streetcard
My swipecard for streetcar arrived today. I’m almost tempted to book a car for tonight just to try it out.
The High Line – New York
The High Line is an elevated freight rail track in Manhattan that runs up 10th from the Meat-packing District to 34th Street. It was opened in 1934 with the express purpose of getting freight trains off the road: to quote the High Line website, “so many accidents occur between freight trains and street-level traffic that 10th Avenue becomes known as Death Avenue. For safety, men on horses, called the West Side Cowboys, ride in front of trains waving red flags.” The last consignment of goods to use the High Line was delivered in the 1980s, but use had curtailed considerable since the 50s, and in the 60s the most southerly section had been demolished. The track sat disused for twenty years or more.
I first came across the High Line via Dan Hill’s City of Sound. At the time, The High Line hadn’t been rejuvenated and the idea of it becoming a public park was a fanciful notion on the part of a few interested New Yorkers, who were slowly but surely convincing people it was a worthwhile re-development. I thought it was an interesting idea, and filed it away along with all the other interesting ideas I file away and never revisit. So I’d forgotten about it until Imran Ali mentioned it again in a recent tweet, comparing it with a similar redevelopment in Leeds.
It's hard to capture lilac with a 3-ccd camera
My wife and I had booked a week in New York in October 2009 and we decided a visit to the now visitable High Line would fit right into the kind of holiday we like, ie dossing about in a big city, walking the streets by day, finding a good bar or restaurant by night and generally soaking up the atmosphere. It also coincided with a little urban regeneration of our own, namely our (my?) on-going efforts to get our back garden into some kind of shape after years of neglect. So there was a small part of me that thought this grand project in America was something I could mimic in a small way in my own backyard in London.
Of course, plenty of disused railways have been rehabilitated over the years. The abandoned Clayton West branch line of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway ran along the edge of the village in which I grew up, and had become a fetching wilderness we used as a shortcut between villages or a place to hunker down away from parents’ eyes until it was redeveloped for the Kirklees Light Railway. The former Great Northern Railway line is being refurbished for cyclists and walkers as the Great Northern Railway Trail, running through the Clayton Valley West of Bradford and over the rather splendid Thornton Viaduct. There was a time when places such as these were dug up or knocked down after they had out-grown their initial use, or were appropriated by developers who would plant houses in the middle of the track, blocking passage to the populous. It always seems a miracle when a council decides to do the right thing, to re-purpose something beautiful and make it available to the general public.
Rolling stock seats
As it turned out, I walked the High Line twice while in New York. Once with my wife, when we skipped merrily down the former track as visitors are supposed to do. Then on my final day, with my wife away for an early flight and my flight not till late in the evening, I walked the High Line again, this time walking the streets underneath to see how it might have changed its neighbourhood since it had been re-commissioned. Not that I had anything to compare it to as it wasn’t an area I’d delved into before, but maybe that’s the point – it brings an area of New York into play that had previously been neglected. The High Line is clearly a sizeable part of the regeneration of the Meat-packing District: I doubt Stella McCartney or Helmut Lang or any of the other high fashion names would have chosen that neck of the woods just for the High Line itself, but the fact that it is bringing people into the area certainly backs up the decision to move there.
View across the Hudson to New Jersey
The High Line is beautiful. The iron structure is beautiful, the views from the deck are beautiful, the layout of the promenade is beautiful. You can tell such care has gone into this project. It helped that it was a glorious day when we were up there – New York, like London or even Hull or Scarborough for that matter, looks at its best in the Autumn. Somehow October-time, the sun strikes at the right angle to make the place glow, (provided you’re lucky enough to get clear skies: if we’d gone up the day after we did, we’d have been soaked). But regardless, the whole High Line environment is immensely pleasing. No two stretches are alike. Grasses, trees, flowers, embedded rail, sleepers – they morph and ebb and flow to create a timeless space which seems much bigger than it actually is. It took longer to walk the track, with all its viewpoints and items of interest, than to walk beneath it taking pictures, watching for traffic.
It will be interesting to revisit the High Line in years to come, once the trees and plants have had a chance to get established and grow, and once the future purchase and redevelopment of the line up from 21st has gone through. I’m trying to persuade my wife that next time we’re there we should give the Standard Hotel a try – we tend to stay uptown but spend our days downtown, in the Village or Soho or lately around the Bowery. Maybe we should be down in the Meat-packing District, closer to where the action is!
I’ve tried to select photos where the Above picture and the Below picture are the same stretch of track seen from different elevations.
| Above | Below |
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 Most Northerly Section of the High Line, 21st St - there are plans to take it up to 34th St |
 Most Northerly Section of the High Line - you can just see the stairs up to the track behind the billboard in the middle of the picture |
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 From a park bench in the Autumn sun |
 Across 10th Ave toward the oasis of peace! |
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 Viewpoint overlooking 10th Ave |
 Viewpoint looking up from 10th Ave |
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 Tunnel through the building which contains Chelsea Market. The coffee vendor was fantastic, friendly, taking photos for people |
 Restaurant in the Chelsea Market Building - the picture on the left runs above the restaurant |
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 Grasses and seats |
 Building renovation - there's a Stella McCartney just behind the photo |
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 The Standard Hotel |
 The Standard Hotel |
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 High Line, last stretch |
 Hector's Cafe & Diner |
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 The End, looking down |
 The End, looking up |
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever
The magnificent Roxy Music with possibly the best song ever about an inflatable doll. (Just had the thought that in this song the inflatable doll is a metaphor for a vacuous but beautiful woman. Just a thought). Anyway, Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you, In Every Dream Home A Heartache:
Found a Boiler Repairer Through Twitter
 This is the message I posted |
 This is the message I got back |
Thanks, Roger
(I didn’t think it was right to post Rod’s phone number, but feel free to get in touch if you have a dodgy boiler yourself and you want me to pass along his details).
streetcar.co.uk
I took my inaugural trip with streetcar yesterday. I had a train ride to Swindon planned to watch Huddersfield vs Swindon but the journey back promised to be a long, miserable, late one, so at the last minute I decided to give Streetcar a go. I’d been eyeing it up for a while, but always opted to hire a car from the National Car Hire at the end of the road, who I really like and who have always given me good service. There’s a work event in a couple of weeks time when I need a car for a few hours on a Saturday, rather than the full weekend which would be the minimum rental from a car hire firm, so I figured I could use this trip to Swindon as a dry run.
Streetcar is a UK pay-as-you-go car club which has been operating since 2004. They have about ten cars within reasonable walking distance from here. The membership fee is about £50, but I went for the £90 2-year option. I started the sign-in process online, and then someone from Streetcar called me to go through the details. Very personable, they were, too, which really matters. They conference called me with the DVLA to check my license, which is a tad strange but seemed to work smoothly. They took my money and gave me a brief overview of the practical side of using their service, eg how to book a car.
The online process for booking a car is easy enough. I inputed my dates, selected the times I required from the cars that were available, worked out how much it was going to cost me, which relies on how long I need the car for and the projected mileage, and then pressed Book. They have my credit details, so I didn’t have to go through a financial transaction to complete the process. The cost includes 30 free miles and coverage of the congestion charge, if that applies.
My swipecard won’t arrive for a couple of days, so when I went to pick up the car, (with a box of Scaremonger CDs for Martin ‘Guitarmonger’ Malone, with whom I was going to watch the game) I was supposed to call them to open the car for me. Unfortunately, I had the wrong number with me, which was my fault, not theirs, (though it could be a tad clearer on the website). I had to schlep home and log on again to pick up the right number, which meant I was at least half an hour late setting off. When I finally got through, again the person I spoke to was personable and amenable. She talked me through dealing with the onboard computer and what to do at the start and the end of the booking, made sure I was OK and then left me to it.
The onboard computer has an attached RFID reader for the swipe card, which sits tucked away inside the bottom-most corner of the windscreen. As I didn’t have a swipecard, I didn’t have to deal with the reader – I think I’m going to enjoy opening the doors with it on my next booking. The computer looks like the contraption conductors use on trains to dispense tickets, and houses the car key and the fuel card. The fuel is paid for by Streetcar with the cost for any extra mileage docked from your credit card. The computer has GPS, so its position can be tracked from Streetcar’s HQ.
The car was a well-maintained silver Golf. It had a couple of small dints/scratches, but overall it was very presentable, and very drivable. It was weird picking it up from the forecourt of a small housing estate, hovering around a car in the dark as I spoke furtively with the people at Streetcar, but I guess the person donating their parking space has sorted it out with their neighbours, so having strangers lurking around their space is something they are prepared to put up with.
Overall, my experience with Streetcar was excellent. I have a couple of other bookings lined up – one short one, one that spans several days – so by the time Christmas comes I’ll have a better feel for how the service works and whether it works for me. So far, a big thumbs up!
Flag Digging
In a sudden flourish, after seeing my pal Sarah’s garden this weekend, I spent my lunch digging up some of the flags and tentatively laying out the garden path:
 Before - House Return Looking Back At The House |
 After - House Return Looking Back At The House |
 Before - Garden Path From Centre of Garden |
 After - Garden Path From Centre of Garden |
 Before - Garden Path From House Return |
 After - Garden Path From House Return |
The first flags lifted and the sand and cement underneath
Island flower bed
It’s nice to see it shaping up to fit the layout I have planned for it. Seeing the path in approximate place has made me think about slight changes to the plan, too. For example, I need to consider where the two or three trees I intended to plant are going to go. I expect to spend several hours standing around looking at the garden from various viewpoints, not just to admire my handiwork, such as it is, but to figure out what to do next.
Today’s Ignite Talk Is Tomorrow’s Chip Wrapper
Caitlin's Chips Wrapped In My Ignite Talk
Poor Caitlin had been waiting an age for her chips at Ignite London, only for them to arrive at the same time as her taxi. In the absence of a newspaper in which to wrap them, the notes from my Ignite Talk did the job nicely.
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever
Fox were a British band from the 70s formed by American Kenny Young, who co-wrote Under The Boardwalk, and Australian singer Noosha Fox (aka Susan Traynor). Only You Can was their first hit, followed it up with S-s-single Bed. Both songs are fantastic, so I thought I’d include them both:
William Carlos Williams on the Underground
This Is Just To Say ...
This is just to say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Soup – 17th November 2009
Autumn is here and I’m back in soup-making mode.
Tuesday’s soup, which should last me till the weekend, is a concoction of what we have left in the house – manky mushrooms, carrots and tomatoes, with an onion, garlic, chicken stock, black pepper and salt.
Soup - the ingredients
The ingredients chopped up
The waste - fodder for the compost heap
Simmering away nicely
Post-blending
Mother, spoon-feed me another mouthful of delicious hot broth
Verdict: Delicious!
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever is A Walking Miracle by Limmie and the Family Cookin’:
In fact, it would be bad manners not to include their other big hit, You Can Do Magic:
New Garden Fence -> Feverish Planting
House Return Showing Newly Repaired Fence
A few months back, we had the garden fence repaired round the back of our house. It had been down for about 5 years, and for the first time since we bought the house back in 2003, I felt like getting out into the backyard and into the garden.
At first my sole intention was to get rid of the weeds and make it look passable, presentable. The previous occupant had paved the whole expanse in flags and concrete, except at the far end, which has a raised breeze block flower bed, which was waist deep in brambles and grandmother’s bonnet, so without extensive re-development, the best I could hope for was to keep it tidy.
I weeded, (and there were some mighty weeds to be contended with, coming up through the flags like Poseidon rising up through the waves). I treated the new bit of fence, which made the old bit look tired so I did that too. Which had the same effect on the fence at the other side, so I did that as well. And then I whitewashed the walls of the buildings backing onto our property, because the bare brick and rendering looked shoddy compared with the pristine fences.
My Flower Tubs
And then I got the crazy notion that, even though I couldn’t really plant anything in the earth, what with it being concreted into oblivion, I could still shove some plants into the few plant pots that the previous owners hadn’t taken with them. This is the bit that hooked me.
I bought a polystyrene block of pansy buds from Homebase, along with a slab of compost, and I put the two together with a sprinkling of water. A few days later, the pansies flowered. In my own small way, I made a flower. I was thrilled.
After that it got a little ridiculous. Very quickly, I had twenty pots on the go, with sweet pea, snowflakes, dahlias, magnolia, french marigold, a palm and some geraniums. I started to plan a trellis with wisteria to be cultivated over the next few years into an arch which will frame the garden breakfast table we bought. I couldn’t go past a garden centre without picking up a tub or two.
After a chucking away a short plastic partition, a small patch of earth revealed itself. Real live earth! So I dug it out, added some compost, and planted it up. I can’t even remember the names of the flowers I planted. In fact, I added too much, and the poor things were falling over themselves to snatch a glimpse of daylight. But, they thrived, no thanks to me, as did the rest of the containers. At one point we had flowers blooming in every part of the garden, and the sweetpea was climbing all over the dead branches of whatever kind of bush it was that I managed to kill with weedkiller several years ago. The whole thing had come alive. I even let the grandmother’s bonnet flourish, as it brought lots of much appreciated colour to this tiny part of SW16.
Some flowers, the names of which escape me
As the summer faded and the plants could no longer support the flowers they’d raised, I resigned myself to the inevitable that the garden would retrograde back into the drab wasteland it had been. But that’s not been the case. The place is still infinitely greener than it was before my planting frenzy, with the evergreen that my mother-in-law salvaged from the bargain shelves at Homebase showing there’s still life out there, and the grasses and stalks of the perennials giving us a warming dash of brightness here and there. And the flowers that made it into the earth, the small patch I over-planted, they have no intentions of going away – they cling on in the face of wind, rain, frost and overcast days, like Dylan Thomas’ Dad raging against the dying of the light.
I appreciate this is small potatoes compared with other people’s backyards, and it’s not unfeasible that this is a petty fad which will pass, like learning to program Ruby or learning Spanish. But I’ve been at it about 8 months now, and I’m still keen. I still have much to learn about gardening – even basic garden maintenance eludes me – but I don’t think it matters. Some things I plant will grow, some might not, but I’m out there getting fresh air and exercise and doing my best to nurture life where there was none, to make something beautiful out of nothing. I have returned to the soil. I have, if not green fingers, at least slightly muddy ones. I am a Maker, a grower.
Much is planned for the New Year, for which the groundwork is being done over the weekends, what with it being too dark to get out there after work. Ah, but that will have to wait for a later post.
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever
I don’t think I’ve seen footage of Them before. The singer, I’m sure I don’t have to remind you, is Van Morrison. The song was written by Bert Berns, who is one the 60’s managers/producers/songwriters/players who gets a little overlooked. But I rate him. He worked out of the Brill Building for a time, and to give you a small snapshot of his stunning CV, he wrote Hang on Sloopy, I Want Candy, Piece of my Heart, Everybody Needs Somebody to Love, 25 Miles and Twist and Shout, which are songs from the very top drawer. He took over from Lieber and Stoller as Staff Producer at Atlantic, and as a little sidenote, he also managed and produced Lulu. Pretty good going.
Bus Garage – Keep Out!
Bus Garage - Keep Out!
Saw this in a pile of discarded rubbish on the edge of the pavement at Amen Corner, Tooting, London, (after eating a fine lunch with Bruce and Claudia).
I thought it was lovely how much care had gone into choosing the colour of the letters. I wonder if making the Bus Garage was more fun than playing with it.
Idiot Time
Idiot Time – The time you spend continuing to read a blog post’s comments once you’ve realised the correspondents are all morons.
Top Artists – 7/11/09 -> 14/11/09
Top Artists on Smithylad's Last.FM for the last week
Notes:
Beautiful Angel Birthday Boy is a project I’m working on
Jim Littlewood is a friend of mine, and a fantastic song-writer.
The 6th Annual Hyde Park Irregulars Award Ceremony
Will Taylor, Golden Bib Winner at the Hyde Park Irregulars End of Season Do
Another glittering night in London saw the occasion of the 6th Annual Hyde Park Irregulars Award Ceremony and End of Season Do (follow link for photos).
The eagerly anticipated event took place in the labyrinthine ante-rooms of Ye Olde Cheddar Cheese on Fleet Street. Many were in attendance, including Bruce, Slug, Matt, Doug, Greg, Rachel, Paul, Simon, Will and me. There was laughter, tears and tequila.
The voting for the Awards was done live in the pub, with Voting Forms for each category going from person to person until all the votes were cast. There were those in the party who were critical of the Votingmonger’s adjudication and administration, (eh, I was doing my best) but the ballot was fair and the complainers were generally sore because they played crap all season and were never ever going to win anything.
Veteran of the Season Voting Form - All Above Board
The Award Winners were:
| Golden Bib | Will Taylor |
| Goal of the Season | Amin |
| Most Regular Irregular | Slug |
| Most Prolific Goalscorer | Joint Winners: Will Taylor Greg Davies |
| Most Improved Player | Rachel |
| Most Regular Pub Goer | Slug |
| Best Emailer | Slug |
| Veteran of the Season | Joint Winners: Slug Craig ‘Clattermonger’ Smith |
| Best Cheesemonger | Babby Paul |
| Best Administrator | Bruce |
You’re No Kind of Man …
… unless you have one of each of the following …
A Crowbar
A Wheelbarrow
A Compost Heap
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever
I woke up with this in my head. My friend Celtic John and I had been talking about it this weekend, in the context of a K-Tel album he got when he was a kid.
Edison Lighthouse were originally just a studio band set up to serve Tony Burrows and songwriter/record producers Tony Macaulay and Barry Mason. Tony Burrows is the only person ever to front three bands on Top of the Pops in one week, (Edison Lighthouse, White Plains and Brotherhood of Man).
Lego Cars
Our cars were never as good as this - these were made by Mad Scientist
I had a quick skim through Giles Turnbull’s A Common Nomenclature for Lego Families, (I’ll be back to read it all later – looks very good indeed), and I started to think about how we used Lego when we were kids.
Somewhere after the age of 5 to somewhere probably short of 12, Jonathan Bowker – who was my first best friend – and I used to build Lego cars on his living room carpet. We took great care to make sure the colours were right, the shape, adding whatever external accessories we thought were appropriate in a car at that age, doing our best to use up every brick in the process. And once we had what we thought was the perfect car, there would be a moment of admiration before we knelt on the floor about a yard apart and ran the cars into each other as hard as we could. The construction would buckle and bits would fly off. And we took what remained and crashed them into each other again and again until only one car remained. That car was the winner. And then we’d rebuild the cars to a different design and go through the destruction process again. It was great fun.
Similarly, when we went to the beach, we would spend hours building ever more elaborate castles out of sand, with turrets, moats, doors, roadways, extensions. We made Neuschwanstein-style palaces decorated with shells and landscaped so the in-coming tide would fill the moat. They were beautiful. And then, when we were due to leave at the end of the day, having had our fill of admiration, we took a few steps back and, in sync, took a flying leap to plough the castle back from whence it came. And we’d look back at our destruction with equal admiration, and leap again if anything of the castle remained.
From this, I would extrapolate that there’s a streak in all boys, in all men, that builds to destroy for the fun of destroying. That we are at once makers and destroyers, creators and nihilists. But I don’t think that’s the case.
My little brother, a couple of years younger than me, built his lego cars to a very high spec, taking more care than we ever did, and never felt the need to destroy them. It was all in the building for him – when he was finished with any given design, he took it apart brick by brick in order to build something else. There was never gleefulness or abandon in the deconstruction.
He’s now a software engineer with a company of his own with several staff, so something in how he built Lego has remained in the way he runs a business. He’s a home decorator, too, and the only time I see that wild glint in his eye that gives away a love of destruction is when a wall is where he wants a door to be, and – after all the necessary preparation – he takes back his sledgehammer, like Thor, and smashes away.
I couldn’t build to destroy now, that’s not in my make-up any more. I like new things, pristine things, I appreciate the effort people put into making them, and once something has been made, I don’t like it being unmade. I like things that work, which are in one piece, which are unblemished. I don’t care for grafitti. I don’t put stickers on my laptop or on my guitars. I don’t have any tattoos. I like things in a state of good repair.
However, I am quite comfortable dog-ear-ing pages in the books I read these days, when once that would have been anathema to me. Those times when I get to snatch a moment to enjoy a book – on the train on the short ride into London, for example – I want to maximise my reading time, and that’s so much easier when I know where I am in the narrative, when I don’t have to find my place before getting stuck in.
And I think that’s symptomatic of why I don’t like destruction any more – there are only so many hours in the day, and I want to spend as little time as possible orientating myself or rebuilding what was built perfectly well before. When you have a never ending to-do list in your head, adding to it willfully, wantonly, is self-defeating. I want to feel like I’m getting through things, not falling backwards.
Things We Can See From The Back of Our House
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Huddersfield Town’s Very Interesting Season So Far
Huddersfield Town League Results So Far, Season 2009/10
The Mighty Terriers, Huddersfield Town, By Far The Greatest Team The World Has Ever Seen, are having a very interesting season indeed. We’re tucked into the last play-off place in League One, but that really doesn’t tell the full story.
So far this season, we have two 4-0 victories and a glorious 7-1 vs Brighton. And tonight we knocked Dagenham and Redbridge out of the FA Cup 6-1. In the games we have lost, we have been beaten by more than 1 goal just once, a 3-1 defeat away to Millwall. The rest of our defeats have been by a single goal. All the big victories have come at home, where we are unbeaten in all competitions so far this season. 12 players have scored for us, with Rhodes scoring 13 and Robinson 8, and Roberts, Novak and Pilkington chipping in nicely with 4 each. Our defence is tight, we know where the jugular is, and the goals are spread out throughout the team. All very promising.
On the downside, we have only won a quarter of our league games away from home, (2 out of 8), and our form against the sides in the top half of the table is a bit poor, ranking 21 in the league. And we went 5 games without a win, which saw us drop from third to ninth. We seem to have shaken that – we have won the last three games now, which has seen us rise to 6th.
Lee Clark, the ex-Newcastle, ex-Sunderland, ex-Fulham footballer with a notoriety for being a bit daft – his ‘Sad Mackem bastards’ t-shirt might demonstrate an admirable loyalty and might be generally very funny, but he did get caught wearing it! – is a first-time manager yet it seems to be bearing out that he’s the lad for the job at Huddersfield. He’s clearly brighter than people take him for, he’s enthusiastic, he does things his own way, and more than anything he has built a fine young team with a lot of promise.
Maybe we won’t go up this year – Leeds seem a shoe-in for the first automatic place, Colchester or Charlton for the second, and the play-offs, as we know, are a lottery – but it’s proving to be such a fun season that whatever happens I’m very pleased with how things are set up. Mind you, I’m not a regular attendee – I’ve only managed one game so far, away to MK Dons, where we came back from behind (twice) to win 3-2. So maybe regulars at the games would prefer a less riotous season with a guaranteed promotion place. But me, as I sit by my computer watching the games update on BBC Sport, I’m thoroughly enjoying the emphatic victories, the confidence when we’re 2-nil up that we aren’t going to blow it, and the belief that even if we’re trailing with minutes to go we can still grab something from the game. It’s so long since we’ve had that at Huddersfield Town, and I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
(statistics from football365)
Women Singer’s Playlist
Clattermonger's Women Singers Playlist
I deliberately chose not to include anyone post-1980 – everything is 50’s, 60’s or 70’s. For singers of renown, eg Aretha Franklin, I went for the slightly less obvious song choices – in Aretha’s case, Don’t Play That Song (You Lied), which is still one that gets included on Greatest Hits collections, but it isn’t I Say A Little Prayer or Respect, (both of which are wonderful songs). And for the singers who aren’t as well know, I think the songs will be familiar when they are heard. For example, Go Now by Bessie Banks is in the public consciousness because of The Moody Blues’ cover.
I’ve also tried to include a mixture of UK and US singers, or in the case of PP Arnold, an American singer making a name for herself first in the UK (like Hendrix and The Walker Brothers).
One of the great things about pop music is the understanding of the human condition which comes through one person telling another person’s story. There are only two examples here of women singing songs they wrote themselves, (Ode to Billy Joe and Who Knows Where The Time Goes). But that doesn’t worry me in the slightest. Some people are interpreters of a song, not writers, and that’s enough – I saw Colin Redgrave in Waiting for Godot, and I don’t remember a single person saying ‘a fine performance but it’s not like he wrote it himself’. The idea that a person has to have written the song they sing or the performance isn’t true is nonsense. It’s plenty that fine singers are singing fine songs. And I could have easily chosen a song for each singer which was written by a woman – I could very probably have come up with a list of the same singers each doing a song which came from a women songwriter writing in the Brill Building. But in actual fact, there is a great mix of songwriters represented here – men, women, black, white, Jewish, Sufic, American, European. And that’s what I mean about one person telling another’s story – all people are at heart the same, and pop music is the perfect medium for showing that.
Today’s New Favourite Best Song Ever
Bruce Connell, the All-Star Marketing Guru with whom I co-founded the Hyde Park Irregulars, has kicked off The Women Singer Challenge. It’s not really a challenge, it’s a bunch of us each putting together a play-list of our favourite songs by women singers, which we’re going to share amongst ourselves in CD form.
My play-list is already decided. And of all of them, this is my favourite:
Weekend Over
With the arrival of my little brother, the weekend couldn’t fail to be a peach. We played tennis twice, took down two satellite dishes from the back of the house, watched the Rugby League Grand Final, (yay Leeds) in Soho and we had a fine breakfast with friends Mike and Allyson and did some music. All very pleasing.
Glen has volunteered to help landscape the back garden here, and he’s adamant that we should wait till spring so the winter frost can’t penetrate the cement. I’m chomping at the bit to get going, but he’s right, and I’ll have to content myself with drawing designs of how it will look and sourcing the materials we will need – a shed, a summer house and a couple of composters, which I can use to break down the brambles and weeds which are piled up in a breeze block pen at the end of the garden. This is a proper project, and it’s worth doing properly. The target for completion is next summer, and when it’s done it will look fantastic.
So, I have to learn a bit of patience from my younger sibling, and think bigger. There are natural timescales for these things. I need to bide my time!
Clattermonger 