Friday, September 26, 2008

Windey Handles


I've had a nice day today. I had coffee with a friend at St Pancras station, then walked along to Euston to visit Dubula and give him his copy of Poetry and Rhyme. He was intrigued to have played on a track with Gina Birch, and not to have actually met her. That's modern day recording for you!
He's busy mixing some music by a woman called Anjali, who I met, but they weren't ready to play her music to anyone yet. He gave me the CD he's just finished, A Town Called Addis, by Dub Colossus, which is Ethiopian, and released by Real World, and I can't wait to have a listen.
He always has lots of guitars, and his latest is this fabulous Gibson, a copy of a Gretsch, with red-and-white inlays to mark the frets. It's so soft to play! And the best thing, which took him a year to notice (he was annoyed by the little ridges on the machine heads), is that little winders fold out from the machine heads so you can rapidly change a string on stage without any fluffing about with roadies and string-winders, both equally annoying pieces of apparatus. The colour of the guitar is amazing too- Hawaiian evening sun, a sort of deep burnt orange.
After motor-mouthing for about an hour, I set off for Brixton and had a swan round the market, where I purchased two old-skool plastic hairslides and a blue gingham skirt printed with strawberries, with net petticoat, cheapo fifties style, which cost me the princely sum of 99 pence!
I drifted down Coldharbour Lane in the sunshine to the Barrier Block, trying to remember what number Mike and Em's flat was, and took a guess. Luckily, I was right: Em was having a coffee morning in the afternoon in aid of Macmillan Cancer Relief, and she'd made loads of cakes. I had a slice of beetroot cake, fresh from the oven and incredibly edible. I chose it for its pink icing and squidginess and she told me I could eat it because I am thin and high cholesterol levels are sometimes caused by stress. So I believed her.
There was a man with blue hair who was doing psychology research for his PHD and getting donations by getting people to volunteer to do a computer game that he's been trying out on six year olds. I realised that I have never played a computer game before, but I volunteered, and it was fun, actually, and made me wish I was six. Several Actionettes were dotted about in mufti; we drank Earl Grey tea and chatted dreamily as the sun streamed through the windows, puncturing our Autumn time-clocks and taking us all unawares.
After a while, the suburbs called and I hopped on the tube back home, reading a selection of discarded newspapers on the way and unwittingly becoming an expert on the activities of B-list celebrities.

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