Wild and exciting

You want wild? You want exciting? What a week I’ve had! Other than the usual working, I liberated a ladybird, went for a walk, went for another walk and noticed Jonathan-from-over-the-road’s dog urinating on a fresh pile of sand which was about to be laid out for a new driveway (dramatic), waved to Dick from the other side of the graveyard (I should perhaps point out that Dick isn’t dead), and replaced the leaky sump on my wormery (a brand new experience). It really doesn’t get much crazier than that, but could I cope if it did?  I doubt it. 

Of course I’m grateful there have been no big dramas. I long for the peaks in life, but an absence of troughs is something to be glad about, at least. And Spring has made a tentative appearance here at last. Oh, I forgot to mention the bumblebee! I saw a bumblebee too. 

Reflecting on such an eventful time reminded me of a very obscure song from the archives. I had the chorus running through my mind and it’s such an unusual number I reckon it deserves a place here. Earth and Fire (no Wind) were a Dutch group, formed in the late 1960s and starting out as, what I suppose you might call, a progressive rock band, but with a bit of a difference in that they had a strong female vocalist, Jerney Kaagman. They were hugely popular in their native land but, to my ears, don't seem obviously commercial (until they later developed into more of a pop/disco outfit, continuing as a band for many years).

 Anyway, ‘Wild and Exciting’ from 1970 is interesting, charming, very European. Jerney’s vocals are distinctly ‘Teutonic’ sounding and really remind me of Siouxsie (did Siouxsie ever listen to them, I wonder?) The changes in tempo, the mix of acoustic guitar with the heavier chords and then some delightfully noisy freakout psychedelic madness that first comes in at around 1m30s …. who’d have thought this could be a Top Ten hit for them?  But it was in the Netherlands, as were most of their early single releases.  Plus I love this video, with Jerney’s big, frizzed hair, so very of the time (I couldn’t help contemplating how hard it must have been to maintain), a special little moment at the 1 minute mark and the unlikely setting of a football ground (why?!) 

Earth and Fire: Wild and Exciting (1970)

One more wild and exciting thing – I realised earlier that this blog is 10 years old today. Argh, I can hardly believe it, how is that even possible? I don’t feel it deserves much celebration given how absolutely terrible I’ve been at its upkeep lately but I’m thankful at least that one decade later we’re both still here... and, of course, if you're reading this,  thank you for being here too.

Rainy day woman

 You know, there is something about walking at 3.30pm on a cold, rainy February day.  Oh, something special, something... a feeling, a memory, a Proustian rush, if you like.

I'm walking home from school.  When I get in, the cat will be sprawled out on the huge boiler in the kitchen, mum will be there, it will be warm, there will be condensation on the window.  The only light in the living room comes from the gas fire with its flashes of blue and pink licking at the grills, and the table lamp in the corner of the typical G-Plan shelving unit - it's ambient, not quite dark outside. I kick off brown shoes and damp white socks, give Cleo a stroke so she lazily licks my face (ooh, such a raspy tongue - like sandpaper!) - then I perch on the yellow stool at the kitchen counter to have a bowl of Weetabix with warm milk.  We seem to be incessantly hungry at 12 years old, I already had a gingerbread man from Simmonds on the way home (who can possibly ignore the temptation of sweet baked delights in the window of the best cake shop in town after double Maths and a Geography test?)  'The Changes' will be on telly soon.... chilling but compelling, I'm hooked.

Why am I telling you this?  Simply because I was walking at 3.30pm today - a cold, rainy February day - and the words I've just written were floating around in my head.  The rain soaks my hair and I don't care, the high collar on the warmest coat that has ever been invented (honestly, it's amazing, like a blanket) is turned up, stroking my cheeks.  Thank god no school uniform...no damp socks, or Double Maths, but I still get that feeling.   Green doors do it too, you know that really strong shade of mid green; I've no idea why.  Anyway I'll write this down when I get in and post it, I thought - not much, I realise, but a way to break the silence at last, if nothing else...!  

I appreciate that the comfortable memories of simple things from the past hold their appeal more than ever at the moment, but I've always had that rainy afternoon thing, a place to go to which can't be spoiled, and I like it very much.

Is there anywhere you go?

A Merry Christmas to you...

Can't believe it's nearly here -  time to break out some seasonal piccies.  

I do love the beautiful work of the artist and designer known as Erté.  Born in Russia but moving to Paris in the early 1900s, he became known for his stylish visuals in many fields - not just illustration but also fashion, jewellery, theatrical set and costume design, and interior decoration.  What a talented man.  Seems quite a character too, if you ever get chance to read more about him.

So here are a few of his gorgeous Christmas designs  - such fantastic graphic style...   

Wishing you the best one possible in these crappy old times and here's to better days for everyone 'soon'....

And here's the man himself (looking not unlike Dave Gahan / Marc Almond!)

Thanks as always 

x

Musical notes

Little scraps of paper abound in my Shedio, where I work all day with only the radio for company.  Scrawled words on torn off corners, hurriedly written, barely legible in magenta or turquoise or 2H pencil or whatever’s closest to hand.  All sorts of apparently random words and names.  Maybe they look like coded messages to a stranger’s eyes, yet to be deciphered, but once revealed they will disclose a dangerous secret.

I mean, a note I made just last week scribbled in purple diagonally across a ripped sheet reads:

Mancini        

       Shotgun

Hmmm....

Of course, I'm just being a fantasist, this is nothing as intriguing as a secret code, but for me it does point to something exciting.  My frantically scribbled notes (I'm very analogue!) are all aides memoires for songs I hear which make my ears prick up (I’m sure they actually do, like a cat’s, if only you could see them).  Songs that make me stop what I’m doing, artists who definitely warrant further investigation.

A little further investigation reveals that the artist in question here, Iraina Mancini, is a singer, actor, radio host, model and DJ, born into a musical family – her father is Warren Peace, a childhood friend of David Bowie, who also co-wrote songs with the great man and provided backing vocals for him.   Oh, imagine having a dad like that!

Iraina has already written her first solo album, but sadly there’s not a lot to hear from her out there just yet, however ‘Shotgun’ is her latest single release and I really hope it stops as many other people in their tracks as it did me the other day...  I think it’s gorgeous - sultry, darkly sensual and cinematic.

It probably comes as no surprise on listening to this to read that Iraina’s musical inspirations include French ‘60s cinema and Ye-Ye, Northern Soul, Serge Gainsbourg, and psychedelia... (right up my street!)

Iraina Mancini: Shotgun

Somewhere Elsa

Sorry it's been so long!  Posts may be sporadic on here until at least the end of the year but I am still around...  just a little too bogged down with work.

However, there is a strange and fanciful other-world which I’ve been visiting lately, just sometimes when I get chance to briefly press pause on the repetitive cycle of mundane reality. We must each have our own other-world, I’m sure - or many. They may be trips back in time, or forwards perhaps. Dreams, daydreams, places where regrets are addressed or fantasies fulfilled… Nothing is out of bounds. 

In this one, I’m of non-specific age in an indefinable location, but it's a weird and wonderful artistic illusion where the me who lives inside my head slips comfortably into her groove. Here in this safe space, feeling uncharacteristically confident, vibrant and eternally youthful of course (it is a figment, after all), I will pour myself elegantly into a Lobster dress...

(1937)

and go to a party where maybe I’ll be introduced to Salvador Dali and Frida Kahlo. Perhaps it will be in Paris?

In my version of events, of course, I won't be pathetically dumbstruck (I mean, I can't even think now what on earth I'd say!) -  and there will be none of the dark, nightmarish backdrop of  war or insanity...  or pandemics.   I'm doing 1930s Lite.  But it's the fashions of  designer Elsa Schiaparelli  which are drawing me in.   A slight obsession with her led me here. I bought a little book a while back; fell in love with her cutting edge ideas and was intrigued by her extraordinary life (definitely worth reading about.  Her personality was so adventurous that even as a child she had quirky ideas - she once threw herself out of a window with an umbrella in the belief that it would act as a parachute, only to land unceremoniously but uninjured in a heap of manure... )  

Her imaginative, playful collaborations and creations (although she objected to the word 'creation', thinking it pretentious)  and her eccentric style are just the escapism I crave, even if it is only to be in my head. Maybe it's spurred on by the simple desire to dress up and venture out somewhere special, something I suspect none of us have done in a verylong while.... 

So, just for now, when I could really do with a little taste of  alternative reality (or should that be surreality) far, far away from 2020 for obvious reasons, it may be one in which I would happily get away with wearing these gloves:

(1936)

this hat

(not sure of the date - 1950s?)

 these shoes

(1938)

these glasses

(1952)

 this brooch 

(1952)

this coat

(1937)

this bra!

(1930s)

and carrying this bag

(1938)

All thanks to Elsa.

Where would you go right now if you could?

Eight arms to hold you

What has three hearts, nine brains, eight legs, blue blood and a beak? I feel sure there’s a joke in there somewhere about the royal family and a pet parrot…. but I think you probably know the answer and it lies, not in the soil, but in the sea. 

There is something slightly surreal and beautiful about the octopus and I’ve rather fallen in love with this remarkable creature. Apart from having an overabundance of hearts and brains, octopuses (octopi?) are amongst only 1% of animals which use tools, they are notorious escape artists, they can change colour, texture and shape in an instant, and even regenerate missing arms at will. Once you start reading and learning about them it just gets more and more fantastical.  I've long believed that there's a lot more going on in the animal kingdom than we can even begin to comprehend, no matter how much scientific research takes place.

My affectionate admiration towards them really came to the fore last year after watching, quite by chance, a documentary which focused on the intelligence and behaviour of one particular individual and her extraordinary relationship with humans. In ‘The Octopus In My House’ a professor and his teenage daughter bond with their cephalopod protegée called Heidi. In return, she shows them how she can solve puzzles, distinguish between different people, pass memory tests and use planning strategies. She even watches TV with the family from her huge tank inside the house, moving to the edge to be closer to the screen. I find myself wondering what she’s thinking, but I’m happy just to wonder and not to know. 

There is, inevitably, a darker side to their lives too - and they don't live for very long.  Once a female has laid eggs, it effectively spells the beginning of her end. She stops eating, becomes listless and wastes away - the female octopus in captivity even seems to go on an active suicide mission – she's very unlikely to make it through to see her new young emerge.  Nature being what it is, there's no need for her to do so - they'll fend for themselves, and thus it seems octopuses are never going to have a population problem.

But putting that grimness aside, I’ve discovered a whole new form of therapy to help soothe away some of the worries of life in 2020. The other evening I'd been stupid enough to catch up on the news before I was about to go to bed and I needed something to offset all the doom and gloom...  so I tuned into youtube and watched some octopuses.  Octopuses swimming, octopuses playing, octopuses hiding in shells, octopuses interacting gently with the sweeter variety of human, octopuses solving problems, octopuses shape-shifting: job done.  Kittens, watch out.

The obvious choice? Syd Barrett:  Octopus

Spitfire bird

 “… The nearest thing to having wings and flying yourself,” said Joy.  “Gorgeous!” was the word Mary used.  I never thought I’d be writing about it here,  but having found myself unexpectedly drawn in by a BBC Four programme on Monday night, I too found myself  enamoured with a tiny single-seater fighter ‘plane, the wonderfully named Spitfire.  I was also enthralled by its pilots.

Joy Lofthouse and Mary Ellis, who both died in the last few years aged 94 and 101 respectively, were among a particularly unusual group of women who piloted ‘planes during WWII as part of the 'Air Transport Auxiliary'.   Bearing in mind that this was at a time when it was thought odd that women would even want to fly a ‘plane, you realise just how special a job this must have been and how much it defied convention.  These ‘Attagirls’, as they were known, flew thousands of warplanes, usually delivering them from factories to RAF air bases, solo and without compass or radio help, navigating only with maps and following railway lines or rivers.  Although not involved in combat, they still faced danger daily from enemy attack or collision with the huge barrage balloons that were deployed as anti-aircraft obstacles.

And as for the male fighter pilots – I find it hard to imagine just how they handled it, many of them aged just 18 or 19, cooped up in a cockpit so small that they had to get into it sideways, tasked with intercepting, outwitting and shooting down enemy aircraft.  There they were, alone in a lightweight metal killing machine that could reach a speed of nearly 400mph - feeling the fear, knowing it was “them or us” – as anyone in a direct conflict situation surely must.  Several of these surviving pilots appeared in the programme and, in voices weakened by the intervening decades, solemnly expressed their hatred of war.  But their love of the Spitfire was indisputable.

As with classic cars, especially the small, sleek, sportier ones, I think there's something about the Spitfire which is aesthetically pleasing.  I like its scale and simplicity. Seeing them in flight is like watching swifts; graceful, wheeling, fast, intrepid.  Maybe my love of birds and the excitement I feel when I witness their aerobatic displays is linked, I don’t know.  Whatever, although aeroplanes aren’t exactly my thing, I can absolutely understand the appeal of this diminutive yet high performance model.

Mary Ellis was particularly fond of the Spitfire and one day, on delivering a new one from the factory, she signed her name on it.  The airplane in question was never used in combat and survives today - along with her youthful signature.  On being asked, just before her 100^th birthday, why she'd done that, she said with a gleam in her eye that it had really just been a romantic thing; she’d hoped that perhaps a dashing young airman would see it and get in touch.  At that moment I think I knew just how Mary felt.

Public Service Broadcasting: Spitfire

The BBC Four programme 'Spitfire' is currently available on iPlayer:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0008rmy/spitfire

Just postponed

I feel I can’t let this weekend slip by without a little acknowledgement of something very special which should have taken place but which has sadly had to go by the wayside for obvious reasons.

A few of us would have been waking up this morning in an Edinburgh hotel room (presumably not the same one…) ready to greet a couple of days full of who-knows-what exactly, but I suspect it would have involved exploring the Old Town and The Royal Mile, diving into coffee shops, smiles and food and laughter, soaking up both culture and wine, and lots and lots of talking.   A lovely 'mini bloggers’ meet-up' was on the calendar;  one that wouldn’t be too overwhelming for those of us who are less comfortable with big groups and new faces, but perhaps a precursor to more.  For me it would have been both a reunion and an introduction, and my first trip over the border into Scotland too, I was looking forward to everything about it.  Huge thanks to John for getting the ball rolling and making it happen at least as far as it did – that is, of course, until this year's unprecedented events overcame us all.  But it’s just postponed, not cancelled, and I hope some time in 2021 we may be talking about it retrospectively.

In the meantime this presents an excuse to indulge in a perfect post-punk single by a great band who take me back to my youth and who hailed from Edinburgh, plus a lovely video, very much of its time, featuring some of the sights from the city (as well as lots of scarves and slippers...)

To next year and the friendship of bloggers...

Scars: All About You (1981)