Slits Book Launch

Yesterday I went to the launch of Zoe Street Howe's book on The Slits.
The sound of Toots and the Maytals squashed out of tiny speakers perched high on the wall, and Dick's Bar in Soho was packed with familiar faces. Dennis Bovell was there and I had a chat with him; I used to teach his son Adrian, who is now a Seventh Day Adventist preacher and apparently lives in Copenhagen. He used to play trombone and he was a very polite young man.
I told Dennis about wanting him as my producer for Helen and the Horns when I was signed to RCA and how they refused; he explained that he'd annoyed them by not dropping everything to work with another of their artists one time, as he thought it was wrong to just dump someone when someone bigger was calling. That made sense to me.
I spoke to Vivien Goldman, who is friendly and fun, and who came to my Lost Women party; Gina Birch and Lucy O'Brien were there, as were Nadya Ostroff (who played guitar with the Slits for over a year not long ago and who was reporting back on the evening for Ari, who is in the USA), Steve Beresford, Ana and Shirley, Tessa Pollitt (of course) who was looking happy and excited, Viv Albertine (who I would have loved to have spoken to for the book but it seemed people were trying to hide her from me at the time!), Don Letts (who was looking fabulously funky), Judy Blame, and lots of other people who looked very up-to-the-minute.
Zoe did a reading from the book, which sounds as though it's a great read (I liked the bit about the studio tea-lady helping them with the mix of Heard it Through the Grapevine after Dennis Brown took one look at the mixing desk and panicked).
That's the cake above, by the way.

Earlier this week Offsprog One asked if her boyfriend could come to stay. Then her boyfriend's brother. Then...
So there were four big teenage chaps in the house last night.
How to behave? Well, they are much the same as teenage girls only their faces are higher up and their voices are deeper down. I hit on an idea while they were waiting to go out this morning. I had been dragging my feet about getting the gardener back to cut the hedge.
Within half and hour one chap was cutting the hedge, another was mowing the lawn and another was weeding, ten quid each job, well done and saved me a lot of energy!
Add to that the excitement of finding a poor dead (though probably old, as it was huge) hedgehog floating belly up in the tiny pond under the tree at the back, and it was all very exciting and sure to get those curtains twitching across the road!
They have all gone off to the Natural History Museum, leaving behind a faint scent of Lynx aftershave.