All dressed up fancy

I'm all dressed up fancy because I'm going for breakfast (breakfast- it's the new black! Or is black the new breakfast?) with my Champagne Friend. She's a very good friend who sat in casualty with me all night once when I was ill, and almost the next day she won a miner's lamp in a Labour Party raffle, closest you could get to a Florence Nightingale lamp, I thought. We used to dress up and go off to drink champagne in posh bars, and we always met somebody mad. Once, some Finnish students interviewed us for a documentary on recycling.
She is living proof that blondes have more fun!
I wrote a song about her, which was the first song I wrote for a friend. I don't play it often, but I recorded it for her and gave her a copy.
Speaking of which I'm recording Sara's song tomorrow morning. I had an idea, too, about all the songs I have written which are less than a minute long. I want to record a vinyl EP with four or five one-minute tracks, called Helen McCookerybook's Saturday Night Assortment. So now I have to find the money, and there's a stack of stuff on the floor upstairs to put on eBay on Friday!

Basil Brush

I really, really hated Basil Brush, so it was a blow one Christmas when McMum triumphantly announced that she'd acquired tickets for Basil Brush in Pantomime at the Sunderland Empire for the whole family to celebrate my birthday. I stretched my lips over my teeth in a painful grin, put on my party clothes and off we went.
Actually, it was one of the most hilariously funny experiences of my life, from being plastered flat against an almost vertical wall of seats in the Gods and feeling that if you leaned forward to cough you'd somersault down into the unwary audience seated in the Upper Circle, to Basil's piece-de-resistance joke:
'Everybody turn to the person on your left and say "How do you do"'. (everyone groans and does as they are told.)
'Now turn to the person on your right and say "Mind your own business"'.
Ha ha, I spend my life trying to find audiences I can use that one on!
Another odd thing is that Little Bruv used to work night shifts at Walkers Crisps in Leicester, and he said one night he was sittingin the cafe chatting loudly about the Basil Brush in Pantomime experience, and someone at the next table said 'Oh yes, I went to that too'. Gradually, a chorus chimed in from other tables, and actually, that panto had been a formative experience for many of the night staff at the Leicester Walkers Crisp factory. Extraordinary. What's more, when Smeg was round the other night he told me that the girlfriend that wore Rod (the first Chefs drummer) out with her libido, and her twin sister, were the daughters of the original Basil Brush voiceover artist. Double extraordinary!
Larstly (you see, I can talk southern!) if you live in Scotland, go to the Perth Theatre pantomime. It has got to be the best in the world. the same cast, endlessly recycled.. the fairy gets older and ends up being the witch, the leading man gets older and fatter and becomes the comedy baddie, audience full of terrifyingly energetic elderly ladies guffawing away and roaring along in all the choruses, Principal 'Boy' with unfeasibly large thighs trembling in white tights, children from local schools got stars in their eyes, Oh no he didn't oh yes he did, can this side of the Theatre sing louder than that side, digs at the local football team, bouncy panto piano music with musical director practically shrugging his jacket off his shoulders with enthusiasm, sponsor mentioned a little too often, it's brilliant!

Night Bus

Yesterday, Paul, Robert, John and Smeg from King Kurt had a meeting at our house about releasing a CD of old stuff. I haven't seen Smeg for ages and it was really nice to see him again. He got stressed at one point in the discussions, left the room, and volunteered to do the ironing for me; the only thing is, I don't really iron, so I couldn't help him out there. So we sat and chatted instead and he tried to swap his original Gretsch Double Anniversary for my repro one plus my Hofner acoustic. I can only assume the vast quantities of Bourbon he had swallowed made him think that this was a remote possibility.
His ironing offer reminds me of when a friend was going out with a tram conductor from Melbourne, who knew Nick Cave at the time of his dabblings with strong drugs. Nick went round their house once, when they were changing the bedlinen, and showed my friend how to do hospital corners.
Last night I was remembering the night bus I used to get home after clubbing (the going out sort, not the kill-the-baby-seals type). It used to drive down the Kilburn High Road, with the driver yelling out 'Anyone for Dyne Road?' and so on, so we all got dropped off at the end of our street. He also used to stop outside the Kentucky Fried Chicken so hungry passengers could rush off, buy some food and climb back on again to continue their journey. Bless!
The wonderful Caroline Coon has contacted me again about the book, and suggested we have a big dinner party with all the interviewees invited, all under one powerpacked roof. What a brilliant idea! I'm sure the roof will burst off and go into orbit!

Burns Night

Well, of course with a name like McCookerybook, what do you expect? Sis cooked a giant Haggis, factory-farmed in the Scottish Borders, we had neeps and tatties, McMum and McDad flew down from Edinburgh on a dragon's wing, and we ate and drank ourselves very silly. Good job I was wearing red- we were just telling Paul (plays sax and clarinet for me and used to be a Horn) what a charming Italian waiter he was, and he tipped a glass of red wine on my kilt, sporran and shirt. The pink fur sporran repelled the stain, the red shirt soaked it up invisibly and I don't know what the kilt did- I got it from the Cancer Care shop for £3.00, it's red and green and clashes beautifully with the sporran. It's going back there because I think it's a children's kilt and it started giving me major problems about the midriff as soon as I ate a morsel of food. It also has some elaborate holes that can only have been created by starving moth grubs, so off it goes, tomorrow. I could swear my stomach hissed with joy when I undid it.
All sorts of starry little things are happening- I have just written a small article for Nude Magazine for their 'Bands that Bombed' section about the Chefs (it's great, you should get hold of a copy), which I hope they will print. And King Kurt are coming for lunch to discuss a reissue. We're all doing it, aren't we?
And life... Gina and myself are going to go skating together, I'm going to record Sara's song for her on Thursday morning (wake up, voice!) and, I hope, play it for her at her party on Saturday. I think the Mad Professor has forgotten me, though. It's all ups and downs and ups and downs; but level and even would be so terribly boring!

Green

On the radio a long time ago, there was a woman who had been born without eyesight. She was given an operation that allowed her to see for the first time ever. When she got home, her helper-dog leapt up at her: it realised she could see, because they are not allow to do that with an unsighted person.
The interviewer asked her what the best thing was that she had ever seen. 'Grass', she replied. 'I had no idea that there was so much green and that it was such a beautiful colour. How can anybody be unhappy when there is so much green in the world to look at?'.

Fag Club at Cardiff's Buffalo Bar

I drove down from London, into the sunset, always so romantic;that strange ballet of traffic, weaving forwards, same old music tape getting worn out and developing odd EQs.
The first support band was an improv band called I-S-G, a guitarist, cellist and double bass player, who used all sorts of objects like wooden spoons and chopsticks to alter their instruments- the double bass playing was particularly fascinating, because you don't see anyone being that aggressive with the precious instrument very often. He was actually a really good player and a creditable percussionist too.
Next were the fantastic Stillettos.
In the beginning, there was punk; it's a learning genre. There is something completely joyful about all that noise and ramshackle structure, all that just doing it.
Crash crash bash thump yell! Stuff everyone, you can go to hell! They sang songs about dentists, they roared, they had attitude. And all this from 2 girls and a guy, all under 18, all having a great adventure. I loved them. They reminded me of Girlschool, actually, which is a compliment because Girlschool are great.
I'd had such a good night and I enjoyed my bit too- I enoyed singing, playing, and the crowd listening and smiling at the funny bits in my lyrics. The sound was really good and the crowd was really warm. Afterwards, I had some nice conversations with one or two of them about the things the songs are about, the less happy ones that they could relate to. Charlotte Grieg came with her two guitarists, one of whom is a sprite (you know, a young guy in it for learning and the experience; Diana has Merlin the accordionist, and the Nightingales have the Lloydlet)
Thank you Debi, for inviting me to play, and for putting me up too. It's a great night. Go along if you can- www.fagclub.net
I noticed I-S-G had left a wooden spoon behind. It's on a chair, guys, if you read this.

WEATHER BRINGS HEADLINE CHAOS

Silly, isn't it. Phew, what a scorcher.
I was myspacechatting to a guy from Glasgow and remembering this gig Helen and the Horns did in Henry Afrikas there. There was a smoke machine that went into overdrive just before we hit the stage, and the fog so thick Chris the Trumpet player couldn't see his music. In fact, none of us could see each other and nor could we see the audience. I spent the entire gig earnestly singing to what I thought was a person only to discover towards the end when the smoke cleared that I had been singing to a pillar, and the audience was over to my left somewhere completely different!
Ah, happy days, happy days... they gave us two crates of Red Stripe on the rider and we drank one of them and took the other to Edinburgh and put it in the fridge where we were staying for after the gig that night. They guys all went out after we had played to get a drink, but me and Sally, our sound engineer, decided to stay in and chat because we were tired. When they got back, we said 'There's a few beers in the fridge'. There weren't. Sally and me had drunk the whole crate while we were chatting. Weird.
So I'm off to Cardiff today, driving over after work, to play the Buffalo Bar in Windsor Place. Looks like a nice venue, and I'm looking forward to it. The other band is the Stillettoes- they look good. Charlotte Grieg's coming along with heer guitarists after her rehearsal. I have callouses on my fingers from practising for it.
And Bobby Moore is thinking of writing a book about the Slits. Bout time someone did- I hope they all agree to being interviewed for it! Also, I'm going to do an interview with Martin Stephenson on Resonance at 7 p.m. on 22nd February.

Stomp and the Plastic Bag Lady

This is a quick posting as I'm at work and want a cup of tea before I start- but I did think about this yeaterday and wanted to write about it before I forgot!
In Brighton in the 1980s there was an elderly lady in an old green coat who trundled around the streets whipping an empty plastic carrier bag and making it snap with a loud report, while she muttered angrily at anyone who passed her. She was a real feature of the personscape, and it was most interesting to see a small item in Stomp's repertoire that involved just such a percussive sequence. I wonder if they paid her royalties?

February Songbird Flyer

Passing Clouds is a wizzo place. Come along to this friendly night, and enjoy yourself this cold wet winter!

Almost Grown

When I lift the lid of this laptop after it's been sleeping, it plays the intro to 'Almost Grown' by Chuck Berry. It doesn't really, it just sounds that way. Being a complete nerd, I had to go and play through a few tracks to find out what it wasit reminded me of. Sometimes I have to switch off my iPod if the DLR is going past the North Circular, or sometimes on the tube too, because the track is out of tune with the traffic noise or the sound of the tube whooshing through the tunnel. It took me ages to work out why I could't stand to listen sometimes. There's always a lot of external noise because those little ear things won't fit in my ears and I have to wear giant headphones that make the ticket collector at my local station roar with laughter every time he sees me. I am too kind to laugh at his silly shoes.

Fool on the Hill

I wrote Hill of Fools as a birthday present for Gina.
We'd been in Scotland, on the West Coast, in a big house with McMum and McDad, brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews. And those huge hills just seemd to dwarf my stupid little human problems, with their thousands of years of solidity.
I started thinking about how I thought the song Fool on the Hill by the Beatles described my feelings of being 'outside' when I was a little girl and how much I used to identify with it; and now, it's the other way round; it seems to me that all the people who have tried to make me feel like the Fool, are the Fools themselves. The only problem is, they are still in control of everything, aren't they?

Vivienne Westwood

Even at half price in the sale, the clothes were too expensive. But it's always nice to walk round and look at them all, especially the shoes. The shop assistant asked me where I got my earrings. 'Top Shop'. "Top Shop rocks' she said. 'That's where I buy my clothes'. So now I'm feeling officially funky.

Folk in Cellar

It's in a cosy little orange cellar, and the storms kept almost everyone away, including the headline act, but it was just the place to be on a windy night. Everyone was really friendly, right down to the barman, and Les Coghlan, who runs the club, was really nice. He has a folk band with Emma Scarr, who plays fiddle and sings, and J. Emma sang some great story songs- from 'Neaden to Nashville' was the best. They did some trio stuff, and I've never been able to see or hear a bodhran at such close quarters before- there's a lot more to the sound than I had realised. J did some songs too, one of which I could swear was called 'Whiskers in my Heart' but I must be wrong. I hope I play there again, because I liked the size and the atmosphere. Where else does the barman buy you a drink? To round it off perfectly, I found a Lindt chocolate reindeer in my coat pocket that I'd bought reduced-price at the garage, and I scoffed the lot on the way home.
What else? I realised this morning that the gorgeous smell of orange blossom at Westferry DLR station was in fact tar. And I saw Amy Lame on the tube, wearing a bright red hat and bright red lipstick. Go Girl, Amy Lame! Who wants to lie down and mope in winter!
Anyway it's taken me a week to confess this... but last Tuesday evening my car got clamped in a car park and I had to pay £75 to get free. When the man had gone, I just sat in my car in the darkness by myself and cried. I couldn't stop. I cried for almost half an hour, and suddenly felt better. I drove home with everything looking sparkly, even the dull old northwestern suburbs, and the beginnings of a new song had washed out of my head, with the tears. And I looked in the mirror when I got home because I thought my eyelids would be all fat and podgy and my eyes would be red, but I looked OK. I think the tears were good for me! You see, I never cry at all usually.

News Books

I think blogs are like adult versions of those News Books we did in Primary School- 'I plaed wit my frends' every day till the teacher told you you had to write something different.
I hope it's friends I play with tonight- the Folk Cellar at the Constitution pub in St Pancras Way, Camden. It's a Folk Club and I was going to go acoustic and take the Hofner, but it's been killing my fingers and I'll have to take the Green Giant. I hope they're not prejudiced.....
Things, things, things... I never got a penny of mechanical royalties for 24 Hours, the track the Chefs did. And there it is, up on iTunes. I know the single sold thousands of copies, but nobody did the decent thing and paid me .But then the Business isn't decent, is it?
People are, though... I've been offered a place on a guitar playing course in Scotland that sounds great. And I'm trying to tempt Elle Osborne to play on one of my tracks: she's an ace fiddle player that makes your heart leap when she plays. I thought she'd sound great on Memento Mori (the demo's on Myspace) so keep your fingers crossed until I tell you to stop! Meanwhile, Plastilina have been in touch again, and I hope that somehow we can sort ot a Chefs release some time soon. But I think that's a bit of a don't-hold-your-breath situation. And another decent person is Dina Hornreich, who's happy for me to post a message on Typicalgirls.com to see if there's a demand for The Lost Women of Rock Music to come out in paperback, so more than just librarians can afford to read it. So I'll do that this weekend.
And my old Hofner semi-acoustic bass has gone to the doctors to be mended. It's gone to a Luthiers called L A Strings who are brilliant- they did some work on the Gretsch I used to play in Helen and the Horns (although it needs new pickups and machine heads but will have to wait for those royalties from 24 Hours for those!) and they fix up the guitars for the Chet Atkins Society.
End of News for today.

Eyes

Bloody Dove Cream Wash.
Dove?
Should be called raging fire, burning knives, barbed wire experience, roaring painster!!
I got some in my left eye this morning and at 2.30 this afternoon, both eyes are still smarting, I'm still sniffing, my throat's full of goo and a headache has moved in between my eyebrows.
Mercy me, I'd hate to use Hawk!!!