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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.