On the 16th we played The Fiddler’s Elbow to a packed out crowd! Umm, okay, so that’s a porky. Yes, we played The Fiddler’s Elbow, and it was a really good gig. But, as it was a Wednesday night, there were only a few people there. Still, slowly-slowly catch the monkey – or some such platitude.
Anyway, for your delectation and delight, here’s a video of ‘Broken Heart’ a song penned by Codey, a friend I never met who, very sadly, died just before his 18th Birthday.
When I was very small, way back when, I remember being ill. I think it was flu, but it might have been measles… anyway, I wasn’t well. And I wasn’t a good patient, either.
So there I was—I can picture the room, the single bed, the smell of the pillows and the blankets, and the smell of Vick’s vapour rub—and in comes my Dad with a book. I have a feeling he’d just got back from a business trip to America, but I could be jumbled up.
Anyway, after feeling my forehead—as parents are wont to do—he sat down and read me the tale of Max and the Wild Things. And then he read it again, as did most of the decent adults who ministered to poor old me. Once was good, but twice was better! Once I was well again it became a bedtime ritual… for a bit. I haven’t read it in an age, and the last time was to my nephews.
I was very sad when I heard Maurice Sendak had died, but thinking of Max and the Wild Things, and his fantastic illustrations have stirred up some wonderful memories.
Like a lot of people I was brought up believing that in order to be successful you had to be a charismatic extrovert. Until puberty I was—at least I think I was. An extrovert, certainly. Charisma… probably not. Though I made up for it by rushing around being very loud.
Now, I’d definitely say I’m an introvert. I like my own company and that of a few friends (and books, and writing). I can’t tell a joke—or pontificate to an audience—to save my life.
Like a light being turned on, Susan Cain’s ‘The Power of Introverts,’ a TED lecture, explains.
In the bog of the smuggler, Pett.
We played a gig on Sunday at The Smuggler in Pett. As gigs go it went jolly well. There was a nice lady dancing by the bar, and quite a few more people tapping feet. There was also clapping to which I humbly replied “Thank you,” or “Thank you so much,” in a slightly shy murmur that, no doubt, Freddie Mercury would have howled at.
The odd song arrangement I managed to stuff up went well, too: in that nobody noticed, or if they did they were to polite to say. It’s amazing that you can rehearse until you’re as perfect as perfect can be, and then your brain goes blank when faced with an audience. Ho hum, and c’est la vie and all that.
Anyway, the point of this blog entry is A) I haven’t blogged in a while and thought I should, and B) we had a poster and I thought you should see it. Of course the poster wasn’t just put up in the gents, it was on the noticeboard as well. But where’s the fun in that?
Kamakura - on the rack in HMV
A while back, though not in the dimest past, I found Mick sniggering. On asking him what was so funny he said he’d put a copy of our album ‘Dealing With Liquids’ in the racks at HMV Records in the town centre.
‘Sure you did,’ I said in a disbelieving tone designed to wind him up. Then I forgot. A while later he said there were now three in there and they been marked up at £10. ‘Hmm,’ said I, as sometimes young Mick can be a little fanciful … a little bit Walter Mitty.
So … I finally found myself near HMV and went to have a look: and now I publically kowtow, and apologise for disbelieving him. There was our CD in all its shrink-wrapped glory. I was almost tempted to buy it so they’d re-order; I was almost tempted to buy it to see if we ever received a royalty statement.
The thrill of seeing your own album in a large record store is worth the cost of putting the album there yourself. Better, anyway, than having them glaring at you from a shelf above your desk.
Word! 
A few of Ai-Weiwei's hand-made ceramic sunflower seeds.
I’m outraged that with a world on the brink of disaster – atrocities in Baba Amr (Syria) that the West seem incapable of stopping; the Iranian situation; x millions starving and living below the poverty line, not to mention the ice caps melting – that Tate Modern have scrounged, yet again, from the public purse to buy eight million hand-made ceramic sunflower seeds.
Ai Weiwei’s exhibition of a hundred million hand-made ceramic sunflower seeds might have been ‘stunning’ and ‘tremendous’ and ‘mind blowing’, but really it was a turbine shed full of pebbles – okay, so they were pretty pebbles. Now, it’s a clever ploy to fleece the U.K. exchequer – in the guise of The Art Fund – of hard won petrol revenues, not to mention all those other cloth eared dimwits who’ve chipped in. AND they’re not even getting the whole exhibit! Al WeiWei still has the other ninety two million hand-made ceramic sunflower seeds to flog to naive collectors the world over.
I thought that Tracy Emin’s bed was the ultimate ‘con,’ but it seems I was mistaken.
Mark my words: there willl be hand-made ceramic sunflower seeds coming out of EBay’s arse before too long.
It all seems somewhat reminiscent of the last days of Rome. There we all are: fiddling, while the world goes to hell around us.
A chain, three double crochets, and a 6mm hook
It maybe that I’ve lost my mind; it maybe that I’m beginning the end; it may even be that Nathan Lowell’s Trader Tales space opera about the life and times of Ishmael Wang has me too captivated. I honestly don’t know, but whatever the cause I’ve taken up crochet.
When I was knee high to a grasshopper—admittedly a very large boy sized grasshopper—my dad had a bad back and was consequently laid up in bed, where he taught himself to knit (that the sweater he made was too heavy and too large to wear is for another blog). The point is: knitting captivated him for a while—or was that his bad back? No. He was a captive in his bed and started knitting. Yes, that’s the way it was. Anyway, that’s neither here nor there. The next point is: he wasn’t worried about people sniggering at him.
And neither am I. I’m inordinately proud of my chain, and those three double crochets. You have no idea (unless you crochet, too) how hard that achievement was to achieve: bloody hard, that’s how hard it was. There’s miles of discarded wool lying around in small heaps all over the house, as well as a lot of blue tinged language littering the ether and heading for Proxima Centauri.
So, if you’d like to listen to some excellent Sci Fi that might—or might not—get you drooling for a ball of wool and a crochet hook, then download Nathan Lowell’s stellar podcast HERE. The one that starts you crocheting is ‘Half Share’, but best to start at the beginning with ‘Quarter Share.’ I can almost guarantee you’ll listen to them all—and maybe even start crocheting, too.
Brighter than bright, the moon woke me up
The full moon was on the 7th, but either it was cloudy or I was deep, deep dreaming. Last night it seemed so bright that whatever I did I couldn’t avoid being woken by it. Some might say I should have pulled the curtains, and maybe so. But I didn’t: I opened the window, shoved my phone out and got this evocative—werewolf howling—snap.
a very daft place to park
Yonks ago—when I was knee high to a grasshopper—I worked on a film shoot for Vauxhall Motors, in Wales. It was a lot of fun, but what I primarily remember was the grip (a chap in charge of moving the camera and of camera dollies and track) parking his van too close to the sea in an area where the tide came in faster than you could run.
Somewhere, I have a series of photographs starting with his van parked on dry beach and ending with the grip swimming out and attaching a buoy to his submerged van’s wing-mirror.
Laugh? We nearly paid our license fees. And the van? The van was swept several miles down the estuary out to sea, and ended up on a sandbank. The grip got a new one on his insurance.
Needless to say we all got a bollocking from the local coastguard for stupidity.
The Terrafugia Transition taking off
I’ve always wanted to fly, though I’ve never had enough money to get a private pilots license. I do, however, drive. I enjoy driving a lot, and the faster the car the better. It’s probably why I follow F1, but I digress. Flying and driving without having to have both a car and a plane. It seems very far fetched – very Flash Gordon, but it’s not!
For under $300,000 you too can get a flying car … or a car that flies. Reserve one for $10,000.
Here’s a video to whet your appetite.
