Backwards

I know my posting titles have been inverted for the past two days.
This might be because the backspace button is broken on the keyboard and I have developed an elaborate highlight-and-space way of deleting mistakes which drove Offsprog One bonkers this morning when she was typing some questions for the chaps in the Umbrella Shop to answer by email.
It is indeed infuriating, and although I have cleaned it, rattled it and blown under the key in case it is jammed on a crumb from a long-forgotten crisp, it's incurable and it's making me think funny.

Shirts: The End Of

I have some shirts that I used to wear when I was in The Chefs.
Why have I kept them for so long?
For quite a while, they symbolised a life that I didn't have any more. I was a suburban mother who went to work, not an ex-punk who have developed some musical skills during the moment and who went off to live the touring and minor label dream for seven years.
So they were here to remind me, moving from house to house and location to location.
Trouble is, one of them in particular (now raddled with moth holes) reminds me of...
...a scarf that I had, that miraculously had the same tartan pattern...
...which fell out of the front door of the van one rainy dark night and I didn't realise, which reminds me of...
... a bootlace tie with a gold guitar on a mother-of-pearl background and a red lace, which was given to me by a scornful fan, when I told him I'd wear it on Top of the Pops (YOU'LL never get on Top of the Pops, and I didn't), and which got stolen from the dressing room at our gig at the University of London Union, and which reminds me of...
...a pair of coincidentally matching gold guitar ear-rings (see the matching thread going on here!) which were stolen from the dressing room at our gig in Preston...
...so actually, it's not a good thing to keep at all.

I have three. Two are going in the bin (not even to a charity shop) tomorrow morning and I might keep one because I like the colours.
But I might not.

Blues (The)

Two things have given me the blues this week: the non-return of a carrier bag  containing paperwork, current sketchbook/lyric book and anarcho-punk paperback book which I left on the tube after a marathon stint at clearing last week (who could want these things? I imagine a drunk young chap lobbing them on to the tube rails for a laugh!), and the accidental purchase of Office for PC instead of Mac, which I can't exchange and which cost a bomb.
The delete key has also stopped working on my keyboard which is also extremely annoying.
On the plus side, Amy's coming for tea today and I've made cinnamon scones. And I have located some amazing women to interview for my next research project.
There are some other pluses kicking about the place and I did enjoy the jaunt to the Bluegrass festival yesterday which Jim and Martin would have really enjoyed, I think.
The week is yet young: let's hope the rest of it looks up!

St Julian's Bluegrass Festival, Kent

Nosy Neighbours

Looking over my fence. Every day they bring more friends to peer into the back yard.

Loft Contents Fund Academic Conference

I'm going to a conference in Vienna later this year and I've been watching travel and hotel prices rocket.  I bit the bullet this morning and booked the lot, to be funded by an eBay adventure in a few weeks time; there's no point at the moment cos everyone's on holiday, ain't they?
Meanwhile, I'm planning more interviews to squash as many in as possible before teaching starts again at the end of September. I should really transcribe the one's I've got but that seems like a rainy-day Sunday activity and it's just too warm and sunny at the moment!

Soporifico

London in August is muggy; everyone left here who is not on holiday is a somnambulist, sleepwalking through their days and evenings.
They wander aimlessly through through the thick, warm air, dispersing to cross roads at random points regardless of the traffic, and congregating outside pubs in a fug of roll-up smoke talking about the past, but never the present or future.
Threads of old friendships, frayed by time and sorrow, connect in the frail cameraderie of the left-behind-in-London.
Even the moderately poor have managed to borrow a tent, or persuade a relative to let them have a week in their caravan at Skegness.
Notting Hill Carnival is happening this weekend. A few years ago, the police smashed it to smithereens and it has now been rebuilt as a corporate, controlled shadow of its former self with the same relative authenticity to the old version as a McDonalds has to an actual beefburger.
It's drizzling out there in Londonland...

Tottenham Chances, Thursday

It's Survivors poetry night tomorrow at Tottenham Chances and I'm going along to play a few songs. It's free, i think, and a variety of different artists will be performing.

Playing

Invergordon By Night

The Alness Boy Racers

From the windows of the curry house in Alness you can watch the Alness boy racers whose circuit includes the High Street.
Roaring and revving, they emerge in their immaculate shiny black or white cars from a side road, watching nervously left to right for the rozzers, then jet down the road at high speed, twin exhausts yarping like bass-bin seagulls. Heaven protect any unwary pedestrians who might stray into their path!
All is silence for two minutes... then they are back again: harummm! harummm! harummm! ROOOOOOAAAARR!
Rather more delicately, a two-team of girls travels the same circuit, just once or twice.
Suddenly, boy-racer motorcyclists appear, dressed head to toe in lurid lime green, white and yellow leathers and blacked-out helmets. They snarl the circuit a few times then depart for who know where, never having quite synched up with the car drivers.
The waiters peer out of the windows and shrug their shoulders.
'Every night, every night', they sigh.

Later, on the way home, a shamefaced adolescent stands with head bowed next to his little supercar as a couple of policemen take his details.
The dare-game has a casualty tonight.

Martin Stephenson Stageit, Sunday

Martin is doing a Stageit performance on Sunday evening: http://www.stageit.com/martin_stephenson/live_in_your_lounge_an_online_gig/26530

Friday Afternoon at The Crazy Horse Cafe, Invergordon

Martin organised a songwriters' afternoon at The Crazy Horse Cafe in Invergordon High Street yesterday afternoon- he has arranged events like this before but this was the first time that I got to go along and perform. It was scary to sing in front of so many of his friends but everyone was warm-hearted and it was fab to hear Miriam sing again (that's her in the middle). Many of the artists have had (or are having) music produced by Martin so I have heard quite a lot of their stuff. There was a great atmosphere which was framed by a host of curious tourists peering through the windows as they strolled around on shore leave from a whopping cruise ship parked next to the oil platforms on the quayside. Davey Cowan and Jimmy Gunn kicked off the afternoon with rousing songs and we all took turns singing before finishing with a whole-caff rendition of Will The Circle Be Unbroken. The caff was full of families eating cakes and drinking coffee and almost all of them joined in; it was moving, in the best possible sense of the word.
The afternoon was rounded off perfectly with a giant slice of chocolate fudge cake.
I have also recorded half a skiffle album this week: or was that a dream?
Photo by Roddy Mackenzie.

Gaelic Telly

It's funny that even documentaries in the Highlands seem to be about rural subjects. We are watching a documentary about Nepal with a Gaelic commentary, that could be about any rural Highland community except that the woman has four husbands. I don't think that the Kirk would approve of that.
Today we have been recording guitars and vocals and eating fish and chips in the shadow of a huge rig, in for repairs at the dock. There are two there at the moment and at night they are lit up like a giant fairground with green, red and white lights strung across them. In daylight they are monsters of bolts and thickly painted steel. Enormous chains are wound around huge reels and mysterious bits of machinery lie in serried rows across the concrete flats of the harbour.
Tomorrow, Miriam is going to join us in The Crazy Horse Cafe for an informal song circle afternoon with coffee and cakes. I'm going to record my first cover of one of Martin's songs tomorrow evening before heading back to London town to see if Offsprog Two has been remembering to water the plants in the back yard!

No Shin and Do Not Dornoch

We went to the Falls of Shin where there is a marvellous cafe and also a viewing platform where you can watch salmon leaping as they travel upstream.
As we arrived, huge coaches were decanting their cargoes of extremely elderly people, shepherded by tour guides in friendly kilts and green tweed jackets.
Slowly, slowly, the untidy crocodiles of ancient and venerable tourists traversed the car park and headed for the path to the salmon leap.
We decided to give it a miss and headed for the marvellous cafe.
Imagine our shock when we realised that it had completely vanished and all that was left was a very large cafe-shaped patch of black shiny tarmac. Just like Dorothy's house in Kansas, a tornado had removed it in its entirety, including heaped plates of macaroni cheese. There was absolutely nothing left.
Starving, we headed for Dornoch. Dornoch was having a bad hair day. 'Cafe Closed On Mondays'. We headed for the beautiful beach, only to be met by a red tin sign: 'Road Closed'.
They had even arranged for a remote controlled wasp to terrorise us as we tried to eat our ice creams, and squads of electronic seagulls were monitoring us when we finally got to the beach, reporting back to HQ. 'Sassenachs heading back South now', they affirmed.
So that's just what we did.