Roman Empress Playlist

Yeah, yeah. So you think Spotify playlists are so over?

Ho hum. Mine is here anyway. It’s only got a few Chrisso songs in there but fear not, they’re good ones…

spotify:user:romanempress:playlist:3vaYln6mGXDDSPLouCq1tH

The Rite of Spring

Saturday night saw my first ever trip to the opera and my umpteenth trip to the ballet but second only sojourn to non-classical ballet (I much prefer it).

Dance is my favourite art form and for a singer, that’s fairly unusual. I went to a double showing of Bartok’s Bluebeard and Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Both performances were shown for the first time within two years of each other (1913 and 1911). Bluebeard is a fairytale, adapted by Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, of course, so not particularly radical but The Rite of Spring caused rioting amongst the audience when it was first shown and the sexually paganistic nature of last night’s adaption raised a lot of eyebrows still (a troupe of naked Irishmen simulating the sex act anyone? Ah, alright then…)

I’m new to Opera but I can appreciate from where I was sitting (near the back in the cheap seats in case you were wondering) the cleverness of the stage design and moving lights effects in making Bluebeard’s castle come alive. Having done this fairytale’s numerous interpretations to death at college, I wondered if there’d be enough to keep me interested in an hour of commanding singing. Thanks to the set design enhancing the heavily psychological bullying behind the tale, there was just enough, although I won’t pretend opera is a passion of mine or likely to become one.

The really memorable part of the evening was the wintery, pagan, Wicker Man feel of the Bartok. The dancers twisted and jerked to the piquant score. There was nakedness, sex, ritualism and violence and incredibly strange animalistic costumes.

There was also confusion and an impenetrable sense at times, of what the hell was that about? As with all art, it’s cross-contaminated so what’s nice is that I’m pretty inspired to bring pagan art into my art classes and to go to more modern dance, which I’m normally lazy about. There’s also another Stravinsky evening planned for February…

Two in review

I haven’t done a theatre review around here for some time. So I’ll do two in one post to make up for lost time.

Trevor Griffiths’ ‘Comedians’ at the Lyric in Hammersmith.

For those of you who have seen grainy, unsatisfactory pirate footage of the original 70s tv transmission (or the subsequent later tv showing), and I count myself in this number, seeing an actual stage production of the live sets (in part 2 of the play) brings a whole new dimension to the experience.

To misquote from the play, these live skits were brilliant but devastatingly unfunny.

My first encounter of this play came 16 years ago when I undertook a module as part of my degree called ‘modern socialist drama’; notable for the main in providing a grounding in Bond, Brenton, Edgar, Churchill, among other more minor playrights (and is also the module where I met my boyfriend of 4 years but that’s another story)…and naturally it was Jonathan Pryce’s performance as Gethin Price which was so bold. It’s this major detail, much stronger than the other details of the play, some of which, incidentally, seemed strangely cliched yesterday, but only because they were great lines to begin with and nailed in to the consciousness so long ago.

The set was that of a 70s classroom for the first third and final third of the play but much effort was given to providing authentic detail such as original wooden desks, a scroll-down blackboard and windows with views of a neighbouring wall (impressive in its extraneousness). The live comic’s set, in part 2, was the kind of thing John Thompson would be stood in front of in a dicky bow… velveteen curtains, a piano stage left, that type of thing, you get the picture…

The minor comics were brilliant in their professionally polished awfulness; the Jewish and Irish comics in particular were one almost merged example of roll-out-the-dull-and-vaguely-offensive-gags-awfulness. Reece Shearsmith (bless him) was genuinely funny dying on his arse as 1/2 of a ventroloquist act with that guy from the Nationwide ads making up the other half. Not known for his subtle prowess as an actor, the slightly grotesque but oddly sweet role suited him down to the ground. The look of genuine shame on his face as he flatly tried to deliver a Pakistani on a rape charge type of gag, was stark.

Matthew Kelly was impressive as the decent and likeable comedy mentor who sat morbidly on the sidelines of the stage as each act seemed to strip one layer at a time from his well-meaning soul and he looked appropriately steam-rollered exiting stage right after Gethin’s brilliantly ugly performance.

And yes, it was everything you’d hope to have experienced. For someone as romantic about Pryce’s allocated time of glory, this was still something else to witness on stage.

It’s a shame you didn’t get to see this play. It’s the first time it’s been shown in a major theatre in London for 25 years and yesterday was the last day.

Louis CK at UCL Bloomsbury

Ok, I’ll admit I was pretty much 10 sheets gone in the wind by the time Louis CK took to the stage at around 10pm on Saturday night. (Er, afternoon drinking in Charing Cross road) but I still laughed and snorted like a demented harridan for about an hour and a half.

No support act (thank Christ) and no compere to big the man up. And actually, why would you need to? It was a sell-out 2 days (2 showings a day) and a very young crowd. Everyone who gave a fuck about comedy and actually fancied going to a live show was there. This is the most talented comic on the planet at the moment and Mr Norman who had no knowledge of him at all before, was hurriedly filled in by me in the foyer about his ‘angle’ on life, for want of a better term, and in pissed eloquence terms, this was summed up by me as ‘he’s American but he doesn’t select American topics, he writes about family life and universal subjects. He calls his primary school-aged daughters ‘cunts’ for example…’

And he laid into his daughters and the banalities of married life with aplomb. He talked about pets too. ‘You can treat them in a way you wouldn’t dare with a human. Sometimes I wanna tear my puppy’s gums back and snog her so hard’…

Truth *and* comedy, Gethin.

New Order’s Confusion.

Embed quandry of the day:
What is the link between Kramer’s pizza pie idea and Bernard Sumner in boy’s tennis shorts?

What Wim Said

It’s 20 years this week since the Berlin wall fell. A few years ago, as part of my Masters I interviewed Wim Wenders about his films and his memories of the cold war. It was a long (and heavily academic in tone) interview and so I won’t publish it all but when I asked him about his memories of the cold war, he said this:

“The cold war was a given thing. I was one of the few who had traveled to the Soviet Union, to Poland, to East Germany. I lived in West Berlin, then, a city encircled in an anti-fascist wall, as they called it.
I knew that communism was basically the reign of an ultra-bourgeois and mediocre
class that stuck to an ideology long outdated. I knew that they had to suppress
the working class they really pretended to represent.”

Well, quite.

Me and My Big Mouth

My husband is guest blogging here today (promoting his new book of course).

I’ve been meaning to mention this blog for a while. It’s always worth a look. It’s one of those rarities that is updated every day and showcases new talent.

Rhymney

We’ve got a new baby in our flat, our little kitty, Rhymney (put on your best Newport council estate nicotine drawl and pronounce it ‘rumney’).

We’ve had her 6 weeks now and this photo was taken in the first few days of having her. She’s still a kitten but she pretty much looks full cat size now.

She’s settling in nicely and isn’t petrified of me anymore (she was for the first week or so and as I have next to zero cat experience I was equally nervous of her).

For the first few days she just hid behind the washing machine. Now she jumps up on me for a cuddle in the afternoons.

It’s funny how they establish routines so quickly. In the mornings she likes to hide under the bed and pounce on your feet. In the afternoons she likes to cuddle up to me and try to read what I’m doing on my laptop and when Mr Norman comes in from work just after six, she wants to play before settling down on his chest for a cuddle. Then, last thing at night, she likes jumping around on the duvet. Enough already! You can set a clock by her.

She’s particurlarly fond of nibbling feet and you have to be careful when you’re around her. Her uncle Louis let her sleep with him this weekend and I think she took a shine to his toes.

Anyway here are a few of her favourite things:

Tune: Ruby Lee by Bill Withers. (Perfectly moody for a slinky black cat padding around on all fours).
Food: Whiskers. Well, she doesn’t have much choice here, as we’re too tight to go for that expensive Waitrose stuff in a square tin with an aristocratic cat on the front.
Body Part: Male genitalia/toes. A close call.
Toy: Her pretend black mouse. Contains cat nip. (It must do. It’s really not that exciting otherwise. Rhymney finds it skin-blisteringly, psychotically exciting).
Time of day: When Daddy comes home. (She normally skids across the floorboards with delight).

Black cats rock and we love her.

Fish Tank

Two words that make me swell a bit with pride: Andrea Arnold.

She’s being lauded as the next Ken Loach and there are similarities in texture and content with Kes in Fish Tank (which you must go and see) but it’s also original; while being depressingly predictable in places, the film still achieves something that isn’t easy to do, a running thread of ambiguity. We’re not convinced as to whether the girl at the centre of the story will find safety and some semblance of comfort or not. Deep down, we know she probably won’t.

Mia is a 15 year old girl, who drinks almost as much as her selfish and indifferent Mum. Her Mum’s ‘boyfriend’ is introduced into the film as abruptly for her as he is for us. He breezes into the kitchen, shirtless and makes a morning cup of tea and Mia doesn’t bat an eyelid which makes you wonder whether this isn’t an alien occurrence in that household.

Michael Fassbender, who plays her Mum’s boyfriend, Connor, treats Mia with some humanity (he’s kind to her when she shows up at his work unnanounced and takes care of a cut on her ankle. He puts her to bed and removes her shoes and trousers when she crashes out drunk but goes no further…) He quickly becomes significant to her as a kind of emblem of safety and Arnold chooses to make use of ‘Overcranking’ (where the shot is slowed down and the sound is heightened) when the two are alone together. There’s much that can be made of this choice. In a similar vein with Samantha Morton’s ‘the unloved’, there’s too much noise in Mia’s life, loud music blasting from the kitchen of her own house and those of her neighbour’s, shouting and screaming between family members and local kids…it’s distressing and unrelenting. When Connor is alone with her, the scenes are quiet, calm and almost emit a sense of discontinuousness. But, we’re not sure. He seems too good to be true and there’s sexual tension in the stillness.

Connor is encouraging towards Mia but he’s experienced and she’s not. He would have known that Mia’s dance audition would be for something seedy and we’re gently sifted into the worthless label he’s placed on her here before she realises. (She’s too decent for that kind of life, despite his low expectations of her and she actually leaves the audition before trying).

There’s always a story behind any family in a council flat that’s as complex, technicolour and linear as any story. There are small defiances and unexpected dignities taking place every day. Nobody should be invisible and especially not children. Good work AA.

In my underpants

It’s been an eventful year so far in this corner of the net. Among other things, a certain member of this household has a book out (available in WH Smiths, Waterstones and other outlets from Mondayish).

To be brief, I’ve lost the motivation to give this blog some welly but I’m still writing for various outlets, just not on this blog very often.

In the meantime I’ll mostly be stroking my new cat, Rhymney leading an exciting London life and enjoying reading what some of you have to say.

Quote Cohen for Fruit Pastilles

Just a fleeting thought for the day.

Off the top of your head, can you quote any Leonard Cohen? Do his lyrics or mutterings speak to you?

Despite loving his songs and lyrics, I can’t specifically quote more than a line or two from memory. But anyway, I came across this in a magazine today. It’s his musing on love and I thought it was very simple and quirky but still managed to touch you ‘right there’. Well, that’s what he does, isn’t it?

“We are made in love and in love we disappear. I don’t think anyone masters the heart. It continues to bubble and sizzle and cook like a shish kebab in everyone’s breast and no one gets a handle on it. I think one is vulnerable at any moment to those emotions.”

Well, why not listen to a man in beads?

The Cryin’ Shames

Mersey band The ‘Cryin’ Shames’ originally called themselves ‘The Bumblies’ (pourquoi?). They had little luck in attracting interest from record companies- probably suffering from being a little late on a Merseyside scene that was already beginning to fade a little by the end of 1965. Nonetheless they decided to approach the independent producer Joe Meek despite the fact that this sound engineering guru had possibly never fully come to terms with the Liverpool sound. Fortunately, the freshness of their performance wowed Meek and their first single was taken up by Decca- the group were newly credited as the ‘Cryin’ Shames’.
Anyway I think they’re bally good and my guess is Bobby Gillespie may just have a long-lost older cousin (or something).

Sarah Cracknell’s Dad

These people don’t come from just anywhere you know. And it wasn’t just Sarah’s Mum who was a somebody, (ie a minor sixties actress), her Dad worked as assistant director on such Kubrick masterpieces as A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey (Cracknell was almost the baby in *that* opening shot). But her Dad was also in this advert, supping on a frothy pint (2.07 into the footage of a collection of Thames TV ads from the 70s). “All I remembered was the taste of bitter and washing up liquid all day.” Gosh.

Derek is the man drinking from the large pint.

*Work* is a Four Lettered Word.

Life is hectic this week.

Normal service will resume shortly.

In the meantime, here’s 5 seconds of loveliness…

…You can blow up my balloon and/or be my room mate anytime baby. Someone actually took the time to put this 3 or so seconds of footage up on You Tube. Someone who likes him almost as much as me…

Polaroids No More.

So it’s been announced this week they won’t be making any more polaroids. This news fills me with dismay. Despite digital photography, Internet radio, blogging, online banking and all these new-fangled wonders, nothing genuinely baffles me like the science behind an (almost) instant pic. It’s a miracle in a big clunky, grey machine that I still, if truth be known, can’t get over.

What also fills me with wonder is this:

You can take a photo of your husband under the Christmas tree on Christmas Day 2007 and still it looks like a man under a Christmas tree on Christmas Day 1974. How that is possible is the greatest joy of modern(ish) science. There must be something inside that machine at the ‘development stage’ that gives skin tone a brownish, over-nourished 70s hue. The only difference is, that’s not advocaat in his hand.

And so to mourn its passing, I present one of my favourite family polaroids. Here immortalised for evermore is Aunty Susan, baby cousin Daniel (now 29), sister Lou (yes she did always look that miserable), brother Will, me and Uncle Geoff (the groovy one who got me into REM aged 14).

(1980).

Cheer Up You Miserable Bastards. It’s the Gingerbread Man!

These are tough times. Some of the cleverest and most talented people I know have recently found themselves jobless (so what dimwits are running the country then?) and some people are moaning all and sunder, left, right and centre. But it doesn’t have to be like this.

What warms me more than root ginger being rubbed in my eyes is the sight of a Gingerbread Man. Never mind Frankenstein, you can make this cute little monster yourself and you don’t need 3D animation software, knitting needles or felt tip pens. A baking tray will do.

Hardyesque.

This one is old, animated and engaged in labour. But he’s still cute.

Yes, your generic Christmas Gingerbread Man.

This one is made of shiny cloth and his smile is a little uneasy. Is he less cute for it though?

What do you think?

The Dark Room

If you were lucky enough to be in a secondary school where they had a dark room, you may remember that space, no bigger than your box room that stank of vinegar where you could escape the watchful eye of roaming adults.

My friends and I, when we weren’t smoking de ‘erb in someone’s car, were most likely to be found at lunch time in the dark room, developing pics of us most likely smoking de ‘erb in someone’s car at lunchtime, or if we were really imaginative, a cringe-worthy profile pic of us wearing school uniform and looking profound, or something. The main thing though, is we had this space which was ours and where nobody bothered us and if someone did knock on the door, we could tell them to get lost, because it’s supposed to be dark in there, isn’t it? Clever, huh?

I don’t recall taking much interest in the mechanics of good photographic development. I remember dousing pics in the stinky stuff and hanging them up to dry afterwards, but in terms of really good practice, well, it was all pretty basic techniques really. Besides, we weren’t serious about photography back then, we just kidded ourselves we were doing something meaningful and arty.

Even adults love ‘em. My friend and her soon to be husband met while dicking around and no doubt flirting shamelessly with each other in a dark room when they both worked as support teachers in a school in Hackney.

Ah, the romance.

Where do the kids go now to develop the bulk of their pics, now that it’s all digital and stuff? Hmm? In the IT Suite where the rest of the teachers are checking their emails in their lunch time? Down with that sort of thing.

Click here for the Gregory’s Girl ‘Dark Room’ clip.

Lego of that. You don’t know what to do with it.

One thing that strikes me about modern day early years practice is certain indecipherable construction toys.

In the nursery where I am, these are the ‘toys’ I put in my planning but I have no idea what they are. With some confusion I put them in under the ’small world construction’ column.

Note to self: A ‘toy’ by definition is surely something that a child can understand how to use and/or an adult can explain to a child how to use.

So, what are, to quote some examples, ‘interstars’, ‘polygons’, ‘popoids’ (actually, I do get these, they’re quite nice, you make dolls with arms and legs, with concertina joints, that go ‘pop’), ‘technico’ and ‘mobilo’?

I chose early years because of the art work involved, but some of nursery life is just plain weird. Sometimes I sit with the kids and ask ‘what do we do with these then’? Mostly I get silent shrugs.

For traditionalists among us though, I can confirm lego is still very much live and being lost under cabinets, sand, mud…

Whenever I get lego out, the kids don’t give it a wide, suspicious berth at all. It’s the most popular construction toy by a mile and I can easily sit with them and kill 20 mins working out how to put a window in a house…

P J Proby

For those who know nothing at all about him:

He was born in Texas in 1938 ( born James Marcus Smith ).

He was also an actor but played himself in the Roy Orbison film, ‘Only The Lonely’.

He moved in old age to Bolton, Lancashire on a (unconfirmed) mission to drink himself to death.

He’s still alive and is approximately 70 years old.

He’s had a spot of bother with the DSS in recent years, accused of benefit fraud.

Here is his first single. It’s starts off as a nice 60s ballad after he’s led into the room to strange romanesque fanfare, then there’s a crazy, slightly incongruous, mental bit of harmonica playing, then the tempo shifts up a gear.

He does have an infectious grin, I must say.

1000 Miles.

I’ve amassed 1000 comments on this here thing (!). That’s quite humbling and I’m very grateful for all of them. Although, in ruthless RE fashion, I do have highlights.

In vague chronological order:

Feedbackreport on Dylan in London, 23 Daves on Internet Twats and Father Ted, Justin Lewis on Cardiff bands, RoMo on naming tapes, Mondo on helping with my German project, Jill on Max Headroom, F-C on mistaking me for someone who’s been married twice, Adam on Revolver, TV’s Ben Baker on PJ Proby. Ooh, there are loads.

Still, one of the cleverest minds out there I have to settle for reading on other people’s blogs. Mr Norman doesn’t write on my blog, or me on his, because that would be (so) wrong.

Thanks to all.

The Look of Tush About Them

Some people, try as they might, can’t escape the fact they look a tad like Rita Tushingham.
The angular features and petite frame give it away. And I must emphasise, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. We call my niece Nancy ‘Tush’ because she looks so cute with her sharp little fringe and her small face.

Did you think Rita Tushingham was attractive and her spin-offs?

I Wasn’t Born on Christmas Day

Dust off that Soviet November feeling and spring your brain into action. Watch this TofTP footage and answer these two questions:
Which one is my brother, Will?
What instrument is he playing (really, I have no idea) ?

Children Lift Up Your Voice. (Rejoice).

Kids are annoying aren’t they? I mean they’re cute but they’re prone to making all such demands on your time, such as asking you to tie up their shoelaces, wipe their arses for them, clear up their sick, scrub food colouring off their coat, tell you so and so won’t share. Fuck off.

But what I do love is, if carefully chosen and not just plonked in for effect, children’s voices can really lift a song. That’s not an easy thing to achieve. How can you make a kid’s choral input actually ****enhance**** a song? Damned if I know but Gorillaz managed it just fine with Dirty Harry. Clever bastards.

And of course, that brick in the wall song, by those upper class, drugs and legal charity scoffing Floyd dull arses. Sometimes I think my arse will explode with sheer boredom listening to that drivel. Not so with ‘the wall’ of course. Oh, no, no. And isn’t it always a massive Grange Hill meets Metropolis meets Kes type pleasure to watch this video? (If only to see with adult eyes just how unoriginal, yet strangely compelling all the same, it is). Yes, it is.

(Brass Eye) Christmas Special

I met my husband a few days before Christmas in 2000. It’s a romantic time of year to meet someone, let alone someone significant enough to still be married to now. (Take that Paul and Heather!).

What is really resonant about that special winter time though is the music we were listening to together as it dawned on us we were becoming a couple.

Bowie at the Beeb (oooh that port of Amsterdam – take that Scott Walker!) and a Slade Greatest Hits comp are the two albums that if we listen to now, we’re transported back to a rosily optimistic time. I still love the less stompy Slade songs (especially le minor chords) and of course Bowie at the Beeb is an incredible album anyway…

On TV, I remember us watching a lot of Brass Eye stuff on video (yes, vid-eeee-o) and Coogan’s Knowing Me, Knowing You, but we recently binned all those tapes. They’d decayed beyond repair.

But enough about me, him and Chris Morris. What were you listening to/watching when you met your partner and do they seem extra significant now?

Presents from Hell or merely just silly.

I can’t think of a single thing I want this Christmas other than a holiday (that’s lucky, as we’re meeting as a family in Portugal). There really isn’t anything I want at all so I’m writing a non-material wish list.

*Can people please stop jeering at civil servants whose wages happen to be paid by taxpayers? Yes, yada yada.
*Can we introduce compulsory labour in that exact field for people who do?
*Can people please stop sneering at the working classes and folk who shop in certain shops?
*Can people stop buying certain newspapers?
*Can people stop demonising anyone under the age of 21?
*Can we (that’s not you, by the way) stop sneering at people who aren’t necessarily atheist?
*Can we (that’s not me, by the way, I never speak of them, unless to say I’d rather boil my head alive in cider than see them in stand-up) never speak of Russell Brand or The Mighty Boosh again?

None of these are likely to happen any time soon, so:

Can you tell me what the silliest xmas present you ever had was?

Could this be the greatest album ever made (with the most awful sleeve)?

“Roman Empress!” From Chepstow to China, they do cry: “What is your favourite album?!?!”

For the past month I’ve been mulling this over (ooh, get me, being all serious and donning my professor of music foam specs) and my gut reaction is this very one. Here’s why:

1974 was a special year (and not just because of that Wimbledon game and the fact I was born). People were still recovering, years later, from that incredible televised 1971 BBC live concert of (mainly) Harvest. (They sometimes show it on BBC4). It’s an emotional experience because those songs are just so impressive and their performer is shy and self-possessed and very brave to get up there like that, all by himself and everything. But just when the world thought they couldn’t witness a sweeter spectacle than that, Neil Young goes and writes something even more subtle, melancholy and lasting (marijuana and honey compote anyone? Blame that).

I’m especially fond of this album because the first 4 times I heard it, I didn’t care for it at all. I was even once said to drunkenly bleat, ‘it’s for grumpy pumpies’! But not so. I do like an album I initially don’t compute or don’t get. I really do.

The album builds, or slides, sadly to the last song which you’d be mistaken for thinking is called Proud Isabella, but it isn’t, it’s called “Ambulance Blues.” (“You’re all just pissing in the wind.” “The waitresses are all crying in the rain. Will their boyfriends ever pass this way again?” I just don’t know). Good Lord, listen out for the harmonica and the minor chords in those strings. Here it is:

Side one

1. “Walk On” – 2:40
2. “See the Sky About to Rain” – 5:03
3. “Revolution Blues” – 4:02
4. “For the Turnstiles” – 3:13
5. “Vampire Blues” – 4:11

Side two

1. “On the Beach” – 6:59
2. “Motion Pictures” – 4:20
3. “Ambulance Blues” – 8:57

Jona Lewie Sings “(Don’t) Stop the Cark-ary.”

Someone always carks it at Chrimbo don’t they? Last year it was the unfortunate incident of an assasination in Pakistan. Before that it was the memorable stuntery of James Brown taking one yuletide spin and thrust too far…
…Who will it be this year?
Can Ben Baker be right, are those shiny new, as yet to be opened, toilets in his town centre really a Mel Smith memorial, to be ‘revealed only when he’s dead’?
Will all members of Lovers Unite combust in a fatal gust of dry humour and hack Pete Wiggs to death?
Thatcher? A daft end (choking on a sixpence) to a pointless life. Meh, maybe not this year but soon and expensively augmented too.

I just don’t know.

Rik does early 80s Contortionism.

Ah, go on. Spare under 40 seconds of your time to watch a non-verbal performance by Rik (a little bit Ian Curtis, a little bit Ian Jones off of TV Cream) Mayall. Except I can’t show you the 37 sec clip due to You Tube enabling disabled by request silliness. Instead I’ll just have to talk you through it.

From a female perspective (alright, from my perspective, dammit), I’m not sure it gets better than this. At least Rik sadly never looked better than this ever again. The sharp suit undercut by the thrown on red t-shirt underneath – matched with an undernourished pallor and an under priced early 80s Joy Division crew cut – check. This is a special window into a time before he started contorting his upper lip to his nose a bit too often and got stuck in the wind that way.

What’s this? What’s he going to do? And with what part of his anatomy?

His ear. Gah. Look what he’s done to his ear!

Merry Christmas.

xx

To listen to: ‘On the hour’ Series 1 and 2.
To read: Suze Rotolo’s account of her Dylan years.
Just two of my presents, so with that and quality family time, I’ll be away til the new year…

…And as it’s the end of the year, take a look at Talk About The Passion (link to your right) where there’s a nice review of the year. And here’s mine:

Music: It’s not new, but I finally got around to buying ‘Family Tree’ the Nick Drake collection, with family out-takes. It’s lovely and I’ve listened to it almost every day for the past 9 months.
Books: Again not new, but I read the classic ‘Testament of Youth’ for the second time, and the second half of ‘Down and Out in Paris and London’ for the first time. Both make you feel very lucky to have the life you do.
TV: I’ve discovered too late, ‘Outnumbered’ which is cosy and ‘The IT Crowd’ which has, for the most part been pretty good (especially the bank robbery episode which was genuinely one of the best comedy half-hours I’ve ever seen, certainly the best since the theatre episode). Also on cable there’s been lots of Mr Don and Mr George and Absolutely to catch up on after all this time.
Theatre: The Lovers by Pinter. Just good enough to endure sitting with bugger all leg room in those awful places they call ‘the the-a-tre’.

Oh IT crowd, why do you vacillate so? Why can you deliver some of the finest comedy around one week and then convince everyone it’s all gone to shit and fit for the knackers yard the next. Note to them: Don’t do this.

And lest we not forget Chris O’Dowd is a character actor (he does other shit too), like this:

[The Boat That Rocked is an upcoming ensemble period comedy film, scheduled for release in 2009. The film is set in 1966 and tells of the United Kingdom pirate radio movement, which used a legal loophole to broadcast to audiences of up to 25 million from ships anchored off the coast of the UK. The film is written and directed by Richard Curtis and is being made by Working Title Films for Universal Pictures. The Boat That Rocked stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Bill Nighy, Rhys Ifans, Nick Frost and Kenneth Branagh.]

Thumbs down and sad banana face (copyright you know who).

Mondo’s got a point; I don’t like tv shows about what you do for a living. Have you seen ‘teachers’? Exactly. Apart from generally being quite dire, do they really have that much time on their hands? Odd that there’s no evidence of them falling through the door at 6pm, just about managing to finish dinner before falling asleep on the sofa, or turning down social invites because they have a shed load of planning to finish. The real ‘teachers’ would probably make for the most dull tv imaginable, unless you take the French model and become a fly on the wall.

That would make far more sense and then the real warmth of the job would shine through because that’s pretty much the only reason people would choose to do the job. The money’s not great in relation to the work/manpower expected, although it’s still more than I’ve ever earned before (xs 2), but on balance it’s a job that gets harder every year due to increased responsibility the further you progress and less and less time to do it all in.

But they say there’s never been a better time to be a teacher. They have a point. In my current supply job, I have 3 teaching assistants. Good grief. Even I’ll concede that’s too many. As a supply teacher I earn almost double that of a nurse in consideration of hours worked and I get to work an 8.30-3.45 day. I’ll admit that’s a good deal and on the whole I’m happy with the path I’ve ‘chosen’ (perhaps unimaginatively, it seemed like the obvious thing to do, liking children and being a graduate and really not thinking a tad beyond that to the reality of the situation…) They also say primary school children are better behaved than in any time in history. I genuinely can’t answer that. I grew up in small, all white, middle class town in South Wales, where kids didn’t despise each other for being the wrong skin colour or religion. It wasn’t London. If you want to do well in a London school you have to drop all attachments to any notions of ‘what should be’ and learn to love the current madness. It’s possible, if a little exhausting at times.

Just don’t give me a staff job. I wouldn’t be able to cope beyond a term or two and that’s solely down to unnecessary paperwork. Yawn.

More Super Jilly

The Lodger

Money’s a bit tighter, I don’t mind admitting, since this recession hoo-ha kicked off last year.

At one point, I turned to my husband and gingerly, immediately understanding the reaction, (certainly pre-empting a raised eyebrow in the negative) suggested we could, just could, rent out our spare room (although not seriously proposing the idea, I think we know each other too well to know that just wouldn’t happen in our lifetime).

The small problem is we’d both rather scour the tips of our fingers off with acid and then rub vinegar into the stumps than entertain such a invasion of our private life.

I think we’d freak out any lodger with our quiet, home loving ways. And we both love to shut the door on the world at the end of the day, with a relieved, coo, that’ll do, thank you, type of way. And what type of person would be the ‘ideal’ guest? Even the Invisible Man wouldn’t be welcome to apply; as Mr Norman points out, we wouldn’t know where he is.

Have you ever entertained the idea or even taken the leap and had one? If so, how did it go?

Fuck off Astoria

I won’t miss you. The city can do without bouncers who physically assault women.

Adios.

John Mortimer and Release.

I used to work for a charity called Release. For those of you who’ll be forgiven for not knowing what it is, it’s a legal and human rights charity that aims to give legal advice (but not representation) to drug users and their friends and families.

I left a few years ago after a management overhaul meant I didn’t recognise the place anymore but that’s by the by. The point is, the judicial system, now, as it did back in ‘67 when Release started, still sneers at the charity and doesn’t take its left-leaning do-goody stance seriously at all. People who take drugs recreationally are an underclass, deserving of imprisonment where possible and where not possible a criminal record. Even hard working professionals who like a line of coke or two at the weekend deserve to have their futures obliterated overnight…

Of course John Mortimer didn’t believe this for a second, but he had his work cut out convincing other barristers and archly conservative judges to take Release seriously. Naturally he was in an unusually powerful position of being a hugely successful barrister and these are the people that are needed to place the underdog under the microscope, but (and to his credit) he was largely out on his own. ‘What’s the problem? Why can’t we tax drugs and have done with it’?

At least he tried.

Dear tarot,

Q – Will F-C be reinstated on Andrew Collins’ blogroll?
Card – Ten of tools.
Chances – Fat.

Q – Will the streets of LA and Harlem burn to the ground and descend into anarchy, in a Spike Lee coming into his pants type way, if Obama is assasinated?
Card – The Tower
Chances – Fucking huge.

I love smack, me, but more than that, I love the sweet high of a new gadget.
I’m attempting this post from the itsy qwerty keyboard of my new iPhone (I won’t keep you long).
I took my toy ’round to Mr Kibble-White’s and Ms Redfern’s last night to show it off only to discover they had one each and they showed me what the thing can do*.
That’ll learn me.
*It can do everything bar inject me with smack.

Slimcea Girl

A Million Miles/Marianne
* FORMAT: 7 Inch Clear Vinyl
* LABEL: Royal Mint
* CAT#:Mint2
* Country: UK
* DATE:1995

Let’s pretend it’s 1995 and the world is excited about a new band called Slimcea Girl (well a handful of people are and one of those people is Bob Stanley so it must count for something, right?). Hmm.

Slimcea Girl were a 3 piece band based in Islington, comprising of brothers Paul (vocals, bass and keyboard), Jason (guitar) Bowstead and Jon Chander (drums). Despite this being a single release par excellence (on the Royal Mint label, which also housed releases from Earl Brutus and Dolly Mixture), Slimcea Girl, although releasing an impressive demo tape, which caught the eye of Heavenly records bosses, never released another single. Just a typical tale in a lot of ways of a talented band who never quite left the ground. But it is a truly great single.
(Jon, subsequently went on to some later success with Birdie, Blue States and Absentee).

Can I sleep on it?

A trip down to the Royal London Hospital earlier got me thinking in a number of ways. The first thought I had was, I’m not sure if I like the hospital or not.

I love the spooky, Victorian cast iron stairwells and the history of having the Elephant Man reside there but it’s also a hellish place where drunks go for refuge and people who clearly don’t look after themselves (mostly due to poverty no doubt) hog the spaces that make waiting around there a pretty grim prospect. I don’t relish going there but every now and again, I have to.

I’ve also been having conversations with friends recently about what public sector job could be more stressful than teaching (possibly working for the NHS?) and we were unable to really come up with many. After all, jobs aren’t nearly as romantic as you imagine them to be, are they? The reality is often quite hard going. But it did make me think about the jobs that I used to find desirable but wisdom has taught me, would be totally unsuitable for me:

1. Doctor (apart from not being bright enough in the area of Science) I’ve seen the documentary that followed them training and it looked like hell on earth. Their marriages suffered or ended and the pressures were immense.
2. Music Journalist. 10 years ago this would have been my dream job but somewhere along the way, I lost interest in music I don’t personally like (I think, rightly so, you’re expected to cast your net a little wider than your own personal record collection) and I rarely enjoy going to gigs anymore. Something similar happened to my sister, who after landing her dream job on the NME, felt sad it hadn’t happened earlier (before she was a mother basically)…timing….
3. Singer/Musician. Again, I used to envy my brother who travelled the world, but who in turn would send home postcards from places such as Chicago, warning me how miserable the whole experience was. Mind you, I’ve since been to Chicago and can see exactly what he means…

Is there anything you would have liked to have tried but are not mourning the fact you didn’t?

Victoria Park Snowman

I got hugs for you if you were born in the 80s.

It’s a bit Neon Neon (I Lust U), this video isn’t it? I wonder if it’s the same director?

It’s strange that both Calvin Harris and Mark Ronson look very reminiscent of my Dad as a young man. (Especially the latter). That’s strange as my Dad doesn’t have a musical ear in the slightest (although he does have excellent taste in pre-Beatles era music, erm, partly).

Anyway, this video cheered me greatly today and made me want to inject a dead animal with green putty and duly thrust me back to a time of Kylie’s barnet on the cover of her ‘Kylie’ album.

(Wotcha gotta do is click on the text to see the vid, as I haven’t worked out a better way to do it, soz).

Frances De La Tour (and more).

I’m offering out invitations for folk to kiss my arse. Folk who scoff and sneer at my current at-home status. (I’m not really, in fact pity me do), as the following run-down of my televisual, telemiserable bloat-out comes to light. For the past 2 weeks I’ve been a bit poorly you see, some sort of advanced stomach bug, so I’ve been shuffling the oceanic gap between my bed and online scrabble, to bed again ever since. This is what you’re missing, productive, employed types (they tell me about people like you, with your secret club ways and your Oyster cards). This was my day on, ooh, let’s pluck a day at random out of the air, Wednesday:

Dickinson’s *Real* Deal: Look, if you’ve just come here to scoff at David Dickinson, you’ve blooming well come to the wrong…oh wait…stay…I’m sorry to swear, but I gasped aloud at the oily, blouse wearing, man pretending to be Miss Jones, who is his resident antique expert. Note to me: Why must daytime tv be such a freakshow? Why?

Loose Women: Am I right in thinking Carol McGiffin thought up the idea for this show? (Or has Wikipedia pinned me up against a wall YET AGAIN?) I’m wondering, why such a ghastly, vinegar tits, shit for brains, boy-shagging (but I HATE MEN!!!!) example of non-humanity is allowed to glue herself to the panel like that? Answers on a postcard…oh, don’t bother, it’s ok, I’m strangely fascinated by her really.

This Morning: Yeah, yeah, another easy target. Schofe is a prof, we all know that. So where was he this week, Eamonn? Anyway I’m mentioning this because it seemed to kick-start a bizarre, Bette Midler appreciation, love-in that when I last checked, a week on, is still underway across daytime tv land. (She’s in town, boyz). Is this woman polite off camera or something? Is this as rare as Dodo’s milk in that biz? Because somebody please explain why everyone gushes over that blow up doll? As my friend Justin Lewis points out: ‘Has anyone noticed she sings *flat* in ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’?!

Midsomer Murders: This was a two-parter. Something about a spiritualist church in an Oxfordshire Hamlet that fucks with people’s heads and does a nice sideline with the undertaker in clawing artifacts to provide details to spook people with (headed by a woman called Rosetta). As is my frustration with a lot of low-rent thriller type shows, it’s bloody ludicrous, the amount of spooky, gauche people in the village, who could have done it. It’s not brain gym, it’s just meandering and you just know there’ll be a daft ending…

Indeed.

Newport (51 degrees north).

Have you ever wondered where the centre of the universe is? Is it Manchester (nope), is it Hull (er, er), no, it’s Newport, Gwent. Don’t believe me? Well please explain how I’ve got three Newport related stories amassed from this one weekend alone? And as a loose backbone to all this I’ve also been watching more tv (in the evening this time). Does this make the exercise less valid? No, it does not.

I was born in an architecturally and articulatory underdeveloped town, called Newport, Gwent in 197* (there you go, identity seekers). I was born in a hospital that’s now a famous golfing hotel, sat proudly on the hilltop lording over tiny taffs asunder, so I was particularly interested in Saturday’s episode of the excellent…

Grand Designs: The episode followed the hair colour and length chameleon-like Sarah and her (insert any IT exec in glasses name such as Gavin here) husband restore a former folly, with views on one side of the Severn Bridges and views on the other of the Brecons and add an extension the size of Chepstow to the side of it. Naturally, the series consistently avoids the delicately creeping quandry du jour, this being a) who are these early thirty-something cunts? and b) where the fuck do they get their money from? Considering Mr Norman and I ploughed £100,000 of our own money (le toux) into a modest 2 bed flat and still have a mortgage for the next 20 years…we are both technically professionals too…I do ever so slightly suspect underhand practice with some of these bastards. The folly cost £1,000,000 and it was a shell to begin with. The extension was so cavernous their 3 year old son needed a bike to get around (meanwhile Mr Norman asks, ‘what is this, The Shining’?) ‘Aren’t the three of you just rattling around in this place’? Asks a perfectly reasonable (and desperately trying to hide his own jealousy), presenter. ‘We invite our friends ’round’, answers *Gavin* as he points to a sad looking, empty banquet table. You’re left wondering what friends, as this Zeta Jones type couple Lord it over their friends still living at home with their parents in the 3 bed semis, somewhere down…there…

Speaking of Newport, praise be to BBC4’s Friday night folk night: As the opening credits began to trickle down the screen, of the 1960s folk festival, I challenged Mr Norman to choose a name for a baby boy in the forthcoming list of performers. Son, as in Son House? No, too much like Sonny, and they’re 2 a penny in Stoke Newington nurseries these days. We settled on Eck (as in Robertson). Although having watched hours of footage he failed to appear, or if we blinked we missed him. So Eck it is. Any future son of ours will be named after a stupendously obscure folk fiddler from the 60s who we’ve never seen. Yes, *that’s* how esoteric we are.

And the third Newport anecdote? Thanks to my youngest brother, who’s studying photography in Newport, for leaving his undercrackers behind my sofa at new year, which shockingly I only noticed today. Good brief (sorry).

Just a few thoughts about Red Riding…

*It’s the Yorkshire Post. Not the Yorkshire Evening Post. (York and ex York familiars will know what I mean). I know the Police were a little errant in the 70s, but would they really beat to a pulp a Yorkshire Post journo? It’s the Yorkshire Post!

*’They didn’t have brown duvets like that in the 70s’. My Mum says, ‘bad research’. Flowery duvets, yes, 90s looking brown Habitat duvets, no. Is she right?

*Tiscali, decided in time-honoured fashion to crank itself down to a big fat zero (well some rather groovy 80s looking waves of stark pastel cerise wavy lines) approx halfway through. We managed to catch the last 25 mins on the terrestrial portable in the bedroom, but we’d missed the pivotal scene with Sean Bean in the interim, so were quite clueless as to rather a lot after that. Fucking Tiscali.

*There’s no denying, this was an event. That’s a suitably rare occurrence on tv these days, for me to check a week beforehand what time and day this was due to be on. But, but, but, although Our Friends in the North was not faultless, this was not Our Friends in the North. It took 15 years to get that show aired and so it’s unlikely another one will be commissioned in any kind of a hurry. RR seems like a fair compromise, but like Morrissey said on the radio recently, about being patient for ‘that voice’ to come our way, I’m still waiting…

*It’s a long time since I fancied Sean Bean.

*I’m becoming increasingly fascinated by Sean Harris. I’ve met him a few times. He drinks down our local. He seems to get a hand in every cool drama rarely aired on tv. Good for him. He’s shifty though.

Err, pass…

Shhhhh

What kind of language is this?

I’m sorry I haven’t been around. I’ve been meditating on a crossword for a long time now and the problem came when I got stuck on a ‘7 down’ which, when looking for the answer, instead of googling it, I decided to find the answer for myself. The journey took me on a long, meandering trip to China, then Tokyo (where I met a rotund zen master) and then all the way back to Ebbw Vale where I found some elderly members of the Spinetti family *still* run that ice cream parlour. Helen Shapiro lived next door and God, I wanted to punch her, but that’s for another day…

On calmer shores back in London, I wanted to just eat toast and watch exemplary examples of contemporary dance on You Tube. My quest for the medium of trapeze dancing took me to the quasi English-rose territory of Kate Bush’s Aerial. A not thought-about track from 2 years ago (but which I think is beautiful under all that rock pomp) is brought alive by the sophistication and sheer impressiveness of the Tempest themed but Tempest light choreography.

Now I’m less mobile, thanks to jet lag (which is now easing, I hasten to add) the movements bodies can make, from symbolism stretching from Jesus on the Cross to ancient Egypt, to modern bends, I’ve found oddly comforting the past day or so…

You can watch the full video by clicking here: (Worth watching right down to the closing bars of swallows cheeping where we can all relax into the very English country again).

slavoj zizek confuses the violation of one’s arse with ‘viva la Tweet’.

Recent developments have involved dissecting and subsequently appreciating the light, journalistic prose of Tony Parsons, drinking a weak, almost colourless ‘afternoon tea’ from Fortnum and Mason’s, readjusting to a return to London from the country, drinking tea on the lawn with someone who has fired my already crackling interest in The Wire (she has all 5 series on box set, thinks it’s the best tv series she’s ever seen and also loves Katie and Peter: Stateside. Kerrrrching!) and experimenting with hairspray. You never know when you’re going to run out of tea, or any of the above for that matter. Things just drift away sometimes (not my words; they’re the words of Tony Parsons).

It’s probably best to approach a post with a defined thesis in mind but I don’t have one, so let’s take some loosely connected points under a hastily thrown together subheading instead :

The House that Andre Built:

I like Peter Andre (Katie and Peter: Stateside, ITV2). He’s decent. He’s a freak, natch, but he’s a nice, family man. Nobody in the world could have been surprised by him wearing an ill-fitting pair of porno dungarees for a photo shoot but the way he was tugging at his crotch and awkwardly shifting from one leg to the other, genuinely warmed my heart. How can we, as a nation complain about him having air time when pricks like Jim Davidson are invited onto our air waves as talking heads? I suppose we should pity, or at least take with a spoonful of humour, a moth eaten, upholstered, old comode slung into an MFI showroom, but I don’t, oddly.

I’m genuinely keen not to miss any of these shows. And incidentally, I hate that pseudo intellectual, Guardian front splash, Katie Price as new feminist icon because she has a disabled son, yada yada. She does a good job with him, and I enjoy sharing their bizarre existence. Tis all.

In other inconsequential TV news, I was surprised too, to see the ‘hot’ (my words and not Tony Parsons’) cop from The Wire is English (BAFTAS). Can we thank Hugh Laurie for a new appreciation of English actors, stateside, as opposed to using them as learned sidearms such as a stuffy headmaster (Frasier) or a antique dealer (Diagnosis Murder) etc…? I’d like to thank Hugh Laurie. On so many levels.

Not least because he’s not on Twitter. At least, I don’t think he is. I am though and so are many of you. I update it about 3 times a day on average. I don’t consider myself particularly weird or a cunt, but if I’m either or both, I’ll sleep.

I haven’t had a drink with Zizek recently, but if he were here now, he’d say ‘viva la Tweet’. Inconsequential ramblings are the order of the day and I doubt he’d complain or be surprised by this human development.

I’ll still respect you more if you don’t use it though. That’ll never change.

Pink Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away

For obvious reasons, it’s going to be strange watching Katie and Peter: Stateside from now on. They’re not a cute couple anymore are they? I use ‘cute’ in the loosest non-cute sense, of course. As, after going to press, in my last post, those of us who watched it, witnessed an uncomfortable, sinister in it’s lack of shouting and mobile phone-throwing, nastier-than-thou argument. The quietness of the exchange was brutal; like someone whispering in your ear in a very serene, controlled voice that as soon as the cameras wind down, they’re going to kill you.

Shudder.

Shame on you Andre. After all, I’d been saying how nice you seemed. Now, I don’t blame Katie for buggering off. I wouldn’t let Peter Andre speak to me like that. And less so if I was as financially solvent as she is. Who needs it? She doesn’t, that’s for sure.

But who’ll take his place?

Are any of Colour Me Badd available?
The arrogant, orange-suited one from Boyz 2 Men?

I just don’t know.

Grayling and Schopenhaur see debate for what it really is.

A funny thing happened to me on the way to a forum, in around late summer ‘08. I’d been having some fun with them for a few months but I’d also been having some exasperating exchanges with people who very much see things in black and white.

As well versed as I am in the art of rhetoric, I soon realised, that like House of Commons time, that’s all you’re really dealing with in these things. What happens is that people fight to the death a point they probably eventually no longer have respect for themselves, but by hook or crook cannot be seen to back down. Rhetoric (fact fans) is winning an argument through force, irrespective of truth or merit. You may also have encountered this in the editorial section of well, every fucking newspaper on the planet but I soon got tired of being in that type of arena and began to wonder if I should start a forum, for polite, fence-sitters like me. It would make for deathly dull reading, probably, but at least it might be some kind of departure. Perhaps.

The Speaker (BBC2) was an excellent series about the discipline of persuasive argument and what was really interesting, especially when Alistair Campbell joined the mentoring ranks, was just how manipulative and souless the act can be (earnest hand movements overplay etc). These kids were almost being brainwashed into a mode of insincere behaviour but what heartened me was that they did it with humility and a modest desire to learn from criticism. I was amazed. I’ve never been one to embrace criticism, or at least I certainly wasn’t at that age. Perhaps these kids, are more suited to forum life than me, or at least they are now that Campbell has cast his spell on them.

Incidentally, the book I’m reading (which Mr Norman brought back as a present to me after a meeting with his publishers on Sunday where he is offerered nice gifts like this) is called ‘the art of always being right’ and it’s basically a very readable interpretation of Schopenhauer. Here’s what (Grayling on Schopenhaur) says about the, ultimately tedious, unrelenting one-upmanship of debate, which we’ll have to adapt to the modern, Internet forum age for ourselves:

‘Such is the stuff of discourse in much political and public life, which as a result is too often not an arena of debate but of debasement’.

Big Up The Unloved

What was moving about Samantha Morton’s drama The Unloved on Monday night wasn’t so much the personal details of her life, but what she decided not to include, which seemed to work in a lovely, but heartbreaking type of way. Just because you can pepper a scene with domestic violence, doesn’t mean you should. A male director might have socked it to us hard, but she didn’t and it was, erm, hard viewing.

The silence in some key scenes was chilling. The car journey from the school office to the children’s home was one of the most powerful examples of less is more I can remember. Imagine not having anyone in the world to turn to. It’s difficult; how do you track unimaginable loneliness on the screen? Turn the sound off and focus the close up on the child in a moving car to an unknown destination. Well, it’s not difficult, original or profound but it was effective.

The decisions involved in making a film about your own experiences are probably endless. One of them, to pitch the film in the current time rather than the 70s, seemed relevant as it really doesn’t matter about decades, haircuts and fashion. Kids sniff solvents and live in clatteringly unprofessional shit holes (sorry, Children’s Homes) now.

Nicely cast was the suited and disinterested social worker. I’ve met loads of ‘professionals’ like them. They don’t like kids, they’re icy, they’re mumbling, inarticulate and passionless. Although, luckily for Lucy, there’s always one care worker, in any dire situation, who shows warmth and a film like this needs one just as one’s needed in real life.

Children’s homes are frightening places but 72,000 live in them. They’re supposed to be the safe option but they’re often mismanaged, sometimes corrupt, occasionally unsafe, skin blisteringly lacking in privacy and always distressingly noisy places. You wouldn’t.

Goat’s Head Soup

Aren’t we a bit romantic about markets in this country? After all, we don’t live in Marrakesh do we?

On the whole, I like them. I don’t normally buy anything other than fruit or veg as I’m a bit of a clothes snob and so I think everything they sell looks a bit cheap and nasty, although I did buy a stripy cotton scarf for £1.99 from Green St market the other day (West Ham) which I thought was an astonishing price and the market did have a sense of buzz about it which made it a bit of an event, certainly considering the grimness of the surrounds. I don’t normally venture further east than Victoria Park, which is where I live. When I do go east I always have a reason to go there, a job interview or a course to attend. I never go there to socialise, (does anyone)?

This market, if you’ve ever been, is the place to go if you want fabric. When I was teaching I bought nice drapes there to decorate the reading corner, for example. Fabrics aside though it’s pretty standard and typical of every other food and home products market.

The ‘fresh’ meats section is a horror show (yes, these are real pics snapped on my phone). What do you do with a goat’s head (or is it a sheep’s head)? I don’t know as the stall was unattended, apart from the odd fly buzzing around the greying tongues on sale. If you’re going to sell animal tongues, should they be grey? Should they be coated with flies? What dishes would you make with tongue?

I found the place weird, but I guess that’s part of the charm of an east end market*.

*I don’t mean those overpriced Spitalfields type affairs but a proper market where the disenfranchised may frequent.

Let’s Do It.

Allow me to explain. My interpretation (as John Donne) in square brackets.

The Flea

Marke but this flea, and marke in this,
How little that which thou deny’st me is;
Me it suck’d first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled bee;
Confesse it, this cannot be said
A sinne, or shame, or losse of maidenhead,

[Look, this flea took a bite out of me, and you too. So actually me coming inside you is no different to this flea having both of our bloods inside its belly, see? Let's shag asap because it won't tarnish your reputation in any way (apart from being compared to a dirty, micro insect, that is].

Yet this enjoyes before it wooe,
And pamper’d swells with one blood made of two,
And this, alas, is more than wee would doe.

[Actually, this flea conceit is far filthier than me shagging you because it involves blood and I won't hurt you *that* much]

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,
When we almost, nay more than maryed are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is;
Though parents grudge, and you, w’are met,
And cloysterd in these living walls of Jet.

[are you getting the flea conceit yet? Once again, imagine we are the bloods in this flea. There are 3 bloods, mine, yours and the flea's. That's one more blood fusion than me and you merely getting it on]

Though use make thee apt to kill me,
Let not to this, selfe murder added bee,
And sacrilege, three sinnes in killing three.

[since this flea has bitten us both, we're as good as married, but I'll settle for a shag for now]

Cruell and sodaine, has thou since
Purpled thy naile, in blood of innocence?
In what could this flea guilty bee,
Except in that drop which it suckt from thee?
Yet thou triumph’st, and saist that thou
Find’st not thyself, nor mee the weaker now;

[Getting it yet? We're no better than this flea. God, this is as hard work as trying to explain a rhetorical question to Katie Price]

‘Tis true, then learne how false, feares bee;
Just so much honor, when thou yeeld’st to mee,
Will wast, as this flea’s death tooke life from thee.

[Killing the flea was easy - well, yielding to me will be just as easy and painless. Promise]

Tom’s Diner

So far, I’ve been to New York, just the once. It’s an exciting but exhausting place. It’s one of the few places where you can be a complete and utter tourist without worrying about seeming cheesy (actually most cities in America are like this, but you get the point…)

So shorty before September 11th 2001, Mr Norman and I (our first holiday together, a safe bet because if we decided we hated each other, there were truck loads of distractions) did the Empire State Building, the Staten Island Ferry (there’s a great photo of me stood on the ferry just in front of the twin towers), East Village, Lennon’s garden and all that jazz. But we also braved the subway up to Harlem to visit Tom’s Diner, as per Suzanne Vega fame but more significantly for us, the exterior of the diner scenes in Seinfeld.

This picture is me stood outside, aged 26.

While inside, we were, yes, a bit disappointed (of course we were). What is baffling is why Suzanne Vega spent so much time there. I know she was skint at the time but there are plenty of other eateries around that area and the food is fucking inhuman. We had never tasted anything that bad in our lives before or since. There were nice big American portions but of cardboard where fish should be and my pea and ham soup had great chunks of flour within. Sure, there were the Seinfeld pics all around and ultimately, of course it was worth the trek for that all-important photo, but you do wonder why most of these iconic places earn their status. It’s not charming or value for money. I wonder if it was as bad in Vega’s day? It couldn’t possibly have been.

They just got sloppy. Still, we saw some genuine J-Lo type ghetto districts in the walk from the subway to the diner. You’ve got to at least dip your toe in, haven’t you?

Floella

Did you know Floella was the first to appear fully pregnant on British TV? (In Play School).

For a woman whose ambition was to be Britain’s first black bank manager, her life took a totally different course. There just weren’t black bank managers back then, but black people were accepted into the theatre, so that’s the career she ’settled’ on.

Similarly there weren’t many black people on TV during the 70s and 80s. The TV channels were becoming more sensitive to the fact, especially in representing children, firstly in the 60s and later on with Derek Griffiths, but the main allure of her lies, I’m sure, in the impression she genuinely loved being around children and that she wasn’t just adorning the shop floor for the career bump-up. Sourcing pics for this post, there were hundreds of her and not one without her beaming.

Floella starred in two of the upper echelons of Play for Todays from one of its golden eras (the late 70s). She starred in ‘a hole in Babylon’ in 1979, about a siege in an Italian restaurant that goes wrong and ‘waterloo sunset’ (also 1979, the year that brought us the dazzling performance of Jonathan Pryce in Trevor Griffiths’ ‘the comedians’) a play about racial disharmony in a poky London flat. A young man and his elderly relative live on a mostly West Indian London housing estate. (The pivotal and most memorable scene from this play involves the naive old woman dusting her aging face with cocoa in order to clumsily show she wants to belong, but they take this gesture the wrong way and she has to leave).

A few years prior, too, in 1975, she starred in the Play for Today ‘the floater’ – where she was lucky enough to appear alongside Richard Beckinsale (who played a solicitor’s clerk acting for his sick wife).

She also appeared in many films (mainly playing a nurse) but ‘black joy’ is a film of note about a naive African immigrant arriving in Brixton, with Norman Beaton as the wise-arse, no-good rude boy she falls in with. Floella plays Beaton’s assertive, no-nonsense wife. Vivian Stanshall’s in it too, weirdly, as a pervy vicar.

In more recent years she was cast in Doctor Who and there’s the Floella Benjamin Awards in Exeter University (which gave her an honoury doctorate) where up to £1,000 is given to promising students to help improve their future job prospects.

Predictably but admirably she runs a lot for charity these days.

Floella Benjamin OBE (born in Trinidad, 1949)

These are a few of my favourite things…

There’s a nice column in Tatler magazine where they invite toffs to talk about their favourite things in their house. I don’t normally read Tatler unless there are some very stylish free sunglasses attached (approx every June) but after having a look at what the upper crust are up to tipsily in a barn somewhere in Oxfordshire, I found that feature and as a result, I thought I’d have a go myself.

Here are a few of my favourite things scattered around our home and the reasons for them:

Well, we all know what this is. I was given this as a present by my sister and her partner for my 18th birthday in 1992. The album cover print is 18 out of a total of 200 Cannell works. It’s a bit faded now after copious house moves where it was positioned badly (too much light) and so the hue is more pink than scarlet, but it’s mine, it happens to be one of my all-time favourite albums and I’m proud to own it.

My brother’s wife is a Slade school of art graduate but doesn’t paint much these days although she does do pop/jazz prints for special occasions. She gave me this for my 30th birthday. Ever since I was three (when I literally wore a hole in my vinyl copy of Mull of Kintyre) I’ve always liked McCartney (and we happen to share a birthday, I wonder if that makes a difference…) and so I was very touched Lucy made this for me.

I can’t play much, unless it’s a simple folk or protest song, but I bought this guitar in the late 90s when I barely had a penny to my name. It cost about £140 in 1997 which was a lot of money then (well, it certainly felt like that to me). The Fenda’s in excellent condition and I dust it regularly.

I’m always touched when a friend makes you a CD, especially when unprompted. This is a collection of Welsh folk music made for me by my friend Nia, who speaks Welsh as a first language. The collection is from the 60s and contains some pretty rare stuff (Welsh Rare Beat, right?). It’s what I listen to most at the moment and I’m hoping to pick up some of the language by spaced-out osmosis.

And when I’m listening to folk music or watching tv, where am I? Under my ‘blanky’ of course. Orange is one of my favoured colours and I like the slightly rough, scratchy texture of my blanket. Well, we all have our little quirks, I suppose.

The Marxolin

You’ve heard of the uke and the mandolin but this is a marxolin. It’s an instrument used mainly in late 30s and 40s folk music and it’s so named because The Marx Music Co. of New Troy, Michigan became famous for building unique, simple-to-play parlour instruments.

It’s a string instrument but unlike a wood-backed instrument such as a violin or guitar, which makes a plucky sound when tweaked, the marxolin is metallic and so makes more of a well, twangy sound when plucked.

There are a few different designs of the marxolin, some quite large, some small and some actually quite ornate, but most work on the premise that there’s chord hammers and a whammy bar.

The bridge is equipped with two levers which sharp and flat various strings. The rosin for the bow is attached to the instrument; a few other Marx instruments also offer this feature. The name “Marxolin” though, was used for other instruments as well.

I think it’s fair to say this is an obscure, very rarely used folk instrument used by current folk recording artists but Bat for Lashes’ Natasha Khan uses one in her new album and is the reason one was brought to my attention.

My niece and nephew when visiting me on the weekend, bounded into the study, pulled up a chair and started thumping away (quite literally in Joe’s case) on the keyboard; drinks precariously positioned on the ledge by the hard drive.

I love this and I positively encourage it, but it’s a world away from when we had our first computer in 1985. My sister and I (other brother not yet born) stood well back in awe as no.1 son jiggled away on his joystick (ahem), playing some kind of tennis game which sounded like a supermarket checkout processing a bar code when you switched the game on and off. The computer was definitely his and we were allowed a few goes but only when supervised by him. We wouldn’t have known what to do with the computer if he wasn’t around anyway.

We were a tiny bit suspicious and intimidated by the whole development. Now, it’s their right.

Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby

I just wanted to share with you, my niece, Ruby’s artwork. This is her interpretation of myself and Mr Norman. She really captures us. Mr Norman does look like this and my breasts, er…

Jack Rosenthal’s ‘About Face’ (or the one where Sarah Cracknell appears).

Mr Norman and I had an evening of Jack Rosenthal last night and during a play about a bag lady (Maureen Lipman is darkly brilliant as an incoherent woman haunted by random memories) from ‘about face’ from 1989, I made an observation.

I thought the woman holding a baby at the Natwest cash point machine (sorry, ’service till’, one of those ones that had the glass on the front) had Sarah Cracknell’s eyes, with Princess Diana’s hair. An odd combination but she definitely had the eyes. On watching the closing credits we noticed firstly that Derek Cracknell (her Father) was assistant director and on closer inspection, Sarah had a credit herself.

‘Well you’re no oil painting, are ya’?, crows Lipman. Thousands of men may beg to differ…

Celebrity Knits (the gifts for you version).

I know, I know what you’re thinking. Suzy, it’s been too long since you shared some knitted knittyness with us. Well, I’m going one better. I’ve carefully selected some gifts for all of you (well some of you, and this is not me being deliberately selective, it’s just some knitted kooks scream for attachment to certain bloggers and/or tweeters more than others).
Enjoy:

Borat (with additional Amy Winehouse attached (?!))
For Five Centres to affectionally tweek the cotton streams on his chest and give the shorts a tug, while he’s at it (if he likes).

Hitler (with attached Winston Churchill).
For Richard Herring. No explanation needed.

Ziggy
For Cocktails. I thought she might like his hair better than Paul Weller’s.

Harry Potter
For RSSTTN. Probably the only writer who can write readable and amusing copy on Harry Potter. (This is not a hint to write more about Harry Potter, by the way).

Russell Brand
Actually this is for anyone who wants him. Any takers? No? Well, I don’t want him in my bed.

Open Page

It’s 1974. A hack has just been ticked off by a broadsheet editor for describing a female politician, in no uncertain terms, as not fanciable and a frumpy dresser. The reason he was ticked off: such observations are irrelevant and in bad taste. Also it’s 1974 and the feminist movement is well underway. ‘This isn’t The Sun’ the editor screeches. Keep that tabloid bile to yourselves. This is a serious newspaper’.

It’s 2009. A hack has not been ticked off by a broadsheet editor for describing a female politician, in no uncertain terms, as not fanciable. The reason he wasn’t ticked off: such observations are deliciously post-ironic. Also it’s 2009 and the feminist movement has long since become an irrelevance. Women can enjoy a bit of high-profile jostling can’t they? We know they do a serious job but there’s no way on earth they’ll mind being animated in this way. This is because they’re completely on equal terms these days. The ‘war’ has been ‘won’ and now women’s place in the workplace is not only one long yawn, but as an added bonus, we (men and women) can revert to 60s style attitudes because it’s amusing. We’re safe. Women don’t face any type of pay discrimination or bullying in the workplace or targeted bitterness under the guise of humour online or anywhere else for that matter. And don’t mind the talented women journalists who also write for this paper. They’re not embarrassed by association with this male contributor under the same umbrella in the least. We all work towards the same cause of this being a serious newspaper.

The Smiths on Charlie’s Bus

‘Where are we going’? Pipes an eager child… ‘We’re going mad’ says Morrissey sneekily, with an almost Spider from Bad News, but a bit more genial, type of sarcasm.

Where is this leading? Hang on, this could get dark. I think we need a twee sounding (but perfectly accomplished) female vocalist to fill the role of missing 80s primary school teacher, to sit on the lawn and sing with them. Luckily, Sandie Shaw appears, to sing ‘Jean’ acoustic with them al fresco in Kew Gardens while Marr strums along on guitar.

It wasn’t quite this much fun the last time I went to Kew Gardens. In fact has anyone ever had this much fun in Kew Gardens?

The teddies in outer space.

I very much enjoyed reading Andrew Collins’ account of the Edinburgh Festival this year. It was a long blog piece that I wouldn’t normally plough through (I don’t like over-long blog pieces), but he’s a fine writer and despite previous reservations about some of the more jarring opinions on his blog, I found myself lost in his experiences.

I’ve never been to the Edinburgh festival but I’d like to go one year. I know just enough about comedy to know who are the industry’s darlings (the not especially ambitious, or in other words, genuinely funny writers and performers, Daniel Kitson for one) and I’ve mentioned before I don’t get the Boosh business at all, but some respected opinions find it creative and clever (David Quantick for one). I don’t know about that. I know I was immediately taken with the creativity and cleverness of Flight of the Conchords, which may partly be down to the humble, even if faux-humble attitude of the writers and performers. In contrast, I’ve always been a little (ok, a lot) suspicious of the Boosh boys. I’ve long been under the impression they’re more focused on fame than content. I could be wrong about this but it’s a gut reaction.

Part of the reason I’ve never been to Edinburgh, but have been to other comedy festivals (well, Brighton) is that I assume, as I don’t know anyone who lives in the city anymore, finding somewhere to stay would be near on impossible. People do manage to find somewhere to stay though, but this involves a lot of planning in advance. If I wanted to go, I’d need to be organised.

What I liked about Collins’ piece was the fondness and respect that glowed from the page for some of the female performers he saw (mainly Sarah Millican but others too) and I have to admit, I liked that. What was a bit harder to swallow was his contempt for some twitter pals he’d put a shout out to meet (buying friends to ease a lonely 2 hours basically) but in describing with too much repetition, his relief they didn’t have 3 heads apiece or weren’t mentally ill, kind of reaffirmed what some of us had long suspected; the ‘relationship’ between ‘celeb’ and ‘fan’ is an unequal relationship and no amount of manipulation under the rod of chumminess and ease of accessibility on these sites will change that anytime soon.

Why people follows ‘celebs’ on Twitter, I’ll never decipher (unless they work in a similar industry and need to request a favour from them, I can see how that may be useful). Otherwise, it could have been you Collins was sneering at and as his trip to Scotland was largely self-financed, that’s not a wholly satisfying thought.