Cabbage Soup

After wrapping the pansies I bought yesterday in polythene because of the snow, I headed down to Katy's for Song Circle.
She lives off Marylebone High Street and the yummy smell of soup curled down the stairway as I puffed and panted up a million flights of stairs to her eyrie above the chimney pots. She was disappointed recently to discover that the Grand Piano she'd been given couldn't get up the stairs, so she has bought something like eight ukeleles to compensate. They hang on her walls, twinkling with potential.
We sat and drank tea till Nadya arrived. Our subject has been 'house' and Katy played hers first- almost a mazurka, it was a bouncy song about how much she loves her flat and how she'd like to win the lottery so she could buy it! The lady upstairs gave her wardrobes when she moved out the other day and Katy has tidied up and was excited to show us. She has wonky floors like me and has to shove bits of folded cardboard under the legs of things to stop them tipping drunkenly; it made me optimistic that contrary to my fears, my house is not in imminent danger of falling down.
Nadya's song wasn't finished yet, but we've decided to make the next session 'finished songs'.
Her song was all about the flavours of living in Tottenham- all the things she can hear around her from her house. Nadya's songs are simple and poetic, and I told her that she should keep them like that: it's a good style to start off from.
I was last, and mine wasn't finished either; but I remembered enough of it to do it. Mine was the House On The Hill, about living in a beautiful house that has no heart because it doesn't want people in it, just sunshine. Nadya told me at was the best song I have written so far.
The woman across the road told me while I was moving out that the two other families who had lived there before us had divorced too. It was a beautiful but poisonous house, destroying three marriages.
I didn't tell the family who moved in. Maybe they will break the pattern: I hope so.

Twillings on a Sunday Evening

The alarm went off shortly after five this morning. Except it wasn't the alarm- it was a vivid dream, over-efficient in the sound department. Indignant, I tried without success to go back to sleep.
Dag
Nabbit!

Whippersnapper didn't want to go back to the vets, understandably; but I had to show the vet that I could inject him with insulin, so we went at the crack of dawn in spite of his loud protestations, and a small pot of insulin has joined the wrinkled old ginger root and the empty egg-compartment in the fridge door.
I bowled down to Brighton, getting there in record time, and took Offrprog One for Tapas before helping her to move a couple of heavy boxes of clothes and books into a warm, dry, tiny room that only has room for half her stuff. She is disorientated, and I hope a night's rest in a better room will help.

I bought some pots of pansies on the way back, in a effort to prompt the onset of spring, and now I'm going to sit with my guitar ad try to join some words with some chords via a melody, because it's Song Circle tomorrow and I haven't done my song yet.
Cheerio!

It Never Rains But It Paws

Whippersnapper was fading so fast today, I took him to the vet, who took blood to test and sent us home; five minutes after we got back, the phone rang and we were back again, so I could learn how to give an insulin injection: he has diabetes.
Offsprog Two remarked that every time he goes to the vet he returns with a different part of his body shaved. He looks like a Premiership footballer with his fancy haircarvings.
Meanwhile, McMum slipped on the ice for the second time since Christmas and has broken her arm and must sleep sitting up.
And Offsprog One is moving house tomorrow; after I've shown the vet that I can inject Whippernapper successfully I'm driving to Brighton.
The University of Brighton has a housing service, Unihomes, which seems to be totally irresponsible and totally unregulated: they gave a builder a key one Saturday morning to just let himself into a flat with 3 teenage women in it- outrageous.
And then her room got colder, and damper, and colder, and damper, and her clothes went mouldy in the wardrobe and her leather belt grew green fur on it, and the ink ran on her drawings, and the Unihomes people git cheekier and cheekier and told the girls that their landlords had terminal cancer- which was true, but how cruel to use that as an excuse!
They missed appointments, letting their tenants down, who had taken precious time off University to wait in for them. Poor Offsprog 1 has been camping out in the tiny living room, after finding a collection of slugs behind her wardrobe.
Finally, she is moving to a little room around the corner and I'm going down to help her move her stuff.

There is good news as well though: Martin has agreed to play Club Artyfartle, and it will be lovely to have him there. It's going to be a very special night. And this weekend I'm playing the Cluny 2 in Newcastle with Martin and Gemma, a full set of songs.
Lots of people have been buying Skifflecat White Cat guitars after they got a good review in Guitar and Bass magazine, all thanks to Liz for telling them about the company.

All we need now is a bit of spring sunshine and a chocolate tap in the bathroom.

Club Artyfartle

I think I've sorted the line-up for Club Artyfartle, although I have yet to contact the poet I'd like to do it.
Planz, planz...
24th February
The Perseverance
11 Shroton Street
Marylebone
NW1
8 pee em

A Good Exhibition To Go To

Yesterday I took my Songwriting group from the University of the West to the Identity exhibition at the Wellcome Foundation on Euston Road.
This was to show them how important it is to be aware of what's happening around you culturally if you are involved in the creative arts, and also to try to get them to think about their own identities before they start writing songs.
I asked each person to try to define themselves in four lines of poetry before next week, when they will play me songs they've written before.
It's a good exhibition, almost amateurish in its presentation and almost arbitrary in its chosen definitions of identity, but all the better for that. The students liked a sort of delayed-image mirror that disconnects you from your self-image. I liked a small set of diaries; "I'm not that sort of girl!' someone had exclaimed in big letters. I also liked a series of photographs in the eugenics section, of Chatham Shipyard workers, Westminster Schoolboys and murderers, differentiated mainly by their haircuts. Most of the shipyard workers had their thumbs in their non-existent lapels, trying to look authoritative; the schoolboys had foppishly shiny hair, and none of the murderers looked remotely guilty.
I was delighted that my students had introduced themselves to the Museum attendants. That bodes well!
Exhibition: free
Cafe: brilliant
Vibe ****

Hitchhiking

While I was at Brighton Art College, my boyfriend was an aspiring film-maker.
Imagine his glee when, hitchhiking to Pontefract one day, we were given a lift by Ken Russell in his blonde Rolls Royce to match his tumbling grey-blond curls!

Tube, For No Particular Reason

Liquorice

Whippersnapper cat has a fetish for melon; he snorts and grunts as he snaffles it, and has been known to steal the rind from the recycling in the middle of the night for a midnight feast.
His latest passion is for liquorice.
I can eat it because it's cholesterol-free, and he's been trying to climb into my mouth just now, with a fiendish look in his eye and a sniffing set of nostrils, growling with gleeful anticipation. I had to bung it all in my mouth to stop him, but he then tried to eat the packet and I'm sitting on that now to hide it from him.
He's mad.

Bits

Today's been a bits day; there have been lists written on bus tickets, corners of magazines, envelopes and all sort of other scraps of paper, and they had to be acted upon at some time.
So the lovely beige 70s phone with working dial went back to Past Times (dial not working after only being used about 15 times).
The resulting refund bought half a week's shopping including catfood for Whippernapper, who has brought on this belt-tightening episode.
I wrote to Ashgate asking if they're going to bring out a paperback, 'cos if not, I will try to find a publisher who will.
I looked for lashings of grey wool in the loft to give to Gina, who is making 'Birchbags', felted wool bags with spotty linings. Alas, Gina, I fear I gave it to the charity shop before I moved.
I put a newspaper on the floor in an attempt to find out if the constant puddle is coming from above or below the vinyl flooring.
I cleared a runway in my room; shelves are going up tomorrow so I might even be able to walk in front of the window from now on!
I read the newspaper and recycled it half an hour later.
I drew a poster for Club Artyfartle and messed up the writing so I'll have to do it again.
I wrote to my students about the mysterious field trip I'm taking them on on Thursday.
I ate liquorice.
I threw away the bits of paper that I'd done the things written on (?)
I wrote this.

The Chefs

I've just learned from Nick Greenwood, Russell's brother, that there is to be a Brighton Bands Day in October, with people re-forming to play.
I have often wondered what it would be like to play with the original Chefs again, but I don't think it would be the same without Russell there.
We haven't been asked anyway!

Yep, It's A Multiposting Day

Phil at punkbrighton.co.uk has put up a gallery of Chefs pictures that I sent him a while ago (some are wrongly captioned). They are at http://punkbrighton.co.uk/chefsgal.html on the excellent site, which really captures the spirit of the Brighton punk and post-punk scene.
Phil has written a book about those times too, but I think the publishers keep delaying it, which must be incredibly frustrating for him. I can't wait to read it.
I doubt whether there's as truthful and interesting a site about a local music scene anywhere else in the world, but of course I am wildly biased, having been in three of the bands (Joby and the Hooligans, The Smartees and The Chefs) and having known just about all of them, no mean feat given the quantity of groups in Brighton in the late 1970s!
He includes fanzines, posters, badges, and all sorts of other stuff that builds up an idea of the power of the do-it-yourself world we all inhabited. It was a full-time occupation and the whole place was absolutely fizzing with energy, terrifying the Police and the local council (and quite a few snarly minicab drivers).
It was so creative, just like punk scenes everywhere: that's what people forget or simply don't realise.
It wasn't all about clothes or worshipping Malcolm McLaren: not for us, anyway.
Life was a vacuum and we filled it up with music, art, our own sort of clothes, fanzines, posters, politics and talk, putting on gigs and other events and refusing to lie down and suffer the consequences of not having a job.
Once on Radio 4 they set me up against Suzy Quatro, who set off on a little diatribe about women musicians in punk bands being not very good at music, how dare they, etc etc etc.
I knew she was quite a Tory, and I pointed out that the choice was either to do nothing, or to start something up and make a life for yourself, which is what a lot of that female music-making was about.
Entrepreneurial, n'est ce pas?
She agreed with me.

They're Taking Our Jobs

Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I am appalled that even some of my students, who should be more enlightened, come out with this rubbish.
I remember quite clearly that in the late 1970s it was us females that were supposedly taking all the jobs.
We were part of the cause of mass unemployment. We were supposed to stay at home and look after the working males, not go out to work ourselves (what were we supposed to do until we were married?).
Don't believe what the silly chattering papers tell you!
I used to feel incredibly sorry for the doctors, accountants and other professionals at my daughters school who were forced to take menial jobs because they were refugees. I felt that their skills must surely be useful in Britain.
In a world recession, there is bound to be unemployment. It's horrible not having a job: my former partner and myself spent half of the 1980s and half of the 1990s constantly being made redundant, over and over again. You'd start a job, work for a few weeks and then the boss would come in with a grave face and break the bad news.
 t was utterly dispiriting. I worked as a cleaner of retirement homes for mentally handicapped people; he worked as a cleaner at Earl's Court. We had an empty fridge almost all the time and a sweet kind milkman who gave use free milk until he got arrested for being Robin Hood. We wore our clothes out and went to the Post Office with so many letters of application that we wore a hole in the pavement.
How dreary that it is all happening again!
We mustn't scapegoat other people for imaginary reasons.
Artists, craftspeople and musicians, we need to share our skills so that people without jobs don't feel ashamed and useless.
If we are in work, we must not resent supporting people who are waiting to work again, and we must understand the depression of those who are long-term unemployed.
There is such a thing as society, and unfortunately it appears to have little control over its destiny, but to sway from one extreme to the other at the mercy of corporate financiers.

Work in Progress

Guitars: a Twilling

Fretboards: you get to know them like friends.
My most comfortable one is the old red Gretsch I used to play in Helen and the Horns and that I keep by the fire to write songs on. I feel like I could play anything on that guitar and it's totally relaxing to play. It's an old pal.
 The Martin acoustic has a flat fretboard with an easy action: sometimes my fingers cause the strings to squeak but it's lovely for bar chords as it's so gentle to play. It's got an amazing sound, acoustic and amplified, and does 50% of the work for you. It can perform unplugged or not, and accompanied me in the studio last week, sounding absolutely amazing.
The new pistachio-green Gretsch can be challenging but it still feel shiny and new; there's something quite rocky about the way it feels, even though I sometimes play quite jazzy chords. I think every time I play it it's amplified, and this makes me feel powerful when I touch the strings.
The Telecaster is more of a stranger but it feels exciting and punky and brash and honest. That's one I have to get to know a bit better.
The Hofner is on holiday with Martin at the moment. It has a strange thick neck like a Southern farmer in the USA, with a wide open feel that gives me different sorts of songs when I write on it. It sounds twangy and reminds me of sunshine.
I sold my Spanish guitar to a girl in a red beret and felt very happy about that; she told me she was a beginner songwriter and I told her the guitar was full of songs. I wrote lots of my first new songs on it (London for instance) when I started up again, and all the childrens' songs for Song Club. I haven't missed it, as it was quite hard to play although its sound was deep and mellow and woody.

I meant to watch the Mo Mowlam film last night but got totally distracted by drawing a poster for one of Martin's gigs, and also reading Marion Leonard's book, Gender in the Music Industry. I love Julie Walters and I thought Mo Mowlam was a very interesting woman. I do hope they repeat it.

I was delighted that McSis and her partner Paul, who plays sax with me sometimes, both liked my new album. Martin phoned and helped me to weed out the rogue track, and it just needs putting into order.
I have put one or two tracks up on Myspace.

Time to take Whippersnapper to the vets for blood tests.
'Bye.