Cake and Writing

I was deep in academic writing land, having found a rich source of energy after slipping a rather snotty Nile Rodgers comment into my work (from Daryl Easlea's book on disco, Everybody Dance: Chic and the Politics of Disco). Suddenly, it stopped feeling like an upward slog and became an exciting ride. And I've just watched the film Twenty Feet from Stardom, which also was full of interesting observations. It's still going to take until at least Christmas before the article is finished, but at 15,000 words its getting ever stronger. I've learned to self-edit, slashing and burning and restructuring: but it's still to huge to read in one sitting. It doesn't move along quickly enough and I need to work on that.
Anyway, jolted from the academic reverie by a knock at the door I realised that time had flown and there was Offsprog One at the door. To celebrate, I made a blueberry cake with fresh blueberries which must have come to the boil in the oven, because half the cake started to burn and the other half was so liquid it ran out of the tin on to the bottom of the oven and from there on to the kitchen floor. I was too laid back to panic even though the kitchen had filled with smoke, and I just swore mildly before rescuing the sticky mess and turning it out on to a plate.
Miraculously, the smell of burning was fake and so was the smoke, and the stickiness solidified.
We had eaten half of the cake before it had even cooled down.
Now, back to writing for a while because I will be spending a ten hour day at the University clearing desk tomorrow. Last year, that's when I left my lyrics book on the train. Although I managed to salvage all of my songs (I hope) from iPhone recordings, and made them into the Anarchy Skiffle album, and also had to get my finger out and do the Bande Dessinee story which was languishing in rough format between the pages of the book, it was a miserable few weeks of constantly going to the Lost Property office at Baker Street and trying to remember what was actually in the bloody book.
That was a nine hour day and tomorrow has an extra hour attached. I don't dare try to do anything important so I'm hoping it's going to be busy. The upside is that it happens in the library, so I've prepared a small and perfectly formed list of books to stick my nose into when I get there.
All this writing: you don't tend to get paid for academic writing and often end up having to apply for funding to pay for illustrations, photographs and indexing.
I have resolved to write a best-selling detective novel next year, once I have decided which of two ideas is the best!

Sun Tan

An area of sun-darkened skin has arranged itself in an amusing butterfly pattern across my face. Being a Celt (a mongrel blend of many Celts plus God knows what in the background), I used to have a tendency to freckle. Now, I look weatherbeaten and can add this to my list of non-feminine attributes. Stranger to nail-bar and hairdresser alike, I stride through town as an idiot-flaneuse (note the French terminology) scattering glamour in my wake.
I'm rather proud of my wind-whacked complexion, actually.
It glows in the dark and I don't need a torch to get from A to B in the middle of the night.

The Pile of Paper, and Grains of Sand

Back from the seaside; the pile of paper awaits. Bills, instructions, notes-to-self, letters to forward, newspaper clippings, ancient stamps waiting to see if I can still use them....
The washing machine is churning and snarling, finding the receipts left in pockets digestible, the sand left in socks not.
Miraculously, I have returned with pairs of socks, not lone singletons. Finally, I have grown up.

Snails have attacked the Giant Hosta and decimated its leaves to lacy shadows of their former selves.
I deeply dislike snails most of the time. One by one, I picked them off, the huge rampaging grey-brown molluscs, and dropped them into the food recycling bin. I am mortified by my cruelty.

The holiday was heavenly, by the way.
Does this mean that real life is hell?

The Sound of the Sea

I've been listening to the sound of the sea, close by, for hours, it is endlessly interesting: whispering, grumbling, roaring, rushing, and telling secret jokes that have the seagulls cackling uproariously with laughter.

A little dog barked on the beach on a windy day.
'Arf arf arf! Arf arf arf!'
The wind blew up under the bark, lifting the dog way up into the clouds, never to be seen again.

Greed Is Good! First Prize To Barnet Council!

After McMum passed away, things were fairly complex because she had lived in Edinburgh. There were things to organise and Offsprogs to transport about the place.
I had arrived back home in my car (which I rarely drive) one day, and been unable to park outside my house, so I parked further down the street instead.
My car was there for a few days because there was never a space in front of my house to move it to.
At some point, a parking suspension notice was tied to a lamp-post there, but I didn't see it because I don't live there and I wasn't walking around a lot because there was so much to organise.
The day before I was due to drive up to the funeral, I went to collect the car to have some work done on it at the garage. I got to my car at two minute past nine to find the warden writing out a parking ticket. He carried on but assured me that he would put in a good word for me because of the circumstances.
In spite of sending a copy of the funeral service with the date on it as part of the appeal, the fine has been instigated anyway. And I don't believe the warden, do you?
Lucky Barnet Parking Services! And how clever, not to post a note through people's doors to tell them that legal parking suddenly becomes illegal at a random time and in a random place!
Ring-a-ding-ding Barnet Council! Ring-a-ding-ding!
.

Catholicism vs Prestbyterianism

Catholicism: have fun, feel guilty later.
Presbyterianism: feel guilty for even thinking about having fun.

Big Faces

I wandered the muggy streets today between Camden and Kentish Town. London is still a stranger to me, after many years of living here.
'Who lives here?', I wonder; 'Who are their friends and what do they do?'.
As always when I stroll around, my mind wanders too.
I think about the conversations that I used to have with my friend Lester Square, the guitarist from the Monochrome Set, who I still owe a bottle of wine to for the sleeve-notes of the Helen and the Horns compilation.
We talked about the fact that both The Monochrome Set and The Chefs had fans who weren't just 'anoraks'. They actually wore anoraks. How we longed for hipsters!
And we talked about the size of our faces (little) and pondered whether if we'd had larger faces we might have become more famous: TV stars, perhaps, who all seemed to have larger than average heads and faces when we saw them out and about the the B-list events we frequented in the 1980s.
But it didn't seem to hold back the band, The Small Faces.

A review in Maverick!

Writing has trapped a nerve in my arm (!) but it's worth it. Yesterday I discovered a scribbled note in the margin of one of my conference papers that led me off on a new trail. I will take a break for a couple of days soon so I can see the wood for the trees, and perhaps write some new songs too.
On another and more musical note, Maverick magazine has given Anarchy Skiffle a four star review and also (thanks to Martin) put one of the tracks, Magpie, on to a free CD on their cover. The reviewer, Alan Harrison, is also a photographer who takes amazing pics of the Newcastle music scene, here http://www.harrisonaphotos.co.uk/
I bumped into him backstage at the Americana festival a few weeks ago and he told me that he really, really likes the album so I was chuffed to bits. I might try to find a double bass player locally so I can play some of the skiffle in its energised form in London.
Also backstage, there was a guy with a strangely-shaped black musical instrument case. Miraculously, the instrument that he unpacked was one of these http://foldingbass.com/ which he proceeded to put together in a trice, and which sounded perfectly normal when it has been assembled.
I love the sound of the double bass; I wish it had been an option to learn when I was a nipper.
Instead, I sat swinging my legs in my piano lessons at Miss Matthew's house, unable to read the dots and carrying the music home in my head to work out at my leisure.
When she realised what I was doing (I'd got to grade three by then) she sacked me, and my formal musical training ended before I got to the age of twelve.
I didn't really like the way she spat her bits of dinner that had been trapped in her teeth on to my knuckles during the lessons anyway.

This Morning...

... I have tried and failed (I think) to repair some 'dings' in my car windscreen, and read one-and-a-half academic articles. The first one was a very detailed study about music technology and gender in Australia which has booted me up the arse (apart from the bit on Foucault, who I have trouble in believing in). The other was a hilarious romp through the misogyny of 1950s America's hi-fi marketers and the way they engineered a territorial battle between the husband and the wife for space, sonic or otherwise, in suburban homes. The advertising copywriters were absolutely vile and the whole attitude was reinforced by Playboy magazine, and other social commentators.
All very intense and very interesting. Do I have time for a break? I think so. Cup of tea and that BBC antiques auction programme where they all lose money and nobody cares. That's my kind of TV!

Why?

Why is there a train ticket in the fridge?

Hello Again Blog

It's been a busy few days; it's strange to be back home and once again welded to the seat in the kitchen, writing and messing about with files.
The gig at St Cecilia's was lovely. Foakies gave me a warm welcome and I enjoyed listening to Mark Barnett's new song, and to John's set. There was a very funny comedy poet (I'll find out his name) who did a poem in a Dalek voice about the Dalek's skincare regime (exfoliate! exfoliate!).
There was a small PA in the hall which was tuned perfectly; the acoustics in that room are so delicate that you can hear what a person is whispering right across the room. It was nice to have a bit of levitation though and I really enjoyed playing and singing although I was still too timid to play the Anarchy Skiffle songs on my own. Note to self to start off with those ones next time rather than letting the fear build!

At St Cecilia's Hall Tonight

Just off The Cowgate, Edinburgh: brave the rain at 8 pm!

Neat

I don't know how I've managed to do this today, but lots of tiny little irritating tasks have been completed after months of lingering and itching. London is sweltering and humid, but my house is cool and it's a perfect refuge from the roasting sunshine.
It's a huge help having so many charity shops around the corner because often the problem is an old smelly cushion that I felt that I couldn't get rid of because it came from McMum and McDad's old house, or an expensive but useless article of clothing which is the last straw on the eBay camel's back, the eCamel. Bags of paperbacks have been despatched to the back of the Oxfam shop, and nothing has been bought to replace them (liar! I bought three trashy novels today).
Television? I'm not tempted by the Commonwealth Games because the Scottish Independence vote is just around the corner and I don't know who I'm batting for; it would be Scotland but I'm not into nationalistic anti-English sentiment (nor anti-Scottish for that matter), so I'm bypassing the whole thing.
Nationalism sucks, wherever it comes from, and you only have to look at Israel and the Ukraine to see exactly where it leads to. Sports are not exempt from the nasty side of competition: if not from the competitors, then from lay commentators who spirit up haloes and plonk them above the heads of whichever side they're on.
That's enough mini-ranting!
All I was saying is that there is no new series of Poirot or Sherlock to distract me; I've even put in a couple of solid hours of quotation-mining for the research I'm doing. All good and useful stuff but the more I do, the further the goalposts seem to move away, or the further away the finish line seems to be.
Sporting metaphors aside, it's extremely absorbing and I hope that I'm doing something useful for the future of music studies.
Next week I will do a full week of research. I have three things in the pipeline and I need to get them well under way before term starts again. Lots of people seem to be away on leave so I might get a head start; the kitchen is piled with books and so is my desk at work. So many ideas......
Before then, there's a gig at the funky St Cecilia's Hall in Edinburgh next Saturday, where I'll be playing a bit of skiffle and a bit of not-skiffle too from 8 p.m. I've had the chance to practise my playing more that normal and I have the familiar thickened and painful finger-pads on the left hand to prove it. There are no new songs in the pipeline yet; an emotional switch has yet to be altered to allow that to happen.
I also say Happy Birthday to Martin for yesterday; lots of people from the past went to meet him in Gosforth yesterday evening and I think he found that touching, and so do I.

A Technological Hand Over My Mouth

Intermittent Broadband, 'due to the weather' according to an email from BT.
Weather? How astonishing to have weather in this buffeted Isle!