Working

Well what is the point of grumbling about working? I know how lucky it is to have stimulating and varied work; however, you occasionally get a week where everything happens at once and this week has been one of that sortuva week. Almost every part of the workscape has come to a head; marking student work, data inputting, the academic article on its fifth rewrite and still taking hours to make imperceptible progress. I've been up at dawn, writing in my pyjamas, hair awry, coffee getting cold, opening and closing files on my computer, forgetting to eat then eating too much...
We are still working on the documentary, which is demanding finer and finer tuning, as well.
Good things? A very positive response to Rendezvous D'Automne, especially by BBC6's Marc Riley, and two lovely gigs coming up this weekend: Glastonwick in Sussex, at the invitation of Attila the Stockbroker on Saturday afternoon, and The Mascara Bar on Sunday as part of The Stoke Newington Music Festival, at the invitation of Fran Isherwood.
In fact, I'm going to stop writing now and play my guitar instead. That's a Very Good Idea.

Out Now!

From here http://gnuinc.co.uk

Marking Time

I've kind of missed the Bank Holiday, as always, because of marking. Even putting the student numbers on the work (they were supposed to do it, but many didn't) takes what seem like centuries.
When the University moved from paper to paperless submissions, the registry threw away something like seven bin-bags of uncollected work which implied that the students only looked at their marks, and not at the painstaking feedback and feed-forward that had been given to them. You have to at least imagine that they look at this stuff or you'd go bonkers.
I have to stop now; the people in the next garden along are drunk and screeching with laughter. I do have ear protectors for when the local DIY gets out of hand, but it's hot and sticky and I've reached my limit for the day.

Transglobal Underground at Stamford Bridge

Transglobal Underground don't play much in the UK so I couldn't miss this gig. I've seen Dubulah's other bands- most of them- from The Simonics (a band made up entirely of Simons and Nicks, who recorded at Elephant Studios in Wapping where the engineers were called Simon and Nick), through the Red River Mountain Boys (an old timey band with stick-on moustaches), Temple of Sound (with Maori singers and dancers), and Dub Colossus (one time in Edinburgh with African musicians, another in Hackney with Mykaell Riley on vocals, a horn section, Winston Blissett and Dubulah both on bass and I can't remember what else, and another at Passing Clouds so late that I had to go home before they played), and of course the occasional gig with me (Lucie's Lounge). I've got at least two Temple of Sound albums, and the band Flavel Bambi Septet, made up of Tim Whelan, Hamid Mantu and God only know who else, came up to the Edinburgh fringe to be the house band for Dr Calamari's Music Hall of the Macabre, way back in the 1980, with Lester Square as the MC.
Too many names?
A bit Old Testament, I confess; maybe you have to be 'in the know', but you didn't need to be to appreciate the music at this gig, which was pure positive dancing energy all the way through. It was great to hear Natacha Atlas sing live, and hear Hamid play again; the percussionist Goldfinger was particularly bouncy, describing the music as 'multiclectic' and at one point, exasperated by the lack of bounce of some members of the audience, shouting 'I'm older than you!! Come on!!'
There, in the background was Dubulah, swopping between bass and guitar, quietly watching one of many teams of musicians he has created music with over the years. We are all survivors of what life throws at us, and we must celebrate the lives we live now: that's the message of this band, multicultural, positive and energising.
The show finished quite early, but early nights are the new late nights, I hear. It was nice to see Dave Jago in the crowd, up from Southend. We have a Helen and the Horns gig in Brighton in August. Yet more names: we all seem to have worked with at least one of us, at one time or another.
Or something.

Back

Back to piles of marking, internet glitches, portals f*cked, phone calls to IT people and booking.com (site down and multiple charges made to debit card for duplicate bookings); what a mess normal life is. Administrators have all been sacked to save money, and recorded voices offer options you don't want, IT professionals gaslight you with impunity, then have to actually apologise (horrors!) when the whole site collapses, and things that should have take half a day will now take the whole weekend.
I'm so glad I went away.
I am looking forward to hearing the recordings.
I met my friend Laura, whose whole family have been friends with my family for three generations and who I haven't seen since she was twelve and I was fourteen; we went to YWCA camp together and managed to survive the experience. We wandered around Boston and then went back to her lovely house in the New Hampshire countryside to talk, eat and catch up.
I went to visit Jane and her baby Emile and ate leek and potato soup in their apartment in Brooklyn, and I met up with Jenn Pelly, who has just completed the book on the Raincoats, for a coffee and a long chat.
Add to that the meandering (seven miles one day, eight miles another), the quirky museums (more to come on that after the marking mountain has been conquered), the park, the YMCA (a unique experience) and a seamless journey back after a struggle through the muggy rush hour Subway with a  suitcase that defied my 'poorly arm', and it has been bliss to be on a completely different planet for a few days.
No jetlag on the way back- how peculiar. Offsprog One reckons that maybe my body clock simply didn't adjust, which makes sense. And now also for the fifth attempt at re-writing the academic article that bounces back as regularly as a rubber ball. This time, though, I'm doing it for the sistaz and will publish myself if they don't do it!

Central Park, 7.30 a.m.

Recording With Tom Again

Tom and Lisa live out at Queens, and I probably chose the longest route there that it was possible to choose. I got the Subway to Flushing, which is a fascinating Korean suburb, and then caught a slow local bus from there to the area where they live.
There was a minor hiccup: Tom had arranged to borrow a Spanish guitar and a solid-body from a local music shop, but there was no-one to be seen when we went to pick them up. We hovered and hoped and peered through the shuttered window, but in the end Tom had to try to find someone else who would hire instruments to us- you'd think that would be easy in New York but it's not. After a lot of searching, we managed to find somewhere and we were just setting off, when the original guy phoned and said he'd opened up and was waiting there for us.
The first solid body had gravelly pots and sticky strings but the second one had a nice strong sound- Seymour Duncan pickups- and we went back and made a start. I'd decided to do electric and acoustic versions of each song, but the songs soon dictated what they wanted and two were recorded on the Spanish guitar and two on the electric. Tom has become so swift at editing and although he now works mainly as a mix engineer, he had put together a really great recording set-up for this session. We recorded the four songs on guitar, and  then because my voice was rough at the bottom end and I had no head-room (jet lag), we stopped for the day and chatted to his wife Lisa and their lovely little baby who was all smiles and who is a ball of fun and energy.
Next day was vocal day and it didn't take long to put the vocals on the songs.
I had realised the day before that coming to Queens to record with Tom again was a really good decision. Time has passed- almost ten years- and we have both got better at what we are doing, but it was as easy as anything to slot right back into working together again. If you have recorded two and a half albums with the same engineer (plus a Christmas EP with a scratch choir on it, which Lisa says they still play every year), at the end of that process you will either be great friends or great enemies, and thankfully we became the first of those.
I can't wait to hear how they sound.
Afterwards we went to a Japanese restaurant and ate ourselves silly.
It is extremely tempting to go back and do next year's album there too; let's see how the next lot of songs develop...
It felt as though no time had passed at all; I was so pleased to see him- and Lisa, who managed to survive the Harrow household where they all lived; and of course, to meet their baby. How often do we get to meet babies? Never! Everyone should have at least one baby in their life just to keep their feet on the ground; this trip, I met two: but more of that in another posting.
I have such fiendish headweirdnessfuckery because of the time zone thing that I can only manage one posting at a time. Can you imagine a night flight, a red-eye, then having to do marking? A whole day of it tomoz, then the fifth rewrite of an article that I'm trying to get published.
Oh, but New York: what a city.

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra

I couldn't get a ticket for the early show at eight but took the risk of the ten thirty.
It was a mistake to stop off in Times Square on the way there because I got seriously hustled and it was frightening. The idea of picking my way to and from Greenwich Village on my own suddenly lost its appeal.
However, food cures all ills and cures all fears too, apparently; although it took a while to locate the venue (going off in the wrong direction from the Subway didn't help), once I was there I joined the smug queue of people with tickets and clambered down the narrow stairs into the teensy club (no more than 123 people allowed in there, appaz) where the audience is so close to the band that they are practically in it.
What a band! Lots of greyhairs, a couple of nerdy whippersnappers, and a slick, breathing big band sound. They play as one: they are like a swarm of bees, leaning in one direction thn the other, rising and falling as they breathe together, reaching over to place microphones for the person doing a solo, the sax players putting their fingers in their ears in unison as the trombones blast behind them in a particularly loud section.
Tight, very New York tunes emanate from the cosy stage area; they explain life through music, looking blissful as they listen in between playing. One sax player even uses newsreaders 'explaining hands' during his solo. They are sure we understand their enthusiasm, and we do.
Sorry no photos- forbidden I'm afraid, although I may well try to draw them from memory at some point. They were fascinating.

New York

New York is foggy tonight, and has been rainy all day. It was a nightmare getting here because the flight was delayed by more than four hours, and part of that time involved the Norwegian Airlines staff trying to reorganise all the seating for the whole enormous planeload so that we could fly in a jumbo jet run by a Spanish airline.
The good bit was that I got to sit in the lump on top, which was something I never in a million years imagined that I'd ever do. It was impossible to sleep though, partly because of turbulence- not enough to make you afraid but enough to wake you up if you nodded off, and partly because the huge seats had all sorts of mechanical gadgetry; you could slide them into a flat position bit by bit, lifting up the footrest and lowering the headrest, you had folding down little reading lights and a folding table in the arm rest, and so much legroom. But all night long the whirring of the mechanisms gently whined as people adjusted their positions; it was a unnerving as it was exciting.
Then at JFK (cheers, Norwegian), I ended up being the only person from the whole flight waiting for transport into town- at 11.30 at night. That was frightening, but the shuttle bus eventually turned up and lots of other late passengers crammed at another terminal.
So I got to the YMCA at 1.30 a.m. and checked into this Spartan room, which has a fabulous view across Central Park.
I can't upload photographs at the moment because this is an iPad and mostly doesn't work. It's horrible to type on too because your fingers feel like spider legs tippy tappying on it.
The recording part of the trip has been perfect. It was fantastic to work with Tom again, and meeting his little baby was amazing. We got four tracks down, and he's going to mix them.
Tomorrow, I have a long trip to visit Laura, who I haven't seen since she was twelve and I was fourteen. On the way, I'm going to get some work done: I printed out a very basic version of my book to read.
So this is a working visit, but at the same time I've walked the (Hi) Line, been to Williamsburg, visited the amazing Folk Museum and just generally wandered around using both my feet and the Metro Card.
Time for a shower- a competitive business because we share bathrooms at the YMCA, and there aren't enough to go around. I mistakenly allowed a soaking wet cyclist to go before me, this morning, which meant that I missed out on things. Wish me luck!

Letter

Dear Gran

I am sorry not to be visiting your birthplace this time around, but I will come back another time.
I remember hanging out with you and your friends; you were so worried about what I would write about them in your diary that you tried to bribe me with a dollar, to show you what I'd written that day. But I hadn't written anything; I found them fascinating, just as you were.
You had so many adventures and there were so many layers to your personality. I understand how you always saw the good in everything and everybody and how important it was to you to do that, in order to keep the darkness away. You saw cruelty, and you experienced it too. But you were a fabulous grandmother and you never lost your ability to play or to understand the child in people, no matter how sophisticated they were. You also rather liked baddies because they were exciting, although you didn't want them around us, your grandchildren.
Whenever life kicks me in the teeth, I think about you and your survival strategy of always to be positive and always to be interested in other people and their stories.

Sending you love from Planet Earth,

Your granddaughter Helen xxx

South Bank Birds

Compass

Just bought a little compass- a metal adventure's compass- from the bookshop, so I can navigate around New York without getting my phone out, because it's a north/south/east/west city.
It says on the box that it's a metal adventurer's compass, so that must mean that I'm a metal adventurer.

The Punks Wait For Their Guitars To Arrive

Alpacas from yesterday; more to come, after (another) graft day. Tina, their boss, is out of the picture. She has magnificent fluttery eyelashes, dark brown fur, and can spot a camera at a hundred yards.
These are therapeutic alpacas who belong to the organisation Animal Antiks, and they visit troubled children and autistic children who need something more than complicated human company to make them feel safe and comfortable.
Not only can these clever chaps play guitar, but they also spit at each other when they are annoyed like proper punk rockers. Llamas spit at humans more often, apparently, because they have nastier temperaments than alpacas; alpacas only have teeth on their lower jaw and have hard gums on the upper one.
You learn a lot at Literary Festivals.

Guitars Located!

I can't believe that next weekend I will be in New York recording with Tom Greenwood again. Tom recorded both Suburban Pastoral and Poetry and Rhyme, plus some of the tracks on Hamilton Square.
Norwegian Airlines don't carry fragile baggage and I've been worried about taking a guitar but Tom has found a friendly music shop to hire some at minimal rates.
This is so exciting!
The beginning of this year was terribly dark: a fog of painkillers, and the shock of realising how things can suddenly happen that make a huge impact on everything in your life.
Trying to edit an academic article with a curdled brain and an ability to type with only one finger.
Months of sleeplessness because of the relentless pain (never break an elbow- that funny bone feeling is with you constantly, 24/7 and painkillers wear off after a couple of hours).
Taking days to be able to bear to wear a guitar and stand up to play (they are heavy buggers).
An unbearable feeling, the feeling of being sorry for myself.
Sitting with my hand in the air for hours at a time to stop the swelling and bruising from becoming really frightening and dramatic.
Drawing a very painful, powerful drawing that summed up the feelings of being dumped two years ago which made a friend cry when they saw it.

What a wonderful NHS we have; they were proud of the work they did in fixing it up.
The surgeon smiled with delight at the mobility of the mended arm and relayed a message from the operating surgeon to ask if I'd managed to do my gigs (I only cancelled one, in the end).

Travelling light and light-hearted! What better thing is there in life?

The Bardaid Literary Festival

The Bardaid people continue their good work creating libraries in phone boxes and schools with this event today in Hertfordshire. I will be there as part of a panel in the afternoon at about 2 p.m. and will be selling copies of the Lost Women of Rock Music later on.