Helen McCookerybook

 I went to Lucy O'Brien's book launch (third edition of She-Bop!) last night. Lucy was looking radiant and very 1920s; Cazz Blaise...

We were playing songs to each other down the phone and Martin played some chords which he called 'Helen Chords'. So I wrote the Mad...

Are my words all going to the wrong place? I have spent the day marking theses and writing a lecture for Wednesday. Last night I began two ...

We will be playing a half hour tour of our two albums as part of this fund-raising event in Camden, next Monday evening.

I haven't been able to sort out the Sunday listening today; Merle Travis was too bibbly-bobbly this morning and then Gareth Lockrane...

On the eleventh day of 'flu, I decided that a fresh walk along the Thames would do the trick. I started at Waterloo which is always col...

I seem to be getting a large number of viewings from a site telling people how to make money from writing a blog. I don't make anything...

Always up-to-the-minute and current, Liberty's window display nods ironically in the direction of the horseburger scandal...

I have been listening to the recordings of Molly Drake, Nick's mum. It's odd how much you can hear her influence on his vocal modula...

A symptom of middle-aged middle-classness in an ex-punk is being inspired to sing a well-known Buzzcocks song while making tea in a Danish B...

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In our bathroom cupboard for many years there was a small powdery soft old cardboard box, half full of ancient bars of hotel soap in exotica...

Hotels are complex ant-hills. In this one, we asked to be moved after being parked in a room next to a pack of laughing hyaenas who arrived ...

Nova Castria is in full flow; the bars are starting to fill with packs of women, hair solid with spray and faces solid with make-up, skin ta...

Most Edinburgh buses, actually: a tartan-carpet-framed security video display. I think someone at the bus company has a sense of humour.