Festivals

Yet again this year, I am playing at precisely nil festivals, although I would love to.
So I am organising my own: Squirrelfest.
I haven't decided where yet, but I plan to pitch up in a grassy park somewhere, entice my audience with a bagful of stale bread crusts, and regale them for four hours with a unique set including specially written songs such as Where Did I Put My Nuts and Beware Of The Dog.
Their little bushy tails will sway to my anthems and they will go back to their dreys at nightfall, happy and contented, with just a few complaints about the toilet facilities, and singing my hit, Humans? Who Needs 'Em?.

Wild Excitement for Barnet's Residents

I've just seen eighties superstar Paul Young in the supermarket. Unfortunately I didn't get to look in his basket. Later, he was withdrawing cash from Barclays on the High Street.
It's all go in Barnet on a Friday afternoon!

Bletherings: Greek

In Crete on holiday, I very gradually began to understand the writing on the signposts; this was very odd, watching sense gradually materialise in front of my eyes from something that had been incomprehensible.
This made me remember McMum and McDad earnestly moving their lips and staring and making noises at me over and over again when I was a baby, and my feeling that they were trying to make me understand what they were doing, until eventually I did, and that's when I started to understand the English language.

When we were in Crete, a teenage member of our party, a girl, was overcome every time we saw one of the many stray doggies that cringed around the tourists.
'Oooh look at the little doggy-poggy-woggies!', she would coo in a baby voice.
So me and her mum started noticing the old ladies who walked by the side of the road with their bundles of shopping or whatever.
'Ahhhh! Look at the lovely little old lady-pady-wadies!', we trilled, tears pouring down our faces with laughter at our clever idea.
We were probably just as sickening as the teenager doggy-poggy-woggy lover.

All this is inspired by a visit to one of my students who is doing work experience at London Greek Radio. They have been fantastic hosts, allowing her to do her own show. But it was an eccentric experience as most of the other staff appear to be Greek men of a certain age, grizzled, polite and exceptionally bossy.
'Everyone upstairs!', one chap would say and we trooped upstairs. 'Right! Downstairs everyone! You can talk for five minutes. Sit there please. Now you have to stop talking for a while; we are going upstairs! Stand over here and be in the photograph. And another please. One more photograph!' Everyone wanted to shake hands and join in, and the poor student grinned at me helplessly as the tide of people swept upstairs and down again, collecting more excited chaps as we did so.
After twenty minutes, I took my leave with a happy heart, enthused by the enthusiasm of people who love their job and put their heart and soul into it.

Finally: McDad produced a bottle of wine called 'Grk' once at the table. A wag in our company asked him if he had another one called 'Ee'.

Well, that's really enough bletherings for today.

Rebel Music: Bristol, Saturday

Years ago, the Chefs played a very eccentric gig at the Trinity in Bristol, after which a young man physically shoved our manager aside to try to get to me in the dressing room and a very nattily dressed African businessman in a navy suit said to me 'Don't worry little girl, I can make you famous'.
This gig on Saturday celebrates those bands who played the Trinity back then. Don't know what time I'm playing yet but I'll let you know!

Event: Rebel Music:  Trinity Center, 17^th April, 2010, 2pm-2am

A day long celebration of Music, Fashion & Art inspired by Punk, Nu Wave and Ska

at the Trinity Center St Philips as part of a HLF funded oral and archival history project What's Your Trinity Story.

Program

Daytime 2-6pm

2.00pm Talk by Debbie Withers,  (Author of 'The Kate Bush Theory')'Do it yourself/ Do it together': A guide to punk cultural production.

3.00-4.00pm Motiq and Earthwormkim present Punk Fashion Show.  w

4.00-5.00pm "Rebel restyle" - Mash up, remake clothes led by final year fashion students from UWE

Evening 6.00-2am

6.00-7.30pm Film Screening in conjunction with Watershed Media Centre "Filth and the Fury" (cert. 15) *

Live Music Featuring: Disorder, Stingrays, Blak Flamez, Denial Factor, Helen Mc Cookerybook, Drunk Granny plus DJ Hackenbush.

Cost

 £10.00 ticket for the whole day

 £5.00 daytime

 £5.00 Evening

* £1.00 payable on the day

Tickets available from Bristol Ticket Office Bristol 0117 929 9008

Please note daytime activities are open to all ages but entry in the evening is restricted to 14 + if accompanied and 16 + if not.

For more information about the event and the project, please contact Outreach Worker Dr Edson Burton on 0117 935 1200 or email info@3ca.org.uk

Joe Guillan Plays Guitar Very Well Indeed Aged 18

http://www.youtube.com/user/bluemoonboy1956#p/a/f/0/DNeydMBH0Dk

Quilts

I went to see the quilts today at the V&A with my friend Joan, who works nearby at the Royal College of Art.

It is a fantastic exhibition and very popular: unfortunately we arrived at the same time as what appeared to be a coach party of opinionated grey-coiffed ladies, all very tall and assertive.

But the exhibition itself was inspiring, with some beautiful and touching work. Joan commented that it was all based on systems, a sort of art that is often associated with ruffty-tuffty macho artists. The mathematical precision was extraordinary, sometimes taking a full day to calculate and realise. There were quilts there by men too- a lovely one that took a tailor eighteen years to make and that was peppered with moral thoughts, and a collaborative effort from inmates at Wandsworth prison (unfortunately not given a full showing the the catalogue: perhaps it wasn't ready in time).

Some of them were funny; many had hidden details that you only saw up close.

It's very pertinent at the moment, particularly given the need for recycling, for of course they are all made from unwanted scraps of material, and they are as evocative of different eras as samples used on hip hop recordings that live again in a completely new context.

Morning Glory

From the Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh. Glorious.

Teenage Joy

Well, I suppose it's teenage logic: smash glasses, a lamp and one of your mother's precious delft tiles. Leave piles of unwashed dishes, use up all the toilet roll, leave a kitchen chair out in the yard all night. When your mother mentions these small peccadilloes, SHOUT AS LOUD AS YOU CAN TO SHUT HER UP and SLAM THE DOOR!!!!

At least I had a lovely couple of days in beautiful Dumfries-shire at a hotel on the banks of the river Nith, with the calls of the eagles and small birds and big trees, spending the day playing guitar with a large group of mellow middle aged men (actually there were two of us middle aged women) and Martin's daughter, wearing the ends of my fingers to rags and eating big Scottish dinners in the evenings.
The highlight of this year's evening concert was a little girl who was a guest at the hotel, seeing all of us getting up in turn to play, and asking her mum to get her guitar so she could play too.
She played a little guitar exercise (50 seconds) and a one-verse song about spring (30 seconds), completely no-nonsense, with not a Simon-Cowell inspired I-want-this-so-much-I'll-die-if-I-don't-get-it hair on her head.
Now I'm tired and I have just eaten a totally disgusting Sainsbury's ready meal; I should've known better.
Sorry for the short posting. I am off to the land of nod, once I have stopped seething about the resident teenager!
I will leave you with Brian's joke.
'I was walking down the road and I came across a guy playing a didgeridoo. He was playing Dancing Queen, Waterloo and some other Abba songs.
I thought, well, that's aboriginal.'

Punk Weekend in October

The Chefs (or a version of us) have been asked to play in Brighton at a weekend do in October to celebrate ten years of the Punkbrighton website (www.punkbrighton.co.uk)
I have emailed Carl but the email bounced back: there is a letter in the post to him. Bruv has said yes so we will see what happens. There had been a stumbling block that would have prevented me from doing it but this was unblocked this morning.
I baked a seed-cake for McMum this morning. The Offsprogs and I are off to see her for two days in Edinburgh in her new gaff. I will be putting pictures up on the wall and cleaning the sofa. Then it's the guitar weekend, which is always brilliant. I hope it's sunny in Dumfries so I can wander about under the lovely trees and think silent thoughts (pretentious, moi?). There's definitely something surreal about a bunch of middle-aged people (mostly guys) wandering around in different directions on the thickly-grassed lawns in the sunshine, guitars slung about their necks, smiling serenely as though they have just died and gone to heaven. Sweet!
I will be taking the Medea ideas (Mideas!) with me to look at on the train and I'm looking forward to dawdling through the streets of Edinburgh marvelling at the red tartan berets with faux (pretentious moi? again) ginger hair attached and the cruddy bagpipers on every street corner with tourist-hatred in their eyes.
Edinburgh's a bit like Waterloo in London: there is often a chill in the air and a chilly nature to its citizens that percolates through their bohemian clothing. I'm immune, having been a visitor for years and having been initiated by having my foot run over by a bus in Princes Street when I was about nine. It was my fault, but my Grandpappy felt furiously guilty and bought me a pair of red shoes to say sorry, which led to a scolding from McMum because I couldn't wear red shoes to school. Which, of course, was exactly the point.

The House on the Hill

New track on Myspace www.myspace.com/helenmccookerybook

Tie: Ever Wondered Whie?

Black Ink

I've got black ink all over my fingers: I'm doing a page from the Medea comic.
It's taking ages, because I have a gothic take on Beano-style drawing and that involves layers and layers of inky cross-hatching.
Also the paper I'm using (which is now no longer available but I think I've got enough for this comic) is coated with avery fine layer of china clay, which means you can scrape away mistakes with a surgical blade when the ink is dry.
I'd forgotten how long it takes the ink to dry- it needs to 'set'- and there are lots of smudges on the paper and on me, which means lots of scraping tomorrow.
So I'm having a poppadum and blog break.
If I"d finished earlier I would have gone out and bought some multibuy Lindt chocolate bunnies from the supermarket and gorged on them, but at least there's a whole pile of poppadums left over from yesterday when Offsprog 1 and her friend came round unexpectedly and made it necessary to make a curry which they gobbled up in a trice (students with empty fridges).
Life is surreal, still: the kitchen is awash with pink balloons from Offsprog 2's surprise party for her friend. She won't let me pop them, and because the cat died a while ago I'm respecting her request (there's some sort of logic in that, I think). They drift towards the cupboards as though they want to put themselves away, and make the cupboard doors bounce open if you try to slam them without hooking them away with a foot, so many normally-swift kitchen procedures are happening in slo-mo today.
There's a bowl of lemon and orange sweets on the table from the same event (they were horrible sweets anyway and the lemon and orange ones are particularly rubbery-chemical in flavour).
No-one is going to eat them but I can't bring myself to throw them away just yet.
There is also something mysterious and brown under a tea-towel next to the cooker, but I'm too frightened to look.
Well, off to the poppadums. There's no space for me to work in this mini-house and I've been following the sun around with my drawing book; evening is drawing in (I'm not drawing it though), the light is going and my black and white working day is over, though I'll be playing some colourful music later on.
N.B. I was asked to do the Medea comic because I know how to draw loud drawings!

Jamie

It was Jamie McDermott's 30th birthday yesterday, and he had a get-together at the George in the Strand.
His band, The Irrepressibles, have been doing incredibly well, he's been very busy and I haven't seen him for ages so I decided to go along and party with him.
That part of the Strand is weird- it seems perpetually winter, even in summer (I went to a wedding there a few years ago and even in high summer it was gloomy and a chill pervaded the air), and also seems to have lagged behind the march of history (it seems to have stuck itself in the 17th Century in spite of modern buildings that have settled on it's old soul).
Brrr!
Inside the pub, though, all was cheerful. His extended family sat at tables, draped in black lace and eating crisps. Jamie was late, but arrived in high spirits with his consort, Jacob, and the night became jolly and musical. His father, an actor, and his brother sang a set of songs that included some Brecht and Weill numbers, and a duo followed them on Casio keyboard, scrunched together and roaring with laughter as they sang.
Piece-de-resistance of the evening was Jordan Hunt, who appeared from the back of the room wearing half a white paper horse strapped to his head and assorted ruffles on his naked torso, playing his violin and miming to a cacophonous medley of diva songs, at one point applying copious quantities of fucshia lipstick to his mouth... then the area around his mouth... then drawing two lipstick hearts on his chest.
He pulled Jamie from the audience and gave him a big sloppy smacker, transferring greasy smudges of fuchsia on to Jamie's face.
What fun! It shut me and Helen White up: we hadn't seen each other for ages. She used to be a student of mine, and she's now doing really well, making a classical album for Boosey and Hawkes amongst other things. There was lots to say.
Eva the singer was there too, good natured and smiling; her boyfriend used to be in a band called Moses who had supported the Daintees, and he told me he recognised me from the Jazz Cafe which was very flattering.
At the end, Jamie was joyfully in his cups and clamped me to his side with a loving arm. He's very strong and very tall and very affectionate. He gave me a big kiss and made my face pink too, and this morning when I woke up I still smelled of his delicious aftershave!
I did take a photo of Jordan and if it's any good I'll post it later.

Two Places Still Available on Martin's Guitar Weekend

This is such a friendly weekend and is suitable for medium-skilled people or those who like myself wish they were better!

It's a beautiful part of the UK and the hotel has its own bit of river and a huge garden full of lovely and interesting trees. There's a bothy nearby with Rabbie Burns' scribbles on the glass of the windows. The all-in cost is £290 (accomodation, tuition, food).

GUITAR WEEKEND 2010 APRIL: 

Fri, Sat & Sun......   8th 9th & 10th  

DUMFRIES:

FRIAR’S CARSE HOTEL

Auldgirth, Dumfries, Scotland DG2

Teachers: Martin Stephenson, Gary Dunn & Bryan Younger

Contact: Andrew Bailey; 07778 558015 email: andrew@takingstock.org.uk 

Friars Carse Hotel, Auldgirth, Dumfries, Scotland DG2 0SA:

WEB:  http://www.friarscarse.co.uk/ 

Tel: 01387 740388

Toast

I've just got back from Liverpool where I was examining an M.Phil. alongside the lovely Marion Leonard.
Now I am tired, but the day went well in spite of a Virgin Train scented, as usual, with Eaudor de Toilette and in spite of mishearing the train announcer at Euston reading out 'Leyton Buttocks' (that should have been Leyton Buzzard, for my international readers) (the Scottish ones!).
Jane Munro from the Au Pairs has been in touch, which has made me very happy, and I am now very much looking forward to revising the book.
I do not like writing very much, even though I have lots of ideas of things to write. It's not laziness: it's a problem with sitting still. I would rather be out doing gigs, and if I do sit still, that's for drawing.
Tomorrow will be filled with nice things: doing some sketches for the Medea comic, thinking up ideas for the Desperado Housewives magazine, listening to girl group compilations, catching up on correspondence, maybe even recording some songs; mostly, though, toastly.

A big pile of toast and a huge pot of tea
Shabby old clothes
That's the day for me.