Dark night of the sole

How is it that sometimes the slightest of injuries can cause a disproportionate degree of pain?  Like paper-cuts.  Ugh.

I had a fairly innocuous injury yesterday afternoon when I sort of ‘fell off’ a strappy sandal and twisted my ankle .  The sudden spraining hurt but then it went all warm (actually felt very nice) and I carried on.  We were at our village’s annual Summer do and hung about to watch a band (surprisingly good), no problem to stand while they played their Who and Cream covers, didn’t feel a thing.  We enjoyed that special smell of trampled-on grass combined with deep fat frying that you only ever get at these events, then walked the half-mile back home, all was fine for an hour, and then, unexpectedly, the pain really kicked in.

It got worse, so intense I couldn’t put any weight on my ankle and had to crawl up the stairs to bed on my hands and knees (very undignified).  Lying there with my foot propped up trying unsuccessfully to get to sleep my thoughts went off on a dark dismal walk of their own.  My ankle was never going to be the same, I’d have to give up going out – going anywhere at all - and we’d need to leave our little home because we couldn’t fit a Stannah Stair Lift.  I’d get so fat through immobility that I’d have to be hoisted in and out of bed and end up featuring in a Channel 5 programme about the dangers of strappy footwear:  ‘My Sandals Ruined My Life’.  Oh, the shame.

Those dark nights of the soul are bastards, aren’t they?  I’ve had them before, where a hairline crack in the bathroom wall ends up with the whole terrace collapsing, and with it the entire fabric of your life.

I heard the milkman's bottles clinking at 3.30 this morning and next door’s dog barking at his footsteps...

...The first cars of the day crunching on the tarmac on their way to the 6am shift at the factory down the road.

As the darkness of the night started to subside, so did the worst of the pain, and so did the thoughts.  Resting the foot today, in between hobbling.  Throwing out the sandals.

Anniversary snapshots: 3rd July 1981

Blimey, I'm finally managing to write again! Thanks for your encouragement and understanding. But hope you'll forgive some retrospective indulgence...   It could even turn into an occasional series, tho' that might be over-ambitious.  Anyway, this started because I was thinking about a gig I was at on this exact day many years ago - hence 'anniversary' - and it dawned on me just how much has changed, although the band in question are still performing (albeit not the complete original line-up).  More on them in a mo.

First, time to forget everything we now take for granted about modern technology.  Rewind to an era when we weren’t all connected, forget having a home computer and transmitting words and pictures like I'm doing now.  I'm back to a time when we still had £1 notes and had to get photos developed at Boots and wait two weeks.  I won’t go on, you were probably there too.

So I'm in the early '80s, and 1981 in particular.  How was it for you?

The music I think of first is that post-punk / embryonic goth thing because I was really into those bands I’d heard through John Peel, like Modern English, Psychedelic Furs, Positive Noise, the Cure...

There were other new sounds too  - I loved the first New Age Steppers album with its dub rhythms...

...and still had allegiance to the anarcho-punk of Crass who released 'Penis Envy' that year.  I don't recall ever enjoying that in the way I did others, but it had its place.

These were varied times musically; I could play New Order’s ‘Ceremony’ alongside Dead Kennedys ‘Too Drunk To Fuck’ and Radio 1 could play Bucks Fizz next to the Jam. So much was going on.  Then, thrown into the mix, was something altogether different: electro ‘machine music' from a German band who’d already been around for over half my life.  Kraftwerk.

Kraftwerk seemed pretty old in '81 (in their 30s!).  I knew this because my sister already had Radioactivity in the dark ages of 1975, a record she'd been given by a German boy during a Town Twinning week.  I was 12 in '75, I liked Showaddywaddy and guinea pigs.  So, yes, they were ancient but, at the same time, so ultra-modern.

On Friday 3^rd July 1981, I saw them at the Hammersmith Odeon.  It was the first time I’d been to a gig venue with seats.  I was used to black-painted halls with sticky floors and being close enough to a band to look up the nostrils of the guitarist and count the hairs.  Down there on stage – a long way away, no up-nosing for me - were four figures who looked more like androids than people, each producing synthetic sounds from a personal console, behind them a huge screen projecting the kind of digital graphics I’d only really seen on Tomorrow’s World.  

Honestly, this is what I mean about forgetting what we know today because back then it seemed so futuristic.  Like when we were little and tried to picture what life might be like in the year 2000 (all jet-packs and holidays on the moon), the computer world that Kraftwerk envisioned wasn’t one I could imagine living in.

Now, as I type this using familiar technology, their version seems retro, like Gameboys and Space Invaders do too. But in 1981 we were still gawping at magic flashing signs on the motorway telling us we were too close to the car in front as we travelled down to Hammersmith in P's Vauxhall Viva.

I’m not sure quite how Kraftwerk fitted in to my musical taste, they just did.  Seeing them felt like witnessing something special.  The sophistication of sound and imagery took us to an other-worldly place, where our hosts didn't seem fully human.  How different from the gigs I'd been to before.  At the same time it was highly accessible, especially in songs like the wistful electro-pop of 'Computer Love'.

We were enthralled for two hours by four automatons, but just occasionally they let slip their robotic façades and smiled, and we loved them for it.   They filled our senses.  It was such a memorable and awe-inspiring night.

And unlike gigs I’d been to before, the ones with sticky floors, there was no real fashion style dominating the audience - there were all sorts there, with no aggro.  P wore a black cape! I don't know why - or perhaps I do - I mean, this was an era when many of us aspired to be vampires, at least part-time.  K was wearing brand new purple creepers from Shelley’s.  I donned my moth-eaten black lace dress (my mum’s from the 1940s), my hair deliberately tangled.

In the foyer on the way out we spotted Toyah! ‘I Want To Be Free’ was in the charts - she was going to turn this world inside out and turn suburbia upside down.  I'm not sure how she got so far with that voice, but she did have the look.

 As we queued to leave the car park, we were amazed to hear a tape of what we’d just listened to being played back – someone must’ve recorded the set on a portable cassette machine. Maybe smuggled in under a cape.

Possibly still dazed from the Kraftwerk experience, P took a wrong turn as we headed home and started driving West instead of East.  We didn’t know as we drove towards Southall that something serious was happening there that night.   The first we heard was in the papers the next day - there was nothing then to tell us what was going on in real time, no tweets, no rolling news.  

Luckily we turned around in time, oblivious to what was unfolding further down the road.  Petrol bombs were being thrown and a pub set on fire when a violent conflict erupted after a number of Oi bands  booked to play the Hambrough Tavern brought many of their racist supporters to an area with a high Asian population.  That was another side to the hot Summer of 1981: riots.

It's weird to think of Oi bands, riots and Kraftwerk in the same breath.  I’m so glad I’d been in the company of the latter that night.  I don’t think Oi fans would’ve taken kindly to seeing us dressed in cape, creepers and lace, singing 'It's More Fun To Compute' out the car windows, and laughing at the ridiculous idea of that ever becoming a reality.

Hmm.

As for Kraftwerk, they're touring again with 70-year old Ralf Hütter as the only original member, and by all accounts their performances are not that dissimilar to the one I enjoyed 36 years ago today.  Whereas so many other things have changed...

Developed at Boots, July 1981

In the digital age, July 2017

Thought it was about time I said hello properly!

Mental block

Oh dear, this is odd, I seem to have lost the ability to write a blog post.   Even typing this feels like an upward struggle and I’m not sure why but, of course, the more I think about it the harder it gets. I’m thinking about it far too much now, I know, aargh.   Can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried and then scrapped an idea . How many times I’ve backspaced - even now when I’m writing about it – I mean, I just backspaced there without anyone knowing and took half the original sentence out.  There have been those paragraphs I’ve composed in my head in that sort of stream of consciousness way when I’m doing the washing up or brushing my teeth which seem to make sense – “Yes!” I think, “quick, write it down! ("Yes, when I've dried my hands!") but then when I try, the words just won’t co-operate.

So really, just to say – after a disproportionate amount of time and effort to even string this much together - that I’m still here and all is fine but I’ve come up against a bit of a block at the moment when it comes to blogging.  As soon as I can kick it out of the way, I’ll try again.  Sort of hoping that just saying this will be a start. 

Fuck that backspace and....  

...Publish!

Orange Juice: Rip It Up

Did you see butterflies?

So excited to get the new Jane Weaver album 'Modern Kosmology' last week - I'm indebted to a couple of fellow bloggers for pointing me in her direction (so a BIG thank you, I think you know who you are!)

It's great (sorry for such an unimaginative adjective) - one of those that just gets better the more you hear it, the more you tune into the detail, the mood, the femininity.

Whilst I'm not a music blogger as such, I don't have a lot to say on other subjects right now, so will just keep to the song and keep it brief today.  'Did You See Butterflies?' is the new single; it's gorgeous (shades of Lush and Stereolab, as mentioned by others before) and I know that because I'm in love with it, I just want you to be as well!  Funny how music has that effect, but it's a good thing.

I did see a butterfly yesterday too.... not many around here just yet.

Jane Weaver: Did You See Butterflies?

Andy

Long-time friends of this blog will know that I lost a very dear friend, who also happened to be a close neighbour, last year.

Whilst personal memories live on in our own minds, when someone is as creative and special as he was, it's really meaningful for those who knew them to see their talents continue to be celebrated and shared in their absence with a wider audience

So I just wanted to spread the word, as I'm aware many of you may already know his sleeve artwork from your own record collections, that there is a lovely feature about him/interview with brother Matt in the new edition of Classic Pop (issue 29) - available from all good newsagents from today.

In loving memory of Andrew ('Andy Dog') Johnson

Unity

As I'm drifting off to sleep Monday night, Mr SDS joins me having stayed up a little later, and tells me the breaking news he’s just read online.  Details are still sketchy, but it’s bad.

Oh no.  Your heart sinks, just sinks.  The world is a flawed, fractured place, full of twisted, tortured souls.  You shield yourself from it as much as you can, you try at least to be kind, caring, in everyday life.   It’s not hard to be those things, not really - is it?  To just get on with your own life and let others get on with theirs, peacefully?  We're lucky here, imagine life elsewhere... but still.  I slip back into a restless slumber, these thoughts swirling around, wondering what nightmare reality I’ll be reading about on Tuesday, things most of us will never be able to understand.

I’m due to go into central London in the morning too.  “Don’t go”, Mr SDS pleads.  “Don’t go if you don’t have to”.  But I do have to.  I’m very aware that I live much of my life – out here in the quiet countryside - inside a cosy bubble.  There’s the irony:  probably the biggest danger I face on a daily basis is that of an insidious, creeping paranoia about the world outside it.   I must defy that paranoia as much as anything else, I must go because I want to go.  

So I get on the train to London, and on the tube, mingle with travellers in crowded carriages; there are extra police around, there are serious faces, I don’t think that Manchester is far from anyone’s mind this morning.  But there are smiley faces too - cities are gutsy places and they remind you: most people are alright, most people want the same basic, harmless things.  In the city of strangers I’m one of them, not going to give in to fear.

I have such a good day, meeting with lovely friends I haven’t seen in years – catching up over tea and cake and paintings.   I’d have missed all this had I let stupid paranoia win.  It's over too soon, and I walk back to catch my train through the metropolis, lapping up its sharp contrast to my usual habitat, here where the sirens are my screaming swifts and starlings, and office blocks and cranes pierce the sky instead of oak and poplar.  

“This train does stop at Colchester, doesn’t it?”   My solitary daze is broken as the woman with two huge pieces of luggage, almost as big as her, asks me this.  I've just boarded too.  Yes, it’s the right train, so she sits across the aisle from me and continues to talk. 

“I’ve been travelling all day...,” she says,  “...come down from Manchester…”

Weird how one particular word, on one particular day, can carry so much weight and meaning and, right out of the blue, it unites us. 

I’m drawn to her face, and in a split second of silence I’m reading her expression.  I need to talk, it says.  I need to talk about something. She has the air of someone who’s been awake all night, with a body tired but brain still buzzing.  Her bright blue eyes are a little watery.  Then she starts to tell me that she’s in the army, and she’d been called on duty in connection with the Manchester Arena incident.

As other people start to board the train, filling up the seats around me, I could just withdraw from the conversation with the woman across the aisle.  But instead  I find myself moving seats, to be with her.  She needs to talk.  She needs to talk about something.

And so I spend the next hour in unbroken conversation with a complete stranger, who’s been awake for 37 hours and who, in spite of having been stationed in Afghanistan and served as a medic, tells me how intensely affected she feels by the night’s events.  By what she’d seen and heard, what she knew so far, what lies ahead too.  I let her talk.  My eyes are a little watery.

But we speak about other stuff too, and some stuff I never knew, because I’ve never chatted to someone who’s in the army, it’s a world away from mine - a world away from my cosy bubble.  I’m so glad I stepped out of it today; I learned so much more than I ever bargained for.  

There’s no punchline to this, no big revelation… I just want to express it.  My train companion is going to stay in my mind for a very long while.  She needed to talk, and I’m so glad I could listen.

Love and peace to Manchester.

Fare thee well

Just heard news of the death of Geoffrey Bayldon yesterday, at the age of 93.  One of my favourite actors, he was best known, I'm sure, for his fantastically animated and utterly convincing portrayal of Catweazle, the eponymous time-travelling character in what has to be one of the best children's TV programmes ever made.  Who could forget electrickery, the telling bone, Castle Saburac and Touchwood the toad?  And "Nothing works"! I'm sure its magic rubbed off on many of us of a certain vintage and may explain a lot...

He was known for many other parts too, not least the Crowman in Worzel Gummidge as well as a teacher in the superb film To Sir With Love; he even played the role of a butler in the tea party scene in Marc Bolan's Born to Boogie.

RIP Geoffrey.  Fare thee well.

The power of pop

Just a quickie today, but had one of those moments yesterday hearing something on the car radio and I'm sure you'll know the kind I mean:  Mr SDS was driving and we were nattering away, but when the intro to this song started up I had to tell him to "Shhh!"   "It's almost a bit like power pop!" I said, "...'78/'79 jangly power pop! I need to know who it is..."

Tuning myself in, what I heard was actually sweet, shameless, modern pop.  The kind that just makes you want to smile because it's simply pure and real and catchy.

We then got stuck behind a maintenance lorry at some roadworks  'cause Anglian Water were digging up the pavement and I was so pleased because it meant I could hear the rest of the song without it having to battle against the engine noise (the joy of a start-stop system!) It will now forever be associated in my mind with that little section of the A131.

Anyway.... it was Declan McKenna with 'Brazil'.  He was just 16 when he wrote and recorded this. He looks so young in this original video, aww!  (It's since been updated - I much prefer this earlier one posted below).   But reading up about him reveals a maturity beyond his years; he self-released this as his first single in August 2015 and, in spite of his lightness of touch musically, his lyrical content is darker and political - a criticism of FIFA awarding the World Cup to Brazil in 2014 without addressing the effect of the huge degree of poverty on its people.

He's touring this month and has an album out in July.  At the risk of sounding like an old fart, he helps restore my faith in....oh dear, do I really have to say it like this?!.... the 'youth of today'...

Declan McKenna: Brazil