Sniff

I'm playing at the Star in Tufnell Park tonight, onstage at 9.45.
I've still got a fiendish cold but reckon I can manage my set and then slope off for a Lemsip or two...
The Unicorn gig has been cancelled but I'm still playing the 12 Bar on the 21st with the Band of Holy Joy and the Bar Latina too.
And, of course, nightly in my front room, the two cats and the dog lined up in front of me looking sheepish, tapping their little paws on the floor and humming along in their animal tones, shaking their heads so their ears whack together at the ends of songs instead of clapping, because of course fur is soundless.

Richard and Judy

A couple of years ago, I was sitting chatting to a student in January, outside. She was very upset and we sat there for ages in the cold yakking away. And then I got 'flu- the proper sort where your bones ache for two weeks and you are capable of nothing but flopping around moaning through a raging sore throat. That's when I started watching Richard and Judy, every afternoon; I later discovered that I shared this taste with the Head of Fashion at the University of Westminster. I even saw the film Team America, because they were laughing so much when they described it, I had to find out what it was like.
Last December, I really wanted to write a song for their Christmas Song competition but I didn't because I was having teething problems in my new job- the teething problems of a hippo, actually, or some other animal with very large teeth (or a lot of 'em!).
Anyway, today I sent them my songs, just in case they have another competition, so I can be the first entrant.
It's partly because while I was doing Jury Service I did a wordsearch and tried to win a yellow Spongebob Squarepants Ukelele. I found all the words, but my eyesight is so bad i couldn't read the teensy weensy address printed at the bottom of the page and I gave up and threw the competition form away.
It's time to get some new glasses; perhaps in January, so I can spend the rest of the winter reading enlightening literature and emerge into Spring as a fresh new bespectacled and clever cover-version of the previous me.
And it can be my one-competition-entry-a-year; I did that last year and won this computer, so you never know!

Louise Bourgeois

I met up with Caroline Coon today- she looked beautiful, long straight white-blonde hair, fitted black coat, slender legs and boy's shoes, what style the woman has!- at the Tate Modern, to see the Louise Bourgeois exhibition. We investigated the crack (apparently 14 people have fallen down it so far), then went and lunched with a view at the restaurant upstairs, admiring St Paul's and also the giant cranes; Caroline says she saw a documentary about them once. I told her about the embroidery I'd started of the cranes at Wembley- i got as far as doing the embroidered frame round the outside, then left it too long and in the meantime, they finished the stadium and took the cranes away.
Bah!
If I was a trillionaire I'd get 'em to put the cranes back just so I could finish the embroidery! It was going to be in black and white, because that seemed like a good idea, what with all those choices of embroidery thread colours. I had several different blacks and several different whites. Alas, my pretentiousness has been thwarted by the passing of time and the completion of the Wembley building project on time, near as dammit!
Louise Bourgeois is completely inspiring- there was one particular marble sculpture, of a seated animal with paws'n'claws and six globes hanging from its chest; its skin was stretched tautly over its spine and you could see the vertebrae just at the most curved part. The marble was polished to such a smooth finish, you wanted to stroke it. There were some drawings and models of housewives, women whose heads had been consumed by square and solid houses leaving their bodies helplessly dangling below them, that defined a feeling almost impossible to articulate in words but all too clear in her expression of it. She'd made little pink sewn model people with two heads, one head, eyelids, almost dolls but a little too scary. Oh do go and see it!
Afterwards we crossed the Millennium Bridge in search of coffee; unfortunately, I became too coughy myself (har har) and decided to tube it home.
Strange to have a cold- I don't get them very often. I hope it clears up by Wednesday because I'm supposed to be re-doing the vocals for the next album. I'll know tomorrow if I'm gonna be better in time. At the moment, I sneeze every time I sniff a strong smell, cough when my lungs hit the cold air, and walk like a 70-year-old man because my legs and arms are so stiff.
My nose is red and sore, my eyes are watering, and my head has settled somewhere between here and Mars.

Link to Christmas Joy

http://www.bendirecords.com/download.php?vad=BEN-EP-005.zip

Playing guitar

The great thing about playing guitars is that you can play them like this...

Or like this....

Or this....

This....

Or even this!

Unicorn Theatre Gig

I have a very special gig coming up close to Christmas, close to London Bridge.
It's a totally acoustic, unplugged gig supporting Martin Stephenson at the Unicorn Theatre on Friday 14th December, and if you would like to come, it would be really good if you get your tickets in advance from:

Email: boxoffice@unicorntheatre.com

If you want to check the venue out the website is www.nakednights.co.uk

I might even sing the Christmas Queen song.
Learn the backing vocals and join in!!!!
Free download from www.bendirecords.com
I'll have a very limited number of CDEPs which I'll do mail order when they arrive, about 10th December- watch this space for details!

Do Not Be Afraid, Little Girl; I Mean You No Harm

It was Bristol, in Trinity Hall with The Chefs. A rabid fan was trying to prise our manager Jonathan out of the doorway so he could get in.
Later, a genial African promoter came in, promising to make me a star. He was terrifying, for the first thing he said was
Do Not Be Afraid, Little Girl; I Mean You No Harm

Sitting About

Oh well, you know, I've just sitted about today. There was no jury service, and I suppose I've done a lot of clearing out and throwing away, stroking Charlie the Bad Cat, looking out of the window....
I've uploaded a different Christmas track on to Myspace, the one with the choir, 'Christmas Queen'.
I know it isn't Christmas yet, but I found a nice little Christmas chef tag so I felt the need to match image to music and Just Do It.
Johny Brown's asked me to play at the 12 Bar with the Band of Holy Joy close to Christmas, and I haven't played there for ages so I'm looking forward to that. All these Geordies... I'm playing with the Daintees in Newcastle Upon Tyne on the 27th December. It'll be Mark Knopfler (yuck) next, or perhaps Sting (double yuck) or possibly, Bryan Ferry (huntin' shootin' fishin'). Or maybe that Dave from the Eurythmics (Durham). Or maybe Laverne from Kenickie... Or perish the thought, that John Miles... "Meoosic was my first love, and meeoosic is my larst... meoosic of the fyoocher...meoosic of the parst..." with that awful bit where the piano gets excited at the end!
Help!
Stop, brain, before you send me barmy!
Excuse me.
I'm going back to just sitting about.

Foggy Morn Story

As the bus rounded the corner one damp foggy morn on the way to jury service, I spotted what appeared to be two machine guns on top of a roof in the thick grey gloom.
"Bloody Hell! That's a bit off for the North London suburbs!", I thought.
We pulled up at the bus stop and I realised that what I'd seen was two gigantic papier-mache angels on top of the the garden centre building, their trumpets pointing joyfully at the heavens.
Silly me.

Corbridge

Corbridge was a lovely gig- in a pub called The Angel. The audience was really friendly: Mike and June were there, and Mike-from-Corbridge (well, of course), and my friend Carol, and more.
I'd written the set list on my hand but my eyesight is so awful I couldn't read it. A kindly lady in the audience fished around in her handbag and lent me her reading glasses, so everything was OK.
Hats off to Fin for some brilliant percussion!
I drove home in the grey rain, listening to Aretha's fabulous voice to cheer me up (I miss the northeast so).
It was 299 miles there, and 284 back.
Did my tyres grow or did England shrink overnight?

Something!

Wow! Hey hey hey!
Someone from Tbilisi in Georgia checked out my Myspace page (I've got a little map)
The weirdest one so far was Bahrein, but I'm particularly pleased about Georgia, because I go there in my imagination rather a lot, ever since I heard some brilliant Georgian journalists singing in the Cabot Hall in Canary Wharf.
I was the only person there not dressed in stern navy-blue, and what's more I had a yogurt-scoffing baby in tow that loved the music so much it joined in and carried on tootling at the end of each song.
When the show had finished, the Georgian journalists raised their hands to the baby, who got a special round of applause all of it's own.

Nothing

Nothing to report today, except perhaps Tomorrow, when Bendi of Sweden officially release 'Helen McCookerybook's Christmas Assortment'. Check them out on www.bendirecords.com
The tracks will be free to download at Christmas, but it's such a nice little CD package I think you should buy it unless you haven't got any money.
It's not a charity record, because I think giving to charity is people's own business and not what songwriters ought to be doing to plug their products (although I never refuse to do a charity gig unless it's a foul and objectionable cause).
It's just that somebody drew it to my attention that Bono did a high-profile charitable thing whenever U2 had a new album out, so I'm wary of such things.
Sourpuss, ain't I?

Tomorrow, up with the lark (or up with the bark, actually, if Blogger has anything to do with it) and off to Corbridge, The Angel, which is where, according to McMum, we celebrated McGran's funeral. I remember the day well, as I made freinds with McGran's freind Katie, who sent me a book of Khalil Gibran's poetry, as both of them had really enjoyed it.
I also cried lot that day, as McGran was my Closest Person and a perfect example of someone determined to spread fun and enjoyment no matter what life threw at her. Somewhere, I have a photo of her playing banjo with a big grin on her face. Even when over eighty, she was also prepared to sit firmly and energetically on a poo-poo cushion when she knew it was there, and be the most extraordinally shocked person in the entire universe to discover that she'd let off a massive fart at the dinner table without feeling any sort of gas-induced abdominal pressure whatsoever.

Titleless

I'm imagining a party at Brother Tobias's cottage-a-trois, in which we hunt-the-food, and loll about on various chairs scoffing what we find, which I hope would be cheese straws. I'll bring them Brother, so long as you hide them!

We got sent home again today but at least I'm sworn in and on a jury.
That means from now on, everything is secret and I'm not telling you anything, even if you buy me a cheese straw every day for the rest of my life.

Soon, I will be moving house, probably to the grubby end of town. I will pack the cats in their carry-boxes, fold the clothes I never wear and that I've moved about six times since I last wore them, put dusty books into cardboard boxes, wrap china in newspapers... actually, it's all pure fantasy at the moment. But the ground is shifting and I'm leaping from tussock to tussock; I've sold a bunch of stuff on eBay, more to go,

Posh no longer, I can hoot at the football, purchase an unsuitable newspaper, dine on fish'n'chips, and. more importantly, remember what it feels like to laugh out loud every day.
Wow.
That's priceless.

Cheese Straws

I found two snapped cheese straws in the cupboard.
Fabulous.
Yellowy orange.
Or orangey yellow.
Tangy.
Crunchy.
A little chewy.
Pastry-y
If you could marry cheese straws, I would do so instantly.

Musings on Mongreldom; Jury Service, 3

As usual, I was retching as I prepared Blogger's disgusting breakfast. That's the downside of owning a dog, or rather, the two downsides: what you put in one end, and what comes out of the other.
Anway, that's enough about that.
I was thinking about identity and who we perceive ourselves to be. I have no identity, as I am not an English Rose, nor am I Jewish, Asian, Scottish, Jamaican, Lithuanian, African, Celtic, Japanese, Chinese, or anything else.
I am bits.
If I was a dog, I would be one of those grey wiry ones you see in Battersea Dogs Home, covered in coarse lumpy fluff that makes them look as though somebody dunked them in glue and then rolled them around a dirty house. Nobody ever owns them as a Statement Dog, but kids luv 'em.
I have a bit of this, a bit of that, nothing pure bred about me at all.
I don't even really know how to bark properly, but I do know how to run around like a fool with my tongue hanging out!

This is the sort of thing you think about, third day into jury service. I haven't spoken to anyone yet, because I'm having a blissful rest from everything except 'North of Watford' on my iPod. I don't know what makes Northern Soul fit so well with sitting with a bunch of people who think grey is a good idea for a winter coat, but there you go. Since Monday, everyone seems to have melted a little. They are slumping good-humouredly instead of sitting with pursed lips and obviously clenched buttocks. Those who have been siting on a jury have bonded with their fellow-jurors and sit in little judgement-communities making small-talk so we don't guess what naughty things their accused has been accused of. Those of us who haven't been into a courtroom yet are exiles, watching the sinister prisoner vehicles with blacked-out windows gliding past the window, delivering secret cargoes of baddies to the back door.

I regret to say that all I'm interested in this time (you see I did jury service a Southwark Crown Court ten years ago, and acually found the experience quite moving) is eating juror's lunch. A gorgeous smell of chips and other greasy delights came wafting out of the kitchen.
'Would the following jurors please go home and come back at ten tomorrow morning....'
Bah!

(by the way, Brother Tobias, I hooted with laughter at the thought of Bobby worrying about you stapling Guy's posterior. Time you had a party, for I want to sit on a hyacinth and get my own back)