Category: sounds

Or a week in the life of someone who looks like they have one, however briefly.

Saturday 4 November – a UK bloggers’ meet-up. My first ever. I had already met a limited number of the people there and spoke only to them. With the exceptions of Robin (whom I read regularly) and Clare (whom I didn’t). Truth to be told I spent as much time as possible with Bernard who is the most delightful, adorable, sociable, interested and engaging young man.

Monday 6 November – on the guest list and off to the Groucho, as already related. At length.

Wednesday 8 November – met, finally, a blogger who although physically somewhat diminished was entirely wonderful, clever, funny, and someone I’m so happy to know offline as well as on. It’s difficult not to say something trite about him. So instead read his own, extremely untrite, words linked to above. In the evening I went to the LSE and listened to Alain de Botton‘s talk based on his new book, then recorded an interview with him (which may or may not appear on the web at some point). Snap review? oh ok then… although I admire his ability to bring complex ideas to an audience which might not otherwise be exposed to them (a populariser in the best sense of the word) he’s bitten off more than he can chew with the phenomenology of architecture and to concentrate only on the facade at the expense of space and all other aspects of architecture is… facile. And it’s totally eurocentric.

Friday 10 November – A delicious evening with C at Octave which was hosting Anita Wardell on this the opening night of the London Jazz Festival.

We ate a selection of animals carefully carved and introduced to culinary procedures for varying lengths of time (my venison was very rare). The music was excellent although this was the most up-tempo and altogether joyous scat-filled version of the jazz staple Willow Weep for Me I’ve ever heard. And the drummer of the quartet looked disturbingly like one of my disturbing and long-ago ex-boyfriends.

Saturday 11 November – More jazz. Given the choice by H of Norwegian or Cameroonian jazz I was decidedly in favour of the latter. During my recent brief sojourn to Norway I had been given a triple CD of the country’s jazz highlights as selected by the Ministry of Tourism and, having listened to all of it, felt it had filled my quota for the year. Besides I’m very fond of Manu Dibango (have I ever mentioned drinking champagne with him on my birthday, outside under the brilliant stars and velvet sky of the southern hemisphere?) Unfortunately Richard Bona was already sold out so we went, somewhat hesitantly, to the Finnish experimental contemporary big band instead. It was absolutely brilliant.

About 20 men in not-quite-matching black suits mostly looking like bank clerks making a sublime sound of great complexity. The imaginative and catchy title of this post is actually that of the UMO Jazz Orchestra‘s latest record, or in Finnish Sauna palaa! The album’s tracks are all inspired by Finland’s national writer Aleksis Kivi – read the background and listen to a couple of the track here.

I’ve spent today recovering with a little light housework interspersed with the crossword. Given that my life consists of childcare, animal husbandry and work it’s unlikely that I shall experience such a social whirl for at least another year. Which is probably a good thing since, unaccustomed as I am to leaving the house, I was poleaxed by the price of everything and will have to allow my wallet at least that long to recover.

Or a week in the life of someone who looks like they have one, however briefly.

Saturday 4 November – a UK bloggers’ meet-up. My first ever. I had already met a limited number of the people there and spoke only to them. With the exceptions of Robin (whom I read regularly) and Clare (whom I didn’t). Truth to be told I spent as much time as possible with Bernard who is the most delightful, adorable, sociable, interested and engaging young man.

Monday 6 November – on the guest list and off to the Groucho, as already related. At length.

Wednesday 8 November – met, finally, a blogger who although physically somewhat diminished was entirely wonderful, clever, funny, and someone I’m so happy to know offline as well as on. It’s difficult not to say something trite about him. So instead read his own, extremely untrite, words linked to above. In the evening I went to the LSE and listened to Alain de Botton‘s talk based on his new book, then recorded an interview with him (which may or may not appear on the web at some point). Snap review? oh ok then… although I admire his ability to bring complex ideas to an audience which might not otherwise be exposed to them (a populariser in the best sense of the word) he’s bitten off more than he can chew with the phenomenology of architecture and to concentrate only on the facade at the expense of space and all other aspects of architecture is… facile. And it’s totally eurocentric.

Friday 10 November – A delicious evening with C at Octave which was hosting Anita Wardell on this the opening night of the London Jazz Festival.

We ate a selection of animals carefully carved and introduced to culinary procedures for varying lengths of time (my venison was very rare). The music was excellent although this was the most up-tempo and altogether joyous scat-filled version of the jazz staple Willow Weep for Me I’ve ever heard. And the drummer of the quartet looked disturbingly like one of my disturbing and long-ago ex-boyfriends.

Saturday 11 November – More jazz. Given the choice by H of Norwegian or Cameroonian jazz I was decidedly in favour of the latter. During my recent brief sojourn to Norway I had been given a triple CD of the country’s jazz highlights as selected by the Ministry of Tourism and, having listened to all of it, felt it had filled my quota for the year. Besides I’m very fond of Manu Dibango (have I ever mentioned drinking champagne with him on my birthday, outside under the brilliant stars and velvet sky of the southern hemisphere?) Unfortunately Richard Bona was already sold out so we went, somewhat hesitantly, to the Finnish experimental contemporary big band instead. It was absolutely brilliant.

About 20 men in not-quite-matching black suits mostly looking like bank clerks making a sublime sound of great complexity. The imaginative and catchy title of this post is actually that of the UMO Jazz Orchestra‘s latest record, or in Finnish Sauna palaa! The album’s tracks are all inspired by Finland’s national writer Aleksis Kivi – read the background and listen to a couple of the track here.

I’ve spent today recovering with a little light housework interspersed with the crossword. Given that my life consists of childcare, animal husbandry and work it’s unlikely that I shall experience such a social whirl for at least another year. Which is probably a good thing since, unaccustomed as I am to leaving the house, I was poleaxed by the price of everything and will have to allow my wallet at least that long to recover.

What a night. It was about the time that it became what a morning that P, legs stretched out long across the thick carpet as he lay nearly horizontal in the embrace of the pale oxblood leather sofa, imparted this choice piece of information.

“Elvis ate squirrel.”

M, the internationally renowned artist, writer and something to do with a seminal British band, still huddled in a large black coat and wooly scarf with his couture sub-bondage-trousered legs curled beneath his hunched form, nodded in agreement.

The waiter, for whom the word “sashay” had been invented, shimmied across the room, tray balanced on the flattened hand of one elegantly up-curved arm, his tall, handsome dancer’s grace slightly marred by excessive diameter of the circles described by his hips. Another round of drinks was placed carefully on napkins on the low table.

Those familiar with the calibre of my mind will realise that I immediately assumed this remark referred to a sexual practice popular among popstars of the 60s with which I was not yet acquainted. Either personally or by repute.

“He, uh, ate squirrel? Elvis? The Elvis?”

P nodded silently, his electric blue eyes conveying not a hint of the salacious.

I was at a loss. J, for whom these surroundings were equally unexpected and unfamiliar, studiously avoided my gaze and seemed preoccupied with her dry white wine. I took refuge in my capybara*, sucked vigourously on the straw and managed to produce the revolting rattling noise so beloved by small children with fizzy drinks.

We were in London’s legendary haunt of artists, glitterati, media daaahlings and other variants of the uncommon or hothouse luvvie, the Groucho Club, but the evening had started much earlier at an equally unlikely venue – The Fly, for the album launch party of Akira the Don.

J and I hadn’t been entirely optimistic about the quality of the entertainment, but it’s not every day that one can say “I’m on the guest list” so we went along. And although the support acts were less than brilliant Akira the Don was really very good and the evening was described by the Don himself on his blog as “so, yeah, dope“.

That’s him in the middle there. The long blonde hair is clearly visible but you can’t see the Dali moustache and generic beard. The presence in the audience of a white-haired vicar in a suit wearing a poppy in his buttonhole and a woman older than I was accounted for by the woman on the right being their daughter. They pulled up the average age of the crowd closer to our own, but it still hovered around 19 years.

How did two staid middle-aged matrons without offspring in the band end up at such an event? If you visit Akira the Don’s music page you’ll see a small boy dressed as a pirate with big blue eyes. He is my son A’s best friend as well as being the son of my friend F and P, manager of the Don.

It was they who wafted us off to the Groucho after the gig for “a quick drink”. I in my dog-walking jeans and bull-dyke-arse-kicking-boots, J in the clothes appropriate for a work-related course on the oncology of the head and neck. I was worried we wouldn’t be let in, but entirely groundlessly so.

Even when F and P left us there because they had to rescue the baby-sitter nobody stared or pointed us out as obvious interlopers. The drinks are possibly the most expensive in London but fortunately I’d found a £10 note on the pavement so that about covered one capybara, which helped. Even habitué M left to drive back to the home counties and listen to the new Dylan album. We eventually staggered out at nearly 2am feeling thoroughly decadent and more than somewhat smug.

And what about “eating squirrel” I hear you ask. Well, it was no more than the literal truth. His family was poor so to supplement their diet they shot and ate the local arboreal residents. Yes, I know. Slightly disappointing. But it might have been some really gross rodent abuse which you’d much rather forget about but be unable to put out of your mind having once heard the details, so be grateful.

* More generally known as a caipirinha but I can neither pronounce nor spell it, unlike the rodent referred to above.