A Small and Self-Indulgent Moan

The problem with working in an academic institution for a person like me is that you never feel that you ought to be there in the first place.
You never feel good enough.
There is always somebody doing something much cleverer than you, with a smirk.
I have battled with feelings of inadequacy for the entire time that I have been lecturing, not so much with the students, who when I first started appreciated my honesty as I read the complicated books that I knew nothing about alongside them, but with my colleagues, who seemed to set about mystifying the obvious with relish.
I know they are brilliant in their worlds, I know they are.
But I feel like a silly child who tries to join in adult conversations without understanding the rules of engagement.
Sometimes people I know tell me that this is because the other academics,too, are insecure, and that their cool demeanour is a veneer to hide their own insecurities.
I used to like working in a shop. I worked with friends (who I still know even 30 years later).
We made tea, sold things and counted up the money at the end of the day.
We talked about proper things and didn't try to steal each other's jobs or spoil each other's day. At least, not too much!
I am looking forward to the day when what I do to earn my living is simpler, and I don't trip over other people's ambition on the way to the loo!

Last Mineeet Gig

Viva Viva restaurant, Hornsey High Street, N8, Thursday 14th May (tomorrow)
I'm on at 9 p.m. for 45 minutes
Nice food, good sound, more acts on too.

Beaten at Own Game

I opened the letter to Ms Cakebread, thinking it to be a joke from a pal.
It was a real letter for a girl down the road, delivered to me in error.
Mirror mirror......

Hamilton Square

Martin has been working away in Scotland to sort out the CD
We will be doing a launch at the Perseverance in Shroton Street, Nprth Marylebone
It's tiny so if you want to come along please get tickets now
We'll be playing our own sets plus music from the CD
Hope you can come along!
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/50103

Half

For years, years, years I have looked on my computer keyboard for the symbol for a half. I have wondered what clever combination of keys will conjure up the fractions. I have worried and pondered.
this morning, it came to me, first thought of the day:
1/2
1/2
1/2
1/2
Ha ha!
Half!

Dinosong

When dinos drummed the earth
And dactyls skimmed the sky
Their stone eggs, they gave birth to bones for you and I
To dream about the past
To dream about the past
A steam-soaked landscape, murky marshes, roaring waterfalls
Ancient forests, crashing trees and distant creature calls
Dream about the past
Dream about the past
To dream

I from distant safety see
I fly, oh I fly
With the landscape under me.

O if I lived in prehistoric times, well I would die
Masticated, torn to shreds in the twinkling of an eye
I wouldn't last a day
I wouldn't last a day
The scent of human blood would tantalise the hungry crew
And when they' polished me off, well they'd surely start on you
You wouldn't last a day
You wouldn't last a day
No way, no way.

We should thank our lucky stars
To be alive in this century of ours

2009
A relatively safe time
No dinosaurs.

Song circle this morning, possibly outside drinking lemonade left over from yesterday when the family came round. We sat in the sun on foldy wooden chairs and some chairs from the kitchen and ate salad and cakes (I ate four).
Sarah brought stickers that said '50' to go on the wheelie bin in case anyone pinches it again. Thank you Sarah!
Andy brought round a green Gnasher t-shirt, perfect for gardening in and scaring away the black and white cat that sneaks in and sprays on my guitar cases when I'm not looking. And the orange cat that comes frog-hunting at the sad little pond a foot square at the back of the garden, still big enough for frogs, and once a newt (how'd dat get there?)
If only it would work on the pesky little grey moths that flutter past in my peripheral vision, heading for my dear green duffel coat that I have had for a million years. If you clap your hands beside them, they become stunned and flutter to the floor.
Cruel perhaps, but I do make tasty little pies out of them and nosh them in the evenings with a pint of spider-leg beer.

Weird

When I was about eight I went to Brownies in Ovingham. My friend's Dad used to drive us there from Wylam in his old, old Rolls Royce, an ancient car that he was doing up from scratch: he would work on it at weekends and bank holidays. It was a veteran car, really, and often didn't work but it managed to get us there and back on Tuesdays.
One balmy summer evening I was sitting next to him in the front seat as he drove us there and the window-winding handle beside me started revolving all by itself, and wound the window down right to the bottom.
I sat and watched it, assuming that this was a normal sort of thing in an old car like that.
'How did you do that?' gasped Mr Valentine, 'That handle's been stuck fast ever since I got this car and I haven't been able to move it at all!'.
I hadn't touched it.
Do you think it was a ghost?

Good Day

That wasn't such a bad day was it? After approximately two hours sleep last night following a lovely dinner with Lucy O'Brien (I think it was all the stuff we were talking about, mulling it over in my head), I was dreading today's songwriting final session. They each have to play two songs and it always blows me away. It's just the variety- and the dedication too.
Once or twice, I have cried at these things.
A Russian girl, singing in Russian about missing her mum in Moscow; a girl singing about a death in the family just a few days after my father in law died; and one year, a song about the sea by a tough-looking hip hop chappie that was just so powerfully and poetically beautiful it seemed to fill the room with underwater light as though we were sitting in an aquarium, listening in the dappled gloom.
One delighted student today had visited L.A. Strings, absolutely The Best guitar repair and care place in all London run by two mega-enthusiastic guitar-builders, one tall, one small, who mend guitars with skill and love and who are full of stories. They should have their own ten-minute TV show every Saturday evening at tea-time. Within days, every household would have bought a guitar, their enthusiasm is so infectious!
So this afternoon was fun; a few shaking fingers on guitar strings, a few nervously quavery voices, a few technical hitches, but some lovely songs, and one which I couldn't get out of my head on the way home, it was so beautiful.
As we said goodbye, I thought how much I will miss them. They stacked the orange chairs for the last time, caught their guitar necks in their gig-bags in the self-closing doors on the way out as they have done every week since January, and that was it for another year.
On the way out, Jim offered to record more songs with me this summer.
I sense a third album on the horizon!

Stuff stuff

Bugger the endless lists of things to do! Stuff the responsibility! The pressure, the bills, the washing, the emails, the fears, the worries, the lot of it!
I've just spent 2 hours recording a song and it was FUN. I glared at the cats when they looked at me with that challenging look: "I am going to ruin your recording!'.
I left in all the imperfections as there wasn't time to fix 'em.
It is 'Gotta Have a Heart' and it's on Myspace.
It sounds like a love song but what inspired it was being badly let down by someone who thought they were virtuous who was supposed to be working with me and who pulled out for what they claimed were noble reasons. I turned it into a love song because that took the sting out of the situation.
One day I will record a posh version but common will have to do for now.
I put a photo of some red clogs from a charity shop. I have decided to photograph things rather than buy them in future, as it's cheaper and it means I will be able to pay the gas bill!
Now it's time for a sun-break, out to sniff the suburban air and listen to everybody's lawn mowers.

Soup

Exhausted by DIY repairs on Saturday and Sunday and a large pile of essay marking, I retired last night only to be kept awake by a song that nagged me to be finished. It may end up as a Helen and the Horns song because it's got an extra bit that doesn't need words. It's a bit of a Dusty Springfield song, except that I have to admit playing it to Burt Bacharach in my imagination and him adjusting it radically with a spanner and a mole-wrench and making it into a proper song, and my face falling with the realisation that I just haven't got what it takes (aha! that sounds like a song title!)
Hamilton Square has taken off and will be released on 19th June- we are doing a launch at the Perseverance in North Marylebone (in the street that has the Sea Shell on the corner) and we'll be selling tickets for that online, I'll let you know when.
Work today- both daytime and evening. Thank God I made some soup yesterday, as when I get in I will be too tired to speak, but not too tired to slurp.

Street Toadstool

Look at this street-toadstool. I saw it in Deptford the other day. I think urban fungi like this will soon be springing up everywhere, and this is probably just the first sighting.

Sheds, and the Shapeley

This is Sandie Owen's picture of Martin and myself at the Perseverance- it looks a bit like a Dutch Interior! I really like it.
I've been in the shed again this morning, this time with a face mask on account of the rat droppings.
I found and cleaned up an old wooden bass guitar case, hoeing the rotten foam from inside it. I'll hoover the rest out on a rainy day; I got distracted and started hoeing the weeds instead after a while. Before that I did manage to collect all the paint tins together, tidy up the garden tools so the lawn mower actually fits in, and throw away all sorts of rubbish. None of this stuff even belongs to me, hardly. I am not sure what will happen to it, but at least it's tidier. Another weekend and it will be sorted out.
Next up I'm going to photograph a whole load of clothes to put on eBay. It's no good pretending clothes fit when they don't. I was born without a waist, and vintage clothes were made for woman-shaped women; I can't wait the rest of my life in the vain hope of becoming an hourglass, so off they go to the shapely!

Here's another drawing. I usually upload them and then realise they don't look finished and go back to the drawing board (quite liderally).
I've been clearing out the garden shed. There are masses of everything- about six used paint trays, lots of broken and rusty garden tools, two old fish tanks, loads and loads of half-finished pots of paint, sheets of plastic (thick and thin), two sets of jump-start leads, empty seed packets (carrot, parsnip, tomato), two broken badminton rackets, a skateboard, bin bags with rollerblades in, two broken bicycles, a real cow bell on a leather strap (my manager Claudine nicked it from a poor cow in the Pyrinees who is still probably wandering around lost to this day), rat droppings aplenty, plant pots and lots of bright green plastic containers with spray nozzles and torn-off coloured labels which could be insecticide, fungicide, leaf-shine, fertilizer, sky-perfume, magic rinse, daisy-dinkums, sonic weep, fizz-blattle, good happenings squirt or calming foot lotion.
All or none of those things.

Katy and Nadya Having Fun

It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad Mad.

How could I be so stupid? Visiting a student on a work placement in Creekside, Deptford turned into a three-hour journey after my search on Transport for London's journey planner for Creek Road, a long road with no houses on it and hence, no numbers. After a lengthy tube journey, a lengthy bus journey and a mile's walk followed by a trawl through Deptford, so glum that I didn't even plunder the one pound shops in Church Street, I got to my destination, grinned like an ape for ten minutes till my teeth went dry and then went home again.
I broke into a sweat later at the thought of how everything I do happens the long way round, or the wrong way round.

It was Offsprog-2's birthday in the week. Poor Offsprog-2 spent the night before the big day with her head down God's Big White Telephone, throwing up after eating the same raw pineapple upside down cake that caused similar symptoms in Offsprog-1 the night before the interview in Brighton. So I made the cake today, big and chocolate, and opened a packet of writing icing to dribble patterns on the top. I gazed at the box, which said you could win ten pounds, or even £75,000, or some icing. "How stupid', I thought nastily, and opened the little brown packet inside. 'A fake ten pound note', I grumbled as it fell on to the kitchen floor amongst the small spiders. Actually, it was a real one. Isn't life peculiar?