John Hegley and the Sybilline Sisters in Tottenham

It was another one of those quirky evenings: Tottenham Chances has an air of the Youth Club about it, or perhaps a little urban French bar venue. Razz and his partner were welcoming and Ingrid was already there, smiling serenely in her hat. The windows had been flung wide open to the intermittent rainstorms, and there was an air of infectious informality about the whole thing. There were a lot of familiar faces around: some I had seen at Boat Ting, others at various odd events around the place. Razz played a couple of songs to start with (the sound was appalling: not to self to take own microphone to gigs in future) followed by a gentleman who did a scary version of They're Coming To Take Me Away, Haha, a song I remember being played on Radio Luxembourg when I was a teenager, and I remember being scared out of my wits by it. He was a bit like a punkhead in a tweed jacket as he played some angry songs afterwards.
Whilst he was playing, a little rock drama was being played out in a brightly-lit doorway behind him: two self-important rock roadies, one with long blonde curls and jangly dangly keys in his pockets and the other bearded in a grubby boiler suit, loaded in a succession of rock instruments: bass drum; keyboard in flight case, bit by bit, from stage left to stage right, never seeming to go back again in the other direction. Perhaps there was a succession of lookalikes?
The panto effect was added to by the massive red rubber gloves jangly keysman was sporting.
I sang Three Maple Men, Heaven Avenue and almost all of Temptation before I blew the PA and felt like a punk rocker again!
There was a poet from Aberdeen called Alan English, who did rhythmical rhyming poems, one particularly good one about domineering men who choose partners that they can control (!), a powerful poem about powerful men.
I really enjoyed the Sybilline Sisters, Cybille from Boat Ting, backed by Kay and the woman who plays bass in The Children.
Cybille's poems are like mean, short little ads; the Sister's backing vocals are sometimes percussive, sometimes mewing, sometimes mooing, glissing and gliding behind her gutsy delivery. She snarls her poetry with a stuttering gothic tension that is like experiencing a LeFanu novel in front of your eyes and ears.
There was more, it was a delightful evening. John Hegley slipped in quietly and rummaged in his bag, emerging with a wad of dog-eared sheets. He wisely chose to perform off-mike, and started with a series of riddles that hooked everyone, no matter how world-weary or cynical they thought they were (yes, there are some haughty characters that end of Tottenham!). He performed quite a lot of French poetry, telling us his mother is French, and the highlight was a small play that he performed with a girl in the audience who was Swiss. He ran through the English translation first so we knew what it was all about (a pile of stones that could have been potatoes or even dog biscuits). A man in the audience got to be the dog at the end.

On the way home by car I got lost as usual. This time, however, I had a satellite navigation system in my bag, which I bought accidentally while looking for cheap computers on the internet.
I pressed 'Home', and indeed I got there.