Oh bloody hell! McCookerybook or Reddington?

Today I woke up and played my guitar and I was Helen McCookerybook. Then I phoned Caroline and I was Helen Reddington; I became Helen McCookerybook briefly again while logged on to Myspace to arrange some gigs, before Reddingtonning again to grade some Fame Academy applications. I then had half an hour of McCookerybook, playing my guitar, and then answered the door under that name to a group of women making a documentary about similarities between Spanish and British punk bands in the late 1970s, who had come to interview Helen Reddington. I remained Reddington while talking to Nicola from Woman's Hour about the Lost Women celebration.
Who was I when I went shopping?
Probably Helen McCallum, the name of the timid schoolgirl who cringed in the sixth-form at Walbottle Comprehensive School.


This code will take you to Poly Styrene's new anti-war track
www.littlelondonstudios.com/tam/codepink

Little Sunday Morning Joke

What did the bird say?
Talk is cheep.

I could sleep on a chicken's lip

I've just driven back from last night's gig in Leicester through about 15 rainstorms to work (yes, me and those little rugger-playing tykes at private schools ar busy on Saturday mornings!).
The gig was great, at the De Montfort Hall. Little Bruv went to see Johnny Cash there and the first two rows of seats were taken up by Leicester's dustmen!
I went on as Martin's guest- it was a sort of festival and there were children there who seemed to really like my songs. Good job they didn't realise that one was about sex (Temptation) and the other about drugs (Heaven Avenue). I sang the Airship Song with Martin and we were going to do Loverman but I chickened out because we didn't have time to rehearse it before the gig and I'm still a bit wet behind the ears as far as tasking risks with songs is concerned especially in such a massive venue with such good sound! It was really good to play in a big place again, which I haven't done for at least 20 years.
It's Little Bruv's birthday today and we're going to Greenwich Park to get rained on and I'm not going to eat Scotch Eggs. Who invented them? They are horrible.

2a Price Street

Well, it was one of those surreal gigs in Birkenhead last night. It was organised by Peter Jones (hi Peter!) who reads this on Sundays while the Antiques Roadshow is on, and was in aid of a children's charity called Jellybean. There was a giant green fur jelly bean playing drums when we got there, and no microphone although there was a PA system; someone phoned for a microphone, and then we noticed that there was no clip on the mike stand to fix it into, although there was a roll of sellotape which was just being wrapped round the microphone to stick it to the stand, when an audience member said they had a mike stand in their car boot and went to get it. So sound materialised; Martin and myself had out photos taken by Paul Chong (who keeps finches and also reads this, hi to you too!) with the giant green fur jellybean.
There were people there from the guitar weekend- it was nice to see them again, and Mike and June were there too (hi Mike and June) with Mike feeling guilty for having a bootleg copy of the Helen and the Horns album, but I told him it wasn't his fault as he'd bought it in good faith off the internet, but I'll have to write a Letter to the Japanese company to tell them to stop manufacturing it.
It was a good gig, all in all, with a great atmosphere once everything got going, the giant green fur jelly bean got everyone dancing (including me with my rusty old joints) and by the end the floor had so many jellybeans on it that everyone's feet were sticking to it.
Weird but fun!
And I rushed back today to do Song Club; I wasn't standing any nonsense today AT ALL CHILDREN and miraculously, we actually got something done, at jammy dodgers, and were all still speaking to each other at the end.

Essence of Scotchness

Look! This is the sort of perfume that Scottish people wear. If you detect this aroma, you can be sure you are in the vicinity of one of us.

If you live in or near Liverpool or Birkenhead, come to 2a Price Street tomorrow; Martin Stephenson is playing and I am too!

End of Carrot-fish: sorry, some sadness

When I came downstairs this morning, the carrot-fish's gills had stopped moving, his colour was pale and dull and he had parked finally with his nose wedged in a corner of the tank.
I'm just about to remove him and give him a decent burial in a plant pot so when he decomposes he can feed a plant.
I cried yesterday morning because he was so ill. SIlly, isn't it, to cry about a fish?
I have a friend, Mykaell, who says that when he peels onions he really cries properly, because the onion-induced effect of crying reminds him of all the sadness he feels.
The worst thing is feeling unhappy and being unable to cry.

Poorly Carrot-fish

Oh it's awful- the carrot-fish is poorly, its bright orange scales have gone pale and dull with grey blotches, its face has swollen and gone knobbly and this morning I found it with its snout buried in the gravel.
I've had him for more than seven years and he's been a feisty friend; he peers at me boldly each morning out of the tank with his revolving black eyes as I come down the stairs, and flaps about when you go up to the tank to look a him.
I gave him fifteen drops of medicine. I hope that works, because we have had a close relationship over those years, and I am very fond of him.

I have to tear myself away because I'm actually going into a rehearsal studio today. I have two gigs this week, in Birkenhead (2a Price Street) and Leicester (as Martin's guest at the De Montfort Hall) and I've started forgetting the lyrics to the old songs because I've been writing so many new ones. So it's an all-day rehearsal, with frayed finger-ends and a lost voice by the end.

Keep your fingers crossed for carrot-fish.

Walnut Whips

They're a bit like chess pieces.
Queen of tortoises.

Horse Art

Yesterday I took some photographs to give you an art show but I'm not going to post them just yet. In fact, I'll just tell you about one of them. I'd been driving past this painted sign that said 'Horse Art' which I thought was wonderful; I was imagining horses making potato-print style art with their hooves, horseshoe-shaped coloured blobs in primary colours on sugar paper. Or blowing inkblots with their flubbery lips to make spidery patterns. Alas, no; at close quarters, the poster said 'Horse and Art' and was some sort of club for humans to make paintings of horses.
What a disappointment!
Today I went to Rough Trade and re-stocked them with Helen and the Horns CDs. I bought the new John Savage book for Little Bruv's birthday and a Borat T-shirt for him too which I regretted when I got home. I was paid for the Suburban Pastoral CDs they have sold so far, which is going straight into the kitty for the nearly-finished next one. They also asked about my book, so I'll have to get the publishers to contact them, and I gave them some chewing-gum art badges to give away too.
I'm removing 'Dreaming of You' from Myspace as soon as it stops playing up, and replacing it with another new one, 'Love on the Wind' which is a demo at the moment.
This is the picture I'm gonna put with it.

Lastly, a joke:
What do you call an mp3 player with very sad music on it?
A cry-pod.

Sorry Grandpappy

When I was six, my Grandfather died of lung cancer. I had a very special relationship with him: he was gruff and cross with everybody except me. I used to draw for him and make him take up a bucket and spade and play in the sand with me.
When he was very ill, as his life was ending, he asked to see me.
I was told he was wearing a mask to help him breathe. I'd just had four teeth out, and had gas through a horrible-smelling black mask to make me go to sleep, which was one of the most dreadful things that had ever happened to me in my life. I was too frightened to go to see him.
I had no idea what it would feel like when he was not there any more, and nor did I understand how much it would have meant to him to see me as he lay dying.
I have never forgiven myself for this, the heartlessness of being young.

Last Night's Songbird

This is a picture of Diana introducing the Bardos Band, two women who sang and played ancient instruments- a giant pale wood viola-type thing. It was lovely to hear such music- normally I give it a wide berth but it seemed to fit the warm atmosphere- somehow, Visions had transformed from its shebeen/strip joint aura into a proper nightclub.
It was full of teenagers selfconscious in their first statement hats (never been to Dalston before) mixed with stout square-set ladies in crimplene and k-skips; a very typical Diana-mixture of people. There were beautiful projections that looked like shards of home-made toffee. I sat and drew people for a while, then Diana moved my chair closer to the music. People were chatting loudly; she suggested they suck their thumbs if they couldn't stop, and that soon shut them up. Next up were two guys from Manchester, one of whom was called David Jaycock. They had forgotten their CD, which was a shame. Their songs were all short, like little Russian film themes in a nutshell, with a whisper of Robert Wyatt in there too; one played a Spanish guitar with a very unusual sound, and the other guy alternated between a harmonium, a lap steel guitar and a banjo. Very laid-back and and mellow fellows, but just right.
As the Gentle Mystics climbed onstage, all the teenagers flooded to the front possessively. Diana introduced the band, one by one: Orlando, Merlin, Cosmo, Naomi.... 'Hampstead!', whispered J, who was sitting next to me. They were indeed Hampstead, but they were also very good- at least the first two or three songs. The singer, Naomi, has a fabulous voice and I absolutely loved the melodies of their songs; the arrangements were very well thought out, the drummer was brilliant and had a stylishly distinctive way of playing. Naomi even played the saw blade too, something I haven't heard since the Wylam Folk Club. They had an awful white rapper for one song, though, and after the first few songs there was too much oom-pah which made everything seem comedic instead of beautifully-crafted (which is what it was, really). But they were very impressive. Hats off to Merlin, too, for some nifty accordion playing.
I'd spent part of the evening gazing at the onstage tuba, wondering if it was two tubas, or one tuba reflected in the mirror.
It was the guilty source of the oom-pah, and should have been left in the tuba cupboard at home.

Self indulgent ramble about Suburban Pastoral

I've been meaning to do this for ages. Because I'm writing lots of new songs, I wondered why I'd written the old ones, and this is why.

Dreaming of You- I probably have already written about this. It was a dream- a little woman singing in a huge dark hall in a deserted Butlins-type place, with an out-of-sight and out-of-tune orchestra; she was standing alone on the stage in her best prom dress, spotlit. The atmosphere was damp and cold. There was no audience, just me in the shadows. I remembered the song she was singing and wrote it down when I awoke.
(Another time I dreamt I did a songwriting project in a pub and there were teddy-boys dancing on the bar, but that's another story)

Heaven Avenue- two groups of people at opposite ends of Brighton sample pure LSD; they agree to walk along the seafront and meet in the middle. One group has a beautiful other-worldly experience; the other has a total nightmare, and never leaves the house.
(At least they know how to make tea when the other-worldlies arrive)

Temptation- this is from a song-cycle I did about the seven deadly sins. I tried to read the Old Testament and got stuck at page 3, so decided to write my own nonsense comic-book version

Don't Know Why- a song about unrequited love and the foolishness surrounding it

Hill of Fools- I wrote this for Gina's Birthday. I'd been in the mountains of Italy, and then in the mountains of Scotland. When I was a little girl I always used to think the Beatles song 'Fool on the Hill' applied to me because I never seemed to fit in anywhere. Then I started thinking that maybe it was everyone else that was wrong and not me. So this is about making yourself feel as though you matter, even when everything else points to another conclusion. I often sing it in the morning when the day ahead looks unbearable, just like children used to sing hymns in assembly at school.
Ultimately, everything looks small and insignificant next to massive mountains that have been there for millions of years.

Running Away- well, yes, who doesn't feel like this sometimes?

Colour my Day- this is a song about trying to remain optimistic and look at difficult things from every angle. Sometimes trying to make another person happy can make you happy yourself.

Swan- I nearly drowned twice in very shallow water when I was very little- once in a bath and once in a paddling pool. These memories ended up in the same in-tray as a tale of a gang of terrifying swans following some young men in a rowing boat on a Sussex river, and a guy from art college who blasted out his brains with LSD and fell through the ice on a pond.
I wrote it to an ice-skating rhythm, because I love doing that even though I am very bad at it and fall over a lot.

Britannia Great- this is a song about compromise, a terrible but necessary thing

Hymn to Kent- beautiful Garden of England, inhabited by the National Front who have headquarters in Welling. How can we have fought wars against racism yet harbour it still in quiet places?

The Word is, Goodbye- about all types of ending and how they make you feel. Sorry, a bit depressing. Someone said they'd like this to be played at their funeral.

London- not what it seems, especially if you wander about a lot at night like I used to do in the 1980s with all those late-night gigs, walking home to Kilburn at 3 in the morning, talking to the transvestites and prostitutes on the way back.
Lots of people don't know that before Margaret Thatcher, there were no people sleeping rough or begging in London. A musician from Berlin came over once to stay and could not believe his eyes, as he'd heard that Britain was a wealthy and successful country. He'd not realised at what expense.

Once in a Blue Moon- I think I would call this song an appeal from the soul

Songbird- this was written for Diana Mavroleon's birthday. She has a lovely party in the woods in Norfolk every year and I wrote this after the first one I went to. We all sat in front of a brown tent, with 'footlights' made of tealights on top of small cut branches banged into the ground, listening to a group playing instruments they'd made from trees, amplified so we could hear how strange they sounded. As we sat there, multicoloured bugs rained down on to our heads and clothing but nobody minded. Later, we all danced to disco music under the stars until we could dance no more. I lay in a sleeping bag in a shed with Gina and her partner and children listening to the music for the rest of the night, falling asleep to the boisterous strains of 'My Boy Lollipop'

And that's it, end of self-indulgence. You can get my CD from www.roughtrade.com if you haven't got it already.
I have nearly finished the next one now.

Later I'll review last night's Songbird, which was very enjoyable.

Lost things

Mostly time; an hour calculating rooms, equipment, dates, and technical assistance, lost by the computer at work as I tried to save it; three hours in traffic to travel 20 miles (although I did see two mad horsemen of the apocalypse charging through the traffic in racing carts with massive wheels, bellowing with horse-carriage road rage, with the most beautifully-shaped black'n'white horses I've ever seen), but most sadly, all the photos off my phone, including those of A Smile and a Ribbon, Temperatures, Katy Carr and Sharon Lewis, Martin Stephenson, and lots of other pics of friends and quirky things like some grated cheese that fell into a cup of tea and melted in the bottom of it.
Oh lost things, lost things!
I did find something today though- my friend Saffie Ashtiany who I had not seen for about eleven years. She is making a film about ordinary people in Iran, and has also pulled off a minor miracle by looking ten years younger than she did the last time I saw her, even though she is ten years older! She made a really excellent video for King Kurt in the 1980s that was a homage to Busby Berkeley, amongst many other things.
Her father used to make films based on Persian folk tales, which the Ayatollahs found politically disturbing; but so did the Shah. Too many uncomfortable truths for the powerful in ordinary people's stories, and he ended up in exile in Paris.

Buttons

I hates 'em- or at least the sewing on bit.
But if you get a lot of clothes at charity shops, you have to do it sometimes.
I have moved the buttons on a cheesey 50s-style holiday shirt, and now have to sew a hook and eye on to a 1970s Droopy and Browns dress (horrible colour, lovely fit) and do the same on a 1950s dress with pink roses on it.
You just have to get into the zone, and then you can reward yourself by playing a few riffs.
No thimbles, though.

Nice Guitar 4 U

This is the Eko guitar that I was going on about at the Cockpit Workshops in Deptford the other week; thought you might like to see it.
I realised reading the last posting that I did that I gave the wrong impression about my book. It's about not-famous people, too, and Sue (fiddle), Suzanne (bass), Sara (vocals), Mufti (drums), Sian (bass), Kate (guitar and vocals), Julie (keyboards), Liz (keyboards) and others will be there alongside those you might have heard of. That's the whole idea.
I've put a new song on Myspace, recorded on Thursday at Tom's. It's called Loverman and has Martin on backing vocals and rhythm geetar, which really drives the song along. I'll leave it up a few days and then put another one there (trying to catch you out, you see!).
I'm planning gigs in York and Edinburgh- funny, none at all in London at the moment. Have the Cockneys fallen out with me?