Oh So....

... knackered, brilliant group of songwriters doing a 5 day course, three to go. Green Gartside today, Romeo Stodart yesterday. Just swell!

Spews of the Worms

I hope it goes down and stays down- by that I mean, no Sun on Sunday, end of tabloids, end of Murdoch.
My father-in-law (ex) when he was still alive was a printer who was locked out by News International in what was called the Print Strike. It was not a strike, the printers were locked out, but it was called a strike because... Rupert Murdoch owned most of the newspapers, and he censored anything that explained the true situation (does anyone remember the blank white columns?).
I have never read/liked the Sun or the News of the World but the men of almost a whole family lost their jobs in one fell swoop. We went on a family march, only to be charged at by mounted police in crash helmets with truncheons, and my mother in law and myself would have been crushed under the galloping horses' hooves had a quick-thinking person not pulled us to safety through some bent railings.
That was the first time I had ever seem the British riot police in action: it was shocking, like being in the middle of one of those films of the Russian invasion of Prague.
We are all used to seeing them now, but it was a nasty surprise to see just how violent and frightening the British Police Service (yes, it's supposed to be a service, answerable to the public, not a force) could be. And now we find they are corrupt too! What is going to happen? David Cameron is good friends with the flame-haired Rebekah, isn't he? Will they let Murdoch buy BSkyB? Is everything going to be covered up, or is everything going to be cleaned up?
Will the baddies live to see another day?

Retread, Perhaps... Traditional Song

On the baby's bottom, on the baby's knee
Where will the David Dimbleby?

Generation Indigo

I am making a playlist for the songwriting course; I took a break to listen to Poly Styrene's album Generation Indigo.
The last track, Electric Blue Monsoon, is brilliant- it makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. It was played at her funeral, on that sunny and windy day in an airy chapel on a hill in Hastings. She was a magical girl with a smile in her voice, even when she must have know how terribly ill she was.

Blogs I Follow (but not officially!)

I follow a lot more than this but not everyone updates regularly:

leaf-pile.blogspot.com
frayedattheedge.typepad.co.uk
circles-of-rain.blogspot.com
dickonedwards.co.uk
goldtop.org
urban75.org
lucyobrienblog.blogspot.com
utrophia.net
odd-girl-out-radio.blogspot.com
danielcostonphotography.com


A variety of different blogs for a variety of different reasons!

Wipermusings

Just dropped a nylon-strung guitar over at the hotel where Roberto Cassani will be staying tomorrow- Martin, Roberto and Bruce Moreton have a 3 Wise Men gig tomorrow at the King's Head in Crouch End. Stephen Foster Pilkington will be dropping by to play fiddle and so will I (but not to play fiddle).
It was p*ssing down with rain on the way over and I realised why I find using both the back and front wipers so distracting- it's the same as that game where you simultaneously pat your head and rub your tummy in a circle.
Had to switch the back one off.

On Bureaucracy

I have often said (although not to you) that working for these huge corporate Universities is a bit like being a camel's toenail- you are miles from the heart, miles from the brain, miles from the centre of logic.
I have been trying to get the photographers paid since the beginning of June.
First of all, requisition forms for each photo.
Then possibly, a new supplier form ( but it's trial and error whether they qualify for this or not)
If not, a status questionnaire (5 pages)
Then a payment request form.
Then a Bank Details form.
So I did them all, and they got lost in the post.

More Writing Experience

At the weekend I finished an article for this:
 http://networkawesome.com/show/live-music-show-the-women-of-punk-3/
And today I went librarying, which is a bit like blackberrying but without the eating fruit at the end.
I interviewed Tessa Pollitt and Gina Birch again a couple of months ago for the paper at the University of the East's Music, Politics and Agency Symposium; now I'm making it into a formal essay.
I am also writing some exercises to do at a song writing course this coming weekend. It lasts for 5 days and seemed quite daunting but now I'm looking forward to it. The guest song writers are Romeo from the Magic Numbers and Green Gartside, and John and Kate from the Daintees will be the rhythm section for the final recording, with Martin coming in on guitar one of the days as well. My job is to make sure that all sixteen aspiring song writers leave with something they are proud of....
There are book towers in the front room, all high enough to leave a little floorspace but no so high that they topple over. I am a drawer and musicker rather than a writer, but Universities value writing more than anything else and so I have to do it; then I eat masses of ice cream as a reward, which almost compensates, actually.
Sometimes I think the pressures of doing things that don't come naturally mean that by the time I get a chance to draw something or write a song, I'm like a pressure cooker that someone has let the steam out of:
PSSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

The All-Day Writing Experience

I have been writing almost all day; I am taking a punt at doing a piece for an academic journal, which means lots of being precise and exact and saying exactly what you mean and not a bean more.
If the boiler had not broken down yet again (shall I 'out' the Barnet boiler-breaking plumber? It's so tempting but he is a frightening man) I would have been going to spend a day in the library tomorrow. But instead I will be waiting in for the heating engineer and making cups of tea.
I wrote something for an e-zine over the weekend. Although none of these things are paid, I think you could say that I am trying hard not to drown in the negative misery that we are all being force fed at the moment!
I have also been planning  for  a songwriting course that I am working on this coming weekend. It is the first that I have done entirely on my own outside a University environment and I am hoping that none of the participants are expecting a 'this is how you write a hit' experience. Writing hits involves as much being part of a network as what you actually write, and that network is cruel, and closed to outsiders.
It has been full for a long time, and I will tell you what happened next week.
Meanwhile, I sit here and look forward to finishing the album that Martin and myself have been working on later this summer: The Cafe of Tiny Kindnesses. Roll on, roll on!

Bins of the 'Burbs: Outreach, the Daily Mail

Here in the Conservative outer London Borough of Barnet, even our street cleaners have snobby tastes in reading; witness the Daily Mail peeking out of this cleaner's pocket. I wonder if the Mail would approve of this chap's readership, or whether they would regard him as beneath them?
He is a treasure, this man, out in all weathers, and I can report that the contents of the bins of the 'burbs is every bit as smelly as that of the supposedly more grimy inner London areas!

New CD from Martin Stephenson and Graham Shipcote

Epping, Mark Two

Romantic Garden Peotry

'Give us hugs',
Request the slugs.
'No, not I',
Snarls the fly.
'Not for me',
Purrs the bee.
'I'm too frail',
Wheedles the snail.
'I'm too cross!',
Snaps the wasp.
'You can't dance!',
Mock the ants.

'Have you heard',
Chirps the bird,
'Just gently sneak
Up to my beak...
Birds kiss bugs,
Especially slugs'.

Computer Nerd

I dressed as a computer nerd when I took the bulging ancient Macbook Pro to the Apple shop in Regent's Street- baggy men's sweatshirt, skateboarding shorts and sandals, geek's face.
The dorkish charm worked: within seconds, a new battery had been snapped into place.
'Do I have to pay for it?', asked this nerd.
'No', replied the other nerd.
Wow!

New Neighbour

How exciting! Jamie and Jacob have moved in round the corner and they are setting up a rehearsal studio.
I took round a tub of ice cream and we sat and had tea up high in the little living area; Anja the accordionist was there too. Real musicneighbours!