My Father's Face

Suddenly, it's October …

Arse!

I'm really none too keen on all this "time going forward" malarkey. Bugger physics! I'm much more of the opinion that Time should have just hung around in the mid-seventies, when I was a teenager with a six pack and a great band, and life was intercoursingly groovy.

As it is, so-called friends have been calling to ask what I want for my birthday, reminding me that I reluctantly turn forty-eight in a few weeks time (Blaaah).
So let's set the record straight: should anyone wish to get me anything, I'd like a teenage girlfriend and a Porsche 550 Spider, please; a nice vintage one like James Dean died in (the Porsche, not the girlfriend) … oh, and some socks.
I've been told those things are compulsory desires for a man my age (well, the first two anyway), though goodness knows why, as either of them would probably kill me.
And how the hell do you talk to a teenage girl? (advice, please: f.i.n? Bethany? anyone?). There are simply no cultural reference points (unless she's a history student).
There's a bunch of teenage girls in my Japanese class, and all we can talk about is JPop and how げんきwe're feeling … and I have to bribe them with Pocky to get that far …
Steely Dan were right … Hey, Nineteen; We can't dance together, We can't talk at all …

Another unwelcome reminder that Time, with gleeful malice, has hurled me onto a collision course with the saddest and most pathetic age of man, is that whenever I look in the mirror these days, my dad waves back at me.
Now as far as I understand death and stuff, dad should have been feasting and carousing in the halls of Valhalla for a few years now. Sure, he turns up in my dreams and does weird stuff that people in dreams do, and I like that. But to come back as my face? Please, dad. Stop it! It's too damned creepy.
To lob that kind of genetic time bomb at your kids is a cruel and unusual punishment and probably rates as child abuse.
Having said that; dad was better looking than me, so I guess I shouldn't complain too loudly.

Just lately, I've been thinking of dressing to emphasise my few remaining good bits. I'm reliably informed that I've still got a good bum and great legs, so perhaps just a nice pair of underpants and a bag over my head would suffice.
Or, hey! How about a mini-skirt length burqa? It would cover up my face and everything else likely to turn off a prospective date. I could start a new fashion trend: the micro-burqa: a kind of 'little black dress' for ugly people (and some of the more tolerant Muslim states). Look out, Jean-Paul Gaultier!

Fuck it. Enough moaning. It looks like I've got no choice but to grow older, but I'm damned if I'm going to grow up! Where's the fun in that? Bring on the teenage girls!

Here's your homework:

Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: Have you put on weight?

Today's track to track down: Jack Gets Up by Leo Kottke (from the album My Father's Face, somewhat predictably, and featuring the line: When you look in the mirror, it's your father's face).
Lugubrious. Weary. Funny. This sounds like Garrison Keillor after a particularly heavy night.

Today's reading assignment: The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

Today's fact: Fat is not caused by overeating; it is surgically injected into your body by little færies while you sleep.

Stop press! This just in:

Hoorah!

Mike (see "Some Stuff About Gravel" in August's archive) has at last decided to assault the blogshpere with his twisted mind. Click on the "Oh, Mikey" link in my Boffo Blogs to find out what strange, haunted planet he is currently orbiting.

For those who don't know him, his marzipan self portrait is astonishingly accurate.

Additional homework:

New project:
Make a self portrait from food and post it on your blog.

くりかえして ください

They say that your schooldays are the best days of your life (mostly because you get to hang around with schoolgirls all day; a wonderful gift you don't really appreciate fully at the time).
Well, after years of trying to teach myself Japanese, I've discovered I'm a crap teacher, so it's time to become a student again and learn it properly.
Let's head down to the local college …

きいて　ください。

I suddenly feel very old. Even Mayuko, our teacher, is young enough to be my daughter. And when Hilton tells me the things he wants to do before he's thirty, I realise that he probably wasn't born when I was thirty!

So here's my class:
Hilton's from China. He's been over here eight months, working as a translator (his English is very good), and now wants to add Japanese to his CV. The other guys in the class are Sam - a technical/architectural draughtsman with kanji tattoos who might end up like me if he's not careful - and Gandy, who's a cool, blonde surfer dude type.
Of the girls: Sophia is the best of all of us at Japanese; she already knows her kana and has had lessons before. Gandy's friend Shona (I hope I'm getting these names right) has spent a month travelling round Japan. She's got great pink hair and piercings. Lynne (the only student other than me who's not still in nappies) has travelled the world and is still jetlagged in class from being diverted to the wrong airport earlier in the day and having to cross the country to fetch her car from the right one. Then there's Camilla, who already speaks Spanish and wants Japanese as well; a quirky combination, but I approve of quirky. Her friend Louisa wants to be a fashion designer in Japan. She dresses straight out of Harajuku and looks like Kelly Osbourne would look if she'd grown up slim and pretty.
And I'm the old guy …

わたしは Dive です。よろしく　おねがいします。

The guys are into manga, movies and games; the girls more into the culture and fashion and J-Pop/J-Rock.
Gandy is studying the warring states period; Hilton has a ninja fixation; Louisa and Camilla whisper and giggle, and wonder why their test results are different when they did the test together; Sam and me get the same results but with different answers (?); Lynne is nearly asleep; Sophia corrects me on some hiragana (rats!); Louisa likes to be called 'Weezer', like the band; Shona and Louisa are veggie, so best not bring them a tin of くじらto try …

That's the ice-breaking over. Next week the lessons start in earnest. Mayuko sensei promises some "leading and lighting". Looks like this could be fun. I'll keep you posted …

では　また。

Homework time:

Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: もしもし。

Today's track to track down: Turning Japanese by The Vapors.

Today's reading assignment: As much manga as you can manage.

Today's fact: Asashoryu is a wuss.

Mad Bints

… in which I realise with horror that my Mum is actually cooler than I am …

To Norwich then, via this careful piece of signwriting (if you're thinking of committing ENITRY, don't try it here).


So I find myself hiding in a bookstore, pretending I'm only here to browse the Japanese language textbooks. I look around nervously for anyone I know. I breathe a sigh of relief; none of the other local musicians are here; nobody from the local music press; no guitar-geeks.
Just as well. There's a pop group in here, surrounded by teenagers and some mad old ladies, and yes, that's my Mum with them …

I suppose I should be grateful. Most other women her age conform to the stereotype of little old ladies who just sit there whingeing and smelling of wee. But my old Mum is in an international gang of internet biddies called the Mad Bints, a motley collection of the old and weird who follow Brit indie-pop bands around like a bunch of students.
They take over hotels, hold late night parties in their rooms (sometimes with band members, and always with cake) and generally behave in a thoroughly reprehensible manner. They blag demos and pre-release white labels, they bootleg DVDs and all sorts of shit, they have frightening IT skills, they knit, they make awesome cakes …
While I approve of this whole-heartedly, it kinda freaks me out a little when one of their bands plays Norwich and I get roped in as a chauffeur. Being an insufferable snob, with willfully obscure tastes and a healthy "anti" attitude, I cannot risk being seen watching pop bands … especially with a bunch of old ladies.
It's not so bad when the Mad Bints stay at Mum's; she lives in the next county. But today, some of them have come up to Norfolk and established base camp in my house.
It's gonna take days to get that bachelor stink back again …

I was forced to spend a Christmas Day freezing my butt off in Norwich once, hanging with the Mad Bints at a local radio station, so they could chat with Alistair Griffin …
And now here I am at Borders' bookstore, hiding behind bookshelves while the Mad Bints go all gooey at the Storys, a Welsh indie-pop band they have the hots for.
Actually, the Storys turn out to be pretty good, eventually luring me out of hiding. Here are a couple of pics for any fans out there:



All the bands they follow are astonishingly tolerant of the Mad Bints and actually seem really glad to see them.
In the evening, at the Arts Centre for an electric gig, the support act rushes over to the Bints to ask how Leslie's dog is doing after an operation …

What is the world coming to? I've been a musician all my life. I'm sitting here in my rather spiffy recording studio (the eponymous Small Glass Planet Studio) wondering what the hell happened.
I lived Spinal Tap and Almost Famous.
Now in my forties, I commute to London to design schools, while my elderly Mother lives the rock'n'roll lifestyle (with prescription drugs and lots of tea and cakes) …

Before I crack up completely, here's your homework:

Today's word you must use in your next telephone conversation: Genefluct.

Today's track to track down: Sexanddrugsandrockandroll by Ian Dury (for nostalgia's sake).

Today's reading assignment: Hammer of the Gods by Stephen Davis; the infamously OTT Led Zep book (again, for nostalgia's sake).

Today's fact: The word 'artichoke' derives from an incident at a Simon and Garfunkel concert.

Underground

On the way back from a meeting in Wimbledon yesterday, I stopped off at Gloucester Road tube station to check out Chiho Aoshima's exhibition.
Transport For London do this "Platform For Art" thing at several stations. It's always good. We had a Cindy Sherman exhibition down here a while back which was cool.
I love this one, so I thought I'd share it with you.
It runs the full length of the platform, so to get a better impression of it, you'll have to stitch the pictures together yourself, because I can't be arsed. Better still: go there and have a look. It's in place until January next year. Central, Circle and Piccadilly lines take you there.













Cute, huh?

Homework for this weekend:

Go paint something.

Meanwhile, In The Attic

Westminster is full of nice little deli/cafés.
This is one of the closest to my office, yet somehow I've never felt tempted …

Yeah, sure, I know what it means in French, but over here in Blighty, mange is a skin disease which dogs get.
Mmmm … Taste that yummy, flaky, salty goodness …

Meanwhile, in the attic …

It's dark up here; just a single bulb on an extension cable.
I set it swinging … shadows swoop and loom through the rafters.
Nina Nastasia's latest CD plopped onto my doormat earlier. It's now on my stereo. I can hear her voice, muffled, coming up the stairs and twisting its way through the attic trapdoor. It sounds right.

How come there's never any spiders up here?
There's always plenty of the buggers in the house. I suppose there's not much to eat in an attic. Either that or something else lives up here that hunts them down. I stop and listen for any tell-tale crunching noises … Nothing big and hairy lurking in the swirling shadows. I wish I hadn't set the light swinging.

I don't come up here much. Just to periodically dump junk, then periodically clear it all out again. There's way too many boxes of books; some unidentifiable wreckage that might have been musical instruments; the fossilised remains of old Apple Macs; pipes that either gurgle or go clunk; and somewhere in the shadows, the thing that eats spiders …
… and, in a dusty box, where it has lurked since the mid nineteen-seventies, an old Russian camera I had as a teenager.
Inside it is an undeveloped reel of film.
Curiosity kills me …

Ghosts … These places are all long gone. The jetty was replaced by waterside apartments too expensive for locals to ever afford. I think the ships' chandlers is now some kind of heritage centre.
There are other ghosts on the film. Dead places. I may well post some more, but not today. Right now, I'm headed back up the ladder into the warm, musty dark to see what I can find.
I don't wear my Spidey suit. Best not take any chances …

While I'm up here, here's your homework:

Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: Glacial moraine.

Today's track to track down: Ghostly Girl by Jolie Holland. A good song to listen to in a dark attic.

Today's reading assignment: Anything by James Ellroy. I'm in that kind of mood.

Today's fact: The number four (4) cannot be added to, subtracted from, multiplied by or divided by, any other number.

Five Years

So it's now five years since US foreign policy came home to roost with a horrific and disgusting act of terrorist slaughter.

Five years of living in denial

Five years of hate

Five years of lashing out with blind violence

Five years of killing the innocent and the guilty … but overwhelmingly the innocent

Five years of making the world an even more dangerous place

All of you:
Bush
Blair
bin Laden
US right-wing Christian fundamentalists
Islamic fundamentalists everywhere
Israel
Hizbollah
Taleban
The list goes on …

Just fucking STOP!

Hang your sick heads in shame and give us all a break.

Love and peace … try it …

Tom Purdew Pt.2 - Cold War

À la recherche du …

1964 …

Hey! That's me! Down there on the left. Little brother Phil on the right. And doesn't Mum look way cool in her hornrims and home-made coat? Dig our cute shoes and cheesy identical costumes.
And those strange little labels … What's that about?Well, kids; here's some history: this is what happens in a nuclear war. Really! Her Majesty's Government has decreed that we are to take part in a nuclear war evacuation exercise! Woohoo!

It's early morning. Several streets of our sleepy little town are abuzz with unusual activity. Mums are laying out the sunday best. Dads are dusting off the Box Brownies. Hyperactive kids are flying round the house, making airplane noises and bumping into things. Our mum is making sure we all look our best, because the TELEVISION PEOPLE will be there! Note the rag she carries (in Phil's hand) for emergency spit-washes.

By mid-morning we are all out on the pavement, the mums checking out one another's clothes. Everyone is decked out in their finery, ready to get nuked. The whole street! This is so weird.
Nobody talks above a whisper. We might miss the siren. Tension mounts as the clock ticks toward the hour …

There it is! The unearthly rising tone wailing out from the church tower, telling us we have FOUR MINUTES until the bombs hit us. Four minutes …
The same siren sounds every sunday morning, telling grown-ups everywhere to send the kids out to play while they furtively fumble for four minutes; the added thrill of pretending it's the real thing. But this day is different … This day the bombs are coming … We might even be on television!

As the siren wails on, wardens tell us to walk slowly to the top of the street, keeping in order like it's a school trip. Then we file along the main road to the coach station where we spend around twenty minutes being loaded up, street by street, into lovely old fifties charabancs, gleaming with strips of chrome. They judder into life and we're off, excitedly staring out of the windows at the spooky streets of our partially depopulated town, wondering the same thing we wonder every day: if we will actually get to see a mushroom cloud or if it will all be over in an instant, just a big flash like lightning …
And where do the government plan to send us when the bombs rain down?
We are headed, rather curiously, to Reydon School, a forty minute drive away.
From the coach windows, we can see across Sole Bay to the Sizewell Nuclear Reactor. There are American airbases dotted around the region. Some dads point out that at least it will be quick, being evacuated into a target area.

Too young to understand that this is the way our government intends to protect us during the imminent nuclear armageddon, we troop into the assembly hall and tuck in to lukewarm banana custard, served by school dinnerladies with lots of make-up and new hair-dos. The banana custard will obviously have some miraculous anti-radiation effect. The school dinnerladies, like the coach drivers, will no doubt be there at work during the apocalypse … After our curious meal, anticlimactically, we file back onto the coaches for the long drive home.

We do get on the telly that night. Crowded round the little wooden cabinet, doors open to reveal the flickering, almost spherical nine-inch screen … Look! There's mum shoving us back on the coach. Not her most dignified moment, but at least it was us and not somebody from the next street …

Back in the real world, that morning, our four minutes are up before we even reach the top of the road.
KERBLOOEY! The big light comes on, then all the lights go out, including yours and mine.
This is living every day with the very real terror of MAD. Mutually Assured Destruction (it's okay that all our people get killed, because all of theirs will be dead, too) …

I kinda miss the old Cold War. That Dr. Strangelove frisson … Hearing the rumble of the Soviet Bears, their long bodies full of bombs, flying down our coast every day, shadowed by our fighter planes. The thrill of wondering if you actually need to do your homework when you could well be dead by morning …

And now here's today's homework. The Bears don't fly any more so you have to do it.

Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: Mutually Assured Destruction.

Today's track to track down: New Frontier by Donald Fagen, who obviously misses the romance of the Cold War as much as I do.

Today's reading assignment: When The Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs. Send a copy to George Bush; it's a comic strip so he might be able to understand some of it. Get a kid to read him the longer words.

Today's fact: Uranuim is actually a vegetable.

Too Bloody Quiet

So Notwork Rail has finally realised it is totally incapable of providing anything resembling a basic transport infrastructure and has allowed things to screech to a shuddering halt yet again (third time in a week). As I write this, millions of pounds of taxpayers' money is being wasted in a futile attempt to master the patently bloody obvious (how to roll a train along a track).

As a consequence of which I am working from home for a couple of days.

It's very, very quiet here in Norfolk …

Listen …

Hear that?

A bit of birdsong. A slight breeze dicking about in the trees. Stuff growing … slowly.
Far over the fields I can see the church in the next village. It's not doing much. And neither am I …
Ooh look! There's a cloud! Whee …

Not being in London tends to give me Reuters' Block, so I'm relying on the press for this post.
Here goes:

Splendid news this week for fans of peurile innuendo and double-entendre:
Each year, that strange and unnatural institution known as Her Majesty's Government declassifies a load of stuff which has been deemed officially "TOP SECRET" since dinosaurs ruled the earth (and Raquel Welch ran around in that fur bikini).
In amongst this year's haul is the lovely story from WW2 of an aristocratic woman accused of spying. The spooks at MI5 suspected her of sleeping with as much of the military top brass as she could and passing secrets back to her German handler. She was imprisoned for a while, but nothing much came of it, other than the odd raised eyebrow and some guarded admiration of her spectacular promiscuity.
The thing which caught my jaded eye was her name: Lady Effingham. You couldn't make it up …

First Gentleman: I say, old chap; is that Lady Effingham?

Second Gentleman: All too enthusiastically, I'm afraid.

Oh, the joy of immature, smutty chortling.

So farewell then, Steve Irwin.
Australia suffers its 'Diana' moment as Mother Nature finally gets pissed off and hits back at the hyperactive conservationist.
Nice bit in the Guardian from Greatest Living Australian, Germaine Greer, but my own favourite Steve moment was watching him poke a cobra with a stick, over and over and over again …
"Crikey! Look how angry he's getting!"
Priceless.
Cool way to go, though; spiked through the heart by a stingray …

I'll finish with a lovely piece of street art from earlier this summer. Brighton High School for Girls had what was a plain cream stone pillar rather creatively modified over a weekend.
The girls loved it, but the headmistress failed to see the funny side. Shame on her …
Right. Wake up. It's homework time:

Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: "Perky little puppies" (let's keep the smutty tone going, shall we)?

Today's track to track down: Billericay Dickie by Ian Dury. As we're on a smutty one, a song with a first verse of breathtaking poetic imagery:
"Had a love affair with Nina,
In the back of my Cortina,
A seasoned-up hyena,
Could not have been more obscener …"
Oh, joy …

Today's reading assignment: Captain Pantoja And The Special Service by Mario Vargas Llosa, to show you just where the smutty stuff gets you.

Today's fact: Shredded Wheat is not made from wheat, but is actually the cocoon of a large, crunchy moth.

On The Road

Oh crap, I'm awake … Once more to suckle at the bitter teat of life.

Inside my head, some heavyset men are attacking the seventh circle of Hell with gusto … and sledgehammers.
I try to move, but someone has removed my bones and replaced them with PAIN.
I open my mouth and out falls the manky crotch of an onion farmer's underpants.
I peel open my eyes. They've been sandpapered and rubbed with burning oil …
Hang on a minute … burning motor oil in my eyes? The scream of racing engines pounding through my head? My breath an unsavoury reminder of too much good organic food and wonderful local beer?

Uh-oh …

It all comes flooding back. It's the morning after another Goodwood Revival Meeting.
Roaring around my head, kicking my bleary consciousness into a shuddering first gear comes the vision of countless millions of pounds worth of vintage Ferraris, Maseratis, Alfas, Jaguars, Astons, Lolas, GT40s, Cobras, Corvettes; Lotus, Brabham and BRM Formula 1 cars, TT bikes and pre-war Brooklands racers, all tearing round the old Goodwood Grand Prix circuit like there's no tomorrow!Goodwood is great! I go every year with my brother, Phil. Everyone dresses in period clothes from the heyday of motor racing. Tens of thousands of people in fancy dresss. It's really trippy, like Pepperland, only with insanely loud motor racing. There are wartime uniforms, British and American; beautiful women in forties, fifties and sixties dresses (and hairstyles), spivs, mods, rockers, toffs and peasants, vintage mechanics … All around the track are fifties ice cream vans, sixties hot dog stands, WW2 bars with live swing music, an old fairground … even the recovery vehicles on the racetrack are classic trucks. Next year, if it's sunny again, I'll take a load of pictures of the general hallucinogenic weirdness that goes on all weekend around the periphery of the racetrack. This year it was too cold and windy to do it justice.
If you love vintage motorsport, this is the best weekend of the year.
Even when the weather's shite, like this year (it's been sunny the past three years, so not a bad record for the end of a British Summer).


As always, the best drivers and riders in the world are racing, from modern Formula 1, Le Mans and Indy stars, back through the likes of Stirling Moss, Wayne Gardner, Alan Jones, Derek Bell, Phil Hill, Jackie Stewart, Jack Brabham, Bobby Rahal, and way too many more to mention. Every one of 'em going totally nutjob out on the track. Stirling Moss spinning out on the straight; three priceless cars in the gravel at Brooklands corner; one of them belly up (all in one race); a fifties Ferrari completely trashed in the tyre wall at St. Mary's, and brilliant lunatic racing action; every race going right down to the wire. Never mind that it's blowing a force 8 storm with horizontal rain; the sky is full of Spitfires and Mustangs; behind the grandstands the Yanks in their Jeeps entice local girls with nylons and the racetrack is full of mad old guys in goggles, desperately sawing away at steering wheels as their cars slide sideways around the wet, twisting circuit at insane speeds. Wonderful … even if I feel like crap this morning …

If you're not a fan of vintage car racing, here's some homework to keep you busy:

Today's phrase you must use in your next telephone conversation: I think I'd like to try a same-sex relationship.

Today's track to track down: Monkey Gone To Heaven by Pixies. Because it makes me dance round the room like your dad, only worse.

Today's reading assignment: On The Road by Jack Kerouac. Go on. You know you've been meaning to read it for ages; now's your chance.

Today's fact: As men get older, their dancing becomes more sexually alluring … To what, however, is still a mystery.

Tom Purdew Pt.1 - Ana

À la recherche du …

We are sitting eating lobster in a Portuguese square. It's some time in the early nineties.
It's a big table; there are a lot of us. We sit apart from the tourists; we are laughing noisily and chattering in Portuguese. It's getting dark but the heat of the day still burns in my skin. Ana is there, and me, and Julie and Cherry and Nigel and Carla and João. I don't see Jorge, perhaps he's back in Lisbon. Carla's little girl Raquel plays under the table, surfacing only for her tumbler of red wine or to grab something off someone's plate.
Blue ceramic pots of açorda; their hot steam twisting up into the darkening sky. Lobster detritus scattered like shrapnel. Clams. Tomatoes. Laughter. Wine … lots of wine.

The table has a paper cloth. Raquel has some felt pens. I start to draw.

As the evening grows around us the picture of the square spreads across the table, oozing outward in all directions. I swap chairs to chase it. Plates and bottles fill any empty spaces. More food. More wine. João makes the corno and laughs at his likeness. Ana pouts at hers. The waiter wants to be in there, too.
Later, the tourists are gone, replaced by cicadas. Alone now in our little pool of light, we drink and laugh. In the dark distance, fireworks sparkle across the bay …

By the early hours, the whole square is there on the table, with the swirling sky above. It covers the entire thing, dotted with small islands of bottles and glasses and bowls of olives. We are all very drunk and very happy. I sign the tablecloth and they pin it up in the restaurant. It's still there the next night, covered in wine stains and bits of lobster. It's good. I didn't go to art college just to screw and smoke dope.

À la recherche du …

A few years later, the usual things happen and that which we love is lost …

Everything comes and goes
Marked by lovers and styles of clothes
(Joni - Down To You, from Court And Spark)

I'm posting this picture of Ana because she turned up in my dreams last night, and so today I'm missing her. Até logo, bonita …

And because I like the picture …

And because I want to …