Incidentally, I finished adding the new interviews to the book yesterday morning, after another 7.30 a.m. start. I was ready to celebrate, but a steady stream of students started flowing at 9.30 just as I typed the final words, and didn't stop till 4.30.
I will have a little dance later on today, to another of my guilty pleasures The Crusaders, whose album version of Streetlife is pure bliss!
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Tuesday, March 08, 2011
International Womens' Day at the TUC
Signal failure at High Barnet? I squashed on to the bus with everyone else and headed a few stations down the line, arriving a little late at the TUC building in Great Russell Street, but in time to do a sound check.
I played to a room full of animated women who were drinking wine and chatting (some listened!), and it was a privilege to be part of the event. It was introduced by Frances O'Grady, and a succession of speakers talked about the lot of women in Nepal (where mass redundancies in the Middle East are having a severe effect on Nepalese migrant workers, many of whom are women), Columbia (where membership of a Trade Union will cause you to be thrown in jail: one woman has been incarcerated for more than a year), Ireland, and the UK.
Mary Turner of the GMB reminded us that cuddly Anne Widdecombe (her of the pussy cats and Strictly Come Dancing) was the same politician who had proposed that women prisoners in labour should be chained to their beds: the room gave her a rousing cheer for this.
The best speaker was Yvette Cooper, who made a succinct and pointed speech without notes and without flannel, and who stuck around for a while afterwards to listen to the other speakers (unlike some politicians I have come across, for instance that Geoff Hoon who was monstrously rude once, when I had a job that involved taking MPs from emerging democracies to the Houses of Parliament to look round).
The evening finished with the Colombian band Clumbe; I was interested to hear their music because a student of mine a few years ago wrote a thesis on Shakira and said that she had been famous in Colombia for making traditional Colombian music before her hips started not lying, which her original audience found rather disconcerting!
I also bumped into a former student, Sylvia, who now sings at a lot of political events, and it was really heartening to hear that she is performing a lot. It was an interesting evening, and inspiring.
Thank you to Gemma, for making me so welcome.
I played to a room full of animated women who were drinking wine and chatting (some listened!), and it was a privilege to be part of the event. It was introduced by Frances O'Grady, and a succession of speakers talked about the lot of women in Nepal (where mass redundancies in the Middle East are having a severe effect on Nepalese migrant workers, many of whom are women), Columbia (where membership of a Trade Union will cause you to be thrown in jail: one woman has been incarcerated for more than a year), Ireland, and the UK.
Mary Turner of the GMB reminded us that cuddly Anne Widdecombe (her of the pussy cats and Strictly Come Dancing) was the same politician who had proposed that women prisoners in labour should be chained to their beds: the room gave her a rousing cheer for this.
The best speaker was Yvette Cooper, who made a succinct and pointed speech without notes and without flannel, and who stuck around for a while afterwards to listen to the other speakers (unlike some politicians I have come across, for instance that Geoff Hoon who was monstrously rude once, when I had a job that involved taking MPs from emerging democracies to the Houses of Parliament to look round).
The evening finished with the Colombian band Clumbe; I was interested to hear their music because a student of mine a few years ago wrote a thesis on Shakira and said that she had been famous in Colombia for making traditional Colombian music before her hips started not lying, which her original audience found rather disconcerting!
I also bumped into a former student, Sylvia, who now sings at a lot of political events, and it was really heartening to hear that she is performing a lot. It was an interesting evening, and inspiring.
Thank you to Gemma, for making me so welcome.
Monday, March 07, 2011
Bonking Bass
So who thought of that bonk-bonk-bonk bassline first?
Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads for Psycho Killer or the Saturday Night Fever Crew for You Should Be Dancing?
And did Trevor Horn pay royalties for nicking it for Relax?
Tina Weymouth of Talking Heads for Psycho Killer or the Saturday Night Fever Crew for You Should Be Dancing?
And did Trevor Horn pay royalties for nicking it for Relax?
Spring Fever
In between sporadic bouts of (ugh) housework, I am listening to Saturday Night Fever.
In fits of nostalgia, I remember the soundtrack being used for the circus in Brighton that my house-mates all found temporary work at: when they all came home at night exhausted and smelling of camel dung.
Just months later they all got bit-parts in Quadrophenia and stuck their fake scars on to the toothpaste tubes, to look as though they were oozing out of them.
I remember the flush of excitement that would hit me sometimes; I was just out of my teens and I would experience almost animal-like rushes that made the world and everything in it seem like a magical place. Normal things would seem hyper-real; everything seemed full of untold secrets, and everywhere seemed to contain layers and layers of explorable material.
Music was everywhere, a sound-track of assorted jumble as I walked along the Western Road to the Art College in the morning, whistled by workmen as they loaded and unloaded their vans at lunchtime; in my head as I walked back home; on my turntable as I loaded it up with vinyl and danced around before I went out at night, with my small green budgie balanced on my head, gripping my hair with its spiny little claws and shrieking with birdy glee.
Every night, bands, bands and more bands: sometimes me, sometimes others, trying to get to grips with organising noise into melody and rhythm, wondering who had the hidden formula of the perfect song.
It must be the sun. At last, there is warmth in the pale rays to thaw out our winter bones.
Spring will be the antidote to recession depression.
The energy returns!
In fits of nostalgia, I remember the soundtrack being used for the circus in Brighton that my house-mates all found temporary work at: when they all came home at night exhausted and smelling of camel dung.
Just months later they all got bit-parts in Quadrophenia and stuck their fake scars on to the toothpaste tubes, to look as though they were oozing out of them.
I remember the flush of excitement that would hit me sometimes; I was just out of my teens and I would experience almost animal-like rushes that made the world and everything in it seem like a magical place. Normal things would seem hyper-real; everything seemed full of untold secrets, and everywhere seemed to contain layers and layers of explorable material.
Music was everywhere, a sound-track of assorted jumble as I walked along the Western Road to the Art College in the morning, whistled by workmen as they loaded and unloaded their vans at lunchtime; in my head as I walked back home; on my turntable as I loaded it up with vinyl and danced around before I went out at night, with my small green budgie balanced on my head, gripping my hair with its spiny little claws and shrieking with birdy glee.
Every night, bands, bands and more bands: sometimes me, sometimes others, trying to get to grips with organising noise into melody and rhythm, wondering who had the hidden formula of the perfect song.
It must be the sun. At last, there is warmth in the pale rays to thaw out our winter bones.
Spring will be the antidote to recession depression.
The energy returns!
This Evening
Tonight at Congress House, 23-28 Great Russell St, City of London WC1B 3LS
An evening to support International Women's Day (tomorrow)
Speakers include Yvette Cooper and representatives of the Colombian, Nepalese and Irish communities.
Admission free
I will play a short set between 6-6.30 and Colombian band Cumbe will play traditional Colombian music from 7.10.
An evening to support International Women's Day (tomorrow)
Speakers include Yvette Cooper and representatives of the Colombian, Nepalese and Irish communities.
Admission free
I will play a short set between 6-6.30 and Colombian band Cumbe will play traditional Colombian music from 7.10.
Sunday, March 06, 2011
Just made Women of the World a bit less brash and a free download
www.reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook
www.reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook
Skeleton of a Horsy
It is about three-and-a-half inches high and it's going to be part of my hat for the Offsprogs' joint 21st and 18th fancy dress party later this year.
I have rather fallen for it in its skeletal form, which is why I took a photo. I had to add an extra bit to its nose, without which it would have been rather a snub-nosed creature.
I loved tinkering about with the tiny pliers under the Anglepoise, and felt a bit like one of Norman Rockwell's subjects, all light and shade and concentration.
Saturday, March 05, 2011
Song for International Womens' Day
I have written a song to celebrate International Womens' Day which I will sing on Monday evening.
There is a rough version of it on Reverbnation but I will remix it tomorrow because the choir bit is too loud.
Martin's going to do some guitar on it.
www.reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook
There is a rough version of it on Reverbnation but I will remix it tomorrow because the choir bit is too loud.
Martin's going to do some guitar on it.
www.reverbnation.com/helenmccookerybook
Friday, March 04, 2011
Two Exhibitions: Long Posting. Make a Cup of Tea.
This week I have visited two entirely contrasting exhibitions: the Norman Rockwell exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and the exhibition of Edwyn Collins' drawings at the Idea Generation Gallery, Redchurch Street, E2.
Getting off the train at North Dulwich station on a sunny day in late winter is exactly like walking into the pages of a Ladybird Book; there's not a scrap of rubbish on the ground, the fences are neatly painted in white and there is nothing broken or out of place. There is hardly any traffic, and life seems to flow at a very slow pace indeed.
It is a ten minute walk to the Gallery, and once I got there I abandoned hope of a cup of tea, because the Gallery Cafe is not a caff, it's a restaurant packed with ladies-who-lunch, lunching in their expensive cardigans and looking rather immoveable. Straight to the exhibition then!
I have a weakness for Norman Rockwell after visiting the USA with my gran when I was 14 and seeing a Saturday Evening Post at an elderly couple's house. This is a nice exhibition: it is not too large, and the information beside the paintings is interesting and well-written.
Lots of his pictures concentrate on the relationship between two people, or one person concentrating intently on an object (such as a needle that they are peering at and trying to thread). He recycles poses and characters and this gives his work a sense of continuity; he is materialistic, using props and possessions to speak about the characters of his subjects. In this he reminds me of the Ancient Egyptians, who buried meaningful objects with the Pharoahs in a somewhat capitalist bid for a place in the afterlife.
Rockwell is a patriot, unquestioning of the status quo, but he's happy to be realistic about painting plain or even ugly faces, and for this reason I would not agree with some critics that he's sentimental even though he clearly loves Santa Claus! His playfulness is evident in this exhibition, with a painting from above of a Bridge game whose card hands we can see, that obviously means something to those 'in the know' about the game.
He loved ciaroscuro, and his unpublished painting The Young Valedictorian (1922) is a beautiful example of this, with touches of duck-egg blue even in the deepest shadows. Other paintings that I particularly liked were The Voluntary Fireman (1931) where he followed his hero Maxwell Parrish's ideas about dynamic symmetry and worked on a grid system, and Shuffleton's Barbershop (1950) a lovely almost monochrome silvery-touched painting, a little snapshot of history: off-duty barbers can be seen through an open door, playing fiddles and carousing in the evening after work.
The funniest painting is Lunch Break With Knight (1962) in which a museum attendant perches on the pedestal of a very grand armoured knight on a horse, pouring coffee, with a slice of cake about to slip from the napkin on his lap. The horse rolls a baleful eye at the sacrilege of the hungry chap, and reminded me of Jake and Dinos Chapman's clown horses in their controversial re-workings of the Goya etchings.
Phew!
So last night I went to see Edwyn's show. A few years ago he came to talk to my song-writing students and they were thrilled that he actually played his songs to them. This was pre- his double aneurysm, since when he has learned to draw with his left hand using pencil and Caran D'Ache crayons.
His subjects are wild animals and birds; many of them fight with a fierceness which probably reflects the way he feels about what has happened to him. Gangling herons scrap, a mass of crackling feathers; the cold anger of a herring-gull's eyes look piercingly out of the paper, animal wildness at the mercy of nature's personality. I loved the fighting hares, the neck of one of them pulled back in fury.
He is developing an interesting technique, building up fur and feathers with strong crayon strokes, subtle colour drifting through his drawings like passing clouds. In spite of the turbulence in some of his drawings, there is also a great delicacy and attention to detail: he is a fine draughtsman.
He seems to have been able to enter the psyche of his wild subjects, even capturing that look of mild annoyance that many wild animals and birds seem to display when they are caught unawares. I get the feeling that he is just at the beginning of a very interesting artistic journey and he is definitely an artist to watch.
Back out into the cold of Shoreditch, where stylishly street-dressed Sons of Surrey mingle with besuited businessmen dabbling in 'hip' for a quick snifter on their way home to a Waitrose lasagne (discard outer sleeve: pierce film lid before heating); a social soup that refuses to emulsify.
Funny how Rivington Street is so long when you walk down it from west to east, and so short when you walk from east to west!
Getting off the train at North Dulwich station on a sunny day in late winter is exactly like walking into the pages of a Ladybird Book; there's not a scrap of rubbish on the ground, the fences are neatly painted in white and there is nothing broken or out of place. There is hardly any traffic, and life seems to flow at a very slow pace indeed.
It is a ten minute walk to the Gallery, and once I got there I abandoned hope of a cup of tea, because the Gallery Cafe is not a caff, it's a restaurant packed with ladies-who-lunch, lunching in their expensive cardigans and looking rather immoveable. Straight to the exhibition then!
I have a weakness for Norman Rockwell after visiting the USA with my gran when I was 14 and seeing a Saturday Evening Post at an elderly couple's house. This is a nice exhibition: it is not too large, and the information beside the paintings is interesting and well-written.
Lots of his pictures concentrate on the relationship between two people, or one person concentrating intently on an object (such as a needle that they are peering at and trying to thread). He recycles poses and characters and this gives his work a sense of continuity; he is materialistic, using props and possessions to speak about the characters of his subjects. In this he reminds me of the Ancient Egyptians, who buried meaningful objects with the Pharoahs in a somewhat capitalist bid for a place in the afterlife.
Rockwell is a patriot, unquestioning of the status quo, but he's happy to be realistic about painting plain or even ugly faces, and for this reason I would not agree with some critics that he's sentimental even though he clearly loves Santa Claus! His playfulness is evident in this exhibition, with a painting from above of a Bridge game whose card hands we can see, that obviously means something to those 'in the know' about the game.
He loved ciaroscuro, and his unpublished painting The Young Valedictorian (1922) is a beautiful example of this, with touches of duck-egg blue even in the deepest shadows. Other paintings that I particularly liked were The Voluntary Fireman (1931) where he followed his hero Maxwell Parrish's ideas about dynamic symmetry and worked on a grid system, and Shuffleton's Barbershop (1950) a lovely almost monochrome silvery-touched painting, a little snapshot of history: off-duty barbers can be seen through an open door, playing fiddles and carousing in the evening after work.
The funniest painting is Lunch Break With Knight (1962) in which a museum attendant perches on the pedestal of a very grand armoured knight on a horse, pouring coffee, with a slice of cake about to slip from the napkin on his lap. The horse rolls a baleful eye at the sacrilege of the hungry chap, and reminded me of Jake and Dinos Chapman's clown horses in their controversial re-workings of the Goya etchings.
Phew!
So last night I went to see Edwyn's show. A few years ago he came to talk to my song-writing students and they were thrilled that he actually played his songs to them. This was pre- his double aneurysm, since when he has learned to draw with his left hand using pencil and Caran D'Ache crayons.
His subjects are wild animals and birds; many of them fight with a fierceness which probably reflects the way he feels about what has happened to him. Gangling herons scrap, a mass of crackling feathers; the cold anger of a herring-gull's eyes look piercingly out of the paper, animal wildness at the mercy of nature's personality. I loved the fighting hares, the neck of one of them pulled back in fury.
He is developing an interesting technique, building up fur and feathers with strong crayon strokes, subtle colour drifting through his drawings like passing clouds. In spite of the turbulence in some of his drawings, there is also a great delicacy and attention to detail: he is a fine draughtsman.
He seems to have been able to enter the psyche of his wild subjects, even capturing that look of mild annoyance that many wild animals and birds seem to display when they are caught unawares. I get the feeling that he is just at the beginning of a very interesting artistic journey and he is definitely an artist to watch.
Back out into the cold of Shoreditch, where stylishly street-dressed Sons of Surrey mingle with besuited businessmen dabbling in 'hip' for a quick snifter on their way home to a Waitrose lasagne (discard outer sleeve: pierce film lid before heating); a social soup that refuses to emulsify.
Funny how Rivington Street is so long when you walk down it from west to east, and so short when you walk from east to west!
Thursday, March 03, 2011
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Teeth
There are two new sweet shops in Barnet lined with multicoloured bottles, laced with liquorice of all stripes, and piled with packets of every hue imaginable: there are boiled sweets, chewy sweets, juicy sweets, soft sweets, hard sweets, minty, fruity, sour, sherbety, everything, everything.
How do the local dentists feel?
Hypocritically delighted or hippocratically horrified?
How do the local dentists feel?
Hypocritically delighted or hippocratically horrified?
Face
For the second time the other day as I smeared moisturiser on to my groggy morning face, I realised too late (alerted by the strong aroma of peppermint) that I had grabbed the tube of Dr Scholl's foot cream instead of the Nivea.
Two all-day-sticky faces later, I have put the identical white tubes of goo at opposite ends of the table.
Two all-day-sticky faces later, I have put the identical white tubes of goo at opposite ends of the table.
Medal
Why do I feel that I deserve a medal (and to be honest, so does everyone else who has managed a feat like this?)
Because I have managed not only to get my grumpy teenage daughter out of bed this morning,
but also because she had to get up to go to the dentist!
Because I have managed not only to get my grumpy teenage daughter out of bed this morning,
but also because she had to get up to go to the dentist!
Tuesday, March 01, 2011
Snowdrops and Other Gardening
Thank you for the snowdrop bulbs Adrian- I am almost looking forward to next winter!
This year I have lots of blue hyacinths and blue irises, just coming into flower.
A long time ago I had some weird greenish veined irises from the Botanic Gardens shop in Edinburgh, but the slugs gobbled them up; I couldn't find any this year so I thought I would have a blue spring garden, and I am hoping the gentians will flower too. And of course there are the little brown tartan fritillaries.
I have seed potatoes and sort of canvas vegetable pots to plant them in; carrots, which I will grow in pots, and hanging basket tomatoes, at Anne's suggestion. The courgettes I grew in a gro-bag last year were brilliant so I got more seeds this year too.
Muddy hands, muddy feet, muddy face: here's to tiny-dark-courtyard gardening!
This year I have lots of blue hyacinths and blue irises, just coming into flower.
A long time ago I had some weird greenish veined irises from the Botanic Gardens shop in Edinburgh, but the slugs gobbled them up; I couldn't find any this year so I thought I would have a blue spring garden, and I am hoping the gentians will flower too. And of course there are the little brown tartan fritillaries.
I have seed potatoes and sort of canvas vegetable pots to plant them in; carrots, which I will grow in pots, and hanging basket tomatoes, at Anne's suggestion. The courgettes I grew in a gro-bag last year were brilliant so I got more seeds this year too.
Muddy hands, muddy feet, muddy face: here's to tiny-dark-courtyard gardening!
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