SOTD: I Love Paris – Ella Fitzgerald

At the moment, as I write this, I’m looking out into a wooded glade. The sky behind this glade, which is on the side of a sloping hill, is sunlit but with gathering grey cloud and a rising wind. It is peaceful but there is a sense of change coming, of a storm approaching. I am sad. I am torn. One of the cities I love has been attacked, my city of lights, of love, has been brutalised in the name of a god who, if he/she existed, would strike down with furious vengeance the perpetrators of this horror. The sadness is all pervading, it has seeped into my very bones. I know, truly, what it is to have a heavy heart. I watch the news obsessively, seeing the body count rise, hearing the witnesses’ stories, gathering the opinions of those who are in charge and I despair. What on earth is it in us that can contemplate such brutality? Celebrate it, see it a ‘blessed’ thing? On the television, through Twitter and Facebook there are people with messages of support and love. I have been one myself, my avi and profile pictures changed to reflect my love for that great city and its people. But what is that? The re-arrangement of some pixels on a screen? Is it any more significant than liking a motivational poster? Do I feel any better for ‘hanging in there’? I don’t know. One thing that doesn’t work for me are the statistics. A man once said, “I can tell you anything with statistics, except the truth”, and that is true here. What difference does it make that in Europe only 2% of terror attacks have been religious based? Or that 0.003% of those that call themselves Muslim are behind such attacks? This isn’t a ‘nerd off’, a comparison between Xbox and PS4, Star Trek and Star Wars, this is lives. What does the attack feel like? What effect does it have? That is what is important. It is right to play down the numbers of people who do this, to talk of a small minority, but oh, what an effect.We cannot deny the shock, the horror, the loss and depression that comes with such an attack and, to be honest with you, the statistics are small beer in relation to what I am feeling right now. And what I feel is varied. I am incredibly labile, the feelings come in waves: despair, sadness, pity, scorn, love. I have been writing a sort story, one where a victim of a tragedy that is unfolding goes through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance. I did wonder if that is what I am going through too. Currently I am at depression. It is easy to quickly experience the others, from “This can’t be happening”, to “Those bastards”, to “Only talk will stop this”. I don’t know if the last is true, but I do know that killig won’t solve it, it has never solved anything. Killing leads to complications, to further hatred, to further killing.

For me, the thing to fall back on is my past. I grew up in London at a time when the IRA was in full swing, when their strategy was to bring terror to mainland Britain, bring the war to the people. We were shocked by the bombings, the assassinations, the terror. I lived through that as a boy and young man, and maybe it was because I was young that it had less effect, maybe it was because my lfe was full of hope, love, work, friends. Or maybe it was because I recognised that, like the trite tee shirt slogan, you keep calm and you carry on. And I think that is what I recognise about today. I remember 7/7, I remember how the reaction to it rose is inverse proportion to the distance from it. I was right there, I came close to being on the Piccadilly line train that was attacked and I kept calm and carried on. I had friends from the US convinced we were sitting in the burnt ruins of a city, or we were dead and devastated – distance does a funny thing to your perceptions. We Kept Calm, we Carried On. That is what I will do too.

SOTD: Hang on, four songs?! You’re taking the piss, aintcha?. Magic Carpet Ride – Steppenwolf. Look Out Young Son – Grand Ole Party. Cry To Me – Solomon Burke. PFunk (Wants To Get Funked Up) – Parliament.

Have you ever had one of those days when it seems like every track that pops up on shuffle is a classic? I decided to stop at four today 🙂

The joy of being my age is that there is no internal pressure to be up to date, cutting edge, ‘with it’. When I was younger I always wanted to be the ‘hipster’, at the forefront of a fashion in music or dress. It was a basic function of insecurity, I wanted to be liked and being on the crest of a wave was how I felt I could be. As I have aged I have come to appreciate that my friends liked me for me, especially as we went through various things together, break ups, fights, reunions, parental problems, life. I was always slightly precocious, reasonably witty and not without a certain charm. Charm that was balanced with selfishness and a knack for cruelty that took no account of consequences. I am a big boy now 🙂 and whilst I continue with some insecurities, I am usually wise enough to recognise when I am being a dick and temper it.
Hmm. Well that descended into deepness a bit too quickly didn’t it? The point is when I come across a piece of music now it doesn’t matter the age, the obscurity or not, my only questions are: do I like it? is it interesting? does it say something to me? The first song is a fine example, something I have heard before as a cover and came as a surprise from my ipod.

When I first heard Magic Carpet Ride it was on the soundtrack of Reservoir Dogs, by Bedlam, and although of mild interest, not the most entertaining or quirky song on that film. I had no idea it was originally recorded by Steppenwolf. Someone posted a Youtube of Steppenwolf performing ‘Sookie Sookie’ so I took a look. I had never seen the band before clicking that link, no memory of them on Old Grey Whistle Test for example, or even Top Of The Pops, so I was curious to see them. As it turned out they looked a typical late 60s rock band, a certain Doorsian sensibility. Sookie Sookie, though was a pretty good track so I thought I’d download a greatest hits album and check out the sound. Of course whenever anyone talks of Steppenwolf, it is their most famous track that comes to mind – Born To Be Wild, an enjoyable rocking, hippy number which brings to mind other tracks like ‘Silver Machine’ by Hawkwind etc. Anyway, this track came as a bit of a surprise, so was fun for that. I can’t say it’s better, but it is the original.

This one was a delight to hear for the first time, one of those tracks that has been selected on a soundtrack and fits. Grand Ole Party’s Look Out Young Son was on the soundtrack of the movie All Cheerleaders Die, a silly, fun film that actually felt more like an extended episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Not to go into the plot, four young women are transformed and this track plays under their first arrival, post transformation, at school. The scene is all slo-mo, walking Spanish down the hall, students reacting to the clear change. The track has a comic, almost circus feel opening guitar lick but the main gist of the song is watch out boys, we will fuck you up.

I caught this beauty (not as a surprise) on the soundtrack to the flabby, unthrilling, unfunny, frankly underwhelming Man From Uncle. It was pretty much the only highlight. For anyone who is a fan of soul music, Solomon Burke is a huge name, an artist certainly up with the greats. His voice is one of treacle, warm, round, filled with emotion, his songs should be recognised as classics. When you listen to his music, you are transported, hearing not only the soul of the songs, but their roots in rhythm and blues, in country. Cry To Me is a brilliant song and has been used before in Dirty Dancing.

THIS is a banging tune! Now, the youtube I found is a live track, so you will have to wait a bit while the saxaphone solo noodles playfully along before getting to the meat and potatoes of the song but once you do, you will not be disappointed. Of course we all know George Clinton is completely nuts but Parliament’s glorious mix of bass heavy funk allied with the idea of black science fiction is inspired. I want my funk uncut!

SOTD: Blind Love – Tom Waits

Note: For anyone remotely confused by my previous post (cocks an ear to stage front, listens for a reaction, a breath, anything)  it was for a thing called sfswap, where people submit a concept idea, theme or proposition which is then randomly given to someone else to write a short story on, 1000 words or less. The story, along with some 60 odd others will be up on sfswap.org soon – various stories have been posted by the organiser already.

Today is a romantic, ethereal mix of fog and sun. Up here on the Jesus Walk strands of fog remain floating through the trees and the sun highlights them, making striated curtains of diaphanous silk. The thin arms of branches give a haunting, spectral feel.

  
Clochette of course is ignoring that entirely, chasing and yipping after small beasties to her heart’s content. My romantic emo twostep up the hill has already been interrupted by her, black and tidy, a pink tongue quivering as she pants. The look is one of excited contentment, as if to say, “Did you see me? I chased and chased and chased and chased”! It fills my heart each time I see her like this, happy, busy and curious.

  
What I love about the picture above is that it seems more like a romantic horror movie set than a section of the woods I walk in. The mood up here, especially when there is fog, light rain or brooding cloud cover, is one of a disquieting peace, the wood trembling on the edge of some transformative experience. I have likened it before to the mood of Picnic At Hanging Rock, the combination of a sense of silence, brooding rocky outcrops and decay.

Today’s song is not about any particular mood or feeling I’m having, just that when it came on I wait expectantly for a line I love, “They say if you get far enough away, you’ll be on your way back home”. Unlike my own philosophy of life, this statement seems to be fatalistic, that whatever you do, however far you flee, you’ll always return to home. It some ways that could been seen as comforting – that is if home is where you rest happily. Of course the overriding problem is that the line also says you can never escape your past. Of course the discography of Tom Waits is littered with lonliness, love lost or broken, damaged people drinking too much and hurting each other with self destructive behaviour – all of which is underlined with a sense of fate, or at least that humans are cursed with a tendency to repeat mistakes. This song is a beauty, where the fact the love is lost is the sad, sad point. The love is blind but all seeing for that. But he can only find her by closing his eyes, dreaming. Melancholic with a lyrical country feel, the guitar makes me picture Texas for some reason 🙂

Tomorrow At Noon

“Tomorrow at noon, the Fireflies will rise”.

Greg’s eyes slide from Grazzo’s face, looks out from the booth and scans the bar. Apart from a crumpled blonde adjusting her gauzy wings over her gaudy wiggle skirt by the jukebox, a pair of broken nosed sports fans propping up the bar and arguing the merits of a world championship of fifty years gone, the only other in the dank room is the barman; an ape of a man, he wipes a grubby cloth across one spot of the bar, his collapsed, resigned face accepting no talker and promising a stone ear to any who tried.

Greg turns his attention back to the whey-faced man and sighs, “The Birds won’t stand for it”.

“Itching for a rumble”, Grazzo sneers. “Monique has a point, Pierszinski, nothing about last night was right and the ‘flies want blood”. The sneer in his voice is replaced with anger, and Greg, despite himself is impressed.

‘How can this ragtag bunch of Fifties rejects command passion from a rat like this’, he thinks. His frown is noticed. Grazzo plunges on.

“This means change. That bastard Barrabas and his ‘flappers’, their days are over, we’ve been too long under their boot and it’s time they were knocked off their perch” Grazzo smiles at his joke.

“Wing”

“What”?

“Under their wing”

“For fuck’s sake, Pierszinski, aren’t you listening? The Birds are going down and you better be sure you’re on the right side, you know? It don’t matter your a cripple”.

Greg rises awkwardly, his shoulders reflexively shaking out absent wings and shuffles out.

 

***************

 

The rain-soaked streets always calms Greg, something about the scattered sheen of multi-coloured neon soothes him. He can see the lights of the suicide booths, beckoning with warm purples. He fights back the tears of shame, of pity. Curling his hand into a fist he strikes himself on the nose. The pain is electric, a flash of searing light that wipes the pity from his heart. Through his tears he laughs.

 

**************************

The Birds flock together, wheeling in the sky, their twists and perturbations a reminder that terrible things are to occur today. The clock tower overlooking the mighty storm drains of the city mark the time: 11.52.

Blue skies, striated with high cloud, are reflected in the water dribbling the central runnels. With their rigid wings and painted feathers, Birds glide and swoop in preparation. The sharp edges of the wings shine and flash in the vapid sunlight. Grins and shouts are passed between the brightly coloured fliers, their faces painted for war. Some stand on the upper slopes of the concrete, preening headdresses, swapping jokes and laughing raucously, ravens, eagles, buzzards of every hue.

 

As the clock in the tower tolls for noon a  high pitched whine splits the air and the Birds are silent, dropping from the sky like stones, lining up on the lip of the storm drain. Bejewelled faces looks up. A grey cloud gathers on the horizon, the hum rising as the cloud thickens. A stream of greyness, highlighted with sparking flashes teases out from the cloud and the Birds’ voices begin a susurration of mutterings as the Fireflies fall to the opposite lip. Delicate, long bodies, light shimmering wings, each face slashed with stripes of red. The eyes are black stones. The Birds’ mutterings rise to a grumbling, to a roar. A clang of metal on concrete and silence falls again as the Fireflies land.

 

Greg races through the tunnel entrance of the storm drain; panting he thrusts through the crowds of Groundies, ignoring the fetid stench of their bodies; slipping and sliding down the wet slope to the centre runnel he shouts as he raises his arms, “STOP!”

Above him, Barrabas. A head taller than the Birds, he flexes his massive shoulders, tilts his head.

 

“What do you want, cripple? PEACE!” The roar from the Birds drowns Greg. He stands, voiceless. Across the drain, a shimmering light rises above the other Fireflies and hovers. Hands over his eyes, Greg makes out Monique.

 

“Greg, it is too late for parley. Those Birds…” Monique pauses, raises a pink eyebrow at Barrabas. “Deserve only annihilation!” The roar from both sides is deafening. A rush of Birds down the slope prompts the battle, Birds and Fireflies meet with slashing blades, clubs swinging. As the blood flows, Birds and Fireflies on the opposite lips rise. The rush of wings fills the air with bloody winds as ‘flies and Birds crash and slash into each other. Broken bodies strew the floor, their moaning and crying mixes with the grunts and thuds of combat. The air is thick with pain, fear and fury.

 

Greg stands. He gathers himself, bowed in, head down. As he rises out and up into the air, he screams. The sound is a high pitched, screeching through every ear. Grabbing at their heads trying to block out the all encompassing sound, soldiers on both sides vomit, bent double, blood flowing from ears, noses, eyes. With a crunching, shrieking sound bodies begin to collapse in, bones squeeze and organs compresses. Birds and ‘flies merge screaming into each other, terrified eyes look out from heads fleshed within backs, mouths wail from shoulders as legs and arms stumble in the attempt to flee the piercing, melting, excoriating shrill.

 

As quickly as it started, it stops. Greg falls crumpled to the floor amid the moans of the injured. The blood flows down the runnel, washing all in red.

 

Staggering to his feet, Barrabas surveys the carnage. A sea of bodies, warped and mangled lies across the floor of the drain. On one slope he can see the lifeless body of Monique, her wings shattered, her body a twisted joke. At the centre, the kneeling Greg hangs his head.

Slowly he rises to survey the scene. The tears flow unheeded. He limps up the slope to the tunnel exit. He turns briefly, catches the eye of Barrabas. Greg’s face is a stone.

Song of the Day – well two songs, actually

“Electricity In My Bones” – The High Planes Drifters.   I’ll tell you the other later 🙂

My walks with Clochette have taken on a different cast of late, thanks to the accusation of chicken killing by the the B&B owners up at the nunnery. As we can no longer walk round the grounds of the nunnery, we have been going to the Lac de Guerladain and the Chemin de Croix du Breuill, both of which are great walks with lovely views and plenty of exercise for the assassin du poule. The only issue is that I have to drive to these locations and that’s a bit of a waste of fuel. Of course, come the Spring and Summer we will be able to take advantage of some dryness in the ground and take walks across local fields and by hedgerows. Regardless, one of the joys of our walks is having the ipod on shuffle all songs and seeing what pops into my ears. The other days it was the above tune, something I first heard on the soundtrack of Breaking Bad. I don’t know much about them, a search reveals little, a facebook page and not much else. This track is a driving energetic indie, grungy, Sixties sounding thing with a sound tat marries elements of early Kings of Leon with The scratchy rock/soul sound of The Sonics.
The other I took time out to watch All Cheerleaders Die, a frankly silly movie from 2013. Suffice to say, although I quite enjoyed it, it was really little more than a Buff The Vampire Slayer episode slapped up on the big screen. What annoyed me most was the kernel of a woman-centric morality tale was hiding in there somewhere but was drowned by the obsession they all had with boys. There’s no way this movie passes the Bechdel test. Anyway, despite its flaws it’s a fun movie to watch and the soundtrack is not that bad, in fact all round this movie has had a bit of money spent on it. One of my faves from the film is the following:

“Look Out Young Son” – Grand Ole Party

Although this track starts with a slick and bouncy guitar riff and follows up with a track with slight psychobilly echoes to it, the look of the band and the sensibility is more indie than anything. The lead singers voice reminds me of Florence and the Machine in its tone and sound. This is a song to strut down a school hallway to. Naturally enough the sight of me strutting along a wooded path to this tune doesn’t have quite the same power. Thankfully there are usually no observers. 

Song Of The Day: “Bloody Lovesong” Kitty In A Casket

Apologies to you all for the long delay in writing (*holds his hand up to shield his eyes from the lights, scanning the empty room). I hope you have managed to occupy yourselves in a gainful manner without me. I have no excuse for not writing, I have had plenty of time and opportunity, the work I have done in the intervening period between then and now has not been onerous, noteworthy things have happened, photos have been taken. Each and every day apart I have listened to music and could have selected a song of the day, or week. Clochette has continued to lay waste to the rabbit population, I have observed birds, farming activity, even the Tour de France passing by where we live. Obviously I am too lazy to care about you.

“Today is a day of wet tarmac roads and the greenest fields and verges. Currently it is not raining, though it has misted a little. Most of the damp comes from overnight showers. Although I say the fields are green, the potatoes planted on the rise to the nunnery are looking quite yellow. I’m not sure if it some kind of leaf problem, a blight perhaps, or if it just a lack of watering recently. The past weeks have seen the farmers irrigating and watering quite intensely. The weather has seen above average temperatures and less rainfall than usual. Today is also a day of aches and pains, stiffness in the muscles. I am just back from playing in a softball tournament in England. The MLB Tournament, a revival of a Major League Baseball backed slow pitch tournament that used to run in England in the late 90s into the early 00s. I fondly rememer the last one I attended in 2002 in Manchester. This year the revival took place at Farnham Park and the dedicated softball fields there. As per previous years, the teams taking part took the names and shirts of MLB teams,the shirts being provided by MLB. The team I played for was The New York Mets, yayy me for getting the team I support.”
I left the above in situ just so you can be properly pissed I have not written for so long. It is now early October (yes, OCTober, not Stoptober, Rootober, Sheeptober, or Fucktober) and I have had what might be my final full scan for the tongue cancer I got in 2011. From now on I shall have two appointments with Dr S. next year and after that only one a year. I may have handheld scans but I am hopeful that very soon I shall be declared fully cancer free.
Today’s song is a little early for Halloween at the end of the month but it struck me this morning whilst walking Clochette up the “Jesus walk” as a friend has dubbed the chemin de croix de breuill. I think I shall select a couple of other Halloween songs in the lead up to the celebrations, just a few creepy, eerie or just plain scary fun tunes I enjoy. Kitty In A Casket are a fun ‘psychobilly’ outfit who don’t really push any boundaries but are fun and slick for all that. Kitty Casket’s voice can be something to get used to but this song has a good driving bass line and if you were to be tasting rockabilly for the first time, this would not disappoint.

Okay, I’m done for now. Next post will be both a fresh song to get into (or not, as the case may be) and maybe a few nuggets about our hols in Mallorca.

All The Light We Cannot See

This is not a novel I would normally read; a WWII story based in France and Germany and centred around the siege of St. Malo. The two main characters are Marie Laure, a blind girl whose father takes her aged 14 to her Great Uncle’s in St. Malo after the fall of Paris and Werner, a boy whose radio genius drags him out of an orphanage and into a special Hitler Youth academy and into the war.  The girl’s father is the key keeper at the natural history museum.  He makes a model of the quartier they live in so ML can find her way around.  When they flee Paris he is charged with hiding and protecting a valuable diamond, or one of three replicas. His models are intricate, delicate and finely honed, a bit like this novel.  I read that it took ten years to write and it certainly shows in the prose.  As one review said, there is not a single noun that doesn’t get an adjective, or two, or three.  Iremember  reading a debut novel called The Art of Baseball, which also took ten years to finish.  That book suffered from a feeling it was written through honey and each word had been agonised over, dripping in meaning and portent.  Here it is similar, the writing in parts is poetic, luminous, but when you strive for that in every sentence, the result is an overwrought quality to the read.  I felt each word had been polished like a beach pebble, placed carefully like shells in an order which made it feel like reading through amber. I enjoyed the novel but from the start I got a Chocolat feel from it, distracting.  Especially as the Joanne Harris feel was from the movie, not the book.  I almost expected Johnny Depp to show up. Having said that, Marie Laure is the best, most complete character.  Werner, the tiny white-haired orphan is, as described, a prescence like a feather.  Despite the horrors of his war, he hardly registers as a person.  Von Rumpel is a cypher and a cliched one at that. Etienne, the great uncle destroyed by the First WW, is similar.

Short sentences and short chapters meant it read quickly and, although I did enjoy it, I am grateful for that.  Any longer and I would have struggled with it.  One thing it has done for me, it has made me want to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.  The relevance of light being invisible to all intents, the man who can hear but cannot see, the girl who is blind but sees better than those around her, all this is layered through the book but to be honest were largely meaningless to me, because they were meant to be meaningful.

Song Of The Week: Saturday, yes, but which?

Good morning all, and for those of you reading this in the afternoon, where were you?

Firstly I need to  apologise for the absence of blog posts lately.  I have been toying with the idea of moving to a song of the week, to give me time and space to read and research for another project, the result of which has been me putting off writing a post at all until I was sure.  No excuses for not keeping you apprised, four fans are just as important as four thousand or four million (if only I had even four fans:)).  Needless to say you can see from the title above what my decision is.  This will only spur me to keep the general tone and standard up each week and you may even get the odd update on the other project, if you are really, really good and sit when I say.

Now,  for all you who have been on tenterhooks about the lack of electricity yesterday (so many, many days ago),  apologies for not telling you why we were without.  Turns out we had forgotten that EDF had informed us they were cutting us off to do some repair/maintenance work that morning.

So I had a thought about songs of the day. It occurred to me that I have not done a days of the week themed stretch.  Now I know that the week either starts on a Sunday or Monday, according to your preference, but as I had the idea this morning, I will start today.  The question is, with which Saturday titled song to go with?  Off the top of my head I can think of a few:

Saturday Night’s All Right For Fighting – Elton John

This one is nothing but ironic now, written and performed in a time when nobody knew he was gay or going to marry David Furnish in the future.

In The Heart Of Saturday Night – Tom Waits

Tom in the early days, just as he was coming out of the troubadour of jazzy love and into the soul of the broken urban wanderer, the travelling bum in the cheap motel.

Saturday Night Fever – Bee Gees

Classic Bee Gees track.  I can’t listen to this without seeing John Travolta promenading down that New York street with a can of paint swinging in his hand, all self regard and confidence.

Saturday Night At The Movies – The Drifters

Soundtrack to my teens.

Saturday Gigs – Mott The Hoople

Here’s why they were interesting but never really successful.

Saturday Night Special – The Runaways

Who doesn’t love skinny rock chicks in tight jeans, dripping with attitude?

The Saturday Boy (one of my absolute faves) – Billy Bragg

I could not resist selecting this track, as I am currently on a bit of a nostalgia kick at the moment.  When I hear this I picture the 70s streets of Ruislip Manor and Eastcote, I see me in tank top and flares running with my mates and falling in love every five minutes.  I suffered, aged 10, 11, 12, 13 etc. many times with love, and the scars of those loves stay with you.  They heal over of course but when reminded they give you the sweet ache of times gone and people left behind.  Nostalgia, despite my protestations has always been what is was.  Whilst I pined for one, another would be pining for me.  It never went right round and made a suburban La Ronde but there was always at least three involved, the one pining for me, the one I was with and the one I pined for. Poignant indeed.  Whilst I was thinking about one of my first loves, Helen, the lovely blonde girl I used to hold hands with in the playground at school, I also remember the heart breaking conversation at her front gate when I had to tell her I was moving to Hampshire.  The walk back home from Eastcote was the longest I had ever made.  I remember too, later, Fiona, the girl of a tough in my neighbourhood.  She was the height of gum chewing, bottle blonde sophistication to me and my first taste of unrequited love.  I wrote her name on my school books, I dreamt of her and she hardly noticed me.  Weirdly, all this talk of love reminds me of the book club I was a member of as a kid.  I think it was the Penguin Book Club (or perhaps Puffin?), organised by the school.  I loved that club, the little booklet brochure of titles that would be passed around each month, the eager thumbing through and reading the blurbs of the books available.  People say travel broadens the mind despite the fact that for most people it seems to do the opposite; that love broadens your emotions, when of course all it does it hurt you;  books are the true expanders, they broaden your mind, your feelings your politics and your soul (or, if you are an atheist and determined to not use the word, your heart).  As a thirteen or fourteen year old I read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold by Le Carre, One Day In The Life Of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Lonliness Of The Long Distance Runner by Alan Sillitoe and many other titles.  I read voraciously and my growing mind soaked up the thoughts, views, opinions and politics of many different writers.  I blossomed.  I don’t know if they still do such things as my book club but I cannot recommend it enough, because to read is to grow.  What it taught me was to voice to myself my feelings.  I learnt from books how to describe myself to myself, to explore.  Shakespeare said it is better to have loved and lost and though that may be true, the next best thing is to love and not have that love returned.  Alongside books, my doomed love for Fiona gave me the ache of yearning, taught me the consolation of fantasy and helped me understand myself better.

Song Of The Day: B-52s – Love Shack

Another beautiful, brilliant, freezing day.  The sun shines hard and yellow, the fields are rimed with frost and the little water around is both frozen and starting to raise a mist.

As usual, Clochette doesn’t care about the weather, though she did shiver some when sitting.

In honour of the cold I’ve picked a hot steamy number.  Bouncy, fun, sexy, Love Shack has me thinking of the hot wet heat of Atlanta, the Love Shack rammed to the gunwales with sweaty, happy, dancing people.  Of course, my only experience of Atlanta was a missed flight and an overnight in a hotel.  I recall a long wait in the airport bar, chatting to a guy who ran church programmes for youth and being unable to sleep in the hotel and finding a waffle hut 3.30am and having waffles, bacon and coffee.  As it was late September, it wasn’t hot and steamy out either.

My usual routine when getting up is to drag myself to the kitchen, get the kettle started, go out back and let out the chickens, give them a feed.  Back in the house I fill the cafetiere, portion out porridge and water into a pan and set that to heat up.  Meanwhile I will put some milk into Phylly’s mug and nuke it in the microwave.  A quick stir of the porridge to keep it loose and stop it sticking and then I’m ready to pour hot water (never boiling) onto the coffee grounds.  I stir the coffee and stir the porridge again.  After a moment’s contemplation the porridge ready to serve.  I add a little milk and cut a banana into mine.   Everything onto a tray, giving the cafetiere an extra twirl as I do so and then upstairs.

Awoke this morning to a power cut, giving the pair of us a small panic about not having paid the bill.  The last bill was peed on by Alan Backwards (I will explain) and so Phylly did not send it off.  Because we have a gas hob fed by bottle all I did was switch to the stove top kettle and put the  milk into a pan to heat.

Alan Backwards is the new name of T.C., who I have mentioned before.  We found out the cat’s real name is Nala from our neighbour.  She looks after and re-homes cats for the Brigitte Bardot charity so she has a whole gang of cats around, staying both long and short term.  A few weeks back I was having a chat with her and mentioned we have a new addition, unwelcome, to our flock.  I told her how for a while we were hearing noises from the Grenier (attic) and then started to meet this little beast on the stair.  I described Alan’s milky eye, ratty fur and deep suspicion of everyone and everything, to which description she said, “Oh, really? I lost a cat a few weeks ago with a milky eye, what colour is its fur”? A little amazed that she should be asking in a hamlet of eight houses as if the cat trooping up and down our stairs could be some other one eyed cat who wandered in from somewhere else, I described Alan’s shoddy looking, greenish fur with white booties.  With a smile she says, “That is Nala, may I see”?  I take her up.  She coos that this is her Nala, who was kept originally in a cage because of the need to administer drugs for an ailment.  As we had a couple of friends staying with us, one of whom is called Alan, it seemed sensible to call her Alan Backwards.  To be honest, Nala is a stupid sounding name anyway.  Although she belongs to our neighbour, we have not handed her back.  This is because she was kept in shelter for seven years and is very far from socialised with humans.  It would be hell on wheels to get a hold of her and traumatic for the cat to be grabbed and carted back.  We have agreed to look after her but our neighbour will have to get her to the vet if she falls ill.

A friend of mine has posted on Facebook a couple of items about toddlers in the U.S. killing themselves or siblings with household guns.  This is terrible, a sad indictment of American society that it cannot see its way clear to proper gun control because of some cockeyed notion of what the 2nd Amendment truly means.  I know this is an old argument but it is nonetheless still true, the West Wing tackled this and pointing out that the right to bear arms is about the creation of a proper, regulated militia is what the founding fathers both meant and specifically wrote.  Here’s the quote:

• republican: Why when the second amendment clearly says that the federal government will not infringe upon citizen’s right to keep and bear arms.

• toby: Because it doesn’t say that. in fact it doesn’t say that at all. the only way it says that if you remove some words from it. it says a well regulated militia being necessary for the security of a free state, the government shall not infringe.  The words well regulated and militia are in the first sentence. I don’t think the framers were thinking of three guys in a Dodge Durango.

• republican: you don’t really know what the framers were thinking do you?

• toby: No. But i know that if you combine all the populations of Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, and Australia you’ll get a population roughly the size of the united states. we had 32,000 gun deaths last year, they had 112. do you think it’s because Americans are more homicidal by nature or do you think it’s because those guys have gun control laws?

What Europeans cannot understand is how it is that the U.S. is happy to have cars registered, drivers licensed,  a recognition that vehicles are large, heavy and potentially dangerous items which need education and training to use but that is impossible for that process to be applied to guns and those who own them, as it would ‘infringe on their rights’.

I wonder whether there should be a fit and proper test for any person wishing to enter any service which makes use of firearms in any capacity, a test or exam that grades them on their responsible use of guns, requires them to be licensed in their use and that their guns are registered with the proper authorities and that they take  proper care of their firearms at home, lock boxes etc.  A Venn diagram of gun users and those who admire or wish to be a part of such a service must show a large correspondence, surely.

SOTD: Elvis Costello – Tokyo Storm Warning

16/01

I popped out the back door to open up the coop this morning and was greeted by a cacophonous susurration in the row of tall fir trees behind our property. There were hundreds of starlings everywhere chatting and squawking with each other, making quite a racket. The funny thing was they were practically invisible in the dense foliage of the trees. To add to the noise, the chickens were making a fuss about being let out later than usual. Loud complaints, muffled by the pop hole door became a huffy set of moaning hens, waddling down the ramp and giving me the evil eye like they were Northern extras in Open All Hours. Today’s song of the day is here almost entirely for the line, “cheap Korean monster movie scenery”, which becomes hilariously (really? you think that joke is hilarious?) obvious once you continue onto to the next paragraph. Having said that, the song is a fine example of Costello’s wit and scabrous humour.

I have been watching a good few movies of late, as is my wont. I go on little themed film jags, getting interested in a particular genre or theme. Recently I was chatting with the daughter of a friend about Korean horror movies, something she is a fan of. She was extolling the virtues of them so I thought I would watch a couple. I have seen “Old Boy” in the past, the most disgusting scene in that being the eating of a live squid by the main character. I have also seen a few Japanese horrors, such as “Battle Royale”, about kids abandoned on an island who must fight to the death. Note: it came, as both book and movie, before the whole Mockingjay movie franchise. One other was called “Audition”, I think, about a director who auditions women to be his wife, although they are unaware. The perfect woman comes along and turns out to be a raving psycho who enjoys cutting parts off people using a wire saw, especially those who have abused her, like her old music teacher. I grabbed a couple of movies which had decent reviews and settled down to watch. One was called “Thirst”, about a priest who is accidently turned into a vampire by a blood transfusion. He fights his nature as best he can until he falls in love and turns her. She embraces the vampire life wholeheartedly which sets them both up for tragedy. I enjoyed this one for its altered view of the vampire oeuvre and for the twisted love affair at the centre. Another, “I Saw The Devil” about a policeman whose wife is killed by a serial killer. Having found it is one of four men, he discovers who via his fiance’s engagement ring. On his own time he then proceeds to attack and release the killer, interrupting him each time he attempts to rape or kill and by turns damages him further each time. I Got the whole ‘the policeman is as bad as the killer’ point way too early to be bothered about the film. The problem I found was the amount of gore in the films. Once you are past the initial thrill of viscera being splashed around the screen, of the change in shape that can be wrought on the human body, you are left with a tiresome set of bloody scenes where I spent half my time wondering about how much work the make up and model men had done and thinking of how much cleaning would be required to remove all this Kensington Gore off the floor.
If you want a scare, I thoroughly recommend “The Babadook”, an Australian movie. It concerns a young widow and her 10 or 11 year old son. He is obsessed with the Babadook, a storybook monster and the possibility of harm coming to his mother, natural if your father died in a car crash whilst taking her to your birth. She is tired and harried and clearly not coping with the boy, who is screechy, annoying, seemingly deranged and constantly making weapons to protect her from danger. I admit that for the first half hour I wondered why I was watching a doormat of a woman and her irritating kid but stuck with it, and very happy I did. I won’t go into the whole plot, suffice to say the boy is not as crazy as you think, there IS a monster who scares the bejeesus out of you with very little blood being shown and I literally (btw, when I say ‘literally’ I mean literally, not figuratively ) had chills up my spine watching it. This is an old fashioned scary movie, creating an atmosphere which draws you in and proceeds to give you frights of the ‘I can see a shape on the bedroom wall and in the wardrobe in the dark” type. Go see it and prepare to say shakily afterwards, “No, I wasn’t scared” And remember to take an extra pair of pants with you, you’ll need them. I’m amazed it has received no Oscar nominations, especially for Essie Davies, who plays the mother with all the emotional power and practicality you expect from a desperate woman.
As an antidote to the horror movies, I watched Tampopo last night, a very sensual, philosophical film about food and love. I remembered it as a great film and in many ways it is, with striking set pieces and beautiful shots but it looks wildly sexist now. The story is of a truck driver who helps a woman running a noodle bar to become a great noodle chef and although she begs him early in the film to be her teacher and says she will do anything, from then on he makes all the decisions about menu, interior decor etc.. to the point where all she becomes as a character is a cypher and a simpering, nervous, manically smiling one at that. Her influence is minimal, she is directed by men throughout, and the movie is more about the little scooby gang of men around her. For all that it is a lovely film to watch and give you a whole new way to look the uses of an egg yolk, or the best thing to dip into whipped cream 🙂