Went out to Deptford last night, to a gig in a bar with high ceilings and tall windows, sitting pretty on a high street corner. It had obviously once been a bank. I bought the first round, which was three lagers. It cost me an inaudible amount, a few coppers off ten quid. I reeled. Clearly the money-making ethos of the place had been as lovingly preserved as the ceiling roses. The music, courtesy of a DJ, was menacingly loud and I withdrew from the pleasant lowlands of conversation to the semi-arid upper slopes of solitude and reflection. In due time a series of acts played three songs. Each. Which was unwise of a couple of them.
My favourites were a group called United Vibrations who played a sort of jazz-meets-afro-beat, semi-improvised music. "Ah," I mused from a good long way up my lager mountain, "this is sort of what I always wanted jazz to be like." Indeed there was much of a jazzy nature about the whole thing, but with the joyful bonus of drums I could follow and a pleasant absence of saxophones and pianos. Best of all no girl singers who think that sounding like Ella is enough.
I had promised my wife before I left not to get into trouble, and had undertaken to apologise immediately if I stood on anyone's trainers. I had also sworn that under no circumstances would I look at anyone even a little bit funny. In the same spirit of safety I duly warned our dedicated driver, G, that I wouldn't be giving him props if he himself decided to stand on anyone's trainers, and that I would disown him sharpish if he did. In the event the evening passed without trouble, except for the strange incident when, on my last trip to the gents, somebody ran at me when I was washing my hands and attempted to squirt some unspecified goo onto my hands.
Being slightly unfamiliar with customs in toilets in Deptford I was frozen for a moment, trying to work out whether assault with a coloured unguent was commonplace in the area, or might be a possible prequel to assault by twenty armed thugs hidden in the nearest stall while my hands were all slippery and I couldn't reliably pull out my 9 mill. Then I figured this was another kind of robbery, very like the old Savoy footman's trick of handing you a towel which was within your reach anyway and expecting a crisp fiver stuffed under your epaulette for your trouble. So I declined to be squirted on and, neatly avoiding his trainers, I skipped back to the bar area, where the DJ, no longer content with keeping things down to a deafening roar, had moved on to impersonating an amplified aero engine test bed. The third member of our party was less grudging, we found out later in the car on the way home. He had been willingly smeared, then liberal to the extent of a quid.
We're going out to yet another fiftieth party tonight, and I think I'll try that schtick myself at about eleven o'clock, to see if I can raise the cab fare home. I bet our hosts have loads of goo in their spacious bathroom that I could administer with a smile, while relying on the Claphamish restraint and good manners of the guests not to ask me if it's actually my goo.
Been lots of fiftieths for about a year or so. The last one was a fortnight ago and was such fun we nearly didn't go home. Unfortunately we managed to leave before one of the guests started dancing with a pot plant.
The most memorable, though, was a big celebrity bash I attended recently in a professional capacity, as part of the supporting cast in the cabaret section of the evening. It's always interesting to see how the other hundredth live.
I turned up showered and shaved at about five in the afternoon and stood alone in a big hall, observing the army of shiny flutes lining the bar as they stood waiting. aching to be filled with champagne. I looked into the tall mirrors lining the walls as they hung, longing to be filled with famous reflections. In good time both wishes were granted, and the stage was duly filled with familiar faces from TV. My personal highlight was playing the Beatles' "Birthday" while three slebs performed. The three in question apparently all share a birthday, which was the very day of the party, something I didn't know until the song was introduced. Which made all the lines about "It's my birthday too, yeah" take on a strange and present sense. There were fairy-tale impossibilities springing to life in front of me.
I was having a wonderful and memorable time. Then I rather blotted my copybook by deciding, once my own aching need to be filled with champagne had been addressed in dangerously full measure, that the whole triple birthday idea was a brilliant theatrical device to get everyone up on stage. I tried out this mini-conspiracy theory on one of the birthday boys. I retired hurt after two sentences, both of which were direct rebuttals of my idea. So I went and looked at myself in the nearest large mirror, and watched myself drinking just a little more champagne. My face looked round and a bit yellow.
The clock had long since struck twelve and I convinced myself I should go home before I turned entirely into a pumpkin.
I have noticed a new sound in the streets of P*ckh@m just recently. It's a sort of 'phlump' and has been occurring regularly as massive amounts fall off local property values. I myself had a lucky escape yesterday evening on the way to the park, when a nifty side-step helped me avoid a large chunk of earthbound equity plummeting from a nearby roof.
The owner of the house in question has been drilling and hammering extra value into his house for ten years or more. He is one of those people who start stuff and never finish it. I'm quite glad he's never invited us over for a meal because I'm sure we would just get some raw egg-whites which he would assure us he intended one day to turn into quite a nice soufflé.
So, I stood in the park last night enjoying the fresh air, watching my son and co-heir ride his bike up and down while the shadows ran from themselves. I was, as you can tell, in hippy dippy poetic mood having spent the previous hour or so listening to Planet Rock while doing some ironing. They had just played 'White Room' by Cream. Again.
Planet Rock describes itself as the country's only digital classic rock station. Quite some boast, that, "the country's only digital classic rock station". On first hearing anyway. Then one asks "Why?" as in "Why the only one?". Perhaps it's just one of those bad ideas that nobody has bothered having before. Like all the homemade jewellery at school Craft Fayres. My next question was "Why, with so much catalogue to choose from, do they play the same records so many times?" Like 'White Room' by Cream. Or 'Layla', which is a very long song featuring a man playing a slide guitar while determinedly ignoring conventional notes, thus making it sound like a dentist's drill.
Or 'Jailbreak' by Thin Lizzy. I was a semi fan back in the day although I never believed in Phil Lynott as hard man. Yesterday the familiar riff punched out of the speakers, quite cosy and pert, but the lyrics stood out and fell as if on new ears.
"Tonight there's gonna be a jailbreak,
Somewhere in the town"
Somewhere? Well, no. Not really. Let me help. The jailbreak will probably be quite near, if not actually in, the jail. Sort of coming out of it, I should think. So, wishing to avoid the promised trouble, I'll give said jail, which is quite recognisable and totally static, a wide berth tonight. Easy. Perhaps this is what that record's producer, Tony Visconti, meant on Front Row a few nights back, when in plugging his autobiography he said that Phil Lynott had lost his artistic way amongst too much champagne.
Jake has been amusing the kitten in a fighty sort of a way, collecting whole handsworths of battlescars. He is rather proud of these wounds and has dubbed the largest of them 'Galactica'.
Hello. And I mean that in a pleased, teary, Neil Diamond-story-resolving sort of a way. Not in a creepy, psycho, Lionel Ritchie-needy sort of a way. And already I can feel the joy of getting real comments again, not just from "Helga 23" asking me to look at her pictures.
Hello indeed, and greetings from Peckham, currently twinned with a Fifty Cent lyric sheet. So what's been going on? Well, lots - and I'll try to get through it all in due time. But briefly it went like this: ran out of money - applied for jobs - got deafened by derisive chortles from labour market - decided to continue with previous thirty years of career - remembered that blogs can be fun and not just for Christmas. Oh, and got started back on the work I used to enjoy.
I actually did a proper session in December, the first for some time. The results have been available for public listening on Radio Two at three minutes past one on Saturday afternoons for the last five or so weeks. Loud guitars. Gosh, remember them? So, I was reacquainted with the feeling of soft fingers being sliced by cruelly straight guitar strings, twinned with the feeling of soft trousers flapping around in front of a Marshall 4 x 12 cabinet. Cobwebs truly blown away, then washed down in a punk-meets-Guardian-reader postscript lasting four hours in the tiny wine bar hidden in the middle of Selfridges. I didn't know it was there, and after four hours I wasn't sure I was there either. The happiest times are so often the accidental times. Innit.
In-doors we had Xmas, in a stout establishment style. At this distance I can only remember disentangling our four strings of Xmas tree lights. Then disentangling the kitten from four strings of Xmas tree lights. But there have been changes. Black nail varnish has appeared on the nails of the daughter - though strictly confined to the hours 4:15 Friday afternoon to 8:59 Sunday evening. Magazines featuring angsty boys wearing eye liner are currently purchased enthusiastically: posters featuring angsty androgynous boys have appeared on bedroom walls. Eye-liner has appeared everywhere. "But," I pointed out, "for all that make-up, none of them are appearing regularly on Radio Two are they?" A fair point, I thought, with one unlined eye on her future career choices.
The boy surprised me a few weeks back when he asked for this bonkers magazine he'd seen advertised. This, I figured, was an attempt to keep pace with his sister, whose regular immersion in rock glossies must have impressed him. No. It turned out he wanted the Bond Cars magazine. We complied. Well, in terms of careers, working for the Government isn't too bad, is it? And if you can do it in an underwater car, then so much the better.
The big change is in Jake's room. Though the ceiling was still visible the floor had become so inaccessible that we finally felt the place merited the award of a squalorship. All the Lego is now in one box, which is crueller than I realised at the time, because these days Lego only makes one thing per kit. Lord knows what mutant evil army of fiendish Legobots will emerge if the place is ever accidentally struck by lightning, or a discarded Game Boy battery has a chance meeting with a stray tin of Toxic Waste in there.
The fambly are off in Manchester at the moment, leaving me alone with the kitten. I am bearing up and eating well, except for the fairy cakes which Mel baked just before she left. (I am beginning to suspect a causal link there.) They were meant to be light and magical, an ornament to the realm of the fairies. In reality they are natural candidates to replace imprisoned members of the So Solid Crew.
More later.