Crowley on Air

What a great privilege to have the track chosen to be Gary Crowley's track of the week last week.
Thank you, Gary.

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/a-good-life-with-a-bad-apple

Beaten By Big Edits

That's it for today. I think I might have to print out the last bit on Tuesday and look at it on paper, to work out if everything is in the right place and the research gaps I'm going to have to fill in.
I've got through 145 pages of it so far and the 'done' pile is bigger than the 'not done' pile, although the 'not done' pile is the bit that needs to be added to.
My head hurts.

Slow Day With Big Edits

I'm looking at page 100: it is festooned with red biro lines and scribbles and it doesn't look like fun. After so much writing yesterday, I might have a 'lite' day today and spend a bit of time on playing and writing songs instead.
Yes.
Here is a Newellism to start the day off:

'I saw John Cooper Clarke coming up the hill.
It was misty.
I thought it was him, and he thought it was me.
We got up close, and it was neither of us'.

Start Your September With A Twang!

Come to the Spice of Life in Soho this coming Sunday for this musical extravaganza!
It starts early (just after seven), they do nice food, it's a great atmosphere, and it's my last gig for a while because I've been so busy that I haven't organised anything in the months to come- got to work on that!
I'm on at ten past eight. It costs roughy £7 to get in.
I'm really looking forward to it- I go to this night for fun sometimes without even knowing the bands and it's never disappointing.

A Day, Backwards

A few weeks ago I saw an ad for the documentary Upstairs Planet about Martin Newell being shown at The Regent Street Cinema so I bought a ticket. I read Giles Smith's book Lost in Music years ago, lent it to a friend, and had to buy it again because it was so funny.
I like that little cinema and I've never seen a bad film there so I decided to go.
The documentary maker Graham Bendel was there and the film was so lo-fi it made Stories from the She Punks look like a Hollywood movie, but it was utterly charming. I loved the bloke from the original Cleaners from Venus pretending to talk to Martin using a brick in place of a mobile, threatening to throw it though his window and then accidentally dropping it on his acoustic guitar and smashing it. Although that might have been faked.
And any film with such a long list of people who refused to appear in it has to be good!
I can't describe how brilliant Martin Newell is.
I've never listened to any of the songs in much depth before but I am now a complete fan.
He sang some songs live at the end, then my heart sank when he slid pages of poetry out of a brown paper envelope, but the one above made me yell with laugher and blub too, which would have been embarrassing because I went on my own, but by then I felt I'd recognised a complete kindred musical spirit and something inside me said 'Hooray! Mad people stalk the earth and write music, and that's where I belong!'

John Cooper Clarke was there and so was the artist Peter Blake. And Stuart Moxham was in the film; it was almost impossible to decipher what he was saying though.
I loved the wife who doesn't like his music at all. Now that's proper love.
This isn't the last you'll be hearing about it. I took notes!

Nearly missed it, innit. I woke up at six a.m. and was writing by 7.30. I wrote for three hours, rehearsed for Sunday's gig at The Spice of Life, did the ironing (a once yearly event: there was a lot of it), watched Bargain Hunt, then wrote for another two hours. I went for a little siesta and accidentally slept for three hours, so I only just got to the West End in time.

Backwards day: I hope tomorrow is more normal.

Birdscape

There's an exceptional birdscape out there this morning. There's a new bird. I don't know what it is, but it's got a loud, bossy and rather beautiful call.

Oh What A Beautiful Morning!

It's an early start today; it could have been even earlier but I became fascinated by Jacob Rees-Mogg's twisted way of talking on the BBC Breakfast show.
I have known people like him all my life- I think we all have- who resort to quoting irrelevant historical platitudes, Latin catchphrases, technical terminology or whatever they think will derail the critical process of the person they are speaking to and allow them to avoid answering a question.
Coming from an educational perspective- I'd get sacked if I (a) refused to answer their question and (b) deliberately tried to confuse someone that I was teaching by one-upmanship and obscurity.
No wonder dictatorships try to destroy education.
Sometimes I imagine the ways this period of Tory confusion and destruction will be written about in history.
The lack of ethics, accountability and social and economic responsibility will be pilloried, won't it?

I've got to page 15 out of God-only-knows-how-many in the revised manuscript. I'd thought I'd be researching the gaps now but the hot weather slowed my blood to a sludge. The nice thing has been the afternoon walks when the day's writing has reached it's conclusion (brains can only do this for a few hours before folding up their chairs and saying they've had enough).

It's been an odd summer. All the tumbled and scattered chess pieces inside me have realigned, and I'm not sure why; possibly a couple of years of solitude have resulted in some sort of emotional tidying up. I feel like now I've got a strong skeleton rather than floppy rubber bones: there is someone there inside me, instead of just reflections of other people that invade my being.
Now I have to work out what this person thinks, wants and believes and instead of being daunting, that is exciting.

The Happy End: Resolution

Compiling

I know this is boring. It bores me too!
Today's job is to reassemble, rename and the compile the chapters of the book before shifting the text about to restructure it.

How I wish my life was just the music bits! I've written a song that even I think is a very good one and I can't wait to record it, but I've got to do this first.

And the programming set-up that Jono from work came and sorted out a few weeks ago- I haven't even touched it, although I did buy a Realistic PZM microphone (the ones that Tandy used to sell) so I can play about with contact surfaces and sounds, once the book is finished.

Does that bore you too?

Green Review from Rocking Magpie

This one made me laugh out loud, at the end!
Thank you.

https://rockingmagpie.wordpress.com/2019/08/28/helen-mccookerybook-green/

Slowing Down!

I've only done an hour on the book today. Maybe it's the heat, but my attention started drifting very quickly.
I'll have to put in a long day tomorrow to make up for it.

The next bit of writing is going to be quite difficult- integrating an academic article I had published in January and part of a book chapter. I think the interview section are more or less sorted.
And I've found a place to press up my next record, thanks to Ian Damaged.

Slow things.....

Gary Crowley's Track of the Week

Played by Robert Elms this morning on BBC London:

Happy Bank Holiday Monday!

More Lovers: Sunday Morning Track

Manners

A lesson in manners from our street, where people talk in very loud voices all the time:
"It's not what, it's BLOODY PARDON!!!"