Men Dressed as Traffic Cones on the Train to the Darts in Alexandra Palace Yesterday

 

Flaneuse-ing

Restlessness is a permanent affliction of mine; I need to keep moving. Today I went to the East End of London for an aimless wander, taking in Rough Trade East to ask for the latest Hollie Cook album. The chap behind the computer tried to sell me an old one, remixed this year (naughty), presumably thinking it didn't matter. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to award 'idiot' badges to people who try to palm you off with something they think they can use to get rid of you, you pesky awkward customer? In the end, I bought it from Bandcamp when I got home.

 Sometimes I get lost in the area, aided by the fact that Apple Maps gets lost too. The two of us usually manage to find our ways there, though. Lots of shops and cafés were closed; the bagel shops still had their queues, and the charity shops and vintage shops were still doing brisk trades. It's funny how parts of town have totally different identities in the daytime and at night. 

About ten years ago (possibly more) Guy Harries, a colleague at UEL, and me used to run the Songlab at the venue 93 Feet East in Brick Lane. It was monthly on a Monday night, a 'dead' night for pubs and clubs. Mostly we had students and staff from the University playing there; one time, our illustration lecturer Mikey Georgeson (AKA David Devant) did a brilliant set as Mr Fox with Mr Solo (the latter played French Horn). People used to drop in off the street and perform sometimes, often young rappers with a CD with their backing track on it. 

Guy organised the illustration students to come along and draw the musicians playing their songs. It had a gentle buzz about it ,and was always full of people who had come to watch or come to play. I would drive down from Barnet to Tufnell Park to pick Guy up with his PA and take it to Brick Lane, then do the reverse at the end of the evening, and stage manage it while Guy did the sound; we organised regular song writing sessions to help people to write material. The University put us on their website, and a student came all the way from Romania to enrol on the course specifically because of that. But the University wouldn't contribute anything to it, nothing at all. In the end we stopped, which was very sad. We'd made a little mark in the nightlife of the area, a tiny droplet of water under the bridge!

Years before that, I went to see Cleveland Watkiss perform across the road at the Truman Brewery. My friend and colleague at the University of Westminster, Mykaell Riley, had been a producer on a TV show in the very early 1990s. One of Cleveland's first TV appearances was on that show, which was presented by Smiley Culture. I'd been working at The Peckham Settlement with a reggae band, and I took them all along to the show to be in the audience. Cleveland had a wonderful singing voice, and when eventually both me and Mykaell started working at Westminster, I invited Cleveland to come along to do a lecture. We were all fish out of water as lecturers back in the day- musicians who had paid their dues on the road entering an institution that was more used to highly academic people but needed the injection of reality once the government of the day finally recognised the sheer amount of money that British musicians were bringing into the UK. We were simultaneously resented and respected, which is a weird combo. 

You come to really, really appreciate people who support what you're doing, even the little things that they say and do. It's almost as though the sun comes out and picks out refuges for you: an energetic press person, a supportive record label, promoters who care and people who are interested in what you do. These things make the whole process a complete joy.

What a ramble... maybe wandering around the streets has inspired a mind-wander now I'm back home. I'm still half asleep after nodding off after what turned out to be a very long walk, six and a half miles. I didn't know there were so many miles in East London, but there you go.

What's next? More learning of songs for Friday's Crisis gig, then lots of rehearsals next week for the Waiting Room gig in Stoke Newington. A big thank you to everyone who has helped me, both back and the day and more recently. Musicians too- how wonderful to play with such inspiring people.

Woman Lifts Weights at Jeremy Deller Trafalgar Square Event, Summer 2025

 

Thingamajigs

We went to see The Importance of Being Earnest at the Noel Coward Theatre a couple of evenings ago. I hadn't been told by the Offsprogs that it had Stephen Fry in it, because they know I don't like him much (a certain stupid assumption about women's sexuality that he obviously had no business making, because he knows precisely zilch about it). 

However, I swallowed my pride and went along for the ice cream in the interval.

It's a weird version: the play is a parody already, and so making a parody version of it is a high-risk punt. 

The script is so great that it's hard to get it wrong, but it wobbled between camp and smut (G.A.Y. jokes in this day and age?), had some odd direction (too often we were faced with the actors' backs), derivative tropes (the butler who couldn't find the way off stage), and some fabulous clowning from the woman who played Cecily (Jessica Whitehurst, who could really have done the entire play herself). I've just realised that one of the main male leads was played by Olly Alexander, so maybe that's what drove their desire to see it! He was relentlessly fey and enormously energetic, and he too was a great visual comedian.

It was entertaining: the pace didn't let up for a second. However, I felt that the cast didn't gel particularly well; it was almost as if they had all rehearsed different versions of the play with different people before coming together for this one. Stephen Fry was actually very good, cast well in this play and completely over made-up. Those magenta lips! But again, he was performing on a different planet from the rest of the cast. Odd, but fun anyway.

Yesterday was my birthday. Offsprog Two threw a small family party, and Offsprog One made a blue tit cake (that was the icing; it wasn't actually made of blue tits, I promise). It was nice. I haven't talked so much for ages though it was low-key. They even sang happy birthday! Sometimes we go away (once even to Paris!), but this year I'm celebrating actually being alive. My brother James should have been there too. There was a gap in the festivities.

Today I made a list of the songs I need to learn. I'm doing a gig in a Crisis at Christmas homeless shelter on Friday and they have asked for a couple of cover versions as well as my own stuff. I was flummoxed till I remembered Mr Unswitchable's Lockdown Saturdays, so I chose This Boy and Storm in a Teacup to learn, and I'll do Femme Fatale and a bunch of my own songs. I did one before lockdown in Camden, and one guy sat and listened intently to the lyrics and asked about them afterwards. It was laid back and informal, and I'm looking forward to it.

I also have to learn the Rabbie Burns song Charlie is my Darling for the Country Soul Sessions Burns Night Special, and I'll learn the Gaelic version of Cailin Morun Sa for that too.

And of course: It Wasn't Me, to play with Lester Square at the gig on the 15th of January (below), plus Sixties Guy which I've never played live before, and The Porter Rose at Dawn, which I don't play very much and which Jack Hayter will be playing on.

I solved a logistic problem last night in my normal insomniac musings. I'd been worried about getting everyone on stage in time for their slots. 'What a stage-management mess', I thought. Then it hit me: we should all be there on stage anyway, do our slot, then get off. Then for the main bit of the gig, all anyone needs to do is go back to where they started and everything will be set up for them. AHA!

Never underestimate a 'sleepless night'!

Here's the ticket link, and a new poster with Gina Birch's name on it now, for I'm delighted to confirm that she will be playing a couple of songs too:

https://wegottickets.com/f/14034

Mrs Father Christmas on Stilts with Present Intercepts Child on Scooter

 

Why Are We Waiting?

Watching an item on TV about spontaneous choirs on trains triggered a memory of waiting on the quayside in North Shields for a ferry to Scandinavia- probably Esbjerg, when there used to be a ferry service between Newcastle and Denmark. 

I must have been about six, and we were on our way to Norway for a holiday. McDad and Bruv both had red hair, so the idea was that we went somewhere where their skin would not burn.

Embarkment must have been delayed, because the whole crowd of passengers waiting to get on to the ferry erupted into a version of 'Why Are We Waiting' and kept singing it until we were allowed to board.

I was astonished. I had never heard so many people singing at once before, not even in church. It was all done in good spirits, I'd say in quite a Geordie way if there is such a thing: good-natured exasperation. I'm not sure if it was that that got us on to the ship, but we did eventually manage to board and we had a lovely holiday in Oslo and Bergen!

Ten to Two

 

Turner and Constable at Tate Britain

I understand that I should upload pictures to make more people read this, but none of the photos that I took do justice to the paintings, so here are some inadequate words instead!

I love Turner's work. One of the blurbs next to a painting said that he painted the pollution that was visible all the time in London, which is why his paintings are so hazy and swirly. I have often thought you can almost feel the atmosphere in his work; he makes weather conditions into dramatic feelings rather than Constable's rather poncy little puffy clouds. I'd never seen Turner's religious paintings before. There was a bit too much melodrama in them, and he was a bit silly: he painted lots of imaginary Italian scenes before actually going there. Or maybe that's poignant; possibly he couldn't afford to travel!

What was lovely was the little sketch books that both of them painted in. That's where their respective skills were really evident. Overlapping two pages sometimes, the passion for capturing reality was vibrant and infectious. I wanted to get a little sketchbook and paint in it there and then.

Like many exhibitions at both London Tates, there was too much here. A bit of focus and editing would have made the exhibition altogether better. There were some gorgeous Constables here, and some intriguing juxtapositions (a painting of a canal with a horse, then another, larger one done several years later of the same place with the same horse, only now populated with men working alongside the water). Both artists are excellent at painting water, Constable still pools and millponds, Turner brilliant at crashing, terrifying seas. But one became tired of Constable's works very quickly: the paintings looked almost paint-by-numbers and they quite possibly were, rushing through commissions. Some of Turner's paintings were not his best, and one of the religious ones had the most silly twee little white rabbit that I've ever seen in a so-called serious painting. 

But I'm quite definitely a Turnerite. It's the industrial ones that I like, all that drama. He's almost like a precursor of the Futurists with his dynamism and ability to turn ugly industrial seascapes into parodies of religious epiphanies. Very clever. I'm going to go back again and soak up some magic from the large canvases that both of them had the luxury of creating. I might like Constable better too, second time around, and see beyond what seems to be superficial sentimentality. He was definitely a record-keeper and he sure could paint a cornfield!

It seems churlish to criticise two such wonderful painters, but it's more that I'm processing what I felt. Now it's time for me to do some drawing.

Christmas Queen

For all you Christmas Queens out there!

Seasons Greetings!

 

Street Artist and Customer, Leicester Square

 

Stereolab at Electric, Brixton

I'm up far too early, so what better thing to do than to reflect on Stereolab's Brixton gig on Sunday?

Their tracks (and also Laetitia's solo music) have been really standing out this year when I'd been listening to Riley and Coe's BBC6 show in the evenings, and when this date was added after the Royal Festival Hall sold out, it seemed like serendipity to buy a Christmas ticket or two.

We'd been spending most of the day listening to their music, yet I'm not enough of a fanwoman to be able to say 'this track, that track'. All I can do is think about the music which was of course, mesmerising. The songs have been arranged with flair and fun, with analogue beeps peeking out from guitar thrashes, exquisitely rehearsed stops and starts, thrilling key changes, and the commanding presence of Laetitia Sadier swapping instruments as though she was merely changing thoughts in her head. A bass trombone stood on a stand, and you could have knocked me down with a feather when it was she who actually lifted it to her lips and played the trombone lines. I watched the other musicians to see who was enjoying which songs (that's a musician's hobby). At one point, the guitarist was having such a lovely time he nearly wrenched his head off his neck, nodding, nodding. And how brilliant to have real drums in music that is sometimes so motorik! The set was a mixture of short, sharp songs with catchy choruses and longer pieces with rock-outs. I liked the short ones best: concentrated, focused thoughts in neat packages, but there was something here for everyone; different sections of the audience were cheering for different songs, which is hardly surprising given they are such a prolific band.

At times, I was almost driven to tears. Look what musicians do: they rehearse, they make songs, they process the human condition, they bring people together. They are not killing people with their machinery. They make mistakes, both technical and in thought. They are not perfect. But they reflect humanity and are born to do so, whether or not music is innate to their DNA. All that assembly of sound, words, nuance, and the layering of a human voice on top of it all, or integrated into a conversation with it all. It never ceases to fill me with awe and sometimes fills me with so much emotion that it spills beyond my body into something that can only be described as beyond human. What could be better than that?

Fairy with Crystal Ball at Street Party

 

Twinkling January Gig!

 Make plans now for Afterchristmas to avoid January misery!

https://wegottickets.com/f/14034

Stylish Street Person Causes a Stir

 

Man With Bull, Rothesay Agricultural Show

 

Showtunes from the Shadows in the Outsiders Music Top Ten

 

Gideon Coe Plays Cailin Morun Sa

 

It's Toadstool Time

Big luv to Wormhole World for including my weird track on their Christmas Compilation!

https://wormholeworld.bandcamp.com/track/its-toadstool-time 

Man Doing Press-Ups In The Fresh Air On Regents Canal Towpath

 

Man Banging Little Bass Drum And Singing