I am at home this evening doing my homework while listening to Radio 2, and now Big Band Special is on so I was all prepared for some gentle show tunes to sing along to, but it is a special programme celebrating the music of David Gedge! He is singing Wedding Present songs with a swing band! I DON'T UNDERSTAND! This is what happens when you don't go to the pub.

Attention, people who like Dark Was The Night - there is a podcast of the DWTN live concert online! I am very excited that it features David Byrne doing things, and I keep trying to listen to it this afternoon but am getting distracted into playing disco music on the office stereo.

Also, Antony and the Johnsons have done a cover of 'Crazy In Love' which makes everyone in the office want to kill themselves whenever we hear it.

That is all.

Back back back! What did I miss? Yesterday it seemed like I'd been away for about six months, most of them on aeroplanes. The thought of coming back and living my silly, chaotic life in over-crowded, grumpy London again seemed fairly dreadful for a while; right up until I got back to my street and there was a sandwich board outside my local pub announcing that it was Indie Barman's birthday, and my garden had decided to grow huge purple flowers while I wasn't looking. Aw! I guess sweet things happen anywhere in the world really.

Anyway, I had a really nice holiday and am somewhat less cross with everything as a result, though we'll see how long that lasts eh. Here is the short version of my holiday:

New Zealand - I went up lots of tall things and looked off the edge, and I saw kiwi birds which are actually real!
Seattle - verlaine has grown a stripy beard and lives in a house with a tiny dachshund!

I will write the long version with photos soon for anyone who's interested, but I'm so far behind with my Japanese course now that it may take a few days.

Oh, and I saw most of the new series of Flight Of The Conchords and it's funnier than the last one; there was an episode featuring karaoke and Brian, the president of New Zealand, which made me hoot loudly in front of tigerpig's parents. Then again, I also laughed a lot at New Zealand breakfast TV, but I was quite jetlagged...

But! I was really looking forward to catching up on three weeks of all my favourite podcasts, but iTunes has only given me the most recent editions! Can anyone advise me on how I can get the ones from last week and the week before? I can't figure it out, and there are so many Mark Kermode opinions I haven't heard...

Hello! As of two minutes ago it is my birthday! I am still up and about because I have been baking cakes for the office: it is a werk tradition that you bring in cakes on your birthday (some people hate this but I like it because it is like being in Denmark, where you had to take bread rolls into work on your birthday for breakfast and consequently get up at about 6.00). I am the only person who actually bakes cakes rather than going to Sainsburys, for some reason. ( Cake spoilers for sevenwindmills! )

Anyway, I'm not too fussed about my birthday (this is a lie - I thrive on the attention and love to pretend the world circles around me, but know full well that in reality, it's just another day 'pon which I get a bit older), but it's nice that it generally coincides with the beginning of proper spring. I planted my bulbs in the wrong order, so instead of the staggered snowdrop-crocus-daffodil thing, they've all come out at once, and the back of my garden is a forsythia bush full of yellow flowers. It looks so wonderful that I rush out and say "Hello, how are you?" to all my plants every time I get home, and feel a bit like Prince Charles. My tulips and wallflowers will be here any day now too! They are like tiny visitors who have come to squat on my land for a bit, and I am fascinated by them. A tiny ginger cat is stalking me at the moment - it sits on my shed roof whenever it thinks I'm not looking, and when I roll up my blind in the morning, it comes up to the back door and stares at me with its big yellow eyes. If I open the door and ask it what it wants, it runs away, so I suppose it is just a shy admirer. Or possibly the culprit who keeps pooing in my flowerbeds.

But the weekend was ever so nice! (Except for featuring too much emo and too much wine - could the two possibly be related??? Hard to say.) On Saturday I worked at the playground and was on minibus duty, so spent most of the day being driven around Hackney with a bunch of teenagers hitting one another on the head and shouting "Shut the front door, you big fish!", while the minibus driver explained cosmic ordering to me and I looked out of the window at Jewish men with huge furry hats going to the synagogues. We stopped outside one girl's house to buy Comic Relief cupcakes off some small girls who were selling them at a table in the street and were quite bewildered that I wanted to buy enough for the whole minibus to eat. On Sunday there was a Tube Walk around Putney featuring the Thames, outdoor pubbage, pugs, an exciting view of the back of the B&Q near my office, a dead fish, a gentlemen's club which Wikipedia claimed to be full of "famous gayers", and the destruction of tonight_we_fly's childhood dreams. But before that, katstevens, atommickbrane and I went to a yarn shop in Fulham called Socktopus where the yarn was decorative and pricy rather than particularly practical, but no matter, for the shop proprietor let us all sit around and drink tea while winding up our yarns on a special yarn-winding machine! It was all very lovely. The rest of the weekend, hoshuteki and I played "Guess the song intro" (80% of my brain is taken up with this knowledge") and watched people being graphically dismembered on Heroes, which wasn't. I really need to develop an interest in some TV programme which doesn't feature exciting shots of people's internal organs...

Anyway. I am just going to work and eat cake today, but you should come to Poptimism on Friday if you are in Lambeth North and like pop music. I've probably plugged it enough now...

EDIT - I'm not doing birthday drinks today, so don't worry, I haven't organised something and decided not to invite you! As if.

How are y'all doing with your 101 things lists? Some of you must be nearly finished! I've got less than a year to go with mine, and I know that I'm not going to manage all 101 things (some of which I've lost interest in anyway. Perhaps I shall never have a giant papier mache head). But I should at least try!

( Progress report. Cut for those who are squeamish about blood, or the Midlands. )

Bah. I may be awesome at getting through snow, but I am still hopeless at hanging onto my possessions. Where is my phone? It's not in the office, or in my bag, or any of my pockets, or the car I got a lift in yesterday... IDIOT NEWHAM!

Hooray, home already! If this weather keeps up I'm sure I'll get steadily grumpier this week, but right now I'm excited to be home before 6 and cheerful after my excellent weekend.

On Saturday I went over to Ladbroke Grove to meet drummygirl and, appropriately enough, play drums. We tagged along with pollitesss to a samba drum class in a sports centre under the Westway, run by an energetic Brazilian dude who spent most of the time dancing around the room, making faces at us and taking phone calls though they must have been inaudible. I felt a bit foolish as I don't think I've played a percussion instrument since junior school, but everyone was friendly and helpful, and they let me stand at the back, gave me earplugs and a big drum to hit and told me who to copy. Luckily I had about the easiest part to play, so I drew on my vast experience from playing Drum Drum Revolution and didn't c0ck it up too badly. And it was ACE! Two hours of hitting things and being part of a band playing lots of cool samba rhythms made me feel very chipper indeed, and I want to do it again.

In the evening I saw 80% of my favourite Londoners, hooray! First I went to cloudgirl's birthday party, where we had to dress as stars of the 1980s. I went as Mike D of the Beastie Boys (after deciding there would be too many Goths present for me to backcomb my hair and be Robert Smith), and Ewan was a surprisingly good Morrissey, but our favourite costume was an eighties George Michael in dazzling white tennis shorts and orange tan. Alas, we had to leave after a couple of hours, but hooray, when we got to Don't Stop Moving it was excellent! Small, crowded and very hot, but I had such a lovely time dancing to 90s pop with people I really like that it didn't matter a jot. I even did the Whigfield dance with p_dan_tic, and who knew that day would come?

Sunday was largely given over to staying in bed watching Haus, but we got out in the afternoon to attend misterant's ghost walk around Westminster. It started snowing immediately, and by the time we called it a day my fingers had stopped working altogether, but it was still good fun hearing Ant's spooky stories and then retiring to the pub to quaff wine and shake our heads at the weather.

This morning Ewan left to catch a train to work, but returned within ten minutes to report that everything was hugely delayed and he was going to work from home. There's not much I can do without my database, but I didn't fancy getting all upset on a cold platform waiting for a very late, very crowded train, so I decided to catch the bus from Peckham to Wandsworth instead. A genius plan! Up to the moment when I got to the bus stop and someone told me that all the buses had been cancelled. The sensible thing would have been to head back to the train station, but I am not renowned for my common sense so decided to walk it instead. And it was great! From Peckham to Herne Hill, the roads were white and silent and the only people I met were children all cheerful because they'd just found out that school was closed, or toddlers on sledges, or people on their phones saying "Sorry, I can't get in, I'll have to stay at home today". It was such a jolly atmosphere, everyone excited by this freakish change in their lives. By the time I got to Brixton the roads were slushy and slippery and the pedestrians looked irritable, but then I hit Acre Lane and saw my first snowman of the day, and people carrying estate agent boards towards the park as makeshift sledges, and it seemed like an adventure again. Clapham Common had snowmen everywhere you looked! My eyes started to swim from staring at so much whiteness. I stopped at the shops to buy dry socks, and was in work two hours and forty minutes after I'd set off.

When I lived in Denmark, of course, it snowed like this every winter, and as I was supposed to get up early and shovel the pavements every time, I grew to resent it quickly enough. I was a home care assistant then, and we were expected to be at work on time - to check the weather forecast the night before and get up earlier - or the old people we worked with would be stranded all day. It felt a bit silly today, to have battled into the office and then have little to do except feel self-righteously exhausted.

Anyway. A whole evening at home! Stop wasting it on the internet, Newham!

Flippin' heck Livejournal, it's almost two weeks into the new year and I still haven't posted anything! I fear this is the way things are going to be now. At work I have been given more to do (hooray!) and moved to a desk in the main office, where I share a table with two other people who have the same name as me - imagine the hilarity! - so it seems inappropriate to webskive there any more. And I'm just not home that much... So I'm going to be a Livejournal lurker rather than an active babbler for a while. I won't be far away though, and I still remember everything you say on the internet...

Anyway, right at the beginning of the year I went to Paris with the Highbury Massive, because it is good to let New Zealand Goths tell you what to do. Paris was so cold I thought my ears were going to fall off and the Eiffel Tower closed down, and it was also REALLY EXPENSIVE. Why did nobody warn me before I went that the exchange rate was so bad that Euros and pounds are now almost the same thing? Cripes! I'll warn you myself then: the only things that are still affordable in Paris are bread, wine and paperback literature. After a day of gnashing our teeth, we decided to find it hilarious that bars were charging almost a tenner for a pint of Kronenbourg, while privately resolving never to buy anything ever again on our return. Also, I managed to book a really rubbish hotel room for four of us, where we paid no mean amount for four wobbly beds in a row, plus one chair, plus a shelf, on the high street where overly cheerful Parisians partied until 5 am outside our window the first night we were there. My friends proved themselves saintly by not complaining about it in the slightest. Also, Paris on New Year's Eve = not that exciting; there were no fireworks beside the ones that people were setting off randomly on the pavements, but the Eiffel Tower did go twinkly at midnight.

Never mind that though; it was good to be on holiday somewhere else because my thoughts got knocked off their usual boring track, and I got to spend a lot of time with some lovely people. The majority of the Highbury Massive rented an apartment on a houseboat on the Seine, with the attendant jollity, high drama and injuries that ensue when you share a small living space with your friends, and we spent a lot of time hanging out there. specialknives taught me to play blackjack and maxinemogadon taught me to play some card game where you have to beat up Catholic schoolgirls. I let people put Goth makeup on me and read a lot of chick lit. In the daytime, hoshuteki and I wandered the streets in search of macaroons and things to eat other than cheese sandwiches, hélas, in vain! But I did go to the Louvre, and the Louvre was boss. I had no idea I'd love it so much, because I know nothing at all about art and only usually go to the Tate Modern; however, maxinemogadon had encouraged me to drink an inordinate amount of frozen strawberry margaritas the night before, and all I was fit for was being pushed around a beautiful marble palace full of mad antique art by my boy, who possesses the rare talent of making Greek pottery interesting. I loved the pots and the hieroglyphs and the sculptures, but mostly I loved the barking mad religious art of the Renaissance, which we kept expecting to turn into Terry Gilliam cartoons and chase each other around the museum. It was disconcerting enough that St. Sebastian kept trying to barge in on every religious scene, like the Nativity and so forth, without St. Denis going to prison and having visions of Jesus and being beheaded all within the same canvas. I think I want to draw cartoons like this now, with all the narrative happening in the same frame at once.

On the last day we went to the Natural History Museum and that was also pretty challenging because it was almost entirely full of skeletons. There were skeletons of everything, from gerbils and bats to whales, dinosaurs and mammoths, and it took only a moment from walking into the museum and registering that the collectors really liked skeletons, to noting that they were all running at you.



And once you'd accustomed yourself to that, you could move on to the shelves full of animal organs in jars (pickled gibbons' tongues!), and the jars of one-eyed kittens, conjoined pigs and two-headed lambs. It was fascinating, and I couldn't eat even half of my lunch afterwards.

And then home. Thanks to cloudgirl for getting me to do something different this New Year's Eve, and for utterly derailing all my New Year's resolutions! I'll start again on payday...

Oh, last week was so busy! I went out and did stuff and had mince pies instead of dinner twice! Tsk, December.

When I last posted properly, I was squeeing with excitement at the prospect of going to see the Steel City Tour, and I was right because it was splendid. Heaven 17 were on rather early so we were able to see Glenn Gregory's dazzlingly white teeth from the back of the venue and grump about not being able to hear the synthesizer properly. They did a version of 'Temptation' which lasted about ten minutes, but if I'd written it I think I'd have done the same. Their other songs are good too, it turns out! The women in the toilet declared that Glenn Gregory had aged well - "He's all right, innee! In the 80s he was really ugly!" And then ABC, oh... they couldn't possibly live up to my expectations as 'The Lexicon of Love' is one of my favourite records ever (I own it on LP, cassette and CD!) and there was something a little cabaret about them, with a band of session musicians insisting on doing 80s saxophone solos and playing songs off their new album, meh. But Martin Fry singing 'All of my heart' and 'The look of love' in front of the red curtains was wonderful.

And then the Human Leg came on and they were AMAZING! They had a big synth sound, an even bigger light display and Phil Oakey running around the stage being hugely charismatic and charming, and they played pretty much a greatest hits set and it was so, so good. I love him all the more for introducing 'The Lebanon' as "a very serious song", bless him. maxinemogadon's wish that they would reunite with Heaven 17 and perform their spoken word flexidisc went unfulfilled, but the rest of us merrily sang 'Empire State Human' all the way home. They made me happy for the rest of the week!

By contrast, the next day I went to see MJ Hibbett play a gig in a room of about 30 people including his parents (who kept filming him on their digital camera. aw!), and we ate mince pies and tried to help him out when he forgot the words to a song about aliens landing in Debden by guessing other stops on the Central Line that might be in the song. MJ Hibbett gigs make me want to run home and draw comics and play my guitar and spread optimism all around me. Maybe I'll get around to it next year.

At Indiejob I got rather distracted at the end of the week by making paper stars for everyone I like, and we had a Secret Santa thing where everyone got something nice except for Saintly IT Guy, who got a big cardboard box containing two lollipops and a cigarette lighter. (Which he accepted with his customary saintliness, while we unearthed his Secret Santa and beat him up.) Worldweary Guy got Play-Doh Operation and his little worldweary face lit up as he sat at his desk making Play-Doh intestines. I also went to the accounts department's Christmas meal where I sat next to Ricky Martin's biggest fan: "He's my ideal man! I flew to Madrid to see him!". I like the fact that although I work for a well-respected record company, only about two people in the entire office are even the slightest bit cool.

Then I worked all weekend (fie on you if you complained about the rain on Saturday - I had to stand outside in it all afternoon!) and watched The X Factor final with gracious Christmassy host lozette, and I went to a party where I spent most of the evening talking to an old blues musician about how to get a piano up numerous flights of stairs.

Too much fun! This week I plan to eat celery and stay in my room.

Hello! You catch me on a brief visit home to wash my hair and dump the Christmas decorations I've been out buying this morning. I also ate a mince pie with Otherjob boss and went to the British Library where a security guard accused me of carrying a bag of blood in my rucksack, and on the way home I passed a big hoarding on Lower Clapton Road upon which someone had spraypainted "Clapton is good". Yay! As if that weren't enough excitement for one day, I'm leaving the flat again in about 40 minutes to go to Hammersmith where I will see THE HUMAN LEG!!!! AND ABC!!!! And Heaven 17, who don't have such a special place in my heart as the aforementioned, but are sure to be pretty good anyway. I know that they're all going to be old and balding (and not in a cool way) and insist on doing songs from their new albums, but I am still SO excited at the thought of Martin Fry saying "Martin, maybe one day you'll find true love" in real life. And Phil Oakey doing anything at all! Oh man!

Which reminds me, last Thursday we were encouraged to wear our old band t-shirts to work because Steve Lamacq was doing something on the radio about it. About ten of us did so and someone took a photo in which we all look like sacks of sh1t, and it all seemed a bit silly really (especially as my Huggy Bear t-shirt has disappeared! And the Bis one! I think the World Of Twist t-shirt just fell apart by itself...). But today I went into Urban Outfitters just in case it turned out to be a better shop than I'd thought, and good grief! All the mannequins were wearing Sonic Youth t-shirts! At £32 a pop! And then I went downstairs and the place was full of Human Leg t-shirts! What on earth? Why are bands I like being turned into fashion statements? Why are Sonic Youth t-shirts being marketed as something you might see on a catwalk? Am I just a terrible indie snob? "I'm beginning to understand you at last, Steve Lamacq," I muttered darkly as I exited the shop.

Talking of indie, I had to research some videos for work last week and I found this one for Sugarcube by Yo La Tengo which made me laugh into my sleeves behind my computer. (mrs_leroy_brown should note that it features Bob Odenkirk. I still don't know who he is, but I like saying "Bob Odenkirk".) Oh, why won't it let me embed it? And look, here's the new video by lovely MJ Hibbett for The Advent Calendar Of Fact, which aside from being lovely, features much humorous moustache usage. Hooray! I'm going to bunk off evening class tomorrow and go and see the last MJ Hibbett acoustic gig of the year at The Lamb on Lamb's Conduit Street, because an employee of Morl3y College told me it was OK to do so. You should come too!

This month is unusually full of gigs, and goodness knows when I'm going to have time to write any Christmas cards. What a rubbish excuse, eh. Anyway, last week was Isis in a crowd of beardy metal fans and a sticky pool of beer, and to my surprise they were excellent. The security guard who searched me on the way in wasn't though - she confiscated my satsuma and my knitting, but once I was inside, I put my hand in my pocket and found a big pair of scissors! Which I accidentally brandished at boyofbadgers in my surprise, but I daresay he was disrespecting me.

I must be off out again. TO HAMMERSMITH! TO THE SYNTHESIZERS!!!

Fans of inconsequential worrying, worry no more! As of last Saturday, I have a proper winter scarf again. It was made by land_girl and presented to me by mzdt at draughty Ealing Broadway station, so it is a true indication of how LJ hears your cries for help and takes note of them even when it doesn't leave comments. I have a stripy scarf that doubles up as a blanket! I'm so happy!





It looks better in real life. I look awfully grim there, but it is quite hard to convey one's happiness when trying to take a photo of oneself. To make up for it, here is a picture my nine-year-old friend G. drew of me (he has chosen to remain anonymous in it). Hmm, it seems my plans to put on an insulating layer of fat for the winter are going quite well...





Oh! I have five Spotify invites if anyone is curious! Spotify is quite good, but not as good as actually paying money for records and CDs and downloads. It's true! Pls to notify me if you're interested.

( Mithering about werk> )

Also, apparently tomorrow is Wear Your Old Band T-shirt To Work Day. Ridiculous! That is every day!

This evening I did something I haven't done since my mid-twenties and went to a gig by myself. I saw Murder In Monochrome because they are my friend's band, so I did not mention that they sound exactly like Muse and only complained a little that I had to watch an Italian Goth band first. To pass the time, I read some of the flyers on the walls, and dear friends, I ask you:

Poll #1308957
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

Which of the following band names are any good at all?

And these?

Please suggest a better name for a jobbing indie band.

While we're here, if you have an opinion on the matter, who do you like best?

Thank you for all your random pop facts! Here they are, unedited, for everyone's enjoyment!

huskyteer -- Before their success in the 60s, Simon and Garfunkel performed Everly Brothers-style rock and roll as 'Tom and Jerry'
angelv -- Rachel Stevens has size 3.5 feet!
bagrec -- Mary Hopkin sang backing vocals on David Bowie's "Sound and Vision" (as Mary Visconti)
miss_newham -- Australian pop star John Farnham was, in fact, born in Basildon. Or was it Dagenham?
land_girl -- Jilted John's one hit wonder, Jilted John, only reached number 4 in the charts although almost everybody over the age of 30 can hum it!
tonight_we_fly -- I was once filmed crawling around dressed as a cat in a video for Th' Faith Healers, but I don't think the footage was ever used in the end. Well, I've never seen it.
mrs_leroy_brown -- oh all my obscure facts have to do with The White Stripes. Uhm Jack's first band was Goober & the Peas, he was a durmmer. First band as guitarist was The Upholsterers. His birth name is John Gillis
katstevens -- One of the guys who wrote the lyrics to the post-rock track on the new Beyonce album also wrote the lyrics to 'No Air' by Jordin Sparks and Chris Brown!
sbp -- Tony Iommi from Black Sabbath plays with artificial fingertips made out of washing-up liquid bottles, because he sliced his fingertips off in an industrial accident when he was 17
burkesworks -- "Standing in the Road" by Blackfoot Sue was NOT penned by the burly physio of non-league Farnborough Town.
kiss_me_quick -- If there were enough room, I would tell you the best selling UK singles of every year from 1980 to 1991.
yiskah -- wah, I don't know any! ask tom.
shermarama -- Elvis Costello's real name is Declan McManus.
lifesizemonkey -- Chris Lowe of Pet Shop Boys trained as an architect
tomatorama -- I only know made up ones, like that Rod Stewart invented bread (according to Bob Mortimer)
friend_of_tofu -- Should this be an obscure fact about pop, or a fact about obscure pop?
maxinemogadon -- Mark E Smith likes to start drinking at 12 noon on a saturday and doesn't like to be disturbed
steviecat -- Poly Styrene's maths teacher was Brian May of Queen !

None of these were any use to me whatsoever last night, but we still did well! Sort of. We entered two teams from work and my team were generally reckoned to be the hopeless outsiders, but for the first five rounds we knew almost everything! We were in second place for an hour and got so overexcited and shouty about our thrilling unexpected success that we were probably very obnoxious. Then it all got really hard (there was a hideous round where they played two records at once and you had to identify them both - flippin' impossible) and we dropped to something like 12th place, beating the other work team by about one point. But oh, that first hour was exciting, and because I knew more answers than anyone else I now have an AWESOME reputation at work as queen of pop trivia. I hope you're all proud of me!

Mike Read wasn't there in the end, but I saw Janice Long, Gary Crowley and Mark Goodier (all of whom I think are dreadful) in the same room. This morning I got a text from a friend saying "Where was the room? In 1992?".

Have a lovely weekend y'all! I am working both days and possibly going to an 85th birthday party!

PS And John Shuttleworth was there too! But I couldn't spot him, which was probably just as well as I would have approached him excitedly and told him how much I like land_girl...

1. How you could ever hurt me so...

2. Please will somebody explain the appeal of Spooks? Several people whose opinions I respect tell me it's the most exciting thing on TV, but whenever I try to give it a chance, it seems like the most dreadful tripe. I don't really understand TV though so I'm prepared to accept a decent explanation of why I'm wrong.

3. I am going to a work Christmas party for the first time in my life and apparently the theme is 50s retro. How the heck does one dress 50s retro? Apart from dressing as Mark Kermode. He may be my moral compass in this world, but I don't think I can rock a quiff...

4. I am going to a VERY HARD POP QUIZ on Thursday and I might get to meet Mike Read! But apparently my team is terrible. I am going to spend my every unoccupied moment for the next two days reading lovely Popular and trying to swallow the Guinness Book of Hit Singles, but perhaps you can help me out too by telling me a really awesome and obscure pop fact? I'd do the same for you! Please fill in my poll which is SECRET due to sevenwindmills being on an opposing team and already knowing everything about music. If your facts are good enough I will share them after the event! Also, what shall I say to Mike Read?


Poll #1300088
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: None

Please tell me an obscure pop fact!

5. Dudes, if I am becoming too media, will you come round and slap me? Promise?

In Japanese, I can now say "What's that over there? It's a tortoise!" and I've learned the word for owl. That's all I need to know, surely!

Hooray! The bloke at the next desk has just discovered MJ Hibbett and is making people listen to 'Hey Hey 16K'!

Otherwise, today is a day of utter ruin. Oh, and I've lost my phone. And all my house keys. And I slept in a graveyard. Why oh why do I agree to go drinking with boys?

( Before the office Halloween party. )


( After. )

Oh though, I guess I do still have time for Livejournal in the middle of the night...

This evening I went to the Barbican for a poetry reading by one of my long-time heroes, Ian McMillan. He has a new book out with poems about his life, and he read some of them out and did some with a double bass player and a percussionist backing him, and signed a book for me afterwards. I couldn't think of a non-cheesy way to tell him what a huge inspiration he'd been on my life, so I looked at my shoes and shuffled off thinking "Hem well, I could write a post about it instead". Stupid internet!

If I had had a mouth and a brain, I would have told him:

1. I've been listening to him talking on the radio since I was about 16, when he used to be on Mark Radcliffe's late-night radio programme, encouraging the listeners to make up poems on the spot and send them in, saying "Anything can be a poem!". I sent him a poem once and he sent me a postcard back, and although I've written approximately two poems since junior school, I've never forgotten his encouragement. Every time he turns up on the radio, making up a poem about 'train language' (like, how train announcers insist that every station is a "station stop" and you are "arriving into" it) or suggesting abstract ways to read Wuthering Heights or being a professional Yorkshireman and enthusing about Barnsley, he makes me feel happier. I like that he is proper modernist and hella folksy at the same time.

2. The last time I saw him was at the Hull Literature Festival in 1996 when he did a joint poetry gig with lovely Simon Armitage and packed out the Hull Truck Theatre. I took my Dictaphone and made a cr4ppy tape of the evening, which I have listened to about 1000 times since. Otherwise my chief memory would've been that Simon Armitage had a cute fringe and Ian McMillan was very very funny.

3. Up until the age of about 22 I was young and serious and hugely excited about literature, and then somehow I became discouraged with everything (oh yes, I think it's called graduation); but I still read his poetry whenever he has a new book out and sometimes listen to The Verb and feel a little shoot of enthusiasm growing all over again. His last book Ideas Have Legs was a collaboration with an artist and it's a lovely thing to behold.

4. He has very good things to say about how everyone should be included in art; how he grew in the West Riding of Yorkshire where the libraries were actually full of books and the schools were run on the belief that all children are creative, and so (apart from a few years in school where they did nothing but read aloud in class), he grew up wanting to be a writer and thinking that this was something he could be; and that "without taking part in Art we're just battery chickens who sometimes go on foreign holidays". I thought of him when I was trying to get the Hackney youth club kids to draw pictures, or my Literacy students to write about themselves, or when getting the Brownies to form a milk bottle orchestra last week (which they did with enormous gusto, bashing some crazy kind of harmony out on glass jars and declaring "It's like jazz!"), or cheering myself up through periods of unemployment by drawing comics. We may have made a lot of rubbish, but I think we felt a bit better for it.

Still, I would have held up the queue and embarrassed people if I'd held forth like that, so perhaps it's just as well that my tedious shyness got in the way. Never mind!

These ones are all from this year. I have not posted any photos I took of my friends being adorable, because blown up to more than 1 inch squared it's impossible to see anything. Stupid cameraphone.

liquid_city should note that this contains footage of the wicker pig that terrorises my old infant school.

( Things I looked at in 2008 )


*Part 1 was f-locked as it contained photos of other people, so if you can't see it, then go and friend me you idiot. I mean, it's not that exciting, but I looked at your photos...

In these Troubled Times, I thought nobody would want to read something as irritating as me saying "Hallo everyone, I'm sorry you're having problems but lots of nice things keep happening to me!". But hoshuteki said this was nonsense and I should write it anyway. So, er, sorry. I've just trodden in some cat poo, if that balances things out a bit.

Nice things!

1. I got the deposit back from my flat in Battersea after a mere two years of arguing! Well, norantiskitchen did all the arguing, I just wrote lots and lots of letters saying "No really, I WILL go to the Small Claims court! This time I mean it!". Anyway, don't rent a flat from Mr. Desai of Lavender Hill, but at least it's all worked out now. Meanwhile, after six years of increasingly grumpy service, my old computer decided it pretty much didn't want to talk to me any more, so this morning I bought a new one. It's nice! It is a Mac mini and its name is Marvin. (The old computer's name is Edwin and the printer's called Barry - guess the connection for a bonus point!) I think I like it, though I don't understand why LJ is now so wide that it doesn't fit on the screen, and why the text seems all blurry. Also, the man in the shop seemed to think transferring the files from my old computer to this one would require me to sign up for weeks of computer lessons, which is a little worrying. Oh, I don't know. Never mind! I'm going to figure out GarageBand and release a techno smash!

2. I went to a music quiz in Kilburn last week with half of Livejournal, as already documented elsewhere, and it was marvellous. I couldn't answer that many questions as, confusingly, a lot of them were about London Lite articles and the Australian music scene, but our team was fairly awesome, we came joint fourth anyway and we had a VERY good time bonding over B'Witched and drinking much beer. I don't mind that some of the other LJ teams did better, as next time we really WILL beat you to the ground etc etc. Besides, we did a lot better than Worldweary Guy from work's team, and consequently he's been much friendlier to me than before. Hooray! I also learned some things about Kilburn: at 1 am it looks EXACTLY the same as Stoke Newington High Street, and in the shop next door to the Luminaire you can purchase a lighter with a rook's head that says "Fvck you!" whenever you ignite it. It is the most remarkable thing I've ever seen.

3. And the next day I had a HORRIBLE hangover but cured it by putting on the Belle & Sebastian DVD in the background at work, and it was so lovely it made me blub. They hung out in a church hall and went to the park and got mocked on Brazilian TV! Awwww! ("Everything makes you cry though! 'Oh look, a leaf falling from a tree, how sad!'," says braisedbywolves, correctly.)

4. On Saturday I went to Suffolk with the extended Highbury Massive to celebrate four of them turning 30. Most of them went for the weekend but I just did a day trip. They were staying in Milden Hall, in a big barn which was decorated all Tudor-stylee and piped in recorder music and encouraged you to dress up in Tudor costumes, which was all a bit silly but we did it anyway. Shakespearean geek friends, I now understand you better! And there were other amusements, like pigs and table football and helping to cook for 26 people, which were all excellent. I went for a walk to the village pub a few miles away with a couple of people, and wandering along the roads picking berries in the autumn sunshine made me very very happy.

5. Oh, and I went round to pink_weasel's place and she let me play with her Wii (it is a good thing! I like that my Mii is stony-faced even when getting great points at skiing and popping bubbles, and I like that there is a button you can press to stop playing a trombone) and cooked me dinner using many ingredients for the first time in the 20 years we've been friends! It was very nice and I'm terrifically proud of her! Also, she's written a wonderful post about pencils which will cheer you greatly, especially once you've read all the comments from people saying "I love pencils too!".

Bother, I must go to work, if I can figure out how to turn my computer off. Oh - there is a Tube Walk on Saturday if you fancy coming to Deptford. Perhaps we will see Jools Holland! Perhaps I will do my Jools Holland impression for you! But come anyway...

PS Japanese is already too hard! I can't write the characters at all! But I will persist...

Happier news! Yesterday I went back to adult education, and as I didn't have to stand at the front and teach three different lessons at once, or draw a picture of my feelings, or learn about linguistics from someone who'd just Googled it the day before </bitter> it was all right. Nay, it was good! Oh, the optimism of starting a new language! I am going to learn Japanese and it is going to be great! I can already tell you what my name is and count to three! (Yesterday I could count to ten, but oh, I have it written down somewhere.) Our teacher seems equal parts strict and eager to teach us everything in the world - ten minutes after the lesson was supposed to end she was still saying "We should finish the lesson now but first I want you to say this word, and this one, and show you a map of Japan, and a picture of a dog, and show you a video" while putting things upside down on the overhead projector and trying to write on the interactive whiteboard and taking more and more flashcards out of her handbag. I couldn't find the option on my enrolment form which said "I don't know any Japanese people and have no need to learn Japanese but it will make me happy", so I ticked something vague and made my best diligent and enthusiastic face for the teacher.

It's brought back lots of happy memories of starting other languages. The first term of Swedish in Hull, where I loved the words so much I'd just doodle them everywhere and look at them, and the Christmas songs we had to perform, wearing white sheet dresses and carrying candles. The Norwegian teacher who made us translate 'The Billy Goats Gruff' and a poem about putting peas up people's noses. Thursday morning Icelandic lessons, where everyone would slope into the basement classroom with a little cloud of hangover above their heads and try to compose bright shiny sentences about what we were wearing. The crash course in Danish, where I spent a term with a bunch of American and French exchange students running around the university doing treasure hunts, singing songs about vowels and putting on epic plays about ordering food in a cafe. So much fun! It doesn't last, and after a few years when I still couldn't get the pronunciation right or write grammatically perfect essays or think up insightful comments on foreign poetry, life would seem hard again. But the beginning is wonderful. I'm going to learn Japanese! One day I will go to Tokyo and count things!

I survived my first outdoor music festival! Despite dirt, grumpiness and NEARLY BEING KILLED BY LOW!!! it was quite good really, though I'm not convinced that standing in a tent full of people talking to each other is the best way to see your favourite bands. However, the Mountain Goats were worth the whole thing, and oh all right, I did enjoy myself.

Good things!

- Camping was surprisingly fun! hoshuteki, tigerpig, mzdt and I set up camp on the far side of the field so weren't bothered by young people having fun, and although it rained on us while we pitched our tent, that was the last we saw of the dark clouds and the rest of the weekend was fine. We slept well, resolved that washing was for wimps and were undismayed by portaloos. I was very proud of hoshuteki for coping with mud (if you've ever been on a countryside Tube Walk you'll know how much he loathes it), and I developed a bittersweet love affair with my wellies, which protected me from all slime and sludge but rubbed off half the skin on my feet. Thanks for the tent, shewho!

- The festival site was very pretty, on the grounds of a stately home (I think, though I don't remember seeing it), with parrots and peacocks strutting around. There was a little bit of woodland where the hedges and trees were covered in fairy lights, there was a piano out in a little clearing which people could go and play, and there was a library tree - a big tree with shelves all around it full of charity shop books. This was my favourite thing in the whole festival, and I had a happy time listening to bands playing nearby while reading James Herriot books.

- The food stalls were pretty good. hoshuteki tried hard to eat something from every single stall and didn't quite manage it, but we were satisfied with the results. We also ate many cheese sandwiches.

- There were lots of children around, which made the atmosphere quite nice. I liked watching the big kids attempting to busk with their newly-purchased ukuleles and the smaller ones sitting on their dads' shoulders watching the bands and wearing big neon headphones. I was also very impressed with the people who pushed wheelchairs through the mud.

- The comedy pavilion was very nice, and a welcome opportunity to sit indoors on the floor and be cheered up. We saw Robin Ince ranting and Terry Saunders telling a lovely story. I think I enjoyed sitting down to watch comedy more than standing up to watch bands, because I am old and hate fun.

- Oh yes, there were lots of bands playing too. I wandered in and out of a lot of Americana bands, missed Robyn Hitchcock due to tent-pitching issues, wondered what all the fuss was about British Sea Power and accidentally stumbled across a band apparently recreating The Old Grey Whistle Test, but I did genuinely enjoy some of the sets. Highlights: Billy Childish playing lots of garage rock and looking like he was having huge fun; Kimya Dawson being very earnest and sweet; Shearwater being GREAT despite their audience; Jeffrey Lewis singing 'Do they owe us a living?' by Crass with John Darnielle coming on stage to shout "Of course they do, of course they do!"; Calexico's mariachi brass serenading us as we packed up the car to go home. The Mountain Goats played a great rocking set, bizarrely starting with a broken guitar string and a five-minute drum solo, and ending with several hundred people singing "I hope you die! I hope we both die!" at the tops of their voices.

Bad things!

- Me being grumpy. I don't mean to be grumpy, I would really prefer to be nice! But I find being surrounded by people 24 hours a day quite hard work, and so I'm afraid I was. Thank goodness for my patient fellow campers, and being able to sit and grizzle under the library tree now and again.

- People talking all the way through bands that I wanted to see. This was particularly bad during Shearwater's set, as their songs are quite atmospheric but they were the last band on in the small tent on Saturday night and thus every overexcited inebriated young person in the vicinity popped into the tent to have a chat. "Oh Jo, there are lots of acts between here and the stage," said Ewan. I squeezed my way to the front for the Mountain Goats despite my fear of being crushed in a crowd, and even some of the enthusiastic fans at the front talked all through the quiet songs. Grr, mutter, oh well.

- NEARLY BEING KILLED BY LOW!!!! Whod'a thought, when they make such quiet and lovely music? Their set was really good, but Alan Sparhawk claimed to be in a very bad mood, and at the very end of the last song he started windmilling his guitar around and flung it out into the crowd. It really flew! We were in the middle of the crowd and it landed a few rows behind us - luckily everyone saw it coming and got out of the way in time, or it could have hit someone dangerously hard. Everyone was quite shocked and I was rather put off going to see any more bands that night! I'm torn between feeling sorry for Alan Sparhawk for feeling bad enough to do that and p1ssed off that he endangered people who came to watch his music. Hmm.

But we all survived End Of The Road! Now I'm off to take Monday Child to the swimming pool and go and see the Mountain Goats again. Yay!