On the way to meet Diana and her dogs for coffee and walkies, I passed through Finchleys East, West and Central, and the usual 'driving to get across the road' type traffic.
Today, it was like being on an ice skating rink; cars slowly circled, went backwards, wove around each other gracefully, interrupted each other's flow, stopped at the sides blocking progress, halted abruptly without warning in the middle and, I swear, figure-8-ed too. This is typical suburban traffic flow; everyone does everything apart from driving forwards in a straight line!
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Hirpity Birpity
I have been worrying a lot about Humpty Dumpty recently. What if the egg hatched halfway down to the ground and the bird flew out?
All System's Go! re-recorded with Jim Hoyland is now on Myspace.
All System's Go! re-recorded with Jim Hoyland is now on Myspace.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Red Wax and Petals
What a lovely sunny day! Last night after an accidental spill of huge quantities of melted red crayon wax (art project of Offsprog-1) on my best rug from Ikea bought two weeks ago to stop the house looking so shabby, I cried. But this morning, I set to work with the iron and a roll of paper towels and managed to make it 75% paler. I'll do the same this evening and then try some stain remover. Martin had made a lovely ambient version of Once in a Blue Moon which he emailed to cheer me up (bless!) and everything doesn't look so bad this morning. I sent him picture number 5, which is here, and I am spending the day organising things. We have booked a gig together at the Perseverance in June- it's such a nice little venue (come to that one Chimesey if you're feeling jaded!).
I took Offsprog-1 to Brighton on Monday for an interview at the Art College, crawling round the M25 at 10 mph in the slashing rain and buffeting wind and only just getting there in time. While she was enduring the searching questions, I plundered the junk shops and came back wit two vases, one hideous and the other twee, and a peach silk robe which I have tried in vain to rinse the 'vintage' smell out of this morning. It is still a beauty, guaranteed to bestow glamour on the plainest of models, and I shall be wearing it on my ugly days to swan about the house with a pretzel and a glass of Schloer.
Hey-ho, coffee time and then perhaps I'll mow the lawn although it's looking so pretty with its coating of apple blossom petals I might just leave it for another couple of days.
P.s. I've written a jazz song about dinosaurs
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Early Helen and the Horns Gigs
The Spandau/Duran/BoyGeorge 80s largely passed me by on an alien track, as I belonged to a group of further-out bands and musicians who played the Universities and small-scale weird venues about Britain (and especially in Scotland).
The first gig Helen and the Horns did was the basement bar at Imperial College, where a mob of drunken mining students did a rowdy conga in front of us. They only went past us once, though, because as each drunken mining student passed me I booted him smartly up the bum while carrying on playing, and as the frontrunner approached for a second time I could see him computing that it wasn't a good idea to pass by me again!
We did an interview for the college radio that someone later sent to me (I was rather rude and arrogant), and were allowed to help ourselves from a shopping trolley packed with a massive quantity of Country and Western LPs.
We played a street party at a pub in West London with a dreadful P.A. system, all sunshine, excited children and hippy food.
We played for for Richard 'Stranger than Steve' Strange, in a basement in Mayfair, an after-hours sortuva gig. Yvette the Conqueror, a well-known transexual, appeared singing a Boystown track over a backing tape, dressed in figure-hugging flesh coloured lycra. A straight-looking man in a pale blue bri-nylon shirt sliced his chest to pieces with a razor blade to music. When it was our turn I realised we weren't quite burlesque enough for Richard and he stood with his back to us throughout our short set, talking loudly to a member of the audience.
I walked home to Kilburn that night with my guitar, past the prostitutes in Park Lane who smiled and nodded (I wasn't competition, not a person with a guitar), past the drunks in Maida Vale and on the Kilburn High Road, arriving back home at my bedsit in Willesden exhausted but buzzing with the idea of the different worlds music brings you into.
The first gig Helen and the Horns did was the basement bar at Imperial College, where a mob of drunken mining students did a rowdy conga in front of us. They only went past us once, though, because as each drunken mining student passed me I booted him smartly up the bum while carrying on playing, and as the frontrunner approached for a second time I could see him computing that it wasn't a good idea to pass by me again!
We did an interview for the college radio that someone later sent to me (I was rather rude and arrogant), and were allowed to help ourselves from a shopping trolley packed with a massive quantity of Country and Western LPs.
We played a street party at a pub in West London with a dreadful P.A. system, all sunshine, excited children and hippy food.
We played for for Richard 'Stranger than Steve' Strange, in a basement in Mayfair, an after-hours sortuva gig. Yvette the Conqueror, a well-known transexual, appeared singing a Boystown track over a backing tape, dressed in figure-hugging flesh coloured lycra. A straight-looking man in a pale blue bri-nylon shirt sliced his chest to pieces with a razor blade to music. When it was our turn I realised we weren't quite burlesque enough for Richard and he stood with his back to us throughout our short set, talking loudly to a member of the audience.
I walked home to Kilburn that night with my guitar, past the prostitutes in Park Lane who smiled and nodded (I wasn't competition, not a person with a guitar), past the drunks in Maida Vale and on the Kilburn High Road, arriving back home at my bedsit in Willesden exhausted but buzzing with the idea of the different worlds music brings you into.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Weekend Gigs
I picked Martin up at Luton and we whizzed up to the Rose and Crown in Chesterfield, which was a mistake, as that wasn't where we were playing. The Rose and Crown in Chesterfield is a pub straight out of the Wild West, full of grumpy sheriffs and with defiant smokers lining the bar, peeling cream-painted walls finishing the despondent scene.
A series of panic-stricken phone calls and texts later found us at the Rose and Crown in Barlborough, a friendly pub in an old building with a genial, smiling manager and Pete Shields anxiously pacing up and down outside, waiting for us. After a nanosecond, we were in full flow. I really enjoyed this gig; the sadness has left my voice and I could enjoy playing again. Mike and June were there, with their daughter Laura; it was a listening audience, and Martin did a fantastic gig for them which was a mixture of new songs (he forgot the words for some of them but it didn't matter), some very deft fingerpicking, and his more poignant Daintees songs at the request of one of the barmen and several audience members.
He did a very funny version of All I Do the Whole Night Through is Dream of You that involved his impersonation of a gentleman who hasn't used the hand-drier after going to the bathroom drying their hands on their jeans, punctuating the song at regular intervals.
We stayed at Pete's and told ghost stories until the small hours, and visited his mum's charity shop the next morning, which is a hub of the village social scene run by two Geordie twin sisters making cups of tea for anyone popping in looking for baby clothes or lampshades. I was much taken by a Ken doll, but it's hair was a bit too punky so I left it there for another punter.
We left Chesterfield with a box of rhubarb, chard, parsley, lettuce seedlings and honey, brought along by Adrian, who has arranged a gig in his allotment later this year.
Last night's gig-ette was at the Perseverance, Spring Voices, arranged by Ingrid Andrew and featuring poets, music, drama. It was another one I really enjoyed playing: I played a smiley-face set and people seemed to really like it; Martin accompanied me on guitar. My favourite act of the night was Amy, otherwise known as Acton Belle, who played simplified versions of 1970s mainstream pop hits by artists like Herman's Hermits. We went to the Sea Shell for fish'n'chips and took her with us for some onion rings. She spoonerised: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Sh*t, which I misheard as Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Fish and Chips.
Luckily, she got the name right in her set (with a quick glance over at me and Martin!). She sings in a Bolton accent. Her first song was There's a Kind of Hush, and I thought of the first sheet music I ever bought, Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes, and how I hadn't really realised at the age of 14 that so much of what I liked about the record was the extras in the arrangement.
But Amy had picked her songs wisely and they cam across really well. Later, she showed me the verses written on her hand in biro and told me she had dreamed she was listening to a Beatles song on the radio and woke up and realised that it was an original Amy-song. I told her about dreaming Dreaming of You and having to wake up and write it down before I forgot it.
There was an exceptionally dark and dry poet from Liverpool whose name escapes me but he was very funny in bite-size bursts, the way poetry works best live I think. He didn't crack a smile the whole evening!
Foolish Girl came all the way from Stevenage on her immaculate yellow motorbike; the rotters at Westminster Parking Control gave her a parking ticket. Never have wanted to stuff a parking ticket where the sun don't shine so much before in my life!
Anyway, that's it for now. I have a cup of tea here at perfect drinking temperature and I don't want it to drop even half a degree further.
Toodle Pip!
A series of panic-stricken phone calls and texts later found us at the Rose and Crown in Barlborough, a friendly pub in an old building with a genial, smiling manager and Pete Shields anxiously pacing up and down outside, waiting for us. After a nanosecond, we were in full flow. I really enjoyed this gig; the sadness has left my voice and I could enjoy playing again. Mike and June were there, with their daughter Laura; it was a listening audience, and Martin did a fantastic gig for them which was a mixture of new songs (he forgot the words for some of them but it didn't matter), some very deft fingerpicking, and his more poignant Daintees songs at the request of one of the barmen and several audience members.
He did a very funny version of All I Do the Whole Night Through is Dream of You that involved his impersonation of a gentleman who hasn't used the hand-drier after going to the bathroom drying their hands on their jeans, punctuating the song at regular intervals.
We stayed at Pete's and told ghost stories until the small hours, and visited his mum's charity shop the next morning, which is a hub of the village social scene run by two Geordie twin sisters making cups of tea for anyone popping in looking for baby clothes or lampshades. I was much taken by a Ken doll, but it's hair was a bit too punky so I left it there for another punter.
We left Chesterfield with a box of rhubarb, chard, parsley, lettuce seedlings and honey, brought along by Adrian, who has arranged a gig in his allotment later this year.
Last night's gig-ette was at the Perseverance, Spring Voices, arranged by Ingrid Andrew and featuring poets, music, drama. It was another one I really enjoyed playing: I played a smiley-face set and people seemed to really like it; Martin accompanied me on guitar. My favourite act of the night was Amy, otherwise known as Acton Belle, who played simplified versions of 1970s mainstream pop hits by artists like Herman's Hermits. We went to the Sea Shell for fish'n'chips and took her with us for some onion rings. She spoonerised: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Sh*t, which I misheard as Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Fish and Chips.
Luckily, she got the name right in her set (with a quick glance over at me and Martin!). She sings in a Bolton accent. Her first song was There's a Kind of Hush, and I thought of the first sheet music I ever bought, Love Grows Where My Rosemary Goes, and how I hadn't really realised at the age of 14 that so much of what I liked about the record was the extras in the arrangement.
But Amy had picked her songs wisely and they cam across really well. Later, she showed me the verses written on her hand in biro and told me she had dreamed she was listening to a Beatles song on the radio and woke up and realised that it was an original Amy-song. I told her about dreaming Dreaming of You and having to wake up and write it down before I forgot it.
There was an exceptionally dark and dry poet from Liverpool whose name escapes me but he was very funny in bite-size bursts, the way poetry works best live I think. He didn't crack a smile the whole evening!
Foolish Girl came all the way from Stevenage on her immaculate yellow motorbike; the rotters at Westminster Parking Control gave her a parking ticket. Never have wanted to stuff a parking ticket where the sun don't shine so much before in my life!
Anyway, that's it for now. I have a cup of tea here at perfect drinking temperature and I don't want it to drop even half a degree further.
Toodle Pip!
Friday, April 24, 2009
Gigs This Weekend
Tonight, I'm playing at the Rose and Crown, High Street. Barlborough, Chesterfield, Midlands S41 8L supporting Martin Stephenson; and tomorrow at the Perseverance, 11 Shroton Street, North Marylebone, London; that will be a 15 minute set some time between 8 and 9. It's a mixed night organised by Ingrid Andrew with poets too.
I've just been out to the Co-Op. It's snowing blossom!
I've just been out to the Co-Op. It's snowing blossom!
Thursday, April 23, 2009
McSis Loved Jelly
McSis loved jelly: yum yum, as much as she could get her little hands on.
At the beach in Scotland we were all playing happily on the cold pebbles and stones and splashing in the cold grey sea.
Further up the beach, McSis was uncharacteristically quiet but we didn't care- there was dried black seaweed to pop, crab's claws to collect and little squirting holes in the sand to dig into and investigate.
In the distance McSis swished a large jellyfish around in her bright tin bucket, mashing it and slicing it enthusiastically with her red spade.
I glanced round.
Oh no!
The little red spade was just about to shovel a large helping of chopped rancid jellyfish into MsSis's hungry little mouth!
Never has an older sister raced up a beach as fast as I did that day, closely followed by Big Bruv, all concern and confusion.
We got there in the nick of time.
McSis smiled beatifically, just glad to be the centre of attention and not sure why.
At the beach in Scotland we were all playing happily on the cold pebbles and stones and splashing in the cold grey sea.
Further up the beach, McSis was uncharacteristically quiet but we didn't care- there was dried black seaweed to pop, crab's claws to collect and little squirting holes in the sand to dig into and investigate.
In the distance McSis swished a large jellyfish around in her bright tin bucket, mashing it and slicing it enthusiastically with her red spade.
I glanced round.
Oh no!
The little red spade was just about to shovel a large helping of chopped rancid jellyfish into MsSis's hungry little mouth!
Never has an older sister raced up a beach as fast as I did that day, closely followed by Big Bruv, all concern and confusion.
We got there in the nick of time.
McSis smiled beatifically, just glad to be the centre of attention and not sure why.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Today's Drawing
Well, today I did 2 hours drawing and 0 hours housework.
Rather nice.
This drawing is one of a series I will be doing for an old-timey album Martin's recording of songs he's written about Buck Easley.
The song's called Buck Made Clocks
You can't see the feet part because my computer program tries to save it sideways if I show the feet!
6.30
Can't believe it... was up at 6.30 making a pancake power breakfast for remaining home sproglet who has an art exam today, mixing batter and swirling it in a pan, sprinkle of sugar, lemon juice and hey presto! Grade A!
If only it was so simple...
I nervously raked the lawn at 7 and watched in disgust as the cat weed on the pile of grass clippings. I realise what a nuisance I had been as a child, jumping into piles of grass clippings, autumn leaves, anything that McDad was trying to pile up and dispose of, scattering the pile everywhere with loud vocal sound effects at the same time.
My new regime means an hours housework, an hours gardening, an hours singing, and an hours drawing, whenever possible.
Now I have to stop blogging and type an Adrian Henri poem into the Ramble My Rose songwriting circle blog- we are all working on it as an experiment to see what it's like writing music to poetry.
We are getting into the swing of it now- we wear our best dresses and make small and perfectly formed plans that may or may not come to fruition.
Fruition
Tuition
Abolition
Mission
Ambition
Atishoo
Bless you!
Hay Fever.
If only it was so simple...
I nervously raked the lawn at 7 and watched in disgust as the cat weed on the pile of grass clippings. I realise what a nuisance I had been as a child, jumping into piles of grass clippings, autumn leaves, anything that McDad was trying to pile up and dispose of, scattering the pile everywhere with loud vocal sound effects at the same time.
My new regime means an hours housework, an hours gardening, an hours singing, and an hours drawing, whenever possible.
Now I have to stop blogging and type an Adrian Henri poem into the Ramble My Rose songwriting circle blog- we are all working on it as an experiment to see what it's like writing music to poetry.
We are getting into the swing of it now- we wear our best dresses and make small and perfectly formed plans that may or may not come to fruition.
Fruition
Tuition
Abolition
Mission
Ambition
Atishoo
Bless you!
Hay Fever.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Ladies' Handbags: Tips'n'Tricks
1. Put a boiled sweet in the bottom of your handbag to collect stray bits of fluff.
2. Put some fluff in the bottom of your handbag to stop stray boiled sweets from making everything sticky.
2. Put some fluff in the bottom of your handbag to stop stray boiled sweets from making everything sticky.
Birdmachinery
I've just been sitting on the dock of the bay in the sunshine at the University of the East, eating a fruit salad and watching London City Airport.
It's very quiet today; the planes are lined up waiting: sunbathing, perhaps.
Every time a little plane took off, I had to resist the urge to applaud, to clap my hands at the spectacle of a distant shiny silver and white birdmachine racing along the tarmac and then gliding into the air to disappear into the bright blue beyond.
What a spectacle!
It's very quiet today; the planes are lined up waiting: sunbathing, perhaps.
Every time a little plane took off, I had to resist the urge to applaud, to clap my hands at the spectacle of a distant shiny silver and white birdmachine racing along the tarmac and then gliding into the air to disappear into the bright blue beyond.
What a spectacle!
Surreal Nights
The last couple of nights have been nights from another planet.
On Sunday, a flowery-shorted thug threw next door's massive plant-pot full of pansies into my car's back window, stoving it in and leaving it there like a decorative industrial feature from a down-to-earth Chelsea Flower Show exhibit.
The police helped me tape the hole up and a kind neighbour appeared with a description of flowery-shorts.
I will be ready with my camera next time, big boy.
Then last night, I heard rustling downstairs, and went down to find one of my cats ripping hungrily through the carrier bag I'd put all my car stuff in to get at my Marks and Spencer's Red and Blacks. I was amazed that the cat liked sweets as well as melon and cauliflower cheese, until I looked at the ingredients. 'Beef gelatine and apple sauce'. No mention of raspberry and blackcurrant, the flavours I had assumed were there. No wonder he wanted to scoff them!
Don't think I'll be buying them again.
Did you read about the Milky Way containing a raspberry-flavoured chemical?
I expected it to be flavoured with white chocolate, somehow.
On Sunday, a flowery-shorted thug threw next door's massive plant-pot full of pansies into my car's back window, stoving it in and leaving it there like a decorative industrial feature from a down-to-earth Chelsea Flower Show exhibit.
The police helped me tape the hole up and a kind neighbour appeared with a description of flowery-shorts.
I will be ready with my camera next time, big boy.
Then last night, I heard rustling downstairs, and went down to find one of my cats ripping hungrily through the carrier bag I'd put all my car stuff in to get at my Marks and Spencer's Red and Blacks. I was amazed that the cat liked sweets as well as melon and cauliflower cheese, until I looked at the ingredients. 'Beef gelatine and apple sauce'. No mention of raspberry and blackcurrant, the flavours I had assumed were there. No wonder he wanted to scoff them!
Don't think I'll be buying them again.
Did you read about the Milky Way containing a raspberry-flavoured chemical?
I expected it to be flavoured with white chocolate, somehow.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Guitar Weekend
The guitar weekend happens at Friar's Carse just outside Dumfries, a beautiful and tranquil old building with pictures of Rabbie Burns on every wall, sometimes looking rather effete. It looks over a quiet part of the river Nith and has lots of different trees, thick mossy lawns and thousands of rabbits that all ran away when I tried to take their photo. The trees are full of bullfinches and other birds, and an osprey wheeled overhead one afternoon. There were chattering swallows nesting in the eaves of the entrance.
It's the third time I've been and it's huge fun and hard work in equal measures; you get to try out different chords and to understand the way different sorts of guitar music work (and if you are me, forget the whole lot when you get home), and then in the evenings there are informal concerts.
This year there were three banjo players, who each played totally differently and that was a real treat, to hear them all together. Martin, Gary and Brian did a set to start off with, playing I Pray at Richard's request, then we all got up and did turns, starting with Ragtime Steve, who keeps bees in Tain and has more honey than he knows what to do with. Tim joined me for Freight Train and the other Tim (three Tims and three Alans!) and Martin for Heaven Avenue.
The last person turned in at four a.m.
I loved it- the guys are really good company (there must have been about 20 chaps and only one me this year) and it was well worth the more-than-three-hundred-mile-drive to get there. The sun shone and so did the music!
Well done to Andrew Bailey for organising it!
Below:
Parked guitar cases, at rest. Sometimes, flocks of cases swept across the floor; at others, they nestled in huddles under the piano. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and definitely not as many guitars!
Guitarists concentrating and listening to each other.
Martin demonstrates the impossible photo-opportunity chord as practised by showoffs the world over!
Backs: on the first night we all took a turn flanked by Gary and Brian to see what it feels like to play guitar with experts.
It's the third time I've been and it's huge fun and hard work in equal measures; you get to try out different chords and to understand the way different sorts of guitar music work (and if you are me, forget the whole lot when you get home), and then in the evenings there are informal concerts.
This year there were three banjo players, who each played totally differently and that was a real treat, to hear them all together. Martin, Gary and Brian did a set to start off with, playing I Pray at Richard's request, then we all got up and did turns, starting with Ragtime Steve, who keeps bees in Tain and has more honey than he knows what to do with. Tim joined me for Freight Train and the other Tim (three Tims and three Alans!) and Martin for Heaven Avenue.
The last person turned in at four a.m.
I loved it- the guys are really good company (there must have been about 20 chaps and only one me this year) and it was well worth the more-than-three-hundred-mile-drive to get there. The sun shone and so did the music!
Well done to Andrew Bailey for organising it!
Below:
Parked guitar cases, at rest. Sometimes, flocks of cases swept across the floor; at others, they nestled in huddles under the piano. There seemed to be hundreds of them, and definitely not as many guitars!
Guitarists concentrating and listening to each other.
Martin demonstrates the impossible photo-opportunity chord as practised by showoffs the world over!
Backs: on the first night we all took a turn flanked by Gary and Brian to see what it feels like to play guitar with experts.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
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