Yesterday evening, on my lone walk through fields and thickets, having climbed over stiles, snaked through kissing gates and played hide-and-seek with the jackdaws, I came across a mysterious doorway.
It set my imagination alight.
What would you want to find if you stepped through this doorway? Would it be a portal to the past, or to the future? To the inner pages of a long-lost book, or a scene in a black-and-white film? To a dream... abstract and transient, but full of meaning?
I know what lies behind it...
But it's terribly boring, so I won't spoil your fantasy!
Thanks so much to all who joined in with the latest instalment of this absurd and trivial challenge. I've realised that it's a bit like cooking a complicated meal; takes ages to prepare, finesse and serve up, and then it's all gone in a fraction of the time. Just the washing up to do now... and some indigestion tablets to gulp down.
Anyway, we started off with an amiable-looking character; I've got so used to looking at this new bespectacled face now that the actual origins somehow no longer look real to me. 'Helen', as Alyson has playfully named her (absolutely!), is essentially Bonnie Raitt, with just Buddy Holly's eyes and nose, but what a difference they make. Both were correctly and quickly identified by Martin.
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Next up, what do you get when you combine Kurt Cobain and Celine Dion? ( The top half of Kurt's face and hair, with the lower half of Celine's. ) You get a young man called 'Kyle', according to Alyson. Martin correctly identified the Nirvana vocalist, and a warm welcome goes to DouglasMcLaren who correctly spotted Celine - many thanks for joining in.
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No. 3 proved tricky. No, not that Tricky. It's Stormzy, or at least the lower half of his face, combined with Nona Hendryx looking suitably exotic, even more so with Stormzy's beard. Another warm welcome and many thanks also to the soul of a collector for dropping by and correctly identifiying Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omair Owuo Jr straight away. Alyson was so close with her Patti Labelle suggestion, but with a little nudge in the same direction realised it's acutally Patti's fellow Labelle member Nona instead.
4 Who's responsible for this living doll? Rigid Digit was straight off the starting blocks to identify Cliff Richard, but wasn't 100% sure if Lulu might be the other half. Martin also thought it could be Lulu. You were both right. Congratulations!
("... looks like an Angela to me," says Martin too. I have to agree.)
5 Jon Bon Jovi and Patti Smith give love a bad name with this mystery lovechild... Well done to Martin.
But Martin had earlier wondered if Bruce Springsteen's genes were in the mix. I can see why.
*However I must reiterate that all lovechildren featured here must be genetically possible, i.e. with male/female parents. Even if some of them would have had to have their eggs or sperm frozen. But, you know, I have to keep this realistic...
6 Ah, look what happens when you give Britney Spears an Ed Sheeran haircut! As Alyson says, you get a kindly face who looks like a Frances. And it's actually Britney's complete face, but seems that hair makes all the difference so, although Martin was quick to identify Ed, an extra clue was needed to spot this particular 'Princess of Pop'. Maybe it would have been easier if they'd both shaved their heads...
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Damon Albarn and Joan Jett combine to make one badass mean girl. (I reckon she's called Donna...) Rigid Digit and Martin both wondered if real-life associates of Damon had something to do with this but I can confirm that neither Phil Daniels* nor Justine Frischmann were anywhere to be seen at the time of conception.
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I don't know what happened down in Devil Gate Drive to result in this, but here she is. Rigid Digit was quick to identify both Suzi Quatro and Robin Gibb.
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I didn't think it would take too long to recognise this Stray Cat's enormous quiff and indeed Martin pinpointed Brian Setzer straight away. But the lower half of this lovechild's face took far longer to identify as belonging to Miley Cyrus, in spite of valiant attempts from both Martin and Alyson.
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And finally, although Martin was quick to recognise Janet Jackson here, Chuck Berry (the owner of those eyes, mouth and pencil moustache) also took a little more time to get right.
And that's the lot.
Everyone who played along got a least one answer right, with Martin bagging the most and Rigid Digit a clear second place. And it turns out Rol knew more than he let on, as confided he'd been to school with most of them...
But no points and no prizes - just another five minutes of your time wasted, I'm afraid! Thanks to everyone for such astute detective work.
I reckon it's time for something ridiculous. pointless and a complete waste of time; even more so than usual, I mean. Another instalment of The Mystery Lovechild!
If you've been around for past 'mystery lovechild' posts you may remember the premise:
What might the secret offspring, born to a famous but unlikely set of musical parents, look like?
Previously, for instance, it turned out that the oddly familiar-looking character below was the (alleged) result of an (alleged) furtive fumble between Rod Stewart and Stevie Nicks. Apparently it all started when he asked her if she thought he was sexy. That night was the night, but it seems it wasn't big love after all and she told him to go his own way - and that must be why he doesn't want to talk about it.
But every picture tells a story...
So here are some more, frankly very peculiar-looking offspring whose parents need identifying. I'd love to know who you think could be responsible for such reckless and terrifying distribution of their genes.
No rush, no prizes, but I hope they make you smile rather than throw up.
It's brilliant how the brief mention of something in a blog can trigger thoughts in others' minds too, so it was really lovely to see recent posts by my dear fellow bloggers Alyson and The Swede on the subject of...
..Hats!
However, they took theirs one step further and each included a lovely photo of themselves in some very dapper headwear too. It seems only right therefore that I should take up the gauntlet thrown down by Alyson at the weekend to try and find an image of myself also wearing a rather bippity-boppity hat. Not easy!
So the image above is from 1986 - it's a screenshot from a little DIY film, which was such a novelty at the time as we really weren't used to being in front of a camera and seeing ourselves that way. Some friends in a band* wanted to make a video about themselves, and this is from an afternoon in the rehearsal studio where Mr SDS and I were invited to watch whilst their manager mate nearly buckled under the weight of a huge, hired, shoulder-supported Camcorder. Thus I donned my finest (posey!) garb for the occasion and made a cameo appearance. I also smoked a lot of cigarettes.
How was 1986 for you? What were you listening to? The charts were full of Five Star and Simply Red, and there was very little new stuff around that was floating my boat. I was 23 and had been discovering '60s psychedelia and beat, the US 'Nuggets' and 'Pebbles' albums, all that kind of thing. I've written about my love of that '60s revival period here before, and how it seems strange looking back to be so young but getting into music that was (or seemed at the time) so old. But this music was new tomyears, and that was enough. It was so fresh and exciting to be exposed to it for the first time, and fantastic to have so much to delve into from previously unplundered archives.
Songs like this: Rupert's People - Hold On (1967)
Having a whole new genre of music to investigate brought with it too an interest in the fashions, attitudes and ephemera of its original era and I scoured the charity shops for dated clothes (including that hat), wishing myself back to a fantasy version of life where I might have shopped at the 'Granny Takes A Trip' boutique on the Kings Road or seen a trippy band at the UFO Club. But the reality was quite different - perhaps that's why. We were still in the midst of the Thatcher years, renting a shitty top-floor flat with peeling wallpaper in a new town well-known for the ubiquity of its concrete.
Granny Takes A Trip
Still - I had the pleasure of working in a record shop and spending my wages on interesting vinyl. It was through this that I discovered other bands who didn't originate from the '60s but who still wanted to revive or at least borrow something from that whole era. Paisley Underground, Garage Revival, call it what you will... it ticked a lot of boxes. It meant you could do more than just stick on a twenty-year-old record and dream yourself back to some idealised version of the past, instead you could go see a band the same age as you, making similar exciting sounds in real time. Things evolved too, different elements were thrown into the mix by these new bands - not only was there the mod influence but there was a hint of the punk ethos about it too, if that makes sense. Fuzzy guitars or contemporary lyrics and more radical haircuts or over-the-top cover designs - something with a harder, brasher edge was going on which fitted in to the contemporary setting. We had bands like the Godfathers and the Prisoners here in the UK, alongside Scandinavian groups such as the Nomads and the Backdoor Men; there were the Fuzztones from New York (and many more).
The Fuzztones: Bad News Travels Fast
Anyway, I'm waffling on but just wanted to put the above image into context. It's how I came to be watching a young new band rehearse in 1986 and yet didn't feel out-of-place in a pair of '60s style granny glasses and a bippity-boppity hat! *Just in case they ever stumble upon this, for the sake of anonymity/privacy I've missed out the band's name. But we thought they were great.
I have long wondered what a bippity boppity hat looks like -
haven’t we all?
But I was thinking, if ever there was a
time to start wearing one it must be now, with the current widespread despair
about our uncut / unstyled hair. I jest, but still...
I’m imagining it could have feathers, or sequins perhaps (to
go with the satin tat).Would it pull
down over the ears? Or have a wide brim?
I found some women's hats from the early 1900s that strike me as being very bippity boppity.
Bowie’s memorable lyric also puts me in mind of a character
from a James Thurber children’s book, The 13 Clocks.I have a copy tucked away; it’s a great fairy story, but a detail which has stayed with me most vividly is that a central character, known as the Golux, wears an
“indescribable hat”.
“He wore an indescribable hat, his eyes were wide and
astonished, as if everything were happening for the first time, and he had a
dark, describable beard…”
Is that not brilliant?
Thurber was blind by the time he wrote The 13 Clocks and could not
add his own images as he'd done in the past, so he got his friend, Marc
Simont, to illustrate it for him.He
then asked Simont to describe all his illustrations; Simont was unable to
describe the hat.Thurber was, quite
rightly, satisfied.
The Golux in his indescribable hat, as illustrated by Marc Simont
My copy is illustrated equally charmingly by Ronald Searle
Anyway, when it comes to some hats I would like to wear to disguise lockdown hair, I love the look of some from the 1920s.
If you're male (although not necessarily), maybe one of these would take your fancy?
Or something more flamboyant perhaps? It would make our daily exercise allowances so much more interesting.
Berets are a favourite of mine and I actually have a few, but I
seldom wear them. If only I could appear this cute
but I reckon the reality is more like this nowadays...wot with me glasses an' that.
It’s an up and down kind of time, isn’t it - thinking/worrying about stuff, people and livelihoods, trying not to overdose on the news, checking on friends, feeling indebted to all those keeping things going.Then needing to give yourself some breaks, get lost in levity and little bits of normality and trivia wherever possible.I think that’s just going to be a
pattern for a while now.
So, like an obedient dogI took my daily walk yesterday and gave myself time
to think some silly thoughts.My walk incorporated a stop at the shop to buy
some essentials – only a short list but a bottle of wine included, essential surely. It was colder than I expected and every step felt like I
was waging war against that northerly wind, one of those that’s so icy and
strong it seemed to lock my features into what I can only imagine was a horrifying
grimace.
It was an interesting study in behaviour, though, and I guess
many are experiencing this on our eerily quiet streets:that each time another person came towards me
on the pavement or path, one of us would actually stop, pull in and give way to
let the other walk by at a safe distance. I realised it was exactly as if we were each
driving an imaginary car (mine’s an E-type Jag then please, may as well go for
the full fantasy). Just like motoring down a narrow lane and using a passing place, with a little wave of
the hand to say thank you. Maybe we should all start wearing miniature headlights on
our coats that we could flash at each other, just to save any confusion, especially if it gets foggy.
Making the most of my outdoor exercise allowance I took a
diversion along my favourite lane, noticing a pile of plucked feathers
in the grass verge signifying a recent sparrowhawk attack (either that or
someone really has got desperate on finding empty shelves in Tesco).I could hear a chiffchaff in the tall lime
trees, it’s a lovely sign of Spring.If
you don’t know already it’s very easy to identify the call of a
chiffchaff.It goes chiff chaff, chiff
chaff… And there were already newborn
lambs in the field, all wobbly black legs and curious faces. I know I'm lucky, things feel more normal when you’re
surrounded by nature.
A chiffchaff
Most chiffchaffs migrate to warmer climates for the Winter
and return here to breed in Spring and Summer.
I found myself thinking (this is the silly, trivial
thinking) about how, when this is over, we might all come out of it looking like
something from the ‘70s.It’s the
haircuts I started with – are we all letting it grow wild, or
risking a dodgy home trim from an unqualified family member?The last time I properly cut anyone’s hair
was in the '70s.... and that was a doll's...(If only I'd realised her long glossy locks actually originated from just a handful of broadly spaced plugs! I was so mortified in case my mum found out what I'd done that I hid her in a box for a year).Will pudding basins and
comb-overs become fashionable again?
What
about teeth?Perhaps classic vintage ivory will
make a comeback, now there are no professional whitening services open for
those who like their gnashers to glow like ultraviolet light.Botox-addicts may learn to embrace their
wrinkles and the lips of many female celebrities may finally return to normal human
size; body hair will flourish again at last in the comfort of its own home.
And we’ll wear down the heels and soles on our
footwear so much through all this daily walking that, with no heel bars open, we’ll
decide to revert to longer-lasting platform shoes and boots…
I finished my walk and as my frozen face thawed out and my
hands lathered up the soap, I allowed myself a little (20-second) escapist reverie – a vivid image
of a whole new world of very hairy, yellow-toothed, wrinkly, 1970s-throwback, platform-boot-wearing
cave-dwellers emerging blinking into the light. We'll all have terribly chapped hands too.
