Walking and The Museum of Everything

Halfway through the marking, I'd had enough, so I hopped on the tube down to Chalk Farm to visit The Museum of Everything. I had been curious to see this Museum, which I believe has been curated by Peter Blake, the collage artist responsible for the cover of the Beatles' Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 
I hated the first corridor which featured posters and photographs of small people and giants: the famous 'General Tom Thumb' was there and it seemed crass to be gawping at the same images Victorians gawped at, in this so-called enlightened age. After all, those people had feelings, didn't they? I don't think it's necessary to recycle these pictures to be re-gawped at, frankly.
In the first room there was a beautiful model of a wooden steam-roundabout with carved little horses ridden by little chaps with tam o' shanters, sandwiched between the occasional tram car. There were oil lamps fixed above them, presumably to light them up as they merry-went-round. It was inspirational and I loved it.
There were lace-decorated cards, dusty and crusty with age in frames, and a small room full of shell-pictures and figurines: crinolined ladies, rabbits, coy-looking cats and intricate clipper ships with sails made of smooth flat clam shells.
A room full of ventriloquists' dummies and Punch-and-Judy puppets spooked me with their rictus grins and hysterical-looking cheerfulness.
One ventriloquists' dummy sitting in a miniature basked chair bore a passing resemblance to Jools Holland (oops! I'm sure the man has feelings!).
A rather fetching paper-mache dog shared a cabined with an evil-looking and frightening baby with a piercing squint. I felt empathy and horror in equal measures for the Judy puppets with their tiny helpless feet and the dead arms sprouting from their chests.
Next up was erotic Berlin Woolwork and some witty Alice in Wonderland Pieces, all of which were colourful and well-made.
A large room displayed hand-painted banners which advertised circus acts: a man fights a bear, and people with distended stomachs, frilled arms and huge feet are 'All Alive'; Don Carlos's Dog and Monkey Hotel, 'Strange little People', dogs in ruffs, a 'Midget Bull', a 'Two-headed Calf' and 'The Most Terrifying Creature Alive'... by this time I was speculating that perhaps that one was Peter Blake himself. The celebration of the macabre was beginning to depress me beyond redemption.
The exhibition was redeemed temporarily by, up some stairs, a display of beautiful fairground signage handpainted in rich colours: steamboats, traction engines, Kings and Queens and a painted 'Carters Dodgems' sign that featured the head of Little Richard between the words. Lovely- I'm going back with my sketchbook to sketch the perfectly-executed painted typography (there's a thousand pound fine for taking photographs, as numerous notices tell me).
The cases of stuffed animals: well, I remember wanting to see these when I was a student in Brighton. Today, they seemed like fusty cases of (in the case {sic} of the red squirrels) endangered species stuffed and posed as schoolchildren with black beady glass eyes, their rust coloured fur fading to beige.
Two headed lamb, three legged duck: was this part of some evil childrens' nursery rhyme? There was a hunt populated by a team of stuffed dead puppies called 'The Sporting Party'. Ugh. At the point where a set of stuffed animals act out boxing scenes in a series of glass cases, I decided that I'd had enough, and walked down to Camden.
That's where I saw this cheerful steel pan band, braving the cold and wearing their Hawaiian shirts over their jackets. They are called The Caribe Allstars and this is my namecheck to them.

Hi Guys! You brightened up my day- thank you!

Monty's Birthday

Yesterday evening, Paul and myself went over to the Southgate Club to play a set for Monty's 50th Birthday. Thirty years ago, Monty used to come to see The Chefs with his twin brother (who now lives in Australia), and ten years ago we bumped into each other in East Barnet Sainsbury's one Sunday morning when I was out shopping with the family.
He comes to see me play whenever he can, and I was delighted to be invited to play on his special occasion. We did a mixture of songs- some Chefs ones (24 Hours, Let's Make Up and Northbound Train), some Helen and the Horns ones (Freight Train, Lonesome Country Boy, Snakebite, Oh Boy, Girl Versus Boy) some now ones (Love on the Wind, Daisies, Loverman, Gotta Have a Heart and London), and of course Happy Birthday to You, which we played twice because Monty's friends had made him a huge birthday cake. Happy Birthday Monty!

Desperado Housewives Limited Edition Christmas Sock

Look! http://desperadohousewives.bigcartel.com/

An Old Brush Sweeps Clean

I have put a new set of songs up on Myspace, including the Christmas songs and a couple of Chefs ones and some rare Helen and the Horns tracks. Daisies is still there though...
www.myspace.com/helenmccookerybook

Talking of sweep: I used to be in love with Sweep from The Sooty and Sweep Show. It was something to do with his eyebrows.

Greyness and Blandness

This morning's traffic jam (an hour to drive five miles) was surprisingly fruitful in terms of ideas.

I was stationary for long enough to sing into my phone on a couple of occasions, and I must remember to put a notebook in the car again: I took it out because I didn't want the mechanics to laugh at my scribblings as well as laughing at me for being a mug and believing them when they told me the list of things that they said needed to be fixed (some of them have miraculously cleared up since then: how can that be?).

There is something beautiful about the ugliness of the North Circular, particularly in the fog. 

The flyovers loom ahead, piercing the gloom with concrete certainty as they curve through the obliterating whiteness; an X-Factor competition has run for years, ensuring that only the ugliest and most functional of buildings and warehouses are allowed to abut the carriageway; signs and logos must be (i) gigantic and (ii) yellow and blue (goes with grey). 

Helplessly, motorists in knackered cars and vans (no jaguars allowed) follow each other like strings of hopeless sausages, forgetting their destinations due to the length and tedium of their journeys.

It's an enormous surprise to arrive because the North-Circularness is so absolute and enveloping.

I emerged from my car blinking and shocked this morning, feeling that I had already done a day's work just by travelling there.

In contrast to yesterday's struggles, the student feedback sheets for Songwriting and Production all said 'satisfied' and 'very satisfied' today.
One of them said it was his favourite Module and he looked forward to it each week. I needed to hear this as lecturing can often feel like pushing a massively heavy boulder up a very steep hill.

I bought books, but I've left them wrapped up in my office because there's no chance I'll be reading them for months. I've got to check about 50 essays this weekend (mercifully, short ones), as there are new staff members with different standards from their previous Universities, both tougher and more lenient, and I have to make sure the students get a fair deal.

But tonight is mine!! 

The mini poppadums are rustling in the kitchen, excited about being scoffed by such an enthusiast. I have sucked up the rugs with the vacuum cleaner (serves them right, the buggers!), sorted the recycling, and will embark on a spell of balloon-popping when Offsprog Two goes out (sorry, but they take up vital space in this tiny house).

I have been daydreaming about allotments: mud and onions, nasturtiums, cold red winter fingers and plumes of breath in the frosty air. Too late now for Barnet, but perhaps one day when I relocate somewhere friendlier and greener I shall have a garden.

I think it says something about the suburbs, that I have lived in Barnet for nearly fourteen years and I don't have a single friend here. 

Behind so many of the smiles there is judgement, frightening racism, a sense of competition ('what school did you say your daughters went to?'), and a desire to criticise the habits of others. 

My pals are a set of misfits and oddballs like me, and sometimes they turn up in squads: fluorescent, leopardskin, laughing, singing and fascinated by the conformity in the streets and the rich pickings in the charity shops jettisoned by their previous owners in their search for anonymity and blandness.

Dubula

This is my pal Dubula, or Nick Page as I used to know him.
He started up Transglobal Underground and Temple of Sound, and manymany years ago, he had a band called The Red River Mountain Boys, a slightly silly band that played hillbilly music.
Sillybillys, I suppose.
I remember the bass player's stick-on moustache sticking itself to the mike-stand and staying there jauntily when he backed away with a bald upper lip after singing his song.
The other day I got an emergency call and went down to St Aloysius' Church Hall to play bass for The Red River Mountain Boys, with half an hour's rehearsal.
I was fine until we got to Frank Ifield's Rose Marie. Sensing my panic, Nick tried mouthing the chords at me: 'B', he mimed.
I looked at the strings in incomprehension. There were only four of them!!
Yes folks, I have officially become a guitarist instead of a bass player,  a six-string Sheila, although I delightedly remembered the feeling of the bass thundering through the soles of my feet and up my legs and the sheer POWER of playing bass.
And it was lovely to see Nick and his mates again, and to share a stage with Simon Walker, a superb fiddle player.
I used to hang out with them all years ago: before I got married and had children, they were all part of my life so it was a very touching experience to see them all again, and I hope to do a bit more hanging out with them in future.

Numberz

Three hours travelling, six hours teaching, two hours marking, one hour at a meeting, all after four hours sleep: big plate of food, cup of tea... perfect!
The Daintees gig at the Half Moon in Putney last night was an absolute stonker. The band have got into their stride and the sound guy was really good, a gruff Glaswegian wha didnae smile but who put all his efforts into making a crystal clear sound for the band. Martin was hilarious but also the perfect crooner, John played some roasting guitar solos, Kate played drums with sharp precision and Lou underpinned it all with a big bass sound. Martin's guitar playing is really on form too and the PA system did the little Yiari justice. Paul Davey came along and saxaphoned merrily and could be seen grinning away in the background.
The band got a standing ovation, and they deserved it. They are in Portsmouth tonight and I know it's going to be a fantastic gig. Wish I could go!
I was told afterwards that my set was good too, and I was also roadying and selling CDs- one woman bought six. There was plenty of crap joke telling in the dressing room (my fave way of passing the time) and Terri and Graham turned up, the couple whose wedding the guys had played a few months ago.
It was absolutely the best way to spend an evening; sometimes I think back to the miserable evenings I used to have in the big house down the road, sitting watching things I didn't want to watch on a mega-sized TV on my own, and I do really count my blessings.

Today wasn't as bad as I'd thought it might be; my colleagues have rallied round and we dove into a pile of essays to double-mark, fortified by chips, chat and coffee. There are still trillions left but it's nice not to feel so isolated.
The chap across the corridor had brought in his guitar to be looked at by the guitar techie in the studios, and I persuaded him to show me. It is a solid-body wood finish Guild, absolutely beautiful, and when I told him that he retired purring back to his office!

The house is a mess (Offsprog Two has hosted two birthday parties this week that involved huge chocolate cakes) but I fit in rather well, really: hair all over the place, pasty tired face, notes scribbled in pen all over my left hand, holes in socks and pot belly. But I don't care, because the dreaded Thursday is over for another week, only three more to go till the end of term, I have survived, and some of the students even smile at me from time to time.

Rehearsals Etc

I had a rehearsal last night with Paul Eccentric's band for the Rrrants Christmas Special in December.
This was a real education because I had to communicate all sorts of stuff about my songs via Paul to a whole band: Mp3s, parts written out, chords, lyrics, and all at speed because of the huge teaching mountain  that is casting its shadow even at breakfast time.
The rehearsal space was just off the M25 in a converted stable, and they were all set up and ready to go when I got there: drums, double bass, keyboards, trumpet, sax and two vocalists. We worked hard, abandoning Memento Mori, which, it became apparent, is really only suitable for solo performance. But I had a chance to share out lead vocal lines, and On New Year's Eve is going to work really well as a band song, even though by then some of us were literally propping ourselves up on the walls with tiredness.
Paul realised halfway through, after a call from his partner, that he had left our mid-match snacks on the cooker at home and had practically set the kitchen on fire. Oops!
There were some lovely musical moments- it's great to work with other vocalists (in fact the Desperado Housewives have started to work with harmony now too), I was able to punt a nice sax and trumpet harmony, there was some beautiful double bass playing, and I left knackered and happy.

It does feel a bit like touring with The Chefs or Helen and the Horns- I am just about to pick Martin up from Luton to take him to the Half Moon in Putney, where the Daintees are playing tonight. I shall play a few songs as well, before taking Martin and their bass player Lou to back to their hotel in Enfield after the gig, then up at 6.30 tomorrow for a day's teaching. I have spent the morning writing Friday's lecture and buying leads for the P.A. for Monty's 50th Birthday Gig which I am doing on Saturday.
I have what I used to think of as 'tired bones'- I wake up in the morning already tired, and follow a plan of what I have to do as though I have been told to do it by an invisible Sergeant-Major, focusing on each detail of the day as though it was the only thing I had to do.

At odd moments, I imagine my life as an illustrator and musician, creating things instead of managing them.
On the plus side, I have become adept at realising when people are just about to snatch the credit for something from under my nose, and I am becoming fierce about defending the effort I have taken to make things work.
I suppose you could say that I'm toughening up, and I may surprise a few steamrollin' personalities over the next few weeks!

Cake Stall

Wisps of cold fog curl into the dimly-lit main entrance at the University of the West.

A lone student stands at a deserted cake stall, eating the cakes himself.

Watch This Space For News Of.....

Dublin

Friday was an oddity of a day.
At work, I got a text from the lecturer who was intended to talk to my students that morning to tell me that she was stuck in a never-ending traffic jam, so I had to wing it and do the lecture myself.
I grabbed a copy of Suburban Pastoral and a CD player, and talked them through Heaven Avenue, Songbird and Don't Know Why as sound productions before they went off to their song writing workshops. Two of the students asked to buy copies of the CD (unprecedented!) so I gave them half price copies as it seemed morally dodgy to be marketing my music to them in a lecture, even if it wasn't pre-planned!
They are in groups writing songs, which they will soon start to record, and the morning was spent visiting their rehearsals and giving feedback.
At 1 p.m. I climbed into the McCookmobile and sped up to Stansted, fielding calls when I got there about the song writing competition at the other University, where yet more students have disobeyed the rules and tried to sneak into the competition. A guy did just that three years ago, and I got egg all over my face because of it (the competition organisers withdrew him and I had to take the blame), so I actually got quite angry that people are trying it on again.
One of the members of the internal University judging panel is upset because a very good and interesting lesbian rock band has not got through; but five years ago, I took The Irrepressibles all the way up to Liverpool for the final and they won not a cent, so I know that the organisers of the competition are looking for 'safe' sounds and 'safe' performers and I will not enter a group, no matter how good, who will have the bad experience of being rejected by a mainstream competition.
It's just not fair on them.

Dazed by work, I disembarked at Dublin airport to be met by a taxi driver bearing a laminated card with 'Ms McCookerybook' written on it. The taxi was posh with aircraft seats in cream velveteen and I started to feel a bit like a pop star. We wound our way through Dublin's rush hour to Whelan's and arrived just as The Daintees were finishing their sound check, so I nabbed Martin's Yiari and played a quick Love on the Wind to learn the shape of the guitar neck (quite different to mine) before nabbing him and going for tea in the caff next door.
The gig had been really well publicised and was jammed to the rafters ( a week ago Martin had been flown over to do some pre-publicity). The support band, the Gandhis, were a four-piece who were all good singers. Their songs harked back to The Beatles but twisted into odd directions that gave them an original slant. My favourite one was actually sung by the drummer; all four group members were singers.
I played for about twenty minutes and Martin came up to join me for Heaven Avenue and Loverman. The crowd were lovely and shushed the talkers at the bar (well, it was Saturday night in Dublin) and I felt very happy with the way my set was received.
The Daintees bounded on next, with Kate Stephenson on drums, John Steele on guitar and Lou Short on bass. Martin was on top form and the band rocked; the audience were in seventh heaven. All the way through the set, the guys pulled different things out of the bag that kept the energy at an amazing level for two solid hours. There were some great harmonies in Running Water, and everyone sang along to Rain like I'd never heard before.
Somehow on the way out we lost each other and I ended up in the vice-like grip of a young woman who wouldn't let me go. She clamped her arms around me and even though I tried to duck down to wriggle free, I actually had to fight her to get out! Even when I managed that she grabbed my hips and tried to drag me backwards. Scary!
Next morning we all piled into the caff for breakfast and had a right larf. All of the various line-ups of The Daintees are very good company and an absolute joy to do gigs with.

So here I am, back down to earth, with fifty study skills essays to mark and a tired face. No wonder I've written a long posting!
Anything to avoid the essays.... shall I put the kettle on?

Sorry- the Perseverance gig is cancelled- the pub has closed, Acton Bell doesn't know why.
She left me a message on Friday evening while I was in Dublin and I was unable to email anyone and tell them. I hope people get this message in time.

Drat

I have just lost a two pound coin in the crisps display at the Pret A Manger in Stansted Airport

Gigs

Tomorrow I'm flying to Dublin in the afternoon after work to play at Whelan's, where I'm supporting the Daintees; back again on Saturday to play Acton Bell's night at the Perseverance. Martin will be coming too and I will invite him to plays a couple of songs with me.
Should see my eyes- I have elephant's suitcases under them.
Thursdays are very hard work.
Gigs to the rescue!

Music

I wrote a miserable post about the inevitability of losing my job (the Government is cutting all of the funding from my area, Humanities) and therefore my house at the age of Too Old To Get Another Job, then I hit a strange key and the whole lot vanished, which I took as a signal to live in the present, so here I am, not worrying about the future!
I've spent the evening multitasking, simultaneously cooking a stir-fry and listening to entries to a University-wide song competition that I am judging.
It's amazing how many entrants seem not to have read the rules. In fact, none of them would qualify at all if I did not think I could knock them into some sort of shape in the next couple of weeks.
Fifteen people entered, two people's CDs wouldn't play on anything (duh! first rule of sending music to people that you want to listen to it, is that the CD must work!), five of them were far too quiet, about seven of them had songs lasting up to five minutes (the time limit is 3 minutes and 45 seconds), several of them had sampled music (there is a rule that says no sampling) and so on, and so on.
Is it haste? Is it arrogance? Is it laziness?
The prize is £5000; surely it would be worth reading the rules and sticking to them!
Last year, the winner stood out a mile and she went on to win the national competition; this year, it's much harder to tell who should win our heat. Luckily there are more judges than just me; my initial job was to do some weeding out, and six songs have gone to the next person to listen to.
I love teaching song writing because it's so exciting helping people to make a song work. I did it for 10 years before going back to writing songs myself, and then it took me three years to apply the things I told other people to do, to my own songs.
I don't know why that was; maybe I didn't feel that my songs were proper songs that deserved the attention. Now, it's as much fun thinking of my own work as though it was someone else's and working on them in that way.
The shortest song that I've ever written is this one:
A song
Doesn't have to be long.


Offsprog One went on the march. It had all but finished when the trouble started, which makes me think that the trouble came from other people, not students. 
I remember going on marches years ago, and there were always bunches of excessively aggressive young men who seemed to be getting a buzz out of being violent and destructive and who totally ignored the other protesters around them who were peacefully demonstrating. I think they may be from the Socialist Workers Party, and they are dangerous and nasty and do quite the opposite of what a demonstration is supposed to do, which is to create a show of numbers to indicate how a section of the public feels about a Government action.
Luckily, in the news broadcasts that I saw, this was pointed out quite clearly, not least by the head of the Student's Union.