At Lunch

At lunch we were talking about football. Barcelona, Barnet and Arsenal; we discussed them in detail. Then inadvertently I tripped over my tongue, and invented a new team: Barsenal.

Hens

I washed the pillows. The house smells of hens.

Illustration at Brighton Art College

I went to see Offsprog Two's degree show at Brighton Art College. There's the very funny film she made of the Life Drawing Class with Eugene in a paper nude suit being drawn by a whole roomful of straight faced students, and the best bit, the interviews with nuns (and Lucy, who was taught by nuns) bound into a little prayer-book sized booklet. She does a lot of embroidery, and in her exhibition is an embroidered cross-stitch cassock with an exclamation mark in black, blue and white (nun colours), and a banner with an excerpt from a nun's prayer. She has previously sewn embroidered patches with bodybuilders on them, and Nick Cave, and she's promised me a Poirot. I must remind her of that.
I love Art College and it's a privilege to be able to hang out in one again. The big white rooms were full of young people's wonder and questioning of everything, all articulated in interesting and beautiful art: print, sewing, painting, drawing, films, photography. I got a lump in my throat; it was partly the smell (why doesn't music smell that good?) and partly pride (this is the second daughter to exhibit art at a degree show; both different artists, both very good). Ideas are so important; the imagination is what makes us human, not money, business, banking, and dark blue suits from Tyrwhitt. Hear that, Osborne?
It was also really odd to be back in the same building where I studied all those years ago. We went upstairs to the print department, and the little room where I used to coat etching plates in photosensitive liquid was still there although the machines had been moved around. Fine Art was still in the same corridor! We wandered from room to room and I think probably all wished we could have had a go too.
 Joan rather liked a fetching painting of a duck smoking a fag; and there was a film of students getting drunk, a theme I'd seen at another University show recently. This lot looked just as embarrassed and guilty as the others; I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time (meow!). Eugene had a bicycle with a Mercedes grille on the front and Merc hubcaps on the wheels. I was rather taken by the photo of him riding down the country road with it, and thought how nice it would be if everyone customised their bicycles instead of thinking of them as branded status symbols. Like Eugene's, I suppose, actually.
Afterwards we flopped on sofas, exhausted by all that looking. Joan said she had the ailment Gallery Foot. The cure was Mr Whippies on the seafront next to the merry-go-round, which serenaded us with Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round The Old Oak Tree and other cheesy songs, some of them Scottish. The little tambourines trembled, the xylophones zinged and trilled, and large seagulls floated about menacingly in mid-air waiting for chips (with delicious expanded polystyrene container on the side). Two babies outshrieked the seagulls by being totally unafraid and charging them, but they soon sailed back into position to dive-bomb the remains of people's dinners. Offsprog One told us that they don't like ice cream, so we were safe.
I want to go to Art College again. I wonder if they'd let me in?

Bluebottle

Every time I open the back door, a huge bluebottle flies into the house, droning like a light aircraft and intermittently crashing into the windows with a sound like crushing cellophane.
Upstairs, downstairs it goes, zigzagging at knee level trying to find the Way Out, panicking visibly.
Is it the same one every time?
Usually, I manage to coax the thing out, but it obviously sneaked back in yesterday evening.
Much to my alarm (quite literally) the huge bluebottle woke me this morning by coming into my room and roaring at maximum wing-volume. Biff, sock, pow against the walls; I cowered under the duvet in terror.
Bzzt bzzt bzzt.....
Bzzzt.....
Eventually, I made a dash for it, and opened the back door.
I think it's gone.
Or has it?

Race of One

Sheila

I have just found out that Sheila Whiteley has died. She was a wonderfully beautiful woman, and a self-effacing academic and musician, the sort of person you want to just go on forever. She was the writer of the groundbreaking book The Space Between the Notes; when I was a little lost at my first conference away from home, she took me under her wing and we sat and yakked in a student cafe about our kids and normal thing like that. She was an utter sweetheart; rest in peace Sheila.

A Short Poem by the Poet Laurel-leaf, after an Energetic Tussle in the Garden with a Spiny Plant

Juniper juniper, bound in your pot,
I'm going to re-pot you.
'Oh no, you are not'.

Andy Diagram at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival

Stoke Newington is one of the most difficult places in the Universe to get to- unless you live there, of course. But that's why it has managed to reserve it's sense of being an enclave of leftiness, quirkiness, and 'we invented the coffee house several centuries ago'-ness. I have been to the literary festival before and I know how special it is. Too late, today, I'm looking at the programme. Tasting fonts-typography and food- now that would have been right up my street! There's so much going on, and I'm too late because it takes a million years to get there from here. But I'm glad I didn't miss yesterday, for sure.
I walked up from Dalston. There, just ahead of me, was student Anthony (not his real name) crossing the road rapidly as he spotted my approach. He hadn't handed in his work, you see; it reminded me of my kids putting their hands over their eyes to hide from me.
Don't worry, Anthony, I didn't see you.
Up Stoke Newington High Street, nothing is what it seems, in that very urban London way.
Shops multitask: a jewellers doubles as a travel agents, for instance. What looked like a huge and beautiful tiled mosque from a distance turned out to be a Turkish restaurant, and a bit further down the road, sandwiched in between chicken shops, an African Church unassumingly occupied a shop.
Firstly, I went for coffee and cake at the top of Church Street. I think Banksy may have popped to the lavvy in this particular caff but it could have been a copycat graffiti (see what I did just there?). Ahem. Then I headed down to the tent in the grounds of the William Patten School.
A breeze had blown up from nowhere, enough to blow a 7" single clean off the turntable in rather a spectacular fashion. You wouldn't get that with an mp3, would you? Small dramas like that make life worth living, and indeed I think I found a spiritual home in Stoke Newington yesterday afternoon; it was packed with people who were refusing to grow old and boring, instead sporting sculpted beards that made lumbersexuals look as conservative as bankers, or sporting their same-sex elderly and nattily-dressed partners on their arms, and generally comporting themselves as free spirits and unfettered human beings.
This leads me to Andy Diagram's half hour set of psychedelic trumpet playing. His trumpet is made of red plastic, although he has a metal mouthpiece which is probably a favourite friend. According to Richard Boon, these plastic brass instruments (plastic sections instead of brass sections? possibly...) were actually invented in Hackney.
Andy's partner Karina (who played sax in the Mike Flowers Orchestra) told me that the first plastic instrument was actually a trombone. I was fascinated; I can't even play my metal one!
Mental note to find a trumpet teacher patient enough to teach a General from another genre.
Played through a Digitech Whammy and controlled via an iPhone attached to the front of the trumpet, the sound travelled through genres, continents and instruments, looping and evolving: I heard the Mad Professor segue into bagpipes; moods of New York underpasses packed with traffic turned into percussive freight trains, before a didgeridoo emerged from the ground and swopped places with a grunting tuba with Fred Wesley playing over the top. It was foot-tapping stuff: here came a 1980s Crusaders-style bass line with a soprano sax sound weaving Turkishly over the top, here came an electric fuzz guitar with the rhythm chopping the sound up into funky chicken nuggets.
The sound engineer, who was sporting a fine blue felt ladies hat, literally sat with his mouth open, enthralled.
I scribbled notes as I listened. Here came 2001: A Space Odyssey, from the future to the past imagined future; the BPMs slithered about and Delia Darbyshire shivered in her grave. Ian Carr bumped into Byron Lee's Allstars and Herb Alpert flew about on the breeze that teased our hair.
In the end, I stopped writing and just enjoyed it all. It was the perfect way to spend a sunny afternoon.
Fifty years ago we might have been watching the Salvation Army with their metal cornets, a three-pronged music-holder clipped at the noise-end, holding fluttering sheet music inscribed with hymn tunes that were held down with static dots. Here and now, music was set free and played through a plastic trumpet with an iPhone that shifted shapes and blended the sound with the wind.
Blimey- how things have changed!
http://www.ptrumpet.com

Sticky Fingers

Can't post at the moment- I've got Araldite on my fingers from repairing a garden lamp.
Mends aeroplanes, you know.

Suitable Socks for Stoke Newington

For the Stoke Newington Literary Festival today, I chose Che Guevara socks. This is because of the area's reputation as a lefty stronghold, with independent-minded people discussing The Revolution over a latte and a slice of baklava (or a double chocolate brownie) in cafes with wooden floorboards and lavender in galvanised tin pails.
Unfortunately nobody asked to see my socks today (actually, they never do), so my secret was safe with me.
I bought some rambling Rosemary (I didn't know such a thing existed either!) and a short review of Andy Diagram's set will follow tomorrow.

A Weed

Blog Interruptions

I keep wanting to post photographs but my phone is busy conking out which makes it rather difficult. When it does agree to take photos (which it's moody about, having bunched up so many Apple updates that they spill out into my handbag), it won't send them anywhere, in spite of making that encouraging 'whooshing' noise. It grinds into action so slowly that I've got time to put the kettle on and make a cup of tea before it opens it eyes and starts twinkling.
In addition, day to day life has been ruled by the computer programmes at work whose subtle attempts to disrupt my normally efficient working habits by relentlessly forgetting the marks its supposed to be saving have given me a new stripe of grey hair in my fringe. I am exhausted by it all and I've promised myself a week of music and art, kicked off by three drawings last night that I can't post here for the above reason.
Add to that the hellish fact that  all of the programmes/apps that I use, from Blogger through Word to texting, have become so enthusiastic at auto-correcting that much of what I type translates as rubbish. If I don't have time to proof-read what I've typed, I send out garbled missives that look as though they've been constructed by a pigeon. 'Computer knows best', nods the machine sagely and smugly.
No you don't, you blasted machine.
If you don't respect me I'll snip off your ears with my pinking shears!
What's the technological word for anthropomorphism?

Chef

I made these trousers from some cheap acrylic tartan that I bought in a fabric shop in Brighton.
I laid it on the floor doubled over, sat on it, drew round my legs and cut it out and sewed it up.
Some guys whose surname was Anderson said it was their tartan: turquoise with coloured checks. I've still got that t-shirt somewhere, I think.
The guitar came from a guitar shop in Worthing. I ate  nothing but sardines for weeks so I could save up to buy it. Later, after a fracas at a gig at Sussex University, some Hells Angels stole it when I leaned it up against Carl's mini (also turquoise) to go to sort out the fight. But I knew they had it and I went and stood outside their pub every night and stared at them as they stood outside with their beers.
One day when I had borrowed my brother's bass to play, I was sitting in the pub waiting to do our gig after the sound check, and my brother walked in with this guitar in his hands. He'd been walking home to get changed and a woman had been carrying it into the Police Station because she had found it when she was sunbathing in the park. He persuaded her to give it straight to him and rushed into the pub with it. I couldn't believe my eyes- I never thought I'd see it again. I think the Hells Angels must have (a) felt guilty and (b) realised that it's so distinctive (it's a Hofner President) that they would never be able to sell it. Later, its neck got snapped off in the Piranhas van on the way back from a gig and I took it to Jimi Hendrix's guitar mender to have it glued and baked back on again. Now it lives in Scotland; it has been re-homed, revived and revved up to play on many local recordings, most recently by the artist Dave Fleming.
It's a survivor, and that's a true story.

Don't Buy! Don't Buy!

I have to put my hands over my eyes when I walk past the charity shops in Barnet.
First it was a mint-condition vintage wind-up record player complete with enormous brass horn; then a beautiful autoharp, painted with lords and ladies and decorated with gold leaf.
A couple of weeks ago an ancient Indian harmonium stood beckoning in a shop window, and today it's a perfect little Bontempi organ.
Oh
Oh
Oh!
My mini-house is full: there is no room for these things, but I do lust after them so.

Saturday Night at the Union Chapel

I'm up with the lark for work, but I thought I'd indulge in a  few moments thought about the Union Chapel on Saturday.
Islington was packed to the gills with Arsenal supporters, cramming the pubs and singing at the tops of their voices. We repaired to a Colombian cafe after the soundcheck where The Daintees ate tortillas and drank coffee and we listened to little bit of salsa music (underpinned by manly chanting).
Even at 7.30 when The Blinking' Buzzards played there were about 100 people already there in the Union Chapel, spread out in the pews and smiling in anticipation.
The cupola up above was still collecting beams of sunshine from the setting sun and the stained glass windows were still glowing with colour. Mike and June and Laura had set up the CD stall at the back of the chapel, and there was even a sweetie shop off to one side.
Earlier, I'd listened as the sound guys scooped the booming, echoing soundcheck from the myriad nooks and crannies of the building and centred it all on the area where the audience was going to be sitting, carving it into music rather than noise. It must be a difficult building to engineer, sound-wise but they did an amazing job.
I got up to play and was greeted by swirling fog as the smoke machine kicked in; I could just about see the audience and I spotted a few friends out there- Katy Carr, Lester Square and his missus, Johny Brown and Inge, Foolish Girl and Wilky, Steve and his missus and Jen. The Daintee's audience is really friendly anyway and always a joy to play to. The added feature of the Union Chapel, of course, is the amount of reverb on the applause, which quadruples to stadium proportions. I like very much.
On came Martin and the crew, with Kate resplendent in her new bright blue cowboy shirt.
Negotiating a set list from the bottom up, they started off with Neon Skies and charged through a set of favourites:  Little Red Bottle, Me and Matthew, Left Us To Burn (brilliant), Lilac Tree (groovin') and many more including a perfect version of Rain which sounded just as good on a Stratocaster as it does on the Yiari. Steve did a bit of classy trumpeting from the stalls and Jim-the-fiddle joined the band for the last two numbers. The band was tight, energetic and positive; Martin was on exceptionally funny form and everyone left with a huge grin o their faces when the curfew came along far to soon.
Thanks to me buddies for coming along- wasn't it fun?
Pic: with Kate, The Daintees' drummer, at soundcheck time