Leavin' You Baby

I'm having a rare slobbing-about morning before rehearsing for tonight's gig at the Amersham Arms in New Cross.
It's a late one, mid-week and sandwiched between work and finalising gig dates for 2019. The first lot are sorted; this doing-it-yerself malarkey is knackering, and I was fantasising last night with the Offsprogs about holidays.
Oh me oh my. Somewhere warm and somewhere lazy, with no computer and no internet connection for the phone either. Sea, sand, ice cream (vanilla please), warm sun and an occasional cool breeze, good company, a blue sky and beautiful sunsets.....
Out there it's splodgy snow, slush, and one poor snowdrop given to me by Adrian in a bag of plants from his allotment years ago. It is valiantly flowering (yes, I notice you snowdrop, every morning: thank you for trying!).
And the beautiful thing that has brightened the day is to see a little flock of Coal Tits drinking droplets of meltwater off the Weeping Mulberry, and helping themselves to peanuts from the bird-feeder that the squirrels haven't managed to destroy. The squirrels ate their way through two plastic ones to get at the nuts, scoffing them off the ground after the feeders collapsed. This one is made of metal and they have tried their hardest to get at it, to no avail.
The back yard is so dark for birds to dare to fly into, but at last they have braved the gloom.
What else?
On days like this, you are supposed to do housework, but bugger that. And the upstairs ceilings need to be painted, but bugger that too (weekend perhaps?).
I will do some research for the chapter on Oh Bondage! Up Yours, maybe collecting together the thoughts I've scribbled on packets of paracetamol, my phone notes and various other spontaneous places.
And I will listen to this song, which was a hoot to record. We did one version in Robin Scott's (Pop Music by M) studio in Wivelsfield, and then this final version in Alaska Studios in Waterloo with Gary Glitter's son engineering it; he was a really nice bloke, and an exceptional sound engineer. He had his husky dog with him in the studio. Simon Walker played fiddle, Nick 'Dubulah' Page played lots of instruments, I vocalised and programmed the drum machine and Mykaell Riley just happened to be passing by, and he played harmonica on it before leaping into his car and driving off int the Waterloo Sunset.
It was the first time I had been told in no uncertain terms that I HAD to be able to sing in the mornings, and all the claptrap about singers' voices only sounding good later afternoon and evening was a load of rubbish: Be Professional! (thank you for the talking-to Nick).
We waited till the engineer went to make the tea and pushed all the volumes right up on the mixing desk (sorry!) (not sorry!), drove the Bell sampler to its limits and then some, kept all the madness and generally had a great recording day.
There are more stories around this release too but I'm off to make a cup of coffee. Ta-ra!

From Belfast With Love

Gina and me with Sean and Joe in Belfast a couple of weeks ago after the Stories from the She-Punks screening.

Amersham Arms Tomorrow

I have a gig tomorrow night at The Amersham Arms in New Cross. It is free to get in, and I'll be on late- 10.45- playing new songs and one or two oldsters too. Vinyl singles for sale. Singing as enthusiastically as this hippo!

Gig Alive!

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/462666

Poster in Progress

Vera

I think one of the best actors in Vera is the weather. Newcastle's not the rainiest city in the UK but it has it's moments: it's on it's best behaviour during this series.

York

I hopped on the early train up to York to visit Mick, June, Laura and Danny; we fed the robin, the blue-tits and the squirrels in the park, sat at a round table and ate Italian food, had tea and cake in a tea shop and had a lovely time catching up and talking our heads off. It was great to see them. Here we are under the trees on the way back to the station.
Photo taken by Danny.
On the way home, King's Cross station was filled with a huge mass of singing football fans and their drum: what an amazing sound! I recorded it but can't post it here, sadly. The funniest thing was them all cramming tightly into the carriages of a southbound Northern Line train, the singing and drumming being muted as soon as the the doors slid closed, but the tube train actually bouncing up and down at the platform in time to the drum! Ha ha!

Yesterday

Funerals are not fun, but yesterday's was cathartic and full of love.

From The Rocksteady Last Night

Pic by Terry Tydesley: thanks for coming along and noticing that I was in the wrong place!
Quite a larf to have a good lung-blast on a freezing January night and play some new stuff.
More on Wednesday next week in New Cross.

Thursday 24th January

I will be playing some new songs at this song writer night in Dalston; I'm on at about 9.30 and it's free:

The Rocksteady

574 Kingsland Road London, ENG E8 4AP 020 7923 9518

https://www.reverbnation.com/show/24135965?utm_campaign=HTML5_ShowSchedule_Widget_Details&utm_content=show_details_link&utm_medium=widget

Swings

I have terrific students at both Universities at the moment; they are creative, energetic, positive and just great to work with.
Dave Laing's funeral is happening later this week and the sadness of that is a great contrast to the buzz at work. It's at the same crematorium that Poly Styrene's was, which has a certain poetry to it because he was one of the best writers on punk that I've ever read, and his book One Chord Wonders was actually on the kitchen table when I heard the news because I'm writing an article about Oh Bondage! Up Yours.
Dave's writing was gleeful: you must read that book, because his observations about the Tartanry in Johnny Rottens's singing, and the comparisons to Harry Lauder and Andy Stewart, are hilarious. I laugh every time I read it. Imagine laughing at an academic book!
Good people like Dave seem like islands in a sea of confusion and madness. I must say that he was inspirational and I really miss him: I know a great many of his friends feel exactly the same way.

Bitty McLean

Don't Let Pig In Head Come Out Of Mouth

Cold

It's so cold that when you go outside, your eyes squirt out water like waterpistols.
The clothes in the back yard got a reprieve from the chill, and the fluttering exercise band from Finchley Memorial Hospital Physiotherapy Department that's tied to the kitchen door-handle did too, after indicating that here was a Force Ten gale blowing through the back door. Sealed in by draught strip, it's back-to-back Vera from now until bedtime. Chow.

Moffs

I have already broken my only New Year's Resolution of not working on Sundays.
Somehow the week's academic tasks just seem to overflow into the weekend, no matter what. Before the next load of unistuff, I've packed all my jumpers into a huge bin bag and they are out in the yard getting a bit of freezing, something I heard stops the moth eggs from hatching.
It did actually work a couple of years ago (I think it was that, anyway). I just have to remember to bring them in before the rats nest in them tonight to get out of the sub-zero temperatures!