I shan't get shirty when they say I look peculiar...

Why Hello...

I should probably preface this again with the fact I have many thoughts today that possibly conflict and also may not exist so bear with me.. As I will with you. If you were to ask me.

So, today.. ah yes this appears to be a Sunday/after work midweek tradition of writing this blog when I'm not entirely sure what I'm thinking but I'm sure there's something to be gleaned out of the bizarre tired feeling I've got today.. Firstly, an amazing and superbly accomplished but even more modest and kind woman died this week and I have felt very lucky to have met her and enjoyed her company. She was never too busy to care about someone else which was the most amazing quality and it most definitely was not her time. I am very saddened by her passing and I only met her a few times but will always remember them.
I went to the funeral and even though I knew she'd done so much never realised quite how much and I know all her friends and family are very proud of her.

As funerals might do to a lot of you they make you really think about how much good you yourself are doing in this world. I am currently lying in bed listening to John Cale on 6music not doing anything hugely productive so I must up and away at some point. I feel the need to physically move and change things. Though John Cale has oft proved himself an excellent bedfellow. One of my favourite Welshmen, after my dad obviously. No matter how many times I hear Hallelujah sung by idiots and insipid Xfactor winners it still makes me cry. Leonard Cohen and John Cale, even Rufus Wainwright, do it justice to the lyrically succinct melody of melancholic beauty. Especially to one who's not sure if God exists. or even god for that matter. Is now the time to be philosophical? on a whim perhaps. and yet again I've gone once more unto the breach of talking nonsense. Before I can succeed at this writing lark I suppose I ought to control and coral my thoughts into some kind of sense but I do like to feel

In the words of a youtube comment "a story Boccaccio or Chaucer would write" this is not only true.. but also quite possibly the most intelligent sounding comment on youtube I've ever seen.

I must momentarily stop. I have just discovered someone on the radio who I can't even describe. Well I could, in comparisons to such French Ideals as Jacque Brel. Jake Thackray is from Leeds. Leeds. But if they had a sense of humour and had Noel Coward like aspirations. I've been put into a profoundly happier mood by this. By his own admission "I missed out on rock and all my influences were French".. ah my friend.



And this is my favourite, and the one that was just played on the radio. Needless to say I am in love with him mostly because of his nose and his jumpers. What a handsome witty man.. just goes to show my mother's right that I do have a thing for Northern Blokes.. yes that is their title don't you know.



Frightfully, frightfully la di dah!

Now I shall continue to write, lest I sit here all day listening to Mr Thackray. LIes all lies, I'm just going to write and listen.

I have just remembered something, whilst searching for Gene Vincent on the excellent Hype machine (not so excellent as I can't seem to find any as it's not working but still.. excellent usually). Somewhat unrelated I dreamt in Beach Boys songs last night. I awoke with Surfer Girl in my head, convinced I must've heard it yesterday. But now I've remembered that some friends were living on an ice lake in a posh hut just outside what was supposedly the Liverpool Docks, getting a boat to and from work and city. And we were sat in this hut, that from the inside seemed to be a large flat and had several floors and empty rooms to be quickly filled, and listened only to Beach Boys. Here the nuances of how dangerous and exciting it was to live on an Ice lake by the docks were explained to me. One after each other they depicted moments of near death and adrenaline, at potentially falling through the ice when drunk on the boat trip back. That going for one's morning jog was slightly hairy. And yet never once did I think the question their decision of living upon this hazardous but beautifully arid and blue silver landscape. There was no question of why one shouldn't live there.

And for another possible rant. I was in a restaurant the other day and I was having very interesting conversations but I couldn't keep my thoughts straight or my feet still when they played a Joe Meek, Gene Vincent et al extravaganza on repeat. There are never too many times to hear Telstar. and now I feel the need to jive and dance. Admittedly there is a part of me who will always imagine a certain Libertine in Telstar


and whilst perusing that I found not only a rather odd version of Venus in Furs being sang by Barat and Brett Anderson, which I only say is odd because it sounds almost normal in comparison to the raw original but also this hilariously drunk almost karaoke version of Kokomo sung by Moldy Peaches' Adam Green and Carl Barat. Worth it for the little dance in the middle by Carl and Adam screaming names of various islands.


I seem to have gone off on a Libertines binge and this has made me somewhat nostalgic for the aftershow party at Brixton academy like a crackden and the first days of Uni. There were libertines posters needless to say. This song still makes me want to cry and watching footage of gigs and the fans shows how amazing they were before they got into the limelight fucking each other up and becoming the bogeyman of the masses and mail readers. My best friend and I had planned our joint bohemian wedding in Albion, I got Carl Barat (who I do believe is married now... so is Julian Casablancas which saddens my 15 year old self) But there were others and happiness and things that meant something and it makes todays music, not to sound like an old fart, really fleeting and bit a sad. I liked the poetic nonchalance of the Libertines (even Dirty Pretty Things to a degree though they never had the passion really did they?) but now everything is so accessible to the masses. Not that I think music should create segregation but I still remember being awed by Arctic Monkeys getting a number one. An Indie band being big again was weird for me. and I don't tend to like some of the same things as everybody else much in the same way they don't like my things and I"ve oft been called weird. I don't mind it so much. I just liked being part of something smaller that was growing and actually being in touch with humanity. Or maybe that's what discovering music feels like at that age and never again do you feel that way about a band but mindlessly listen to 6music waiting for something or someone to make you feel that way again and hoping that you've not turned into the 20 something square that goes "oh yeah man Indie pop isn't what it used to be but don't you just fucking love Plan B??" If that's the case I'm running away and joining the indie pop circus.
and in some places it isn't like that. Indietracks festival is a place born of those who love what I do. And it's small and happy. and not full of wankers in maxi dresses discussing the nuances of Florence Welch's fringe. I work with many a person like that. I'm not naming names, though I'd like, nor am I going to get as annoyed when older people are surprised I like the Stones and Gainsbourg. How he physically makes me tingle and the beginning of Syd Barrat's Golden Hair makes me go into a psychotropic haze of delight and the sadness that tinges it with a tragic beauty. I know it all sounds very very um…. very pretentious and you know what some part of me doesn't really care. I care very much about the things that I like, so much so that I've apparently used up my data quota for the month in a matter of days writing this and listening to Jake Thackray and the Libertines and pretending things matter still. They do still matter but I suppose you have to work at it. I just wish there was some kind of movement that happened now. Something I obviously might have to start myself. Something to escape and run away from the emo shit and ridiculousness of the long boring day of nothingness in an office.

I've recently bought: Metronomy's English Riviera (which I know probably comes into the everybody likes it category and this pains me. not as much as listening and almost liking that foster the people song. ok I might actually cry now that I've admitted that. I hate it I really hate it when I like something as popular ok! Admitted admission and I'm a big pretentious geek. I don't care!

I've recently made: a long green silk evening gown that I wore to a graduation ball and then promptly threw up all the free red wine and delicious dinner I had all over it. Fun was had but it wasn't pretty (well it was quite 20s at first especially in a setting of an old hall with many an Art Deco furnishing)

I've recently read; um.. let's see what did I finish when I last wrote this… ooh I read When God Was a Rabbit which was movingly excellent and re read One Day as I like to do this every year around the time I graduated to remind me that I may not have lost everybody I ever made friends with and had a connection with and that I may still have time to do something useful and meaningful in this world and not just work in my equivalent of a Mexican restaurant.

I've recently done: very little but sat in bed and looked out of the window.

I've recently been: to London and Belfast. and discussed getting a garden in our new flat. and want to grow beans. and started a lot of sentences with and which pains me somewhat but I can't really go back and change them all now. and...


A bientôt x