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. 

On reflection, I think if you are a man married to another man, then sometimes you might feel obliged to reinforce other people's stereotypes to try to fit in, especially in a small market town where passive aggression simmers below surface interactions. 

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

March Bandcamp Friday Tomorrow

My own copies of this 7" vinyl single showed up yesterday. It's pressed on beautiful translucent blue vinyl, and is a collaboration between me and Willie Gibson, the analogue synth wizz that I've worked with before. I sing both tracks in Scottish Gaelic, which took a long time to learn!

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/album/cailin-moruin-sa-ailein-duinn

Café

 

Neil Young (young)

 

Daffodils and the Car Wash

I'm swerving past the charity shops today just in case they grab me and force me to take back the many bags of some-people's-rubbish-other-people's-treasure. 'Gotcha!'. Will they recognise me? I hope not!

I drove to Trent Park: it's very rare to drive close to home, but it's a long walk and a complicated bus trip. Would the sea of daffodils be there, even though the main building (supposedly in trust for educational purposes) has been turned into luxury flats? Yes, they are still there, though only 50% in bloom at the moment. It's a bit early for them, I think. Enfield has not yet noticed climate change, although it has taken on board ethics change. 

There are murals by Rex Whistler in that building; I know this because not only did I study there, I also taught there. Studying there was wonderful; it involved a long journey from filthy Camberwell, via my sister-in-law's to drop off Offsprog One, up through infinite tube tunnels and out into what seemed like paradise. It wasn't just the lovely surroundings (actual SNOW in winter!) but it was a paradise of knowledge, of a brain finally being ready to learn really complex theories, and a mind broadening to enjoy art-forms I'd never previously seen the point of. Teaching, too: students turned up early for lectures, loved the knowledge, showed off their new tattoos, made eye-contact, asked questions and gave a round of applause at the end of each lecture. It was really stimulating. Then you got to walk down the hill to Oakwood tube station, through the actual oak woods, in a part of Greater London where people didn't strangle each other and steal each other's wallets.

In about ten days time the full display of daffodils will be ready, and people who know about them will make a pilgrimage to see them. Then you'll be able to hear their loud trumpets, playing a joyous spring chorus as they point to the left, point to the right and point up at the sky.. 'Look at us! We're here again!'

And here is a silly thing. I took my car to the automated car wash. It is just so much fun! I remember how thrilling it was when we used to go with McDad when we were children; I couldn't believe that such a mundane thing could be so entertaining. Enormous thundering brushes spin at a relentless speed and approach the windscreen; detergent sprays, water squirts. The car feels little (it is, anyway): over the roof and down the sides the huge brushes sweep simultaneously, whacking the car clean. Maybe time will stop and you'll be stuck there in an endless cycle! Oh no! Help! Finally, the air blows the water off the windscreen, and you're done. What an exciting adventure on a Tuesday afternoon.

It's not that clean, actually. It was shamefully grubby after a couple of long motorway journeys in torrential rain a few weeks ago and there hasn't seemed to be any point in getting in washed while it's been raining so much. This wash is a precursor to a Hungarian hand-wash that I hope might finally remove the moss from around the windows. It's kind of lovely to see it there, but it's probably not very good for the rubber seals. That's what happens when you drive to Scotland: you bring back souvenirs from the countryside and redistribute it darn sarf.

So that's today's adventures. 

Man on Tractor on Hot Day

 

Mad March Hare

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/hare

Snowfall in the House

Triumphant after taking six bags of charity-shop stuff to three different shops, and collecting McMum's coat which I'd had taken up 14 centimetres (the moths were consistent), I unloaded Monday's washing.

Oh no.

Someone left a tissue in a pocket, and that someone was me. Snow all over the kitchen floor.

Two Bags Full

That's two bags of vintage clothes delivered to the Oxfam shop. 

A fine mist of dust is still floating around the house from yesterday, making everything look like a Vermeer painting. Some of it has settled and I've had the Henry (or rather the Henrietta: I wanted a pink one), out for a dust-slurping adventure. 

It's very vacuum-cleaner smelly, because it's a recycled one. I was a bit annoyed when I discovered that a new one would have cost the same amount to buy, but I consoled myself with the fact that there is one less Henry floating around in the Pacific Ocean with all the ancient Duplo and the discarded water-bottles.

Shall I take another couple of bags out? Maybe. I'll have a cup of coffee and make a decision. 

Kojak or charity shops?

Next Week

Next week I'm going away on a solo song writing retreat. I have so many ideas but it's impossible to even start them properly at home because there are so many distractions. 

I did this in 2023: I went away in January that year, and only really wrote one complete song- but somehow the cogs in my mind adjusted themselves and when I got back I just sat down and wrote a whole lot of 'em.

The funny thing is that as soon as I decided what I was going to do, even more ideas popped up. This means that I will have to edit which songs I finish and which I don't. This always feels alarming at the time, but is actually a really good thing to do. I remember when Beyoncé brought out her Lemonade album, it got so many excellent reviews that I really wanted to listen to it. I was fascinated by the song-house idea, too: the problem was that I didn't  know where to start, so I didn't start at all!

Simon Frith, the academic and rock critic, once said that Garageband was the worst thing that had happened to music, because there was a complete flood of DIY music with no mediators. Taking into account that he himself is a mediator and perhaps has a vested interest in protecting opinion-formers, I started to see his point, until I realised that I am one of the guilty parties (though in my case, it's Logic Audio). 

Right from the start, I've filled the cutting room floor with rejected songs, middle eights, lyrics and harmonies. I once overstuffed a song so much that I couldn't decide what to lose and dumped the whole thing. When I did the Showtunes from the Shadows album, I shelved two songs completely. I also chopped out verses and backing vocals, and in one of the songs completely re-wrote the lyrics because they were potentially contentious, and some people didn't want to be associated with it.

Sorry to burble on. Both Offsprogs came here and cleared stuff from the loft yesterday- impressively, they managed to empty about five boxes, but I've now got a very large number of bags to take to charity shops this week, and writing this post is part of an elaborate plan to put that off. I must make a start: I can't go off on a song writing retreat with Toy Story DVDs and redundant costume jewellery piled up in the room to come back to. Such things are energy vampires. Begone!