Dear everyone,
I am spending Christmas at home with my family for the first time in years. It's quiet and predictable and non-traditional - my mum's cooking fish curry for Christmas dinner and I had to argue passionately for the inclusion of Yorkshire puddings (mmm...carbs) but it's actually all rather lovely. I'll be going out of my head with boredom by Boxing Day, mind.
I've been feeling festive since Thursday, when I went to see Patrick Wolf at the Shepherd's Bush Empire. His encore was a Christmas carol medley and he came out dressed as a bauble. For the uninitiated, Patrick Wolf is a sparkly pixie-child made entirely of glitter who sings filthy songs and writhes around on stage. The audience was mainly comprised of 14-year-old schoolgirls who squealed and cooed at him and nearly fainted en masse when he climbed onto a speaker stack and took his top off. He clambered off stage and drifted within touching distance of the audience at several points and the effect was not unlike a pack of kittens playing with a moth, until teenage hormones kicked in and they all began to maul him shamelessly.
Right, I'm off to drink wine and watch a rubbish film and wonder what the slipper-shaped present from my grandmother could be. (Might it be...no, surely not - not for the seventh year running?) 2007 has been the best year of my life so far, and yet it looks like 2008 might somehow be better.
This weekend I went to All Tomorrow’s Parties with three of my most favourite bloggers:
The huge advantage that ATP has over other festivals is that you stay in a Butlins chalet rather than a tent and oh, how we loved that chalet. Even during the best bands I found myself wondering when I could go back to it, throw more glitter on my face, cook hash browns and cuddle up with my beautiful chalet mates on the sofa. One of my happiest memories is of telling everyone I loved them on Friday night before everything got a bit messy and I nearly cried over the photos in a recipe book and was then transfixed by the pattern in the curtains.
Some stats from the weekend for you:
Dirty food consumed: filthy chips, sordid meat-tastic pizza, grubby
bacon
Mulled wine drunk: really far too much. Damn you, slow cooker of joy!
Hugs given and received: approx. 3 million
Bands seen:
The Horrors: tiny Goth children made of pipe cleaners trying to be angry – aww, they were very cute and we wanted to take them home and make them cake;
Rosie Red Rash – more like Rosie Red GASH (ha ha haaargh);
Malcolm Middleton – glorious Scottish melancholia;
Portishead – I’d forgotten how much I love them. They were hypnotic and beautiful and only slightly marred by the men behind me talking loudly about hedge funds;
Madlib Medicine Show – I threw my hands in the air like I just didn’t care because they were brilliant, although the indie crowd were slightly confused by hip hop for much of the set.
Yes, I only saw five bands. None of us saw very many acts because we
were distracted by the many joys that Butlins had to offer us, and largely
shunned the magnificent line-up in favour of:
Playing Indie Bingo (“Life begins at 40 except if you’re John Lennon
because you’re dead: 40!”):
Reading Take A Break-esque magazines and making collages of the best quotes:
Cooking sausage and mash:
Doing interpretative drawings of classic album covers during a pub quiz:
It was brilliant and seemed to last two hours rather than three days. The weekend can really be summed thusly:
Hello. I have recently got a digital camera and am still grasping how it works. Most of my photos are blurred snaps of walls, or of my face as I peer at the lens in an attempt to turn the flash off. Anyway, here are some of my very first pictures.
1) I am not on a diet. I am still a friend of wheat, because wheat is totally fucking awesome. Other things that are amazing: caffeine, alcohol, cheese. Here is a pie I recently cooked:
That is my mum's finger, pointing excitedly at the pie.
2) I didn't take the following picture - it was taken by a friend of a
squirrel on crack. I am not joking. There is a genuine problem in her
area with squirrels taking drugs - not swapping acorns for heroin on
dingy alleyways, but ingesting drugs left over by junkies. Please note
that the squirrel is eating a sparrow. It is eating a sparrow because
IT IS ON CRACK:
3) Finally, how lesbian is my house? My house easily scores 6 on the Kinsey scale:
So, there you go - three photos, one of which I didn't take. I will soon be David Bailey.
I have lived in Leyton for eight months now and, on the whole, it has been brilliant. Once I recovered from the shock of moving to east London, I settled in remarkably fast. I love how easy it is to get to work, I love the local corner shops where you can buy a huge bag of pitta bread for 30p, I love hearing the distant roar of football fans when Leyton Orient play at their stadium down the road. Ok, so it’s not the most upmarket part of town and the community newsletter has a worrying amount of headlines saying “Great news – we closed down ANOTHER brothel on your road!”, but hey: at least we’re not Leytonstone. (That’s where people get knifed.)
However, what Leyton lacks is anywhere to go. There was a rumour a few months ago that a Wetherspoons would open on the high street and the whole district was abuzz with excitement. No, the most entertainment we get is watching people fight in the checkout queues in Asda. You can guarantee fisticuffs in the self-service queue - there’s something about the power trip of scanning your own shopping that sets people off.
However, this all changed on Wednesday night when I went to a local night called What’s Cookin’, a country and bluegrass club a mere 15 minutes walk away. And good grief – it was fabulous. Upstairs in an unpromising-sounding Ex-Serviceman’s Club is a proper toe-tappin’, foot-stompin’, yee-hawin’ (and other hyphenated, ‘g’-shunning adjectives) rock & roll night out. I could describe the lavishly decorated stage, but I think a photo does it better:
Truly, it is a labour of love, and all done for about fifty people who cram in for free. Did I mention it was free? There’s a whip-round at the end where you can give as much as you think the bands deserve.
The first act was a bit gloomy, frankly – “country emo”, as my companion deemed him. I liked his lank hair and beard and merchandise featuring an eagle attacking a unicorn, but not his sixth-form lyrics or morose tunes. But we forgot about him as soon as the headliners, the Southern Tenant Folk Union, came on. Banjos! Violins! A double-bass! Six-part harmonies! They were soulful and upbeat and sang songs about cocaine and the Bible and loose women and oh my, they were fantastic. At the end they came off stage and played a few songs acoustically, stood right in front of us. It was intimate and electric and, as a friend commented, like getting an alt-country lapdance. I tottered home feeling tired but joyful.
The next day I felt a renewed glow of love for scruffy, unglamourous Leyton. A sense of community spirit surged through me because now I have somewhere local to socialise, and it is amazing the difference that makes.
And then I walked to a friend’s house and on the ten minute journey I saw two men smoking crack in a phone booth, a pile of human excrement on the street and a man being wilfully sick on the steps of the police station.
And I remembered why I want to move to Tooting.
My latest distraction at work is the "Missed Connections" section of the Gumtree website. For the uninitiated, this section is devoted to people who shared a moment together but, for some reason, did not exchange contact details. Sometimes mobile phones are tragically lost, rendezvous are unavoidably missed, shyness regrettably prevents the potential soulmates from swapping numbers. Most often, however, the scenario can be summed up thusly:
i see u every night
To the pretty lady i see every night on the tube and bus. Today u had a blue pull over on. U stood next to me on the tube wanted to say hello?
u have the most amazing blue eyes and a face to die for. I had the green german jacket on.
if u read this pls get in touch or i might just ask u oneday on the train. [Shogun74]
Yes, many of them are men who have seen an attractive woman on the tube and hope that she felt the same damp rush of lust that they did. Some advice, Shogun74 - do not start a missive to your prospective lady love with "i see u every night." That is what stalkers do. Women don't like to feel they're being followed, especially not by a man in a - sorry, "the" - green German jacket.
I'm sure many of them are made up, but I fear the bulk of these deluded men who think gurning at a woman who then legged it = the start of a beautiful romance are sincere. For instance:
sat oppostie u on circle district line
we both got on the circle/district line, i sat opposite u in a black coat/scarf in jeans. U were chewing on ur nail looking around the train, i got off at westminter.
we had a few glimpses in each others direction.... [Zeafly]
Zeafly, a few glimpses does not augur the start of something beautiful. She was probably wondering why you were looking at her and rubbing your thighs and groaning. She was clearly anxiously biting her nails and looking around desperately for someone who'd help her when you inevitably lunged. Give it up and move on before you get a restraining order.
There aren't many penned by women, but they tend to follow these lines:
it was a fun night, sorry about kickin you out so early, :( would like it to be more than a one night stand, get in touch. [Anon]
Oh dear, Anon. What would your mother say?
My favourite ever ad, however, both terrifies and amuses me in equal parts. It is a work of art which I intend to print out in large font and exhibit at a gallery, entitled ‘Gravy’:
little fat woman outside mcdonalds
thursday night at hammersmith mcd,at about just after closing time you were on the floor crying and i said to you are you crying because you are hungry?and you said to me fuck off,because you had fallen over and grazed youre leg.there was blood all over the floor, and i said what bloodtype are you,gravy.please dear god of love may we meet again.
From the age of 14 to 18 I sang in a choir at the Royal Festival Hall every Easter, performing Bach's St Matthew Passion. It possibly sounds more impressive than it was - our music teacher played piano for the choir's rehearsals and press-ganged a group of us into joining the Ripieno Chorus. The story is simple enough – Jesus does a bunch of miracles, Judas betrays him, he dies. The chorus’s job is to go "hey, look, it’s the son of God, you morons!" while the rest of the choir sings "this Jesus guy sucks! FREE BARABBAS!" like a braying Jeremy Kyle audience. Then the chorus has to not be too smug at the end when the choir realises that oops, he really was the messiah and they probably shouldn’t have called for his violent death. Too late now! I’m over-simplifying somewhat. Rehearsals, bringing together half a dozen different schools, were held at a private girls' school in central London. This was a masterclass in how the other half lived. The glass-walled building overlooked the Thames and smelled of scented cleaning fluid and privilege. It wasn't quite Scumbag College vs Footlights College, but we were very aware of being the only inner London comprehensive. We'd chat to the groomed private school pupils on breaks during rehearsals. They'd use words we didn't understand like "prep" and "day boarders", and we'd confuse them with our creative swearing. We bonded over Britpop though. Everyone did in 1995. We did several performances each year, having to get up at an ungodly hour to arrive at 8am to warm-up. We whinged half-heartedly about the early mornings but we would have done anything to stand on that stage and sing. We knew this was not an opportunity that would come round again. It was drawing near to the end of the last performance of one year and we were all tired. We’d been standing for over an hour and I was terrified of losing concentration and dropping my book. I idly scanned the audience and wondered if I knew anyone out there, if everyone was enjoying the music, if they all realised that they weren’t supposed to clap at the end (apparently it would be tantamount to applauding the crucifixion so, instead, everyone had to file out in silence. It was odd). Suddenly, there was a commotion in the stalls on the top right. A man clutching his chest, feet sprawled forward, head at an unnatural angle; a woman standing over him, a steward rushing over. The seating arrangements meant most of the audience were unaware of his struggle. Maybe thirty people around him saw him fall and felt the agonising delay before he was stretchered out, but from the stage we had a clear view. I sensed everyone around me watching him; we all had one eye on the stalls and the other on the conductor. We were, potentially, soundtracking a dying man's moments. I'd like to say it was the best performance we gave, but it wasn't. It was, however, the most intense and heartfelt, and the most coherent. We lifted our voices and sang as one for the final chorale. It’s quite beautiful – about grief and loss and abandonment, and the belated realisation that you should have believed in someone who has now left you forever. I remember listening for the clash/resolve of the final notes, where discord acquiesces into harmony and says that just maybe everything will be ok. I'm going a bit Pseud's Corner now but I love this music. That's how I'd like to die; holding the hand of someone I love, cloaked in beautiful music. Make it quick, don't let me linger.
End of the Road is officially the best festival ever. I've just returned from camping with some sexy bloggers, among others, and had the happiest, most glorious weekend I've had in ages.
Things I learned:
- if you sleep alone in a tent you run a 90% chance of dying of the cold;
- people from north Wales are called gogs. They are all bitter and talk funny;
- dry shampoo will not make you feel better. It will make you look and smell like an old woman;
- Herman Dune are "like Belle & Sebastian if they'd been knitted by Bagpuss";
- festivals with only 5000 people are exponentially better than
large-scale mega festivals - no endless walking between stages, no
getting lost, no taking an hour to walk 20 yards due to the sheer mass
of punters all trying to go the same way;
- walking out of rubbish sets is brilliant (step forward Scout Niblett,
Robyn Hitchcock and Midlake). Special notice must go to Mary Hampton
who was too twee even for me, with her songs about frozen sparrows
falling out of trees;
- Swedish cider is bloody lovely;
- if one of your party falls asleep in front of the main stage, why not invite your fellow festival goers to place money on his torso and make a wish by rubbing his head? You may make as much as £1.32;
- enchanted forests are an underrated delight;
- there are few nicer ways to end a festival than drinking Cosmopolitans while listening to James Yorkston.
I might write more later, after I've slept for several hours. I've almost entirely lost my voice now. Brilliant.
