Round My House

This is Kim's photo of Pete from Fan Club and me round my house, probably in about 1980. Kim and Charlotte moved to Deptford from Brighton, and Fan Club wrote a song about them called Deptford Bike Dollies. We used to hang out together, all under-employed musicians and artists drinking tea and eating toast at each other's places, and chips in the evening. We talked about everything in the world and we were cheap (clad in plastic and second-hand leopardskin prints) and cheerful (and sometimes not). We fell into and out of love, and had painful crushes and damning spats.
Out of the picture is my plastic goldfish bowl with my two fish, Curioser and Curioser (inspiration for some of the lyrics to Boasting by The Chefs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJKaK8AoZIY) and Toby, my second-hand budgie with the loud whistle and the robotic voice (inspiration for the song Toby by The Chefs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTHZkrUMVdU&list=PL9m3538MRyj-S1iUTfNAvfoFpwW8HukcT&index=11).
The Chefs was all about four walls and the small things inside them. That included feelings, relationships and the music we listened to (which is why we did a cover of the Velvet Underground's Femme Fatale), claustrophobia and singing our way out of being stuck.
I think that's what all art is about really: an attempt to fly, even though gravity stops you from doing so. We need to see people flying to make our stuck lives bearable, even when we can't do it ourselves.
We all look for a person to fly together with and land together with, but synchronising that is the most difficult thing in the world.