Here's another bit of lomo photography, this one on slide film and cross-processed. What you can't see, sadly, is that my t-shirt is a fetching shade of pastel pink. On the occasions when I have worn it to work, people have laughed. But I hold my head high.
More evidence that housework is bad for your health: I've got a right headache today, and my suspicion is that it's fogged up after inhaling all the cleaning products I've been using on my flat in the last few days. Ugh.
To clarify, I've been cleaning my flat, not sniffing detergent for kicks.
Am I alone in having never heard of this site before? Etsy is fantastic - tagged as "your place to buy and sell all things handmade", it's exactly that, a kind of brilliant, vivid mix of ebay, portobello market and ffffound; well designed things that you can buy. Don't be put off by the fact that it's American - they've calibrated it so that international purchases are not a problem.
Oh no, I'm clearly going to spend money there.
If I had to devise a list of my favourite bands at the moment it's quite possible that Peggy Sue and Thomas Tantrum would occupy the top two slots, although the likes of Let's Wrestle, The Wave Pictures and Emmy The Great would doubtless be scrapping them all the way.
This pointless fact aside, it may be of interest to you, as it is to me, that Peggy Sue and Thomas Tantrum are playing together at The Social in London on August 5th. If you go to the TT website, you can enter a quiz to win free tickets. The answer is 'Armchair', I think.
Thomas Tantrum are brilliant. Look:
Oh, I wish I wasn't as guilty of inefficient shopping as I am, but sadly I'm useless, always misjudging food quantities and either running out of stock almost immediately, or else opening my fridge and finding food which has passed its sell by date.
With Gordon Brown asking the nation to consider cutting back, the Guardian spend some time thinking about food wastage. Laura Barton writes:
"There is something slightly irritating about the prime minister's insistence that it is down to us consumers to cut our food waste. Less than half of the food thrown away each year comes from households. To suggest that the average householder is to blame for our colossal national wastage is to ignore the way that the food industry has been allowed to develop in this country, from the relentless rise of the supermarket to the flourishing of the fast-food outlet, the decline in farming and the death of the local shop. All of these affect why we buy the wrong things, and why we buy so much of what we do not need".All of which is undoubtedly true - but the fact remains that a lot of people (including, for the most part, me) could do with developing stategies for efficient food consumption. So the article's tips, put together by Ms. Barton and John Henley, make sound advice and a surprisingly good read. I'll certainly be trying to think this stuff through more.
"I think that goes back to the rise of the big American fridge," notes Blythman. "It's an aspirational thing." You do not, therefore, need to buy acres of food each week to keep it chock-full.
The lovefoodhatewaste.com site has a huge array of recipes contributed by celebrity chefs, nutritionists and members of the public, including a large number dubbed "rescue recipes" - in other words, how to put that bit of leftover chicken or half courgette to delicious use. There are also websites out there (leftoverchef.com and kitchen-scraps.com, to name but two) that, one you've typed in the primary and secondary ingredients you have spare, will go away and search their databases for recipes to use them up. Bit of fish left over, and some broccoli? Try, for example, Chinese steamed fish. And a couple of books may help: Second Time Around: Ideas and Recipes for Leftovers by Pamela Le Bailly, and The Use It Up Cookbook: Creative Recipes for the Frugal Cook, by Catherine Kitcho.
As a general rule, only "use by" is worth taking seriously; "sell-by" and "display-until" dates are merely stock-control devices for food retailers, and "best before" is simply the producer's estimate of when the food will stop tasting good, which is fairly subjective anyway. Rather than slavishly observing these date labels, we'd be far better off understanding the kinds of foods that could actually be harmful if they go off, such as ready meals (including sandwiches), soft cheeses, pates and cooked, processed meats and seafood. Eggs with a Lion Quality stamp can be kept for weeks in the fridge; chicken, raw meats and fish will all look and smell unpleasant long before they're actively unsafe (as long as you cook it thoroughly, chicken, for example, is good for at least a week past its sell-by date). Apples last for months; potatoes are fine as long as you chop the green shoots off before cooking; tins and jars will last decades if not centuries; hard cheese is indestructible; and dry foods will last for years too. "Ignore sell-by dates," insists Swannell. "They're not relevant. And best before is just what it says on the tin; it doesn't mean the food is toxic the day after that date."
Elsewhere, over at B4L, Andrew asks an interesting question:"Would the Government have been brave enough to suggest that people might save money by using less petrol, or that by borrowing less they might insulate themselves from rising interest rates? People inevitably realise this and adapt accordingly, but the reaction to a politician stating it would be furious."
From Michele Hanson's column in the Guardian today:
"People are forever coming round here glaring crabbily at my computer because it isn't fast enough. It takes one whole minute when it ought be taking a nano-second. They sit there, desperate to get online, and to them the huge seconds trundle by, each like the passing of the longest night. Unbearable. "You need a new computer," they complain rattily. "This is ridiculous."Great stuff.
No it isn't. It is heaven. I switch it on, it has a little warm up, I go into the garden and deadhead a few daisies. Clip, clip. I count the froggies in the pond. I come in, I press connect, I turn to the piano, I practise a fragment of sonata, I return to the screen, I press mail, I give the dogs a kiss, I come in, I arrange my coffee and biscuit, and voilà - the computer is ready. It has taken a few brief minutes."
Another ace episode of Mary Queen of Shops tonight, which you'll doubtless be able to watch with your iPlayer whatsit in hours and days to come. This time Mary visited an amazing, fusty old boutique in York and utterly transformed into it without sacrificing it's wayward sense of style. Best of all was the discovery of a wonderfully eccentric fashion designer - Mary Benson - whose dresses were absolutely fantastic and who casually described her clientele as "crazy cool girls" who "all have nice hair". Oh, and she was only 17. If you're ever in the distant North, she's selling stuff in Blue Rinse in Leeds and Selkie in York, as well as via her own website. Here's a brief BBC profile of her, and click the image below to access her myspace:
[Update: lots of hits on this page, so here's a bit more info I found. From Image Magazine].
She is only in her second year of her fashion course at Leeds College of Art and Design but her metallic dresses are already stocked in the boutique Blue Rinse and she will soon be seen on the TV programme Mary Queen of Shops.
Mary said: "I had to pitch my ideas to Mary Portas from Mary Queen of Shops. The competition was whittled down from 30 to three and I was one of them. She said that I was well established and that I was doing really well for my age."
Mary creates womenswear and accessories inspired by the 1950s and 1960s, including pinafore dresses with a splash of eccentricity. She began designing in the summer after she finished high school when she made skirts and sold them at the Corn Exchange.
She then applied to Leeds College of Art and Design and has been unstoppable. Her collections are varied from monochrome to metallics and, most importantly, are wearable.
Mary said: "I’ve been asked to create a collection for Vidal Sassoon. I have also been working on costumes for a music video as well as attending vintage fashion fairs where I sell accessories."
With meetings set with boutiques in Nottingham and a trip to London planned, Mary Benson is definitely one we will hear about in the future."
One of the more interesting quotes I came across last year was the following, courtesy of Bob Dylan:
"You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static." -Bob Dylan
Pete Bilderback, who posts over at the charmingly titled Flowering Toilet blog, spotted it too but has taken the time to provide a really interesting analysis of the way that compression is used in music production. He demonstrates, by comparing and contrasting songs from artists' back catalogues and recent material, the extent to which an obsession with loudness is leading to the disfiguration of their sound. It's a fascinating article, well worth a read.
Here it is.
Pending references and all that rubbish, this is my new flat (attic level). Please feel free to coo approvingly and express envious feelings in the comments box below.
The sky will always be this blue.
I love break up songs, always have, so much so that I've written tons of them during the happiest of relationships, always finding the raw emotion and mourning a fascinating thing to write about, from whichever side of the break-up fence you're looking. Today my favourite break-up song is 'Canopies and Grapes', by the impossibly great, er, Emmy The Great.
I love how it oscillates between pop culture references and declarations of despair, and I love it how it's funny one minute and tragic the next. Having taken in references to S Club 7 and Friends in the first verse, Emmy goes on to sing, in her slight but beautiful voice:
"Later on, me and a bottle will hook up to have some fun
Then I'll call your house at 12 to let you know that I’m drunk
Say I'm sorry Mr C, I was just looking for your son,
How are you incidentally? Do you know if he's out alone?
There was this book he leant to me something like seven months ago
I'm gonna burn it in the street, be so kind as to let him know...
... That I'm dealing with this badly."
One of the wonderful thing about Emmy's songs are how revealing they are; she always ends up telling you more than she needs to, giving away too much about her vulnerability, in just the way we all do sometimes. I remember a period about two or three years ago when I had a month of just being horribly overcome by emotion generally, so much so that it seemed that every night I was telling a near-stranger something personal in an overwrought voice in a busy pub, acting completely without self-control. It didn't last long but some of Emmy's songs remind me of it.
And she's just as good at constructing the internal conversations, because the dialogue with the one you've lost so rarely stops at the break-up point. Having reeled off a list of bands she's been listening to get through it, she confesses:
"And it's getting much too late to give back your Magnetic Fields EP...
Can I keep it? By my pillow?
Fucking loved it.
How I'd love to tell to tell you so."
Her lyrics aren't just conversational, too, as the many wonderful lines in her songs attest. She's one of those writers capable of dropping brilliant lines in to her songs in a constantly surprising way. It's done better elsewhere in her material, in fact – try her devastating pay-off in 'The City Song'; "They pulled a human from my waist / It had your mouth, it had your face / I would have kept it if I'd stayed" – but as 'Canopies and Grapes' draws to a close there's a line that sticks in my memory, which for the last few days has been dancing around my head. Here it is:
"When I get to sleep I'll dream again of canopies and grapes,
And wake shaking from the knowledge that the mattress holds your shape"
Here's Emmy's myspace. If you go here, you can download 'Canopies and Grapes'.
I've spent the last couple of days flat-hunting in Brighton, a wearying but quite enjoyable process so long as there isn't any urgency and – happily – on this occasion there isn't. I'm basically window flat—shopping, wondering if I should upgrade my studio to a bigger and more comfortable place and seeing what's available. Unlike on almost every other occasion I've done it in the past, I'm looking without being forced to do so by a notice period running down.
The first flat I saw was through Direct Lettings, who arranged to show me a flat on Powis Road, and timed the appointment so that they could show a couple round at the same time. I hate this arrangement, so arrived early, establishing my presence as the dominant flat-hunter. The rival couple stood sulkily on the other side of the road, resenting my proximity. After a while a man-child with a thickly knotted tie pulled up in a hatchback and escorted us inside. The flat was nice but too small, a double bedroom which offered space for nothing more than a bed, and a nice living room with a kitchen settled incongruously on its flank, inching into the space. The young man showing us round was clearly tongue-tied so I didn't ask any questions, just peered into spaces and waited to leave.
The second flat was much better, tempting even – a compact but attractive apartment in the middle of Brighton's lively North Laine, complete with laminated floorboards, two balconies and a huge glass window-wall looking out onto the street. It was the sort of place that was easy to fall in love with, so I put my head down and muttered "too small, too small, too small" to myself, until the urge to take it faded away. I left the property exchanging warm words with the agent – this time a charming bloke from Leaders, whose first statement of purpose was the following:
"I don’t know if you can smell it, but I’m covered in deep heat".
Which kind of broke the ice.
This morning the same agent – Ben; if you use Leaders ask for Ben – showed me round a flat on Buckingham Place, well positioned in Seven Dials and near the station, as well as the shops and Dan's house, too. And all of a sudden the luxury of relaxed flat-hunting went out of the window because, well, it was rather super, and now I need to think of notice periods, deposits and contracts because... I think... I'm going to take it.
I'm writing this in the pub garden at the Crescent (the world's finest pub). Me, Dan, Siobhan, Laura and Sam are sat talking rubbish and discussing Glastonbury. But all of a sudden we're distracted...
And you know how it is when you realise that the person behind you starts jabbering in a way that makes it abundantly clear that he is unhinged. He's talking ten to the dozen to no-one at all, pointing and gesticulating. It's hard not to pay attention, but we keep talking while he chatters on.
Then he stands up, and addresses someone nearby, indignantly.
"I'm not going to do Mick Jagger for you!".
He jabs his finger aggressively as he talks.
We look up and realise he is addressing a cat, sat on the pub roof, looking down concerned.
He shifts a little. The man follows him with his pointed finger, and signs off curtly:
"Goodnight".
We stifle our laughs as he walks, head held high, out onto the street.
It was partly a hatred of the vocal histrionics of commercial chart music that drove me into the arms of indie rock. My conversion to the less polished music of The Charlatans, Happy Mondays and The House of Love coincided, not accidentally, with a period when vocal divas dominated the charts, and the likes of Ian Brown, David Gedge and Mark E Smith sounded thrillingly, insouciantly unpolished and unpractised. I used to obsess over my VHS of the Stone Roses at Blackpool, marvelling over the way Ian Brown’s voice slowly, song by song, began to settle until after a while he sat neatly, and only slightly tunelessly, over the slight, sly music his bandmates conjured up. For the first six songs, to my delight, he was an utter mess.
Fashions have come and gone in indie music and a series of truly gifted singers have drifted in and out of the limelight, but it’s striking how few have been emboldened or inclined enough to open their lungs and belt it out. The full-blooded, top-volume vocal is even less fashionable in indie circles than the guitar solo, and still the preserve of commercial dance music and arena-rock.
So it's hard to know what to make of Florence & The Machine. Her peers are clearly from the folkier end of the indie spectrum – Emmy The Great and Lightspeed Champion; the guitars on her debut, 'Kiss With A Fist' sound like The White Stripes; and the words ("a kiss with a fist is better than none") are pretty uncompromising, indeed controversial. Yet she belts out her lyrics with a note-perfect perfectionism and power more reminiscent of Leona Lewis than her indie contemporaries. I find listening to the two songs on the 7" quite unsettling, if ultimately rewarding.
"Kiss With A Fist" is nothing special, in fact, trading more on Florence’s vivid lyrical imagery and delivery than the quality of the song. It’s beautifully paced and propulsive, and probably sounds brilliant on the dancefloor, but it doesn’t do anything for me – and Florence's vocal, so over-the-top, is hindering, rather than helping, me get with it.
But the b-side, an extraordinary take on the Cold War Kids' "Hospital Beds", makes me think again completely. It starts with Florence belting out the verse acapella; her full-pelt, bluesy, delivery subsequently accompanied by a spare acoustic guitar and a kick drum. I still hate the exhibitionism of her vocal pyrotechnics, but somehow the song creates a spectacular, heartfelt intimacy and it's impossible to deny that it's the vocal that whips things along. In folk music, of course, mannered and controlled vocals are nothing new, but it still seems somewhat dazzling to hear the power Florence commands placed in this context. I'm glad when it finishes, yet I put it on repeat.
Like all new artists, what matters are the songs, and it’s too early to say whether Florence & The Machine has them. The Cold War Kids cover is, however, one of the most exciting cover versions I’ve heard in many a month, and I’m briefly lifted, suspiciously optimistic; my hope leavened by a dread that if she keeps singing like that, so bloody wonderfully, I’ll end up hating her guts.
Right, I need some new blogs to read - can I have recommendations, please?
Ideally I'd like something fairly regularly updated, quite personal (but not depicting an endless stream of sexual encounters), something that covers books or pop music or art but not in obsesssive detail, and something that is engaged with politics and world affairs but not super-serious; in fact, a sense of humour is quite important. If anyone is reading anything that sounds like that at the moment, please tell me about it.
I realise that the above sounds like I'm looking for a new sexual partner. Sorry about that.
As an antidote to party photos, which may well accurately evoke something of the event (usually the hedonism or, cruelly, the boredom) but inevitably miss much else, here are a few drawings courtesy of Rhonda, who sat with an amused smile for several hours in an armchair at Dan and Laura's joint birthday party, capturing an element of the party which I remember strongly, and which is more in evidence here than in any of the evening's photos; the dressing up and the talking, the interplay between the guests.
Cameras at parties so often tend to draw the focus, arrogate attention until they break up the contents of the viewfinder. Practically every set of party photos I've ever seen - except for those taken by the very talented - seem to summon up the same party and the same guests.
These I like much more.
Last minute prediction: Jay-Z will be the best headliner of Glastonbury for at least 10 years. Comment me if I'm wrong.
You may well have noticed lots of praise for the ace Peggy Sue - who have lost their 'And The Pirates' suffix in recent days - on Assistant Blog in the last month or so, so thought I'd flag up the fact that they've announced a new single, and celebrate the fact that the double 7" pack is a collaborative effort, with songs performed with the also-ace Left With Pictures, who were one of my favourite acts at last year's End of the Road festival.
The single, attributed to Peggy Sue and The Pictures (all these name changes!) will be comprised of 4 tracks, including the wonderful 'Spare Parts' and 'Escargot', both of which are delightful in the Peggy Sue set and things of bare, trembling beauty, so it will be incredibly interesting to hear them rearranged as full songs. I'm actually really excited, as when I reviewed Left With Pictures last year I picked out their precise arrangements for praise and pretentiously heralded them as "wistful, diaphenous and enchanting", which sounds rather jolly, I know.
The single will be called 'Spare Parts' and it's out on August 4th, aaaages away. It's got a lovely cover, too, look:
Meanwhile, for a bit of context, here's what Rosa Rex said about the sessions leading up to the single, over on the Peggy Sue Myspace blog:
You can preorder the single here.Me and katy have been pretty busy of late. We're doing practices every weekend with Left With Pictures which is going really well. it's fun to be able to have loads of different instruments in our songs and they're really talented. Rob has perfect pitch and they all work as human tuners which is good since our tuner still doesn't really like to work. I thought for a while maybe it was just us, but I've even read the booklet now. I guess it's temperamentality gives Sir Pablo character. Anyway they can tell us all the chords we're playing which is pretty amazing. My descriptions go along the line of 'and then you just play this string with that one on the fret that's about here' and one of them will tell me I'm playing A sharp half diminished and I feel a glow of undeserved cleverness. it's wonderful.
In Brighton - as in a lot of other cities, I'm sure - it's quite common to turn a street corner and see, perched on a garden wall or outside someone's gate, a box of possessions which are up for grabs. They're usually books, sometimes CDs, occasionally unwanted gifts. Larger items occasionally appear; microwaves, book shelves, chairs. I usually stop and have a look. A while back I grabbed an 'Indie Top 20' VHS from a box on St. Michael's Place. Recently Vic nabbed me a paperback copy of 'Him With His Foot In His Mouth and other stories' by Saul Bellow from a cardboard box on Compton avenue (which was much appreciated).
Last night me and my girlfriend went for a walk, idle in the summer sun, hoping we might find a pub and some cats to make friends with on the way (we did - The Chimney House, and a cat-caucus near Seven Dials, three podgy animals sat in conference, enjoying the weather). On the way I spotted a box of abandoned items and suddenly bent over, leafing through a box of abandoned items - mostly magazines.
"What on earth are you doing?", my girlfriend asked.
I looked up at her, puzzled.
"Just seeing if there's anything worth taking", I replied, squinting up at her.
She looked at me with mild disgust.
"In someone's recycling?"
I looked at the box, which had the Brighton and Hove council logo on its side; straightened my back; said nothing; and walked on.
Anyone else developed a bit of a crush on Slaven Bilic, the Croatia manager, during the course of Euro 2008? I think he's terrific; quite apart from the fact that he plays lead guitar in a rock group whose song for the tournament was titled 'Fiery Madness', he has a kind of innate charisma and a combination of authority and approachability, as well as being really bright. Something tells me he has the right blend of characteristics to go a long way, and I hope we see him in the premiership before long.
On the subject of charismatic leaders, my friend Dave sent me a really amazing article on K-Punk, which compares the incomparable Brian Clough with the incomparable Mark E. Smith - and does so with aplomb; a really insightful bit of writing.
"At a certain point, though, the sorcery stops working: self-belief becomes arrogant hubris, motivational techniques become mere bullying, everything dries up, apart from the drinks, which keep on coming. The fearless leader who inspires loyalty becomes the drunken Lear surrounded by sycophants. It happened to Clough, it happened to Smith."Click here to read the full post.
I suppose it's not surprising that I missed this, given that I am far from being a connoisseur of children's telly - nevertheless, I'm sad I've never stumbled upon this on the telly; it would have been a lovely thing to chance upon. As it is, my girlfriend directed me to this cartoon on youtube - it airs on Channel 5 apparently. Amazingly charming stuff. There's plenty more on there, too.
Over the last month or two I've only picked up my guitar a few times, having been pretty tied up with my ukulele, which I'm slowly getting the hang of and enjoying using enormously. And as well as playing that a lot I've been scribbling lots of lyrics - mostly half thought-through - into my notepad for later use. One of those was a quick lyric for a song called 'Night Shifts At The Airport', which transcribed various memories and observations of mine, mostly dating back a few years, and jumbled them up with other hypothetical events I've never experienced, creating a weird half-poem which feels both made-up and oddly personal. Having written them down, I toyed with a few melodies and then gave up on the song.
Then a week or two ago I sat down by my computer and idly picked up my acoustic guitar, which feels all big and foreign after so much time with the uke. And I started playing a long, repetitive and very simple sequence of three chords - E, A and Am. And all of a sudden a song was in my head and I recorded the guitar, sang the completed lyric from my notepad and fed it quickly into Garageband, where the song sat for a few days feeling rather bare and lonely. Since then I've added a bass line, a bit of piano and some more guitars, but I think it still sounds simple and quick - or it's supposed to, at least.
Here it is:
Assistant - Night Shifts At The Airport (demo) [2.35 mins, 3.6mb]
Since I saw them at the Freebutt supporting Scout Niblett a month or so ago, I've been obsessing over the five songs I own by the marvellous Peggy Sue and The Pirates, but I felt slightly worried before they took to the stage at the Komedia, recalling other times a band blew me away on the first encounter and then failed to make good on those tentative promises. At the Freebutt the band - Rosa and Katy - were engagingly messy, extremely charming and incredibly impressive, their slight, romantic songs soaring courtesy of some stunning harmonizing. Their songs, occasionally acapella but generally accompanied by acoustic guitar and an assortment of toy instruments, seemed to marry a disregard for convention with an innate appreciation of pop, and their unforced style and vocal gymnastics put a new spin on the unmannered anti-folk groups they've been lumped in with. After that show I bought a CD from Katy and she apologised again for their shambolic set. I told her that all my favourite bands are a shambles, which is pretty much true. But I did wonder if they'd turn in a more polished performance the next time round.
And, at the Komedia, they sort of do, although they're every bit as likeable and unpredictable. And - to my relief - they're still comfortably my favourite band at the moment (with the possible exception of The Wave Pictures), their songs just as good as I remembered, their voices just as pretty. They play eight or nine short songs and, buoyed by the first appearance of a new, snake-hipped drummer, a couple which, in their own words, stray into epic territory: in other words they last three of four minutes, rather than two or three.
Of the songs, its hard to pick out a favourite, especially when I hardly know any names, but I love 'New Song', which is heartbreaking and terribly graceful, and one song built on a refrain of "love will save the day, love will save the day, love will save the day" is met with a pay off which ties me up in knots - Katy's baleful, half spoken reply; "if love will only stay". On 'Phone Song' they pull off the same trick, managing to give simple lyrics emphasis and impact. "I hate it when the phone rings and it's not you" is economical and unflowery, but Peggy Sue also make it seem true, which is a nice trick to pull off. Tonight's closer - 'Escargot', if I heard right - is perhaps the evening's most sumptuous moment, where Katy's breathy, staggering voice is underlined, or countered, by Rosa's tilting melodica riff. The pause, the micro-second gap where the latter switches her attention from her instrument to the microphone provokes a in me a shiver and gasp, one of those hair-standing-on-skin moments that make pop music so exciting.
When they finish I turn to my friends and I have that feeling I always have when I encounter a new favourite band; a kind of desperation for my friends to love them too. And I'm pleased that they do, and we argue about whether we like Rosa or Katy best (it comes out two-two), and how great and how pretty they are, and how much fun their set was. When they walk past I kind of shout 'that was great' in Rosa's direction, and she smiles as if they're still a bit surprised that people like them, but they must be getting used to it. I drink another beer and watch people sitting down by the stage, ready for Diane Cluck - who is headlining - and shout to Dan that they're all 'fucking hippies' - just at the moment that Rosa walks by again, and this time she turns and looks at me, surprised, as if I tried to accost her, and I feel embarrassed and stare at my shoes.
The reason I like Peggy Sue so much, I think, is because they make me feel inspired; when I watch them I want to learn new instruments, write songs, draw pictures, make friends, wear new clothes; be generally intuitive, unhurried, open to possibilities, keen. That must be because all those characteristics, all those urges, are captured in their group, and in their songs. And that, in turn, must be why I love them so much.
I've always been more of a splasher than a swimmer; when I was a kid I just couldn't get rid of the panic-tendency which meant that as soon as I put my head under I opened my mouth and gasped, getting a mouthful of salty (or chemical-flavoured) water for my troubles. I hated school swimming-lessons, hated every texture and fibre; lycra skull caps, goosebump-effect vinyl, hard towels and rubber locker-key bands. Snorting up water, particularly, wanting to retch.
I hated diving, racing, treading water. I hated getting out of my depth. I hated the coach-journey to the local grammar school, whose posh pool was rented out to the local comprehensives, but I liked the way we used to walk through their playground and sneer at the fact that they were playing cricket not football.
I hated too-tight inflatable arm-bands, compulsory showers. I never had a veruca. I skipped class the day they told us to bring our pyjamas.
Once, long after I'd dropped PE and stopped going swimming, my grandmother told me she hated Wednesdays, and when I asked why, she said "because you always go swimming on Wednesdays, and you hate it".
I do actually like swimming, so long as no-one is making me do it. But even then I lounge round the edge of the pool or, if I swim out to the centre, eschew straight lines in favour of broad arcs and slaloms.
Here's how I learned to swim: Not at school, I don't think, although my primary school did have a pool. I remember swimming for the first time in the sea on holiday with my parents, somewhere warm. I hadn't summoned up the courage to swim properly, so I used to play a game in the water instead, which consisted of walking out well within my depth and half-running, half-bouncing along the sea-floor, playing an imaginary, slow-motion game of football. I'd pass the ball, turn, and pound slowly through the water to my position by the goal, anticipating the cross, which I would meet with a diving header carefully calibrated to leave me back in the shallows, still dry from the neck up.
One day I was scooting along on my hands and knees where the water was warmest, and hence only a foot or two deep, when I looked up to find my father pointing his camera at me. On the rare days the photo album comes out, he always points out that was the day I learned to swim - he doesn't see how my arms are tense, supporting my weight and keeping me anchored. There wasn't a moment on that holiday when I decided to take the plunge, but I think my strides got longer and my body relaxed more, until it seemed I wasn't touching the floor at all any more.
And then I noticed I wasn't.
I suppose I always associate the ability to swim with the process of growing up; the inability to do so is something you throw off, like the inability to walk, or ride a bicycle. We get to the age of, I dunno, three or four or five or six, and learn how to be comfortable in the water. Then I read this weird thing in the Guardian today, an archived article from 1919, and it really surprised me and made me think, and the idea posited within - that we are an island people scared of water - really captured my imagination and made me think about the things we take for granted about modern Britain; including the ability to swim.
"At Ashton on Sunday a crowd stood on the banks of a canal and let a two-year-old child drown.The article goes on to declare support for the 1919 Education Act, which made special provision for a new subject; the teaching of swimming. All of a sudden I think back to my childhood swimming lessons and feel a touch of gratitude, rather than remembered horror.
They even held back a spirited lad who was about to dive to the rescue, and delayed his effort until it was too late. The Coroner yesterday censured the crowd for their cowardice, but we doubt if he touched the root of the trouble.
It needs little or no courage to rescue a child from a canal. If courage were the only essential, no average British crowd would be found to lack it. But the prime factor in courage is confidence, and the paralysis that falls too often on the spectators of drowning accidents is born of a pitiful and needless fear of water.
We are an island people. None of us lives more than half a day's journey from the sea. Water is our natural element, our strength lies on it. Yet the majority of our whole population still dare not trust themselves in it."
Just reading about David Davis's bizarre decision to resign as an MP and fight a by-election on an anti-42-days platform. I can't think of a single reason why doing it makes sense, considering it'll cost heaps of the taxpayer's money, no serious party will stand against him, and it'll just turn into a circus with the BNP and UKIP chasing him around Haltemprice. The Tory party leadership is likely to be utterly perplexed. I suspect it's about ego, and nothing else.
Idiot.
Argh, the sun is out and it's all a bit weedy/folky this week. Sorry, punk rock.
1. Peggy Sue and The Pirates - Slowcoach
2. The Dodos - Red and Purple
3. The Anderson Tapes - Turn To Speak
4. Port O'Brien - All We Could Do Was Sing LP
5. Emmy The Great - Long Island (Wave Pictures cover)
6. Truckers of Husk - Cookie Cool and the Candy Mob
7. Anna Log - Scribble Talk
8. The National - Fake Empire
9. Florence and The Machine - Between Two Lungs
10. Jeffrey Lewis - The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song
Now that the sun is out more often, I've started serenading my friends with my ukulele whenever we go to the park. They smile thinly and glance at their watches, wondering when the weather will turn. But Dan is my most consistent and enthusiastic audience member, only occasionally heckling and rolling his eyes - and he recorded me playing a song ('Something Good That Grows') in Brighton's Montpellier Crescent Gardens a few weeks ago. Note me ad-libbing and confessing to Ant that I can't remember the words, and discover why I rarely choose to go clean-shaven these days...
The sun has come out in Brighton and the city seems much changed; it's proper sun and proper heat, but best of all the city is bathed in proper light, meaning that everything looks rather beautiful. St. Anne's Well Gardens, particularly, was a delight this weekend, and I went there twice, first for a breakfast on Saturday morning - where I watched the dogs leaping over each other with joy - and again yesterday, for a lovely lazy picnic with a few friends, including the brilliant Ali, who I'd not seen for ages. We did our best to play up Brighton as a city of constant sun in the hope we might tempt her back down from London for good, but I think she remembers living here well enough to remember it ain't so. She's back in Brighton next week too, which I'm very happy about.
Wisely, half of Brighton had the same idea as us, so the park was full of people lounging around, and only the rampaging kids and frisbee-throwers were a nuisance, like contstant wasps. Ali glared murderously at the former, I stared coldly at the latter, weighing up things to call them should a frisbee stray too close. The group next to us had a solar-powered record player, which I was much taken with, although not so much by their music choices. I curled my lip snobbily and cranked up my own iPod, although Dan in turn bristled at my choice of a Carl Craig tune, and conjured up a sneer of his own. We had a few beers, some white wine, bread and olives, and rued the inevitability of returning home.
...if it's true.
The Guardian report today that John Lydon - a musical hero of mine for his heroic PiL records - has been accused of punching Roxane Davis, assistant producer on a TV show Lydon is making, in the face because he didn't like the hotel room he'd been allocated. Stunningly unimpressive stuff, and bewildering too. I hope it isn't true, but it might be.
Oddly, having recorded this sad story, the Guardian's Sean Michaels decides to close his news piece by turning the article into an advert for the latest installment of the Sex Pistols tour. It's strange and dispiriting to encounter an article about a pop star punching a woman in the face should end with the line "You can admire Rotten's new teeth and nasty demeanour at the following gigs..."
More details on this song to follow; but here's a new one for you to try. This song was written over the last few weeks in a rare combination of locations: Lisbon, Somerset and the train from Bristol to Brighton last week. Once again, it's ukulele driven - I might as well just sell my guitar.
Assistant - Standards (demo) [2.13 mins, 3.5mb]
# (list sites)
Blogging Brits
? (random)
RSS Feed
