books

…answer to a post….

i have neglected to have my tuppeny haporth worth of opinion!

hmmm if he’s after an sas style macho ‘eagle eyes, fuzzy felt hair’ action man book i’d recommend ‘Into Thin Air’, by John Krakatoa.
it’s a real life story, by a bloke who was on the expedition, of people dying on Everest

Theres some poor project leader fellow, trapped just below the summit, on the radio, he gets patched through by the internet to have a last conversation with his wife
…gives me the goose bump heebee geebies
a story of hubris really, doesn’t matter how good a climber you are, if the mountain is going to get you, it will.

………..
this year tho’, i’ve been having a spate of reading books by Neil Jordan and recommending them to everybody!
‘Shade’ and ‘Sunrise with Seamonster’
he’s the irish film director who did ‘the company of wolves’ and ‘the crying game’
admittedly his characterisation is a bit patchy and plotwise the wheels come off the waggon, but i think he’s brilliant.
lyrical, written with great personal warmth and an exuberance of language, incredibly poetic
and he’s writing about places in Ireland i know quite well

…………………….
also

…… lauras uncles book sounds good too!
spare a thought for my scriptwriter brother, who lives in Salt Dean, he’s currently doing a Scott of the Antartic adaption, apparently Scotts last letters are ‘not inspiring’ at all, very little self awareness
Scott spends most of the time blaming people ‘we would have made it if we could have left the sick behind’.
The derr-brain doesn’t seem to consider that it was his fault they didn’t take any huskies! barking

My brov reckons they pretty much forced Captain Oates out into the snow ‘i’m going outside now, i may be sometime’.
The only other thing known of note about Oates is that before he left for antartica, he made a woman pregnant, she was 12… those Victorians, mind boggling.

Anyway my brother finds it tricky writing about Antartica in this heatwave.
I’ve suggested he sit in the bath surrounded by ice cubes, slurping a blueberry slush puppy, from there he can glimpse the white cliffs, if you squint they look like Iceberg glaciers!
and my nephew johnny is only 2, so he waddles about in convincing penguin fashion!

babbies

oh my giddy aunt

Jenny had a baby boy on Saturday night
which is brilliant news!

anyone heard from Elly?

I bumped into Sarah down along the sea front at lunch, so far she’s coping well with her 2 nippers

all together now….. aaaah

heres ellys beautiful baby bella

available for photoshoots? … don’t think so!

What was your first gig?


…mine was 78/79 Rose Royce at the Cornwall Colliseum in St Austel
my sisters very kindly took me
a Disco Funk, slushy ballards band. They were just fantastic.
we sang along to all the classics ‘Love don’t live here anymore’, oh and ‘Car Wash’!

…more posts….

Dozza… I saw Chumbawumba a couple of times in the late 80’s early nineties, they were such zealots, possibly the least likely band ever to have a hit record.
saw them once in Prague, they played in u Zoufastou (or somfink, the name meant club despair), which was in a basement, cellar firetrap place just of the old town sq, a big pistachio mozart baroque building up top… and a punk club below.

It was an odd place, every time you went back it was twice the size as they’d found knocked down a couple of cellar walls and found a few extra rooms

when i turned up the place was rammed with hundreds of young polish punks.
quirkily Chumbawumba were big in Krakow!
What was her name, alice nutter? came out dressed as a nun and the whole place went bonkers
afterwards half the punks came back to stay, i know it’s a terrible thing to say, but they were so sweet, polite and smiley.
i was tempted to give them lessons in sneering. gurcha.

we had a huge loft, 50 or so of them could kip up there, i suspect some of themn are still up there, like Japanese Prisoners of war, you know, in the jungle on small melanesian islands??!

goth racket

the sisters of mercy as a counterbalance to Eddie VH from the other day

when i was young i went to see the sisters of mercy in concert, they were gawdawful blooming loud
being of sensitive, fey disposition i decided to protect my ears by putting pirces of loo roll in them.
it worked a treat, they sound much better slightly muffled
i could happily get on with pogoing about

next day tho’ i couldn’t hear a thing and had terrible ear ache, lumme must have been louder than i thought!
So off i went to the doctors. ‘i think i have a burst eardrum’
he shone a light in me lug hole, went ‘aha’ and fished out a piece of tissue paper.
embarrased

St Wulfrans

What’s yer favourite church?
I was over at St Wulfrans in Ovingdene yesterday.
a splash of yellow daffs outside the front porch, a yew tree, crows cawing.
I fell asleep. a snooze in the sunshine in the graveyard! Something to do with those commands to ‘Rest in Peace’.
Jumping Jehosophines!

I really like the fact that i can walk out of my front door, through East Brighton park, then, up, up, past the chalk Whitehawk, over the golf course and be completely in the countryside.
there are these amazing plough shire horses, enormous hulking beasts bigger than Sherman tanks!

I’ve never been inside St Wulfrans, always locked, but i really like the name which is blatantly Saxon and maybe part Red Indian
the church is a typical Downs one, built from Flint, which you always find lying about amidst the chalk.

…after the church i bumped into Suzy a dreadlocked mum from the school (her kids called Jacey Blue, yep, they all have weird names), whenever i see her i always think ‘face like the back of a bus!’
actually she’s beautiful, but also one of those people who appear on teh side of Brighton buses, you know, the ones with a slogan, encouraging you to dump your car.
It always spooks me out, when her bus goes by, to see her fizzgog, 12ft high!

…aaah i am rambling about my ramble.. onto the Kipling gardens in Rottingdene, an ice cream and stroll home along the undercliff path… home… just in time for the antiques roadshow

aidan: For a while I was haunted by an old flame adorned on the side of the buses. It would always give me shivers when she would appear, 8ft high right in front of me at a crossing.

12ft high images, kinda reminds me….
….of when i spent a winter in Sheff, in a sprawling student house which backed right out onto Meersbrook park.
The house was full of climbers, pupeteers, artists… and me
everyday in the kitchen, huddled around the 3 bar electric fire, drinking endless cups of tea from a dribbling teapot
Theresa, the artist, her work was figurative, so she spent a lot of time just sketching us all.
Whilst sketching she’d always be asking lots of personal questions ‘tell me all about your first love?’, her theory being that when people talk about themselves, it shows some of their soul.
Felt a bit unfair to me, as she knew i fancied her, just a teensy bit.

In may i went to visit her in her studio, down ‘blast furnace lane’,
a big, old, near derelict victorian warehouse… nowadays, i ‘spect, it’s yuppy loft flat appartments… the whole of the north of England , so i hear!

I brought her a large bag of cherries, so we sat in 2 deckchairs, chomping, then spitting out the pips.
Looking up there was this huge 12ft or so canvas, apparently of me.
Just the head and the hands in detail, the rest barely, faintly sketched in, she claimed ‘the renaissance masters only ever painted teh face and hands, they left the clothes and the backgrounds to their apprentices!’
I was more ‘but he’s got a big nose… he looks nothing like me… he’s, he’s well ugly’
she responded ‘that’s because it’s a representation of your soul… not a likeness of your physique’
ha
Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man….

not one of her piccies, but similar, continuing the cherry theme!

RB: