With Box, Durham

Olive's Cafe, Norwich, Saturday 12th November

Here is a ticket link for this gig: solo sets from Gina Birch and Ana Da Silva, and also from myself
http://www.ueaticketbookings.co.uk/events/women-in-punk--the-raincoats---ana-da-silva-and-gina-birch---helen-mccookerybook-.aspx

Coach 'V'

On a train journey, the woman seated next to me had a deep, rich and germy cough. I discreetly turned away, but across the aisle a young woman with a rose-red nose sniffled sadly. In the next block of seats, a man sneezed loudly from time to time.
Martin wondered if this was a special coach for people with viruses to share, coach 'V', rather like coach 'B', 'the quiet coach'.
Given the propensity of viruses to mutate, I wonder what sparkling new disease we could have created on a six-hour journey?

Thomson's Evolution of Western Dance Music

http://www.thomson.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/infographic/interactive-music-map/index.html

Joke (Martin's)

What's it called when you try to persuade someone to give you a job in November, December or January?
A winterview.

A Walk in Trent Park

Trent Park is a beautiful park in Enfield, especially at this time of year.
I have been to lots of different events; the council can't seem to make it's mind up what the park is for. For several years they had a mega-firework display with lasers and a huge bonfire. Then other years in the summer they have had balloon festivals, and crafts festivals that featured traction engines and a steam-driven plank-making machine (I loved it!)
Funniest was the stoat-racing year which I did write about at the time. For 4 pence (who on earth settled on that fee?) you bet on a hopeless stoat- they were all hopeless- and yelled encouragement. One got halfway down the tube and stopped, with its fur peeking out from joins in the plastic tubing. Another got halfway down the tube very quickly, changed its mind and backed out again. And one got almost to the finish, the end of the tube, and backed out again too. The eventual winner was very casual, pausing for thought a few times (you could see its shadow stop and start) before sauntering out of the end of the tube, looking bewilderedly at the cheering crowds.
This photo shows the carved benches and gargoyles that continually mutate and change. You never see the guy who makes them: maybe he's a ghost, or a horde of elves. All the stages of the process are there to see, from the massive trunks of felled trees to the grey, seasoned furniture you see in the picture.
There is also an animal sanctuary, which I was tempted by (they sell fresh duck eggs), but the smell of chicken sh*t was a trifle pungent today so I gave it a miss!

Business Illustration

This is from the 1990s.

Work

No more postings about lectures etc.
Education is private.
The blog is returning to its former bland splendour.
There are more appropriate places for some of the things that need to be said, and more appropriate readers/listeners. I think I overstepped a mark a few postings ago and I have deleted the posting after making the decision that my attempts to anonymise situations are not effective enough!
I apologise.

I am mad. I bought these this afternoon on my way back from work. They are so like the pair of Pirelli slippers I had when I was in The Chefs and that I wore for the first of Claire's marvellous photographs of the band, during a phase when I was rather chubby. We ironed, hoovered and polished, and she hand-tinted us to perfection.
I already have a similar pair in brown which I shall now have to wear, in order to allocate these a place at the back of the queue.You know, I did an internet search for a pair about a year and a half ago and all I could find was a mention of a pair in South Africa. Fact!
This morning I spent with my inspiring bunch at the University of the West, just across the conference table from my friend Dr No, also doing dissertation tutorials; then this afternoon I went to visit a music organisation in Kilburn (Dyne Road, where me, Treacle, Carl and Simon Smith lived in a big house owned by the Conneallys, who had three houses with adjoining back gardens ruled by a flock of chickens who used to pop into the kitchen and help themselves to the contents of the cat tray for supper-ugh!).

For England

I have been writing a lecture and making a playlist today, which has taken me almost all day. By mid-afternoon I started flagging and watched a bit of Margaret Rutherford and James Robertson Justice hamming it up in a Miss Marple film.
It has been one of those days lived in limbo, where things have happened, but not with my active involvement. I have noticed that I don't look as overwhelmingly knackered as I did a week ago so maybe limbo-days have a purpose!
The weekend before last I was frantically filling in a funding application to run something for the students at the University of the East, and last weekend I was drawing illustrations for hours: I love that feeling of being 'in the zone'.  For days afterwards I can remember exactly what I was watching on TV (or rather, listening to) when I look at the drawings. Louis Theroux featured heavily last weekend, with his horror at the baboon's lurid backside and the exceedingly odd big cat sanctuary owners flooding into my mind at every scrawl and scribble.
Mercifully, I have been unable to do any housework as the painter Higgins is upstairs, sticking the ancient rickety windows back together with a coat of paint and half a ton of filler. This means I have been sitting dutifully researching and writing, with a cup of tea ferried upstairs every hour or so. I have been unable to go to the supermarket and buy a gigantic bar of chocolate, a daily habit that has not helped me to get into my winter trouserwear. There aren't even any carrots, so I can't have soup; just reheated stuff from sad little plastic boxes in the freezer.
You see? I can bore for England when I try!

UK Oh Dear

Olive's Cafe, Norwich, Saturday 12th November

Great night ahead at Olive's Cafe in Norwich: Gina Birch and Ana da Silva, both playing solo, and ditto myself.
Olives is a lovely intimate venue; its costs £6.00 to get in so if you can come along, please do!

Poster: Songlab Event

Writing Lectures

I am. And at the bottom of this blog is some Chefs-related stuff.

Photographs from the Archives

Dancing bride in Wales (very Degas, I thought); teddies wait patiently outside an electrical shop; LPs in the Oxfam shop; Martin plays in a teepee.