Egg Fingers

It wasn't butterfingers because it was an egg. It made quite a pleasant gentle splat as it landed on the floor.
I was making a cake- a caraway seed cake.
The kitchen filled with smoke because I greased the cake tin with sunflower oil and the oven didn't like it.
It also welded the cake to the 'non-stick' pan.
The cake is delicious, actually.

Flies

I've walked four miles just now, to exercise away the anxiety cause by trying to organise something simple with a large organisation (and failing as I knew I would, even though I crossed all the 't's and whatever the other bit of that saying is).
When my feet have stopped hurting (unsuitable shoes), I'll start recording again but until then, it's just me and a squadron of flies that has decided to do a fly-past in my living room for no discernible reason. They are all ages, all sizes and all buzzes and they would be driving me bonkers but I haven't got any bonks left to drive.
I should perhaps open the front door and see if they will fly out in formation, or even not.
I don't mind which.

Revamped Website Shop

Thanks to Damian Cosmas for revamping my website shop. There are new postal charges, and 'multi buy' deals. This is cheaper than Bandcamp, as I send the stuff out directly from home. I've had to cancel nine gigs this year and would normally sell my CDs and records on the road, which is why I've now got this. Mrs Nationofshopkeeper, or should that be Dr Nationofshopkeeper?

http://mccookerybook.com/shop/

Blackberry Break

Lovely blackberries. In season, they have an after-kick of Ribena flavour that is absolutely lush. Excuse me for being swanky, but the first time I went to New York two years ago I half-lived off blackberries from the street corner stalls near Central Park. A box or two of those, and I was ready to roll.
In the hedgerows up here they are almost ripe, which means I'll get fat. The wild ones are so sour you have to put them in a blackberry pudding, and that means lots of picking, lots of pudding, lots of eating, lots of fatting.
This is my ears-break of the afternoon. I did some work this morning but I'm a bit stuck now because my computer is filling up with work stuff. I'm trying to arrange to collect the one from work, Big Bad Brenda, so I can stick all the work on to that one and free up this one for music.
I'm going to have to do some audio homework. To my ears, my vocals catch a certain tone at a certain pitch that is a bit like a punch on the eardrum. I can't find the Hz when I'm equalising it to stop it from happening, so I need to do a bit of research because that's not a good thing.
Likewise (or not) I need to be able to take some of the muddiness out of the guitar without it sounding thin and tinny.
Looking on the bright side, I'm finding the SM58 absolutely perfect for vocals; it fixes all sorts of things even before you get the sound on to the hard drive. I think maybe expensive microphones are made so you can mix the voice with a lot of popifying plugins.
Or maybe I'm just a cheap date. Likewise (or not, again) having a guitar with great pickups means that there's a character in the sound of the guitar without me having to add lots of things to it to make it work.
OK! Back to work. Quick tune-up of the guitar, wipe the rust off the strings.
Another 45 minutes before my ears give up and add a tinnitus twang to the song!

Recording

I spent the afternoon recording. I like doing that. My fingers are worn through from playing the guitar, and my ears are shot from listening.
I feel quite happy about my ability to record what I need to record, but mixing is a different matter and that's what I'm trying to do: not the 'getting it technically right' type of mixing, but the 'making it sound good' type. Getting a guitar and a recorded voice to sound just right is really hard. In the headphones they sound one way, over the speakers they sound another way and on the laptop... they sound crap.
Craptop.
It's an interesting puzzle to solve, and I shouldn't wish it would rain so I don't mind being inside doing it. The point is that once you get going, you get so absorbed in it that it's difficult to stop. I had crisps for my tea because I couldn't be bothered to cook because I was recording. That's how much it make you concentrate. I had to make myself stop because there's a certain degree of fatigue beyond which there's no point in carrying on: you have to stop nanoseconds before it stops being fun!
I've recorded two songs, one new one, and one that is so new I haven't even really finished the words and I'll have to change them any way because I mention Amazon and also say 'arsehole', which isn't terrible poetic, is it?

Respected Doctor

Songwriting Circle

This afternoon, it's songwriting circle. Katy Carr set this up years ago, and we've been doing it intermittently ever since. It started at her flat in Marylebone on Mondays, which meant a scrabble to write a song on a Sunday night. Then it rested for a while and now it's back, this time on Zoom, with two of the other 'originals', Rowen Bridler and Nadya Ostroff, joining in last week. One year, almost a whole album came out of it (this one: https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/album/take-one-download-only), and I think k that happened for Katy too. Sometimes it's just about a creative exercise, flexing your song writing muscles and perhaps writing something that just passes the time fo day in a creative way.
Whatever, it's great to have something to look forward to: a mini project every week that stimulates that part for the brain that other things can't reach. The cabbage soup Katy made isn't there, but the humour and encouragement are, and that's much more important.
Katy has just completed Chris Difford's song writing mentor course so I'm sure she will be really fired up by that.
Got to go now and practice this week's song, and then this weekend I'm going to do some recording and remind myself of ways of working in sound. I have another project in the offing.

Songs from the Kitchen: Set in Stone

Last Night's Dream

Last night's lockdown dream was every bit as complex as the one the night before, but it slithered away swiftly like a snake as I tried to grasp it and remember what happened. I
 just saw its tail disappearing into the distance and couldn't hang on to it.
Maybe that was a dream as well.

Lockdown Dreams and Frozen Fridges

I don't normally remember my dreams but during lockdown that have been vivid, exhausting and sometimes alarming. I wake up in the morning with what feels like a headful of panicking pigeons. A couple of nights ago I had to get a coach load of tourists out of a French chateau and back into the coach with half an hour to go before their ferry left. When I went to find them the stair carpet, which was made of cloth, came undone and I had to try to fix it back again on to slippy wooden stairs, all under the watchful eye of duchess Thandie Newton. I did manage to collect up the tourists but then had to convince the tour operator that we were in a hurry, and she didn't seem that bothered.
What a relief to wake up!
Meanwhile, there's a gap in my working life where my book was. I am going to write a book chapter on Oh Bondage! Up Yours but I know I need a couple of weeks of not exactly rest, but catching up on University work stuff. Online courses, you know.
Double meanwhile after a year I have finally admitted that it's time to defrost the lump of ice that my fridge has become. It has taken more than 24 hours to not melt and people have been recommending that I get the hairdryer out.
Sounds good. I think I will, but that might mean the kitchen smells of melted and pre-rotting food.
I have scrubbed away at the top bit with bicarbonate of soda. Some dill went mouldy in there and it's been very hard to get rid of the smell. That, and half-onions.
I think this is called 'domestic bliss'. I'm looking for the bliss bit: it's probably embedded in that huge lump of ice in the freezer compartment, I think.
Postscript: I got bored with the hairdryer hint pretty quickly. It's better to just wait.

Kitchen Video

Interview in PunkGirlDiaries Zine

This is a top-quality zine, lovely paper and ink (how can you tell I used to be a printer?). I was delighted to do an interview with them.
Issue 2 available now! https://punkgirldiaries.com
Also featuring an interview with Alison Statton from the Young Marble Giants and Weekend.

Bandcamp Friday 3rd July

Bandcamp are doing a fee-free day tomorrow. This track will be up for 36 hours only. It's a song I will re-record for my next album, but this version will generate 100% of its sales income for Crisis, the homelessness charity, if you buy it this time around.
Please do listen to the rest of my music too, if you're visiting!

https://helenmccookerybook.bandcamp.com/track/all-i-want-is-the-sun-to-shine-for-you

Morning

I wake up every morning in a good mood, and then remember about the virus. Urgh.

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