There can be few greater pleasures in life - if we take life to mean when you don't have anything better to do and/or are putting something off - than lying on a sofa with friends and bitching relentlessly about what you're watching, while making no attempt to grasp the remote (which is four inches away) with your obviously bloated and arthritis-raddled fingers to change the channel.
I, for example, would quite like to twat Bear Grylls. You know, the overgrown boy scout? Brick jaw, close-set eyes (A sign of an unstable mind in Phrenology apparently, take note). He leapt off a helicopter into the ocean the other day to get to Namibia, into the freezing Atlantic waters just off the Skeleton Coast - "What I'm about to do is really dangerous; this is one of the most violent stretches of water... (Dramatic emphasis, hushed voice, drop an octave like Jeremy Clarkson)... in the world."
Really? Why do it then?
He was plodding - no, sorry, he never plods, he sprints unnecessarily - through the Bornean jungle a bit later. Busy, busy little man. He saw a placid green tree snake, squealed a boyish squeal of delight, launched into a lecture on its many fascinating habits, extolled its beauty, and lapsed into admiring silence. Then, he looked at it thoughtfully for a bit. Then he bit its head off. I don't know why. It seemed a bit strong really, just to show how hard he was.
A bit later on, he was above the snowline in Patagonia, shivering hypothermically in a dug-out shelter, with his hat on, and his ear-flaps up. Now, I'm not a hard bastard really - despite appearances to the contrary, obviously - and I've never been in the SAS, but it seems to me that you if you lose most of the heat in your body through your head, covering up your ears might be wise. Dappy doesn't cover his ears, and who'd listen to Dappy? Anyway, he was clearly a bit chilly, and he said, "This is dangerously cold. I could die up here quite easily", in the same harmonics that you or me might use to say, "I could be given a really nice present!". Truly, there is no understanding some people's conception of fun. Some people find pleasure in masochism. Some find it in really hard crosswords. Some people even derive enjoyment from jazz. Bear Grylls derives his from the possibility of contracting a flesh-eating virus in Sumatra.
It follows then that Bear Grylls is dangerous, and you should not let him near your children, lest he take them on a trip to your suburban playpark, liberally scatter landmines about the footie pitch, dig a bloody great trench, fill it with Solenopsis Invicta - the Red Fire Ant to you and me - and lob your nippers in. This is what Bear Grylls does to relax of an afternoon, incidentally. Goes swimming in ants.
Which brings me on to part two. I tread trembling and unsettled ground here - the televisual equivalent of the San Andreas Fault. Because I'd like to slag off the One Show. I have a lot of friends - the bulk, I suppose - who are students, and for some of them, Angry Adrian and Chirpy Christina are Godheads of a kind, second only to Schofield and Britton. There are other Illuminati - Ben Fogle, That Bastard from Bargain Hunt (The one who's not David Dickinson, who I harbour a paticular hatred for), the Top Gear crew on endless Dave re-runs, but The One Show has a vice-like grip, a full-nelson if you will, on evening TV.
And it's like having your brain massaged with big, pink, beautifully moisturised hands. Or a swift lobotomy. As I watched it, I could feel my jaw slackening, my tensile neck muscles relaxing as my lower pate sunk down to somewhere around chest level. A little bit of dribble came out. This is what I normally get when I watch, say, an Arnold Schwarznegger vehicle, not middle-Britain de jour TV.
I am using my valuble time - I could be eating a cake - to watch a bubbly Irish woman tolerate grumpy Adrian as he clandestinely gets to grips with the great and good. David Attenborough was on the other day, the great David Attenborough, and they asked him if he watched Britain's Got Talent. I'm sorry, what? He didn't, as it happens, but he did know about it. Simon Cowell already heads up the broken remains of the Weimar Republic and controls the world through a secret organization using the shattered stock market, political insinuation and Jedward (Come on, keep up), so it's only right that he's burrowed into the minds of learned types too, like the little cultural Tick he is.
There's nothing wrong with The One Show, as such. But it's a bit like my mobile phone, or on-line banking: theoretically, they exist to help, ease, and calm me, but actually, they all make me a little bit more tense and worried than I was before. My phone allows unsavoury types to plague me, reminds me to reply swiftly to friends, lest I spark offence and outrage, and bequeaths me with a bill that I can't pay at the end of each month. My on-line NatWest account allows me to quickly and effortlessly access and assess the extent of my abject poverty and plunge me further into worry. And The One Show, as a light, informative mode of entertainment, is there to remind me that my wit, guile, and funtional intelligence - my tools for tax evasion and exam blagging and all sorts - are slowly but surely being drained away by Adrian droning on about self-heating meals.
He really was, you know.
Tuesday 23 March 2010
The Gospel According To Pete
Even for November, this is taking the piss.
Half-time, so me and the fellas are out front, right outside, bang in the element, in a little courtyard. It is mashing it down. Smokers are hard done by in this country. Get to stand in our own segregated patio, like lepers, like fuckin’ pariahs.
I blame the Tories. There’s a bit of thing for having a dig at the old liberals at the mo, but I’d rather have a poncy liberal from Hampstead then some posh nonce from Chelsea, know what I mean? Cameron don’t know nuffin’ about living on an estate in the East End. Brown, worl, he’s got a dodgy eye. Bit porky. Fallible. Bare-knuckle boy, like me. Fair play to him, I say. Lesser of two evils, as the poet puts it. Hur hur.
Was a time personal liberty was just that – you could do what you fancied. But now, if I enjoy my quality tobacco product inside, turns out I’m killing that blonde bird who’s scowling at me. And she’s a good ten-feet away.
She looks like a whinger. Look at that horrible little dog she’s got. A rat. A nicely groomed rat, I’ll give her that, but still a rat.
Daft bint.
Blimey. I’d written off rising sea levels and all that global warming malarkey as one of them Green fings what I don’t worry about on account of the fact that it’s all a load of scare-mongering rubbish and I’ve got duties, I have, I’ve got kids, but the way it’s coming down right now, we’ll be up to up to our arseholes in ocean by tomorrow.
“What you reckon of Westham’s chances then, Pete? Relegation on the way?”
Worl. Judging by Zola’s performance so far, s’only a matter of time, really? ‘Course, I don’t voice that opinion. No. Don’t do to let the side down. So I say what the lads want to hear, which is, “Nah, mate. Zola’s a bit of a playboy, bit of a dancer, but he’s one of them Latino types (Big laugh), can’t help it. Good manger though. Give him time, boys. Give him time”.
They all nod their heads sagely at this. Much drawing of fag smoke and supping of pints. Pete’s got it bang on, as per usual.
‘Course, that’s how it works round my way. You stand by your mates. You stand by your woman, even if she moans the place down about you rolling in from the pub late slash pissed. You stand firm, even if she does demand more trips to Ikea to get cupboards and lampshades what cost me a fuckin’ fortune... and do I get any recognition for getting up at 5am to stand in the rain and wind chipping ice for Brixham beam-haulers to pack Icelandic Cod in, and me with my lumbago? Do I fuck.
I feel quite ‘urt sometimes, I really do.
And you stand by your team. What you feel isn’t what matters, sorta fing. You don’t let the side down.
Look at Gaz. Look at that hair-cut. Like a bog-brush. No, like a parrot. ‘Course, Gaz thinks he looks the bollocks, the very bollocks, but actually, he looks like my landlady’s moulting Cockatoo.
Cockatoo. I do make myself chuckle, sometimes. Hur.
Now Gaz is banging on about the need to send more troops to Iraq to deal with the Taliban. Gaz calls anyone brown “Arabs”: A-rabs, like that. And the Taliban are in fuckin’ Afghanistan, as any pillock knows. He’s saying how we need give them a taste of Bulldog Britain; a belting round the back of The Crown & Thistle etcetera. Gaz likes that sort of thing. Bit of an animal. Bit of an old-school thug, you might say. Likes a taste of splashed blood. I keep clear of him when he’s in one of them moods.
Len’s piped up. What’s he saying? He’s trying to calm Gaz down, isn’t he? Gaz gets a bit frothy now and then. Bit piss and vinegar. And then someone says something – anything – and he goes off on one and ends up in the caring arms of the old bill, and some kid’s got his arm broken in three places.
My nephew was killed in Iraq. Nice lad. Bit quiet. Spotty, face like the surface of the moon. Thought the uniform would get the birds, no doubt. Hur.
Bit of shrapnel through the temple. Whammo. Like that. And there he was, gone.
And now Gaz reckons we should make National Service compulsory, butcher the A-rabs, make footie the state religion – none of “this Allah shit.”
Sometimes he makes me so fucking despondent.
I thought of a nice little example about sticking with your team, too. Wifey, yeah? She tries on a pair of jeans, and her arse is all over the shop – like, two pumpkins in a sack, right? You wouldn’t say, “Yeah, your bum looks massive, love”. You just wouldn’t, am I right, or am I right? ‘Course I am. Anyway, that’s your team. Don’t matter if Zola’s a bit, y’know, continental. Don’t matter if my back seizes up some mornings, apparently. Don’t matter if Gaz has frankly got Rabies. Don’t matter.
You want to stick with Papa Pete, you do. I know what’s going on.
Hur.
Half-time, so me and the fellas are out front, right outside, bang in the element, in a little courtyard. It is mashing it down. Smokers are hard done by in this country. Get to stand in our own segregated patio, like lepers, like fuckin’ pariahs.
I blame the Tories. There’s a bit of thing for having a dig at the old liberals at the mo, but I’d rather have a poncy liberal from Hampstead then some posh nonce from Chelsea, know what I mean? Cameron don’t know nuffin’ about living on an estate in the East End. Brown, worl, he’s got a dodgy eye. Bit porky. Fallible. Bare-knuckle boy, like me. Fair play to him, I say. Lesser of two evils, as the poet puts it. Hur hur.
Was a time personal liberty was just that – you could do what you fancied. But now, if I enjoy my quality tobacco product inside, turns out I’m killing that blonde bird who’s scowling at me. And she’s a good ten-feet away.
She looks like a whinger. Look at that horrible little dog she’s got. A rat. A nicely groomed rat, I’ll give her that, but still a rat.
Daft bint.
Blimey. I’d written off rising sea levels and all that global warming malarkey as one of them Green fings what I don’t worry about on account of the fact that it’s all a load of scare-mongering rubbish and I’ve got duties, I have, I’ve got kids, but the way it’s coming down right now, we’ll be up to up to our arseholes in ocean by tomorrow.
“What you reckon of Westham’s chances then, Pete? Relegation on the way?”
Worl. Judging by Zola’s performance so far, s’only a matter of time, really? ‘Course, I don’t voice that opinion. No. Don’t do to let the side down. So I say what the lads want to hear, which is, “Nah, mate. Zola’s a bit of a playboy, bit of a dancer, but he’s one of them Latino types (Big laugh), can’t help it. Good manger though. Give him time, boys. Give him time”.
They all nod their heads sagely at this. Much drawing of fag smoke and supping of pints. Pete’s got it bang on, as per usual.
‘Course, that’s how it works round my way. You stand by your mates. You stand by your woman, even if she moans the place down about you rolling in from the pub late slash pissed. You stand firm, even if she does demand more trips to Ikea to get cupboards and lampshades what cost me a fuckin’ fortune... and do I get any recognition for getting up at 5am to stand in the rain and wind chipping ice for Brixham beam-haulers to pack Icelandic Cod in, and me with my lumbago? Do I fuck.
I feel quite ‘urt sometimes, I really do.
And you stand by your team. What you feel isn’t what matters, sorta fing. You don’t let the side down.
Look at Gaz. Look at that hair-cut. Like a bog-brush. No, like a parrot. ‘Course, Gaz thinks he looks the bollocks, the very bollocks, but actually, he looks like my landlady’s moulting Cockatoo.
Cockatoo. I do make myself chuckle, sometimes. Hur.
Now Gaz is banging on about the need to send more troops to Iraq to deal with the Taliban. Gaz calls anyone brown “Arabs”: A-rabs, like that. And the Taliban are in fuckin’ Afghanistan, as any pillock knows. He’s saying how we need give them a taste of Bulldog Britain; a belting round the back of The Crown & Thistle etcetera. Gaz likes that sort of thing. Bit of an animal. Bit of an old-school thug, you might say. Likes a taste of splashed blood. I keep clear of him when he’s in one of them moods.
Len’s piped up. What’s he saying? He’s trying to calm Gaz down, isn’t he? Gaz gets a bit frothy now and then. Bit piss and vinegar. And then someone says something – anything – and he goes off on one and ends up in the caring arms of the old bill, and some kid’s got his arm broken in three places.
My nephew was killed in Iraq. Nice lad. Bit quiet. Spotty, face like the surface of the moon. Thought the uniform would get the birds, no doubt. Hur.
Bit of shrapnel through the temple. Whammo. Like that. And there he was, gone.
And now Gaz reckons we should make National Service compulsory, butcher the A-rabs, make footie the state religion – none of “this Allah shit.”
Sometimes he makes me so fucking despondent.
I thought of a nice little example about sticking with your team, too. Wifey, yeah? She tries on a pair of jeans, and her arse is all over the shop – like, two pumpkins in a sack, right? You wouldn’t say, “Yeah, your bum looks massive, love”. You just wouldn’t, am I right, or am I right? ‘Course I am. Anyway, that’s your team. Don’t matter if Zola’s a bit, y’know, continental. Don’t matter if my back seizes up some mornings, apparently. Don’t matter if Gaz has frankly got Rabies. Don’t matter.
You want to stick with Papa Pete, you do. I know what’s going on.
Hur.
Rushes & Reeds
Ideas have fetches. As with a wave, an idea breaks upon the brain like a wave train. It washes across ribbed sand spits and provokes thoughts where it sinks into the wet dunes. Which is why I migrate towards water - preferably running, noisy water - when I need to think.
I am sitting at the bend in my river. I have no formal ownership of this section of the river – no paperwork, signatures, documents, legislation – and it’s hardly a river, more a thread of torpid water that glazes the valley-bottom, like a blue ribbon measured out across green cloth, or as, the parish’s ruddy-cheeked local priest puts it, “like a spilt pint across the baize of a pool-table”, which I imagine is partly poetic expression, and partly experience.
The canal, for that is what is, doesn’t wind elegantly, or rush in excitable torrents. It instead runs straight as a die through bulrushes and watermint and pondweed, suctioning damply at the mud banks like a tongue probing for a lost tooth. It is, in its way, a profoundly uninteresting section of water. But it is mine, and I can sit by it in summer and winter and find hidden things and be rewarded by the flash of colour in the dun, and by the blur of movement in the still.
Kingfishers live in the spinney. I’m not sure where exactly – the banks do not seem high enough to accommodate their warrens, and the winter floods would drown anything lower than the high woods on the ridge-line – but I’ve seen them in summer, if you can call glimpsing a blurred shard of blue-and-orange 'seeing'. They peep and pipe throughout Spring, and as with most hidden things, are easier to hear than see. I have heard a Bittern, once, and it’s harsh, irritable, “crak”, with the middle ‘a’ accentuated (á) to create the, “arr” sound, is an annual rite of passage. But I’ve never seen it, largely because Bitterns are secretive, shy, and a dull, flecked brown.
Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, this is my bit of the river. The anglers don’t agree, and perch over the water, spindly carbon-fibre rods dangling over the stream like the legs of a Cranefly, twitching as in a breeze with the nibblings of Ten-Spined Sticklebacks. Ten-Spined Sticklebacks are apparently quite rare, but no-one told the ones in this section of the Brede River, which breed with gusto and provide vital fuel in the summer for lots of birds that live in or around the main spinney.
Sometimes I lie flat on my back on a natural bank, raised at a slight incline, and look at the clouds scudding by. I like to look at clouds, but today I am looking for a Buzzard.
Buzzards are the birds which make the lonely, mewling cries in wilderness scenes in films. People assume the cries are Eagles of some kind, because Buzzards are a bit lowly and common to be the guardians of the wilderness. Buzzards are, for me at least, as much a sign of solitude and wild land as the howls of wolves or coyotes. They are one of the most evocative sounds I can think of, largely, it must be said, due to half my family being Canadian - along with the lowing of a freight-train in North America, the two-tone warble of the Great Northern Diver, the plash of a car wheels in heavy rain, and the winter hub-bub of conversation in a busy pub, they're an inclusive part of my make-up. Buzzards wheeling overhead and piercing the sky with spearing cries are as much part of winter for me as caramelising apple-wood in a bonfire, or the deadening lull of snow-fall, or the searing rush of whisky down my throat in The Anchor, with friends, on Christmas Eve.
I am sitting at the bend in my river. I have no formal ownership of this section of the river – no paperwork, signatures, documents, legislation – and it’s hardly a river, more a thread of torpid water that glazes the valley-bottom, like a blue ribbon measured out across green cloth, or as, the parish’s ruddy-cheeked local priest puts it, “like a spilt pint across the baize of a pool-table”, which I imagine is partly poetic expression, and partly experience.
The canal, for that is what is, doesn’t wind elegantly, or rush in excitable torrents. It instead runs straight as a die through bulrushes and watermint and pondweed, suctioning damply at the mud banks like a tongue probing for a lost tooth. It is, in its way, a profoundly uninteresting section of water. But it is mine, and I can sit by it in summer and winter and find hidden things and be rewarded by the flash of colour in the dun, and by the blur of movement in the still.
Kingfishers live in the spinney. I’m not sure where exactly – the banks do not seem high enough to accommodate their warrens, and the winter floods would drown anything lower than the high woods on the ridge-line – but I’ve seen them in summer, if you can call glimpsing a blurred shard of blue-and-orange 'seeing'. They peep and pipe throughout Spring, and as with most hidden things, are easier to hear than see. I have heard a Bittern, once, and it’s harsh, irritable, “crak”, with the middle ‘a’ accentuated (á) to create the, “arr” sound, is an annual rite of passage. But I’ve never seen it, largely because Bitterns are secretive, shy, and a dull, flecked brown.
Nevertheless, for what it’s worth, this is my bit of the river. The anglers don’t agree, and perch over the water, spindly carbon-fibre rods dangling over the stream like the legs of a Cranefly, twitching as in a breeze with the nibblings of Ten-Spined Sticklebacks. Ten-Spined Sticklebacks are apparently quite rare, but no-one told the ones in this section of the Brede River, which breed with gusto and provide vital fuel in the summer for lots of birds that live in or around the main spinney.
Sometimes I lie flat on my back on a natural bank, raised at a slight incline, and look at the clouds scudding by. I like to look at clouds, but today I am looking for a Buzzard.
Buzzards are the birds which make the lonely, mewling cries in wilderness scenes in films. People assume the cries are Eagles of some kind, because Buzzards are a bit lowly and common to be the guardians of the wilderness. Buzzards are, for me at least, as much a sign of solitude and wild land as the howls of wolves or coyotes. They are one of the most evocative sounds I can think of, largely, it must be said, due to half my family being Canadian - along with the lowing of a freight-train in North America, the two-tone warble of the Great Northern Diver, the plash of a car wheels in heavy rain, and the winter hub-bub of conversation in a busy pub, they're an inclusive part of my make-up. Buzzards wheeling overhead and piercing the sky with spearing cries are as much part of winter for me as caramelising apple-wood in a bonfire, or the deadening lull of snow-fall, or the searing rush of whisky down my throat in The Anchor, with friends, on Christmas Eve.
Sound Of March
http://open.spotify.com/user/trade_winds/playlist/4ewLjPW0qZvzyj9CSGwkm5
Usual monthly aural update, for discerning eustachian tubes the world over.
Usual monthly aural update, for discerning eustachian tubes the world over.
Soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months, and then taken outside and run over with a car
Tom Waits fans are a peculiar breed. The Wolfman does not promote a cult of personality - Waits shys away instinctively from all self-promotion, is notoriously cagey in the presence of journalists and devotees, and seems at times to make his work deliberately inaccessible, as anyone who's listened to some of the vaudevillian nightmares of Mule Variations, The Black Rider, and Bastards will testify.
Waits is a relentless inventor and, musically, something of an auteur - he is famed for being obsessively precise in articulating his lyrics, arrangements, art-work, and so on. For a man who actively promotes "the unfinished article - warts and scars and all", he is minutely anal about getting "it" right; an off-key passage, the whine of a string breaking, the clonk of a chair-leg falling through the fissures in a floor-board, the imperfectly timed cough - all of these combine in Waits songs to create an atmosphere that is uniquely Waitsian.
Even the term 'Waitsian' carries weight in the annals of musical journalism; its definition is obviously imprecise, spanning as it does everything from Closing Time-era balladry (Showing Waits fascination with Tin Pan Alley classic songwriting, subtly influenced by the standard template of 20's and 30's blues musicians; Waits has stated many times that Hoagy Carmichael and Howlin' Wolf were as important to him as Kerouac and Dylan) to the sleazy noir of SwordFishTrombones, all the way to the bleached-bone scare stories of Bone Machine. But if Waits imprecision and elusiveness is his hallmark of choice, then it adds to his mystique - he has made a career out of being un-pindownable, impossible to nail the ragged, smoke-stained voice to the collecting board of genre.
'Waitsian' is generally taken to mean any sludgy, detuned varietal of music-hall villain, world-weary minstrel, and mad inventor in the basement, stapling steaks to washboards and shooting Zildjian cymbals at point-blank range with a twelve-bore, and while this is a key feature of a lot of Waits oeuvre (Sleazy down-and-out characters pissing their lives in glorious tragi-comedy up the wall, somewhere off Skid Row), his work is also populated with a cast of freakish figures that rebound disquietingly off real life - the high-school jock who ended up sleeping with transsexual prostitutes, the ghost truck driver, the long-distance lovelorn call from Istanbul. It’s the superimposition of the normal and pathetic upon the surreal and grotesque that makes it so compelling.
Anyway, here's a few highlights from the whole span of Waits's work. Enjoy!
http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2010/01/04/tom-waits-nighthawks-on-the-radio-1976-wnew-fm-nyc/
http://bigshouldersporter.blogspot.com/2007/11/fill-in-blank-playlist.html
http://www.sandiegoserenade.com/2006/06/springsteen_seals_n_shit.html
http://monkeybastardsv20.blogspot.com/2009/03/mannish-boy.html
Get that down your ear-pipes.
Waits is a relentless inventor and, musically, something of an auteur - he is famed for being obsessively precise in articulating his lyrics, arrangements, art-work, and so on. For a man who actively promotes "the unfinished article - warts and scars and all", he is minutely anal about getting "it" right; an off-key passage, the whine of a string breaking, the clonk of a chair-leg falling through the fissures in a floor-board, the imperfectly timed cough - all of these combine in Waits songs to create an atmosphere that is uniquely Waitsian.
Even the term 'Waitsian' carries weight in the annals of musical journalism; its definition is obviously imprecise, spanning as it does everything from Closing Time-era balladry (Showing Waits fascination with Tin Pan Alley classic songwriting, subtly influenced by the standard template of 20's and 30's blues musicians; Waits has stated many times that Hoagy Carmichael and Howlin' Wolf were as important to him as Kerouac and Dylan) to the sleazy noir of SwordFishTrombones, all the way to the bleached-bone scare stories of Bone Machine. But if Waits imprecision and elusiveness is his hallmark of choice, then it adds to his mystique - he has made a career out of being un-pindownable, impossible to nail the ragged, smoke-stained voice to the collecting board of genre.
'Waitsian' is generally taken to mean any sludgy, detuned varietal of music-hall villain, world-weary minstrel, and mad inventor in the basement, stapling steaks to washboards and shooting Zildjian cymbals at point-blank range with a twelve-bore, and while this is a key feature of a lot of Waits oeuvre (Sleazy down-and-out characters pissing their lives in glorious tragi-comedy up the wall, somewhere off Skid Row), his work is also populated with a cast of freakish figures that rebound disquietingly off real life - the high-school jock who ended up sleeping with transsexual prostitutes, the ghost truck driver, the long-distance lovelorn call from Istanbul. It’s the superimposition of the normal and pathetic upon the surreal and grotesque that makes it so compelling.
Anyway, here's a few highlights from the whole span of Waits's work. Enjoy!
http://www.aquariumdrunkard.com/2010/01/04/tom-waits-nighthawks-on-the-radio-1976-wnew-fm-nyc/
http://bigshouldersporter.blogspot.com/2007/11/fill-in-blank-playlist.html
http://www.sandiegoserenade.com/2006/06/springsteen_seals_n_shit.html
http://monkeybastardsv20.blogspot.com/2009/03/mannish-boy.html
Get that down your ear-pipes.
Friday 19 March 2010
Green Man
I wound down the window as I made my way home, and exhaled into the September air. The Devon countryside was dreaming to itself. Fieldfares churred sleepily from a thicket of Hawthorn. Marsh Frogs belched seductive platitudes. I dimmed the headlights as a post-van sped past, and then switched them off. Darkness fell into the car. In the night, moths engaged in silent dog-fights. One bat conducted a perfect Immelmann turn and snatched the shadow of a moth in front of the moon.
The moon was cast in copper. Moonset in September, sometimes, causes the scattering of light-particles in the atmosphere. As the moon dips below its zenith, it spreads the low-frequency particles along its azimuth angle - the low-proton blues and greens are shattered along a subtle beam, and the reds and yellows are drawn into the chlorophyll, to be processed into autumn sugars.
Frank used to swim in the Tavy River as a child, and he once told me that when he did the breaststroke, the algae that proliferated in the mid-august river used to turn his underwater limbs a tarnished gold, and sometimes, filtered through the sediment and ripples, he dreamt of being a frog.
I pulled into a lay-by, and heard the frogs and the chittering of bats.
II.
Frank’s funeral was on Tuesday. I had driven over from Bristol on Monday, to attend a wake in the company of Frank’s oldest friends, his partner, and – written into his will – a case of vintage elderberry wine, which Frank had bottled on a narcotic summer night in 1992, and which was to be consumed by the congregation at the earliest suitable occasion. Frank’s beautiful, scrawled writing was etched in India ink on each fawn-coloured label, and both his handwriting on the labels and the explicit ordering of his will was classically Frank – robust, earthy, hugely generous, and unconcernedly immortal. Frank was aware of death, in a distant, amused way, but I don’t think he ever really expected to die. No-one did. Frank was less a human being and more a force of nature on legs – a bouncing fox-cub given human form.
At sixty-three, he woke up at 6am in the summer, 7am in the winter, happily splashed himself clean in toffee-coloured water in a tin bath in June, amiably plunged his head into the freshly-broken ice of a water-butt in December. Two years ago, he told me how he had woken up on April 12th at 5am, shouldered a hatchet and flask of applejack, walked to Wiskit wood glugging the brandy contentedly, felled two yew saplings, and, packing the whippy greenwood in the back seat of his Reliant Scimitar – a vehicular version of himself; powerful, grumpy, forgiving, and with its advanced age, increasingly backfiring – drove towards Bristol.
I remember the confusion of that morning. I had been up since 6am, mostly sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the whorls and burls in the walnut grain and Crayola doodles of my daughter, Veronica, and silently vibrating with nerves. At 8am, after decimating a pack of Benson & Hedges silver and on my fourth consecutive cup of black coffee, I went upstairs to bathe, shave, prepare my suit and check for the umpteenth time that my parents arrived at the wedding at 11am sharp for the final rehearsal, my father’s memory being what it was.
As I rose from my chair – shaky with nerves, rehearsal exhaustion and caffeine - I saw a movement at the window, and a craggy and fissured, but somehow impish face hoved slowly into view, rounding the window-frame like a big autumn moon. Frank’s teeth, beige, tomb-stone things, leered happily back at me. I opened the French windows.
I asked him, in carefully measured, neutral tones, just why he was lurking in my garden at 8am on the morning of my wedding.
‘Ah, well, I broke in. I was going to knock, but I thought you’d be asleep, and I didn’t want to disturb you, so I vaulted the wall. Your gate was locked, y’see. Landed on Jane’s begonias, which broke my fall alright, although you want to have that blackthorn stump out, because’ – he peeled a few crushed petals off his jeans, and the scent of drowsy nectar filled the air for a moment - ‘I landed right on it.’ He grimaced, ‘With my arse, too’ he said gravely. ‘Got any secateurs? I wouldn’t say no to an egg’.
This was such a typical comment of Frank that I collapsed in weary hysterics, my racked chest heaving with momentary nuptial relief. Frank looked blankly at me, like a cow that’s been shown a card trick. I jokingly asked him if he wanted soldiers with the egg. He looked, if anything, even blanker.
‘No, I’ll have it fried ‘til it clangs and slapped between white bread, thanks. Lots of ketchup’ said Frank, rubbing his huge hands and peering interestedly around the kitchen. He picked up a sea-shell I had found near Derek Jarman’s driftwood garden, near Dungeness in Sussex, bleached white by the saline winds and deeply furrowed by boring sand-worms.
‘Nice little piece. Jarman’s, of course. That’s theft, that is’. Frank’s face creaked into a crafty grin. My mouth may have begun to open, in amazement or protest, I can’t remember which, but was stopped by Frank, who was now deep in the midst of a masters explanation.
‘He always artificially bleaches them, y’see. Couple of bags of salt, pan of boiling water. Change and replace three times, and Bob’s your proverbial uncle. Those grooves were made with a file, too. Look, he’s nicked a chip in it here, see?’
I glanced down to see an infinitesimal notch in the calcite deposits, which I would never have noticed, before he whisked it away, grabbed a pair of scissors on the sideboard, scrutinized the tasting blurb on a bottle of Londis wine, gruffly mumbled something negative about Chilian wine, and ambled out the door. Seconds later, his head loomed through the door-frame.
‘Coffee, Jake, and lots of it. Three teaspoons, same of sugar. Imagine you’re paving a road with tarmac. That sort of consistency. Think gravy, Jake, think gravy’. And he crashed off into the foliage.
III.
Frank Taylor was, in the nicest way, a rural throwback. While other people in his adopted village had installed central heating and double-glazing throughout, Frank cut sappy chestnut logs, cleaving them into kindling and drying them in sheaves for the winter. When his friends aged, they either conceded the steering wheel to arthritis and impaired vision, or bought new, mild-mannered cars to pop down to the shops in, Frank tinkered away on his ancient Scimatar until the engine bellowed like a rutting stag and clouds of blue Castrol exhaust smoke swamped the lanes around his house like the mist of Heathcliff. Frank called his car, “The Colonel”, allegedly because of its noble form and decisive military acceleration, but rather more accurately because of its resemblance to a puce-faced, hard-of-hearing distinguished old boy, roaring at everyone to speak up.
The moon was cast in copper. Moonset in September, sometimes, causes the scattering of light-particles in the atmosphere. As the moon dips below its zenith, it spreads the low-frequency particles along its azimuth angle - the low-proton blues and greens are shattered along a subtle beam, and the reds and yellows are drawn into the chlorophyll, to be processed into autumn sugars.
Frank used to swim in the Tavy River as a child, and he once told me that when he did the breaststroke, the algae that proliferated in the mid-august river used to turn his underwater limbs a tarnished gold, and sometimes, filtered through the sediment and ripples, he dreamt of being a frog.
I pulled into a lay-by, and heard the frogs and the chittering of bats.
II.
Frank’s funeral was on Tuesday. I had driven over from Bristol on Monday, to attend a wake in the company of Frank’s oldest friends, his partner, and – written into his will – a case of vintage elderberry wine, which Frank had bottled on a narcotic summer night in 1992, and which was to be consumed by the congregation at the earliest suitable occasion. Frank’s beautiful, scrawled writing was etched in India ink on each fawn-coloured label, and both his handwriting on the labels and the explicit ordering of his will was classically Frank – robust, earthy, hugely generous, and unconcernedly immortal. Frank was aware of death, in a distant, amused way, but I don’t think he ever really expected to die. No-one did. Frank was less a human being and more a force of nature on legs – a bouncing fox-cub given human form.
At sixty-three, he woke up at 6am in the summer, 7am in the winter, happily splashed himself clean in toffee-coloured water in a tin bath in June, amiably plunged his head into the freshly-broken ice of a water-butt in December. Two years ago, he told me how he had woken up on April 12th at 5am, shouldered a hatchet and flask of applejack, walked to Wiskit wood glugging the brandy contentedly, felled two yew saplings, and, packing the whippy greenwood in the back seat of his Reliant Scimitar – a vehicular version of himself; powerful, grumpy, forgiving, and with its advanced age, increasingly backfiring – drove towards Bristol.
I remember the confusion of that morning. I had been up since 6am, mostly sitting at the kitchen table, staring at the whorls and burls in the walnut grain and Crayola doodles of my daughter, Veronica, and silently vibrating with nerves. At 8am, after decimating a pack of Benson & Hedges silver and on my fourth consecutive cup of black coffee, I went upstairs to bathe, shave, prepare my suit and check for the umpteenth time that my parents arrived at the wedding at 11am sharp for the final rehearsal, my father’s memory being what it was.
As I rose from my chair – shaky with nerves, rehearsal exhaustion and caffeine - I saw a movement at the window, and a craggy and fissured, but somehow impish face hoved slowly into view, rounding the window-frame like a big autumn moon. Frank’s teeth, beige, tomb-stone things, leered happily back at me. I opened the French windows.
I asked him, in carefully measured, neutral tones, just why he was lurking in my garden at 8am on the morning of my wedding.
‘Ah, well, I broke in. I was going to knock, but I thought you’d be asleep, and I didn’t want to disturb you, so I vaulted the wall. Your gate was locked, y’see. Landed on Jane’s begonias, which broke my fall alright, although you want to have that blackthorn stump out, because’ – he peeled a few crushed petals off his jeans, and the scent of drowsy nectar filled the air for a moment - ‘I landed right on it.’ He grimaced, ‘With my arse, too’ he said gravely. ‘Got any secateurs? I wouldn’t say no to an egg’.
This was such a typical comment of Frank that I collapsed in weary hysterics, my racked chest heaving with momentary nuptial relief. Frank looked blankly at me, like a cow that’s been shown a card trick. I jokingly asked him if he wanted soldiers with the egg. He looked, if anything, even blanker.
‘No, I’ll have it fried ‘til it clangs and slapped between white bread, thanks. Lots of ketchup’ said Frank, rubbing his huge hands and peering interestedly around the kitchen. He picked up a sea-shell I had found near Derek Jarman’s driftwood garden, near Dungeness in Sussex, bleached white by the saline winds and deeply furrowed by boring sand-worms.
‘Nice little piece. Jarman’s, of course. That’s theft, that is’. Frank’s face creaked into a crafty grin. My mouth may have begun to open, in amazement or protest, I can’t remember which, but was stopped by Frank, who was now deep in the midst of a masters explanation.
‘He always artificially bleaches them, y’see. Couple of bags of salt, pan of boiling water. Change and replace three times, and Bob’s your proverbial uncle. Those grooves were made with a file, too. Look, he’s nicked a chip in it here, see?’
I glanced down to see an infinitesimal notch in the calcite deposits, which I would never have noticed, before he whisked it away, grabbed a pair of scissors on the sideboard, scrutinized the tasting blurb on a bottle of Londis wine, gruffly mumbled something negative about Chilian wine, and ambled out the door. Seconds later, his head loomed through the door-frame.
‘Coffee, Jake, and lots of it. Three teaspoons, same of sugar. Imagine you’re paving a road with tarmac. That sort of consistency. Think gravy, Jake, think gravy’. And he crashed off into the foliage.
III.
Frank Taylor was, in the nicest way, a rural throwback. While other people in his adopted village had installed central heating and double-glazing throughout, Frank cut sappy chestnut logs, cleaving them into kindling and drying them in sheaves for the winter. When his friends aged, they either conceded the steering wheel to arthritis and impaired vision, or bought new, mild-mannered cars to pop down to the shops in, Frank tinkered away on his ancient Scimatar until the engine bellowed like a rutting stag and clouds of blue Castrol exhaust smoke swamped the lanes around his house like the mist of Heathcliff. Frank called his car, “The Colonel”, allegedly because of its noble form and decisive military acceleration, but rather more accurately because of its resemblance to a puce-faced, hard-of-hearing distinguished old boy, roaring at everyone to speak up.
Platitudes to Tom, PT.1
Well the smart money's on Harlow and the moon is in the street
And the shadow boys are breaking all the laws
And you're east of East Saint Louis and the wind is making speeches
And the rain sounds like a round of applause
And Napoleon is weeping in a carnival saloon
His invisible fiancee's in the mirror
And the band is going home, it's raining hammers, it's raining nails
And it's true there's nothing left for him down here
And it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
And they all pretend they're orphans and their memory's like a train
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away
And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget
That history puts a saint in every dream
Well she said she'd stick around until the bandages came off
But these mama's boys just don't know when to quit
And Mathilda asks the sailors "Are those dreams or are those prayers?"
So close your eyes, son, and this won't hurt a bit
Oh it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
Well things are pretty lousy for a calendar girl
The boys just dive right off the cars and splash into the street
And when they're on a roll she pulls a razor from her boot
And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet
So put a candle in the window and a kiss upon his lips
As the dish outside the window fills with rain
Just like a stranger with the weeds in your heart
And pay the fiddler off 'til I come back again
Oh it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
And it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
And the shadow boys are breaking all the laws
And you're east of East Saint Louis and the wind is making speeches
And the rain sounds like a round of applause
And Napoleon is weeping in a carnival saloon
His invisible fiancee's in the mirror
And the band is going home, it's raining hammers, it's raining nails
And it's true there's nothing left for him down here
And it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
And they all pretend they're orphans and their memory's like a train
You can see it getting smaller as it pulls away
And the things you can't remember tell the things you can't forget
That history puts a saint in every dream
Well she said she'd stick around until the bandages came off
But these mama's boys just don't know when to quit
And Mathilda asks the sailors "Are those dreams or are those prayers?"
So close your eyes, son, and this won't hurt a bit
Oh it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
Well things are pretty lousy for a calendar girl
The boys just dive right off the cars and splash into the street
And when they're on a roll she pulls a razor from her boot
And a thousand pigeons fall around her feet
So put a candle in the window and a kiss upon his lips
As the dish outside the window fills with rain
Just like a stranger with the weeds in your heart
And pay the fiddler off 'til I come back again
Oh it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
And it's time time time, and it's time time time
And it's time time time that you love
And it's time time time
Thursday 18 March 2010
Why I Fear Handbags
The other day, I was lying on a bench in my garden, dipping my hobnob in my coffee, flicking crumbs to my friend the blackbird, and idly devising ways to cap the Boy Scouts behind my house with an aging air rifle and not get arrested, when the mens bit of the Sunday Supplement I was flicking through started shouting at me.
“Hermes handbag”.
Huh?
“The ultimate man-bag”.
Hang on, wai...
“Competitively priced at £160. You cannot afford be seen without this bag. Buy it now”.
After I’d read the sentence a few times, turned the magazine upside down, and tried out a few basic cipher patterns on it, I eventually concluded that it meant I should invest in what is, to all intends and purposes, a bag for women for men. It also foretold dire omens if I did not buy it this instant; people would inevitably think I was a bin-bag wearing troglodyte who fished for food in wheelie bins and shopped exclusively in Poundland. There would be no mercy for such as me.
This worries me.
First off – “You cannot be seen without this bag”. Somehow, I doubted that. I imagined myself, darting furtively from shadow to shadow, crouching in the grit-and-dust dark of a Soviet-era bloc, breath fast and tense, arched back pressed hard to the cold concrete, bagless, like the filthy fashion fugitive I apparently am. Karl Lagerfeld would be pursuing me on foot, looking like a camp Teutonic Terminator. Ozwald Boateng would be following me with dogs. Somewhere in the broiling clouds, Tom Ford would be lurking in an Apache gunship. After I’d finished chortling in the manner of one who has recently had his frontal lobes removed, I considered point two.
The appraisal of said man-bag was tersely signed, in an irritable italic scribble, “Terence Green”. Who was he? Why was he being so aggressive? What had I done to him? And why the hell did he want me to buy a tiny crocodile-skin bag for silly money? I freely admit that I engage on a happily bewildered level with most of civilisation, but the mystique of this was such that, as usual, my mind drifted off into the fluffy pink clouds I mentally retreat to everytime I encounter a strange and frightening concept, like an Inland Revenue form or self-serve checkout.
See, I can tolerate women’s fashion. I don't claim to understand the appeal of many, many pairs of shoes, but it's an issue I don't have to engage with, and that is as it should be. With a woman, when I go into Miss Selfridge or Miu Miu, I go into a sort of instant narcosis. It’s quite nice really. I just drift about with a faint smile plastered on my face, with very little idea of where I am, and then I come out again.
But I get anxious when a man called Terence Green threatens me with social ostracism if I don’t buy a very small, very expensive bag. This is beyond what I can be reasonably expected to understand. I thought fruity little bags where a definite female area, and that if I had one, I’d be swaying in the breeze, hung on a coat hook by my boxers within seconds, and beefy justice would be righteously served. But I am wrong.
I decided to research further. Trundling around my kitchen, boxer-dressed and deep in investigation, colliding with protesting family and pets, I read on. Did you know that £140 cufflinks are, “Vital right now”. I didn’t. Blood is vital, isn't it? Oxygen also. I’m told that sixty quid for a mug is quite reasonable. No, not told - assumed.
Now, I like mugs. I have quite a few, often with dry legends like, “Sit down, have a cup of tea. Everything will be alright”. A lifesaver, you will agree. I would pay up to a tenner on a mug, perhaps as much as twelve pounds if it was a paticularly good mug and I liked the shop attendant. Nevertheless, £60 seems a bit steep. If I was drinking £140 Cristal out of it, perhaps it’d make a crude sense. But I can’t afford Cristal. I can just about afford Cava, but I'd rather buy Tangfastics, and putting them in a mug would be weird.
Also, the writing disturbs me. The general tone is either screaming teenage girl off her tits on a generous quantity of meth, or barking border patrol guard at a Siberian check-point in Murmansk. Both are equally frightening, and the fashion journalist will often switch disconcertingly between the two - wired fashionista and psychotic squaddie - within a single sentence.
I don’t know, maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Nobody needs to be a Pulitzer Prize winner to write about clothes. But I draw the line when the general tone seems to be bashing randomly at a keyboard and making furious 2001 monkey noises. Also, being a fashion writer isn't a real job, really. Neither - for the record - are food critics, interior designers, and bankers.
I eventually glanced on this gem, which sums it all up rather wall, I think: “OMG, we’re actually in love” shrieked the fashion writer, gaunt limbs a-flail and smoky eyes a-twitch. She was referring to £99.99 Dolce & Gabbana bibs. As in, baby bibs. Surely they’d be more appropriate for the parents who bought them?.
Not for the first time, I decided that I was not really meant for this world, and went out for a bracing run, or a wheeze-and-swear-session, as I like to call them. I felt very slightly more macho as a result. It was strangely comforting.
“Hermes handbag”.
Huh?
“The ultimate man-bag”.
Hang on, wai...
“Competitively priced at £160. You cannot afford be seen without this bag. Buy it now”.
After I’d read the sentence a few times, turned the magazine upside down, and tried out a few basic cipher patterns on it, I eventually concluded that it meant I should invest in what is, to all intends and purposes, a bag for women for men. It also foretold dire omens if I did not buy it this instant; people would inevitably think I was a bin-bag wearing troglodyte who fished for food in wheelie bins and shopped exclusively in Poundland. There would be no mercy for such as me.
This worries me.
First off – “You cannot be seen without this bag”. Somehow, I doubted that. I imagined myself, darting furtively from shadow to shadow, crouching in the grit-and-dust dark of a Soviet-era bloc, breath fast and tense, arched back pressed hard to the cold concrete, bagless, like the filthy fashion fugitive I apparently am. Karl Lagerfeld would be pursuing me on foot, looking like a camp Teutonic Terminator. Ozwald Boateng would be following me with dogs. Somewhere in the broiling clouds, Tom Ford would be lurking in an Apache gunship. After I’d finished chortling in the manner of one who has recently had his frontal lobes removed, I considered point two.
The appraisal of said man-bag was tersely signed, in an irritable italic scribble, “Terence Green”. Who was he? Why was he being so aggressive? What had I done to him? And why the hell did he want me to buy a tiny crocodile-skin bag for silly money? I freely admit that I engage on a happily bewildered level with most of civilisation, but the mystique of this was such that, as usual, my mind drifted off into the fluffy pink clouds I mentally retreat to everytime I encounter a strange and frightening concept, like an Inland Revenue form or self-serve checkout.
See, I can tolerate women’s fashion. I don't claim to understand the appeal of many, many pairs of shoes, but it's an issue I don't have to engage with, and that is as it should be. With a woman, when I go into Miss Selfridge or Miu Miu, I go into a sort of instant narcosis. It’s quite nice really. I just drift about with a faint smile plastered on my face, with very little idea of where I am, and then I come out again.
But I get anxious when a man called Terence Green threatens me with social ostracism if I don’t buy a very small, very expensive bag. This is beyond what I can be reasonably expected to understand. I thought fruity little bags where a definite female area, and that if I had one, I’d be swaying in the breeze, hung on a coat hook by my boxers within seconds, and beefy justice would be righteously served. But I am wrong.
I decided to research further. Trundling around my kitchen, boxer-dressed and deep in investigation, colliding with protesting family and pets, I read on. Did you know that £140 cufflinks are, “Vital right now”. I didn’t. Blood is vital, isn't it? Oxygen also. I’m told that sixty quid for a mug is quite reasonable. No, not told - assumed.
Now, I like mugs. I have quite a few, often with dry legends like, “Sit down, have a cup of tea. Everything will be alright”. A lifesaver, you will agree. I would pay up to a tenner on a mug, perhaps as much as twelve pounds if it was a paticularly good mug and I liked the shop attendant. Nevertheless, £60 seems a bit steep. If I was drinking £140 Cristal out of it, perhaps it’d make a crude sense. But I can’t afford Cristal. I can just about afford Cava, but I'd rather buy Tangfastics, and putting them in a mug would be weird.
Also, the writing disturbs me. The general tone is either screaming teenage girl off her tits on a generous quantity of meth, or barking border patrol guard at a Siberian check-point in Murmansk. Both are equally frightening, and the fashion journalist will often switch disconcertingly between the two - wired fashionista and psychotic squaddie - within a single sentence.
I don’t know, maybe I’m being a bit harsh. Nobody needs to be a Pulitzer Prize winner to write about clothes. But I draw the line when the general tone seems to be bashing randomly at a keyboard and making furious 2001 monkey noises. Also, being a fashion writer isn't a real job, really. Neither - for the record - are food critics, interior designers, and bankers.
I eventually glanced on this gem, which sums it all up rather wall, I think: “OMG, we’re actually in love” shrieked the fashion writer, gaunt limbs a-flail and smoky eyes a-twitch. She was referring to £99.99 Dolce & Gabbana bibs. As in, baby bibs. Surely they’d be more appropriate for the parents who bought them?.
Not for the first time, I decided that I was not really meant for this world, and went out for a bracing run, or a wheeze-and-swear-session, as I like to call them. I felt very slightly more macho as a result. It was strangely comforting.
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