The unfortunate truth about teenagers is that they bring themselves up, choosing whether or not to prioritise what their parents, their teachers, or their peers tell them.
I have been reading about the Myersons, and their experience closely resembles that of at least two of my friends or relatives.
I also, unfortunately, can see that many of my students quite obviously use skunk. It makes them abusive, arrogant and unable to listen or learn. The users sit with a grey cloud over their heads, red-eyed and with a yellowish cast over their skin.
The next day, they can be normal and charming.
The problem with all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco (and I am not a stranger to them) is that they group the users together as a romantic clan. We have all seen films of the heart-wrenching troubles of the alcoholic, or know of the poets' struggles with opium. The user does not realise that they are boring, destructive and delusional (again, I include myself in this definition). There is something in the nature of humans to experiment to excess with chemicals, believing that they will solve all sorts of issues and help one to escape to a better place.
In a peer-group of users, even one as apparently simple as the lunchtime smokers outside an office block, the us-against-them feelings are reinforced, and all the inadequacies and failed expectations are rolled up into a ball of idealised otherness that makes one feel special for one's dependency.
Not using substances takes one away from comforting rituals and often social circles and friendships, where there is an agreement about what normal is. Most substances seem to have a built-in evangelism facility. I mentioned this once to a singer I knew, because smack is particularly bad in this respect. All addicts I have met have tried to tempt me into using it, waxing lyrical about how fantastic it is. He agreed with me. 'Mind you', he said, I have used it a few times and it's absoultely amazing. You've really got to try it'.
Myerson's father writes that he is an aspiring songwriter. If they're lucky, the family will get away with a set of seething songs describing their painful family relationships (no doubt a record deal is being negotiated). If they are not so lucky, young Myerson is negotiating as we speak with Max or a Max-a-like to write a totally poisonous book about his parents, and this will very probably focus his mind on his writing skills, justify his addiction (to himself) and if the family are fortunate, distract him from his utterly distressing and destructive behaviour.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Monday, March 09, 2009
In Praise of the Down to Earth
You see I do just keep forgetting what this blog was supposed to be for.
I am playing in Islington tomorrow night (that's Tuesday):
03-10-2009 20:30 at The Queen Boadicea
292-294 Clerkenwell Road, Clerkenwell, London and South East EC1V 4PA
Cost: Free
Angel Tube
8 – 8.30: Little Steve Long (www. myspace. com/littlestevelong) 8.40 – 9.10: Helen McCookerybook 9.20 – 9.50: The Boy The Girl and All The World (www. myspace. com/theboythegirlandalltheworld) 10 – 10.30: Jack Harris (www. myspace. com/jackharrismusic)
I also neglected to mention that Robert Lloyd wrote me to ask if I would like to open the night for a little tour by a couple of fantastic New York women, Christy and Emily, who play guitar and wurlitzer and who are absolutely brilliant. Gina is going to be the main support act, and this will be an amazing set of gigs. I do love playing gigs with Gina, and I cannot wait to see Christy amd Emily in action (they have a Myspace, well worth checking out). Their influences include Erik Satie and Jonathan Richman, and you can hear it in their music, which is a bit like listening in on a secret conversation between musical instruments while everyone is out somewhere and not expected back till midnight.
I was thinking about the Nightingales, Robert's band, this morning, and laughing, just as I always used to when John Peel played their tracks. The very first time that he announced their name, I was expecting something like the Marine Girls and was all primed for delicate vocals and thin and thrashy guitars, and out came Rob singing about being a baker, needing the dough, trying to make a bit of bread, in his big bad cynical Black Country voice. It got me every time! I've got lots of their music on vinyl; they are one of those bands that are secretly very clever, playing badly very well, as BIlly Childish once put it.
The bottom line, though, is that the Nightingales have fabulously memorable songs. I went to see them a while ago and was amazed at how many of them I recognised (I reviewed the gig here but I can't remember when).
They are hugely energetic live and have that completely unpretentious openness that a lot of the fringe-punk bands had, so refreshing. No business plan, hurrah!!!!
I am playing in Islington tomorrow night (that's Tuesday):
03-10-2009 20:30 at The Queen Boadicea
292-294 Clerkenwell Road, Clerkenwell, London and South East EC1V 4PA
Cost: Free
Angel Tube
8 – 8.30: Little Steve Long (www. myspace. com/littlestevelong) 8.40 – 9.10: Helen McCookerybook 9.20 – 9.50: The Boy The Girl and All The World (www. myspace. com/theboythegirlandalltheworld) 10 – 10.30: Jack Harris (www. myspace. com/jackharrismusic)
I also neglected to mention that Robert Lloyd wrote me to ask if I would like to open the night for a little tour by a couple of fantastic New York women, Christy and Emily, who play guitar and wurlitzer and who are absolutely brilliant. Gina is going to be the main support act, and this will be an amazing set of gigs. I do love playing gigs with Gina, and I cannot wait to see Christy amd Emily in action (they have a Myspace, well worth checking out). Their influences include Erik Satie and Jonathan Richman, and you can hear it in their music, which is a bit like listening in on a secret conversation between musical instruments while everyone is out somewhere and not expected back till midnight.
I was thinking about the Nightingales, Robert's band, this morning, and laughing, just as I always used to when John Peel played their tracks. The very first time that he announced their name, I was expecting something like the Marine Girls and was all primed for delicate vocals and thin and thrashy guitars, and out came Rob singing about being a baker, needing the dough, trying to make a bit of bread, in his big bad cynical Black Country voice. It got me every time! I've got lots of their music on vinyl; they are one of those bands that are secretly very clever, playing badly very well, as BIlly Childish once put it.
The bottom line, though, is that the Nightingales have fabulously memorable songs. I went to see them a while ago and was amazed at how many of them I recognised (I reviewed the gig here but I can't remember when).
They are hugely energetic live and have that completely unpretentious openness that a lot of the fringe-punk bands had, so refreshing. No business plan, hurrah!!!!
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Sugar Lumps
Ah, what colourful tomatoes. You may just be able to see the spelling of asparagus- apagus.
The most complex market-stall spelling I ever saw was in East Street Market in Walworth: essperegess.
The legs remind me of an art installation I once saw called Pervy Men, which had a row of trousered men's legs under brown mackintoshes that lifted one by one in sequence; it was exceptionally pervy and very disturbing.
My favourite stall was the one that sold silver plated sugar tongs, rows and rows of which were slotted over string suspended between the poles of the stall. It looked undignified; sugar tongs are like gentlefolk, polite, reserved, unfussily fussy, and should indicate the presence of sugar lumps piled in a silver sugar dish. To amass them in rows without their Victorian owners' permission seems rude and far too Warholian for such delicately-wrought fancies.
Even British Rail's bright orange tea used to come with two sugar lumps wrapped neatly in red tissue with 'Tate and Lyle' printed on it. McDad used to bring them home every week from London after his train trip and we used to crunch them greedily like little horses. McMum used to give us vitamin drops on a sugar lump every day, and the polio vaccine (I think it was that one) came as drops on a sugar lump too.
Bloody hell. Blogs cause one to ramble on about anything, especially on a Sunday evening!
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Meandering
I was going to take you on a trip in photographs down Portobello Road; I might upload some tomorrow, perhaps.
I went round to visit Gina; she's busy editing lots of footage for the Raincoats film that's going to be shown at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival later this month. I haven't seen her for ages and she'd called two weeks ago to see if I wanted to go ice-skating (we used to do that together for a while), but it was McDad's funeral that day.
We drank coffee and had a micro-chat, and her daughter, who is nine, played guitar for us. I showed her daughter a new chord, A minor seventh, and then how to play the Three Little Fishes song, which she has always absolutely loved. That meant another new chord, B seventh. And then I showed her how to finger-pick using just her thumb and index finger, and she picked (ha ha) it up quite quickly.
Time to head off down posh Westbourne Grove, where women have flawless skin and Diptyque candles in their homes.
Portobello was packed with tourists- it was the sun wot brought them out- and I photographed the stacks, rows and piles of everything for sale. It was fun to browse; there was nothing I particularly wanted to buy, although there was a workwear stall that had a lot of interesting navy blue clothes and some very old-fashioned 1940s-looking vests in thick cream coloured cotton. I bought a huge shiny yellow pepper, a thick bunch of celery and a net with gigantic bulbs of garlic in it after waiting in a queue at a vegetable stall behind a man who bought ten pounds of onions which bounced all over the street when the stallholder wasn't paying attentione .
A songwriting student from a couple of years ago was standing on the corner, upset after being sacked from her job; she had been saving up to go to New York to do work experience with a soundtrack composer.
Some ladies in the park had consoled her, and she showed me pictures on her phone of a video she has been making to go with one of her songs. What an enterprising girl! We wandered up to the tube station and she told me all about her plans. Somehow, I believe she will be all right and will have a very interesting life. Apparently, Basement Jaxx had been in the University looking for new vocalists and her tutor, who had arranged the visit, hadn't told her about it. She was upset about that as well, but I suggested she should contact them, tell them what happened, and see if they will audition her anyway. I hope she does!
As I meandered along, I heard a taxi parp its horn. It was Martin, the taxi driver friend who kindly read my book to tell me if it was readable or not (you know they have big hippocampuses, cab drivers!). We said a London Hello (65 seconds) before he drove off to take tourists to Tower Bridge or whatever.
It has been a nice day with random social happenings. I bought some ink at the art shop when I got home and spent the evening drawing a poster for Martin Stephenson's night on the Little Boat in Hartlepool. I've not done any serious drawing since I stopped doing posters for Songbird, and I'd almost forgotten the joys of dipping the paintbrush into my tea by accident and (artists secret!) holding the picture up in front of the mirror so I can look at it as though someone else has drawn it.
I went round to visit Gina; she's busy editing lots of footage for the Raincoats film that's going to be shown at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival later this month. I haven't seen her for ages and she'd called two weeks ago to see if I wanted to go ice-skating (we used to do that together for a while), but it was McDad's funeral that day.
We drank coffee and had a micro-chat, and her daughter, who is nine, played guitar for us. I showed her daughter a new chord, A minor seventh, and then how to play the Three Little Fishes song, which she has always absolutely loved. That meant another new chord, B seventh. And then I showed her how to finger-pick using just her thumb and index finger, and she picked (ha ha) it up quite quickly.
Time to head off down posh Westbourne Grove, where women have flawless skin and Diptyque candles in their homes.
Portobello was packed with tourists- it was the sun wot brought them out- and I photographed the stacks, rows and piles of everything for sale. It was fun to browse; there was nothing I particularly wanted to buy, although there was a workwear stall that had a lot of interesting navy blue clothes and some very old-fashioned 1940s-looking vests in thick cream coloured cotton. I bought a huge shiny yellow pepper, a thick bunch of celery and a net with gigantic bulbs of garlic in it after waiting in a queue at a vegetable stall behind a man who bought ten pounds of onions which bounced all over the street when the stallholder wasn't paying attentione .
A songwriting student from a couple of years ago was standing on the corner, upset after being sacked from her job; she had been saving up to go to New York to do work experience with a soundtrack composer.
Some ladies in the park had consoled her, and she showed me pictures on her phone of a video she has been making to go with one of her songs. What an enterprising girl! We wandered up to the tube station and she told me all about her plans. Somehow, I believe she will be all right and will have a very interesting life. Apparently, Basement Jaxx had been in the University looking for new vocalists and her tutor, who had arranged the visit, hadn't told her about it. She was upset about that as well, but I suggested she should contact them, tell them what happened, and see if they will audition her anyway. I hope she does!
As I meandered along, I heard a taxi parp its horn. It was Martin, the taxi driver friend who kindly read my book to tell me if it was readable or not (you know they have big hippocampuses, cab drivers!). We said a London Hello (65 seconds) before he drove off to take tourists to Tower Bridge or whatever.
It has been a nice day with random social happenings. I bought some ink at the art shop when I got home and spent the evening drawing a poster for Martin Stephenson's night on the Little Boat in Hartlepool. I've not done any serious drawing since I stopped doing posters for Songbird, and I'd almost forgotten the joys of dipping the paintbrush into my tea by accident and (artists secret!) holding the picture up in front of the mirror so I can look at it as though someone else has drawn it.
Bee
This year's pigeon, last year's bee. It is a huge fur-coated bumble bee, thudding into the window angrily then stopping for an indignant rest. If I let it out it will die of cold so I'm keeping it.
The cat is intrigued but it's too big for her to fight and I think she remembers getting a Fat Lip a couple of years ago, then a Fat Paw, from trying to eat and play with bumblers. It's an amazing creature and it's quite good company.
Akiko Hada once tried to hire a bee for the video opera, The Fall Of The Queen, and was quoted £1000. She ended up using a toy one, but I'm wondering.. could this be my way out of the recession?
The cat is intrigued but it's too big for her to fight and I think she remembers getting a Fat Lip a couple of years ago, then a Fat Paw, from trying to eat and play with bumblers. It's an amazing creature and it's quite good company.
Akiko Hada once tried to hire a bee for the video opera, The Fall Of The Queen, and was quoted £1000. She ended up using a toy one, but I'm wondering.. could this be my way out of the recession?
Friday, March 06, 2009
Tomorrowing
Today, I've done quite a bit of yesterday's tomorrowings; and some of today's tasks, I will do tomorrow.
I used to try to do everything that appeared on the horizon as soon as it appeared, but it's not always the right day to do things. Tomorrowing works quite well. Some tasks just disappear and others mature into simpler ones by the next day.
Others pile up into dull heaps of tangled hassle and are best dealt with as side- issues of more pleasant exercises.
A tedious visit to the Post Office is better seen as a walk in the Spring sunshine than 'destination foetid queue' and a dreaded visit to the Bank Machine can be fun after a tootle round the clothes shops that reveals that all fashions this year are unwearable bags and there is nothing to desire on that front and the old clothes stuffed into the bottom of the wardrobe will do for another year!
Of course there are some tasks that remain resolutely gruesome, but this is a positive blog and I will shout them into a bucket and put them out with the bins.
I used to try to do everything that appeared on the horizon as soon as it appeared, but it's not always the right day to do things. Tomorrowing works quite well. Some tasks just disappear and others mature into simpler ones by the next day.
Others pile up into dull heaps of tangled hassle and are best dealt with as side- issues of more pleasant exercises.
A tedious visit to the Post Office is better seen as a walk in the Spring sunshine than 'destination foetid queue' and a dreaded visit to the Bank Machine can be fun after a tootle round the clothes shops that reveals that all fashions this year are unwearable bags and there is nothing to desire on that front and the old clothes stuffed into the bottom of the wardrobe will do for another year!
Of course there are some tasks that remain resolutely gruesome, but this is a positive blog and I will shout them into a bucket and put them out with the bins.
The Spring Pigeon
The Spring Pigeon is here.
'You stiooopid bugga....... you stiooopid bugga....... you stioopid bugga......... you stioopid bugga', it coos incessantly, and my waking brain clocks in and chants along with it until I remember that I'm a human and not a stioopid bugga, and get up to embrace the day.
It has its own time signature and if I was an artier sort of musician I would write a 'piece' based on its rhythm. And that of the gaps between telephone burrs as you wait for someone to answer, and of course windscreen wipers: tub.. thump, tub.. thump, tub.. thump.
Here is the first joke of spring:
What do you call a cat who is unnaturally attracted to its mother?
Oedi Puss
'You stiooopid bugga....... you stiooopid bugga....... you stioopid bugga......... you stioopid bugga', it coos incessantly, and my waking brain clocks in and chants along with it until I remember that I'm a human and not a stioopid bugga, and get up to embrace the day.
It has its own time signature and if I was an artier sort of musician I would write a 'piece' based on its rhythm. And that of the gaps between telephone burrs as you wait for someone to answer, and of course windscreen wipers: tub.. thump, tub.. thump, tub.. thump.
Here is the first joke of spring:
What do you call a cat who is unnaturally attracted to its mother?
Oedi Puss
Wednesday, March 04, 2009
From Odile et Pierre Hamelin
Odile and Pierre have sent this lovely photo of the concert in the garden at Rochefort last year.
Projects
Ah, projects, the spice of life!
The University of the East has given me a little development grant to develop a proposal for later this year. I will have to get organised. I will go to buy some coloured card files (I like those) this avo, and then fill them up with papers covered in scrawled ideas and dreams.
The Chefs CD- just you try getting in touch with the BBC! They take ages to get through to on the blower, and then put you through to the wrong department that sends you the wrong form addressed to the wrong person. Very Gormenghast, actually, and freaktastic fun in a dark and negative way.
In the summer, I will put a little web shop here on the blog as I have tons of pantings, drawings, etchings and so on that I should sell- in two fat, bursting black leather-look portfolios concealed behind the curtains. Some of the stuff goes back to when I was 15 and I was a better artist than I am now.
Flowers- I shall spend as much as I can afford on spring flowers to celebrate life and regeneration!
Songs: well, I am writing away as always; the song writing group starts up again next Monday after Katy's exciting visit to Memphis. I write lots of songs, all the time, but only want to put the best on my next album. Hamilton Square is still in the pipeline. we even have artwork for that almost complete. It needs one last burst of energy and it will be finished. Both Martin and myself have had tough winters, but we'll get there.
Looks like I need to take more Suburban Pastoral CDs down to Rough Trade sometime soon as well.
I need to buy ink. I need to draw. I need to fill all the gaps in life with drawing and music!
The University of the East has given me a little development grant to develop a proposal for later this year. I will have to get organised. I will go to buy some coloured card files (I like those) this avo, and then fill them up with papers covered in scrawled ideas and dreams.
The Chefs CD- just you try getting in touch with the BBC! They take ages to get through to on the blower, and then put you through to the wrong department that sends you the wrong form addressed to the wrong person. Very Gormenghast, actually, and freaktastic fun in a dark and negative way.
In the summer, I will put a little web shop here on the blog as I have tons of pantings, drawings, etchings and so on that I should sell- in two fat, bursting black leather-look portfolios concealed behind the curtains. Some of the stuff goes back to when I was 15 and I was a better artist than I am now.
Flowers- I shall spend as much as I can afford on spring flowers to celebrate life and regeneration!
Songs: well, I am writing away as always; the song writing group starts up again next Monday after Katy's exciting visit to Memphis. I write lots of songs, all the time, but only want to put the best on my next album. Hamilton Square is still in the pipeline. we even have artwork for that almost complete. It needs one last burst of energy and it will be finished. Both Martin and myself have had tough winters, but we'll get there.
Looks like I need to take more Suburban Pastoral CDs down to Rough Trade sometime soon as well.
I need to buy ink. I need to draw. I need to fill all the gaps in life with drawing and music!
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
William's 78
William (from 2 postings ago) invited me for tea when he lived in London.
He had an old 78 country record, and he put it on the gramophone.
'Oh a woman is a ..., and a woman is a ...' (I can't remember the exact words)
A whiney man's country voice complained for three minutes and fifty-five seconds, blaming all the ills of the world on 'a woman'.
At the end of the record, the man said, 'Now turn this record over to find out what the woman has to say'.
William turned the record over, and to the same melody, a woman's voice complained; 'Oh a man is a ... and a man is a ...'.
And of course, at the end of the song, the woman advised us, 'Now turn this record over to find out what the man has to say'.
I thought about that record for ages afterwards.
What if you never stopped playing it?
He had an old 78 country record, and he put it on the gramophone.
'Oh a woman is a ..., and a woman is a ...' (I can't remember the exact words)
A whiney man's country voice complained for three minutes and fifty-five seconds, blaming all the ills of the world on 'a woman'.
At the end of the record, the man said, 'Now turn this record over to find out what the woman has to say'.
William turned the record over, and to the same melody, a woman's voice complained; 'Oh a man is a ... and a man is a ...'.
And of course, at the end of the song, the woman advised us, 'Now turn this record over to find out what the man has to say'.
I thought about that record for ages afterwards.
What if you never stopped playing it?
Monday, March 02, 2009
Helen and the Horns
There will be a Helen and the Horns gig at the Borderline on Charing Cross Road on the 18th of September.
The Daintees have very kindly asked us to support them that night.
The Daintees have very kindly asked us to support them that night.
Clothes'n'things; an odd segue
When I was a little girl I bought Many Eccentric Things from jumble sales in the Institute in Wylam, where I was brought up. For sixpence I could buy a stack of used 7-inch vinyl singles (I've still got some of them). This was like acquiring a mysterious radio programme- somebody else's taste, worn and crackly. I suppose these days, I would've been 'diggin', except I was the wrong gender and the wrong location for that because you're supposed to be a young urban male. I also acquired strange books: 'Scouting For Boys' (yes Mr B-P, that's you, sir, in all your weirdness) which had fantastic concepts- the bucket up a tree with holes in it and a little boy pouring what must have been cold water on to another little boy beneath to make a makeshift shower. I know I have blogged about it before. Unforchly, McMum had a massive clearout when I left home and that, and my copy of 'Thoroughly Modern Millie', which McMum thoroughly modernly disapproved of, went probably back to another village jumble sale, along with 'Gert and Daisy's Wartime Cookery Book'. In a fit o nostalgia several months ago I put out a search on eBay, and hole and below, as my French manager Claudine used to say, it turned up and I now have a very soft and worn copy of the book with its sad recipes for wartime Britain, and the stylish black and white cartoon Gerts and Daisys, with their huge heads and tiny bodies, discussing things with sly smiles and crisp pinnies over their frugal clothing, at the beginning of each chapter.
Once, I bought a huge and beautiful pale green ankle-length coat with bell sleeves and a lovely slippery satin lining. I drifted hither and thither up and down the village with my head in the clouds until my friend Debbie, who was very down to earth and practical, refused to go anywhere with me until I abandoned the pale green coat.
So that one went back to the jumble sale, to be replaced by a matted black jumper that was solid with being washed too much, and a hairstyle made by plaiting my hair while it was wet and unplaiting it when it was dry. 'You look like a sheep', said McDad. So I started ironing my hair on the ironing board to make it straight (I'd seen Barbra Streisand say she had her hair ironed in some film or other).
I made a blouse out of the kitchen curtains that McMum was throwing away (red and white checked cotton). Big Bruv grew bigger than me and I inherited his Levis, and wore them with my shirt and a pair of Stars and Stripes clogs that I bought mail-order from Sounds. I know I looked ridiculous because I was painfully thin in spite of eating half a loaf of bread a day, but I did not care. Clothes were part of getting out of the village and having adventures and even at the age of thirteen, when I bought my first ever lipstick (Rimmel, gold), I didn't care a fig for what everybody else thought you were supposed to do. I didn't like being different, but people had made fun of me even when I wore ordinary things like them. In doing that, people liberate you from even trying to blend into the herd, which is both a blessing and a curse. It forces you to go off and have adventures, to find other people like you; I found them at Sunderland Polytechnic, where I did my Art Foundation course. Dennis, from Jarrow, who could buy tabs of LSD for sixpence as a child and who told us the natural fluoride in the water in Jarrow meant you never had to brush your teeth if you came from there. He broke his tooth on a chip one lunchtime.
There was William, with his loud voice. 'William strode into the canteen: everyone looked round', he would bellow as he strode into the canteen and everyone looked round.
There was Tom, brother of one of the Kane Gang (B-B-Byker... GROVE!), who collected the clay ginger-beer stoppers that you found on the beach at Ryhope (they had been dumped into the river Wear when the factory closed down) and made a mysterious game that not even he could play.
There was Sheena, who had a laugh like Muttley, and who once dropped a ping-pong ball on the top step of the lecture theatre which bounced loudly down each step in slow motion during an excruciatingly intense and boring lecture.
There was Fiona, who wore boy's clothes and shoes, Trevor who liked rainbows, Owen who had been a gas man but changed his mind and decided to be an artist instead. Susan who, in a state of cold fear, hoovered up spiders every day with her mother's vacuum cleaner.
Our teacher Brian had been at Newcastle University with Brian Ferry. Imagine that!
And that's just half of 'em. Three cheers for art colleges! Brilliant places where madness is nurtured and cherished, where vulnerable people collide with extraordinary people, where you can be fat, thin or in-between and where you are barricaded from the rest of the world with a mountain of weird projects and activities invented by senior, madder versions of yourself.
Once, I bought a huge and beautiful pale green ankle-length coat with bell sleeves and a lovely slippery satin lining. I drifted hither and thither up and down the village with my head in the clouds until my friend Debbie, who was very down to earth and practical, refused to go anywhere with me until I abandoned the pale green coat.
So that one went back to the jumble sale, to be replaced by a matted black jumper that was solid with being washed too much, and a hairstyle made by plaiting my hair while it was wet and unplaiting it when it was dry. 'You look like a sheep', said McDad. So I started ironing my hair on the ironing board to make it straight (I'd seen Barbra Streisand say she had her hair ironed in some film or other).
I made a blouse out of the kitchen curtains that McMum was throwing away (red and white checked cotton). Big Bruv grew bigger than me and I inherited his Levis, and wore them with my shirt and a pair of Stars and Stripes clogs that I bought mail-order from Sounds. I know I looked ridiculous because I was painfully thin in spite of eating half a loaf of bread a day, but I did not care. Clothes were part of getting out of the village and having adventures and even at the age of thirteen, when I bought my first ever lipstick (Rimmel, gold), I didn't care a fig for what everybody else thought you were supposed to do. I didn't like being different, but people had made fun of me even when I wore ordinary things like them. In doing that, people liberate you from even trying to blend into the herd, which is both a blessing and a curse. It forces you to go off and have adventures, to find other people like you; I found them at Sunderland Polytechnic, where I did my Art Foundation course. Dennis, from Jarrow, who could buy tabs of LSD for sixpence as a child and who told us the natural fluoride in the water in Jarrow meant you never had to brush your teeth if you came from there. He broke his tooth on a chip one lunchtime.
There was William, with his loud voice. 'William strode into the canteen: everyone looked round', he would bellow as he strode into the canteen and everyone looked round.
There was Tom, brother of one of the Kane Gang (B-B-Byker... GROVE!), who collected the clay ginger-beer stoppers that you found on the beach at Ryhope (they had been dumped into the river Wear when the factory closed down) and made a mysterious game that not even he could play.
There was Sheena, who had a laugh like Muttley, and who once dropped a ping-pong ball on the top step of the lecture theatre which bounced loudly down each step in slow motion during an excruciatingly intense and boring lecture.
There was Fiona, who wore boy's clothes and shoes, Trevor who liked rainbows, Owen who had been a gas man but changed his mind and decided to be an artist instead. Susan who, in a state of cold fear, hoovered up spiders every day with her mother's vacuum cleaner.
Our teacher Brian had been at Newcastle University with Brian Ferry. Imagine that!
And that's just half of 'em. Three cheers for art colleges! Brilliant places where madness is nurtured and cherished, where vulnerable people collide with extraordinary people, where you can be fat, thin or in-between and where you are barricaded from the rest of the world with a mountain of weird projects and activities invented by senior, madder versions of yourself.
Gordon the Gopher
Remember Gordon? He used to have his own little slot on children's TV with Andy somethingorother and he used to squeak annoyingly and once really wound Des Lynam up by appearing in a hinged toupee, flicking to one side with a flourish and challenging Des to do the same!
I was writing songs for a theatre group, Count of Three, and we had a drummer in the little band who lived in Stamford Hill.
He was riding along on his bicycle one morning and he found a package at the side of the road. It was Gordon the Gopher's Olympic costume, all wrapped up ready to be tried on. He phoned the BBC and they were deeply grateful and relieved to have such a valuable asset returned to them; it had fallen off the back of the despatch bike as it was hurried along to Television Centre for the evening's show.
I was writing songs for a theatre group, Count of Three, and we had a drummer in the little band who lived in Stamford Hill.
He was riding along on his bicycle one morning and he found a package at the side of the road. It was Gordon the Gopher's Olympic costume, all wrapped up ready to be tried on. He phoned the BBC and they were deeply grateful and relieved to have such a valuable asset returned to them; it had fallen off the back of the despatch bike as it was hurried along to Television Centre for the evening's show.
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Cars
One broken car in London, to be driven to Newcastle on Saturday; 5 minutes out of the garage, an almighty clanging ensued, and I had to take it back to be fixed again. Meanwhile, my own car in Newcastle had broken down, and had to be fixed. The London-broken-down car broke down again this morning, but was fixed again this afternoon.
I have returned from a breeze of a drive back in my mended car, only disturbed on the journey by watching flocks of starlings through the windscreen scribbling on the milky clouds, and listening to Toots and the Maytals.
I have learned to articulate my philosophy.
Tomorrow, it will be tomorrow, and it won't be today any more.
I have returned from a breeze of a drive back in my mended car, only disturbed on the journey by watching flocks of starlings through the windscreen scribbling on the milky clouds, and listening to Toots and the Maytals.
I have learned to articulate my philosophy.
Tomorrow, it will be tomorrow, and it won't be today any more.
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