Hoovers and Gogs

We're on the M1 heading back from Cheshire. Nathan's sister has recently departed the Land of my Fathers and is now living with her husband-to-be, Julius, in a beautiful modern house made of reclaimed bricks on the edge of a charming village called No Man's Heath. How cool is that name? As we drove up the M6, I was beavering away on a song in Brass called No Man's Land, so our destination felt particularly relevant. There are some brilliantly named British villages, aren't there? My three personal favourites are Pity Me (the most neurotic village), Shingay-cum-Wendy (the campest village) and Cold Christmas (the most romantic village.) The rudest is, of course, Twatt, on the Shetland Islands, but I've never been there. Feel free to get in touch with any other weird or wonderful village names, real or imagined!

I'm a little sad that Sam is no longer living in Wales. It's difficult for me to imagine not being able to have such regular Goggy top-ups. Visiting Wales is an itch I have to scratch periodically.

So, today's gathering was to wish Sam and Julius well as they depart on their wedding-cum-holiday-of-a-lifetime, which will see them riding Harley Davisons the full length of Route 66. The wedding itself takes place at the Grand Canyon. Cher and Meat Loaf can, frankly, eat their hearts out! Here was me thinking that we'd got the monopoly on awesome and unique weddings! #totallyupstaged!

The Hoover Dam is, of course, just off Route 66. As we drove home this evening in ludicrously slow moving traffic, I asked if Nathan would ever want to see that particular feat of structural engineering. "I'm not sure..." He pondered for a moment, "although I'd like to meet the giant beavers that made it..." Quick as a flash, my husband!

Strictly Come Who?

We're on our way back from Julie and Sam's where we've been doing Craft and Cake. It's been a much-needed break, although I was secretly working on Brass documents during the afternoon, proof-reading the clutch of piano/ vocal scores I'd spent the morning printing out.

Today's crafters were working on a variety of projects. Tina was even crocheting a carpet for a tent out of multi-coloured garden string, which I thought was rather ingenious. Elsewhere in the room, people were knitting socks and scarfs. We ate Julie-made salted-caramel eclairs and Sam-made pasta with cream and peas. There was a fruit cake, home-made bread and pots and pots of tea.

We watched the first episode of Strictly Come Dancing, and it seems the BBC are using the word "celebrity" in inverted commas this year... That, or I'm getting very old! I had no idea who anyone was. None of us did. In most cases we were forced to listen very carefully to the one-line description of participants as they sashayed down the staircases. "Bronze medal-winning Olympic boxer, X," "Random female sports presenter, Y" "Token BME presenter from Country File, Z..." Next year they'll be featuring the entire cast of Gogglebox, or running a reality show to turn "real people" into the celebrities they need. There was one moment when all the "stars" were asked to hold up circular question marks in front of their faces whilst the professional dancers walked in. On a count of three, they revealed themselves, to much cheering from the pros. I'm sure it must have been acting. If that rabble of D-listers (including the woefully homophobic Jamelia) had unveiled themselves to me, I'd have been confused and then distinctly underwhelmed!

Still, the great joy about Strictly, is being able to see Claudia Winkleman back on our television screens. She's a hugely talented presenter in my view and I'm genuinely really proud of the BBC for allowing two women to co-host a prime time Saturday night entertainment show. It's so much more refreshing than the deeply misogynist cliche of the old sleazy comedian standing with a pretty young floozy who's sole task is to gurn, pout and twitter. It's only taken the BBC about eighty years to realise the errors of their ways, but, as my Mum used to say, "better late than never..."

Totes emosh

I am a level of knackered tonight I hitherto thought impossible! We have been filming all day. Like ALL day, documenting a seriously important milestone in the project we're working on. It's all a bit terrifying. This is the point at which we allow other people in, and have to start sharing and being malleable. I've always been a bit of a one-man-band, so this is somewhat problematic for me!

I realised today that it is almost exactly thirty years since I started senior school, which means I've known my dear friend Tammy for as many years. It's actually her birthday today, which gave me cause to send her a cheery message, whilst deep down I was feeling really emotional. I used to hear old people uttering cliches like "where do the years go?" I used to want to throttle them, and say, "you know exactly where they've gone. Time passes. Get over it..." And then suddenly you're 41. Suddenly you're in a thirteen year relationship like the one your parents were in when you started senior school thirty years ago. And part of you wonders how it all happened.

I see my God children and want to tell them just how much they've grown and give them a quid to spend on an ice cream. I'm turning into my Grannie! God, how I sometimes miss my Grannie!

I got inexplicably tearful today because the project we're working on is very close to my heart, and forces me to reflect on my life as a five year-old boy in a dusty market town in Bedfordshire. Again, the years tumble away, and the memories, which I once considered indelibly etched on my little grey cells, don't seem to be that easy to access anymore. I see a haze of sunlight instead: generalised images of rounders matches, teddy bears' picnics, kagouls, ABBA records, Nuclear Power No Thanks stickers, kiln parties and home made bread dipped in cider vinegar. The memories which remain, invariably take a moment or two to sharpen, but so many are gone forever; simply evaporated in the heat of those long summers.

Exhausted kebabs

We're exhausted. It's 8.30pm, we've only just finished work down at Uncle Archie's in Kentish Town, we're gonna gobble down a bit of food, and then I need to get cracking on another song from Brass. At the moment, my only respite is the actual act of eating, and even then, whilst stuffing food in my gob, I'm trying to read a document, or check an email. It's punishing beyond words.

The positive is that we're doing good work. Really good work. Things have started slotting into place and there's only been a small amount of tension, all of which has come as a result of the team not all being in the same place at the same time. Things have a habit of moving forward in leaps and bounds when one of us is absent, and this invariably causes hints of friction.

It's veggie kebabs from "Mega Grill" tonight. Mega Grill! I ask you. It's only children's nurseries which have worse names than kebab shops. Nurseries are always called ghastly things like "Little Stars" or "Tiny Monsterz." Kebab shops are usually named after other fast food chains ("Hawaiian Fried Chicken") or randomly prefixed by some kind of shiny gemstone. How do I know all this? Well, unfortunately, as the work-load increases, so our ability to cook for ourselves diminishes. It's soups and salads for lunch and then whatever we can source from local takeaways for tea. Last night we had pasta from Papa Del's, which doubled up as lunch today because the portions are so wonderfully large.

They've dug up the road at the back of our house. Apparently they're doing essential gas works for ten weeks, which probably means the road will be closed for that long. I must say, it's rather lovely. The road is blocked off at the junction with the A1, which means there's no through way, which, of course, means it's deathly quiet, and suddenly great for parking. I hope the gas works take forever, frankly!

Hysterical wombs

So Nathan's knitting Podcast continues to attract new followers, seemingly from every corner of the world. He's recently been getting messages from a young lad in Taiwan. Nathan has a little segment in his films called "stuff for the boys" which addresses the issue that knitting is often seen as a somewhat feminine pursuit.  It's not a boy-versus-girl thing. Many women aren't that fussed about knitting in pink Kidsilk Haze or making silly lacy things, so Nathan simply tries to promote project bags, patterns, stitch markers and the like which aren't exclusively for girly girls. He shows his viewers things with geometric shapes on them, for example, rather than floral designs. Blacks and Browns instead of pinks and lilacs. He is also trying to encourage male knitters to reclaim the craft by doing so publicly. Nathan often knits on the tube - usually whilst wearing his big leather biker jacket. He garners rather strange looks all the time, and people, for some reason, often feel the need to secretly take his photograph. The sense however, is that they're impressed, or at least find him charmingly eccentric. On only one occasion have I witnessed homophobia. In this instance an older woman actually tutted and moved into a different area of the compartment when both Nathan and our friend, Trevor pulled out their knitting.

Anyway, the lad from Taiwan is particularly keen on the "stuff for the boys" strand, explaining that, in his country, men are very much looked down on for knitting, and that he has to stuff all his crafting accoutrements into a ruck sack because the project bags for sale out there are teeth-achingly feminine.

He tells Nathan that he sometimes knits in public, but that it can attract really abusive comments. The other day, an older man came up to him on a train and said, "if you were my son I'd beat you to death." Hideous. The lad's response to the dreadful man was dignified and pithy; "well I'm glad you're not my father. And I feel sorry for your son." At this stage, I feel the need to refer all readers to my blog on Monday about the concept of women-only tubes, reminding them that the world is not always a safe place for LGBT people, or those who appear to be on the LGBT spectrum. I also feel obliged to remind everyone that the quest for gender equality has to work in two directions... If a bloke wants to knit, learn the harp, be a midwife or play netball, it should be as inappropriate to take the mickey out of them as it is to tell women that their wombs make them hysterical. 

And if you want to see Nathan's wonderful knitting podcast, click here... 

Dot dot dot

I woke up this morning, checked in on Facebook, and immediately witnessed a text book example of what I call the "dot dot dot" Facebook status. I'm sure everyone reading this who is on Facebook will be aware of the oeuvre. The statement is usually brave but resigned and just non-specific enough to create mayhem amongst friends. The dot dot dot statuses are almost exclusively followed by the ellipsis of doom... The best examples of the form divide friends into those who know your inner most daemons (ie your real friends) and those who don't (ie the people who need to feel ashamed that they have no idea who or what you're talking about.) The dot dot dots tempt your inner sanctum of friends to send an "in the know" cryptic response, which deliberately sheds no new light on the original message and achieves nothing but making the sender feel (and look) really smug.

Today's classic dot dot dot status was; "well here goes...."

Others I've read in the past include;

"Just when you thought life couldn't get any more painful..."

"Can't believe it's all started again..."

"Waiting for an ambulance to arrive..."

"Keep thinking about Devon. Lol. Know what I mean...? (winking face emoticon followed by list of friends names who, one assumes, shared this extraordinary Devonian experience)...

If not cryptically quipping, the quintessential response to the dot dot dot message is either to "like" it, which seems almost too bizarre for messages which are often tragic in tone, or to write those two, ludicrously bland, 21st century "can't think of anything else to say, but need the world to know I'm nice" words, "hugs, babes." The tragedy is generally completed with a pink emoticon of some description. Frankly, if you can think of nothing other than that to write, it's probably worth wondering if you need to write anything at all.

Cut these tragic messages out of your status updates, people. If you're feeling sad, share enough facts so that those who perhaps don't spend their lives Facebook stalking people have some sort of idea as to whether they need to be on suicide watch or simply assume it's just another whinging text designed to both antagonise and worry your friends.

Oh yes.

Dot dot dot...

Night!

Women only

On my way to Moorgate this morning I sat on a tube carriage which very speedily became women only. It was just one of those things. I looked up at one point and realised I was a lone man in a sea of femininity. I'm afraid many of the women sitting with me were rude. One decided she wanted to sit next to me, where my umbrella was resting, but instead of asking if I'd mind moving it, she kicked my foot, pointed at the umbrella and grunted like a caveman. She threw herself down on the seat, immediately changed her mind, stood up again, and in the process shunted my computer so hard that it slid down my leg. Did she apologise? Did she f**k! Worse still, the group of girls she was with burst into peels of hysterical laughter as I grappled to restore the scene's factory settings.

As a result of this, and myriad other reasons, which I'm about to list, when the debate kicks off properly about whether or not there should be women only carriages on British trains and tubes, I shall be arguing most firmly against.

Firstly, as evidenced today, men do not have the monopoly on abusive, rude or anti-social behaviour. A bloke on a tube surrounded by a gang of girls, particularly an elderly one, could be made to feel hugely intimidated. Probably not as intimidated as a woman travelling on her own surrounded by a group of men, but intimidated none the less. On that particular note, if group of lads heading home after a night on the town are wanting to cause problems, are they really going to be put off by a sign which says "women-only"? Of course they're not. In fact, I suspect, the taboo of entering the woman-only carriage could well prove too alluring to ignore.

On another note, I think it's also worth remembering that men travelling on their own - particularly late at night - are, in my view, just as likely to attract "unwanted attention" as women... It's a different sort of attention but the consequences are no less unthinkable. Men get beaten up on the streets all the time. They give another bloke the "wrong look" and all hell breaks loose. Funnelling men into single sex carriages fuels testosterone and creates dangerous powder kegs. In fact I'd go as far as to suggest that the presence of women makes men behave with more decorum towards one another.

Worst still, feminine men and transpeople are red rags to the bullish behaviour of a certain type of pissed-up gang. Protecting women from this but not members of the LGBT community, the elderly or, indeed just men who don't want to get involved, is almost too horrifying and negligent for words. On so so many occasions in the past, I've been forced to cross the road from a group of lads, or move carriages because I've felt uneasy, or been jeered at for wearing an AIDS ribbon.

Tackle the behaviour of louts by all means, but not like this, because by doing it this way, you're sacrificing one person's safety for another.

I had lunch with Meriel today in a rainy Spitalfields Market. We had veggie pie and mash, which was rather delicious, before taking a walk along Brick Lane and back round to Moorgate where I took the tube back home and worked on the Brass scores until midnight. Not a great way to spend a Bank Holiday, but I guess the weather was so awful, so anything else would have been a nonsense.