jazzsharking

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF (HIS) MIND..

2011-01-08T08:52:00.006-05:00

In some ways the TH is spectacularly dependable.
For instance, I can totally depend on him to do some slightly 'odd' things in my absence. Putting his name down for a 300 mile bike ride when he didn't even own a bike, is one case which springs to mind.

So it came as no great surprise this morning to hear, by way of twitter, that no sooner am I on a plane and out of sight, he has decided to 'do' the Brockwell Lido Mid-Winter Swim today. Which would be all very well, (well, when I say 'all very well', clearly I don't mean that - how is it 'all very well' to swim in an outdoor unheated pool in minus 4 degrees? But we're talking about the TH here so let's make some allowances). It might be 'all very well', except for the fact that the first (and indeed last) time I found myself in a pool with him, I discovered he couldn't really actually....errrr...swim....?

In tour management we call that 'logistically impossible', but he's in IT so I guess to him it's merely an 'issue'.

Good luck with that then....

JOBS, KEYS, PLANTS AND ANIMALS

2008-07-22T21:25:00.008-04:00

In my desperation to leave New York's unbearable heat, I have somehow ended up on the West Coast responsible for one and a half apartments, two cairn terriers, 30 plants, an office, a music festival and (part of the time) two cats.
As something or someone always needs feeding, watering, peeing, tuning, cleaning, walking, organising, rehearsing, marketing, complimenting, ushering or selling, then unfortunately there is absolutely No.Time.To.Blog.
Or eat.
Or sleep.

OUT OF CONTROL

2008-06-23T09:25:00.007-04:00

I got back from Rochester (note to self - do not explore any more of the USA - NY is just fine) to find a significant amount of rubble on the kitchen floor, and a hole in the wall. The TH, despite having been here the whole time, had somehow failed to notice this. I really don't like the outdoors at the best of times, and particularly at this time of year, and now there is uncontrollable 'weather' in the kitchen.
I am presuming that this is a 'mistake' rather than the revised building 'Fire Safety Plan'....although the builders responsible for the hole clearly aren't particularly perturbed as they have disappeared. For two days now.

The doorbell rang at 7am this morning and the neighbour is delivering our current house guest, who she'd found asleep outside on the corridor floor. She hates anything 'messing up' the corridor, and given the fuss she makes about umbrellas being left there, I can see that the aftermath of finding a whole person on the doorstep is going to run and run. I use the term 'whole person' with caution, as this is the second time in 3 nights now that J has spectacularly failed to find his bed and what with jetting about, jetlag, jazz gigs and JB taking care of 23 hours out of every 24, I figure he can't have had more than one night's sleep in about the last 6 days.
He is nevertheless looking far better for it than I am.

I just knew it was going to get messy.

EST

2008-06-16T19:56:00.014-04:00

A sad day.

I found myself quite by accident this afternoon watching Lee Siegel's fascinating talk about the internet and how it affects/has affected our lives and culture.
To take his comments slightly out of context (which of course he'd hate), what rang particularly true for me today was his description of the difference between 'commercial' culture and 'high' culture.
'Commercial culture is all about the gratification of self-interest and it involves the total engagement of your ego'.
Whereas with 'high' culture - 'At the heart of a successful work of Art, lies something fresh and other.' You are 'sprung from the daily pressures of self-interest and you lay yourself and your ego aside'.

I mention all this because I found out this morning that the Swedish pianist Esbjorn Svensson died on Saturday evening in a diving accident.
He was 44.
Quite apart from feeling the tragedy of someone dying so young and leaving behind a young family, I was surprised at how personally upset I felt. And I think the reason relates to Siegel's words.
I have been to hear the Esbjorn Svensson Trio perform maybe a dozen times, I met him a couple of times and I loved his music.
He was one of the rare performers I could go to hear where, no matter what was going on in my life, I could guarantee that I would be 'taken out of myself' and would literally 'lose' myself in his musical storytelling. A very welcome 'laying aside' of the ego. For whatever reason, this happens to me only occasionally these days - the odd amazing book and a small number of musical experiences. There is now one less and I feel that loss.

In a World where we are inundated with 'commercial' culture, his music reached out to touch a new younger audience for jazz, it was popular in the broadest sense, and yet retained the utmost artistic integrity.

He leaves us with an amazing collection of beautiful recorded work, but already I miss the anticipation of his next live performance, the promise of experiencing something 'other'.
Here is one of my favourite pieces - from gagarin's point of view.
RIP Esbjorn.

2008-06-11T12:34:00.006-04:00

It’s been over 100 degrees here for days now. Obviously I’m not going out in that! So with so much Mozart work to do I’ve had to be quite creative in devising apartment-bound procrastination techniques. Having cleaned everything, deleted 543 emails, filed all my documents and got back in touch with everyone I vaguely remember on Friends Reunited.... I've now resorted to memes. Here’s a fantastic pointless waste of time. You set your itunes to ‘random’ then answer the following questions with whatever track comes up. No cheating. It’s uncanny!

What does next year have in store for me?
Seattle – Avishai Cohen

What’s my love life like?
He Thinks He’ll Keep Her – Mary Chapin Carpenter

What do I say when life gets hard?
It’s Crazy – Sarah Vaughan

What song should I have danced to at my wedding?
All the Things You are – Clare Foster (Clare actually sang at my wedding, so it’s entirely possible this happened..)

What do you want as a career?
1979 Semi-Finalist – Bad Plus

Famous last words?
Sweet Sorrow – Joshua Redman

Your favourite saying?
Interested – India Arie

Favourite place?
St Louis Blues – Gil Evans

What do you think of your parents?
I Worn My Elbows – Ivor Cutler

Where would you go on a first date?
What Was Going On – Steve Lawson

Describe yourself.
You are Driving Me Crazy – Chet Baker

What is the thing I like doing most?
Stuff Like That – Quincy Jones

What is my state of mind like at the moment?
Vicious World – Rufus Wainwright

How will I die?
Speed Of Light – Teenage Fanclub

BUMF

2008-06-07T13:04:00.005-04:00

Today we received a document from our landlord entitled 'Fire Safety Plan'.

'Aha' I thought, 'finally they've noticed that our building is rather prone to spontaneous combustion....'

This is what it says:

Sprinkler System: No
Fire Alarm: No
Public Address System: No
Other Information: There is no access to any adjoining buildings from the roof level.

That is actually ALL it says, apart from mentioning that our exit is via the main lobby door, which after three years here I've just about got to grips with...

Hmmm. So where exactly is the 'safety' part, or indeed the 'plan'?

WORK IS THE CURSE OF THE DRINKING CLASSES

2008-06-06T20:33:00.043-04:00

Paula in town a couple of weeks ago. Her presence tornado-like, sweeping up everyone around her and carrying them along in a whirlwind of spontaneous adventure and ...errrr ...champagne. You’ve got to love a girl you’ve never met before who hands you a book (a very beautiful book I might add) of photos of herself (mostly minus clothing), practically before she’s even said hello. We were introduced by a mutual friend, and clearly he has permission to introduce anyone to me from now on.

There haven’t been enough people in my life like this lately, but unfortunately they have all chosen to visit in the same month. I think I can say with some precision that I am unlikely to be sober again now until June 29th.

And so to the Marquis and Ben. The really terrible thing about house guests like these is that at some point they GO HOME. Who is leaving liquor chocolates on my pillow, making Vietnamese coffee and playing Chopin in the front room now huh? Not the TH....
Oh God I love these two. Serene and charming by day, witty and spirited at night.

All too soon their final evening, which began in a very civilized manner with drinks and chat on JB & Uptown Nigel’s roof deck. One of those totally perfect times with four of my favourite people in the World, who were all totally in love with each other from practically the moment they met. (Flashbacks to Commuter Jazz Friday gatherings.) It was hard to believe (certainly from my point of view) that the evening could possibly get any better than THIS.

But 6 hours and many drinks later, off we cabbed into the village night. Despite persistent denials from the Marquis, I remain convinced that he is keyholder of this entire city, as I have yet to enter a bar with him where everything is not ‘taken care of’ by some mysterious benefactor behind the scenes. And so it was at the first bar, where incidentally, even Brooke Shields hobbled over on her crutches to catch a glimpse of the glamorous Nola boys (although for some reason they thought it was the other way round). There was also a famous rock band at our table, apparently. But don’t ask who because by this point I could barely remember my own name.

2am or thereabouts and onto another bar. On the way I befriended one of our party – a lovely guy from New Orleans who looked like a sound engineer and was called Newark or Kennedy or perhaps some other airport? Oh wait, maybe it was a State? He’d just been auditioning for a ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’ movie special and was clearly about 50 drinks behind us. He was one of several people that evening I think I invited to come and stay at some point...but probably the only time I meant it..

Everybody at the next bar had had at least as much to drink as us and it appeared that they had been waiting for our arrival all night. JB had a harem following him around from the moment he walked through the door and there was a pool game, of sorts, but very little of it was taking place on the pool table. Despite being (the only) female in a gay bar, even I got hit on. My hitter was cute as all hell and I was more than happy to spend an hour staring into his pretty eyes whilst he poured out his heart about having a girlfriend at home who had no idea that he was gay. I don’t think I invited him to stay too, but it’s not impossible....

Home finally at 0 dark thirty. The Marquis and I debrief at the kitchen table, and I brag about never getting to the point when I’ve drunk too much to talk. I am conscious that I am slurring the word ‘talk’. And the word ‘alcohol’ is impossible.

I hate it when they leave, but it’s fortuitous at least for Demidenko, who might not otherwise have had a piano for his performances in July....
Owen arrives next week for doubtless more of the same. And so it goes on....

But for now Shark is Working.
Please Do Not Disturb.

TOWERING INFERNO 2. THE SEQUEL.

2008-05-13T18:51:00.009-04:00

The sirens are louder than usual and more persistent. After ten minutes of this racket I go to the window.

Flashbacks to November ’05, only this time there are NINE fire engines parked outside our apartment block and the avenue has been cordoned off three blocks in both directions. A crowd has gathered and is staring up at somewhere that looks alarmingly close to us.

I immediately hear fireman Barry Whybrow’s voice in these situations and go into auto-pilot from years of fire training at the RFH. They were skills I never actually got to use there (which is amazing now that I think about the various drunken escapades I was involved in during that particular period of my life), but need all too often in NY it seems. I check the corridor – a smell of burning but no smoke. In the bedroom however, alongside the smell of burning there is an ominous noise of clanking metal, shouting and banging coming from the direction of 13B on the other side of the wall. Hang on – that’s our ‘love, marriage and relationship Gua’. It can’t burn down! I can’t even begin to imagine what the burning down of an entire Gua means in Feng Shui, but I’m sure it’s not good. This being no wimpy ‘two engine fire’ just a wall away from us, I start shutting windows and doors and get my jacket.

‘I think the fire’s on the other side of our bedroom wall’.
The TH, who has clearly never done one nanosecond of fire training in his life, sits back down on the sofa.
‘What are you doing?!’
‘I’m watching the end of ‘House’.
‘Oh okay – I’ll tell the fire to wait until ‘House’ has finished shall I……’.
‘It’s under control now’.
‘And you know this HOW?’

I vaguely remember being taught about people like the TH in fire training too, and seem to recall that you’re supposed to knock them out. (Or was that life-saving someone who’s drowning?)

A lot of the tenants are in the lobby or collecting underneath the scaffolding outside. It’s rare you get to see the inhabitants of the whole building together like this and the doorman is not finding the fact that the building is on fire during his shift anywhere near as difficult as the fact that all his ‘girlfriends’ are suddenly all together in one place, demanding his usually forthcoming ‘special attention’.

It’s warm outside, but there are miniscule shivering dogs everywhere, because clearly they’re too tiny to maintain any kind of sensible body temperature. I have to concentrate hard not to tread on them.

Most gatherings of more than two people in NY turn into a ‘speed dating’ event sooner or later, and the TH has scored within seconds, as some scantily-clad-twenty-something-yr-old-stranger starts telling him all about her last disastrous relationship, and asks if all men in the UK are ‘nice like him’. Only in New York. I move over and put my arm through his. She looks devastated, and is suddenly not interested in his company and wanders off to order a takeout to be delivered to her ‘on the sidewalk where the fire is’. A couple of apartments are burning down and the neighbours are hitting on each other’s husbands and ordering their dinner.

Don’t you just love this city.

The fire out, we trudge back up 26 flights of stairs, where it becomes all too apparent who goes to the gym and who doesn't. On the upside, nobody was injured this time around, and it turns out that the fire wasn't in our relationship Gua. It remains to be seen who or what is......

QI TO THE HIGHWAY

2008-05-06T16:25:00.018-04:00

Apologies for the 9 month glitch. No I haven’t had a baby. Actually I’ve no idea what happened, aside from a few months work, but I have to write now because I’ve been introduced to Feng Shui by the ever-helpful T, and one of the fundamental rules is that if I haven’t used something for months then I have to throw it away.

The introduction of Feng Shui into my life was supposed to make things easier, but instead it seems to have thrown up a whole new layer of problems.
For instance – our apartment’s 'Bagua' totally lacks a ‘love, marriage and relationship’ section. It simply doesn’t have one. Our love, marriage and relationship area is actually in apartment 13B. I have no idea who lives in 13B. (Yet...)
‘Perhaps we should find out who lives in apartment 13B. We may find the love of our lives there or something…’ (me to the TH. Half joking. Obviously).
TH, not even looking up from his latest CDO crisis - ‘yes darling, that’s a great idea. I totally agree’.
‘Errrr, did you hear what I said?’
Pause. ‘Errr .. no not really’.
All of which kind of speaks for itself.

Then there is the prosperity, wealth and abundance area. Currently the toilet. Which frankly explains a lot. Short of moving the lavatory or the front door, neither of which would probably be acceptable tenant behaviour, there is very little I can do.
‘You’ll have to move’ T concluded decisively. Actually with our current prosperity, wealth and abundance situation we probably will have to move…..

Aside from these major problems, there is the relatively minor problem of me sleeping directly underneath a beam. This merely means that I have health problems in my whole body. I tried sleeping across the bed, which apparently only creates health problems in the thigh area, but this puts me in the ‘lonely pillow’ position.
Yeah. I’ll say.
Have you ever tried sleeping diagonally across your partner?

And DON’T and I repeat DON’T try this at home - the’ hanging of bamboo flutes from the beam’ solution - because they HURT when they fall on your head.
There is an alternative if we switch the whole room around, but this would mean Qi coming down from the sides of the beam between us, causing ‘separation or divorce’. A no win situation I think you’ll agree.

On the upside, if you're coming to visit, then the guest room is the centre of offspring. You have been warned.

So I have to do what I can, which is the 'clearing of clutter'. Luckily it is Spring in New York now, which usually lasts for about 4 days, so I am spending the week spring cleaning before it gets too hot to do anything other than get on a plane to somewhere else.

As part of this process, the right hand links column of this blog is about to undergo a ruthless cull, so if you want to stay linked you’d better have blogged in the last few months or I'd better have eaten in you. In short, and in the words of Ryan Seacrest, very few of you, aside from my American Idol the Marquis, are 'safe'.
Just sayin’.

2007-08-30T11:18:00.000-04:00

Harlem sunset.

Harlem blues.

PUTTING MY FOOT IN IT

2007-08-19T20:00:00.000-04:00

'Could the next guest in line step down please'.

Uh?

I am in the chemists, where I have been queuing (as opposed to 'lining') for at least 10 minutes, whilst the one member of staff on a till does everything BUT take money from people (telephone calls, fetching carrier-bags, discussing the weather).

I have had a futile shopping afternoon where I have been humiliated in at least ten shoe shops for the size of my feet, which absolutely nowhere, (and I repeat nowhere) in this 'capital of all cities' caters for, and this sentence is frankly the final straw.

Hell, if she can discuss hurricanes for five minutes, she can discuss this. 'I am not a guest, I'm a customer'. She looks at me like I'm insane. I probably look insane with my American size 11 ww freaky feet. 'A patron, a customer, but not a guest'. I am quite calm in my madness. She has gone all quiet and takes my money very quickly. 'I would be a guest if I had stayed here for the night for instance'. I realise I have gone a little too far now, and the thought also strikes me that it's entirely possible that people spend the whole night in drugstores here on account of it being impossible to find anything. But I carry on nevertheless 'and it's not step down, because there's no step and we're not on any sort of gradient - it's an entirely flat surface'.
Sometimes I can be really mean and horrible.

She hands me my receipt and eyes the phone.
I, for once, do not get told to have a nice day, and to add insult to injury she then says 'Could the next guest in line step down'.

Today my Bridget Jones count is:
packets of hula hoops consumed - 3.

As these clearly go straight to my feet, I guess I come out the loser.

TALES FROM THE CITY

2007-07-26T03:05:00.001-04:00

I am doing the craziest job. Last week working 14-hour days. Thrown in at the deep end, there was nothing for it but to crisis-manage seven days a week. For instance, I didn’t really expect to be having to first build the venues I was supposed to be working in ……the orchestra rehearsing as I (try to quietly) move 600 chairs around them, labeling them with seat numbers…..

But there can be no better place in which to commute.
This city is beautiful. Taking the MUNI to work in the morning, a ten minute journey on the cute one-car KLM trains, I feel like a tourist in my wonder, but a local as the newspaper-stand man nods a good-morning recognition greeting to me, offering change as I stand by the ticket machines. I wear my weirdest clothes, and unlike in New York, nobody cares or stares.

Driving through Californian micro-climates for hours, to and from the concerts with the festival director, the soloist and her husband – lovely people. Several nationalities of humour going on in the car, but we nevertheless get on fabulously.

I smoke occasionally late at night on the back balcony, losing whole packets of cigarettes to the middle-class ‘Rear Window’ patios and random passageways in the perpetual SF breeze. The apartment directly behind has had the same dishes waiting to be washed in the sink for 12 days now. A photograph on the wall of the apartment across the way appears and disappears, depending on who is visiting.....
I observe these human scenes, but it is the mists which really fascinate me – forever changing over Twin Peaks in the near distance.
There is proper weather here.

I am staying in an apartment owned by singers, but clearly run by cats. Voices from behind every door - E rehearsing Mozart, the lovely S rehearsing show songs, J next door - a beautiful and powerful voice rehearsing for the Met.

Magnificat is totally in control. Pizzicato lounges around nonchalantly, venturing out of hiding only occasionally to get beaten up by her brother, and partake of some serious stroking and the ‘catnip high’ bestowed on her by passing adults. I’m very fond of Pizzi, and relate to her lifestyle utterly. If I were a cat, I would be like this cat. Aloof yet desiring of affection, but not willing to move too far in order to receive it....

FACING UP TO THE PAST

2007-07-13T09:39:00.000-04:00

My online life seems to have migrated to facebook, and as if that isn't bad enough news for this blog, I discovered from a 19 yr old last night that something called (if I understood correctly) 'asmallworld' is about to 'take over' from facebook. Blogging is clearly not even yesterday's news anymore, but more like a relic from the upper jurassic period.

Frankly, it's asmallenoughworldalready for me, as recently I've become re-acquainted (via facebook and myspace and everyone else's spacebooks) with not only pretty much every ex-significant-other I ever had, but also people I merely bought a lettuce off in 1979. If I re-discover any more friends or acquaintances from my very distant past I'm in serious danger of losing my mystique.

So anyway, I went to Canada. And that was a blast. Met some amazing people, saw some brilliant music and did some very successful research for next year's jazz project. Oh yes, and I went on a boat underneath this......

I was under the mistaken impression that Niagara Falls was one of the Seven Wonders of the World (which believe me, it should be), until I did some online research. It seems that nowadays wonders of the world are being created and re-named all the time, rather like online communities, and far from being just seven, there are now about 150 of them. But sadly no Niagara.

Whilst I was away the TH managed to enroll himself on a 275 mile sponsored bike ride. Which is all very well, except I had to point out to him that he didn't even own a bike. (Forward planning has never been one of his strengths.) So I sent him off to buy a bike and he also came back with an i-phone - which is apparently completely essential biking gear. Yeah right. He has since started 'training', which is a rather glamorous way of saying that he now cycles to KFC when he has a craving in the middle of the night, rather than walks.
If you would like to sponsor him, you can do so online here.
It's a very worthy cause, and he's determined to do it, though heaven knows at what cost in medical bills afterwards....

And now I must pack. Again. Tomorrow to San Francisco.

FLYING VISITS

2007-06-15T03:44:00.000-04:00

Knowing Andy is like having an up-to-the-minute interactive copy of Time Out London, as he is inevitably taking part in any event worth seeing. So last Friday and Saturday was spent at the Royal Festival Hall re-opening events (where A was performing), catching up with many very missed friends, joy-riding in the new glass elevator and testing out all the new bars (including one which was formerly my office....)

RFH re-opening 'Singing River' Project

Two hours after playing sax in a big band at the RFH, A was riding naked through the streets of London in the World Naked Bike Ride. Obviously.

J felt it only right and proper to set up a water station at the side of the road, but was (for some reason) being very selective as to who was allowed water. I will leave the criteria to your imagination.

A opts for something stronger

Have since spent a day with the lovely sister et famille who were visiting from Berlin, attended meetings re. my trip to Canada next week (where I'll be researching a very exciting forthcoming jazz project), lost games of Pictionary to the lovely tenants, refurbished the bathroom, attended the RFH gala opening concert and traversed London three times to get rebuilt by my genius osteopath.

What I've not managed to do is sleep.

Tomorrow New York. Next week Canada.
My global footprint is fast becoming as embarrassing as my actual shoe size...

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

2007-06-05T21:15:00.000-04:00

I think it's only fair to point out to anyone who may be contemplating a NY visit to stay chez nous, that a whole new standard has been set in house guests recently.

These days it is customary to cook gourmet meals for the hosts on a daily basis (thanks L), whilst pandering to the dietary whims of the shark following wisdom teeth removal (thanks to the marquis for the best chocolate mousse I have ever tasted), arrive with the entire contents of a 5-star casino minibar (thanks Ben) and THEN send care packages post departure, either containing clothes that the shark has coveted (thanks in advance L) or containing limited edition art for our hitherto artless walls (thanks to the very talented Todd Perley).

No pressure....

You can see more of Todd's wonderful artwork here

ON BEING A PROMOTER AND A FAN

2007-06-04T13:44:00.000-04:00

18 months down the line and I feel I am really getting to grips with the jazz scene here.
It’s not simply a case of knowing who plays or sings with whom, how good they are and what they sound like. To me it is also just as important to know, for instance, that Robert Glasper drinks vodka and cranberry juice and nods on the offbeat, whereas Derrick Hodge nods on the beat. It is important to know who brings their own piano stool or mic to a gig, which make of piano or bass amp they prefer, whether they’re a left or right-handed drummer and what their preferred stage layout is, whether they’re vegetarian, vegan or carnivores. Because those details are what make a promoter a really good promoter. I have been watching, listening and learning, and finally I am feeling the beginnings of a reassuring familiarity here.

And a word on my new favourite venue - the Highline Ballroom. It's only been open for just over a month, but despite a few teething problems (very few in fact, considering, such as the kitchen not being quite operational yet), it already seems to be selling-out a large number of shows (not bad for a 700 capacity venue), and has found a niche that no other venue in New York seems to be covering. If the TH and I were to come up with a list of all the bands we'd like to see live, they are already on, or doubtless soon will be on the Highline's programme. This is even more interesting considering our tastes, which despite crossing over to some degree, are still fairly different. We have been to 6 or 7 gigs there already and have a whole lot more booked. In fact, between us, we ARE the target audience, clearly. There is no other venue I can think of with a programme covering everything from Amy Winehouse to the Bad Plus, Meshell Ndegeocello, Jonatha Brooke, Ojos de Brujo, Mos Def and the Brand New Heavies. Joe's Pub, our erstwhile favourite venue, comes close, but isn't big enough to attract the larger names.

On top of which, here is a venue that seems to have got everything RIGHT. The layout is superb, feeling intimate despite its capacity, with perfect sightlines everywhere. The sound system and lighting are awesome, and the staff are (so far) lovely. They still haven't quite sorted out their seating policy, which seems to change on an almost daily basis, but as we've befriended the bartenders, we have so far been lucky enough to procure a seat whenever we've wanted one. And it's not cheap - but then why should it be, considering the quality of the bands, equipment and general gig experience there. So a BIG UP to the Highline, and if you've not yet been, then check it out.

Mos Def at the Highline Ballroom

NEVER WORK WITH CHILDREN OR ANIMALS

2007-05-13T11:53:00.000-04:00

Have spent the week in dark gigs on account of half my face turning blue. I take it this is some sort of after-effect of wisdom teeth removal, but at my post-op appointment on Thursday the surgeon was convinced that it was way too late for bruises to start appearing so it must be something to do with the TH. I could have dined out on that one quite a bit this week, if I were able to dine yet, that is.
The medical profession will say anything here to avoid being sued, although I guess I could have sued him for libel.

So last night en-route to another gig, the TH and I stumbled into one of those peculiarly New York cab experiences.
Granted it was a people carrier, but it's not often you get into a taxi and immediately realise that you're sharing it with quite a few others. For starters there was a large cat draped across the top of the dashboard. And a young child in the front passenger seat. I say 'in' but she had no seatbelt on and a very bad case of ADD, so was more or less everywhere in the car except in the front passenger seat. She spent most of the journey on or around the steering wheel, occasionally crawling down to experiment with the pedals. The driver, who was straight out of The Sopranos, seemed totally oblivious to this and was on his cellphone ordering takeout pizza whilst simultaneously running a heartfelt momologue to nobody in particular about how cellphones cause brain tumours and in 34 years exactly, all the cellphone companies would have to compensate everyone and hence provide him with a pension. In his free hand he was brandishing a bottle of chocolate milk at just about every other driver on the road.
At one point the cat stretched and yawned, completely obscuring the windscreen, the chocolate milk went flying and were it not for the child landing on the brake pedal, last night's gig would have had two less patrons. It was during the emergency stop, as we lurched backwards that we noticed the jagged metal rods protruding between our seats and turned round to find the entire contents of somebody's house in the back. Completely obscuring the rear window. Maths has never been my strong point so I genuinely lost count of the number of violations we were dealing with here, but that was probably just as well, seeing as we were stuck in a confined space with a couple of troubled Sopranos. And I'm not talking about their vocal range.

I do love the Eggplants, but I've never felt quite so happy to arrive at one of their gigs. We handed over a ten dollar bill for the 7 dollar fare. The child (who can't have been older than 6) grabbed the money and asked us threateningly if we wanted change. Of course we didn't.....

SLEEPY HEAD

2007-05-03T17:36:00.000-04:00

So these are the lengths I'll go to lately in order to score a couple of hours of sleep. This morning I had my first ever general anaesthetic.

I was actually having my wisdom teeth removed at the time, but I don't think anyone would have got me to the surgeon in the first place for this particularly jaunty little Thursday outing unless there was at least the promise of a good nap attached.

General anaesthetics are a pretty weird sort of sleep it turned out -
I didn't dream and I had no concept whatsoever of the passage of time, so I did feel a bit cheated out of knowing that I'd slept. After the fact like.... But the words small, mercy, thankful, one should be, come to mind, because I can also now strike off my very extensive list of pointless (though imaginative) worries, (which are part of my insomnia problem in the first place), the one where I might be one of those people who doesn't respond to general anaesthetics and is therefore aware during operations without being able to communicate it - euggggh. I don't need to worry about that anymore because I was definitely unconscious. I know this because in the interim I'd managed to gain several holes in my mouth (although weirdly some where there weren't even teeth ...), which are now stuffed with gauze, a bunch of random stitches, and a really fashionable, if scary, chipmunk-gets-botox-and-collagen-lips kind of look (which, sadly, might help in job interviews) - all without having a clue as to how. Mind you I've had real sleeps when I've woken up in that state too, but not, I think, since I stopped partaking in the 'Westgate Run' in Wakefield, circa 1983.

So now the pain is kicking in and despite being very hungry, I can't face the thought of the inevitable battle that would ensue between my mouth and anything I might try to put in it at the moment. So instead I am off to experiment with the sleep inducing properties of vicodin....be afraid.

DIRTY MIND

2007-04-23T04:15:00.000-04:00

At least I knew which city I was in when I woke at 3am this morning. I knew this because as I gained consciousness my brain was already deeply involved in working out the answer to a very Manhattan-specific question - 'where is my nearest soil?'. (Clearly if I'd still been in Tokyo, the question would have been totally different, and something along the lines of 'which bits of this plate of soil sitting in front of me is it safe to eat?')

I've no idea why I was so concerned about finding soil at 3am, but it seemed pretty important at the time, in the cold dark of night, so I figured the sooner I'd worked out the answer, the sooner I could get back to sleep. It was actually more complicated than I thought. Strictly speaking my nearest soil is in a small square garden a mere 2 long blocks from here. But that doesn't really count, as the garden is only accessible to residents and I don't have a key - 'private' soil, in other words. A breaking and entering situation seems a bit of a risky venture just to get hold of some soil, particularly when you don't even know what you want it for.

My nearest 'public' soil therefore must be 6 blocks south or 5 long blocks west. Which seems an awful long way when you come from London, where even in the centre of the city there are bits of grass or garden pretty much around every corner.

It's dangerous to get into any sort of 3.30am panic when you're suffering from insomnia, so even though I don't need any soil, I vowed to go out and buy some in the morning, just so as it'll be around, and I can stop worrying about it and go back to sleep. Except I have no idea where my nearest garden centre is, so now it is 4.10am and I am googling Manhattan garden centres for some soil I don't want or need, and I am very much awake.........

JETLAG

2007-04-22T03:44:00.000-04:00

1pm. I sit upright in bed, in Japan and in a panic. 'What time do we have to check out of the room?!"
The TH 'We don't have to check out of the room - you're at home......'

For three consecutive mornings (between the hours of 6am and 8am) I've had a recurring claustrophobic nightmare about lying underneath a car, (where I am retrieving someone else's mail, obviously?). My clothes get caught on the car underside, thereby trapping me. I wake up exhausted, fighting my Japanese duvet.

It is 3.44am and our nightly insomniacs party is kicking off. The TH is choosing movies and I rummage through cupboards looking for exciting ingredients to add to camomile tea.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

2007-04-15T12:29:00.000-04:00

The TH has been having a kind of mid-life crisis, brought about by his 40th birthday a couple of weeks ago. The crisis is manifesting itself in a strong desire to do dangerous things, such as bungee jumping, diving with sharks, white water rafting and eating 5-course traditional Japanese meals. I have managed to talk him out of most of these things, but yesterday failed miserably to prevent him dragging me into a Japanese restaurant. It was totally empty and nobody could speak English - never good signs in any restaurant anywhere in my book, but the TH was determined. Between bows we were muttering at each other under our breath 'It's okay I'll let you do the bungee jump, just don't make me eat here!' 'You said we're not insured for sports'. 'We're not insured for anything since Thursday. Including food!'

It was just as I'd feared. For starters the appetisers looked far from appetising. There was a solitary prawn in a lump of jelly, some raw eel and a couple of totally unidentifiable things. I ate the tiny asparagus decoration, put the eel on the TH's plate and made an attempt at the jellied prawn. Totally disgusting. Then there was a sashimi course - raw tuna and something else unidentifiable. Definitely not for me. I'll say something for Japanese food - at least it comes in really tiny portions so it can be easily disposed of in a serviette. Managed to eat the tiny piece of cooked fish which was the third course, but it was really bland ('not bland - 'subtle' the TH insisted). Then the raw beef course, by which time I was getting really hungry and my serviette was getting really full. Some rice, miso and green tea appeared, but even the rice had unidentifiable fishy things in it. The tea was murky, like a garden pond.
Dessert though, was the creme de la creme. Yum - a pot of totally tasteless white slimy things in brown sludge.

One mouthful of this and I really thought I was going to puke. It was really really really gross. It was so gross I became convinced that the chef was watching us from somewhere having a good laugh 'look at those silly English people eating the stuff I just scraped up from the plughole'.

I have not seen one overweight person since I've been in Japan. I wonder why.

TOKYO

2007-04-13T23:23:00.000-04:00

It was a long haul into Tokyo.
Contrary to expectation the Japanese hardly use (or accept) credit cards, so having cash is pretty essential. Unfortunately they don't seem to use ATM's very much either, and the ones they do use don't like USA or UK cards. It took ages to find the one machine in the whole of Narita that would give us any money, and then we went slightly mad, drawing out millions of yen in a sort of cashpoint panic.

A 70 minute fast-train into Ueno, Tokyo and there we had to switch onto the subway.
The Tokyo subway map looks like a 2-year old sat down with 24 coloured crayons and scribbled for an hour. Then some really clever calligrapher with amazing eyesight added hundreds of really tiny Kanji symbols. Errr.......?

The big subway map on the wall and all the ticket price charts were in Kanji. So were the ticket machines. On top of which, the TH kept almost knocking himself out because the entire subway system is built for people under 5 foot 8". Oh and there were hundreds and hundreds of people running around madly, trying to get to work, (or to who knows where, 'cos we couldn't read any place names.)

A long time later (ie. when we'd had time to learn the Japanese language) we managed to work out the Kanji symbol for the station we were going to, and then with much trial and error, make the ticket machine understand that too. The TH has lived in Japan for a year before now, so we were clearly at an advantage (though I failed to see what advantage exactly).

Finally we arrived at Shibuya and crossed over the famous 4-way crossing, as seen in Lost in Translation, and doubtless countless other movies.

First impressions of Tokyo.
The noise is extraordinary. All the huge billboard videos on the sides of buildings have a soundtrack and every shop has music spilling outside. It is overwhelmingly loud.

It is fast. A fast that makes New York look like a bunch of English Sunday drivers. We stopped for a coffee at Starbucks and a queue of around 20 people was served in less than a minute - scary fast. In Starbucks, as almost everywhere else, people are employed specifically to organise other people, so two people were simply organising the queue. Later that day we glimpsed the subway marshals in action, employed literally to push people on and off the overcrowded trains, and clear the platforms. I stopped on the platform for a moment to get my bearings and got ushered towards an exit quite aggressively. When a train empties, the platform is cleared within seconds.

Consequently everything at least gives the outward appearance of being super-efficient. But sometimes it feels like Big Brother. For instance, there appear to be two traffic police at each traffic light later in the day, who march into the road hands in the air at every red light. Why does a red traffic light also need two people to stop the traffic one has to ask?

We walked around the area and up to Takeshita Street - which I guess is Tokyo's Camden. The pavements are spotlessly clean - not a cigarette butt in sight. Then I realise that there are 'no smoking' signs along the actual streets and smoking areas with ashtrays at street corners. The few people who are smoking as they walk are carrying portable ashtrays.

Yes it's true that Japanese schoolgirls wear ridiculously short mini-skirts. And yes it's true that you can buy almost anything from a myriad of vending machines. It also seems to be true that Japanese females wear shoes at least 2 sizes too big for them, making it very difficult for them to walk and almost impossible to run as they drag their hanging-off-footwear after them. I can only presume this is some sort of weird fashion statement?

Then the subway to Roppongi. Tokyo is vast and sprawling, which you start to understand when you realise you can spend 40 minutes on a subway and still exit somewhere as central as when you went in. First to the new Ritz-Carlton hotel to check out the venue Tessa will be playing in all Summer. We sneaked past a 'residents only' sign and had a couple of drinks in the gorgeous 45th floor lounge, taking sneaky photos to show T. That'll be a nice gig. Then to a bar Bryan had mentioned to us the previous evening - 'Geronimo's'. It's extraordinary how bars here can be up in a tiny elevator to the second floor, like you're going to someone's apartment, with no clue whatsoever on the outside as to where the place is. The bar was full of English-speaking residents and within the hour we were all MySpace friends because they're musicians really. It's a shot bar so we left before we were forced to buy the whole bar a round and donate a tie of the TH's to the trader's 'wall of ties'.......

The last train to Narita.

NARITA

2007-04-12T22:32:00.000-04:00

Narita airport is something between 60 and 90km from downtown Tokyo, depending which guide book you're reading, but either way it's a very long train journey or apparently 300 dollars in a cab. So, as we only expected to be here for one night, we're staying at the Narita Hilton, near the airport.

In the bar yesterday evening, I had my first lesson in Japanese culture. The waiters first bowing, then crouching down below my eye-level to talk to me or serve my drink. The seats are pretty low anyway, so this is some big crouch thing going on. I wonder how I could ever strike up any kind of meaningful conversation or relationship with a bartender under these circumstances (which disturbs me.) On top of which, I am feeling for their knees.....

Then this morning I had to become familiar with the ritual at the swimming pool. First there's the bowing, then establishing that I want to swim when the receptionist understands no English, so a bit of swimming miming followed by some more bowing. Then I get a locker key in exchange for my room key and a bow, then some form filling in exchange for some towels and some bowing. Wow. I'd pretty much had a workout by the time I got to the entrance. Then you have to take your shoes off and swap them for some slippers to walk to the changing room, where you take them off again (?) and put them in the slipper basket. Then before getting into the pool you have to walk through a series of about 3 showers and paddling pools until you're really really clean. And only then can you go swimming, but only if you're wearing compulsory swimming cap and goggles. I have to say though, it's all worth it. This is the best pool ever in a hotel, and possibly the best pool ever. Period.

To Narita City. Disguised as a village. Narita is a quaint little place, with two very contrasting main purposes - the Naritasan Shinshoji Temple complex, and the fact that it's an airport City. The former wins out, so despite the fact that hundreds of airline crew are passing through each week, there are still only a couple of English speaking bars and the more traditional shops, restaurants and drinking places are much more predominant. We got incredibly stared at of course. (Not only is there an Afro-Caribbean person in town, but he's with a white person in strange clothes. And they're both really really tall.)

The traditional food was freaking me out. Old men were cooking what looked like large long caterpillars in the front of tiny dark restaurants. Big maggoty things were swimming in buckets before being fried. I was particularly alarmed by all this on account of the fact that our holiday insurance ran out today. The TH was up for it, but I stuck with the only food in the whole City that I recognised.

The Naritasan Shinshoji Temple area is huge and impressive and consists of many different buildings all having a different purpose. This one for instance - the Issai-Kyouzou (House of all Sutras), houses a complete set of the Buddhist scriptures.

Feeling suitably karmic after a long walk around the temples, we headed for the English speaking bar - the Barge Inn. Here we met the wonderful, witty and sharp bartender Bryan. All karmic feelings went swiftly out of the window when the freight pilots came in. A true boys club. After a couple of pints the conversation turned to women and one of them stated pointedly in my direction 'It's our fault - we should never have given women the vote'. Bryan leapt in with a 'Come on guys, there's a lady present', so Mr Pilot added 'no offence - we're simple creatures - all we need from women is a bit of rubby-rubby and a cold beer'.

Eeewwww. Nice guys. Not. Haha. After a couple more happy hour drinks and moans about their ex (quel surpris) wives, they left (as Bryan had predicted - apparently freight pilots don't like to pay full price), and we had a good long chat with B about how to get to Tokyo the following day and what to do there....

HOTEL LOO

2007-04-12T19:56:00.000-04:00

It strikes me that this loo would be an excellent management training tool to demonstrate the importance of attention to detail. You really don't want to be sitting on it until you've read the small print and located the 'stop' button. Believe me.
(Although one has to wonder why 'splashing the lid with water' might cause 'fire or trouble' ?)

LOST IN TRANSLATION

2007-04-11T22:49:00.000-04:00

Very conscious that we didn't spend long enough in Sydney to experience it properly. On Tuesday morning Easter was over, the sun came out and the City felt like a different place entirely. In the meantime, we managed a road trip to the Blue Mountains (which aren't blue, incidentally), and lunch at a gorgeous secret Italian place - Sopra (shhhhhhh), with Tessa's wonderful friends Nick and Jules. Tessa is much better connected in Australia than the internet is, and that's a fact.

Horrible day of travel to Tokyo via practically every other city we hadn't visited in Australia, and seemingly the world. The plane kept errrr ....landing, rather than actually flying. So we went via Brisbane, Cairns, Ramsay Street, Coronation Street etc etc. On top of which we'd been given the exit seats on the plane (as like a 'favour' for our extensive travel status and because the TH is tall,) and found out on boarding that said exit seats were in fact worse than normal seats on account of the great-wall-of-china-bulkhead situated about 4 inches in front of them. So on-off on-off on-off the same plane all day long to the same rubbish seats, learning three times the same way to open the same exit door, till it got to the point that when a new crew got onboard at Cairns I was so grumpy that I greeted them with an unamused 'welcome onboard'. Of course that really helped endear me to them for the longest leg of the journey. Not.

12 miserable hours later - Tokyo. Wow. I have never been to a country before where I don't understand a single word of the language, and what's more, nobody seems to understand any English either. I have never been to an airport before where there is no sign of a cashpoint machine or a taxi, just hundreds of buses with Kanji symbols on them.
We got to the hotel. (Somehow.) And in front of us a group of Japanese businessmen are checking in, greeting each other with an extraordinary and extensive head- nodding ritual. This goes on for so long I feel I must be in an episode of Fawlty Towers.

And then I see the hotel pool. Oh my God! A 4-lane 25 metre empty swimming pool. We can't possibly stay in Tokyo for just one night then leave........how silly would that be?!

HARBOURING DOUBTS

2007-04-08T03:45:00.000-04:00

The TH insists that this is a holiday not a moving recce, but just for the record, I think I could probably live in Melbourne. The architecture is beautiful, the natives are friendly, the toilet paper is scented and the whole place is a manageable size, seemingly without the danger of boredom. Oh and they have the most random signs I have ever seen, which is always a plus in a City.

And so to Sydney.
By the time we'd had lunch, booked a guided tour of the opera house and the TH had satisfied his boyish urge to ride on a very fast thunderjet boat for half an hour, we had only been in town for a couple of hours and had said goodbye to over 150 quid. This was clearly going to be unsustainable over 5 days....

The (26 dollar) opera house tour only consisted of the largest auditorium, the foyer and a recently redeveloped room used for functions, which looked like an incomplete loft conversion. There was apparently another tour which takes you backstage, so I went to the information desk to investigate.
'It's at 7am each day and costs 140 dollars.'
'You what?!!!'
They must be having a laugh! 140 dollars to see a few dressing rooms and an orchestral warm-up area, when I used to take backstage tours of the Festival Hall for one pound!! (That's 2.4015 dollars to you, Mr Information Desk.) Hell, you can probably buy a named seat for 140 dollars at the RFH! I think, under the circumstances, I can probably manage to live without seeing another dressing room.

I guess on the upside for the opera house, with the number of tours which were pouring in and out and crashing into each other just in the short time we were there, I think they'll probably have raised their 1 billion dollars for refurbishment by the end of next week.

By the time we got out of there, I was 'outraged of 10010', and kept muttering '140 dollars!' incredulously. And it was raining. A lot. On top of which I was starting to worry that since being in Sydney I'd not heard the phrase 'no worries'. Not even once...

We decided to splash out and buy an umbrella with the remains of the kids inheritance. Luckily for the kids, we've got no kids. We then spent the rest of the day wandering around a selection of very similar-looking bays in search of a place where we could afford a coffee.
Julian Joseph used to have an excellent phrase for times like this, 'I'm not feeling it'. And I definitely wasn't 'feeling' Sydney that day.

Last night to Rose Bay to visit friends of T's, who'd kindly invited us round for drinks. There things definitely started to look up. Shona and Chris are totally adorable people, and drinks turned into much gorgeous wine and Thai food whilst sitting on their picuresque candlelit balcony with their lovely friends, bats, and a huge spider for company. Much entertaining conversation above the torrential rain. Lots of fun.....

This morning the TH was that person being breathalised at 8am before being allowed to do the (189 dollar) Sydney Bridge climb. He was also that person who was failing his breathaliser test at 8am. His second test was borderline, so he was allowed to do the climb, which is just as well, or we wouldn't now have an excellent 60 dollar photograph of him doing a Mexican wave 134 metres above some outrageously expensive restaurants.

Not that this City is making us totally bankrupt or anything, but tomorrow we are hiring a car and driving somewhere else, because we figured it would be cheaper to eat that way. Or we might just eat the car.

This blog was brought to you by 'rooms online broadband' (24 dollars 99 cents).

URBAN WORRIES

2007-04-03T05:26:00.000-04:00

Melbourne since Friday. Freo was relaxing and lovely, but ah the relief to be back amongst skyscrapers, neon and ambiguous graffiti.
The holiday has turned into a series of babies and meals. On Sunday to visit the lovely Anna and Laurence and their (on this trip compulsory) cute children. Had lunch and dinner with them and much catching-up time - I've only seen Anna once in the last 14 years, since she left London, so the who's who of our lives since then took care of the best part of the day.

I ended up putting the second Australian under 2-yr-old in 3 days to bed (the adorable Max), and realised I was becoming horrifyingly familiar with the routine, not to mention the Wiggles (don't ask) and Elmo.

Yesterday for lunch with Lynette, who we'd met in NY last year, then dinner with Andre et famille at his gorgeous family home in Brighton beach. Andre has a 6 month old, so my super-nanny skills are getting more impressive by the day. Baby wipes are now a permanent feature in my handbag.

Meal of the holiday (and possibly the year) award goes to the Flower Drum, where we had lunch today. I have no idea how we got in, as there's supposed to be a waiting list of at least 6 weeks and folks such as Madonna dine there. Not only did we get in but we were sat a fair way from the door, where apparently they put the celebs. I can only pesume that the TH was mistaken for Frank Bruno again. Stuff happens, and sometimes good stuff. Entirely perfect food and service.

You will gather from this that I am veritably eating and drinking my way through Australia state by state and am therefore becoming HUGE. There's only one solution as I see it - to burn the extra 4,000 calories per day that I'm consuming, I'll have to become a wet nurse and start breast feeding too......

GODSON

2007-03-28T09:09:00.000-04:00

The lovely Gabriel of Perth.
I would travel half way round the world to meet this little man. Oh wait....I did!

NO WORRIES?

2007-03-25T23:19:00.000-04:00

Western Australian people are some of the loveliest, most helpful and friendly people I have ever met. Nothing is too much trouble. This is in part due to the extremely laid-back Australian lifestyle, which can be summed up in two very common phrases, used in response to almost anything - 'no worries' and 'no drama'.
Personally I have quite a lot of worries. No internet being one of them. K still has dial- up (?), which is about as useful as giving me a pen and writing paper with which to communicate. Then there is the heat (on average 35 degrees, which means I have a suntan! Nah, just kidding - I'm RED), crawling wildlife (gardens containing poisonous redback spiders and snakes), and flying wildlife (32 mosquito bites and counting).

The TH has taken to all this like a kangaroo to the outback and has been whizzing around barefoot and bare-chested in a whole series of borrowed cars (people are so generous here they lend their cars more readily than New Yorkers would give their best mate a cigarette ). So last week he borrowed a 4-wheel drive Nissan Patrol affair (which looked like it had had a long career as a getaway car in B movies), and we ventured into the outback for 3 days, driving south to Margaret River. Our truck had no air-conditioning (unless you count the passenger door, which was hanging off one hinge), the windscreen wipers didn't work and the spare wheel kept falling off the back. But no worries, because the population is something like one person per 1000 sq miles here, so we saw absolutely nobody for something like 150 kilometres of sparse cacti-covered dustbowl. That is until we stumbled upon a roadside cafe called, aptly, ' The Centre of the Universe'. There was a family sitting silently inside, eating (each other probably), and they all trooped out one by one to take a look at the TH, as clearly they'd never seen anything quite like him before. We got out of there pretty quick. No drama.

By the time we reached Yallingup, I'd forgotten which phobia I was most worried about, having passed through agoraphobia, arachnophobia, thermophobia, ophidiophobia, molysmophobia, levophobia, insectophobia and hodophobia.
No worries. Much.

Something about this area reminds me of California, and more specifically LA. Life would be totally impossible without a car (and this applies to every bit of Australia I've seen yet). There's one main road surrounded by trees and bush with only dirt tracks leading to anything resembling civilisation. The agoraphobia kicked in big time here (all accomodation being called a 'retreat'), so having retreated quite enough already for one week, I insisted we moved on to Margaret River, which at least resembled a village. There we found an apartment (thanks to ultra friendly helpful receptionist at the full hotel) with a real live television and a road with vague traffic sounds nearby. Next day on a Margaret River winery tour. Four vinyards, a cheese farm and chocolate factory later and I'm feeling a little more grounded. To Lake Cave and Mammoth Cave before the long drive back to Fremantle (where K lives), stopping on the way at Busselton to check out the underwater observatory. NOW we're talking. A couple of kilometres walk out to sea on a narrow piece of board in gale force winds (with railings on one side only) to get to the observatory (I'd love to see this pass a Lambeth health and safety test....) The observatory takes you 8 metres underwater to observe whatever sea life happens to be around at the time. No sharks unfortunately, but nevertheless totally brilliant.

There seems to be a readily available rent-a-crowd of the loveliest people in Freo and K did a fantastic job of creating a gorgeous 40th birthday party barbecue for the TH. I hate to stereotype, but in our first four days in Australia we'd been to four barbecues. Just sayin'.....

The quality of life here is amazing it has to be said. There are stars in the sky every night like you'd only normally see far out to sea, and the bird calls from the garden in the morning are those you'd only hear in a zoo back home. But in the centre of Perth on Friday night, was there a jazz gig to be found? Errrrr no. As the next nearest City is Adelaide, a mere 2500 kilometres away, I don't see a busman's holiday happening anytime soon, nor an emigration......

WIFE SWAP

2007-03-19T04:28:00.000-04:00

So there's this girl who lives in a high rise in Manhattan. She loves very cold weather and hates the sun, wears black all the time and spends the majority of her spare time on the internet or hanging out drinking in jazz clubs after dark.
In this week's episode, after 3 days spent on planes with very little sleep, she arrives on the edge of the outback where her black clothes are taken from her, she's put in a colourful sarong and bare feet, and dumped on a beach with no shade in 35 degrees.
Her disorientation further increases when she is taken to the house where she is to stay for the next 10 days and there is no alcohol, no air conditioning, no wifi and no broadband connection. Furthermore there is a baby she has no idea how to look after, and no jazz club for miles.
Will she survive? To be continued.........

CONTINENTAL DRIFT

2007-03-15T07:02:00.000-04:00

I know, I know - I never write, I never call.....checking in to every which-where-airport-and-place but this blog. So a quick debrief.

Currently sitting in Hong Kong airport (and it's pretty cruisy up top here in the lounge I can tell you...) Other than that, it's exactly like being at home. Any of my homes. The TH and I are sitting opposite each other behind computers and I can see a 'Tie Rack' through the window. This seems to be a fitting situation in which to use the Catster's current favourite word 'Meh!'' But I'm only guessing and it's entirely possible I might have this whole new-cult-word-thing all wrong.....

London for a week. Just lovely to spend quality time with my family of very missed friends, to regularly and randomly crash into old acquaintances in the street, have people laugh at my jokes (because they..errr...get them), and drink at second-home bars where the staff know me and don't need telling 'no fruit' in the gin. Stayed with my lovely tenants/friends who were paradoxically paying me rent whilst putting me up for a few days in my own apartment. (Errrr....you what?! I said they were lovely!)

Took care of lots of UK business with banks, moonlighting Poles (who of course only work by moonlight), phone & insurance companies and freeholders etc. Lovely day with L and Catster and very positive meeting with I in Brighton re. possible work in New York, (also, as always, checked on the Brighton hut - a whole other story, for another time).

Moved to H's wondrous Old St loft for the last few days, ate & drank way too much, revised my babysitting skills (on hitherto complete strangers), explored L's fabulous and long-awaited new gaff, and played about 950 games of Skip-Bo. On Wednesday H's wifi connection went down and the boiler broke. Bah. Lofts huh! So we thought 'F***k this, let's go to another continent!'
Just kiddin'.
Although not about the continent bit, clearly.

Next up - Godson, TH's 40th birthday, our very postponed honeymoon. Tomorrow in Perth.
The 12 hour journey to Hong Kong (I think the first time I've slept on a plane ever), was an upgrade to business class, thanks to dear friend Brian, who got in touch with the lovely J, (who I've not seen for a while, but used to work with at the RFH years ago - when the RFH was veritably swimming in such adorable people - and now works at Heathrow). Thank you a million times J, if you're reading this! J is clearly going under the pseudonym of 'Eddy' these days, as every favour we received in the airport (and there were many), was given to us with a wink and a 'from Eddy'. So I'm presuming that all this loveliness was from J.....
If, instead, it was randomly given by a stranger called Eddy, then that would be very weird.
Very weird indeed.

So. I have no idea what time of day or night it is here (or in NY.) I think it is breakfast time in London, but I am sipping a large g&t just to be on the safe side.
You are, I am sure, gathering from all of this that life could be very much worse.....but to put it in realistic terms that H will definitely understand - it doubtless will be, at some point.

2007-03-02T16:08:00.000-05:00

THE OSCARS

2007-02-27T09:11:00.000-05:00

Have clearly cracked this city finally, because last Sunday we found ourselves invited to not one, but two Oscars parties.
On Friday it occurred to me that I hadn't yet seen any of the movies that had been nominated. And I mean any. So I spent the next 48 hours in cinemas, clocking up six movies. By Saturday night I had haemorrhoids and was apparently talking about makeup artists in my sleep.
On Sunday I showered and ate to film soundtracks and spent the remainder of the day revising documentary and animated shorts.
The Tactile Helpdesk pointed out dryly that if I were even half as competitive in my career as I am when it comes to TV programmes, then I'd probably be very rich by now. As I see it, most of my earnings so far this year have come from betting on the outcome of TV programmes, so it practically IS my career..... and anyway, there was to be a 5 dollar winner-takes-all ballot at the party......

T's friends, B and I, are totally adorable people - welcoming, friendly, relaxed, witty. And as for their beautiful Upper West Side apartment. Let's just say a pianist was playing Oscar-winning film soundtracks on a (grand) piano in (one) of the living rooms. There were (real) Dali's on the wall. (Plural).
Gorgeous food, lovely guests.

A whole room was set aside for the ballot and I spent at least as much time on the ballot paper as I did on my German O' level back in 1979. So long in fact, that when I finally emerged, I was asked for a second 5 dollars because another ice-age had begun outside and everyone had forgotten that, back in 2007 when I entered the room, I'd paid already. (Next time they need an invigilator.) Then obviously I had to copy down my ballot form answers into my little black book, because I needed to remember who I'd voted for so as I could cheer. Unfortunately the host read this as me not trusting her to mark the papers correctly, which hadn't even occurred to me.
At least until she mentioned it.......

As I was defending my little black book actions, the TH shot me the first of many 'stop taking this so seriously' looks. I glared back with a 'you're on your third drink already and everyone else is drinking water' look. That's the lovely thing about being married - after a year or two most necessary communication can be achieved with an alarmingly small number of all too familiar facial expressions.

T and I blagged some precious TV room sofa seats and got stuck into serious red carpet dress-bitching with all the guys who had been hooked on the TV since entering the party and seemed to know all the costume designers personally .....

By the time Ellen started to do her thing (and how cool was SHE!), the TV room was filling up and I was starting to get that anxious sitting-on-the-subway-should-give-up-seat-to-someone-more-needy feeling. I kept glancing behind to see if there were any signs to that effect, but no.... just beautiful sculptures.
Finally my morality (read 'guilt') got the upper hand and I had to let the 8-month pregnant woman and one-legged 95 yr old man take my seat. (Okay not quite that needy, but I had been sitting for at least an hour.)

The TH had decided that the kitchen was where it was at. It was where the alcohol was at too. Weird that. I stopped by for a drink and a chat then probably appeared very rude to the host by running out mid-sentence to check my score. Several things became apparent as the evening progressed - nobody at this party was drinking even remotely as much as the Brits - ie. T, myself and the TH. In fact the majority appeared to be not drinking at all. Hmmmm.....?
Nobody at the party was taking their score quite as seriously as I was, as evidenced by my panic when some near-end scores came in and I knew I had 12, which would have put me in second place, but was told I had 11. The TH gave me a third or fourth 'warning look' at that point, although by then his looks were getting a little less focused, so he might equally have been looking at the rather amazing Victorian brass hand collection.

I knew I'd not won when the best movie came in. I'd wanted 'Little Miss Sunshine' to win (which, incidentally, you absolutely MUST see,) but I figured it wouldn't win, so I'd gone for 'Babel' instead, on account of it being big and profound and traumatic. Wrong....

I'd added up my score as 14. The winner had 15. She went home with the money. Then someone else got a second prize for 14. Errrrr......?
The TH was practically trying to drag me out by this point, but I was adamant. 'Re-count!' I demanded. Nobody was paying any attention, which was just as well. It was late and everyone had to be up at 6 or something, so the place emptied quickly, leaving only the TH (incapable of counting anything), myself (demanding a re-count) and a not exactly sober T (doing the re-counting.) Here you see the basis of the vast cultural difference between Americans and Brits. If this had been a party in Herne Hill on a Sunday evening, there would already have been at least one divorce, a fire, and someone sleeping in or at least on the washing machine. Nobody would have gone home yet, and most people wouldn't have been able to remember where home was. Sometimes it's kind of embarrassing being British in New York.

Anyway, following T's re-count, it transpired that I had definitely come joint second, so she insisted that I also got a second prize, which was a packet of customized M&M's with the hosts names printed on them. I really didn't mind whether I got a prize or not by this point - it was merely a matter of pride, but this prize worried me slightly (despite the fact that I am a total M&M's addict). It seems sort of weird to eat M&M's with people's names on, like a bad omen thing. I decided we could only use them as 'emergency' chocolate. And because I'd had drinks, many drinks, something made my outside voice go through all the possible emergencies which could result in me eating these M&M's - divorce, death,......

We got out. Even the TH had sobered enough to push me out of the door mid this-particular-monologue. All in all a rather wonderful evening at the home of some truly gorgeous people. And I do hope our behaviour wasn't too shameful.......but I'm not betting on it.

MAY CAUSE DROWSINESS

2007-02-22T10:26:00.000-05:00

It's that time of the year again. American Idol predictions.
I apologise.
I'm not feeling as confident as I did last year. The standard is much higher in general, and I didn't get that immediate 'he/she's going to win' feeling that I felt last year on first hearing Taylor Hicks.
I'm therefore rooting for the most honest vocalists. The ones to whom delivering the song was more important than delivering an image of themselves singing it. The ones who were not a step or more removed from their performances. The ones who sang with the most sincerity and the least self-consciousness. In short, those with the most natural musical talent, aside from their voices, looks, image etc.
Shark's winning predictions are therefore Phil Stacey or Lakisha Jones.

VALENTINE'S DAY MASSACRE

2007-02-16T16:48:00.000-05:00

Guess what! More upside down nakedness!
The theme of random unsavoury lack of clothes continues this week. Our Valentine's night outing was initially looking all set to be nudity-free, which clearly one would expect from a Kurt Elling gig at the Blue Note (totally amazing of course). I was feeling all loved-up, until the TH insisted on a detour on the way home and dragged me into a seedy club called (I think, imaginatively) 'Love'. I very much agree with the Groucho Marx sentiment of refusing to join any club that would have me as a member, particularly a night club in New York on Valentine's night, without the aid of a Marquis to see me through the velvet ropes. There were no velvet ropes (never a promising sign, much as I hate them) and the doormen were throwing us in, not out. In fact it was a whole lot easier to get into this club than to log on to blogger these days. There was of course a reason for this - the place was full of (but far from full) sad single crazies and geeks out on the pull, dressed in practically nothing, displaying body parts best left unseen and demonstrating all manner of quirky non-rhythmic dance movements, which left no further need for an explanation as to why they were on their own. There were also a handful of extremely young people, young enough to be my children, or possibly my grandchildren. Since we were there and there was no queue at the bar it seemed rude not to try out their house gin, which I'm fairly sure was called 'Crap', which sounds unlikely, although made sense. (Whatever it was called, it was definitely responsible for the mysterious disappearance of February 15th.) Sometimes the 5 year age gap between myself and the TH seems like about 25 years, because I think he was actually having fun...? I was not. However, I definitely got my own back by taking advantage of the practically empty dance floor (what were those DJ's doing?) to run through the entire repertoire of my sister's contemporary dance career. By the time I had got to a piece called 'The Wrecking Yard' the TH was more than ready to leave.......

Tonight I am going to a party in a church in honour of the Reverend's parents. I await with interest to see if the nudity theme of the week is going to continue to play itself out.

FAIRY TALE

2007-02-14T10:58:00.000-05:00

I woke this morning to the sound of fairies dancing on the air-conditioner outside the window, their footsteps like tiny wind-chimes.
Finally it is snowing.

BUM 'N' BASS

2007-02-13T02:08:00.000-05:00

So there's been lots going on of course. It's just that I've somehow lost the ability to log it all. I mean Steve and Lo came back to stay for another week, which was loads of fun, oh and we're heading for bankruptcy on account of the TH's housing allowance mysteriously CEASING ALTOGETHER! But really, all that pales into insignificance in the light of tonight's gig.
I am a serious Me'shell Ndegeocello fan, but the TH is even more so. So his valentine treat from me was tonight's gig at Joe's Pub. Totally sold out of course, huge anticipation vibe, the place rocking out to DJ Beverley Bond's hardcore funk intro. Then Me'shell comes on with a SERIOUSLY AMAZING band. But during the first number a half-dressed woman(?)appears in the very tenuous 'gangway' doing a dubious 'erotic' dance, flinging a feather boa in everyone's face. Uh? I am thinking maybe this is a quirk, like from the audience. The place is full of them after all - the guy sitting next to me is swaying to the music so alarmingly that if I don't sway along with him I'll get knocked out. I'm a little distracted, but she disappears, so all is good, that is until she re-appears on the stage......
She then proceeds to dance around Me'shell, sucking on random mics and licking any musician bodily part which presented itself, before taking off her top. This is so incongruous with what we all expect from a Me'shell gig that the audience is somewhat.... errrrr...gobsmacked? Call me old-fashioned, but believe me it's really really hard to appreciate a Robert Glasper or Jason Lindner solo when there is a practically naked woman doing a headstand in your lap with her feet on your shoulders, which is exactly what happened to me a couple of numbers later.....
(And no, 'could you get off me please, I'm trying to watch the gig' wouldn't have worked under the circumstances/position.)

At one point there was a bra hanging on Me'shell's mic (naturally), and the sound guy needed to change the mic. He proceeded to do this, then carefully replaced the bra on the new mic.....a pure comedy moment. I have no idea what was happening at that gig tonight. The band were awesome and groovesome - I mean you can't fault Charles Haynes, Oren Bloedow, Mark Kelley, Brandon Ross etc - they're amazing musicians, but this was like a Burlesque show. Me'shell I think (?) sensed the audience confusion - 'I'm just trying out some things that are going on in my head'.....errrrrrr okaaaaaay...... ? It's absolutely bizarre to me that she should feel that anything else is necessary apart from her music. She is a genius bass-player, vocalist, composer. Why on earth does she need anyone or anything to distract from this that we all came to see and hear?
Hey whatever. We all do what we have to do, but the lack of demand for an encore after what was a stunning night of music kind of said it all.....

2007-02-05T22:15:00.000-05:00

2007-01-31T09:25:00.000-05:00

One of the reasons for my lack of blogging lately is discovering Stumbleupon. (Thanks O. Not).
Join at your own risk, and if you had a life then wave goodbye to it.
Sooner or later I will stumble upon my own blog and then you may get another entry...

IAJE

2007-01-15T12:48:00.000-05:00

Four days of extreme noise terror sitting on the JSL stand next to 60 or so music shops all demonstrating their instruments. Lovely. Then there was the scale of the light show on the neighbouring stand, which I hold solely responsible for this year's inevitable iceberg breakup and for me now appearing to have a tan. Also no voice - hoarse from shouting above the din to answer the endlessly repeated question 'what does jazz services do?'

Hours of hanging in the bar, catching up with lovely friends, musicians and promoters from London, NY and elsewhere, ducking, diving and collecting the flying business cards. Free-drink-friendly with the hotel bartender by Friday - fortuitous, as a glass of wine cost 13 dollars. Offered 4 jobs. Granted it was 4am and everyone was drunk, but at least two still seemed fairly promising at dawn. Tired and emotional took on new meaning as the sad news spread of the deaths of Michael Brecker and Alice Coltrane on Saturday.

Profound and moving acceptance speeches from all this year's NEA Jazz Master's Award winners. Phil Woods a born comedian. The Clayton Brothers Quintet performing, masters of stop-time, and that thing Americans do so well - jazz families. John's son Gerald Clayton on piano, only 22 - but a seriously talented player. Then Nancy Wilson - totally ageless onstage, extraordinary charisma and an amazing voice, which swoops and laughs and cries in the style of her mentor Jimmy Scott, who watched from the audience.

Last day. We pack up the stand and head to the ‘Europe’ reception. Walking with the lovely folks from Dune Records, stopping every few feet to chat to people on the way, it’s very slow progress. 7.30pm and alcohol has yet to pass our lips. Abram - ‘Do you want me to introduce you to Russell Malone?' Hmmmm. Russell Malone. Glass of wine. Russell Malone. Glass of wine. J and I – ‘errr no it’s okay thanks – some other time….’

Final gig at 1am - Avishai Cohen Trio. Have seen this band so many times. Have loved their music perhaps more than any other music over the last couple of years. But this gig was the ONE. The massive ballroom full, anticipation high. But nothing of the last 4 days had prepared anyone for the electric tension of these three world class musicians, communicating in so rare and magical a way that there was surely a sixth sense at work. Hundreds on the edges of seats with excitement. Everyone transfixed in the same moment. And somehow time, though pounding by as Avishai drummed the body and soul of his bass, was standing still. No industry conference cynicism here - the audience in a standing ovation frenzy. The trio. Mark Guiliana (of my previous Heernt ravings) definitely my favourite drummer in the world - always surprising, switching from style to style with ease and an inspired bravery, creating whole new styles on the way. And pianist Shai Maestro. A huge discovery. It's nothing short of ridiculous that someone only 19 years old can play with such assurity, creativity and wisdom. And therein lies the mystery of this music, which keeps us all locked in.

3am and the doormen at the Hilton are doing birdsong impressions to while away the hours, delighting in the confused faces of weary guests as they peer into the concrete darkness for signs of an aviary. On the corner of 53rd the ever present long line at a small roadside stall, as people wait in the rain for the chicken and rice we have all partaken of at some point during the week.

Back at home gorgeous vegetarian food awaits me as it has every night this week. The lovely Stevie has been staying, and L from Montreal. They cook. Loving these guests (and not just because they cook), and wishing I'd had a chance to see more of them.....

NEW YEAR

2007-01-02T10:17:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year all!
How did that happen? My last memory of any true clarity is sitting down for Christmas lunch. If you really want to know what's been happening I suggest you read CNL's blog - she was certainly drinking for two so it seemed reasonable to request that she should blog for two as well.

We found an apartment. That's the good news. The bad news is that there is someone living in it who doesn't seem to be showing any signs of moving out. He was supposed to vacate in October and then again in December. Whilst viewing the apartment it was evident that he hadn't cleaned the bathroom once in the three years he'd been living there, so, sociable as I am, a flatshare is definitely out of the question. I should have predicted this sit-in, having had a repetitive nightmare on Christmas eve in which I was clinging to the roof of the new apartment six-storey building and nobody was coming to my rescue, so I kept falling off. I died five times that night, which was pretty exhausting I can tell you. The Elf was curious as to why santa didn't rescue me, as he was clearly hot-footing around the sky that evening with a bunch of flying reindeer. Good point. And clearly another bad omen. The tenant has apparently said that he needs 'another couple of weeks or so to move out'. As it will take at least another two weeks in addition to that to clean the bathroom floor alone, and we're meant to be moving at the end of January, I'm not holding my breath. Meanwhile I'm posting CNL at the front door of our apartment to scare off any prospective new tenants here...just incase.

Other than flat-hunting stress, it's been a really fun two weeks. Lots of lovely time spent with the Berliners and then a proper bank holiday yesterday, which I've not experienced in years - the three of us sat around in our pyjamas all day watching tv football and a whole load of movies, consuming beer, cheesy wotsits and the remains of the Elf's candy cavern until we all felt sick enough to ardently believe in and look forward to our resolutions to give everything up.

FLATLINING

2006-12-14T08:02:00.000-05:00

It's H's fault for spoiling us in London. As a result, I'm on the hunt for a vast and impressive New York loft (they always have pillars). Failing that I'll settle for an apartment at 151 Avenue B, where Charlie Parker used to live, or perhaps a place on Washington Square in Edward Hopper's house.......
I have to add that none of the above are looking particularly likely on our budget, or indeed otherwise. This is a rubbish time of year to be looking for an apartment - and very few have been advertised this week which even have walls. Though in NY it appears that you are allowed to build your own (?) - the estate agent 'code' for this being 'walls allowed'. Call me perfectionist, but frankly, if I'm paying several thousand dollars a month for a flat, I'd quite like it to have walls already.

And agents! Only a small step above amoeba on the evolutionary scale, and the step costs extra. How can it be that difficult? All they have to do is respond to my very precise criteria with something suitable. Instead they call me about 12 times a day with entirely unsuitable properties and advertise apartments which don't even exist. I refer you to my favourite joke of the moment.
How can you tell if an estate agent is lying?
His lips move.

We have six weeks left in which to find somewhere and move. And as the Berlin contingent will be with us at Christmas and New Year, I intend to spend at least 2 of these weeks in Olympic-level liver training activities. There is always the option that as poor lovely CNL has lost absolutely everything she owned in a warehouse fire, we move all our stuff into her place, or alternatively, we might yet be begging to stay where we are......

TIME ZONED OUT

2006-11-28T12:46:00.000-05:00

In a vast and impressive London loft. This is clearly the reason for the title 'best man'. Three 40th birthday parties, five beds and a grand total of sixteen hours sleep in six days. Typing impossible as said loft only has trendy up-lighting, which is rubbish for actually seeing anything, but fantastic for looking vaguely human after previous sentence experience. Now must resume charging my entire life gadget by gadget on one adapter plug. Later.

JAZZ UK

2006-11-20T11:38:00.000-05:00

Back in the world of real people, my feature on what it's like to be a British jazz musician living in New York is in the November issue of Jazz UK magazine. You can find Jazz UK at most UK jazz venues, jazz record stores etc, and online here.
(To go directly to my article click here. )
It's a great magazine covering what's new, good and happening on the UK jazz scene (and I say that without bias, as I've been reading it for years) so now you have two good reasons to check it out!

ALL TOO SIMILAR

2006-11-19T08:30:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately I re-loaded Sims 2 onto my laptop whilst a was sick a couple of weeks back, and what was meant to be a minor distraction through a few days of coughing, has become, just as it did the last time, more of a lifestyle than a game. Which is exactly why I uninstalled it two years ago....

The warning signs are back. Yesterday in Bloomingdales I tried to right click on some annoying people who were blocking the escalator and move them a few paces to the left. And as I walked along the street happily humming random little tunes, everyone else seemed to have blue bars and thought bubbles above their heads....

I have started to run my own life like that of a Sim - keeping careful control of the basic necessities, and trying to give some time each day to my aspirations so that my own bars stay the right colour and I'm making good general life progress. But when something disturbs this plan, I feel my mood changing and my white bar changing to green then red. The TH has lost his passport and we are flying to Europe on Wednesday. He tried to enlist me in a turning-the-flat-upside-down operation yesterday, just as I was gaining a cleaning point. He had no idea why I immediately had a hissy stamping fit in the bathroom, and to be honest, how could I explain?
('I can't do that now, I'm gaining a cleaning point! Then I have to gain a creativity point, and then I have to check on my Sims to keep my entertainment bar topped up.....')

Today it is clearly time to uninstall, but not until I've clicked on the TH and then on the washing up by the sink......

2006-11-16T09:49:00.000-05:00

Midtown at midnight. Humidity is high and a fine mist hangs low. The discarded trash pile up of today in desolate cross streets. And grown ups crouch in doorways preparing for tomorrow.

ELECTION AND FEVER

2006-11-06T15:03:00.000-05:00

Coughing, sneezing and feverish. Also have a sore tooth (nothing new there then.) So aside from apartment viewings (currently only ones with a pillar in the living room - I just want one, ok?), jazz class and the unmissable spectacle of my ex-boss from the RFH performing at Mo Pitkins the other evening (which was much fun), have been pretty much staying indoors.

Apparently Mercury is in retrograde. This, amongst other things, allegedly sends 'communications, travel, appointments, mail and the www into a general snarlup'. Possibly not the best time then to be planning my trip to London on the internet, sorting appointments for whilst I'm there and dealing with a general mail backlog. A fact borne out when I had to spend the entire morning tracking down my hairdresser and hair straightener, who have both left the salon in London I've been going to for ten years. I did track them down eventually. One of them to Australia..... Terrific. Don't you just hate it when people demonstrate so absolutely that they have their own lives, and you just don't figure in them.....

There is a midterm election here tomorrow, so TV is an endless stream of baffling political broadcasts. Nobody here advertises what they can do, merely what their opponent can't do. In almost every ad, there is much overuse of the phrase 'unqualified to be comptroller' about the opposing candidate. I have no idea what a comptroller is or what the qualifications are, but every time I hear the word I am reminded of kids TV programmes such as Thomas the Tank Engine, (in which case I guess the qualifications would be that he needs to be fat and know a little about trains), or Trumpton, where I imagine Mr Comptroller would shuffle papers all day in the Town Hall (qualifications - being able to get to work at 9am on the dot and sing a catchy little theme tune about his busy paper-shuffling-life).

DOGGY BAG.......

2006-10-29T18:14:00.000-05:00

There were some fairly absurd and alarming sightings at the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade today, but for my money, this one took the biscuit...

JAZZ AGES

2006-10-27T14:02:00.000-04:00

My father was pretty much wholly responsible for my love of jazz. When I was a child, our family was very much divided into two - my sister and mother, and myself and my father. To cut a long story short, this meant that my sister ended up in dance classes and youth theatres most of the time - acting out (literally) our mother's (desired but unfulfilled) career as an actress, and I took on my father's jazz obsession, which we both used as an 'escape hatch' from my mother - there was nothing more guaranteed to get her to leave a room than to put on a recording of Gene Krupa or Stan Kenton.

In spite of, or more probably, because of, the dubious psychology and family politics behind this, my sister ended up becoming a dancer and myself a jazz promoter. Neither of us were ever forgiven for this - we were meant to be teachers or bankers or doctors. And the 'Arts' were meant to be hobbies, not careers. My sister was persistently told to 'get a proper job', and even though I sort of had one, my father never saw a single one of the 4,000 or so jazz concerts I programmed, because my mother simply wouldn't let him....
Perhaps we both did it to rebel, or perhaps we did it in some way to fulfil the unfulfilled dreams of our parents. Either way, it resulted in us being geographically too far away for them and psychologically a bit too close to home.

If I have a single regret in life, and I'm not one for regrets, it's that I didn't 'kidnap' (parentnap?) my father and take him to London to Ronnie Scott's and a myriad of other venues he'd never been to, to actually SEE all the artists he spent his whole life listening to on record.

But back to being a nine/ten yr old, and the highlight of my week was a trip to Birmingham Record Library every Saturday morning with my father, where we would borrow four jazz albums, then devour them for the whole of Saturday afternoon (or as long as we could get away with) when we got home. They were inevitably big band albums, as this was my father's real passion, and I grew up loving that awesome and powerful sound (and still do). The crunch came when we brought back 'There Comes a Time' by the Gil Evans Orchestra. I think I was 13, and I was SO excited by this music - it was the most profound and beautiful noise I had ever heard. My father absolutely hated it. From that day our tastes went in different directions, and I took out my own library membership and brought home all kinds of new and wonderful off-shoots from this initial discovery, whilst my father continued to perfect his ability to recognise every soloist and sidesman from every big band in the 30's, 40's & 50's without the aid of sleeve notes. I know - I used to test him.

All of which brings me to today. And I'm now only a couple of years younger than my father was when we were playing those records together every Saturday. And partly because I'm filling in all kinds of gaps in my jazz knowledge on the jazz course I'm currently doing, and partly because I have toothache and now a cold as well and am resigned to spending a few days indoors, I have hauled out my father's 78 rpm jazz collection. My sister and I found boxes and boxes of these 78's in the attic when our parents died, along with a rather beautiful wind-up Columbia Grafonola - in perfect working order. The records are in varying states of health, but most need lots of TLC, and I so wish my father had 'talked me through' these when he was alive - but I rather think they'd been in the attic since before I was even born. So now it is my task to clean them all, catalogue them in some way, try to find out the line-up on each record via internet searches (out of sheer curiosity), then find some way of transferring the ones I like onto disc. There is not much information on the net surprisingly. I've spent the entire morning (unsuccessfully) trying to find reference to the Brunswick UK releases of a dozen Lionel Hampton Orchestra recordings, and impatient with that task, I randomly picked out another record to look into, a Tommy Dorsey recording, only to find a mysterious orange stamp in the middle of the label. What, if anything, does that mean?

It would have been my father's birthday tomorrow. So somehow fitting that I am sitting on the floor, in the birthplace of jazz, surrounded by shellac, trying to make sense of his jazz age in relation to mine.

OVERRULED

2006-10-26T09:11:00.000-04:00

Since hanging out with the lovesick one a few weeks back, I've become much more aware of the ludicrous number of rules in existence in this city.
For instance, this long list outside 'Groove' - a small bar in the village, where we went to see a gig by Oli Rockberger a couple of evenings ago. It's amazing to me that 50 people managed to get in, given the criteria.
Has the hitherto harmles flip-flop now become some kind of gang-affiliated attire? (Parents note well - if your child absolutely refuses to part with their flip-flops, then the chances are they want to be recognised as a gang member.) And what, pray, is a head warp?

Oli has a very good voice and lots of potential. He also writes pretty good songs, give or take a few mini drivers gear changes (not nearly as bad as the truck driver's gear change). The end result is kind of the soul of Jamiroquai meets '80's pop (in a good way.....) with some jazz thrown into the mix. We were therefore convinced that Oli must have had a mis-spent youth at the Wag Club, until we realised that it had probably closed down before he was even born.
All in all, he's talented and I think he'll do well. And it's always good to hear the lovely Janek Gwizdala on bass, who is never anything less than totally committed and brilliant at what he's playing, even when only depping, as he was for this gig.

The whole gig was marred for me though on account of the following, which I felt moved to present as a list of rules.
1. If a bar is the size of my living room, the drummer should not need to be put behind a perspex sound screen, unless it is to dampen his volume rather than amplify it even more.
2. If the sound engineer has his fingers in his ears for the majority of the gig, then the gig is TOO LOUD.
3. If the audience have earplugs in and are still uncomfortable with the volume, then the gig is TOO LOUD and can cause head warp.......

THE WHOLE TOOTH AND NOTHING BUT THE TOOTH

2006-10-24T13:50:00.000-04:00

I will never ever forgive Bayer Plc for changing the feminax recipe.
I am being a wimp, but I feel justified, having just taken the last serious pain killers in the whole apartment (ie. the last two proper 'old' feminax tablets).

It seems that my joyful anticipation of solid food (as opposed to the soups I have been living on for a week now,) was premature. The return visit to Mr Endodontist this morning didn't go quite as planned. This tooth is 'complicated' and hence a 'problem' (no, really?). I have a history of this kind of thing, which is why I try to stay away from the medical profession. Like the time they found I had an 'extra' rib and the blood disease I had as a child which was so rare it took 7 months of weekly blood tests to diagnose. And don't get me started on my current blood test results, which have been declared a 'mystery'. Anyway, Mr E today only managed to clear out (hack out) two of the three 'complicated meandering' tooth roots in the one and a half hours of sheer butchery I was subjected to (my roots clearly follow a British roadmap layout, as opposed to a grid system). I now look, and feel, as if somebody has repeatedly punched me in the face, and Oh Joy, I get to go through it all again in a weeks time for 'Root 3, The Sequel' (which looks on the X-ray like a dirt track in Norfolk). He has 'left something' in this root to pave the way next week. I am fairly sure it is one of those big olympic pole vaults. And what's more, apparently the tooth is fractured. Quel surpris! After this morning, my brain feels fractured. So depending how far down the fracture goes, I may still have to have the tooth extracted and all these weeks of soup frenzy will have been in vain. Much more of this and I'll pull the wretched thing out myself.....

LAYING DOWN ROOTS

2006-10-16T16:44:00.000-04:00

My endodontist called this morning. I never thought I'd write a sentence like that. Hell, I didn't even know what an endodontist was until yesterday. The worst thing about moving to another country is that you no longer have access to the whole string of professionals you have carefully sifted through, chosen and cultivated throughout your entire life. For example, my dentist of 20 years in Charing Cross Road, who would see me, I know, within seconds, should I turn up on his doorstep or call him at anytime. He knows my whole life story as intimately as the contents of my mouth. He offered to come and 'hold my hand' when I had to have my wisdom teeth extracted by someone else. I hate to get all sentimental about dentists but then you move to another country and suddenly you're back to the yellow pages (only they're white here........)

Then of course it's not at all simple, because, having found a 'dentist', you find you've gone to the wrong person and suddenly you're being flung across town to something called an 'endodontist', with the dollars clocking up by the second. This is not how I run my relationships - I'm in debt to a stranger for $$$ dollars and he has my home phone number and is using it, before I've even had time to google him! Some weeks are just like that - by Monday you know you've totally lost control and the week is just going to do whatever it likes.

Having said all that, I was in horrible pain at the weekend and ms dentist did do a good job in sending me to mr endodontist who managed to root-canal it all away yesterday, which frankly, was worth any amount of dollars. Incidentally, he added this morning that I can't eat on the tooth till I see him again next Tuesday, (which is a bit much coming from a man who didn't even give me any decent drugs as a food substitute.) As this tooth is right at the front, it's pretty much impossible to eat at all therefore, so I am now officially inventing the 'root canal diet', and as this is America, I am planning on making a fortune out of this diet by next Tuesday. And hence will be able to pay the endodontist.

LIVING SPACE - THE FINAL FRONTIER.

2006-10-14T07:55:00.000-04:00

The living room looks like the first Cylon war has taken place there overnight. I left the TH watching Battlestar Galactica in there at 11pm to go and read about Sidney Bechet in the bedroom (because opposites clearly attract), and for the second night running he didn't appear and I find him yet again working on the computer calling the UK office at 5/6am surrounded by bachelor detritus - empty bottles of rum, takeaway cartons, three full ashtrays and the tail ends of a couple of hours of snatched sofa sleep (opposites clearly don't attract that much). It's at times like this I want to get all my single girlfriends around who spend hours complaining about not having a partner, so as I can remind them what it's really like being the last freedom fighter in an episode entitled 'living space - the final frontier'.

When we move to a cupboard there are going to have to be an awful lot of rules - no smoking, no working from home, definitely no sci-fi (which I am sure must be to blame for most marriage break-ups - did anybody ever survey that?) And in return I'll stop reading about Sidney Bechet. If that's a problem.

But today, the vexed problem of surgically removing the TH from his keyboard, because there are those in here who believe that there is a life out there and would quite like to do something with the weekend.
'Can we go out and find a lost civilisation darling?' (read 'Can we go and do the weekly shop at Wholefoods').

Frankly there's quite a lot we have to go and do, and according to Al Gore in 'An Inconvenient Truth' , which I saw yesterday, it seems like we've only got about ten years left in which to do it. Very scary stuff. So I need to reawaken my mankind to a higher purpose.

And whilst we're on the subject, I bet all those intergalactic space ships aren't helping global warming one bit.....

2006-10-13T19:06:00.000-04:00

13th St (between 2nd and 3rd Ave)

WANTED - ROOM TO SWING A CAT

2006-10-06T08:57:00.000-04:00

Catster has gone, taking the lovesick one with her. I kind of miss her ragged self, hogging my laptop writing desperate love notes with her sad little rule-abiding ways. That's Tina, not the Catster. Of course I miss the Catster too, only it's probably a good thing she's gone as she was breaking me with an excess of everything - day, night, killer cocktails, Wholefoods' Spanish nut mix etc. (One has to question the point of a painkiller delivery if they are all used up by the time said mule has departed, due to the mule's presence ....)
But hey, we had fun!

Now to the vexed question of finding another apartment, as our rent has increased overnight by $400 per month just as the Tactile Helpdesk's housing allowance from his company has decreased by considerably more than that. To all of you who haven't been to stay yet - too late. We will almost certainly be moving to something resembling a wendy house, or a 'one bedroom alcove apartment', which is estate agent code for a cupboard in somebody else's flat.

Meanwhile, I am living on the sort of pocket money I used to get to spend on Dundee biscuits (now missing, presumed dead) in the tuck shop at school when I was 11. Luckily I have a 10 book reading list for the jazz course I've recently started, so that should keep me out of harmful spending ways for a while.....

2006-09-27T10:17:00.000-04:00

Catster. Central Park.

2006-09-27T10:16:00.000-04:00

Carousel Central Park

CAT'S SCAN

2006-09-26T08:48:00.000-04:00

The Catster arrived yesterday.
Contents of suitcase - 2 packs of feminax (the rubbish new ones, but they are so much better than nothing), 2 old feminax tablets (wow - these things are like gold dust now - I could probably get a load for them on ebay if I didn't want them for myself. But they will have to wait for a very rainy day indeed), Tina Spoon (lovesick rag doll) , pre-ordered shark clothes and hula hoops.
Personally, if I had a suitcase full of such suspect oddities, I wouldn't have volunteered to go through the special full body x-ray machine with all my bags in order to queue jump at airport security just a little bit, but the catster is a fearless feline. She was therefore subjected to the tightest security checks it is possible to experience at an airport, and passed through sans probleme. Strange then, that on boarding the plane she then realised that she was accidentally still in possession of a cigarette lighter, having forgotten to dispose of it pre-security. Which makes one wonder, does it not? She arrived very excited that she could maybe pay for the price of her trip by selling her story to the papers, until I pointed out that as she had passed about 150 places where she could have purchased a cigarette lighter on her journey from the airport to my apartment, it might now be slightly difficult to prove.......

It was the Cat's birthday, so we then embarked on a downtown-uptown east-west marathon to collect the present I had ordered for her, drink lovely cocktails at the Rainbow Room and eat gorgeous food at Tia Pol, which has to be THE best tapas bar outside of Spain I've ever encountered. On the way there, cab driver Abraham introduced himself, shook our hands and recited his entire CV to us before starting to 'drive' (I use the term loosely). He then proceeded to bond with the Catster in a very alarming fashion throughout the entire 40 block journey (ie. without ANY hands on the wheel and FACING us in the back for 90% of the time). Had I been able to get a word in edgeways I might have sugested that he pay just a tiny bit of attention to the road, but the monologue about the entire works of Tom Hanks and Jack Nicholson, plus the non-career of Paris Hilton and various Dangermouse, Banksy spin-offs, left no second for interruption. He was so on a roll that he went 4 blocks too far before even noticing, and then wouldn't let us out until we'd heard his personal 9/11 conspiracy theory. This of course is how cab drivers in NY are supposed to behave, but only do when you're visiting the city. The last time I had an interesting cab driver was when CNL was visiting, and we were treated to a glovebox firearm viewing. If you live here, for some reason you only get the monosyllabic-in-another-language ones. But the Catster doesn't believe me of course. Maybe I will get to experience a NY vacation again too whilst she's around.......

BURNT OUT

2006-09-17T09:31:00.000-04:00

Yesterday the Th set himself on fire.

For the briefest femto second I thought it was some kind of party trick inspired by the previous evening's trip to Absinthe, (and what grown man doesn't get home from that and endeavour to put both legs behind their neck whilst simultaneously eating fire? Or something...)
But no. There was a not inconsiderable amount of smoke coming out of one of the pockets of his jeans, and he looked down and stated, breezily like, 'oh look, I'm on fire'.
'Get your trousers off!' my outside voice was shouting. (Just occasionally the outside voice is spot on.) But my-ever-so-cool-husband merely reached into his pocket and put out the flames with his bare hands. That's years of living in Tottenham for you.
Of course it's entirely possible that old Minnie Castevet across the way had put some kind of 'pants' curse on him, given her obsession with the lack of them this week, particularly as he'd been speaking to her only just a moment before. Oddly. But the less sinister explanation is that the Marquis and Ben's personalised matchbook had spontaneously combusted inside his pocket. Most things from Nola it seems, both animate and inanimate, have this habit of behaving in a spectacular manner.

So the day continued without much incident. We met this chap for drinks at some cute boutique hotel bar. Free drinks of course, because the Marquis had it sorted. From what I could gather said chap draws angry bunny rabbits and measures the front of weight watchers buildings across the country for a living, but aside from that he seemed like a perfectly normal kinda guy....
From there to the Bodies exhibition, where for some reason to do with the Marquis, we only had to pay half price. (Although I almost got in completely free on account of bearing a striking resemblance to plastinated remains, having consumed my bodyweight in liquor the previous day with only half a bloodstream left.)

And then to PARTY at the launch of 'Surge' - an exhibition of art by 150 New Orleans artists at Brooklyn Lyceum, including a couple of Marquis pieces. Oh and lots of lovely fun was had there!

There was the voodoo blindfold dancing room? Of course...

And here the lovely Aria demonstrates how to stay within the NY law by simultaneously not drinking outside and not smoking inside a building. And whilst you're standing in an exit, you might as well attempt to charge people 5 dollars to leave. It just might work.....

Much of what occurred after that is a bit of a blur, but I vaguely recall several bars, some kind of motorbyke incident and a stolen pogo stick episode.

I was somewhat sceptical that the adorable boys would make their 10.30am flight this morning, and secretly rather hoping they wouldn't. It's certainly the first morning they've seen in daylight this week. But alas, it seems they are gone. I can only hope that these are the Marquis' keys to the city.....

DRESS SENSE

2006-09-16T19:26:00.000-04:00

Mrs N cannot control her excitement this week due to the presence of not one but three glamorous and charming males in our apartment. The thrice daily visits are back and she has taken to loitering in the hallway with intent and little more than a T shirt at every available opportunity. When there is a male 'sighting', she launches into a really odd flirtation ritual.

Clearly she is trying ever so hard to find a ninth husband (or whatever number it is she's up to now) and make an impression. And she has. Today, after her second appearance, the Marquis commented drily 'you'd think someone that rich could afford some pants'.

BLOOD MONEY

2006-09-15T11:50:00.000-04:00

I'd figured that getting to the blood testing centre at opening time would mean I wouldn't have to wait in a huge queue......
7.30am and clearly people had been camping out overnight, like Madonna was billed to draw the blood. What's more - the queue all definitely had tuberculosis, even I could tell them that without them having to be tested.

'Take a seat' I was told. If I had actually been able to TAKE the seat somewhere else entirely that would've been fine, but as the only seat was placed between TB and yellow fever, I mumbled 'No, it's okay I'll stand'.
'TAKE A SEAT' the receptionist yelled. Blimey.
Believe me, it's well difficult to hold your breath for over 10 minutes - I understand the whole David Blaine fuss now.

So much for being early. All it meant was that I got the nurse who was late. She entered screaming about traffic delays and dripping wet, then proceeded to yell at her childminder on her cellphone for 5 minutes. Still cursing and with her coat on, she called the name 'Fernandez!' Nobody moved. 'Fernandez!!!' irritably. The receptionist looked accusingly at me. 'Errr that's not my name'.
"That's what it says here!' I spelled my name out again. 'Yes that's what I said -Fernandez! Go in there!' she retorted even more impatiently. Ah whatever....

I smiled at her in my best empathetic calming way as she continued to rant about every highway from here to deepest darkest Jersey, with childminder expletives thrown in for good measure.
'Perhaps you should have a coffee and relax a bit - you've obviously had a very stressful morning'.....
(read - Please don't let this raving maniac stick a needle in my arm........).
Too late. she went in from a great height and with all the angst of American road rage, and believe me, that's a whole different rifle range to English road rage.

She removed 10 test tubes ie. about half the contents of my bloodstream, which amounted to about all that the current mosquito infestation had left behind. And she did it with the gusto of someone who dearly loves her job.

In this country, for this we PAY.....

COUNTRY FARE

2006-09-13T12:55:00.000-04:00

The search for valid procrastination went out of the window when the divine and adorable Marquis and Ben came in through the door on Sunday. But strangely, the presence of this best possible type of distraction in the flat has only served to make me write much more quickly and efficiently, whilst these most endearing of house guests deposit little treats on the table in front of me at regular intervals - gorgeous purple orchids, mint chocolate chip cookies, bottles of wine (and of course milk thistle to counteract - how thoughtful is that!).

This is the second time they have visited and I am now convinced that they have this city totally sewn up. Last time we were veritably red-carpeted into all the best clubs in town, and last night they proved that they also have the culinary arena cut and dried and served on a silver platter, when the TH and I accompanied them to the latest 'buzz-restaurant' in town - Country.
Not only are they ever-so-pally-pally with the captain there, but by the end of the evening we were all set up for about the next decade, having been introduced to the chef (read God) and a good deal of the remaining staff. The 7-course meal 'specially prepared for our table' by chef, served by a waiter each, (and at a heavily 'Marq(uis)ed-down' price), was up there in the top two meals I've ever had in my life, and it was really one of those totally perfect evenings - gorgeous entertaining company and incredible food and wine.

Then to the nearest dive-bar with said captain (to bring us back down to our level), for a couple of hours of riveting behind the scenes restaurant stories straight out of 'Hells Kitchen', which always had the same roared ending ( although in a variety of languages ) - 'get your knives and get out!'

'PROCRASTINATION IS SOMETHING BEST PUT OFF UNTIL TOMORROW'

2006-09-07T18:29:00.002-04:00

- Gerald Vaughan

Eventually the thing one is procrastinating from becomes the procrastination for the procrastinations. So to speak.
My recently purchased bible for instance. Call me naive, but I really had no idea the bible was so traumatic. I've now finished Genesis, and have thus far (note my newly acquired King James vocabulary) read about incest, infidelity, murder, polygamy, rape, pillage, war, general depravity, errrr did I miss anything? Ah yes, extreme overuse of the word 'peradventure'. There's only so much of all that one can take in one go, which is clearly why tv programmes like 'Big Love' only show once a week. I can only hope that the ten commandments are going to make an appearance sooner rather than later.

So, having eaten the local newsagent totally out of M&M's, there was nothing for it but to either copy out my maternal family tree going back to 1750 in neat writing, (which I weirdly stumbled upon on the web the other day,) clean the entire apartment or try to precis something like 30,000 words into 1,500 words. I'm down to about 7,000 and have reached the point where I'd pretty much rather be doing anything else. Having said that, the family tree is looking dangerously similar to Genesis, so I must say, the hoover is starting to look very enticing.

Eventually the thing one is procrastinating from becomes the procrastination for the procrastinations. So to speak.
My recently purchased bible for instance. Call me naive, but I really had no idea the bible was so traumatic. I've now finished Genesis, and have thus far (note my newly acquired King James vocabulary) read about incest, infidelity, murder, polygamy, rape, pillage, war, general depravity, errrr did I miss anything? Ah yes, extreme overuse of the word 'peradventure'. There's only so much of all that one can take in one go, which is clearly why tv programmes like 'Big Love' only show once a week. I can only hope that the ten commandments are going to make an appearance sooner rather than later.

So, having eaten the local newsagent totally out of M&M's, there was nothing for it but to either copy out my maternal family tree going back to 1750 in neat writing, (which I weirdly stumbled upon on the web the other day,) clean the entire apartment or try to precis something like 30,000 words into 1,500 words. I'm down to about 7,000 and have reached the point where I'd pretty much rather be doing anything else. Having said that, the family tree is looking dangerously similar to Genesis, so I must say, the hoover is starting to look very enticing.

PROCRASTINATION

2006-09-05T08:28:00.000-04:00

So yesterday I insisted that we go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to pick up our Godchildren's Christmas presents, as that's extremely urgent. Obviously.
Whilst there I totally fell in love with a bible. It's the sort of bible that makes you really want to read it - huge and full of medieval art illustrations. I just had to have it.
On returning home I completely re-designed my myspace page, because clearly that's really important. Then I tackled the 995 odd socks situation in the bedroom.
That took care of yesterday.
Today I'm about to start reading said bible, because let's face it, I've always meant to.

Meanwhile my feature deadline is looming ever closer......

2006-08-31T22:20:00.000-04:00

The Cloisters NY

2006-08-31T22:18:00.000-04:00

Fort Tryon Park

LONDON CALLING

2006-08-30T18:53:00.000-04:00

Yes yes yes. I know it's been a while. But really, this City sometimes seeps every ounce of energy and will out of you, then squeezes a bit more for good measure. I only wish American washing machines were half as effective. Or indeed anything around here.

The last two weeks have been largely, how we say, stressful. 1 step forward 2 back. Ok, it's not all been bad - had several great interviews and cups of tea with lovely musicians - Tessa Souter, D, Orlando le Fleming and Mat Fishwick. But meanwhile, perhaps the most useful interview of all is still in disc hospital where minidisc recovery seems like a very rare skill. The doorman at the data recovery place now thinks I work there I've visited so often, and today mr d. recovery had to admit defeat and now wants to send it somewhere else. At least he's still trying...... But I wouldn't be surprised if by the time I've actually retrieved this interview (if indeed I ever do), the magazine I'm writing it for has folded or something, or it'll be way too late. It clearly doesn't pay to do any work here, as I've already spent way more on equipment to DO this job than I'll ever be receiving FOR the job, if indeed the job ever manages to get done.

I have turned to M&M's. Even the blue ones.

Meanwhile my dear friend D has been having a kind of Tsunami in her bathroom. Every time anyone else in her building takes a bath or shower, huge waves of dirty water well up into and over her bath. This has been going on for over a week now and her landlord is less than interested. Which would be all very well if she wasn't paying about a million dollars a month for a ROOM. She has spent the whole week in said room waiting for a selection of plumbers to arrive, none of whom seem able to deal with the problem other than suggesting knocking down a couple of walls (which actually might not be a bad thing, as it could double the size of her apartment), but they won't take the job on nevertheless because it's 'too difficult'. The inefficiency here is really remarkable. As D pointedly remarked to me today 'New York, New York... So good they named it twice. Maybe they should have named it a few more times and sorted out their housing policies.'
Still, at least she's not been able to leave the apartment to work or anything, which is clearly a good thing or she'd probably be bankrupt into the bargain. Like me.

D, who has only had about three alcoholic beverages in the 8 months I've known her, has turned to drink.

So as a brief respite from our frustrations we went to a rather wonderful gig at the 55 Bar the other night.
I pause here for a statistic.
Apparently rats outnumber New Yorkers by 6 to 1.
I didn't set out to prove this point. Hell I've got enough problems as it is. But the statistic was nevertheless borne out when on ambling along Seventh Avenue at 1 am or thereabouts after the gig, the TH, D and I stumbled upon what can only be described as a 'rat pack' in and around a pile of black bin liners on the sidewalk. Several things happened in the next few seconds. King Rat obviously called last orders and the convention broke up sending a huge number of terrifyingly large rats scurrying around our feet in a kind of horror-movie scenario, D screamed and ran and a passing homeless character became very excited and started jumping up and down ranting about how rats could jump up and bite your neck. Helpfully like.
Somehow, amidst this frenzy of activity, I found myself calmly counting, in the way that one repeatedly counts anything in a stressful situation - ceiling tiles at the dentists, sheep when you can't sleep (do people really do that?), and I counted 17!
3 of us and 17 of them. That's really not a nice number of rats to find yourself surrounded by.

And don't get me started on the many and various flying insects that are gradually eating me overnight here....

Is it time to go back to London yet please?

IN THE LAP OF THE PODS

2006-08-18T17:09:00.000-04:00

New York is beautiful at the moment. By that I mean it's cooler. And by that I mean it's 'only' in the mid '80s. A gorgeous morning last Sunday in Central Park. Then to the American Museum of Natural History for 'Indigenous Peoples' Day'. Bag checks are cursory now and seem to have been replaced by drinking displays - you can't go in without drinking from whatever liquid you're carrying in front of security guards, but you can probably take in a couple of suitcases full of who knows what without much trouble. All a bit strange as apparently some liquids which could be used to make explosives wouldn't do you any harm if you tasted them anyway. Then to performances by Matou - mesmerising chants and harmonies from a fusion group of native Americans and Maori singers and Tama Waipara - a Maori vocalist/songwriter who played a kind of mellow soul set. Had arranged to meet Janek Gwizdala there (as he was performing with Tama), to do an interview for the feature I'm currently writing on British musicians living in New York.

We decided to go back to his apartment for the interview on account of the general children-meet-dinosaurs din in the museum, and there then followed a very amusing few minutes where security wouldn't let us OUT with a bass guitar and amp, thinking that we were stealing Egyptian artifacts. It's an oldish amp, granted, but Egyptian.....? A good and very interesting interview, but was slightly panicked at the end when I went to save it on my newly acquired Belkin ipod attachment, and the ipod crashed on me mid-save.

Hours later I was that person with a midnight appointment at the 'genius bar' at the apple store. It's true - pretty much everything is 24 hours in this city, except the 'genius' that is, who was showing clear signs of needing sleep. In trying to salvage the interview by 'updating the software' (this is only a 2 month old ipod we're talking about), he managed to totally crash the entire thing and lose the whole 30GB of music etc currently on there. All backed up of course, but a total pain. It's at times like this that I'm definitely becoming American and I let the 'genius' know in no uncertain terms what I thought of the situation.. Left with a replacement ipod, new software and a guarantee this wouldn't happen again, but had lost the last 10 minutes of the interview and was gutted.....

Did a few ipod recording test-runs before Wednesday's interview with Wayne Batchelor. On the morning of the interview another test run sent the ipod crashing again. This was no joking matter now. Very annoyed. So persuaded Wayne to come round to my flat instead of meeting for lunch, where I'd set up my old mini-disc recorder, which for some reason will only work when plugged into a UK socket which in turn is plugged into a step transformer. (They'd have loved that at the museum - it even looks like a bomb. But I guess that would've been okay 'cos it's clearly not a liquid.)

Another good interview, and apart from that really good to catch up with Wayne, who I've only seen a couple of times briefly since living here. Then ran off to buy a new mini-disc player because frankly life was getting too stressful without one, and the Belkin attachment is obviously a pile of crap.

On Thursday to the upper West side to meet Mark Taylor. We had lunch and a good catch-up chat before the actual interview, which went very well and was totally fascinating. After that back to his apartment for tea and more chats. We haven't seen each other properly for something like 12 years, and literally didn't stop talking for five hours. Really lovely to see him again, and I think we'll be seeing a lot more of each other now we've re-connected. I'm totally loving doing this interviewing thing - nothing makes me happier than good interesting one-to-one chats, and hanging with musicians, on top of which I'm really fascinated by their New York stories and am looking forward to writing it all up.

Then the third crisis of the week. Got home and transferred the mini-disc to another player, which for some reason immediately went into record mode. Hastily ejected the disc and when I put it back, it read 0 files and 'read error'. The absolute final straw. What is it with crappy new digital media??!! Is absolutely nothing reliable? I need that interview, not least because Mark goes to Japan for seven weeks this weekend and although I can remember the essence of it all, I want his quotes. So spent the whole evening searching for a data recovery place in NY to take the disc to which isn't going to totally break the bank, and spent this morning taking it there. I am not happy. At least I'm not happy until they tell me it's recoverable.....
Then I need to take the Belkin rubbish back for a refund. Arg.
Bring back cassettes....

KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL

2006-08-10T09:30:00.000-04:00

Last week I had the great pleasure of spending a good few entertaining hours in the 'time-capsule-which-is-A's-gaff' for a breakfast which seamlessly morphed straight into lunch, then just kept on going. The way time disappears in that house, without anything being achieved other than the sort of conversation which could easily go on indefinitely and large gaps appearing in the wine cellar, could explain why it's taken him approximately 3 years to get the kitchen fitted. It might also explain his strange fetish for anything vintage (and not just of the liquid variety). He is currently experimenting with 30 year old blackberries (so old in fact that the word means something entirely different now), 1985 Diamond Jubilee Oxo cubes and a 1997 jar of honey. The honey I can sort of understand though, now that I think about it, because I'm sure it's entirely possible to arrive at that house for breakfast in 1997 and not leave until 2006.

Anyway, my point is that there is now, finally, a kitchen. But not just any old kitchen. For example, the hob is the size of most NY apartments and has a dimmer switch and the drawers have a kind of time-lapse self-closing system. I am presuming it is a slow one though, because to unload the dishwasher this symmetrically would probably take a compass, slide rule and another 3 years.

The man is clearly a virgo. Only he's not. This total planetary error kind of destroys any astrological faith one might ever have had.

BACK IN THE USA

2006-08-09T16:20:00.000-04:00

I know this because everwhere is very hot outside and very cold inside and it took me nearly half an hour to find cotton buds in the drugstore yesterday, (which are, by the way, called cotton SWABS here, which makes them sound so gross I then almost couldn't bring myself to buy them.) They were in the chocolate section. Of course, silly me. What is the problem with filing in NY drugstores? Unbelievable. And it's not like you can ask anyone, as most of the assistants only speak Spanish, and my school Spanish unfortunately doesn't stretch to 'bud', let alone 'swab'. I did try a 'sticking my finger in my ear and wiggling it' mime type thing, until I realised that of course they wouldn't get it like that, because that's the one thing you're not allowed to do with cotton buds...

Got up at 3am. Wide awake. Watched tv, read, answered emails, dealt with forgotten-for-3-weeks loaf of bread situation in the kitchen and dead plants situation in the other rooms, opened post - bills and a bunch of results from the medical I had last week which pronounce me not alive after all and in need of further tests or a blood transfusion or a new liver or something. (yeah - a new place to live).
Daylight. Sleepy. Grrrr.

I'm sure it's obvious that I'm really happy to be back.

TOURIST TRAP

2006-08-04T03:55:00.000-04:00

Back in the days when I lived in Earl's Court, I found myself engaged in an almost daily exchange with rock-gig or exhibition-seeking tourists on the tube platform or street, which went something like this:
'Excuse me, where is Earl's Court please?'
'You're in it'.

Nowadays, in a manner of speaking, I've become a London tourist. I therefore feel no compunction in mentioning that for the past two weeks we have been staying in St Paul's, thank you very much.

2006-07-31T15:12:00.000-04:00

RFH refurbishment - auditorium

HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS

2006-07-31T06:06:00.000-04:00

I am so loving being in London…..

A whirlwind week seeing friends for lunches, drinks, coffee, drinks, dinner and errrr ……drinks every day. A few fabulous gigs also thrown in to the mix - notably Hanne Hukkelberg (surely the next Bjork?), the lovely Steve Lawson’s Recycle Collective gig to launch his wonderful new album (which I was ever so slightly involved in), and preview the imaginative and beautifully performed ‘New Standard’ set with Julie McKee before their Edinburgh Festival run (go check it out if you’re up there), and a heartfelt solo gig at the new Vortex by the ever-creative Estelle Kokot

On Friday I was offered a tour of the Royal Festival Hall’s site redevelopment - a huge and very exciting project. So, suitably dressed in hard-hat, fluorescent jacket and very dodgy wellingtons (which instantly cause you to walk like a builder), I went hunting for my old office and discovered that it now appears to be a bar....which seems somehow appropriate.

The auditorium currently consists of miles of scaffolding (in itself a remarkable feat of engineering) and although not totally gutted by any means, there's so much already changed in the building that despite having worked there for 19 years, I was nevertheless getting confused as to my whereabouts.

Yesterday to C and OVP's gaff for a lovely afternoon/evening/night in their garden with my closest and very-missed friends. In short, my ‘family’. The last thing I remember is having way too much fun with a pitchfork digging up potatoes in J's allotment at dusk. Don't ask. I've really no idea...

THE LAST ONE TO GO HOME

2006-07-26T04:26:00.000-04:00

Yes, ha ha, very funny, now can we have the usual British summertime back please.
I left NY at this time of year to get away from 37 degree temperatures, but the degree equivalent of the average mid-life crisis age is methodically following me around the world, like a big weather-personal-joke thing.
And at the risk of missing out whole countries due to sporadic internet access of late, suffice to say Berlin was, errrr, HOT.

Monday was spent entirely at the American Embassy due to spectacularly incompetent lawyers who had somehow managed to totally mess up our visa application by failing to notice a ticked box on our forms and hence not following up by obtaining, or asking us to obtain, the required extra information. As far as I can see, all they had to do for their thousands of pounds was to 'copy out' forms we had already filled in months ago and notice a ticked box, and in addition to missing the tick, they even managed three 'copying - out' errors. Unbelievable! I swear my 8 yr old niece could have done a better job. So on Monday morning beady-eyed lawyer calmly sat there and said 'our paralegal missed it i'm afraid. She's new. The worse case scenario is that you'll have to stay in the UK whilst the extra information is processed'. WHAT?! (We know exactly what this means because the very same thing happened the first time round, and TH was delayed in the UK for no less than 4 months, due to someone in the same company once again missing a ticked box!). The TH looked like he was about to have a heart-attack and I was about to come out with my now automatic-American-response to threaten to sue , but then remembered that they're lawyers. (Allegedly.) Although frankly they're so useless I'd probably have won. Worst of all was their total lack of apology or any kind of concern. For all they cared we could be homeless and jobless in the UK for 4 months due to their incompetence, and that was just 'one of those things'. I can really see how folks end up in jail for years for crimes they've not committed if this is the standard of legal representation in this country.

The American Embassy must be the only place in the world with 'America' in the title which doesn't have air-conditioning. So we sat in excruciating heat for the entire day with about 600 others and one fan (the redistributing warm-air kind, not the stalker kind), waiting for the verdict. Our number got bypassed. And bypassed.... And after about 4 hours I had become accustomed to the idea of being stuck in the UK for 4 months and was compiling a rather exciting list of 'things to do in London when you're stranded'. By 5pm I was very jolly indeed, with the Edinburgh Festival, the London Jazz Festival, a whole bunch of friends to stay with and 'cooler weather' on my list.....

By 5.30pm everyone had been processed except us and a guy who looked totally strung out on something. In short it didn't look good. It looked a bit like the tail end of a party when you really should have left hours ago, particularly as there was no alcohol.

Finally we got called for our interview. Miraculously the guy interviewing us a/ clearly wanted to get home and b/ had managed to dredge up the missing information from TH's previous application 3 years ago (which the lawyers had claimed would take days to get out of the archive). Half an hour later our visas were agreed. We handed over the lawyer's credit card information to pay for the visas, and guess what - their credit card info was incorrect! What a surprise. I've never seen the TH get his credit card out so quickly.

On leaving the embassy we both immediately started smoking again. The TH out of sheer relief. Myself, because I was gutted. No 4 months in London ......and London still feels like my home.

POKER NIGHT

2006-07-12T17:36:00.000-04:00

8 four-packs, 7 bottles of wine, 6 investment bankers, 5 broken glasses, 4 all-ins, 3 broken plates, 2 glamorous jazz singers, 1 shark, 1 dog/pig and 1 all-day morning after....

THE ID AND THE EGO

2006-07-07T15:58:00.000-04:00

Even now, things about this city still amaze me almost daily. For instance, there are NO passport photo booths. No such thing. So having reached the point in my stay when I need to complete another batch of endless administrative paperwork in order to maintain my right to live the American Dream (?), I find myself forced to visit actual photographers for my 3 photos for this, 2 for that and 1 for the other.

Problem. Well several actually. Number one being my pathological hatred of having my photograph taken. Back in the UK it was trauma enough to have to shut myself in the photo booth at Waterloo Station for a whole afternoon, armed with a bucket of pound coins, but at least there was a small chance that I would emerge several hours later (and several tens of pounds poorer) with a photo vaguely resembling my self-image. And most importantly, nobody else had to undergo this painful process with me.

It is rather different here. I now have the required photos but it is 4pm Friday. I began my photo session at midday on Thursday.

The first photographers was a very hit and run affair.....errrrr, what, no mirror? I'm sorry, but with the number of times per day I'm asked for ID here, there is NO WAY I'm going to spend the next 2 years looking like an escaped convict who's recovering from a second-degree burns incident on a sunbed. It was just too embarrassing to join the queue again to re-do said photos so I went to another shop.

At the next place they had a problem with my head. The thing about living here (visa) is that your head has to be 1.25" from top to chin, but if you want to work (work permit), your head needs to be 2mm smaller - perhaps so as you don't get any big ideas.... especially as a foreigner. However, if you want to get into the country in the first place (passport) I believe your head has to be 10mm smaller. Or something. Which would be all very well if there wasn't the added problem of the measurement from your eye level to the bottom of the photograph.

I swear you have to have a PhD in maths and a logarithms book close by to be a passport photographer in this city, and the guy in shop 2 was having a great deal of trouble 'minimising' me. Ok, so on top of my photo phobia I now find out I'm facially a total freak, and the square of my hypotenuse doesn't equal the sum of the squares on my other two sides. So in the next batch of shots, which took forever, I am looking, (because I'm feeling), like the Elephant Man. I really couldn't put him or myself through all that again, so I pretended to be happy and went to shop 3.

The girl in shop 3 actually took some photos I was almost pleased with. But she wasn't. 'You're smiling' she said 'they probably won't accept them'. (Quite where that smile had come from after the day I'd had I've no idea. It can't possibly have been mine.) By this point I'd traversed the city several times and it was practically bedtime. Maybe if I slept on it (my face that is), I'd wake up with it miraculously the right size, colour, shape and expression.

This morning I cut my fringe, flattened my hair down with gel to lose a few millimetres and plastered make-up on before attempt 4. The first photos were apparently 'no good', as some hair had 'got away' and consequently both my ears weren't showing (?) And I was starting to think that I'd never be able to travel or work again purely on account of not being able to produce a valid photograph, when the photographer caught me off-guard and got the shot. I look nothing like myself, but that's okay as 'good likeness' doesn't appear to be on the list of requirements. The point is I look miserable, have 2 ears and am the right size.

So now we know why only 34% of Americans own passports.

INDEPENDENCE DAY

2006-07-05T08:25:00.000-04:00

So, because 230 years ago, the Americans got away from us Brits, last night I joined 3 million other 'independently minded people' to stand on the FDR ( a large motorway which runs over 9 miles up the eastern side of Manhattan ) to watch the much-awaited firework display. (The FDR was closed to traffic, just incase you're wondering....)

The aliens are coming and their goal is to invade and destroy. Fighting superior technology, Man's best weapon is the will to survive. Yeah that's the movie, but actually it could easily have been the theme of the display - particularly at the end, when the will to survive came in very handy whilst trying to get home at the same time as 3 million other 'independently minded people'.

The actual individual fireworks were probably the most original and creative I've ever seen - notably ones which exploded into star shapes and 3D boxes, Saturn rings and slow-rising ghost-like alien things. But, whatever happened to the three act structure? Like most displays these days, after the initiating incident the whole storyline rather lost the plot. There was no 2nd act climax, and even the denouement was confusing with several false-endings. Just imagine being at the theatre and the audience clap because they think the play's over (in several places), only to find it starts up again. Said play would almost certainly be considered rubbish, right? Visual storytelling is no different to any other, and in my opinion, all firework display designers should enrol on Robert McKee's 'story' seminar.....

Anyway, personal structure gripe aside, it was a good display as displays go. It's just that nothing will EVER compare to the Millennium firework display in London. That year my friends were clearly sleeping with the right people because I found myself, with only a handful of others, viewing from the roof of the Royal Festival Hall, so close to the action that burnt-out firework shells were landing on the ground at our feet. I will never ever forget that evening and the background soundtrack of my French friend D, who was leaping up and down with excitement behind his tripod as he took zillions of photographs, whilst simultaneously trying to direct another friend in the use of his new camera by screaming every few seconds 'Press zee fooking BUTTON!'

2006-07-02T13:39:00.000-04:00

Apparently.....

TICKETMASTER RANT

2006-06-25T10:19:00.000-04:00

Most venues in NY only offer online booking through one of a handful of ticket agencies, and so a few weeks ago the TH purchased tickets online for us to see Avishai Cohen and the Bad Plus at Irving Plaza. I'm astounded by the additional charges involved in online ticket purchases here - for starters there is always something called a 'convenience charge' slapped on top of the ticket price, which recently at BB Kings (also Ticketmaster), cost me something like 7 dollars per ticket! This is apparently for the 'convenience' of being able to book tickets in your own home...? Uh? Doesn't online booking actually SAVE ticket agencies money as they don't have to sell from outlets (which means rent) or through staff (who need salaries)? But in addition to that, there is also something called the 'order processing charge', which for these particular concerts came to an additional $9.20.

To cut a long story short, we found out a couple of days before the gig, quite by accident ie. through a friend, that the Avishai Cohen gig was cancelled. We subsequently found out on the actual day of the Bad Plus gig that that too was cancelled. And how did we find out? By accident, as I had logged onto the Bad Plus blog!

On receiving our refunds, (which incidentally involved US having to call Ticketmaster), we noticed that there was still a charge of $9.20. Now I wouldn't even mind this if they had bothered to send us notification by email of the cancellations, but we received NOT A WORD. How difficult is it to email a cancellation notification to ticket holders? It is not difficult. I know this because I've worked in box offices and ticket agencies. With the technology they possess, it takes one person approximately 5 minutes to press about 3 buttons.

We never got a reason for the cancellations, we are $9.20 down, and the promoter and band are also down because had we known in advance about the Bad Plus cancellation we would have gone out of our way to see them at Carnegie Hall a couple of days before. Oh, and we are also dissatisfied pissed off customers.

And whilst we're on the subject, it seems that everyone in the world is entitled to use your email address if you've purchased tickets with this rip-off company, EXCEPT it seems, if it is going to be useful to the ticket-holder.

And they call this the customer service capital of the World.........

NEW YORK WITH THE FRINGE ON TOP

2006-06-24T14:35:00.000-04:00

Summer in New York. And it feels more like the Edinburgh Fringe Festival every day. There is a pile of washing up in the sink. I have no idea who's in the spare room, although the shoes in the hall may or may not be a clue. I haven't slept more than 2 hours in days and appear to be wearing clothes which don't belong to me. Wine is flowing but food is scarce. We are reeling from free gig to free gig with the odd paid gig inbetween and are coincidentally meeting 'friends of friends' on an hourly karmic basis. It's even raining like we're in Scotland. I should currently be at something called the 'Mermaid Parade' but stuff happens. There's still the hip-hop festival and tap dance extravaganza later.....
Meantime, our apartment is apparently the venue for a poker game, friends are disappearing to saner places and an alarming number of folks are walking past dressed in cotton balls.
Somehow, amidst this chaos, the TH is still managing to HOLD DOWN A JOB.

SINGING WITH THE LARK

2006-06-23T14:16:00.000-04:00

Tucked behind the New York Public Library, a mere biscuits toss from 5th Avenue and the sensory hell of Times Square, is an oasis (by NY standards) of relative calm.
I first discovered Bryant Park a couple of years ago, when the JVC Jazz Festival held three days of free events there, and it has since become one of my favourite NY haunts. Despite the office blocks rising above the trees on all sides, with its tree-lined pathway circumference and grassed centre, this small haven nevertheless feels totally cut off from the surrounding madness, and you can almost hear yourself think.

Quite apart from all that, the layout and use of this park for public events is truly inspired, which is why, when talks were underway at the SBC in London 18 months ago, regarding the re-design of Jubilee Gardens, I suggested that they might consider using Bryant Park as a model.

So today, because there are no longer enough hours in the night in which to see bands, I went along to Bryant Park's latest offering - a free performance by Mary J. Blige at, errrrr, 7am. This was one of a series of free concerts at 7am every Friday, which in forthcoming weeks will also feature Lionel Ritchie and the Beach Boys. The performances go out live on 'Good Morning America' on ABC, who presumably pay for them, and the time of day guarantees crowd-number control and also ensures that the noise doesn't disturb nearby offices. A genius programming idea.

In addition to these performances, there are free movies at dusk every Monday evening shown on a huge screen, a reading area with books and literature events, a gorgeous carousel, a chess/games area, free WiFi, coffee booths, and 2,000 chairs and tables you're allowed to move around the park. And of course, in Winter, one of the largest ice rinks in the City.

In short, it's one of those very rare urban spaces, where both architects and programmers have got it exactly right. If you're ever in the neighbourhood, go check it out...

2006-06-23T14:15:00.000-04:00

9am. Post-gig rush hour.

MESSAGE FROM ABOVE

2006-06-21T14:04:00.000-04:00

Arial Unicode MS? Or maybe Wingdings?

BRANDON ROSS & 'BLAZING BEAUTY'

2006-06-19T10:05:00.000-04:00

Outside the unrelenting evening humidity attaches itself to every movement and muffles every sound. An all-engulfing blanket. Children play half-heartedly with a balloon on the steps of a turn of the century tenement block, but the balloon is going nowhere, everything is strangely still. A man approaches me from across the street. A lone Hopper-painting figure against the intense shadows of fire escapes.. sweat pouring from his forehead. Do I know where Rucker Street is? He has been searching for hours. I don't, but hand him my map. He studies it, but in truth neither of us can read the tiny street names without our absent reading glasses. He sighs resignedly, in the way only New Yorkers can and do, and sets off to wander the virtually empty streets some more.

Lower East Side. Deep inside. Scaffolding and handmade signs in windows.
Tonic. And it is. The contrast and respite of instant coolness in a space which nevertheless exudes warmth. Exposed brick walls, a cathedral-like smell of incense and wax, candles flickering in the otherwise darkened vault. A place to worship music.

Although Brandon Ross is the leader, this is a true 'band project' with JT Lewis, Stomu Takeishi and Ron Miles all an equal part of the concept. (About as far away from Marcus Miller and his 'sideshow' of two days ago as it is possible to get...)

These are musicians so technically advanced, so experienced, that there is no barrier. And what follows is a free-flow creative highway from their hearts through the instruments, an emotionally intense filmic journey, a surround soundscape of original stories, sometimes playful and quirky, often dark and tormented.

Extraordinary moments. When Brandon plucks the banjo strings tentatively, they cry out as desolately as heartstrings. In 'Peace Flows' his voice has a Jeff Buckley quality - an effortless purity which somehow pleads. JT pounds a backbeat which slams forcefully across the live walls, then stops and we too can hear the rhythm he feels and implies in bars of silence. And throughout, Stomu and Ron, always there, never there, like a perfectly woven carpet, there is no join, no individual thread. They are a part of the whole and yet the whole of the part.

Just occasionally I am in awe of the miracle of music. How did it happen - this extraordinary sequence of events which results in sounds so powerful they are felt rather than heard? How did these like-minded souls find each other, how did they not only KNOW that this is what they were born to do, but then actually, somehow, do it?

This was not a gig, it was an experience.

And last night I found a New York I had imagined.

ALL EYES ON THE BALL

2006-06-18T11:29:00.000-04:00

Bleary-eyed from another 0-dark-thirty night. If it weren't for high-definition TV I wouldn't even be able to find the football channel.

Summer in the city. This is what it sounds like. 92 degrees and the AC is high.

Tonight will be the 34th band I've seen so far this month.
Slowly getting to grips with the music in this City, but there aren't enough hours in the night. Totally dependent on cabs from venue to venue (not an extravagance - they're so cheap here). But now the added complication of finding cab drivers who have no interest in football. Last night my life in the hands of a guy from Ghana, who spent the entire journey shrieking down the phone to relatives in his homeland about aggregates. His eyes were about as far from the road as his dream from reality. On the way home a Czech driver, who was, to say the least, suicidal...

The doorman sound asleep as we crept in. He's from Croatia, so very soon it might be too dangerous to even leave the apartment.

GREAT EXPECTATIONS

2006-06-17T11:16:00.000-04:00

The only good thing about losing just about all the work projects you have lined up for the next couple of months in the space of 24 hours, is knowing that somewhere along the line you're owed 24 hours of good fortune.

In the meantime, Portugal, who I am supporting in the World Cup (and actually have money on) have just gone through to the next round. So, whilst I am hoping for some slightly more personal career progress, my back-up plan of becoming a professional gambler is looking like the best option right now.

' The suburbs: Signs of life, but no proofs.'

2006-06-12T15:20:00.000-04:00

The strangest events I ever end up at are always something to do with the Eggplants, but Saturday's event hit a whole new jackpot in the Twin Peaks world which is Eggplantis.

Take a respectable Brooklyn suburb, take a band called 'Brain Surgeons' (led by Blue Oyster Cult drummer Albert Bouchard, who unless I'm mistaken, once won some kind of award for being the loudest drummer EVER), take Eggplant bass player Gil's (small) garden in said Brooklyn suburbia and a 10 hour long fund-raising event for breast cancer research called 'Brooklyn Woodstock'. Mix up all these ingredients, and you get something like this:

The sound is only terrible because it was SO LOUD my camera microphone was smoking like a shisha pipe (tenuous link, I know, but don't you just LOVE that computerised voice). The sound was nevertheless perfect about 20 blocks away. I'm sure you get the idea..... In London the police would have been there in minutes, but amazingly not a curtain twitched and nobody stirred in this 'Amityville' street, so clearly this sort of thing happens all the time, or everyone moved out ages ago, or everyone is really charitable, or something.....

Anyway it was a fun afternoon with many good bands and way too much of everything else. We have had B and M to stay for a week (much fun) and we pride ourselves in showing the tourists the real thing....

(View Brooklyn Woodstock photos here.)

2006-06-05T20:24:00.000-04:00

Things not to say during a 'Bang on a Can' Marathon: 'Do you think the ceiling needs painting?'

MEN ARE FROM MARS BUT WE'RE ALL IN SPACE NOW

2006-06-05T10:53:00.000-04:00

I came out last week. On MySpace I mean. Having cowered behind a shark for several months, I took the plunge at midnight one evening and revealed my face on cyberspace. I woke the next morning to a record 5 comments in my inbox ranging from 'beautiful' to....well never mind the range, that's the comment I kept re-reading, and a record 10 'friend requests' in the overNightSpace of a mere 7 hours, from male musicians in NY. Ah ha - so that's how one kickstarts a music career in this City!

What I failed to mention is that said photo is approximately 10 years old, and when I read the comments more closely I realised that my London friends were a little sceptical of my sudden youthful appearance ('have you had a facial?' and 'since when were you a Bond girl?'). So I then went into the sort of panic where you stand in front of the bathroom mirror for an hour contemplating doing things that you've never considered doing before, like plucking your eyebrows, putting green mud on your face and giving up alcohol. (I said contemplating....) Spookily, in the midst of this crisis, I received a phone message from Monique, who messed with my face uninvited in February, offering her services, like she was directly tapped into, or logged on to my facial misrepresentation dilemma....

So armed (or rather faced) with my new public profile, I embarked on a whirlwind social calendar few days. The wonderful Anita was in town, so a couple of extremely fun girlie evenings were had with her fantastic mate Diana and my NY soulmate Daniela (the 'Space Girls'). Aware of the fact, as we sat around various dinner and bar tables, that the four of us were subconsciously falling into 'Sex and the City' roles. I won't embarrass you with the topics of conversation (like we did all nearby tables), but OurSpace was growing around us and I spent a fair amount of time with mouth open in amazement in 'Charlotte' mode. Although unfortunately even a 10 yr old pic doesn't quite cast me as Charlotte visually......

Imagine my relief then when even after the sort of hot weather on Saturday which immediately turns my hopelessly intolerant British complexion into a blotch fest, and several (ahem) g&t's, not one, but TWO complete strangers at the gig I was at, RECOGNISED me from the MySpace photo. Result!

It was the Heernt debut album launch gig and it was so good to see them playing again - it's been way too long. Also finally got to meet the awesomely talented singer/songwriter Jeff Taylor, who I've been corresponding with on and off over the last few months. He played a beautiful support set. An excellent evening - Heernt are, as I've said before, my absolute favourite NY band of the moment, well since I've been living here in truth, so I came away with an armful of everything Heernt - CD's, DVD's, stickers, beer holders (?). I've said it before and I'll say it again - Heernt - you heard it here first.

Still riding on the Heerntergy of the previous night, and in an effort to keep the TH from working over the weekend, I persuaded him that Sunday's Bang On a Can Marathon at the WFC was an event we couldn't possibly miss. 24 events back to back (roughly 21 different groups) over 12 hours! Haha. I wondered if he'd last, (I wondered if I'd last to be honest), but you can always depend on blokes to fall into competitive mode on such occasions, and I sensed it was becoming a team sport to him - he wasn't about to leave the pitch half way through the game, however much he was hating it. And believe me, by the time William Parker came on, he was pretty much definitely hating it. By about 8pm there were still 7 bands to go and I had definitely developed arthritis, but was otherwise okay. I'd also had a sneaky couple of painkillers at 6pm, but wasn't about to admit this to the TH.

Then I went outside for some air, and got CHATTED UP! I mean properly. I can't remember the last time that happened.....but it wasn't in the US. Admittedly everyone was behaving a little oddly after 9 hours of 'new' music, but even so, I prefer to think that I'm actually metamorphosing into my MySpace photo......

At 10pm the TH said 'now I know what it must be like giving birth!'. Errrrr? I think what was actually happening was that he now knew what it was like to be without an alcoholic drink for 14 waking hours. Personally I've never given birth, but despite his sportsmanship, I still felt justified in pointing out that 11 hours would be considered a miraculously short birth, and in pregnancy the 20 painful alcohol-free hours he had just experienced would have been preceded by 9 alcohol-free months.

We made it to the end. But more miraculously the technicians and crew at the WFC made it to the end. Never before in my life in the arts have I witnessed such incredibly fast and slick changeovers coupled with such excellent sound over so many consecutive and technically complicated performances.

Only in NY can you go to a gig like that and be home in a cab in 7 minutes. The TH paid....

EVERYTHING COMES AROUND

2006-05-29T15:59:00.000-04:00

Déjà vu.

When I met the TH nine years ago he was unemployed and formulating a major career change. So whilst I went out to work 24/7, he spent the first few months of our relationship lying on my living room floor ploughing through a pile of very thick computer language books and crates of special brew, learning how to become an investment banker. We had hardly any money in those days. So little money in fact that we totally lived on lentil soup and home-baked bread. (Pause for general readership gasping - the shark baking bread?! Baking anything?) Sure enough, he finally got the job of his dreams and has never looked back. To my knowledge he hasn't drunk special brew since either. (Which, if you know anything about that particular poison, can only be at least as good a thing as him getting the job.)

Forward wind nine years and whilst the TH goes out to work 24/7, I find myself unemployed, sitting on the living room floor ploughing through a large computer language book, formulating a career change.
We have more money these days so I don't make the TH bake bread, and I'm working through a rather lovely bottle of Gavi di Gavi.....

But, details aside, how weird is that?

2006-05-29T11:32:00.000-04:00

The temperature is rising here. Summer spent last week a few blocks away and as of today it's trying to get in through our windows. I am resigned to spending the next few weeks indoors with headphones on trying to block out the industrial noise of recently acquired air-conditioners, which sound like someone is building a 20-storey block of flats in the room. Oh and apparently 85 degrees is nothing compared to the barbecue we are about to receive....

2006-05-27T23:59:00.000-04:00

RFH Foyer Coney Island style.

2006-05-27T23:50:00.000-04:00

Busman's holiday

TRAINS, PLANES & AUTOMOBILES

2006-05-25T13:54:00.000-04:00

A strange surreal week. I woke this morning to tales of a major power outage on all NY mainline trains for hours and military planes have been flying overhead accompanying jets all day, not to mention the endless police sirens, which haven't stopped since 7am. Unconnected (?) things like that take on a weird significance in a foreign country, especially as I've been living on a diet of painkillers for the last 3 days due to perpetual underlying migraine, and am hence feeling a little surreal anyway. All very odd.

Then there was the shopping trolley incident. Woke on Tuesday with a fridge full of ingredients and a mind full of recipes for dinner for eight. Also woke on Tuesday with a killer headache. Couldn't face cooking, so decided to make use of the gorgeous deli counter at the wonder that is Wholefoods Market and buy up their entire selection of Indian vegetable dishes (the closest thing in the USA to the lovely Indian food it's possible to get in the UK). That way I'd only have to cook rice and poppadums etc. So I painstakingly filled up six large containers with vegetable korma and sag panir etc one by one, taking each one back to my trolley a few feet away as I did so. But when I returned with the seventh, all of them had GONE! Someone had stolen my food from the trolley, leaving only a couple of lemons and a bag of carrots. I did a check of the queue at the checkout to see if I could spot the thief, staring into people's trolleys like a mad person, but no sign, although in such circumstances everybody looks guilty. I asked a store assistant standing nearby if he'd witnessed the theft, to which he replied 'odd things are always happening in here, but yeah, that's pretty odd. Maybe someone was really hungry and didn't care what they ate'. Uh? These are cardboard containers I might add, so nobody would have had any idea what they were stealing, unless they'd just been watching me, because they had decidophobia and couldn't face the choice of picking dinner for themselves. Whatever. Weird bloody country. I had to start all over again, this time keeping the trolley right next to me at all times, much to everyone else's annoyance as they tried to access the counter. 'I'm sorry - I have to have the trolley here because someone is stealing my food!' The looks I received proved that I'm clearly becoming as crazy as everyone else in this city.

Deep down I knew that this was the doing of the God-of-Guilt, who was speaking to me through Indian deli kleptomaniacs, saying 'well that's what you get for cheating and not cooking the meal yourself'. It's the same guy who, when you plan to take a work sickie, makes sure you're actually sick that day, to pay you back for skiving.

Anyhow, the meal was a great success, American Idol was watched, The Eggplants' Myspace site was created, and it only took the band about two hours to decide which three words to use to describe their music style. (Lesson - never create a Myspace site by committee.)

And whilst we're on the subject, JB and I had a very constructive afternoon last week time-tabling his forthcoming album, choosing arrangements, discussing which tracks to use, when to record and which musicians to book. I'm very excited about this project as it's been a long time coming and is now at last really going to happen. JB is a truly talented singer and songwriter and you can hear an out-take and a 'bathrobe session' (a story for another time) right now, at his new Myspace site.

And now I'm back to plane-spotting, taking headache tablets and pondering on the fact that there is a job about to become available in London which I would really like to do....sigh.

HOME TRUTH

2006-05-24T22:35:00.000-04:00

I told you so ;-)
After 63 million votes (uh!?) Taylor Hicks tonight won American Idol.

YAY!

AH THE FINS.....

2006-05-20T16:21:00.000-04:00

I am streaming the eurovision song contest live on my laptop (unfortunately minus Terry Wogan, without whom it is clearly not the same). This year it's just me and a mug of coffee, which makes it an even sadder spectacle than usual, it being a far cry from the 30 or so folks and crates of wine I'm used to at the legendary HH annual eurovision song contest party. I'm also not familiar enough with the Warsaw pact to predict the voting without Tel's help. Some things don't change though - the French entry failed to strike a single in-tune note and there appears to be more wind on the stage than there was in the south during Katrina.

I will be making up for the lack of party on Tuesday, as I seem to have accidentally invited approximately 8 people round to dinner, which is approximately 80% of the number of people I actually know in this city. (Note to self - must therefore take extra special care not to poison them.) The timing is slightly unfortunate, as Tuesday night is the American Idol final and I'm excited to say the least, as my original winning prediction, Taylor Hicks, is in the final two. I hope my friends are not expecting to talk to me or anything...

On top of which I've not cooked for that number of people since last year's ESC.
All fail safe recipes which need no kitchen intervention whatsoever very welcome.
I will be the one watching the TV.

SAY WHAT?!

2006-05-17T14:51:00.000-04:00

There has been a strange development in tai-chi class over this last week. One of the 70yr olds seems to have developed a very specific case of tourette's syndrome. Picture the scene - 8 of us engaging in gracefully flowing synchronised movements (as in the BBC1 ident) in the middle of the '42' (which, incidentally is the form being used for the Beijing olympics in 2008 - could THIS be my new career?), karmic ambient music in the background....
And then this guy every few seconds starts shouting the word 'GROIN'!
I counted something like 11 'groins' today before I totally lost concentration and had to feign cramp in order to stifle uncontrollable laughter.

On the treadmill afterwards I realised that my gym is full of total quirks. I see the same folks every time I go so I guess I've got used to them, but today, because I'd started, my laughing didn't stop - the Chinese guy who walks backwards on the treadmill (someone should tell him.....), the young guy who comes in at 12.50 on the dot and turns off every single tv monitor in the room before he starts working out (we all know to schedule our exercise before he comes in), and if anyone dares to turn one on again (even on the opposite side of the room) he stops his workout and turns it off , the woman who never does any exercise as clearly she believes everyone at the gym is actually her therapist and stands by any stranger without headphones giving them the sad story of her life and asking for advice (we all now know to wear headphones at all times), and a particular favourite of mine - the guy, who again doesn't do any exercise, but gives the mirrors a terrific workout standing in front of them in various 'I am beautiful' poses for about an hour. You'd be amazed how treadmill-time flies watching that dork. That's actually just the tip of the iceberg. (I also find the 20something girls who run at about 30mph for a couple of hours, then cycle at about 80mph for another couple of hours quite amusing, but that could be just jealousy....)
Who'd ever have thought the gym could be so entertaining.

And of course, after today, I'll be known as the strange woman who laughs hysterically all the time and wears headphones in the shower...

MELTDOWN

2006-05-14T16:27:00.000-04:00

I have two bits of Meltdown news. The first is that David Bowie appears to be 'coveting' the RFH's long-running Meltdown festival and is staging the first 'High Line' Festival in New York in 2007. He was curator of the RFH's Meltdown in 2002. The festival went on for a couple of weeks, but unlike previous curators, Bowie was, how we say, 'less than present' for most of it, to the point where all the folks working on the festival took to carrying around a lifesize portrait of the man, just to remind themselves what festival they were actually working on. I hope he makes it to his own festival. Having said that, the day in which he did make an appearance, he was spectacular and did one of the best gigs I've ever seen in my life.
Anyway, we are clearly living in the Da Vinci plagiarising era, and we are also in New York, where yesterday is long gone and only tomorrow counts, so I daresay nobody else will even spot the similarity, never mind care. I do wish it were possible to copyright ideas though, having had a couple of stormers in the last week or two (well D had the best one in all honesty), but us being mere 'sax and the city' girls in NY, someone more influential would doubtless steal said ideas within moments of our revelations (yes, the ideas are THAT good). That's not to say that we're not having 'business lunches' about them though....and if there are any entrepreneur printers out there, please make yourselves known.

Meltdown two is rather more serious. The desktop died. This has resulted in hours and hours, no, DAYS of salvaging files, music and photos. Actually I've been trying to rescue most of the '90s if we're being honest about this. The tactile helpdesk is in serious danger of losing his title right now, and is holding onto it only because the information is still somewhere in the ether and I've been in a laptop downloading frenzy capturing it all over the last couple of days....
I think we're okay. But only at a price of $539 dollars, because frankly I'm so not in the mood to go through this hell again that I went out and bought a new ipod and a hard disk today, so that everything from now on will be in at least two places, and preferably three. 'I'm not really a computer person' the TH pleaded to me today 'I'm a person just trying to get through life'.
And in that endearing sentence lies one of the reasons I married him.

IDLE PREDICTIONS

2006-05-10T18:00:00.000-04:00

Further to my career-threatening prediction of February 16th (yes, sadly American Idol has been going on for that long, and it isn't over yet), I'd like to point out (as I'm in CV-writing mode), that Paris Bennett got (unjustly) thrown out last week, but nevertheless made it to the final five (and will be a superstar whatever happens), and Taylor is still going strong. Well maybe not strong exactly, but he's in the final four, for those who are counting. Tonight someone else gets to go. I don't think it'll be Taylor. In fact the shark predicts we're in for a Taylor/Chris final. But it's a close call.......

10.30pm update - well Chris just went. Bit of a shock. But good news for Taylor methinks. He's in the final three. Yay!

BECAUSE A TOTAL LIFESTYLE EXPERIENCE IS UNSALEABLE WITHOUT A THIN LACQUER OF CULTURAL CRED

2006-05-10T16:09:00.000-04:00

The reason I've not blogged in a week is that it would (with a couple of exceptions) read something like 'went to tai-chi class, came home, re-wrote CV (again), went to gig'. I would hate to be the author of something quite that mind-numbingly dull, so I haven't written it. Ok?