Bags and a Poem

I went to Gina's today to catch up on her news; because I had to keep going with preparing the academic paper, I took the music technology magazines round to scan at the same time. She sat in the kitchen making Birchbags (lovely felted wool bags) and I sat on the landing, scanning image after image of men in front of their recording consoles.
About ten years ago, a student did a brilliant piece of research about music technology teaching in schools, Why Men Twiddle Knobs and Women Don't which started off with 19 photographs of producers in their studios, looking very pleased with themselves, all taken from consecutive issues of Sound on Sound, one of the main studio magazines. So I have made a series of images in a very similar vein to project while I'm talking.
The problem is that I had to put a new operating system on my computer a few weeks ago and the Powerpoint won't work, so I am going to have to try to do it on Offsprog Two's PC.
Anyway, Gina made us lunch, we talked about all sorts of stuff: poor Ana broke her wrist in Paris and Gina had to do the Raincoats gig on her own with the drummer and the violinist, but it looks like she rose to the occasion: she showed me a Youtube film of her bouncing around like an energetic teenager, with the others in the band giving it their all. Wish I could have been there to see and hear it!

Best wishes to Ana for a speedy recovery.
This (below) is the best example of Poetry on the Underground I have ever seen. It almost made me cry, it's so beautiful; it perfectly mimics the slow 3/4 time of a whale traversing the oceans and should be prescribed to everyone especially those who do not understand the desperate importance of looking after our beautiful world.

There was a refreshing interlude yesterday afternoon- a visit to a little house in Stratford, where two colleagues, Persis-Jade Maravala and Jorge Ramos, are opening ip their house to the performing arts staff at the University of the East to make installations, music, artworks or whatever.
We sat around and ate things for a while (always nice!) and then explored the house, which must have been built around the same time as mine although it is bigger and has more original features, in particular big wooden cupboards with brass latches and a lovely old wooden floor with the scars of years of human traffic etched upon it.
Jorge is going to start up a blog about what we do: the project will be called Domestic Science.
Then it was back to my books and papers and some rather interesting forays into the fringes of the Internet.

I went by tube to the Regent Street site of the University of the West this morning to present some of the research I'm doing.
There were two passenger alarms in the train carriages at Camden, which the driver didn't believe and she told us all off so we went on to Euston with an unconscious passenger in the doorway.
The tube staff are right about needing staff in the stations. What if someone has a heart attack? There appeared to be only one person at Camden running the whole station and no-one could communicate with him.
There was a fire alarm halfway through the seminar, but the students were really attentive and I was glad to have spoken to them. I asked their lecturer whether my presentations skills were OK and he was very positive.
I am nervous: there are 54 male presenters and 15 female ones (roughly) at the conference next weekend. It was a debatable decision to present this research at a Music Production conference instead of a Feminist one, but I like the idea of raising consciousness somehow, rather than adding pique to the pot.
That male:female ratio is better than a music technology conference I was involved with about twelve years ago which had 50 men and two women!

Prince Philip

It's so funny!
Amazon has decided that I'm a Royalty Fan because I bought a second hand book of Prince Philip's gaffes.
I wanted to find the one where he said that women were ideally suited for production-line work because they had different brains from men.
He was basically equating us with pigeons, actually, because you can train a pigeon to differentiate between differently- coloured grains of rice on a conveyor belt.
It wasn't there, but now I am officially interested in books with titles like 'At Home with The Royals'.
How do they equate this with my recent purchases of book about Gangsta Rap, I wonder?

Morning, 12.45

Breakfast: coffee, crisps (to come) and writing down of the disturbing anecdotes (aka empirical research) about my own experiences of engineering and production over the years, rationed to an hour on a getting-it-off-my-chest basis.
In today's Observer, there is a review of a concert by Jamie Woon, who was a student I taught at the University of the West a few years ago.
I am glad he is becoming successful: like The Irrepressibles, he had his own way about him and he has needed to do a lot of groundwork to make people respect him and take him seriously. I discovered back then that he has links to Crieff in Scotland, a secret surprise of a place full of Perthshire-pinkVictorian mansions and an eccentric, perpetually-raining Highland Games (see a few weeks ago, Euan McGregor the Highland Chieftain) that once featured a display of dancing Bigfoots.
Bigfoots are those trucks with monstrously huge tyres.
I loves 'em.
So big up to ya Jamie; one of his best shows was him and a drummer, lovely and sparse, and according to the review he is still playing about with space.
I like that. I am a total fan of Big Sounds in Empty Spaces and I shall be writing a song to prove it!
Now where's those crisps?

Academic Research into Female Music Producers and Engineers

Oops: there I was thinking that yesterday's meeting would be serene.
I exploded, right in front of the student representatives and all the staff. But boy, did it feel good! I hardly ever lose my temper, although I do get angry about things. I feel so much better now, after weeks of unbearable pressure. Who knows what will happen next: a reprimand?
At least I had a peaceful evening with all the pent up fury left in the meeting room, sitting on a blue plastic chair with a tubular steel attachment for putting your writing paper on.
There may it rest in peace.

I have been writing all day, since about 10.30 It has been fun. I had an hour off for lunch and a charity shop trawl, before sitting down to the books again, all 21 of them, plus numerous academic articles.
I have written seventeen pages so far, with more to go, but the computer has started being silly so I'm going to switch it off for an hour. All the frustration of the past few weeks has turned into writing energy; I do hope I manage to do this paper justice at the conference on Friday.
Almost all of it, I could tell as a string of anecdotes about my own life, but that's not what they want.

Lucy's partner made a very good point about student grants last night. If students pay their own fees, they are thinking about 'learning for me', whereas if the grant comes from the Government (i.e. all of us who pay taxes) they have some sort of social 'thumbs-up' for what they are doing- and possibly, some sort of greater social awareness as a result. I have actually had a student come to me saying 'I pay all these fees and what do I get? 60%! I expect a first for all that money!'. I pointed out to them that:
1. We pay for a Driving Test, but do not pass just because we have paid. Imagine what would happen if we did!
2. They would not be happy to go to a doctor who had passed their exams purely because they had paid for their training. We need benchmarks so we can trust people in whatever situation: cultural, medical, scientific, whatever.
3. 60% is a good mark anyway.

Anyway- bye for now!

Coda

Yesss! I have found the first two pages of the Clawson article, but lost the last two of John Shepherd's Music as Social Text Chapter 8.
I Know!
Look on Amazon and buy the whole book!
Price: £80.00
I think not.

Kelloggs Variety Day

A wagtail waddled across the concrete at the University of the East.
Strange- wagtails seem to like universities. There are wagtails at the University of the West too, also waddling along with a sense of purpose, perhaps on their way to a lecture on the Psychoanalytical Approaches to Tail-wagging in European Birdery.
The only green woodpecker I've ever seen was pecking the wood of a willow tree at the University of the West, and small fieldmice regularly run along the large outdoor corridor there.

Ah me! I had lost all of the pages of Mary-Ann Clawson's article on female bass-players in rock bands in Boston; I only had page one so I went through every single paper I had and eventually, I found the rest of it.
Now I have lost page one!
I have had to 'let it go'.

I have a pile of books and articles over a foot high to take home tonight: tomorrow is writing day and I'm going to take over the kitchen table with a delicious spread of audio magazines (to play 'spot the woman' with), books, papers and other things to rummage about in for the paper on women and audio technology.

And I have just had the most fantastic, unhealthy, greasy lunch and I feel amazing: solid, fatty, strong, warm (take that, O thou cold weather!), sleepy, and untroubled by the pressures building up around me.
Let them!

On the way to work this morning, I not only had a song idea but also a very funny idea for a spoof of univerities that I have been writing for about ten years and have got about 4 lines of.
And Julia, who shares an office with me, says she doesn't mind me including her story of the day she dealt with a serious allegation of sexual harassment, only to find that the end of the day that she was till wearing the sparkling diamante Claire's Accesories tiara she'd put on as an ironic statement.
It makes me laugh even thinking of it.

Later, I shall be attending a meeting at which the students are allowed to criticise the way we teach and the content of our lectures. I am expecting to get slaughtered and I shall merrily agree with them. I wonder what they will think of that? Turgid and slow after my feast of grease, a placid and stupid grin will adorn my face and repel their arrows with dreamy splendour.

Finally- I'm going to Lucy O'Brien's tonight (Lucy wrote that fantastic book She-Bop) with a box of multi-coloured macaroons and a set of funny 'I teach at a university' stories to swap with hers. I am knackered, but my jowls have dropped as low as they can go, the bags under my eyes are as big as they can get and I have absolutely nothing left to lose on the energy front...
YEEE HA!

Supermarket

We are tired. With glazed expressions, we buffet round the supermarket in the evening after work, hands bristling with packets and boxes, Edwardsupermarkethands.
We didn't think we needed a basket; in fact we do, but we can't be bothered to get one now.
Behind us in the queue, a businessman in an expensive navy topcoat restlessly moves from foot to foot, occasionally bumping into us; he is clearly not used to queueing and his impatience burns our backs.
The fluorescent lights are piercingly bright, and make us buy things in coloured packets that we don't really want or need.
We just want to have 'done the shopping' so we can go home and have a cup of tea.
Oh yes we do.

Notting Hill Interlude

It's nice to have an excursion planned; I bounced down the road, wrestled with Foucault on the tube, stopped off at Butler and Wilson for a pair of sparkly earrings (stuff the grey shirt!!), bought sandwiches, crisps and chocolate and then meandered down Portobello Road, window shopping.
The feeling of the swinging sixties is still palpable: slightly odd bohemian women of a certain age (mine, probably), lurk in the dim recesses of shops festooned with jewellery, feathered headgear, twenties-inspired beaded dresses and handbags.
It was cold and sunny, the perfect winter day.
I overshot Caroline's street, passing through a phalanx of builders eating their sandwiches and stretching after a morning's work, and there she was, smiling and waving at the window. The painter was busy, rolling fresh paint on to the walls with a silently hissing roller.
Caroline made tea, and we sat and talked about music, feminism, technology, and everything interesting under the sun, flanked by her extraordinary paintings.
One one side, hermaphrodites leapt into the air in a basketball game watched by hundreds of tiny people, all exquisitely painted. On the other, a work-in-progress of flowers sang out in brilliant blue hues.
Her walls are lined with books on art, politics and music, and her conversation is humblingly knowledgeable and totally stimulating.
After lunch with Caroline, my brain feels wide awake and I feel as though I need to rush off and immediately do things, change the world, write books, draw pictures, sing songs: she is a very alive person, a tireless campaigner for the underdog (especially women: underbitches, perhaps, to borrow a term from the ceaselessly misogynistic hip hop men!).
Refreshed, I left as the mirrored splash-backs for her kitchen arrived.
Later I downloaded a couple of articles for the paper I have to deliver in Leeds in two weeks time. I am weeks behind with it and I've decided that rather than being detailed and plodding through facts, I am going to be philosophical. The facts are there, but the story is far from enchanting; my challenge is to infuse energy into subjects that people don't want to talk about. And that is quite a challenge....

Offsprog Two returned from the student march. They had been corralled by the police into a street where there was an empty police van left for them to attack, and of course some silly people attacked it and made news headlines; nobody mentioned that the van was empty, and it seemed obvious to us at home (Offsprog One was here watching it with me on News 24) that it was a stunt van, left there on purpose.
Stuck for two hours in the freezing cold, some of them lit little bonfires to keep warm, which were reported as acts of deliberate destruction. Some of the schoolchildren (that is what a lot of them were) were frightened and were crying because they did not know how long they were going to be stuck there hemmed in by the police, and did not know what was going to happen to them.
This has been quite an education for Offsprog Two in media manipulation.

Ah well, the evening flows by: shall I do some more work or shall I watch another repeated episode of Poirot?
No contest.

Caroline's website is www.carolinecoon.com

Get well soon Martin! x

Band

Good job I did that distraction therapy on Sunday.
I almost forgot- there was the sound of a loud band playing in the street in Camden, and as I crossed the bridge I could see them- four young chaps in funky street clothing playing paint-by-numbers punk and thoroughly enjoying it. People in the crowd were smiling even though it was bitterly cold. Youth! Noise!
'I know how to do that', I thought, and laughed out loud at the thought of being 53 and punkier-than-thou.

I stopped off and bought a grey shirt, to match my teaching.
I have responsibility for 150 students and 6 staff, 5 of whom are new and need varying degrees of mentoring. Most of the week is spent averting disasters or potential disasters, while the teaching that I love (Songwriting and Production) buzzes along in the background, and I am starved of the pleasures of working on my own songs at home, as there simply isn't time. There is no other word for it but malmusician!
I look at it positively when I can: I currently have a job. But worrying about horror-Thursday (up to two hours travelling either side of a nine hour day) seeps back as far as Sunday evening now and I imagine spinning plates crashing to the ground from their poles.
Gah! That's enough moping.
I am going to see Caroline tomorrow with a picnic (she's got the builders in) and looking forward to a good yak with her: she's full of vitality and could cheer up the most miserable slug on a building site!

Walking and The Museum of Everything

Halfway through the marking, I'd had enough, so I hopped on the tube down to Chalk Farm to visit The Museum of Everything. I had been curious to see this Museum, which I believe has been curated by Peter Blake, the collage artist responsible for the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 
I hated the first corridor which featured posters and photographs of small people and giants: the famous 'General Tom Thumb' was there and it seemed crass to be gawping at the same images Victorians gawped at, in this so-called enlightened age. After all, those people had feelings, didn't they? I don't think it's necessary to recycle these pictures to be re-gawped at, frankly.
In the first room there was a beautiful model of a wooden steam-roundabout with carved little horses ridden by little chaps with tam o' shanters, sandwiched between the occasional tram car. There were oil lamps fixed above them, presumably to light them up as they merry-went-round. It was inspirational and I loved it.
There were lace-decorated cards, dusty and crusty with age in frames, and a small room full of shell-pictures and figurines: crinolined ladies, rabbits, coy-looking cats and intricate clipper ships with sails made of smooth flat clam shells.
A room full of ventriloquists' dummies and Punch-and-Judy puppets spooked me with their rictus grins and hysterical-looking cheerfulness.
One ventriloquists' dummy sitting in a miniature basked chair bore a passing resemblance to Jools Holland (oops! I'm sure the man has feelings!).
A rather fetching paper-mache dog shared a cabined with an evil-looking and frightening baby with a piercing squint. I felt empathy and horror in equal measures for the Judy puppets with their tiny helpless feet and the dead arms sprouting from their chests.
Next up was erotic Berlin Woolwork and some witty Alice in Wonderland Pieces, all of which were colourful and well-made.
A large room displayed hand-painted banners which advertised circus acts: a man fights a bear, and people with distended stomachs, frilled arms and huge feet are 'All Alive'; Don Carlos's Dog and Monkey Hotel, 'Strange little People', dogs in ruffs, a 'Midget Bull', a 'Two-headed Calf' and 'The Most Terrifying Creature Alive'... by this time I was speculating that perhaps that one was Peter Blake himself. The celebration of the macabre was beginning to depress me beyond redemption.
The exhibition was redeemed temporarily by, up some stairs, a display of beautiful fairground signage handpainted in rich colours: steamboats, traction engines, Kings and Queens and a painted 'Carters Dodgems' sign that featured the head of Little Richard between the words. Lovely- I'm going back with my sketchbook to sketch the perfectly-executed painted typography (there's a thousand pound fine for taking photographs, as numerous notices tell me).
The cases of stuffed animals: well, I remember wanting to see these when I was a student in Brighton. Today, they seemed like fusty cases of (in the case {sic} of the red squirrels) endangered species stuffed and posed as schoolchildren with black beady glass eyes, their rust coloured fur fading to beige.
Two headed lamb, three legged duck: was this part of some evil childrens' nursery rhyme? There was a hunt populated by a team of stuffed dead puppies called 'The Sporting Party'. Ugh. At the point where a set of stuffed animals act out boxing scenes in a series of glass cases, I decided that I'd had enough, and walked down to Camden.
That's where I saw this cheerful steel pan band, braving the cold and wearing their Hawaiian shirts over their jackets. They are called The Caribe Allstars and this is my namecheck to them.

Hi Guys! You brightened up my day- thank you!

Monty's Birthday

Yesterday evening, Paul and myself went over to the Southgate Club to play a set for Monty's 50th Birthday. Thirty years ago, Monty used to come to see The Chefs with his twin brother (who now lives in Australia), and ten years ago we bumped into each other in East Barnet Sainsbury's one Sunday morning when I was out shopping with the family.
He comes to see me play whenever he can, and I was delighted to be invited to play on his special occasion. We did a mixture of songs- some Chefs ones (24 Hours, Let's Make Up and Northbound Train), some Helen and the Horns ones (Freight Train, Lonesome Country Boy, Snakebite, Oh Boy, Girl Versus Boy) some now ones (Love on the Wind, Daisies, Loverman, Gotta Have a Heart and London), and of course Happy Birthday to You, which we played twice because Monty's friends had made him a huge birthday cake. Happy Birthday Monty!

Desperado Housewives Limited Edition Christmas Sock

Look! http://desperadohousewives.bigcartel.com/

An Old Brush Sweeps Clean

I have put a new set of songs up on Myspace, including the Christmas songs and a couple of Chefs ones and some rare Helen and the Horns tracks. Daisies is still there though...
www.myspace.com/helenmccookerybook

Talking of sweep: I used to be in love with Sweep from The Sooty and Sweep Show. It was something to do with his eyebrows.

Greyness and Blandness

This morning's traffic jam (an hour to drive five miles) was surprisingly fruitful in terms of ideas.

I was stationary for long enough to sing into my phone on a couple of occasions, and I must remember to put a notebook in the car again: I took it out because I didn't want the mechanics to laugh at my scribblings as well as laughing at me for being a mug and believing them when they told me the list of things that they said needed to be fixed (some of them have miraculously cleared up since then: how can that be?).

There is something beautiful about the ugliness of the North Circular, particularly in the fog. 

The flyovers loom ahead, piercing the gloom with concrete certainty as they curve through the obliterating whiteness; an X-Factor competition has run for years, ensuring that only the ugliest and most functional of buildings and warehouses are allowed to abut the carriageway; signs and logos must be (i) gigantic and (ii) yellow and blue (goes with grey). 

Helplessly, motorists in knackered cars and vans (no jaguars allowed) follow each other like strings of hopeless sausages, forgetting their destinations due to the length and tedium of their journeys.

It's an enormous surprise to arrive because the North-Circularness is so absolute and enveloping.

I emerged from my car blinking and shocked this morning, feeling that I had already done a day's work just by travelling there.

In contrast to yesterday's struggles, the student feedback sheets for Songwriting and Production all said 'satisfied' and 'very satisfied' today.
One of them said it was his favourite Module and he looked forward to it each week. I needed to hear this as lecturing can often feel like pushing a massively heavy boulder up a very steep hill.

I bought books, but I've left them wrapped up in my office because there's no chance I'll be reading them for months. I've got to check about 50 essays this weekend (mercifully, short ones), as there are new staff members with different standards from their previous Universities, both tougher and more lenient, and I have to make sure the students get a fair deal.

But tonight is mine!! 

The mini poppadums are rustling in the kitchen, excited about being scoffed by such an enthusiast. I have sucked up the rugs with the vacuum cleaner (serves them right, the buggers!), sorted the recycling, and will embark on a spell of balloon-popping when Offsprog Two goes out (sorry, but they take up vital space in this tiny house).

I have been daydreaming about allotments: mud and onions, nasturtiums, cold red winter fingers and plumes of breath in the frosty air. Too late now for Barnet, but perhaps one day when I relocate somewhere friendlier and greener I shall have a garden.

I think it says something about the suburbs, that I have lived in Barnet for nearly fourteen years and I don't have a single friend here. 

Behind so many of the smiles there is judgement, frightening racism, a sense of competition ('what school did you say your daughters went to?'), and a desire to criticise the habits of others. 

My pals are a set of misfits and oddballs like me, and sometimes they turn up in squads: fluorescent, leopardskin, laughing, singing and fascinated by the conformity in the streets and the rich pickings in the charity shops jettisoned by their previous owners in their search for anonymity and blandness.