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I'm off to Yorkshire for a few days tomorrow. There will be pens. And hopefully, cake.

bang bang rock n' roll

A spam email turned up the other day, posing a couple of interesting questions:

'In a band? Wanna be the opening act for Bon Jovi at the 02 Arena?'

I'm tempted to reply with 'nope, but I'll have a go.' Presumably if nobody else entered the competition Bon Jovi would have to put up with me as their support act. I have no musical skills at all, but I could borrow my Mum's Bontempi keyboard and therefore treat the Jovi's audience to a tinny, pre-recorded, electronic bossanova. This would probably enrage the band (and their audience) but thankfully the keyboard is quite chunky and would function pretty well as a shield.

Actually, I own a ukulele which is sitting unplayed in the top of my wardrobe. Every time I scrabble around up there I see the box and remember that I really should pick it up again. At one stage, I was having lessons, practising daily and being constantly irritated by slowness of my digits. On every occasion whenever I've tried to learn anything musical, I've felt like I needed to apologise to the instrument. I keep telling myself that one day I will go back to it. I will become a uke mistress and my stage name will be 'Slothfingers'.

this is just like television, only you can see much further

I looked out of the window of the 41 this afternoon and noticed that there was a tv remote control (an elderly, chunky one) on top of a bus shelter. As I saw 'Being There' the night before it got me wondering all sorts of things about coincidence.

'Being There' deals in part with people's tendency to look for meanings and make up their own when none can be found. The main character, as played splendidly by Peter Sellers, is called Chance. Chance is a blank. A man child who loves to watch TV. People start to 'project' what they want onto him. Eventually, they start to call him a genius and declare his every utterance to be profound. It's an unusual film - a lots of sad/funny going on.

At one point, some kids shout at Chance in the street and he produces his TV remote control from his coat pocket, presses buttons and wonders why they're still there. I'm wondering if something similar happened to a Norf London version of Chance whilst on a bus somewhere, hence the abandoned remote. Perhaps school bullies have moved on from taking their victim's PE kits and bus passes and are breaking into other kid's houses to steal their parent's stuff. That's taking bullying to a new low - not only would it mean humiliation for the victim, but it might also put them at serious risk of a parental bollocking.

Which reminds me of something I was pondering earlier - what is the female equivalent of 'stark bollock naked'? I don't think there is one. The only thing I can think of is 'stark top bollock naked' after the slightly icky (and biologically inaccurate) slang beloved of 'No Gurls' type laddish lads. I suppose there is no female equivalent of 'git', either though I think I once decided that it was 'gite', which is pronounced exactly the same as 'git' only with a fake French accent. Though I'd quite like it if it was 'git-ette' or 'gitelle'.

we will still need a song

Overheard on the 134 bus the other day: ‘I can’t believe you voted Tory. That’s really surprising. And do you know what else is surprising? We’ve got a spiders’ nest in our bathroom!’ The speaker was a young woman in a pretty coat. She gave no clue as to the political inclinations of the spiders.

The past few days have seen more gigging. Friday was Alabama 3 at the Kentish Town Forum. We were sitting upstairs, so I had to chair dance. As they have been ever since I first saw them in, like 1998 or something scary like that (it was back when I was a student and was still going through my super static polyester vintage blouses phase - no idea why I remember that) the band were pretty splendid - funky, swampy and bonkers. So a lot of seated Bez shuffling was going on.

Chair Bez-ing is pretty difficult, especially when you have a limited space to work with. I used to know a couple of fellas who were masters at pub based chair dancing. Chair Morrissey and chair Blues Brothers were their specialities. I don’t know how well they’d get on in a gig type situation.

Last night involved Hawksley Workman at the Borderline, which is a sweaty basement which appears to have been decorated like a Wild West themed burger bar. As Hawksley himself commented (and he chatted almost as much as he sang, which isn’t out of the ordinary for him. Thankfully his onstage banter is highly entertaining - he's like your oddest mate after they've eaten a lot sugar.) the place smelt quite strongly of steak.

Hawksley plays rocky poppy cabaret folk songs. Some of which sound like Sparks. He has a massive back catalogue full of catchy ditties so a lot of singalongs happened. Last night, he encouraged us to sing choruses whilst he’ll harmonised, sang bits of other peoples songs and pulled what my friend memorably described as a ‘sex face’.

For some reason, the front row of the gig seemed to be entirely made up of women with cameras. I’m not sure how many pictures of two men (HW and his pianist ‘Mr Lonely’) one person needs, but it was a whole symphony of whirrs and clicks, which was quite irritating. Still, we enjoyed Hawksley.

I’m not seeing any bands at all this week. But at least my bathroom is spider-free. I’ve not asked any of my friends how they voted, but may do so whilst on the way into work tomorrow.

i! wanna rock n' roll all night!

I've always suspected that all serious, shuffling, indie fringe wearing musos secretly yearn to be the bloke out of Aqua whose job it was to say 'C'mon Barbie, let's go party.' Some days, fluff is what you need. Sometimes, you want to get on a roller coaster and scream profanities. There are days when the only sensible course of action is to cover yourself in glitter and go 'rrrrraaaaarrrrrrrgh.'

Basically, I went to see Kiss last night and I bloody loved it. I guess that's me off the indie roll call for, like, ever. Bubblegum pop/rock played really really loud. Spinal Tap goes panto. Pyrotechnics. Indoor fireworks. Men in their 60s whose job it is to dress up at monsters and prowl in high heels, pointing at people.

It'll be a day or two before my eardrums recover. Which is unfortunate, as I'm off to two other gigs over the weekend - Alabama 3 and Hawksley Workman. I think they'll both be somewhat quieter. This evening, I'm recovering by watching Bill Oddie talking about crayfish.

pome

I am a hypocrite*. After criticising other people's reactions to the big ol' wrestler man's face yesterday, I've spent a lot of today musing on the close resemble between David Cameron's features and a baked potato.

It would be too easy to have a political rant today, so here's a poem I wrote a few weeks ago instead:

Quiet Song, N6

We came.
We grew
From liquorice-coloured earth.
Wind battered.
Kicked, trampled.
Showered by torrents of rain
And (occasionally) dog’s piss.
Our siblings sit indoors.
Smug in front rooms with pianos in.
They don’t know the air
Like we do.
Our lot isn’t easy.
But we make people smile.
And that’s enough.
Nevermind the poetry.
We shot up.
Proud. Vegetable-like.
Quietly flamboyant.
Not delicate.
For all our complaints.
We enjoy being daffodils.

* Someone I know had an aversion to the word 'hypocrite', so when she wanted to describe someone as hypocrital she would announce that they had 'hippo tits.' This really needs to go into the OED, pronto.

an elegant letter of thanks, in French, with practically no spelling mistakes.

I've been reading up on Mr Tillet, The French Angel. He's starting to sound like a character from an epic novel, something historical and smelling of greasepaint like 'Nights at the Circus' or Glen David Gold's 'Sunnyside', which I'm reading at the moment.

'Four enterprising young anthropologists' measured his head in 1940, presumably so they could do research or play a kind of measurements Top Trumps game with their chums. It's odd that they seemed surprised by the 'thank you' letter. What were they expecting him to do? Send them a crayon drawing of a horse-y? Why is it so hard to recognise unusual looking people as anything other than performing animals.

More recent accounts of Tillet usually tend to end with people speculating whether Shrek was based on his unusual visage. And then someone will probably suggest that he probably had a'good soul', which is well-meaning, but also a bit patronising.

Nobody seems to have asked the most important questions about the French Angel, namely: 1) Did the Americans ever try to use him in World War Two? And if so, how? 2) Who would win in a paranormal wrestling bout between Tillet's ghost and Andre the Giant's?

It wasn't part of yesterday's exhibition, but there are other Irving Penn pictures of the Angel online, like the one I've used here. It seems that old timey wrestlers had to wear granny pants whilst in the ring. I bet they were glad when spandex was invented.

interesting times...

No-one knows who's in charge of the country. Anarchy could happen at any moment (though it'd be a British form of anarchy, mostly based on tutting) and now Gordon Brown has resigned.

The BBC website features an unflattering freeze frame of a mid-speech Gordon, gob half open, looking sleepy. Hopefully, he can catch up on some zzzds now that the announcement has been made. Though from what I can gather, politicians aren't supposed to need much sleep. Which would suggest that the ideal PM would either be a teenager raver or a toddler.

Politics is everywhere at the moment, unsurprisingly enough. I went to the Irving Penn Portraits exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery this evening and had to endue a very loud man in bad knitwear outlining to his companion (and therefore everyone who was trying to enjoy Penn's dreamy b&w pics) exactly what he thought about proportional representation.

The exhibition featured a lot of interesting pictures (Alfred Hitchcock looking like a huge baby in a suit, Marlene Dietrich looking gorgeous, Audrey Hepburn's impish smile), but the one that caught my attention most was of the wrestler Maurice Tillet, whose stage name was The French Angel.

Maurice was both a poet and a chess enthusiast. Non-wiki accounts of his life suggest that he spent several years studying law, several more in the French navy before becoming one of the first Wrestling superstars. His image got to be a work of art twice over, with the Penn picture (not available online, sadly) and Louis Linck's sculpture, pictured here.

Interesting fella. The Penn portrait makes him look defiant. Like he'd be capable of telling the jumper man to 'button it'. I'm not sure what the French for 'button it' is, but it would probably sound pretty effective coming from Morris.

then...

If I was the Prime Minister,’ my classmate M proclaims, waggling his highlighter pen, ‘I’d get Robocop to be my bodyguard.’

His friends nod. They are all nine and ten and take the concept of ‘cool ‘really seriously. It’s 1988. As far as characters from TV and film go, Robocop is cool. Even though, with the exception of one lad who has a youngish Dad who is scornful of censorship, most of them have not actually seen the film.

It’s lunchtime and I’m sitting opposite the boys as they colour in the pictures in their ‘Choose your Own Adventure’ books and discuss Robocop. The idea of any of them becoming Prime Minister is fairly daft, but then the twenty first century is looming up and we all know that it’s going to be, to use the parlance of the times 'well futuristic'. Even ‘Tomorrow’s World’ features androids (some of which are capable of break dancing), so they’re definitely going to be a big part of everyone’s lives.

What am I doing whilst the conversation is going on? Doodling. Sheets and sheets of computer paper are filled with my scrawls. Some of them are inspired by ‘Labyrinth’, ‘ET’ and all of those other memorable trips to the temple of Butterkist. I haven’t seen Robocop, but thanks to Video Venture in my local town centre I’ve seen the lurid posters for an impressive haul of 18 certificate films. The idea of a Prime Minister (I can’t image anyone other than Margaret Thatcher being in charge of the country, but my parents have told me that one day someone else will be) with Robocop strolling by his side appeals to my very silly imagination.

As a girl (and the boys in my class have decided that girls are definitely not cool, though as we have all be learning and playing together for six years now some of them will grudgingly admit that we are the same species), I’m not supposed to join in with their Robocop based imaginings. What are girls supposed to talk about? I suspect that the answer involves Bros.

As the lads move onto another topic (probably football or more likely football stickers), I start to write a little story on my computer paper. A story in which M is the Prime Minister and he has just appointed a futuristic law enforcer on his staff. The story quickly becomes a fake news report. A curious cocktail, based on my limited understanding of both politics and horror films.

I decide to make Freddie Krueger the Home Secretary. I’m not too sure what the Home Secretary does (though I suspect it involves pencil sharpeners), but for some reason the idea of a wise-cracking murder being one appeals. Perhaps Freddie could sharpen his claws after he’d finished doing all of the PM’s HBs.

By the time my news report is finished, lunchtime is nearly over. I finish with a sentence along the lines of ‘Mr Freddie Krueger, the Home Secretary was unable to make further comment as he had a prior engagement to kill Kylie and Jason.’ Strange, ungainly words for a nipper to use. I can only assume that it was something I’d absorbed from watching the news. I had a bit of a grudge against Kylie and Jason, though I couldn’t really explain why.

I showed the story to M and the boys who had inspired it. Sadly, they were unimpressed. I’d crossed something of a line into boy-world. A couple of the girls were more interested, possibly because they were pleased with any sort of mention of Jason Donovan.

Twenty-two years later, there’s no sign of Robocop (yet) but real-life politics looks very much like one of those ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books, minus the dragons. I have seen Jason Donovan doing a glittery version of ‘McArthur Park’ on a West End stage. And I’ve danced like a wonky wind-up toy to Ms Minogue’s ditties on a few occasions. There’s a new ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’ film out, with a different Freddie in. Pop culture nonsense and politics seem to be folding in on themselves like a David Lynch narratives. As far as I know, M hasn’t gone into politics but perhaps he will do when robots become more involved.