lost in space

The Asian media is still completely saturated with coverage of Michael Jackson, more than a week after his somewhat unexpected demise from a cardiac arrest. The pundits, former friends and employees, doctors, nurses, people who took his garbage away… they’re all queuing up to place their tuppence worth into the media frenzy surrounding the death of a very strange and singular person. The truth is that nobody really does know the truth, and the only person who could give the answers to the complexities of that particular screwed-up life has passed on to whatever (if anything) lies beyond.

From despair to where… the performing arts, and in particular the field of music, seem to have more than their fair share of troubled geniuses… the Syd Barrett’s, Richie Edwards’ of this world whose thoughts are simply too big for their minds to cope with and end up either shutting that part of their life out completely or ending that life to silence the demons within… perhaps as public figures they feel extra stresses and strains that so-called ‘normal’ people are not subject to. Having said that, let me qualify - I really don’t believe Michael Jackson was remotely a genius – he was a professional entertainer, but as a human being he was not conforming to anything like the parameters set down for normalcy… and in his quest to remake and remodel himself, he clearly exhibited symptoms of mental distress.

Mental illness is a funny thing. I mean it’s not usually a ‘funny’ thing in the hahaha sense of the word (although it does have its moments…), but in the sense of ‘funny’ as peculiar. Of course it’s a huge spectrum of syndromes and symptoms to delineate all too simply with the catch-all term ‘mental illness’, but the general description is of a ‘disease of the mind’ – the DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the American Psychiatric Association's standard reference for psychiatry, includes over 400 different definitions of mental disorders. Wow! That hurts the brain….

What is definitely not funny in any sense is the very real mental torment being exhibited by the survivors of S-21, Toul Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, who are currently giving evidence in the case against the former head of the prison, Duch. Three survivors have been testifying this week, all have broken down during their testimony and all have admitted to suffering mental illness as a result of their brutal treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. I receive trial transcripts at work, and one of the most astonishing things is the complete lack of sympathy or understanding exhibited by the Cambodian judiciary toward the witnesses and civil parties – their illness is very obviously seen as a weakness that lessens them as human beings in this society. Perhaps that goes some way toward explaining how people can live with the legacy of genocide… anguish becomes internalized, seething away inside but never allowed to break through the tolerant smiles given to the questioning foreigner…

What follows will of course have little bearing on the tormented souls reliving their own hells in the chambers of the ECCC, or for the tens of thousands others in this country living and struggling with the things they have seen or done, but for the privileged foreigner who has ready access to help if they want it these words of advice may give some comfort or a spur to make some change. Having some experience of mental illness is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand, one just wants to sweep the dust back under the carpet, put the files back in the cabinet and lock the drawer and throw the key away when one has come through a particularly dark period. Particularly true when, as I do, you come from a community where usually the kindest word you hear about sufferers is ‘nutter’. On the other hand, discussing it openly may help others who are feeling unable to cope with their own situation. However, when I am feeling good the last thing I want to do is talk about ‘my problem’, indeed often I refuse to acknowledge the fact that there was (and is) a problem, because the demons (shall we call them that – small red creatures with horns and tridents… mean, mean reds…) never really disappear, they hang around nipping at my ankles until they think the way is clear for them to clamber up and nest once more inside my head. I don’t really know how long they’ve been there either… the turn of the last century saw their worst manifestation, when I seriously lost the plot for a good while.

However I’m still around, and back on track now, so I guess what I’m trying to say here is do not go it alone – acknowledge, if the signs are there (and if you can’t see them, then often those you love and who love you can), admit you need help and do something about it. I absolutely loathe and detest taking medication, but it clearly helps me, so I do it. Talk to someone, preferably a professional who doesn’t carry the emotional connection that a friend or family member might, and that too will help. Always try and look outside of yourself – many sufferers pour everything inwards until they explode, often again at the expense of their loved ones who are around when the eruption takes place. Equally, don’t become numb, don’t shut down or shut yourself off from life. If you have something that gives you a release and a relief from the internal struggle, do it! Write a book, learn to fly, sing a song, paint a picture, go cloudgazing … all positive therapies…

We have such a limited time on this amazing planet that it’s such a waste to spend it all in the dark alleyways of the sidestreets. We can help ourselves into the light of day, and we can share with others, who may also be suffering, ways to beat their demons. There is an amazing Kurosawa film in which a dying civil servant, who has spent his entire life shuffling paper around, struggles to do something meaningful before he dies.

The film is called ‘Ikuru’

The word means “to live.”

Stop shuffling that paper now…!

It’s been quite a week in the world, one way or another. Colleagues of mine have lost close friends, former colleagues have lost family members in tragic circumstances, others have been caught up in political turmoil in Honduras, the death of Michael Jackson continues to dominate the Asian media, swine flu has struck Cambodia with a vengeance and news has just broken of a huge explosion in the Prime Minister’s private compound.

I shouldn’t, therefore, have been unduly surprised to come home from work last Friday, settle down outside in the orange glow of impending sunset with my book and then gradually realize after a few minutes that what was tickling my exposed big toe was not, as I had thought, a wind-blown dry leaf but the front claw of a scorpion.

Oh dear.

These creatures I have only encountered previously a) in movies, b) behind glass in a zoo or c) pinned to a wall display in Kuala Lumpur and no longer animate, but now a rather large black version of the species possessing what could be clearly seen as a particularly vicious looking stinger was showing what to me was an inordinate amount of interest in my big toe…

I remained still. Absolutely still. As did the scorpion. I’ve no idea exactly how long we faced off (or should that be ‘footed’ off?), but it felt like a very long time indeed. Eventually it turned away from my foot. I inched my foot slowly out of my sandal and tucked it underneath me in the chair. The scorpion was in no hurry… minutes more passed and then eventually it ambled off in the fading light into the undergrowth and disappeared.

I have no idea just how toxic my little chum was… I’m sure at the very least he could have inflicted a very painful sting upon yours truly. I guess we never know what surprises, pleasant or unpleasant await us, so the trick is to enjoy as much of life as you can before you get surprised by it. The book I was reading at the time (or re-reading, to tell the truth) was ‘The Art of Travel’, by Alain de Botton, a philosophical treatise on… surprise, surprise, travel! I had been using an old boarding pass as a bookmark, one from a trip to Bologna to attend a film festival some years ago, and the combination of this well-used souvenir, the content of the book and the scorpion incident conspired to set the old grey matter swirling and eddying, and the wheels within wheels to be set in motion. Bologna is just one of the amazing places I have been fortunate to visit and experience over the last few years. My horizons have broadened so much in that time, and entirely thanks to one person who set the wheels of travel in motion for me and who has been my long suffering companion on many of those journeys, my dear wife.

She has had to endure my rampant serial killer paranoia in Venice (what normal person is wandering around the streets inviting backpacking strangers into his house at two in the morning, I ask you?), my deaths door dysentery melodramas in Cuba (crawling on hands and knees into the clinic for a vitamin shot), my horror of undercooked pork in Paris…actually undercooked everything in Paris… yes, the griping list is endless, but although her experience of me as a travelling companion is coloured by my far from endearing grumpy old man-ness, the experiences I have had, the people I have met, the places I have seen, they are etched indelibly and wondrously on my soul and entirely thanks to her. So many unforgettable moments… drinks at sunset on the terrace of the Galle Face hotel in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a crowded train journey in the company of merry pilgrims in India, residing in the very same hotel room as the Beatles did in Barcelona, drenched to the skin in the new year celebrations in Yangon, upgraded to jet set class in Taormina, Sicily, fireworks around the Eiffel Tower to herald a new year in Paris, the overwhelming emotion of coming face to face with a favourite Magritte painting in Peggy Guggenheims house in Venice, a birthday waltz around the Palazzo Bonaparte in San Miniato, Tuscany… and more, so many, many more…magical experiences all, these simply cherry-picked from a tree full of such experiences, and more to come which we can now share with our wonderful little boy. Thank you, A.

In his book, de Botton dissects the whole modern concept of travel, of setting oneself off onto adventures where one might experience the new, the exotic, the different, yet also acknowledges that sometimes we don’t realize that those very things we seek through travel can also be around us in our everyday lives. Take time to look… the travel we generally do in those everyday lives of ours becomes a chore, a necessary way of getting from A to B, from home to work, home to shop, work to home…. either on foot or trapped inside a moving metal box with other necessary travelers… if we start to see it differently, look at the detail in the world going on around us, ponder thoughtfully on the actions of those we watch,notice the un-noticed, pick up on the detail, analyse the surrounding architecture and the space it occupies then another whole world of wonder can leap out to enrich our daily lives. Carpe Diem, indeed. Make every minute count of this wonderful life, savour every single moment you are a living, breathing person…

As that other great philosopher (!), Ian Fleming once wrote, paraphrasing a wise man from the past

‘It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive…’

A further note on the explosion mentioned in paragraph one above – it appears to have been a truck full of rockets bound for the Thai-Cambodian temple stand-off in Preah Vihear. It was being refueled in the Prime Ministers private compound (?). One of the drivers wanted to do a visual check on how much fuel was in the tank, and as it was getting dark and difficult for him to see, he bent down over the gas tank and flipped open his lighter….

…not recommended….

Toyah had it exactly right, didn’t she? ‘It’s a mystery, it’s a mystery…’ Yes, ‘it’ sure is. So, what it exactly is ‘it’? Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s a mystery…

About a month ago I changed jobs. I’ve left behind the world of landmines and UXO and small arms and MANPADS and IED’s and so on and so on to return to the world of children. No, un moment s’il vous plait - I haven’t regressed to my childhood. How could I? I never left it in the first place, just ask my wife and son. However, I am now working with street children in an international context. And no, that doesn’t mean I am the Fagin-like mastermind behind an international street urchin criminal ring, robbing tourists willy-nillly and setting off hue-and-cries in the chic destinations of the world, oh no. I now sport the rather grand title of International Grants Manager for Friends-International, a rather wonderful organization based here in Phnom Penh but with projects running all over the world working with some of the most marginalized members of our societies, the street living and working children and young people. If you want the full story, please go to the Friends International website, www.friends-international.org where all is revealed in a much more coherent manner than your humble correspondent could possibly manage… and that little burst of Francais above was no mistake either… it’s a French organization. Allons Y!

Last Saturday evening was a bit surreal for me, even by the normally surreal standards of Phnom Penh. It was the Fete de la Musique (French again! Zut alors!), and after getting on down with the Mekong Pirates at Gasolina (and witnessing a truly bizarre performance there from a young woman and her misbehaving backing tapes) yours truly was performing with Khmer/Filipino band ‘Rock X Press’ in the sweaty confines of the funkiest joint in town, the Memphis Club. Exceptional musicians all, which made rehearsals extremely easy. Over the course of those rehearsals during the week I had gotten to know the band really well, so Saturday evening I was one of those in the inner sanctum of band friends and associates and other musicians and found myself chatting to the very amiable uncle of Suk, the drummer. He was an extremely genial chap, somewhere in his 60’s and sporting a discreetly loud (is there such a thing? Je ne sais pas…) Hawaiian shirt and jet black slicked back brilliantined hair. He looked like an extra from an Elvis Presley movie, or indeed the off-duty premier of a tiny Pacific island paradise. But my goodness, he was a guitarist of some considerable ability, and wowed the audience with his take on Les Paul and Carlos Santana songs, getting extremely animated in that eyes-closed grimace-of-pain-lead guitarist way as his set drew to a close. As he returned to his seat I congratulated him, and he pulled me conspiratorially close and whispered into my ear ‘You know, I’m not very good at shooting a gun.’ ‘Oh’ said I, not really knowing where this conversation was going to go. ‘I prefer the guitar. I know how to use that! ‘ He laughed. It turned out that our amiable guitar hero was the Chief of Security at the Ministry of the Interior…

I do know what he means. Alex Harvey once said he would rather face an oncoming army with an electric guitar and a Marshall stack instead of a gun. Rock X Press and I put that to the test as we faced the marauding hordes in the Memphis, and within two songs the mix of drunken expats and wildly enthusiastic Khmers were in thrall to the likes of ‘Born to be Wild’ and ‘Sunshine of Your Love’… cutting edge stuff, I know, but sometimes you just gotta go with the obvious! I ended the evening with a string of invitations to perform at other venues, jam with other bands, visit recording studios, make jingles… AND a quarter bottle of whisky from the event sponsors… what more could any living walking breathing talking singing leaping cliché of a rock singer want?

O and A are in the UK, enjoying the summer break, so the relatively empty corridors of my house have been reverberating at night to the sound of (bad) guitar playing and the echoing soundtracks of DVD’s. I use some of this ‘alone’ time to catch up on the art house and experimental movies that have passed me by in the last few months, reveling in the avant-garde abstractions of the post modern nouvelle-vague and such like.

Last night it was ‘X-Men origins – Wolverine’.

Yes, I know. But it was just a little avant-garde, as this was a pre-post-production copy, so much of the special FX magic was there in its basic form – for example, you could see wires attached to actors and bad prosthetics and basic CGI stuff which added immensely to my enjoyment of the movie. Remember what I said about regressing to childhood above? Tonight it’s Star Trek, accompanied by a can of Ginger Beer, a packet of kettle chips and an Almond Magnum. Mmmmm, now guess who’s going to have a sore tummy tomorrow…

‘Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay 

To mould me man, Did I solicit thee 

From darkness to promote me?’
John Milton, Paradise Lost

I awoke with a start, sweat-soaked, choking and stifled of breath in the cloying warmth of the room. In the far off distance thunder rumbled in the canopies of clouds that shrouded the night. Darkness, deep and velvet and impermeable settled all around me, enfolding me in its weighty cloak. A distant and trebly sound, but one with familiar and beautiful cadences came from somewhere… befuddlement passed and became recollection – the listening device… yes, the I-Pod. I had placed it under my pillow along with that other electronic device… I fumbled under that selfsame pillow for the cellular telephone, located it and pressed its eerie greenish light into life. 2.45am… and on the periphery of my vision, a movement, a darker shadow than any other object in the room, caught in the fading edge of the light from the telephone. I reached for the bedside lamp switch, pressed it on and scorched my eyes with the sudden intensity of its light. A moment passed, and as my eyes adjusted to plain sight there could be no doubt. It sat, absolutely still, on the tiny stool at the foot of my bed.

‘You’ I cried out ‘you have come to… to…’ my voice vanished, strangled in the fearful closure of my throat at the sight I beheld.
The creature raised its head and gazed directly at me. Water – mayhap rainwater, was trickling down its fearful visage. After several seconds it spoke.
‘No. This time I have not come to kill thee. I have come to take my leave of thee.’ Its voice held no anger, as it had done so many times before. Now it seemed weighted with a deep and unimaginable sorrow, how changed from the blazing terror that I knew from experience could be unleashed by its tongue.
‘You are leaving me?’ relief had unblocked the stricture of my throat, and now I could scarce believe the words that had emerged hoarse and laboured from the scarred lips of the beast before me.
‘truly, you leave?’
It nodded, saying no more, yet conveying the absolute truth of its intentions in the slow gravity of the gesture.
Minutes passed. The creature continued to stare directly at me, in absolute stillness. No breath appeared to pass from it, no blink of an eyelid to confirm humanity. I saw now that it was wearing my Navy greatcoat, that which I had inherited from my uncle, and that it was flecked with mud and shimmering with droplets of rainwater. In the right hand pocket I could clearly see my copy of ‘L’etranger’, now water stained and grubby. Upon seeing this, I clearly recalled my teenage years of existential doubt and angst, and once more my throat constricted.

The creature leaned forward, and extended a parchment dry bony finger in my direction, jabbing it toward me for emphasis as it spoke. “Remember this, if you will of me - It was thou that created me, thou that breathed life into me, thou that needed me… ‘ it leaned back into the corner, and gazed upwards to the ceiling before continuing ‘but I know… I know now that it is time for me to leave thee… forever. I have brought much pain to you and to the ones you love…’ I fear he almost spat the last word out ‘… but hast thou ever considered me? A dark thing, unloved, unwanted… I cannot bear to see myself… I cannot walk freely in daylight…’
his voice broke off in a choking sob. At that moment, I felt sorrow for him. True sorrow. I felt as God must mayhap feel toward mankind, the frustration that endowing one’s creatures with free will must cause the creator… yes, I had created this beast, called it up from the depths of my dark mind, bestowed life upon it, a shape, a form… and now I had to recognize that the time had come, and the tragedy was that it too knew this, and had come almost willingly, it seemed, to his nemesis, his maker… yes, to meet his maker.

The thunder having calmed, the room was now almost silent, other than the sound of the I-Pod, the music seemingly shimmering in the still warm air. The creature leaned forward again. ‘That sound… it is so… so calming, so beautiful. What is it?’
‘It is Nick Drake. It is called Black Eyed Dog.’
The creature allowed a slight smile to flicker across his lips, and nodded his head slightly. ‘Ah yes, I know of him. He was born in Rangoon.’ I was surprised at this, and my surprise must have shown, as the creature let out a harsh, barking laugh
‘ha! You wonder at my knowledge. Here!’
from inside my greatcoat he threw a ragged parcel upon my bed, wrapped in torn and stained brown paper and held loosely together with fraying string. It was clear his intention was for me to open it, so I duly did. Inside were many familiar loose leaf printed sheets, individually printed from the internet it appeared. ‘I know these’ I said, quietly. ‘As do I’ retorted the creature ’As do I…’ he reached over, lifted one up and squinted at it before reading aloud slowly and deliberately. ‘Lost – in – Space. Ha! The vanities of man!’ he threw it disdainfully back onto the bed. ‘Enough of this! Tell me about this music, this song. What does it mean?’ In truth I was fearful of where this discourse may lead, but to humour him I answered. “It comes from his last album… record. It was named Pink Moon. He died soon after making this, from an accidental overdose of anti-depressants. Many people think it’s a song about suicide, or depression. A metaphor for them… do you know, Winston Churchill used to describe his depression as a Black Dog, following him around…’

‘Really? How interesting. But this is a Black Eyed Dog… perhaps it means something other… perhaps it looks to better times…’

Abruptly, the creature stood up. Startled, I moved suddenly and knocked the bedside lamp spinning. I hurriedly straightened it up and in that brief moment it was beside me, leaning over me, inches from my face. ‘Goodbye’ it said. In that instant, I saw that its eyes were the deepest, darkest black imaginable…

…and then it was gone…

Historical note – the reference made to Rangoon by the creature is generally accepted to be a direct reference to the author’s visit to Yangon with his wife and child in 2009 during the New Year water celebrations. From contemporary accounts it was clear that they had a wonderful time, and were enchanted with the city and overwhelmed by the kindness of their hosts, Nick and May Yei.

‘And so’ expounded Alice ‘lets just cut to the chase and fill in some of what’s been happening in the last couple of months, albeit in a surreal manner (as indeed and as usual, much has been surreal anyway)’
‘ Cut to the chase?’ The White Rabbit dropped his sandwich and wrinkled his pink nose in a contrary manner, which seemed to Alice to mingle both curiousity and disgust in equal portions.
‘Cut to the chase? Oh my goodness, her Majesty will be so distressed that language such as that is being used… oh my goodness!’
‘You sir, are a rabbit, and a conversing one at that, which is unduly strange, if not surreal in itself, and I will thank you to keep your opinions firmly to yourself.’
The rabbit muttered away inwardly as he scoured the tablecloth for the remaining crumbs of his sandwich, which had been lifted aloft and carried away by a battalion of extremely large ants garbed in scarlet uniforms during the brief exchange with Alice.
Alice scowled at this behaviour, and waited until the rabbit peered up at her again with his crumby snout before directing a steely gaze at him and intoning ‘Whatevah!’ in, Alice was deeply amused to think, a particularly ‘chavish’ manner.
Suitably chastened, the rabbit wiped his whiskers, glanced briefly at this pocket watch then sat at attention opposite Alice. Alice shifted a little, then from her apron withdrew a small gingham-wrapped package, which she placed carefully before them on the tablecloth before unwrapping it and withdrawing two small and somewhat dog-eared spiral bound notebooks.
‘Now rabbit, I ‘borrowed’ these from Mr. Skip’s desk, so I will thank you to refrain from mentioning it when next you have discourse with him.’
The rabbit sighed deeply before replying. ‘ He believes me to be a figment of his so-called feverish imagination in any case, so that should not be anything of an issue.’
Alice ignored this statement and opened the first notebook, and read aloud from the first page.
‘Conversations with J, volume 17, 2008’
‘Heard it all before! Heard it all before!’ snapped the rabbit. Alice knitted her eyebrows angrily at this interjection, but nevertheless closed the notebook and cast it to one side, picking up the second, leafing through the first few pages before pausing, nodding, clearing her throat and commencing to read. ‘ Today we mused on cockfighting…’ she began…

“J recalled the Saturday afternoon where he and A had firstly become embroiled in a circus procession along the riverfront, then had repaired to the Riverhouse to sip a late afternoon cocktail and muse on the flurries of activity happening across the road against the huge green corrugated fences bedecked with advertising hoardings which screened the river from gaze during the lengthy work being undertaken to replace the city’s ailing sewerage system. Wow, that was a lengthy sentence, wasn’t it? When they left a few minutes later and drove past the scene, they could see it was in fact cockfighting training taking place, there, in broad daylight, on one of the busiest thoroughfares in town. The following week, the Prime Minister outlawed cockfighting. Fortunately J and A had nothing to do with this decision, so they had little to fear from such as the deputy Prime Minister’s henchmen, as he was a breeder of fighting cocks and very upset by this new law. Perhaps, pondered J, a quorum of the National Assembly will outlaw the keeping of man-eating crocodiles and then it will be the Prime Ministers turn to be suitably aggrieved (if the stories are true) …
… and so to Khmer New Year, with J, A and O repairing firstly to Bangkok and then to Yangon for the celebrations, but unwittingly becoming embroiled in the Thai political crisis through being present at the taking of a tank by the redshirts one Sunday afternoon. Let J elaborate…

‘The briefest of tenures as a BBC correspondent (‘are you in Bangkok? Have you witnessed what is happening? Let us know!’ ‘Ehm, well not much actually. It’s a bit tricky to get to the shops, but mustn’t grumble…’) and puzzlement at the hotel staff being completely oblivious of the situation (‘no problem sir, all shops open, all safe’ – ‘I’m sorry, we can see from our room the entire city centre is closed and if you have a peek out of your foyer over there you can see two tanks and some armed soldiers. I don’t think it’s a fancy dress parade….’ – ‘oh, sorry sir…’) led to us decanting to the relatively sane insanity of the only place open in the entire Siam Square, the Hard Rock Café. The staff were amazing - they absolutely loved O, and he loved them back, delighting in water fights, balloons, playing drums, colouring in and more, as mummy and daddy struggled to devour the American –size platters on offer. The Hard Rock was a godsend, that and the Sky Train which O watched endlessly criss-crossing its way above the city from our vantage point on the 17th floor and appeared to be infinitely more interesting and diverting to him than the 27 violent cartoon channels available on the hotel cable TV. So it was good to escape from one madness, the factionalised Bangkok, to another, the water drenched craziness of new year in Yangon, Myanmar…’ “

Here Alice paused. The rabbit sat with his chin on his chest, apparently fascinated by the buttons on his somewhat admirable weskit, but Alice knew his quaint ways well enough to know that the bewhiskered one was actually asleep.
‘RABBIT! Awake!’ she screamed at the very limits of her lungs, and the poor creature physically leapt upright from his repose, eyes startled wide open, before falling backward to gasp upon the tablecloth, scattering the still marauding ants as he did so.
Alice laid the notebook face down and leaned over the unfortunate creature.
‘I fear we shall have to wait for the next part of this tale until you have sufficiently recovered your composure’ she hissed at the rabbit.
He sat himself up, blew his nose noisily upon his pocket-kerchief, and returned the fierce gaze of Alice with his own watery eyes. There was what appeared to be a lengthy pause before he answered.
‘Am I bovvered?’ he replied.

Do you recall Worzel Gummidge? He was a scarecrow, a walking, talking, living, breathing scarecrow, portrayed with admirable joie-de-vivre on Sunday afternoon children’s TV during the late 70s and early 80s in a metaphysical and sartorial about-turn by the former Dr. Who, the late Jon Pertwee. Worzel had the unique facility of being able to switch his heads around to suit his requirements, so, for example, he could change his usual ‘mischievous’ head for his ‘thinking’ head as and when the occasion demanded. As he grows older and wiser in the ways of this world, little O also seems to be developing that facility, albeit with slightly more variance than dear old Worzel managed.

Saturday last he had his ‘Roger Bannister’ head firmly in place. The International School of Phnom Penh were holding their annual sponsored Landmines Fun Run (sounds ever so slightly wrong, doesn’t it?), to raise awareness of the continuing blight caused to this country by unexploded ordnance (UXO) and landmines, and to raise funds to support the Cambodian volleyball team whose members include many survivors of these deadly legacies of conflict. We had put little O’s name down for the elementary fun run, assuming that he could be escorted by yours truly at a sedate pace around the dusty pebble-strewn track for the duration of one quarter kilometer lap. The big day dawned, and with it a gnawing sense of unease churning in the stomachs of all participants. Not caused by the worry of impending physical exercise, or indeed a dodgy roadside snack from the night before, but the real foreboding generated by the revelation, for the first time in public in Cambodia outwith a swimming pool, of your humble correspondents stick-like, white and hairy lower appendages… yes, I too had dressed for the occasion, baggy t-shirt, shorts and trendy black converse hi-tops in place…well, brothers, sisters, we don’t need this fasttrack groove thang…, oh no. Once the murmurs of distaste and ripples of barely suppressed laughter had subsided, all were called to order and lined up at the start line. A barely noticed countdown and we were off, in clouds of billowing dust, jogging along to the strains of Alice Cooper ‘School’s Out’ (Mostly ‘good’ music all morning, I have to say. Congrats to the compiler!). Little O, who was the youngest participant, waved to all around him and seemed really into this idea of trotting around trying to keep up with the big kids. The cheering and encouraging announcements must have spurred him on, for as eventually the end of lap one loomed with mummy cheerfully and excitedly waving him into the pits, the O decided that he wasn’t going to stop. ‘One more’ he said, and carried on trotting…
This was repeated FIVE times, until we put a stop to it after six laps and dragged him protesting into the sidelines, along with yours truly who was by now completely hot, dust-covered, sweaty and exhausted from keeping up with the little chap…

The mischievous head was firmly in place at a colleagues wedding this week. We had endured almost an hour stuck in a tuk-tuk in horrendous traffic to get to the venue, arriving there to marvel once more at the feats of cosmetic engineering conducted upon hapless Khmer brides by the beauticians of this fair country. I have sat beside my colleague for nearly two years now, but I completely failed to recognise her when we entered the reception, wondering to myself who was this glittering vision, who looked like a tiny alabaster version of one of the Roman Goddesses, hair piled in Medusan coils and eyes framed by the darkest thickest lashes, mascara’ed beyond even the wildest imaginings of Dusty Springfield. She seems to know me… who is it? Then realization dawned, this was indeed her, trapped like a frightened bird under the layers of the beauticians craft. It does look wonderful in the photoshopped marvels that pass for wedding albums round these parts, though…

My other female colleagues from work had also gone into unrecognizably glamorous overload, and from the make-up, hair and clothes you would have thought that we were actually attending an Oscar ceremony from the 1960s where all females present had entered into an Elizabeth Taylor look-alike contest. Comfortingly, the men mostly resembled extras from a black and white 1960s British kitchen sink drama, Cambodian Tom Courtenay’s all, looking as if they had just come in from the allotment, wiped their faces on their sleeves, splashed themselves very briefly with ‘The Great Smell of Brut ©’, then got stuck straight into the minced pig entrails and greasy scrawny chicken on offer with considerable gusto accompanied by copious amounts of liquid lubrication (‘Cold Guinness… Number One!’ as our waiter rather enthusiastically informed me). I felt very much the barang exception in my white Ambre suit and black shirt, but I imagined that most of the Khmer guests thought I was a very important foreign gangster, so nobody really commented for fear of going for a concrete-booted paddle in the Mekong.

O was the very modicum of stoic calmness during the first hour that we waited for our table to fill up and food to be served, he even ventured with me on a couple of occasions to view the band, who boasted a completely electronic drum kit, a jazz-thrash noodling lead guitarist, a PA system adequate for a small stadium and a baffling number of lead vocalists, including one man who was absolutely from the oh-so-smooth Andy Williams white loafer school which fitted in wonderfully with the whole Elizabeth Taylor imagined scenario going on in my brain…

Although the arrival of other guests (including some foreign women who were clearly and scarily misinformed that this was a Tammy Wynette look-alike event – thank the lord for A and her beautiful, simple little polka dot dress!) en masse to our table meant that the food had also arrived, O was by now well bored, and despite the tasty distractions of whole deep fried fish, mischievous head kicked in. He smashed some cutlery and stole the chopsticks off the woman sitting next to him, so we decanted him hastily from the premises, pausing briefly so he could have his picture snapped on the red carpet with my colleagues three year old cousin (who had obviously done this sort of thing before – she posed furiously for all she was worth as O remained clutched in her grasp with an expression of abject terror etched on his face) and then back into the tuk-tuk for a considerably faster trundle home. Once home, little O put his (and our) favourite head on, that of the wonderful, funny, sweet little chap that he is, and went off to bed with the story of The Gruffalo’s Child lulling him into the land of Nod from his stereo…

… and along with The Gruffalo’s Child, Robert Fripp now enters the picture. Not such a leap of the imagination as it may at first seem (what’s he talking about now? Robert Fripp? Isn’t he that Dorset guy who plays guitar, made a weird record with Eno and married Toyah? Yes, that’s the one.). I’ve recently been recording bedtime stories for the little chap using Garageband software on our Macbook, which has been enormous fun for yours truly and, it seems to date, enormously enjoyed by our little O. Whilst searching for suitable snippets of soundtrack music, I have rediscovered King Crimson. This has been a real joy to me, as regular readers will know that in addition to my love of rock, jazz, indie, punk, soul, latin, pyschedelia, country, folk, ambient, electronica, Hawaiian slack-key guitar, blah, blah, blah, I have an abiding and unwholesome fondness for Progressive Rock, or ‘Prog’ as it now seems to be known to the subterranean denizens of the vast and bewildering world of music. I think I’ve mentioned in these blogs before of balmy and not-so-balmy evenings spent appreciating each others record collections in the homes of Eric Law, Colin Morrison, Steven Beaton, Michael Houston, John Farquhar, Donald McIntosh and many others from that particular hall of infamy. Thurso High School record club and the redoubtable Leon ‘do you think I look like Ian Anderson? Great!’ Volwerk must also figure hugely in these formative years of my musical appreciation. Mr. Volwerk, Eric and Colin were big on Prog, as indeed I was, and one of my all-time favourites from that era when dinosaurs still roamed the earth with impunity was (and still is) ‘Lizard’ by King Crimson. It’s funny that listening to it now with the benefit of hindsight (or should that be hindhearing?) it’s actually pretty much jazz-rock fusion with a soupcon of classical influences thrown in. There’s even a guest vocal from helium lunged Accrington born astral elf Jon Anderson of Yes and the atonal piano dribbling of Keith Tippett burbling all over the place. It is however, in the grand tradition of all things Prog, majestic, moving, bafflingly dexterous in both scope and execution and, of course, supremely, wonderfully silly. It’s also full of Mellotron, that amazing Heath Robinson-esque instrument that added the mystery to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ and the menace to ‘We Love You’… ah, the Beatles and the Stones, they sucked the marrow out of bones…(’House of Love’… remember them?). Mellotron gives a gloriously wonky orchestral feel to many of the tracks, and adds to the slightly creepy sensibility which pervades the album. The Beatles link continues with the track ‘Happy Families’ where Pete Sinfield’s occasionally obscure lyrics on the album clarify into a surreal discursion on the breakup of the Fab Four (‘Nasty Jonah grew a wife, Judas drew his pruning knife…’).

Colin Morrison used to particularly despair of my attitude towards much of the music he enjoyed, but as I recall ‘Lizard’ seemed to be a common ground between us. Colin and I used to get into some fairly heated arguments, particularly about jazz-rock, and sometimes his taste seemed to me to be bafflingly obtuse – sorry to bring this up again Colin, but Jukka Tolonen…? – but I really miss the overall over-intellectualised and frequently smarmy silliness that used to pass between us during our ‘appreciation’ evenings… these might, for example, include lengthy discussions about the stunning left-handed bass technique of another Colin, Mr. Hodgkinson of Back Door. I’ve mentioned them before in a blog, but just to recap they were an early 70s Yorkshire bred jazz-rock trio of sax, bass and drums with a punk attitude and by ‘eck bloomin’ good they were, too. I bet you really wish now that you had been part of those music appreciation evenings, don’t you, eh? I hope that you’re still out there in the land of the musical avant-garde, Colin (Morrison that is – Mr. H is still a very active musician and has recently put together a new combo based on the Back Door sound), baffling your neighbours with Jukka and the rest. If you should happen to stumble upon this, please do get in touch… the same goes for you, Robert Fripp… I’m sure your well developed sense of the absurd will be tickled by the thought that snippets of your meisterwork ‘Lizard’ are now adorning my renditions of ‘The Selfish Crocodile’ and ‘The Gruffalo’s Child’.

I wonder too if my dear little tousle-haired O will grow up to mumble incoherently from behind a curtain of shoulder length hair, wear an ex-Navy greatcoat, 26-inch loon pants and desert boots and waste many evenings of his teenage years earnestly debating with his long-suffering friends something earth-shattering such as the nuances of style that differentiate Steve Howe’s picking technique from that of Robert Fripp …

… or perhaps maybe, just maybe, unlike his father, he will actually get a life!

‘Today I learned about the sea and ‘bout someone in history
well, ain’t that cool
they taught me how to square a cube and put a fly into a tube
well, ain’t that cool…’

the above lines are lifted from the very wonderful 45 ‘S’cool days’ by Stanley Frank. I can’t quite remember when it was released (late 70s? early 80s?), and I can tell you very little about Mr. Frank, but other than coming enclosed in a particularly nasty orange sleeve it was one of those great one-off new wave non-hits that proliferated around that time. I’m sorry, perhaps some of you would be puzzled by the ‘45’ reference in the opening sentence. Nowadays they would call it a 7-inch vinyl. Those exciting little slabs of plastic generally revolve around the turntable at 45rpm, hence the abbreviation, most commonly used in the 60s and 70s. It’s extremely heartening that whatever you choose to call it, the good old single record is still around.

Can you remember the first one you bought with your own pocket money? Mine was ‘Lady Madonna/The Inner light’ by The Beatles, 6/11d from the Music Shop, Thurso… I can still recall the smell of the vinyl as I removed it from its black paper sleeve and the sheer joy and anticipation of placing it over the spindle of my Aunt Catherine’s Dansette record player…

I was certainly no stranger to the wonders of the 7-inch record at that point, as my collecting habit had been kick started by my mum and dad many years before with ‘The Old Chisum Trail/Red River Valley’ by Roy Rogers, which was the first record I had bought for me. It was actually a red vinyl 78rpm with a magnificent picture of Roy and his trusty white steed Trigger adorning the front. He stuffed him, you know. Stop sniggering at the back, it’s true. When his four-legged friend passed on to the great pasture in the sky, Roy had him stuffed and placed in the Roy Rogers museum. I wonder if a similar thought flitted across the mind of Roy’s wife Dale when the singing cowboy joined the ranks of the ghost riders in the sky… doesn’t really bear thinking about, does it…

My mum and dad both loved music, so we had plenty of records around the house. My Aunt Catherine also had a great love of music, and, being single, a bit more in the way of disposable income so she had a pretty awesome collection mostly stored at my nana’s house, where the aforesaid Dansette also resided. My nana was another music lover, her tastes mainly being for ballad singers. She was particularly fond of Ken Dodd (he actually had a very ‘country’ style catch in his voice… ‘Tears’ showcases that to great effect. Bet you never thought I’d admit to being a bit of a Ken Dodd connoisseur, eh?) and Englebert Humperdinck, whose name she steadfastly pretended she could not pronounce. “J, would you please put that lovely Dinglebert record on.” she would ask, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, and D.J. J would oblige, and then pretend to do the Last Waltz with his nana around the tiny sitting room.

That selfsame tiny sitting room (we actually always called it the living room) in a remote northern Scottish town was the scene of many Saturday afternoon rave-ups, when my sisters, cousins, nana and I would enjoy the latest discs bought by my Aunt by frugging enthusiastically around the tiny space to them before inevitably collapsing in a heap when the needle hit the run-out groove. The best collapsing in a heap record was undoubtedly ‘The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde’ by Georgie Fame, where we would all re-enact the bullet-riddled end of the doomed lovers in a gloriously over the top manner which William Penn’s gore fest movie could only hint at…

Writing this the memories are coming thick and fast… working in the music business for over twenty five years had somewhat dulled my visceral reaction to music, but it’s been a long time and now with the benefit of some hindsight I can clearly recall the thrill engendered by those black circles of plastic, the differing weights, smells, some in picture sleeves, some Extended Plays (the four track E.P.’s) in their heavy laminated sleeves, like mini-albums, the band names, which seemed to precisely invoke the music lurking in the spiral groove… space rock from The Tornados, psychedelic music hall from The Kinks, the jazz tinged cool of Manfred Mann… I could go on and on and on, and I will, but… later!

As I grew older, DJ’ing took precedence over dancing, and I began to really notice the elements of a record that excited me, the beat, the bass line, the sound of the voices and instruments – particularly guitar, the melody, harmony… the best 45’s were an encapsulation of feelings that could be sadness, joy, happiness, loneliness or anything else, delivered in a sonic mélange that took you on a whirlwind rollercoaster ride of emotions, a journey that lasted from the moment the needle dropped into the vinyl until the click of the tone arm moving back into place, ready for the next one… S’cool days, indeed…

During my late teens and early twenties, on visits to Edinburgh I would frequent the ‘Hot Licks’ record shop in Cockburn Street, a very ‘studenty’ cobbled wynd near the castle. In addition to having the world’s coolest carrier bags (the Stones tongue logo) they often stocked limited copies of obscure US import singles, LP’s and other cool stuff, and it was there that I bought such essential items as copies of ‘Punk’ and ‘Trouser Press’ magazines, ‘Go Girl Crazy’ by the Dictators, ‘Little Johnny Jewel’ by Television, ‘The Summer Sun EP’ by Chris Stamey and the absolutely bonkers but truly wonderful ‘Bangkok’ by Alex Chilton. I also bought ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’, Bruce Springsteen, on the day of its release from Hot Licks, and I recall how sombre and low key Bruce appeared on the sleeve, a bleary eyed leather-jacketed Al Pacino look-alike, tired and bruised from the slings and arrows that outrageous fortune had sent his way since the success of ‘Born to Run’. It very quickly became my favourite Springsteen album, and has remained in that lofty position (albeit challenged by ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Nebraska’ from time to time) until now.

The surprise challenger is the new Bruce album, ‘Working on a Dream.’ It’s his best collection of pop songs in a long time, emerging from the dark post 9-11 clouds that have weighed heavy on his last few albums, choosing instead to be funny, happy, joyous, just a little bit serious, and, for Bruce, pretty experimental with the sonic palette. In feel, it touches base with the exuberant and untrammeled early works, ‘Greetings…’ and ‘The Wild, the Innocent…’ and his recent ‘Night with the Jersey Devil’ Halloween freebie whilst also letting a great deal of very Brian Wilson style light into his arrangements, which have in the past been occasionally just a little too dense for their own good. It’s also, on occasion, as pleasingly daft as a semi-psychedelic brush. Which is also good. Very good. Try the bizarre eight-minute opening epic ‘Outlaw Pete’ (‘…at six months old he’d done three months in jail…’)or ‘Queen of the Supermarket’ with its killer pay-off line for a taster of some of the new directions (whistling and backwards guitars?) followed by The Boss…

The Other Boss, little O, has also been making his musical mark lately. Daddy finally got around to buying and putting strings onto his customized mini-guitar (with retro Cowboy illustrations… yippee-ay-yeh! The influence of a John Fogerty video makes itself felt…), so the O is now happily thrashing away and experimenting with his six-string sidekick. He seems at the moment to be partial to the Syd Barrett/Blixa Bargeld school of using various implements to modify the sonic output and of course he has a somewhat maverick approach to the niceties of tuning, but, hey, he’s only two… Hopefully he’ll soon be confident enough to pop a couple of doors up and jam with our new neighbour in Villa Domino (the very Bond-like residence which has sprung up in our street recently), who adds a wonderful dream-like ambience to our hot weekend days by sitting up on his balcony as the late afternoon sun brings a fuzzy orange glow to the surrounding buildings and tootles away on what sounds like a tenor sax. His repertoire is limited but appropriate, and it often adds just the right amount of mellow to an already laid back day…

Tuesday night A and I managed to have a quiet, civilized and entirely uninterrupted evening repast in the oasis of calm that is Commé a la Maison. We pretty much had the place to ourselves, the little O was back home, safely causing havoc with his ever patient Aunt Packdey. Dear A wisely went home after our leisurely meal, leaving yours truly to venture out again with a colleague from Laos in search of LOUD ROCK MUSIC. During the course of a lengthy evening that did indeed lead to LOUD ROCK MUSIC (namely Zeppelin Rock Bar, where Jun, who never ceases to amaze me with his musical selections, played some Rick Derringer! Yay! Then on to Memphis (bar, not city) where, fortified with copious amounts of my good friend San Miguel I assaulted the sensitive ears of the hardy few with renditions of ‘classic’ rock tunes accompanied by the house band. My head and throat really hurt the next day…) we visited the Meta House gallery where we bumped into Tim Page, the iconic war (and peace) photographer. Well, to be honest, we didn’t really ‘bump’ into him, we kind of stalked him. Tim is a patron of the organisation I work for, and on guessing he might well be in town to attend the opening of an exhibition of his work we thought we could pin him down to ask him for some favours. Ever the gentleman, he duly obliged, and we spent an hour or so chatting to him. He now feels closer than ever to finally solving the riddles surrounding the disappearance of his close friends Sean Flynn and Dana Stone, and is returning to Cambodia next week to continue his quest for the truth, with, he hopes, some resolution and closure in sight. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again, but he’s a remarkable man, in many ways the Keith Richards of photojournalism, yet infinitely humble though charged with an intense inner flame, whose pictures of the mayhem and destruction wreaked by war are a frozen reminder of the insanity that humans continually perpetuate seemingly without ever learning that it is really not a good thing…

Time for a change of subject… let us muse briefly on tropical torpor. We are definitely moving into the hot season now, the temperature is rising and life is moving ever so slightly slower than it did before. Weddings are on the increase (we have been invited to three in the last two weeks) and so is the prevalence of that massively popular Khmer outdoor sport, spot squeezing. On every corner one can expect to see someone, more often than not a Tuk-Tuk or moto driver, bent in intense concentration in front of a wing mirror, squeezing and popping for all they are worth… ah, life’s small pleasures. Nose-picking, nit-picking, zit zapping, spitting, urination and spot squeezing are all publicly paraded on the thoroughfares of this fair city. Still, better out than in, as my dad used to say…
… and so the days crawl by here in the Kingdom of Cambodia, counting slowly down to the summer holidays in a lazy haze. I venture that Ray Davies would love it here, given how many Kinks songs mention either sitting, or the sun, or both… perhaps I ought to rechristen my current domicile the Kinkdom of Cambodia?

Now there’s a thought…

‘I’m just sittin’ in the midday sun
Just soaking up that currant bun
With no particular purpose or reason
Just sittin’ in the midday sun.’

‘Sitting in the Midday Sun’ The Kinks

ciao, bambinos

Roll on
Rock on
Raw Bones
Well I still got all the rhythm in these
Rockin' Bones

I wanna leave a happy memory when I go,
I wanna leave something to let the whole world know,
That the rock 'n' roll daddy has a-done passed on,
but my bones will keep a rockin' long after I've gone

Roll on
Rock on
Raw Bones
Well I still got all the rhythm in these
Rockin' Bones

Well when I die don't you bury me at all,
Just nail my bones up on the wall,
Beneath these bones let these words be seen,
"This is the Bloody gears of a Boppin' machine"

Roll on
Rock on
Raw Bones
Well I still got all the rhythm in these
Rockin' Bones

And I worry about tomorrow
just thinkin' about tonight,
My bones are getting restless and I do it up right,
A few more times around a hardwood floor,

Before we turn off the lights and
Close the door

R.I.P. Lux Interior

....thank you from the northern wolfman.

Have you ever hankered after tinkling the ivories but were stymied by a complete lack of length in your fat little digits? Ever been the disappointed one turned away in the queue for hand cream models because your stubby fingers were too Shrek-like to pass the grade? Were you forced down the career path of butchery because, lets face it, those pork sausages you had sprouting from your palms were not really suited to the fine motor skills required of a brain surgeon?

Despair no more, for help is at hand (groan!)…

Just around the corner from our humble abode in Phnom Penh city is a beauty shop. Ah, but clearly not only a beauty shop, also a place where dreams come true in a magical scented haze of all-round wonderfulness, for not only will they ‘iron the hair to make it straight’ and ‘make the face to white’ (is Michael Jackson their best customer, I wonder?) but they also promise, for the princely sum of only $10.00, to, wait for it…

‘perfume the fingers to be slim...’

Yippee! A new career awaits me…
‘Oh, I just loved his Bach variations, so fluid, so emotive the way his beautiful, long fingers glided so effortlessly over the keys…’
‘Yes! Yes! And his hands smell so nice…’

I bet Rick Wakeman goes there too.

I’m pretty sure he doesn’t go to the one I spotted some months back close to BKK market, where a somewhat graphic piece of naïve art accompanies the assertion that not only can this establishment provide all the usual skin-whitening processes, but can also ‘cover all kind of bruises’ that a woman may be forced to endure in her daily routine. A sad reminder that this is still a male-dominated society, and that too often that domination is reinforced by the application of a fist…

I’m still as bemused and confused and amused by everyday life in the Cambodian capital as I was when I began writing this blog. Every day continues to bring new things to wonder at. Why is a gigantic office block being built near us opposite the site of a smaller office block that was forced to close earlier this month because… well, because no-one can afford to rent offices… ? Why do so many vehicles have no number plates, tinted glass and mini televisions showing Tom and Jerry cartoons smack in the middle of the dashboard? How many Hummers is it possible to fit on the sidewalk outside Malis’s restaurant? (Arlo Guthrie, there’s a song in there for you somewhere…) Why have Lucky Market suddenly stopped selling mayonnaise (until last week there were three shelves full of variations on the stuff, now they lie empty and forlorn - it’s either a melamine-type scare that we don’t know about yet, panic buying by foreigners (?), or it just simply has ceased to exist, like sun-dried tomatoes. We used to buy some lovely sun-dried tomatoes from the small deli counter in Lucky’s until the day they were no longer there, and the staff conspiratorially informed me that sorry sir, sun-dried tomatoes no longer existed, had vanished off the face of the earth forever, had ‘done a dodo’, etc etc. I simply haven’t had the heart to tell them about deli Le Duo’s range of sun-dried t…………….

Of course, if I get bored at being stuck in morning rush hour traffic with only the sight of two senior policemen driving at high speed in their very large SUV down what most people actually do now realise is the wrong side of Norodom Boulevard whilst simultaneously guzzling from cans of ABC beer (8.00am… isn’t that a little early, gentlemen?), then I can always drift off into a gentle reverie about little O. One morning this week, he finally completed his metamorphosis into a petulant teenager. I came into his room to give him his morning greeting at around 6.00am, and there he was, lying on his back across his bed, hands clasped behind his neck, knees up, gazing at the ceiling fan with a look of utter boredom on his face.

‘Hello! How are you today, O?’ Daddy enquires.

‘Go away!’ says O.

All well and good, but he’s TWO, forgoodnessake! TWO!

And…

He can climb the stairs approximately 2.8 times faster than I can (and in all probability descend faster, but thank the good lord I have not yet witnessed that particular heart-stopping exercise – our stairs are like the Odessa steps with a bend in the middle).
He can completely (and silently) disappear, and then reappear in a completely different place less than 5 milliseconds later.
He can store an entire packet of Chocolate Buttons in one cheek, some cheese and ham in the other and still manage to chew and swallow eggy toast soldiers at the same time.
He can lower his trousers/pants/nappy and pee at will, and in any situation, providing it causes the maximum annoyance/embarrassment to his parents.
He can open locked doors in the blink of an eye, and can lock doors that have no key finally and irrevocably.
He can programme an I-Pod and change DVDs with incredible speed and dexterity, and he employs his own form of censorship upon the adults in the house by switching off any television programme that does not meet with his approval…
He covertly works for a secret organisation whose mission is to rid the world of all remote control devices, but particularly those for TVs and DVDs.
Or perhaps he covertly works for the woman in the market who sells remote controls – we are undoubtedly her best customers, and come to think of it she does seem to have some unspoken dialogue between O and her when we make our almost weekly pilgrimage to replace them…

And…

Awww…he’s truly, truly wonderful. Our lives are just so much better for him being around, and each day brings new surprises and moments to melt the hardest of hearts (mine particularly). I’ve never wanted to be one of those ‘my kid is wonderful, blah blah blah’, parents, but it’s my blog and I’ll blag if I want to… so there!

Let’s talk about music again. You have to admit that going for about seven paragraphs hardly mentioning any music is pretty good, isn’t it? I quite often ponder in an ‘out-of-the-body-experience’ manner at the stylistic leaps I take in my listening habits. Last few weeks it’s been mainly the bleak English folktronica of July Skies emanating from my trusty and battered I-Pod and speaker pillow (remind me to elucidate at a later date on that particular wonder…), this week it’s Motown. I’m actually ‘listening’ to those songs that soundtracked a great deal of my adolescence, as opposed to living with them , and I am marvelling in a frankly gobsmacked manner at just how amazing the production was on the classic Motown tracks, and how vital and alive everything sounded (and still sounds today.) Every note in the right place, every component of the mix exactly where it should be in the sonic palette. Wow. Far out. Although the early 1970s was largely the domain of progressive rock in the circles I moved in, nearly every party came to the point where the only thing to do was to haul ‘L.A. Woman’ off the turntable and replace it with the silver Motown Chartbusters Volume 3 album, which would inevitably, as Pink might say, really ‘get the party started’. There were other volumes (one, volume 6 I believe, even had a Roger Dean sleeve! How that confused the progressive fraternity!), but 3 was the tried and trusted partystarter in our remote neck of the woods. The moment ‘Í heard it through the grapevine’ kicked in, all manner of solitary dizzy hippy hopping gave way to Soul Train-esque funky choreography, or so we thought in our naïve northern Scottish way… I’m sure Rufus Thomas must have taken inspiration from the ineptness of some of us ‘funky chickens’ gyrating drunkenly in the tiny wee kitchen of a tiny wee hoose in a tiny wee toon, with elbows akimbo, emerging like a hairier and scarier Pan’s People through a fog of strangely sweet-smelling smoke, Newcastle Brown and vodka-and-orange-wi’-a-wee-drappie-o’-water fumes…

The latter drink was the closest at that point that I had come to a cocktail. I still recall the burning chemical aftertaste of the potent mix of Smirnoff and diluting orange (Oh boy, was it ORANGE. Colourings and preservatives were essential parts of the deadly mix!), with the edge just slightly dulled by the brackish warm water…such sophistication! I truly did not become a fully paid up member of the suave and urbane world of the real cocktail drinker until one memorable afternoon in Edinburgh in the early 1980s, in Refreshers Cocktail Bar, when Donald McIntosh and I decided we would drink our way through the card…. but that’s another story for another time….

Oh well, that’s enough reminiscing for now. I wonder (if I can stop A from laughing too much) if I can teach little O the moves for ‘Going to a go-go’ ….

(cue funky guitar and rolling piano lick)

‘Watch me now!!!’

For the lucky ones such as I, memories of the past are akin to imaginary creatures, amorphous yet solid, there but yet not quite there, subject to being shaped by the will to make things fit with the idea of an ideal past, yes, once again those blue-remembered hills of yore.

Lately I have been listening to the work of a band called ‘July Skies’. They deal in a particular kind of musical nostalgia that is designed to evoke in the listener the distinct feeling of a place and time, and by goodness it works. The mainstay of the band is a young man named Antony Harding. He holds some singularly unusual ideas for a contemporary young man, and he can be found expressing them during a 2006 interview in a highly eloquent and captivating manner at this website, www.pennyblackmusic.co.uk/MagSitePages/Article.aspx?id=4113 . His views really resonate with me – as a younger person I often found solace in visiting old deserted buildings, sitting quietly and listening to the sounds they made, imagining the lives of those who had once lived there… I was a strange little chap, really.

The title of this posting strikes me as emanating a strange, calm serenity, invoking something of a Turner landscape in the reader. In my mind’s eye I see huge skies flecked with streaks of blue-grey rain that descend upon and partially obscure the clusters of tiny grey buildings dotted amongst the green at the bottom of the picture. It actually comes from the name of a track on the July Skies album ‘The Weather Clock’, and in my opinion Mr. Harding totally succeeds in using appropriate instrumentation and almost intangible atmospheres on this recording to conjure the feelings and sensations of growing up and living in post-war twentieth century Britain. It’s a world of grass poking through grey concrete slabs, grimy windows, gritty pavements designed to inflict maximum damage to children’s knees, sweet wrappers blowing through deserted housing estates, a lone mother wrapped up against the cold pushing a pram up a steep hill… Real or make believe? Who knows? Why should we care if it feels right, which it does… One track is called ‘Waiting for the Test Card’, and it does remind this listener in an uncanny way of the butterfly-stomached anticipation that the test card appearing on the television screen brought to those of us of a certain age… impossible to convey to many today, as we face saturation television digitally penetrating our homes from satellites or cables twenty-four hours a day… the old guard are disappearing too… last year the genius that was Oliver Postgate, this year Tony Hart. My old musical sparring partner Skip has more to say on their sad passing on his blog over at skipcormack.blog.co.uk, please take the time to visit. I don’t always entirely see eye to eye with him, but in this case I do. These remarkable and gentle men were inspirations and friends to thousands of British children and I cannot help but wonder if the braying hyperactive ninnies who host many children’s TV programmes nowadays will be remembered with such warm fondness by their viewers. Mind you, Barney the Dinosaur seems, although oh-so-slightly annoying, quite a big-hearted kindly chap and little O is very taken by him indeed…

I’m sorry if these last two postings appear to have had an overly sentimental sepia tinge to them… it’s not that the past was better, for that is not the case, it’s just I feel, as I’m sure many do, that to a degree we have slightly lost our way as humans at the moment. Yes, the past is a distant country that we once visited, but it is still a place that we may have much to learn from. To paraphrase Blur (Back together again! Nostalgia for an age yet to come, anyone?), ‘Modern Life Is (not entirely) Rubbish’. If we can be informed by the past, then that can help us to have a viable present and a hopeful future…

Next posting I will try and inject a bit more humour into proceedings. After all, as ‘The Reader’s Digest’ (now there’s a publication to get nostalgic about if ever there was one!) has told us on countless occasions in Dr’s waiting rooms as we nervously await our appointment, ‘Laughter is the Best Medicine.’

So I shall leave you with this…

“What goes ‘Ha Ha Ha Thump!’?”

A man laughing his head off.

Bye.