught the train to Hexham.

We used to go there every Saturday with McMum and McDad when we were little, and I used to hover in the stationery department of Robbs department store (now no longer there) while McMum did the food shopping. We'd see a little old lady with grey hair in a horse and cart clopping along the road to go to the market. Once, a bunch of us children from the village danced as the Pied Piper's rats in a show in the Hexham theatre (before it became a cinema), and the Wylam Girl Guides all dressed as monks for a procession in Hexham Abbey, singing a dismal chant, monks-habit costumes made as instructed from old white bedsheets.

I noticed a record shop across the way from the coffee shop, and it turned out that it belongs to Jamie Harwood and his partner Moira. What was intended to be a solitary amble through the streets sadly peering into long-gone shops turned into a jolly conversation about music instead. We talked about song writing too; how very nerdy!

Moria recommended a shop across the road that sold homewares; the man whose shop it was asked if my husband or male partner was across the way looking at records while I looked at the clothes, candles and cushions. I was incredibly polite under the circumstances, and it turned out that he is a musician too. 

So much food for thought! I'd probably be writing songs about all that if I wasn't already preoccupied with other matters. I bumped into Pauline Murray again on the way back to finish the morning's song, then went out to the Grainger Market and bought three bananas and a box of fresh blueberries of two quid, which seemed remarkably reasonable.

There is literally nothing left in my head. I'm sitting here with the window open listening to the gulls barking outside on the river Tyne. I know that I can write better lyrics than I've written, I know I'll have to change lots of things about the songs so far, and I know there's going to be a day of pouring rain tomorrow so I may well be holed up here just writing. For tonight, I'm going to fill my head with rubbish TV and read a bit of a crime novel, and you can't say fairer than that.

Two Gigs with Pauline Murray

It's going to be great to do these gigs with Pauline- we played together in London a few years ago at the Betsey Trotwood and it seemed as though every Geordie in town came along- and a few honourable Geordies to boot! A matinee in Brighton, and an evening gig on the Golden Hinde in London (no, autocorrect, it really isn't called the Golden Hinge!)

Posters nicked from Instagram, so don't click on the arrow, plz.

Brighton ticket link: https://www.seetickets.com/event/pauline-murray-helen-mccookerybook/the-prince-albert/3616963

London Ticket link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/pauline-murray-penetration-helen-mccookerybook-live-on-the-golden-hinde-tickets-1984895127759

All Out Of Chords

I have a few beginnings, hip hip hooray.

I'm out of chords and out of energy, but happy to have made a start.

I met my friend today for a coffee break. It's so good to see someone that I've known since I was seventeen. We used to share a room in Sunderland at Mrs Hugie's house, and tried to share dreams but that didn't work. We have both had uppity-downity lives but here we still are, laughing and horrified in turn.

Will it rain tomorrow? The weather is lying about what it's going to do- even the weather. Truth is a very wobbly concept at the moment!

Writing Songs

I have come away on my own to write songs. Surprisingly, I got stuck in straight away yesterday afternoon when I got here, which was exhausting and I slept like a log last night.

I did something similar two years ago, but was much more relaxed about everything and went for copious walks in the sunshine (it was January in Devon and freakishly beautiful).

This time around the songs are for a specific purpose, and break the usual mould of chord sounds and imagery: they are storytelling songs that reject metaphors. One of yesterday's efforts was utter rubbish, but in an odd way that was quite a good result; the rubbish has to go somewhere, and out on a page is better than inside your head messing everything up in secret. At least I recognise rubbish when I hear it!

Annoyingly, I managed to leave the book that lyrics belong in at home, and had to go to buy a cheap notebook. It's got rough paper (supposedly for drawing on), but it's quite satisfying to scribble upon, making a scraping, scratchy sound with a suitably irritable timbre.

One of the things you realise is that you can't just sit there and 'songwrite' for hours on end; you need thinking time, so you need to wander around outside and daydream. That's one of my favourite activities, and even though I've booked a fairly grim, cheap hotel to stay in, the sun is shining and the walking around bits are fun. I've drunk the tea of three people (it's a last minute room with lots of supplies) so will have to take a proper break soon.

I've seen some astonishingly weird things: a young embarrassed-looking man in a short-sleeved polo shirt, carrying a tiny white-painted metal cage with a bright yellow cockatiel inside it down the very busy high street (the cockatiel looked very happy and self-important); a busker unpacking an acoustic guitar from its case, strumming a few chords, then burping really loudly; a serious-looking woman with an absolutely enormous stuffed plush duck attached to her wheelie suitcase, very early this morning; and two abseiling engineers in orange hi-vis sliding themselves up the very thin wires of the bridge in the sunshine, looking like some strange musical score that moves up and down before the instrumentalists can catch up with it.

For once, writing a blog post doesn't feel like procrastination. There's a mist of song ideas swirling around inside my head, and I have to wait for it to settle. Ideas that 'belonged' to one song have landed on an entirely different one. I've also written a guitar part that is impossible to play with my current skills, but that's probably a good thing too, because it'll have to be rehearsed until it comes easy.

I wonder if I can intercept one of the cleaners, and ask for some more tea bags.

Accordion Player, Quayside, Newcastle

 

Women of the World for International Women's Day

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/women-of-the-world