...cloudy but mainly dry, a fair breeze keeping the temperature down to a maximum of twenty with small patches of rain drifting up over the south coast later in the evening...
{.....}
Thursday, 10 June 2010
Wendy Hurrell watch...
...cloudy but mainly dry, a fair breeze keeping the temperature down to a maximum of twenty with small patches of rain drifting up over the south coast later in the evening...
{.....}
Wednesday, 9 June 2010
Montevideo killed the radio star...
We he held our office World Cup sweepstake the other day.
I got Uruguay...
I got Uruguay...
A night at the opera...
For those of my reader(s) fortunate enough to be in possession of a smart phone/iphone type gizmo, I really can't recommend the new Opera web reader app highly enough. It's a brilliant way of accessing web content. You can choose text sizes that are actually readable and it seems to work well with all the sites I look at regularly - Arsenal News Review, the Guardian and the Beeb all are a joy to flick through now ( although there are the usual access issues on the Tarty Doris website, obviously, but that might just be the effect of the restraining order. That Holly Willoughby's a touchy mare, isn't she????
But best of all, it's *free*!!!!
As they used to say on the Goon Show; 'Get some today!!!'
L.U.V.on y'all,
Bob
But best of all, it's *free*!!!!
As they used to say on the Goon Show; 'Get some today!!!'
L.U.V.on y'all,
Bob
Monday, 3 May 2010
My big fat Greek-Cypriot/Scottish wedding...
We've been invited to the wedding of one of the Once and Future Mrs Swipe's former work colleagues. On the stroke of eight I open the door to D - Spike Milligan impersonating the corrupt police chief from LA Confidential. D is married to G, another of the O & F Mrs S's erstwhile workmates and named after an old Ava Gardner movie -
'G'. Maybe I've been reading too much Martin Amis of late, but the car he leads us to *has* to be called a Fiasco. It's low slung and has a dash so highly polished it looks more like marblized plastic than wood. There are no seatbelts and you immediately feel as if you've entered an episode of 'The Persuaders' as soon as you begin to cruise. The only anomaly is a large tartan rug spread out over the back seat - for G's flea-ridden pooch, I'm assured. I feel my legs begin to itch as soon as I've sat down.
The streets are empty so, before you can say Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in an ill-fitting safari suit, we're pulling up at the gates of Richmond Park. We're about half an hour early and, having squeezed ourselves out of the 'Fiasco' and de-creased ourselves, are just about to embark upon a circuit of the park to kill time when a North Face weatherproofed parkie appears, scuttling towards us. We brace ourselves for his 'gerroff me land' type spiel but none is forthcoming: he turns out to be nothing but benign.
Indeed, so benign that it's as if the body of Whispering Bob Harris is being animated by the spirit of Larry Grayson. Our guide proceeds to sit us down, furnish us with doll's house glasses of wine and fill us in on the glamorous history of Pembroke Lodge whilst we wait for the wedding party to finish their meal and speeches and joining us for drinks ahead of the evening reception. George III, his wife Charlotte, Queen Victoria, Lord John Russell, Bertrand Russell, David Niven and the former Duchess of York are all involved in this whistlestop history of the house in which we're sat. Bob/Larry (Blarry?) tells us that the Lodge was actually Fergie's desired London residence until palace apparachiks put the kibosh on the move. "It's so open here, anyone could get a shot through one of these windows" our guide, evidently still dismayed at the very prospect of such regal proximity to the great unwashed, informs us whilst examining some stray specks of dust he's picked up after a casual sweep of the Robert Adam fireplace. I'm furtively imagining letting off a few rounds at one of the Yorks with an AK47 when it dawns on me that he's probably thinking more about the royal couple's vulnerability to the papparazzi than to would-be assassins.
We sit looking out at the patio, ekeing out our wine as we wait for the other guests to descend. It's not long before we get on to politics. D and G (G was, I should perhaps mention, born in Baghdad of Anglo-Iraqi parentage) are both voting BNP. Well, they're the only ones prepared to do anything about immigration, it would seem.
The other guests start to arrive and it soon becomes apparent that we've made a couple of basic strategic blunders. Firstly, we forgot to establish from whence the drinks were due to be despatched. Furthermore, in our ignorance, we've sat ourselves about as far away from the liquid action as we possibly could and are now at completely the wrong end of a room that has rapidly filled up with sozzled wedding extras.
A procession of the O & F Mrs S's chums begin to make their way over to us. There's T who used to be a rep on Paxos but now lives in Dubai, works in cosmetics and has a South African accent that makes her say 'yissss' instead of 'yes' - when she isn't saying 'yarr' instead of 'yeah', that is. There's C who looks like a lot of fun; blowsy and red-dressed, Katie Brand wearing one of Lady Gaga's more restrained pill box and veil chapeaurial concoctions. Another T, who has two glasses of wine on the go, and whose amply beveraged presence reminds us of the desperate straits we're in booze-wise so we brace ourselves and squeeze our way towards the wine dispenser,
Another thimble full of vino secured, we get chatting with Digby (not, I'm assured, his real name) He doesn't look as if he would be but Digby was a veteran of the pub rock and early punk scene. He lists an impressive list of bands he saw before they became famous and many who never quite got that far. I start to feel I was born at the wrong time. I'm looking forward to chatting some more but we lose sight of Digby for the rest of the evening once I've ordered him up a Guinness from the free bar.
Yes, we've now been spirited through to the Belvedere room, past a lovely portrait of the happy couple that all the guests are expected to sign and a deligtfully seedy looking chap in a pale grey pinstriped suit whom I can only describe as looking exactly as Richard Harris would have if he'd ever been asked to play the role of Rod Stewart in later life.
The parents of S, the bride, are Greek-Cypriot and the family their daughter has married into are Scots but it's surprisingly hard in some cases to decide which side of the newly extended family the non-kilt-wearing guests represent. Matters aren't helped by there also being a fairly strong male gay presence, almost all of whom bear an uncanny resemblance to George Clooney and who, consequently, could also just as easily be either Hellenic or Celt. There are a few easy spots though - like the curly haired young Greek in a tight sixties suit who looks as if he could br the drummer in some hip new wave New York indie band and a young lass I'm sure has been on he cover of a Belle & Sebastian CD.
The happy couple take their first dance. S - the exact midpoint between a pre-nosejob Rachel from Friends and Grace from Will & Grace playing a Shakespearian bride, Rosalind perhaps? - looks radiant and beautiful. She has pearls in her hair. Those were pearls in her hair... J looks like a nice Paul Morley as he nervously leads his new wife through screaching, soulified version of 'Hallelujah' - incidentally, why on *earth* does no one *ever* use the Leonard Cohen version at these things? There's a decibel measuring display fitted in the ceiling and as the Mediterranean club anthems begin to pump out, the steady stream of loud green hyphens effervesces into an insistent red throb.
The lightshow bestows emphemeral gifts upon the dancers, flecking them with toadstools, mysterons, shamrocks, circles of Mondrian print. The old sit and watch, held in some distant reverie by the young: with their glossy platinum sheen, puppyish moves and Minnie Mouse shoes.
And then something magical happens. All the ladies are to join in a dance. A glitzy young blonde in perpendicular diamanté heeled shoes is paired with an ancient old Greek lady. The elder creaks towards the circle of dancers in an antique powder blue crocheted dress, bowed by the balling of the bones and flesh between her shoulders. The blonde looks off and makes embarrassed faces offstage as the old lady grips her hand and a ring begins to eddy around the bride. The circle turns and the years peel away to reveal a skittish young girl in a powder blue dress smiling a secret inner smile. These moves, she seems to say as her feet move surely through steps that have been handed down through centuries, these moves - I've been keeping them for just such a day as this. It's the glinting feet beside her that now look ungainly and unsure. The dance over, lady in the pastel blue creeps back to her pew; quiet, proud. Her young blonde partner remonstrates off to the side with angry flashing eyes.
It's now the turn of the men. I take my place in the circle, arms locked with those of the indie New York drummer. We start to wheel and kick around the bridegroom. I feel strangely elevated, as if aware of the power that this many men, arms linked together, might be capable wielding. The groom seems blithely unaware of the whirlwind of which he is the still, quiet centre. It's exhausting, but you keep on kicking, keep revolving until the bride breaks our circle and whisks her husband away. Exhausted but exhilarated I shake the indie kid's hand and collapse back against the wall I've been propping up all night.
There's a heady, intoxicating scent in the air; lillies combined with the smell of peppers on a grill. We're moving outside time. This is not one but many weddings, stretching back, stretcing forward in history. This is what ritual does and explains, perhaps, why we want and need it. Ritual helps us see beyond the now.
Time for the money dance. The O & F Mrs S joins the crowd flocking to pin money to the bride and groom. Strips of fifties cascade to the floor. Bare shoulders stare out in reproach at our collective tightness. The couple glide across the floor, sterling-bodiced, dada-armed. It's as if highlighting the economic aspect of the union like this merely serves to make light of it; it seems so playful an act that the gesture seems slightly absurd - absurd as the two smiling cash-covered scarecrow figures at the centre of it all before they troop off to divest themselves of several thousand pounds.
Those were pearls in her hair...
The music plays on, the dance continues. We hear "wake up Maggie..." and all eyes turn expectantly toward Rod Stewart/Richard Harris (Rodchard? Stewrris??), to no avail. He looks so aptly pissed! A blonde woman who's been in danger of tripping over gauzy tube that takes up the better part of her otherwise negligible skirt gets up to sing an old soul smoocher, 'Sweet love'. Our initial patience drifts through indifference toward outright contempt. She's only half way through yet several onlookers look as if they've lost the will to live. One Greek lady d'un certain age looks positively bereft. The vampy soul diva slinks off, 'American pie' starts up but is fortuitously cut off a mere two minutes in as the last slow dance number is played.
The music and the dancing done, we say our farewells to S. As we leave we're handed a beautifully wrapped and ribboned pouch that looks as if it ought to contain potpourri. "It's just a traditional macaroon sort of thing" says S, who still has pearls in her hair.
The 'Fiasco' whisks us home. We share one of the tradtional macaroon sort of things. They taste just like Farley's rusks, only the centre melts on contact with your tongue.
xxx
Bob
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
'G'. Maybe I've been reading too much Martin Amis of late, but the car he leads us to *has* to be called a Fiasco. It's low slung and has a dash so highly polished it looks more like marblized plastic than wood. There are no seatbelts and you immediately feel as if you've entered an episode of 'The Persuaders' as soon as you begin to cruise. The only anomaly is a large tartan rug spread out over the back seat - for G's flea-ridden pooch, I'm assured. I feel my legs begin to itch as soon as I've sat down.
The streets are empty so, before you can say Roger Moore and Tony Curtis in an ill-fitting safari suit, we're pulling up at the gates of Richmond Park. We're about half an hour early and, having squeezed ourselves out of the 'Fiasco' and de-creased ourselves, are just about to embark upon a circuit of the park to kill time when a North Face weatherproofed parkie appears, scuttling towards us. We brace ourselves for his 'gerroff me land' type spiel but none is forthcoming: he turns out to be nothing but benign.
Indeed, so benign that it's as if the body of Whispering Bob Harris is being animated by the spirit of Larry Grayson. Our guide proceeds to sit us down, furnish us with doll's house glasses of wine and fill us in on the glamorous history of Pembroke Lodge whilst we wait for the wedding party to finish their meal and speeches and joining us for drinks ahead of the evening reception. George III, his wife Charlotte, Queen Victoria, Lord John Russell, Bertrand Russell, David Niven and the former Duchess of York are all involved in this whistlestop history of the house in which we're sat. Bob/Larry (Blarry?) tells us that the Lodge was actually Fergie's desired London residence until palace apparachiks put the kibosh on the move. "It's so open here, anyone could get a shot through one of these windows" our guide, evidently still dismayed at the very prospect of such regal proximity to the great unwashed, informs us whilst examining some stray specks of dust he's picked up after a casual sweep of the Robert Adam fireplace. I'm furtively imagining letting off a few rounds at one of the Yorks with an AK47 when it dawns on me that he's probably thinking more about the royal couple's vulnerability to the papparazzi than to would-be assassins.
We sit looking out at the patio, ekeing out our wine as we wait for the other guests to descend. It's not long before we get on to politics. D and G (G was, I should perhaps mention, born in Baghdad of Anglo-Iraqi parentage) are both voting BNP. Well, they're the only ones prepared to do anything about immigration, it would seem.
The other guests start to arrive and it soon becomes apparent that we've made a couple of basic strategic blunders. Firstly, we forgot to establish from whence the drinks were due to be despatched. Furthermore, in our ignorance, we've sat ourselves about as far away from the liquid action as we possibly could and are now at completely the wrong end of a room that has rapidly filled up with sozzled wedding extras.
A procession of the O & F Mrs S's chums begin to make their way over to us. There's T who used to be a rep on Paxos but now lives in Dubai, works in cosmetics and has a South African accent that makes her say 'yissss' instead of 'yes' - when she isn't saying 'yarr' instead of 'yeah', that is. There's C who looks like a lot of fun; blowsy and red-dressed, Katie Brand wearing one of Lady Gaga's more restrained pill box and veil chapeaurial concoctions. Another T, who has two glasses of wine on the go, and whose amply beveraged presence reminds us of the desperate straits we're in booze-wise so we brace ourselves and squeeze our way towards the wine dispenser,
Another thimble full of vino secured, we get chatting with Digby (not, I'm assured, his real name) He doesn't look as if he would be but Digby was a veteran of the pub rock and early punk scene. He lists an impressive list of bands he saw before they became famous and many who never quite got that far. I start to feel I was born at the wrong time. I'm looking forward to chatting some more but we lose sight of Digby for the rest of the evening once I've ordered him up a Guinness from the free bar.
Yes, we've now been spirited through to the Belvedere room, past a lovely portrait of the happy couple that all the guests are expected to sign and a deligtfully seedy looking chap in a pale grey pinstriped suit whom I can only describe as looking exactly as Richard Harris would have if he'd ever been asked to play the role of Rod Stewart in later life.
The parents of S, the bride, are Greek-Cypriot and the family their daughter has married into are Scots but it's surprisingly hard in some cases to decide which side of the newly extended family the non-kilt-wearing guests represent. Matters aren't helped by there also being a fairly strong male gay presence, almost all of whom bear an uncanny resemblance to George Clooney and who, consequently, could also just as easily be either Hellenic or Celt. There are a few easy spots though - like the curly haired young Greek in a tight sixties suit who looks as if he could br the drummer in some hip new wave New York indie band and a young lass I'm sure has been on he cover of a Belle & Sebastian CD.
The happy couple take their first dance. S - the exact midpoint between a pre-nosejob Rachel from Friends and Grace from Will & Grace playing a Shakespearian bride, Rosalind perhaps? - looks radiant and beautiful. She has pearls in her hair. Those were pearls in her hair... J looks like a nice Paul Morley as he nervously leads his new wife through screaching, soulified version of 'Hallelujah' - incidentally, why on *earth* does no one *ever* use the Leonard Cohen version at these things? There's a decibel measuring display fitted in the ceiling and as the Mediterranean club anthems begin to pump out, the steady stream of loud green hyphens effervesces into an insistent red throb.
The lightshow bestows emphemeral gifts upon the dancers, flecking them with toadstools, mysterons, shamrocks, circles of Mondrian print. The old sit and watch, held in some distant reverie by the young: with their glossy platinum sheen, puppyish moves and Minnie Mouse shoes.
And then something magical happens. All the ladies are to join in a dance. A glitzy young blonde in perpendicular diamanté heeled shoes is paired with an ancient old Greek lady. The elder creaks towards the circle of dancers in an antique powder blue crocheted dress, bowed by the balling of the bones and flesh between her shoulders. The blonde looks off and makes embarrassed faces offstage as the old lady grips her hand and a ring begins to eddy around the bride. The circle turns and the years peel away to reveal a skittish young girl in a powder blue dress smiling a secret inner smile. These moves, she seems to say as her feet move surely through steps that have been handed down through centuries, these moves - I've been keeping them for just such a day as this. It's the glinting feet beside her that now look ungainly and unsure. The dance over, lady in the pastel blue creeps back to her pew; quiet, proud. Her young blonde partner remonstrates off to the side with angry flashing eyes.
It's now the turn of the men. I take my place in the circle, arms locked with those of the indie New York drummer. We start to wheel and kick around the bridegroom. I feel strangely elevated, as if aware of the power that this many men, arms linked together, might be capable wielding. The groom seems blithely unaware of the whirlwind of which he is the still, quiet centre. It's exhausting, but you keep on kicking, keep revolving until the bride breaks our circle and whisks her husband away. Exhausted but exhilarated I shake the indie kid's hand and collapse back against the wall I've been propping up all night.
There's a heady, intoxicating scent in the air; lillies combined with the smell of peppers on a grill. We're moving outside time. This is not one but many weddings, stretching back, stretcing forward in history. This is what ritual does and explains, perhaps, why we want and need it. Ritual helps us see beyond the now.
Time for the money dance. The O & F Mrs S joins the crowd flocking to pin money to the bride and groom. Strips of fifties cascade to the floor. Bare shoulders stare out in reproach at our collective tightness. The couple glide across the floor, sterling-bodiced, dada-armed. It's as if highlighting the economic aspect of the union like this merely serves to make light of it; it seems so playful an act that the gesture seems slightly absurd - absurd as the two smiling cash-covered scarecrow figures at the centre of it all before they troop off to divest themselves of several thousand pounds.
Those were pearls in her hair...
The music plays on, the dance continues. We hear "wake up Maggie..." and all eyes turn expectantly toward Rod Stewart/Richard Harris (Rodchard? Stewrris??), to no avail. He looks so aptly pissed! A blonde woman who's been in danger of tripping over gauzy tube that takes up the better part of her otherwise negligible skirt gets up to sing an old soul smoocher, 'Sweet love'. Our initial patience drifts through indifference toward outright contempt. She's only half way through yet several onlookers look as if they've lost the will to live. One Greek lady d'un certain age looks positively bereft. The vampy soul diva slinks off, 'American pie' starts up but is fortuitously cut off a mere two minutes in as the last slow dance number is played.
The music and the dancing done, we say our farewells to S. As we leave we're handed a beautifully wrapped and ribboned pouch that looks as if it ought to contain potpourri. "It's just a traditional macaroon sort of thing" says S, who still has pearls in her hair.
The 'Fiasco' whisks us home. We share one of the tradtional macaroon sort of things. They taste just like Farley's rusks, only the centre melts on contact with your tongue.
xxx
Bob
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Sunday, 2 May 2010
The horror,the horror...
Awaking from my annual winter slumbers, I discover with some alarm and (I'm guessing at the meaning of the word here) alacrity that not only is the country about to go to the polls but it's also looking a racing certainty that the next PM will in all likelihood be a Tory.
In fairness, there will be a certain degree of novelty in the country being governed once more by a chinless public school toff, I suppose - and, to give the man his due, David Cameron does do a remarkable impersonation of a 1951 vintage Henry the Green Engine:
Cameron
Henry the G.E.
Should come in handy that - the ability to locomote speedily away from those angry mobs of peasantry after you've just closed down all their schools and hospitals in order to subsidise tax breaks for your old chums from Eton. That's right, Dave/Henry will be the envy of *all* the other engines: Gordon the Grumpy Bastard, Clegg the Champion Centre Party Choo-choo Train, Nigel the Farrageously Ferocious Freight, Wyn Jones the Steam, Alex the Flying Salmond (crikey - Salmond really does look more like something from Rev Awdry than a human being....) and who can forget every young boy's favourite lovable steam engine? Nick Griffin: the Fat Nazi Cunt.
Still, it's not all doom and gloom is it? (Well, the election's not 'tll Thursday, so there's still time to join a 20 month waiting list for treatment on the NHS) Another ray of light amidst the dying light; I recently became the proud owner of an iPOd touch.
They're astonishingly clever devices,aren't they? Not only are they an absolute boom to the serious scholar - I've loaded mine up with the complete works of Shakespeare, the Dickens collection, 101 classic novels, the casebook of Sherlock Holmes and six years worth of Knave back issues and it's barely even half full! it aslo croretcs lal yuor splelign msikates for yuo so you snot gave to ketp gong balcony on yuorslef all teh tmie to ptu thnigs rghit - ist fnastatic!!!!
But seriously - I thoroughly recommend them to all my reader.
Oh well, I suppose I'd better get back on the campaign trail. Only 4 more days to stop Cameron. This is serious stuff. How am I going to be able to lurk around outside the convent school gates all day once he's closed them all down??
Onward and upward....
Xxx
Bob
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
In fairness, there will be a certain degree of novelty in the country being governed once more by a chinless public school toff, I suppose - and, to give the man his due, David Cameron does do a remarkable impersonation of a 1951 vintage Henry the Green Engine:
Cameron
Henry the G.E.
Should come in handy that - the ability to locomote speedily away from those angry mobs of peasantry after you've just closed down all their schools and hospitals in order to subsidise tax breaks for your old chums from Eton. That's right, Dave/Henry will be the envy of *all* the other engines: Gordon the Grumpy Bastard, Clegg the Champion Centre Party Choo-choo Train, Nigel the Farrageously Ferocious Freight, Wyn Jones the Steam, Alex the Flying Salmond (crikey - Salmond really does look more like something from Rev Awdry than a human being....) and who can forget every young boy's favourite lovable steam engine? Nick Griffin: the Fat Nazi Cunt.
Still, it's not all doom and gloom is it? (Well, the election's not 'tll Thursday, so there's still time to join a 20 month waiting list for treatment on the NHS) Another ray of light amidst the dying light; I recently became the proud owner of an iPOd touch.
They're astonishingly clever devices,aren't they? Not only are they an absolute boom to the serious scholar - I've loaded mine up with the complete works of Shakespeare, the Dickens collection, 101 classic novels, the casebook of Sherlock Holmes and six years worth of Knave back issues and it's barely even half full! it aslo croretcs lal yuor splelign msikates for yuo so you snot gave to ketp gong balcony on yuorslef all teh tmie to ptu thnigs rghit - ist fnastatic!!!!
But seriously - I thoroughly recommend them to all my reader.
Oh well, I suppose I'd better get back on the campaign trail. Only 4 more days to stop Cameron. This is serious stuff. How am I going to be able to lurk around outside the convent school gates all day once he's closed them all down??
Onward and upward....
Xxx
Bob
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone
Friday, 9 April 2010
"Be reasonable - demand the impossible!!"...
It's some time in 1977 - early spring? Late summer? (Or was it 1976?) The years and the seasons blur, but whenever it was the sky was washed out blue, suburban and vast overhead. A youthful John Lennon was on the front of the New Musical Express along with the strapline "Oh no - not another bloody punk rocker!" as David Lawrence and I stood waiting for the 90B bus that would take us to school. He was about three years ahead of me and the obligatory sneer that someone with that sort of advantage over you would adopt by default was beginning to fade as our halting, maroon blazered bus-stop conversations grew a little more animated and unguarded with each daily wait.
The Hamburg-era Lennon photo was a valuable if tenuous link between us; a rare bit of shared rock grammar. That apart, we spoke two different languages. He was a punk, you see and I was...well, I was 11 going on 12 and all I knew about pop music was contained within my copy of The Beatles: an illustrated record by Roy Carr and Tony Tyler. 1977 for him was 7 A.D. as far as I was concerned. I think it was during one of these bus-to-school meetings that David revealed to me that he was forming a punk rock group and had started building his own guitar. "It's just a simple plywood thing, nothing special," he said. "Besides, I'm only going to be bashing it over people's heads." Despite my already heavily entrenched rock classicism, this still sounded pretty impressive. And somewhere, no doubt, the wily, wiry art school dropout who'd played no small part in sparking this nice young Jewish lad's urge to destroy was probably chortling with delight at the thought of it.
It took some time for the astonishing import of its ethos to filter down to me and I was never a part of the original punk explosion, but it still came as a bit of a jolt to learn this morning that Malcolm McLaren had died, aged 64. The BBC breakfast news used a nice photo of him in later life. I think it's the one at the top of this post. Aside from a slightly faux-aristocratic bearing there's no real clue as to the puckish, prankster spirit that animated him. No, Malcolm looked what he'd probably become; urbane, relaxed and perhaps a little smug and haughty. Combined with the knowledge of his death, this serene bearing felt surprisingly right - where one would have expected to feel disappointment at such a sell out; the complete absence of the confrontational attitude that will probably elsewhere loom large in his legacy. This benign image of the man was reinforced by the conciliatory tone of the statement made by his once bitter foe John Lydon - "I'll miss him. So should you" - and I'm reminded of Larkin:
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
"Only an attitude remains". Attitudes were Malcolm's stock-in-trade, but you feel that a lot more love than you'd ever have thought while he was alive survives of him too.
(Oh, and for the record; the last time I met him, David Lawrence had become an architect...)
R.I.P.
Monday, 5 April 2010
"If I said you had a beautiful Boty..."
Secret histories are so regularly more interesting and enlightening than the official version of events that it makes you wonder why we ever allow ourselves to be blinkered by the un-secret variety at all. I really can't recommend Barry Miles' London Calling: a countercultural history of London since 1945 enough. But for works like this, a whole treasure trove of the weird, the wonderful and the arcane would be in danger of slipping permanently and irredeemably through the cracks in the pavement of the collective memory.
Take Pauline Boty.
Lovely looking lass, played one of Alfie's birds in the iconic Sixties adaptation of the Bill Naughton novel and, not content with all that, was a fabulous Pop Artist who would no doubt have gone on to eclipse most of her former classmates had she not tragically died at the ridiculous age of 26.
Michael Bracewll can tell you a lot more, obviously - although he'll probably spoil the pun in this post's title by pronouncing her name all wrong or something:
As well as being a dab hand with the old oil, turps and linseed oil (did I forget to mention that she was a first rate cook to boot?), Boty was also what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood would doubtless have called a "stunner" (amongst other things) and was somewhat less (or more?) edifyingly known by her peers as "the Wimbledon Bardot". You can see why in this clip from Ken Russell's film on the British Pop Artists, Pop Goes the Easel. She certainly knows how to shake a tail feather:
Reading about Boty - an artist I wasn't familiar with before - is almost as uplifting as the discovery that Absolute Beginners author Colin MacInnes "basically liked to be raped by a black man, preferably a ponce..." (You show me a black man who's willing to do something like that to a 50s novelist whose famous relatives included Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard "Ruddy" Kipling and *isn't* a ponce and I'll give you a fiver, Gungadin....)
But it's not all high cultural insight. There's fascinating stuff like the fact that the CND symbol was designed by Gerald Holtom; a Christian pacifist from (of all places) Twickenham. According to this, he had a factory there which was used to make the original placards bearing his now universally recognisable design ahead of the first Aldermaston peace march. Worthy of a blue plaque, don't you think?
But that's not all. Miles' book also has stuff in it of genuinely earth-shattering and global importance. For instance, of all the artists in Larry "Parnes, Shillings & Pence" Parnes' stable of British rock 'n' roll legends - Vince Eager, Billy Fury, Johnny Gentle, Dickie Pride to name but a few of the least ridiculously coiffed - only one was headstrong enough to refuse the monicker Parnes attempted to foist on him. Who else, but the original Bovver Boy of British Pop...
Yes, Joe Brown he remains to this day.
And the name he so strenuously and successfully managed to dodge?
Elmer Twitch.
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
Take Pauline Boty.
Lovely looking lass, played one of Alfie's birds in the iconic Sixties adaptation of the Bill Naughton novel and, not content with all that, was a fabulous Pop Artist who would no doubt have gone on to eclipse most of her former classmates had she not tragically died at the ridiculous age of 26.
Michael Bracewll can tell you a lot more, obviously - although he'll probably spoil the pun in this post's title by pronouncing her name all wrong or something:
As well as being a dab hand with the old oil, turps and linseed oil (did I forget to mention that she was a first rate cook to boot?), Boty was also what the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood would doubtless have called a "stunner" (amongst other things) and was somewhat less (or more?) edifyingly known by her peers as "the Wimbledon Bardot". You can see why in this clip from Ken Russell's film on the British Pop Artists, Pop Goes the Easel. She certainly knows how to shake a tail feather:
Reading about Boty - an artist I wasn't familiar with before - is almost as uplifting as the discovery that Absolute Beginners author Colin MacInnes "basically liked to be raped by a black man, preferably a ponce..." (You show me a black man who's willing to do something like that to a 50s novelist whose famous relatives included Edward Burne-Jones, Stanley Baldwin and Rudyard "Ruddy" Kipling and *isn't* a ponce and I'll give you a fiver, Gungadin....)
But it's not all high cultural insight. There's fascinating stuff like the fact that the CND symbol was designed by Gerald Holtom; a Christian pacifist from (of all places) Twickenham. According to this, he had a factory there which was used to make the original placards bearing his now universally recognisable design ahead of the first Aldermaston peace march. Worthy of a blue plaque, don't you think?
But that's not all. Miles' book also has stuff in it of genuinely earth-shattering and global importance. For instance, of all the artists in Larry "Parnes, Shillings & Pence" Parnes' stable of British rock 'n' roll legends - Vince Eager, Billy Fury, Johnny Gentle, Dickie Pride to name but a few of the least ridiculously coiffed - only one was headstrong enough to refuse the monicker Parnes attempted to foist on him. Who else, but the original Bovver Boy of British Pop...
Yes, Joe Brown he remains to this day.
And the name he so strenuously and successfully managed to dodge?
Elmer Twitch.
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
Wednesday, 31 March 2010
Remember him this way...
An Adult-Oriented Rock Singer's Love Song:
After A Subaltern's Love Song.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.
Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.
While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.
While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading
You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...
....but you're open to persuasion.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
After A Subaltern's Love Song.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.
Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.
While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.
While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading
You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...
....but you're open to persuasion.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Tuesday, 30 March 2010
Remember him this way...
An Adult-Oriented Rock Singer's Love Song:
After A Subaltern's Love Song.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.
Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.
While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.
While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading
You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...
....but you're open to persuasion.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
After A Subaltern's Love Song.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In your velvet jacket
With military braiding.
Singing your mind-numbing
A.O.R.
On your poncey, roundbacked
Ovation guitar.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Indifferent to the countries
We are invading.
While sectarian militias
In Basra riot,
You pointlessly sing about
Dropping the pilot.
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
In Baghdad and Kabul
The troops are parading.
While you wail your songs for
Middleclass simpletons
And cohabitate with
Valerie Singleton(s)
Joan Armatrading,
Joan Armatrading,
Geo-political conflict
Evading
You sing not a word of
Iraqi invasion -
You're not in love...
....but you're open to persuasion.
Bobcasts now available at iTunes!!
click here to hear our regular Bobcasts!!
Subscribe to The Robert Swipe Show
© 2006 Swipe Enterprises
Monday, 29 March 2010
Swimmin' with the wimmin'...
Apropos of nothing, really but my God, Jane Moore's a sexy old boot, isn't she?
(Sorry folks, couldn't find any pics with her legs in, but there you go...there may be some on Chickipedia, but if they're there at all, they're taking one heck of a long time to appear on the screen...Chikipedia - nice one; why didn't I think of that?) Of course, the woman talks out of her arse most of the time, but you can't have everything, can you? One could try muzzling her, I suppose - but not only would that be deeply offensive to both of us - yes, believe it or not, she's a stonewall feminist, despite the brown shirt - but would also take a lot of the fun out of the contest. (You feel that everything would be turned into a contest with Jane, don't you?; even champagne-enhanced, languid all-day love-making in her sumptuously satin-sheeted Essex fourposter beneath a ceiling mirror (she *must* live in Essex and have a mirrored ceiling, right?) And she'd find, you know in your heart of hearts, some way to spoil even the most romantic of shared fag post-coital moments of intimacy with an ill-advised rant about bogus asylum-seeking gypsies being waved to the top of the council house waiting list by politically correct zealots or such like bile-fuelled xenophobic rhetoric.
I suppose that's part of the appeal, isn't it - opposites attract and all that. (Although, for the record, I'm with her on the bogus asylum-seeking gypsies being waved to the top of the council house waiting list by politically correct zealots or such like bile-fuelled xenophobic rhetoric. And bring back flogging while you're at it. Bendy buses? Don't get me started...) Or maybe there's a secret and irresistable urge buried deep within all but the most neutered of 'liberal-with-a-small-L' Guardian reading new men to get deep down and personal with the Queen the of filthy red top enemy. Preferably in a break between coursing hares on our 500 acre estate. Wearing nothing more than a black latex boob tube and a pair of stirrups. (Jane'll probably be in slacks though, I should imagine...)
Sexist nonsense - I hope you've all been able to see the above as such. All of which casual misogyny leads me to my main (if you'll excuse the phallocentric word choice) *thrust*. I sense a change in the political climate. Perhaps it's the recession, or maybe they're just getting fed up with having to ponce around in ridiculously perpendicular high heeled shoes looking vacant all day, but there seems to be an austere new zippin'-up-our-boots-going-back-to-our-roots feminism abroad and I for one say "about time too girls!"
A while back, I read this article by former Burchill squeeze Charlotte Raven. Putting aside any reservations about the rather Radcliffe-Hall hairdo she seems to be wearing, I think she has a point about the "have-it-all" school of wimmin's libbers who feel that they can have their lipgloss and eat it. I wonder how representative her views are? As my readership divides pretty much straight down the middle along gender lines (2 male, 2 women, 1 not sure) I thought we had a fairly good sample. So, is it off with the skimpy see-through all-in-one and suspenders and on with the brogues, Fred Perry and designer stubble? I await your comments with interest bordering that of one of Pavlov's mutts.
Speaking personally, I'm ambivalent. As someone who's spent large amounts of time trying (with varying degrees of success) to pass himself off as a woman, I've been on the end of a fair amount of unrestrained male chauvanist piggery myself. I've also been treated with considerable respect - insert your own Monty Python-style "and what's more, he knew how to treat a female impersonator.." gag of choice...) As many modern women do, I've objectified myself and been viewed as an object - I am after all, as we all are, an object in the strictest sense, I suppose. But curiously, this objectification has not by any means been the preserve of the males of the species. Women can and do collude in the This would suggest that the truth is perhaps a little less clearcut than Raven suggests. Or maybe the imprisoning male gaze is now so universal and we've grown so used to the chains it binds us in that we can no longer see them.
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
(Sorry folks, couldn't find any pics with her legs in, but there you go...there may be some on Chickipedia, but if they're there at all, they're taking one heck of a long time to appear on the screen...Chikipedia - nice one; why didn't I think of that?) Of course, the woman talks out of her arse most of the time, but you can't have everything, can you? One could try muzzling her, I suppose - but not only would that be deeply offensive to both of us - yes, believe it or not, she's a stonewall feminist, despite the brown shirt - but would also take a lot of the fun out of the contest. (You feel that everything would be turned into a contest with Jane, don't you?; even champagne-enhanced, languid all-day love-making in her sumptuously satin-sheeted Essex fourposter beneath a ceiling mirror (she *must* live in Essex and have a mirrored ceiling, right?) And she'd find, you know in your heart of hearts, some way to spoil even the most romantic of shared fag post-coital moments of intimacy with an ill-advised rant about bogus asylum-seeking gypsies being waved to the top of the council house waiting list by politically correct zealots or such like bile-fuelled xenophobic rhetoric.
I suppose that's part of the appeal, isn't it - opposites attract and all that. (Although, for the record, I'm with her on the bogus asylum-seeking gypsies being waved to the top of the council house waiting list by politically correct zealots or such like bile-fuelled xenophobic rhetoric. And bring back flogging while you're at it. Bendy buses? Don't get me started...) Or maybe there's a secret and irresistable urge buried deep within all but the most neutered of 'liberal-with-a-small-L' Guardian reading new men to get deep down and personal with the Queen the of filthy red top enemy. Preferably in a break between coursing hares on our 500 acre estate. Wearing nothing more than a black latex boob tube and a pair of stirrups. (Jane'll probably be in slacks though, I should imagine...)
Sexist nonsense - I hope you've all been able to see the above as such. All of which casual misogyny leads me to my main (if you'll excuse the phallocentric word choice) *thrust*. I sense a change in the political climate. Perhaps it's the recession, or maybe they're just getting fed up with having to ponce around in ridiculously perpendicular high heeled shoes looking vacant all day, but there seems to be an austere new zippin'-up-our-boots-going-back-to-our-roots feminism abroad and I for one say "about time too girls!"
A while back, I read this article by former Burchill squeeze Charlotte Raven. Putting aside any reservations about the rather Radcliffe-Hall hairdo she seems to be wearing, I think she has a point about the "have-it-all" school of wimmin's libbers who feel that they can have their lipgloss and eat it. I wonder how representative her views are? As my readership divides pretty much straight down the middle along gender lines (2 male, 2 women, 1 not sure) I thought we had a fairly good sample. So, is it off with the skimpy see-through all-in-one and suspenders and on with the brogues, Fred Perry and designer stubble? I await your comments with interest bordering that of one of Pavlov's mutts.
Speaking personally, I'm ambivalent. As someone who's spent large amounts of time trying (with varying degrees of success) to pass himself off as a woman, I've been on the end of a fair amount of unrestrained male chauvanist piggery myself. I've also been treated with considerable respect - insert your own Monty Python-style "and what's more, he knew how to treat a female impersonator.." gag of choice...) As many modern women do, I've objectified myself and been viewed as an object - I am after all, as we all are, an object in the strictest sense, I suppose. But curiously, this objectification has not by any means been the preserve of the males of the species. Women can and do collude in the This would suggest that the truth is perhaps a little less clearcut than Raven suggests. Or maybe the imprisoning male gaze is now so universal and we've grown so used to the chains it binds us in that we can no longer see them.
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Sunday, 28 March 2010
For Whom the Blogs Toll...
(...That's as in the kind of toll you pay on a motorway or (inexplicably) to enter Wales, obviously - don't worry, it should all make sense when you read the rest of the piece. For once.) I mention tolls because as you'll all probably have read already in your weekend papers, due to the sharp economic downturn and the *sheer* *expense* of paying myself the exorbitant fee I command to come up with this bilge on a fortnightly basis, it is with regret that I have to announce that as of tomorrow, I have no option but to demand a small charge from you all for the privilege of reading my enormously important and (in some of the more remote areas of East Anglia) influential opinions.
The decision has not been taken lightly. I've looked at all the other options such as advertising...
(Hmm nice pins - I don't know if that's Mr. Dolce or Mr. Gabbana in the picture, but he can carry my tote bag to work for me anyday...!)
...Linking to pornographic websites...
...trying to use this page to flog the remaining 3,000 copies of Bedroom Burlesque currently rotting away in the attic here at Swipe Towers...
(Hmm - even nicer pins. Wonder what she's doing now...?)
But none of these measures would come close even to keeping me in exfoliator for a week, let alone put food and wine on the table, so a 2 pound charge it is. Fiver a week. (Go on - twenty notes for a year's subscription and I'll throw in a copy of *Glam*!! for good measure...*ANYBODY*???)
But seriously, this will be an interesting moment in the digital revolution, don't you think? Quite how this will go down with a generation brought up with the idea that music, information, sport (heck, even an old crusty like me was able to watch the Arsenal's pitiful last minute capitulation to Birmingham City live, as it happened and completely gratis on a high definition Veetle link) are to all intents and purposes available as freely as the lillies of the field, isn't exactly rocket science. Neither is it too demanding of the old grey matter to reach the conclusion that, whatever impediments are put in the way by the News International geeks, there'll be a pretty simple way to get round their paywalls. Once that's happened, like pretty much everything else in cyberspace, it'll just be a question of finding the free version - should anyone be *remotely* interested in reading the tosh in the first place, of course.
I read a quote from Bowie recently where he claimed that in ten year's time, there'll be no such thing as intellectual property, to which the only sane response is; you mean, it will last that long? So what we may be seeing over at Murdoch HQ are the beginnings of its death throes.
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
The decision has not been taken lightly. I've looked at all the other options such as advertising...
(Hmm nice pins - I don't know if that's Mr. Dolce or Mr. Gabbana in the picture, but he can carry my tote bag to work for me anyday...!)
...Linking to pornographic websites...
...trying to use this page to flog the remaining 3,000 copies of Bedroom Burlesque currently rotting away in the attic here at Swipe Towers...
(Hmm - even nicer pins. Wonder what she's doing now...?)
But none of these measures would come close even to keeping me in exfoliator for a week, let alone put food and wine on the table, so a 2 pound charge it is. Fiver a week. (Go on - twenty notes for a year's subscription and I'll throw in a copy of *Glam*!! for good measure...*ANYBODY*???)
But seriously, this will be an interesting moment in the digital revolution, don't you think? Quite how this will go down with a generation brought up with the idea that music, information, sport (heck, even an old crusty like me was able to watch the Arsenal's pitiful last minute capitulation to Birmingham City live, as it happened and completely gratis on a high definition Veetle link) are to all intents and purposes available as freely as the lillies of the field, isn't exactly rocket science. Neither is it too demanding of the old grey matter to reach the conclusion that, whatever impediments are put in the way by the News International geeks, there'll be a pretty simple way to get round their paywalls. Once that's happened, like pretty much everything else in cyberspace, it'll just be a question of finding the free version - should anyone be *remotely* interested in reading the tosh in the first place, of course.
I read a quote from Bowie recently where he claimed that in ten year's time, there'll be no such thing as intellectual property, to which the only sane response is; you mean, it will last that long? So what we may be seeing over at Murdoch HQ are the beginnings of its death throes.
L.U.V. on ya,
Bob
Saturday, 27 March 2010
This is not America...
Three books on the go right now.
I'm nearing the halfway point of Philip Roth's recent (I say recent - it's *six* years old...how time flies!) novel, The Plot Against America.
It's a kind of SSGB for the US - or, put more simply, a kind of SSUS, I suppose. In Roth's book, history takes a different turn as the 1940 US presidential election is won not by FDR but rather a Nazi sympathising, proto-Fascist uber-hero; the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Scary stuff ensues as the fictional, non-interventionist US diverges further and further from the principles of its founding fathers. No echoes of the contemporary there then...
For the British reader I suppose the nearest equivalent would be waking up in a parallel universe in which the Labour government many of us so joyously celebrated the election of in May 1997 soon turned out to be as corrupt as the day is long - dishing out honours for cash and legislating to the whim of the highest bidder, pursuing the Thatcherite project of privatisation more vigorously than even TBW* herself had ever dared, widening the gap between the richest and the poorest in our society to an unprecedented degree and duping the electorate into sending our troops to become mired in two lengthy, intractable, unpopular, possibly illegal and ultimately unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Thank heavens for fiction, eh?
I also picked up Barry Miles' London Calling: a countercultural history of London since 1945.
Miles was the co-owner and founder (with Marianne Faithful's then fella John Dunbar and [I think] Peter Asher - Dickster will know...) of the Indica bookshop and gallery; home of The International Times and eventual meeting place of John & Yoko. A confirmed townie - passing them atop a Green Line bus, he used mentally to obliterate the open fields and trees of his native Cirencester and replace them with terraced houses - Miles is a groovy guide to the city's bohemian nooks and crannies. Not sure if it's everyone's cup of tea, but if you feel remotely enriched by the discovery that the artist Francis Bacon used to brush Kiwi boot polish through his hair and polish his teeth with Vim before a night out or find the following as hysterically funny as I did, it might well be the book for you:
Sod, known during the war as 'the bugger's Vera Lynn' for her drinking club catering to gay servicemen, liked to lie on the divan naked, sleeping off her morning intake of gin while Anne [Dunn]'s Australian fruitbat hung upside down above her, squirting everything with jets of diarroah.
Ah, the glamour of it all.
Lastly: from the ridiculous to the sublime. The fairer half and I went dutch on Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights and an excellent purchase it has proved to be.
Full of tasty morsels, delightful amuses bouches (whatever that is) and handsomely illustrated with a selection of glossy and easy to wipe plates, it's a must for every home that has a kitchen in it. Apparently there are some recipes in there too...
Right, I'm off to watch Eduardo confront his demons at St. Andrews.
Up the Arsenal!
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*TBW: That Bloody Woman. There is a ruder version, but I'll spare my younger readers that for now...
I'm nearing the halfway point of Philip Roth's recent (I say recent - it's *six* years old...how time flies!) novel, The Plot Against America.
It's a kind of SSGB for the US - or, put more simply, a kind of SSUS, I suppose. In Roth's book, history takes a different turn as the 1940 US presidential election is won not by FDR but rather a Nazi sympathising, proto-Fascist uber-hero; the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Scary stuff ensues as the fictional, non-interventionist US diverges further and further from the principles of its founding fathers. No echoes of the contemporary there then...
For the British reader I suppose the nearest equivalent would be waking up in a parallel universe in which the Labour government many of us so joyously celebrated the election of in May 1997 soon turned out to be as corrupt as the day is long - dishing out honours for cash and legislating to the whim of the highest bidder, pursuing the Thatcherite project of privatisation more vigorously than even TBW* herself had ever dared, widening the gap between the richest and the poorest in our society to an unprecedented degree and duping the electorate into sending our troops to become mired in two lengthy, intractable, unpopular, possibly illegal and ultimately unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Thank heavens for fiction, eh?
I also picked up Barry Miles' London Calling: a countercultural history of London since 1945.
Miles was the co-owner and founder (with Marianne Faithful's then fella John Dunbar and [I think] Peter Asher - Dickster will know...) of the Indica bookshop and gallery; home of The International Times and eventual meeting place of John & Yoko. A confirmed townie - passing them atop a Green Line bus, he used mentally to obliterate the open fields and trees of his native Cirencester and replace them with terraced houses - Miles is a groovy guide to the city's bohemian nooks and crannies. Not sure if it's everyone's cup of tea, but if you feel remotely enriched by the discovery that the artist Francis Bacon used to brush Kiwi boot polish through his hair and polish his teeth with Vim before a night out or find the following as hysterically funny as I did, it might well be the book for you:
Sod, known during the war as 'the bugger's Vera Lynn' for her drinking club catering to gay servicemen, liked to lie on the divan naked, sleeping off her morning intake of gin while Anne [Dunn]'s Australian fruitbat hung upside down above her, squirting everything with jets of diarroah.
Ah, the glamour of it all.
Lastly: from the ridiculous to the sublime. The fairer half and I went dutch on Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights and an excellent purchase it has proved to be.
Full of tasty morsels, delightful amuses bouches (whatever that is) and handsomely illustrated with a selection of glossy and easy to wipe plates, it's a must for every home that has a kitchen in it. Apparently there are some recipes in there too...
Right, I'm off to watch Eduardo confront his demons at St. Andrews.
Up the Arsenal!
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
*TBW: That Bloody Woman. There is a ruder version, but I'll spare my younger readers that for now...
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Great Names for Pretentious Indie Bands...
#3,476:
The Jonathan Safran Foer.
(He looks like he could be in it too, doesn't he?)
JSF is only, like, 16 or something (...see what I did there? Savage, huh?) but he writes with a maturity and wisdom that you'd usually associate with someone a lot older - say, I dunno, a 21 year old? Whatevah. I've just finished his first novel (it's about my 4,308th novel - I get through them at a rate of knots. Well, they give me something to read on those long bus journeys and there's only so many times you can skim through your copy of Metro looking for upskirt shots of Jane Moore before you start drawing attention to yourself. Well, you try spending an hour and a half on a busy airport dormitory route lying on the floor staring up at an upside down copy of the free London newspaper and not raise an eyebrow or two...If you can show me how it's done, there's a Parker Knoll Recliner and a year's supply of oven chiops in it for you, Gungadin...).
It's called Everything is Iluminated. That's the kind of thing the novel's half-narrator, Alex, would say when he means to say "everything is clear" and JFS (JSF? Whatevah) uses this technique to splendidly Nabokovian and humorous effect.* Well, so I'd imagined when I saw a bald, Jewish looking chap reading the paperback of it some months ago on the underground. He was laughing his knackers off. I found it less amusing - possibly because I'm not Jewish. Or bald, for that matter - although I am starting to thin a little at the crown. Maybe I should re-read the book in a few years when I've thinned out a little more. Or "done a Burchill". Incidentally, while I mention it, have they let her in yet? That'll be one packed Brighton synagogue when they do, won't it?
Anyway, there are some very funny things in the book - like the bit where Jonathan (yes, it's that kind of book where there's a character in the novel with *exactly* the same name as the author - Jonathan Flivingston Seagull? Whatevah.) is explaining yiddish words to Alex (who is, I should maybe have pointed out earlier Ukrainian. Yes, I know; *crazy*, isn't it?) and all the examples he can think of mean the same as the word 'schmuck'. Or actually *are* schmuck. It also has lots of very moving bits to do with the Holocaust. (Just a minor digression here, but is it just me or does every novel published in the UK over the last decade have, by law, to have something to do with the Holocaust? I'm not complaining - I like a good WWII yarn as much as the next man, but aren't they somewhat over-egging the pudding on this one, just a tad? Just a thought.) Oh, and speaking of puddings - wasn't Sophie Dahl wonderful on the telly the other night. Lovely Roly Poly Puddings. And her desserts weren't half bad either from what I could see.
So, there you have it: "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Saffron Waldon (Ralph Waldo Emerson Lake Huntley & Palmer???? Whatevah).
An excellent read.
Now all he needs are some songs...
*This is the kind of thing I would say, when I could think of nothing better to, at dinner parties - in the unlikely event that anyone would ever considering inviting me to a dinner party to discuss Nabokov (or any Russian novelist, come to think of it.)
The Jonathan Safran Foer.
(He looks like he could be in it too, doesn't he?)
JSF is only, like, 16 or something (...see what I did there? Savage, huh?) but he writes with a maturity and wisdom that you'd usually associate with someone a lot older - say, I dunno, a 21 year old? Whatevah. I've just finished his first novel (it's about my 4,308th novel - I get through them at a rate of knots. Well, they give me something to read on those long bus journeys and there's only so many times you can skim through your copy of Metro looking for upskirt shots of Jane Moore before you start drawing attention to yourself. Well, you try spending an hour and a half on a busy airport dormitory route lying on the floor staring up at an upside down copy of the free London newspaper and not raise an eyebrow or two...If you can show me how it's done, there's a Parker Knoll Recliner and a year's supply of oven chiops in it for you, Gungadin...).
It's called Everything is Iluminated. That's the kind of thing the novel's half-narrator, Alex, would say when he means to say "everything is clear" and JFS (JSF? Whatevah) uses this technique to splendidly Nabokovian and humorous effect.* Well, so I'd imagined when I saw a bald, Jewish looking chap reading the paperback of it some months ago on the underground. He was laughing his knackers off. I found it less amusing - possibly because I'm not Jewish. Or bald, for that matter - although I am starting to thin a little at the crown. Maybe I should re-read the book in a few years when I've thinned out a little more. Or "done a Burchill". Incidentally, while I mention it, have they let her in yet? That'll be one packed Brighton synagogue when they do, won't it?
Anyway, there are some very funny things in the book - like the bit where Jonathan (yes, it's that kind of book where there's a character in the novel with *exactly* the same name as the author - Jonathan Flivingston Seagull? Whatevah.) is explaining yiddish words to Alex (who is, I should maybe have pointed out earlier Ukrainian. Yes, I know; *crazy*, isn't it?) and all the examples he can think of mean the same as the word 'schmuck'. Or actually *are* schmuck. It also has lots of very moving bits to do with the Holocaust. (Just a minor digression here, but is it just me or does every novel published in the UK over the last decade have, by law, to have something to do with the Holocaust? I'm not complaining - I like a good WWII yarn as much as the next man, but aren't they somewhat over-egging the pudding on this one, just a tad? Just a thought.) Oh, and speaking of puddings - wasn't Sophie Dahl wonderful on the telly the other night. Lovely Roly Poly Puddings. And her desserts weren't half bad either from what I could see.
So, there you have it: "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Saffron Waldon (Ralph Waldo Emerson Lake Huntley & Palmer???? Whatevah).
An excellent read.
Now all he needs are some songs...
*This is the kind of thing I would say, when I could think of nothing better to, at dinner parties - in the unlikely event that anyone would ever considering inviting me to a dinner party to discuss Nabokov (or any Russian novelist, come to think of it.)
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Bobcast #62...
...It was 50 years ago today...
(...erm... in a couple of years time... I thought I'd get in early, like...)
;)
...Tune in, turn on, download...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
Sunday, 21 February 2010
Thursday, 11 February 2010
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Bobcast #61...
Bob's taken a break from recording to record yet another podcast...
(As you'll hear, he's clearly heavily medicated, but otherwise OK...)
xxx
'Berta
Monday, 8 February 2010
A letter...
A letter arrives for Bob. He shows it to me:
Dear Bob,
(I can call you Bob, can't I?) Listen, our shelves groan under the weight of Ezra, Larkin, Hughes and Heaney (...so it's just as well I got a Kindle for Crimbo, I suppose). Anyroad, and that's just the surface; deep as it may seem. We feel that you belong in this company. (Although, obviously, considering your neuralgia, you might prefer a comfy chair or a pouffe etc to a rather cramped set of bookshelves - the choice, naturellement, is yours...if you're happy standing up, that's fine with us too. It was good enough for Tommy Stearns - when he wasn't sprawled out on the cocktail cabinet like a patient etherised on a table while Viv applied his mascara for him...)
Anyway, where was I? [Straight-faced:] It would be the fulfillment of my most pressing (and, believe me, I've been well and truly presssed, no word of a lie) and persistent publishing dream to see that 'ff' sewn into the spine of your life (although, given your advanced age, you may prefer an epidural injection....my wife swears by them, but then, I've never been pregnant with sextuplets by another man, so I wouldn't be able to weigh up the relative merits, unfortunately - again, I defer to your judgement in this, as ever...) Just any other publisher won't do. (Besides, Mills & Boon won't touch drag - take my word for it....Christ knows, I've tried myself, but they can't seem to see beyond the five o'clock shadow. They could have had Paul O'Grady too if they'd played their cards right. Serves 'em right the Philestines!) You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it. (Besides, my agent has a ten pound each-way wager on you for the Orange prize. You can't say fairer than that, can you?)
Robert Swipe, the doors of our Georgian Bloomsbury-based publishing house are open to you wherever you may be: Penge, Cricklewood, Rothergavenny. (Although, realistically, it would help if you were somewhere within the London Orbital if you're planning to squeeze a crafty snifter in in the Coach & Horses before closing time...)
"We'll let you know..."
Yours besottedly & C,
Lee Brackstone,
Editor
Faber & Faber
So, there you go! Bob's thinking about it - although obviously they'll have to match the offer he's just had from Escort for a serialised memoir. (Well, they've offered to throw in a subscription...)
I'll keep you posted...
xxx
'Berta
Dear Bob,
(I can call you Bob, can't I?) Listen, our shelves groan under the weight of Ezra, Larkin, Hughes and Heaney (...so it's just as well I got a Kindle for Crimbo, I suppose). Anyroad, and that's just the surface; deep as it may seem. We feel that you belong in this company. (Although, obviously, considering your neuralgia, you might prefer a comfy chair or a pouffe etc to a rather cramped set of bookshelves - the choice, naturellement, is yours...if you're happy standing up, that's fine with us too. It was good enough for Tommy Stearns - when he wasn't sprawled out on the cocktail cabinet like a patient etherised on a table while Viv applied his mascara for him...)
Anyway, where was I? [Straight-faced:] It would be the fulfillment of my most pressing (and, believe me, I've been well and truly presssed, no word of a lie) and persistent publishing dream to see that 'ff' sewn into the spine of your life (although, given your advanced age, you may prefer an epidural injection....my wife swears by them, but then, I've never been pregnant with sextuplets by another man, so I wouldn't be able to weigh up the relative merits, unfortunately - again, I defer to your judgement in this, as ever...) Just any other publisher won't do. (Besides, Mills & Boon won't touch drag - take my word for it....Christ knows, I've tried myself, but they can't seem to see beyond the five o'clock shadow. They could have had Paul O'Grady too if they'd played their cards right. Serves 'em right the Philestines!) You deserve Faber and the love we can give you. History demands it; destiny commands it. (Besides, my agent has a ten pound each-way wager on you for the Orange prize. You can't say fairer than that, can you?)
Robert Swipe, the doors of our Georgian Bloomsbury-based publishing house are open to you wherever you may be: Penge, Cricklewood, Rothergavenny. (Although, realistically, it would help if you were somewhere within the London Orbital if you're planning to squeeze a crafty snifter in in the Coach & Horses before closing time...)
"We'll let you know..."
Yours besottedly & C,
Lee Brackstone,
Editor
Faber & Faber
So, there you go! Bob's thinking about it - although obviously they'll have to match the offer he's just had from Escort for a serialised memoir. (Well, they've offered to throw in a subscription...)
I'll keep you posted...
xxx
'Berta
Release me...
Bob's asked me to post up a press release for the new album before he sends it off to the fourth estate. Hopefully, it will come in handy when you're weighing up the pros and cons of the various album concepts I'm hoping to put up here for your scrutiny later this week, all being well. OK, over to Bob...
This may well turn out to be the sort of urban myth future generations will cackle over as they warm their hands over the campfire and wait for the nuclear winter to thaw out, but I read somewhere that the first child who will go on to live to 1,000 has already been born...
Assuming we can make it beyond the apocalypse threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran, were such a fundamental schism in the genetic durability of the species to be realised in the form of the 1,000 year old man, it would represent a triumph of sorts for the prevailing rationalist/capitalist hegemony. After all, such enduring genes won't come cheap, one supposes. And who but the godless could possibly feel so emboldened as to place such a miracle down in the midst of the rest of us?; the teeming mass of three-score years and tenners. And what would such a world be like for those on the other side of the golden dawn? That's the kind of territory I've tried to inhabit in this new set of songs. I suppose I've set myself the brief of creating the soundtrack to a reinterpretation of 'Brave New World' as realised by Dennis Potter; either that or some bizarre kind of tea dance/trip hop fusion. Potter saw the popular songform of the thirties he grew up listening to as secular psalms. I suppose that's what I've been striving for here - little prayers offered up to the sky, barely audible above the din of the urban sprawl.
"You've made me such a beautiful monster" sings a child of the future to the stem cells from which he was created. "We chose your eyes from a million pairs of eyes - now I wish that you could see me". The question I suppose we want to know is this: "is that *really* all we are?" Is it just me, or does it not feel counter-intuitive to think of oneself as little more than a bundle of genetic codes and instructions. There is, surely, more to us than that, isn't there? So our guts tell us, in any case. But it's precisely those intuitions - gut feelings, hunches, intimations of the transcendent - that are so beloved of the artist and so despised by rationalists such as Richard Dawkins. We're asked not to believe something that seems so self-evident as we experience those occasional moments of elevation in life. What makes us feel most human, it seems, we are expected to disdain, deride or ultimately, as the logic of our mutability should dictate, will one day in any case be forcibly removed. I'm not a conventionally religious person, but I can see how people who are should feel so irked by the lack of humility evident in Dawkins' position. There is a need for greater humility all round, it seems to me; especially when our experiments with the stuff we're made of appear on the cusp either of redefining the nature of existence for future generations, and our fundamentalist doctrines of destroying that future altogether.
So, it's an age-old question for such a brave new world: do we have what might be called a soul? "I start to care about their souls; where they go when the flesh implodes?" sings the 1,000 year-old man himself in the song of the same name. Bored by centuries of whoring, he starts to lose the will to live himself as, one by one, his ephemeral human lovers slip off their mortal coils. It's a tender love song to those mayfly mammals - lounge lizard Martin Amis. "How long would be enough, for all our monkey stuff?" he asks.
Beautiful monsters, mutable Millennial monkeys preening themselves in a glamorous hell - is that all we are? It's an album of irreconcilable contradictions, just like the times, really; the ridiculous jauntiness of the vaudevillian self-harmer in 'The loving blade' - Vivian Stanshall sings Nine Inch Nails, perhaps? Or the cosmic traveller who's journeyed light years across space and time just to end up on this crummy planet Earth, "all eleven of [his] senses deranged" and only staying long enough to "live and die and try to get along". And what about the children at the other end of the spectrum from our long-lived descendants? The little lives that barely bloom before they're gone? The last song, 'Star Baby', is a lullaby for them - and the rest of us too, I suppose.
I don't for one second pretend to have the answers - just a lot of song-shaped questions. Hope you like 'em...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
This may well turn out to be the sort of urban myth future generations will cackle over as they warm their hands over the campfire and wait for the nuclear winter to thaw out, but I read somewhere that the first child who will go on to live to 1,000 has already been born...
Assuming we can make it beyond the apocalypse threatened by a nuclear-armed Iran, were such a fundamental schism in the genetic durability of the species to be realised in the form of the 1,000 year old man, it would represent a triumph of sorts for the prevailing rationalist/capitalist hegemony. After all, such enduring genes won't come cheap, one supposes. And who but the godless could possibly feel so emboldened as to place such a miracle down in the midst of the rest of us?; the teeming mass of three-score years and tenners. And what would such a world be like for those on the other side of the golden dawn? That's the kind of territory I've tried to inhabit in this new set of songs. I suppose I've set myself the brief of creating the soundtrack to a reinterpretation of 'Brave New World' as realised by Dennis Potter; either that or some bizarre kind of tea dance/trip hop fusion. Potter saw the popular songform of the thirties he grew up listening to as secular psalms. I suppose that's what I've been striving for here - little prayers offered up to the sky, barely audible above the din of the urban sprawl.
"You've made me such a beautiful monster" sings a child of the future to the stem cells from which he was created. "We chose your eyes from a million pairs of eyes - now I wish that you could see me". The question I suppose we want to know is this: "is that *really* all we are?" Is it just me, or does it not feel counter-intuitive to think of oneself as little more than a bundle of genetic codes and instructions. There is, surely, more to us than that, isn't there? So our guts tell us, in any case. But it's precisely those intuitions - gut feelings, hunches, intimations of the transcendent - that are so beloved of the artist and so despised by rationalists such as Richard Dawkins. We're asked not to believe something that seems so self-evident as we experience those occasional moments of elevation in life. What makes us feel most human, it seems, we are expected to disdain, deride or ultimately, as the logic of our mutability should dictate, will one day in any case be forcibly removed. I'm not a conventionally religious person, but I can see how people who are should feel so irked by the lack of humility evident in Dawkins' position. There is a need for greater humility all round, it seems to me; especially when our experiments with the stuff we're made of appear on the cusp either of redefining the nature of existence for future generations, and our fundamentalist doctrines of destroying that future altogether.
So, it's an age-old question for such a brave new world: do we have what might be called a soul? "I start to care about their souls; where they go when the flesh implodes?" sings the 1,000 year-old man himself in the song of the same name. Bored by centuries of whoring, he starts to lose the will to live himself as, one by one, his ephemeral human lovers slip off their mortal coils. It's a tender love song to those mayfly mammals - lounge lizard Martin Amis. "How long would be enough, for all our monkey stuff?" he asks.
Beautiful monsters, mutable Millennial monkeys preening themselves in a glamorous hell - is that all we are? It's an album of irreconcilable contradictions, just like the times, really; the ridiculous jauntiness of the vaudevillian self-harmer in 'The loving blade' - Vivian Stanshall sings Nine Inch Nails, perhaps? Or the cosmic traveller who's journeyed light years across space and time just to end up on this crummy planet Earth, "all eleven of [his] senses deranged" and only staying long enough to "live and die and try to get along". And what about the children at the other end of the spectrum from our long-lived descendants? The little lives that barely bloom before they're gone? The last song, 'Star Baby', is a lullaby for them - and the rest of us too, I suppose.
I don't for one second pretend to have the answers - just a lot of song-shaped questions. Hope you like 'em...
L.U.V. on y'all,
Bob
Thursday, 4 February 2010
Hi-Ho-Hi-Ho...
...it's back to work Bob goes!
Yes, the wonderful news from the Swipe household is that Bob is feeling three million per cent his old self and is gearing up for yet another assault on the pop charts! That's right; a mere week and a half since he collapsed in his attic studio under the combined influences of airtex, the new Kesha video and a genetic predisposition to chronic heart disease, Bob's been back to work doing pre-production on his next album! Unbelievable!
I don't know where he gets his energy from - well, I do...it's most likely the diet pills washed down with strong German wheat beer he's been living on since 1974. But for a 59 and three quarter year old fella, he puts a lot of the so-called younger generation to shame. Why, they're probably still in bed dreaming of their next ASBO when Bob's up with the larks and paying a visit to the local gymnasium (I don't know what the attraction is myself, but it seems to keep him happy being surrounded by huge, athletic black men in tight-fitting lycra. And they obviously relish his visits because Bob says they're only too pleased to park his wheelchair ring-side so he can get a really good view of the sparring....)
As is standard industry practice, Bob's already started work on the most important aspect of the record production process - the sleeve. (Well, how else are the execs going to come up with all those snappy taglines and storyboards for videos featuring scantily-clad gothic numpties jigging around in a haze of dry ice and bacofoil? Exactly). Bob's working on a range of visual ideas as usual but this time he has a significant problem - he's got no less than *three* really strong working titles for the as yet uncompleted (well, he hasn't even written the ruddy songs yet, so cut the guy some slack...) project.
It's a painful sight, watching him glued to the PC, agonising over images and frantically tugging at his crotch in confusion as he wrestles with the finer points of his aesthetic persona. (He should worry - how that lass in the picture is going to get herself off that donkey seems to be a *much* trickier proposition than whether Bob's bum looks too big in a pair of sequinned hot pants if you ask me...) It's almost as sad as watching him disappear into the kitchen for 20 minutes only to re-emerge without so much as a clue as to why he went in there in the first place and leaving it for muggins here to take the bananas off the top of his head and shake the parmesan out of his waistcoat.
So, in a rare moment of collaboration,. I suggested to Bob that if he couldn't decide on the title and cover for his LP, why didn't he post the candidates up here and let his reader(s) decide for him - after all, not only is it *excellent* pre-publicity for the LP but also, where else was he going to be able to get 5 saddoes from Norfolk in one place at the same time to discuss the minutaie of his under garments? (Carrow Road excepted, obviously!) And, to my great surprise, Bob not only agreed, but also let me borrow his diamante bustier to do the hoovering in by way of a thank you - he's all heart, really!
I'll be posting up the artwork over the next few weeks, once Bob's finished photoshopping out his warts/third nipples/belly button fluff etc., so I hope you'll all keep an eye out and share your views on the different concepts and looks Bob's been working on. Besides, it's the nearest thing you'll get to a working democracy this side of Halloween, so use it or lose it I say! After all without you, his audience, what is Bob but the most deservedly obscure, gender-confused Emo/funk-fusion rock legend in the whole of Christendom.
See - there's nothing like a bit of realism to spoil the fun, is there?
Toodle-pip
xxx
'Berta
Yes, the wonderful news from the Swipe household is that Bob is feeling three million per cent his old self and is gearing up for yet another assault on the pop charts! That's right; a mere week and a half since he collapsed in his attic studio under the combined influences of airtex, the new Kesha video and a genetic predisposition to chronic heart disease, Bob's been back to work doing pre-production on his next album! Unbelievable!
I don't know where he gets his energy from - well, I do...it's most likely the diet pills washed down with strong German wheat beer he's been living on since 1974. But for a 59 and three quarter year old fella, he puts a lot of the so-called younger generation to shame. Why, they're probably still in bed dreaming of their next ASBO when Bob's up with the larks and paying a visit to the local gymnasium (I don't know what the attraction is myself, but it seems to keep him happy being surrounded by huge, athletic black men in tight-fitting lycra. And they obviously relish his visits because Bob says they're only too pleased to park his wheelchair ring-side so he can get a really good view of the sparring....)
As is standard industry practice, Bob's already started work on the most important aspect of the record production process - the sleeve. (Well, how else are the execs going to come up with all those snappy taglines and storyboards for videos featuring scantily-clad gothic numpties jigging around in a haze of dry ice and bacofoil? Exactly). Bob's working on a range of visual ideas as usual but this time he has a significant problem - he's got no less than *three* really strong working titles for the as yet uncompleted (well, he hasn't even written the ruddy songs yet, so cut the guy some slack...) project.
It's a painful sight, watching him glued to the PC, agonising over images and frantically tugging at his crotch in confusion as he wrestles with the finer points of his aesthetic persona. (He should worry - how that lass in the picture is going to get herself off that donkey seems to be a *much* trickier proposition than whether Bob's bum looks too big in a pair of sequinned hot pants if you ask me...) It's almost as sad as watching him disappear into the kitchen for 20 minutes only to re-emerge without so much as a clue as to why he went in there in the first place and leaving it for muggins here to take the bananas off the top of his head and shake the parmesan out of his waistcoat.
So, in a rare moment of collaboration,. I suggested to Bob that if he couldn't decide on the title and cover for his LP, why didn't he post the candidates up here and let his reader(s) decide for him - after all, not only is it *excellent* pre-publicity for the LP but also, where else was he going to be able to get 5 saddoes from Norfolk in one place at the same time to discuss the minutaie of his under garments? (Carrow Road excepted, obviously!) And, to my great surprise, Bob not only agreed, but also let me borrow his diamante bustier to do the hoovering in by way of a thank you - he's all heart, really!
I'll be posting up the artwork over the next few weeks, once Bob's finished photoshopping out his warts/third nipples/belly button fluff etc., so I hope you'll all keep an eye out and share your views on the different concepts and looks Bob's been working on. Besides, it's the nearest thing you'll get to a working democracy this side of Halloween, so use it or lose it I say! After all without you, his audience, what is Bob but the most deservedly obscure, gender-confused Emo/funk-fusion rock legend in the whole of Christendom.
See - there's nothing like a bit of realism to spoil the fun, is there?
Toodle-pip
xxx
'Berta
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