small town blues

A little while back Philip J and I were discussing Small Town Mentality Syndrome. Having grown up in a city the size of a monopoly board I am well versed in the mechanics of gossip and rumour and the constant vigilance of the small townee. On more than one occasion as a teenager I'd arrive home to find that my parents knew more about what I'd been up to that night than was entirely comfortable, particularly as my good times revolved around spar cider, poppers and french kissing the local youth round the back of the cathedral.
Don't get me wrong, I like to gossip as much as the next lass, but there is something sinister and almost bleak about being the subject of the bitchery and snipery that sustains the Small Town Mentality.I'm known for my terrible judgement of both people and situations and therefore found myself against the better judgement of every single person I knew, on a flight to Asia to marry a total idiot. My friends tried to stop me. The regulars in the pub I was running tried to stop me. My own mother offered me money to not go. But I knew what I was doing, I was in love.

So when, four weeks and many tears later I arrived unwed back in Brighton, tanned and skinnier than when I'd left but feeling like a catastrophic failure and abysmally alone, it came as no surprise at all to find that everyone knew. Everyone. Even complete strangers came up to me in the pub;
"Ah, we knew it wouldn't work out. He was no good for you. We all thought so. Boys a fool if he doesn't want you etc"
"Who are you ?"
"Ah. We saw your picture in the shop there."

"What ?"
Turns out my flatmate Simon had put a poster up of me in the town centre with the words;
'LOST. A friend and a flatmate, last seen running away to Thailand with her head in the clouds'
because he knew, like everyone else it seemed, that it was never going to work out. Just like everyone had said. A few people had joked about taking bets on how long it would be before I came home - at least I think they were joking. The point being that the fact that it hadn't worked out made for very good story indeed, especially when you consider that the boy involved flew back to England before me threatening to kill a man I'd once had a fling with. Oh, how that paid off in gossip gold. It's all there, broken hearts, shotgun weddings, bikinis, threats to kill, if it didn't sound so fictional I'd write a book about it.

Back to the conversation. Philip had made a good point in that when you live in a small town with not much happening except the events of other people's lives you tend to get 'a running commentary' on your activities from others.
In this case I was meeting a friend who had moved away from Brighton recently and was only in town for the afternoon. We had about an hour and a half together before she had to go, which was time enough for a pint. Sitting in the beer garden I hadn't even taken my jacket off when I was hit with the question bullets flying out of her face.
" You're not going to tell about this man you've met than?"

"Which one ?"

"I hear you haven't written anything for a while because you've been drinking too much."

"Pardon ?"

"Is it true that you're getting dressed up as Led Zeppelin on the night of the tribute concert and performing the entirety of 'Physical Graffiti' in your kitchen and that you and Lisa have fallen out because you both wanted to be Jimmy Page?"
"That's not strictly true, no -"

"You still not sleeping I hear ?"
"Jesus - "

"Someone told me you were some kind of ultra vixen with a torture dungeon in your basement and a cache of weapons in the loft."
"Yeah, I suppose."

Turns out she was being fed this information through the many and various mouths of my acquaintances, and as she no longer lived in town she had specifically asked that any news was reported back to her with the speed and inaccuracy of a tabloid reporter. Which I could have been annoyed about. I could have pulled her up and told her that if she wanted to know about what I was doing all she had to do was ask and I'd tell her. But after years of living in a tiny, snub-nosed town I have developed the ability to shrug off all my gossip and laugh in the face of all the scandalous rumours. Particularly the one currently doing the rounds about me at the moment. I'm sure you'll hear about it soon. Just not from me.

that van stank to high heaven though.

I have a wonderful image in my head, a static slice of frozen time.
Cornwall, a few years ago. Nine of us had miraculously managed to get a weekend off our various bar jobs and hired a mini-bus to drive down there for an experimental exodus out of Brighton. It was, and remains still, one of the happiest journeys I've taken so far - 'the devil fools with the best laid plans' Neil Young once sang but we were safe because we hadn't made any. Not one. Hence the first night was spent with nine of us sleeping upright and drunk in the van parked on Perranporth beach. The image in my head is that of us, windswept and tired, on the seafront down at St Ives on a brisk May morning the day we were due to leave. Alex John is looking pale and unhappy because a seagull had stolen her ice-cream and she had a bilious hangover from the local scrumpy. Tina is still drunk, and wrapped up in a bright pink blanket. Jon and Odge are to my left, discussing Fifty Cent with Gordon, who looks stilted and worn because he cricked his neck sleeping in the van on the first night. From here, stood on the beach I can see Amy and Burg writing their names in the sand. Finch is to my right, with a pasty, ignoring the fact that the temperature within it is close to that of molten lava.
It was here that I can remember feeling happy - happy in that content, this is bliss way - and hoping it was a moment I would never forget. We've banned ourselves from discussing that holiday now - particularly in the presence of anyone who wasn't there - because the stories and anecdotes are numerous and the in-jokes so inverted that they may as well be mythical, and anyone listening to us ramble on about it generally starts shifting in their seat, then their eyes develop a glassy sheen, then their jaws slacken and a runner of drool swings from their lower lip as they enter an advanced catatonic state.
Alright, it's not that boring. But like all the best things, you had to be there.

aka 'big stupid nobchops'

If you're going to give yourself an alias - the sort of cool, razor-edged, law-breaking moniker used mainly by rappers and hustlers, always, always choose something which makes you sound, well, cool, razor-edged and law-breaking.
For instance, no-one is going to question the credentials of the Grym Reaper, Dr Doom or Ol' Dirty Bastard.
And you'd have to be an maniac to pick a fight with someone calling themselves Ghost Face Killah.
So in my childish way, it really made me laugh when, on Saturday afternoon as I headed off to the pub I saw that someone calling themselves Big Daddy G had tagged themselves all over the walls of one of Brighton's junctions. What made it funny, at least to me in some puerile way, was that someone had added '-ay' at the end of ‘ Big Daddy G’.
Ah, the comedy.

such a load of old bono, all of it.

The other night Alan and I were having late drinks in the pub and we overhead a table having a ‘Ten Bands we Must see before we Die’ conversation, which led us, in our meandering, drunken way, on to a conversation of ‘Ten Bands we’d rather Die then See’.
I’d forgotten all about it until last week when I received this message from Al;

Alan - Oasis, Hard-Fi, Fatboy Slim, The Kooks, Arctic Monkeys, U2, Calvin Harris, Maroon 5, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Hard-Fi again (Cos I hate them so much)...

Which led me to respond;

Daisy - u2, sting, sting and u2 in concert , sting, bono and simply red live with jamie cullum, genesis, phil collins, mike and mechanics, razorlight, steely dan, ub40, fallout boy, my chemical romance, ub40 guest appearing at a lenny kravitz concert.
*deep breath*
akkon the ringtone menace, jack penate, sean kingston, katie melua, dave stewart solo with jamie cullum on the pia-pia-pia-no, collins on drums, and bono on vocals. it’s a super group.super shit that is.

and m-people, which I have just thought of. Bunch of insipid, lukewarm arse.

(thanks to Alan for making me laugh so much about it though.)

insomnia's revenge - the awakening

It's four-thirty in the morning the night before the day I'm going to post this, or the morning of, if you're a bit of a pedant.
I've just been downstairs to make a cup of tea and stare glazed around the kitchen cursing my restlessness when I found myself drawn against my will to the flat black pools of the windows which overlook the garden.
I've said it before and will happily keep saying it until someone physically restrains me, there is something sinister about the middle of the night. On Sunday I woke up at three o'clock in the morning, paddling against the restraint of my covers and wondering why I could only see things in black and white.
" I'm colour-blind!" I screamed inwardly "I can only see in monochrome!"
A know plenty of people who get 'face at the window' syndrome - anyone who has watched a horror film from the eighties or early nineties will have some measure of this - when all you see is the spectre of your reflection peering back at you and somewhere out there, in the dark and the depths of the night the killer is prowling, stalking, knife glinting in hand, your eyes wander restlessly over the - ah Jesus! there he is, pressed flat against the glass.
The looming face at the porthole of your fears.
I spent at least five of my teenage years in a state of painful anxiety after being told by a 'psychic' that I was going to start seeing ghosts and that the first one would appear to me over my shoulder in my reflection. Thanks for that. I was a staggeringly insecure adolescent - as if there is any other kind - and would have happily spent hours staring into hostile mirrors and mentally pulling my image apart. Catching my own reflection became a terrifying ordeal, not only having to contend with the unhappy symmetry of my features but potentially the wispy face of a phantom hovering about the place, suggesting ways I could improve my hair. Whether I believe in ghosts or not, her words always, always come back to haunt me in these dark times, these alone-in-the-bowels-of-the-night times, when all I see out of the exposed kitchen windows is my own pale face, nervous and wide eyed, not just because of the roaming killer about to slam himself up against the glass but because the faces of the dead are about to loom up in the behind me as well.
It’s not as if I encourage meddling with the afterlife, I’m going to be seeing enough of it when I’m dead.

i'll (not) get these in.

"Life moves pretty fast, " said Ferris Bueller, later to be sampled on the Gravediggaz Niggamortis album, "you don't stop to look around every once in a while, you miss it."

Ferris has obviously never spent a week in my company when I'm off the sauce, when time slows to a lame crawl and the only thing you're likely to miss if you don't stop to look around is my cells dying. A craving, like gossip, is hard to ignore, particularly if you regard the twin evils of smoking and drinking as I do, which is like fond old pals instead of for what they are. One, a hysterical displacement activity and insidious poison, the other an emotion sating, speech slurring social activity.
When I tried to give up smoking back in June it was as though someone had told me I could no longer breathe. I'd sit huddled in pubs with my friends, insanely jealous as they wafted smoke about the place and made roll-ups with nimble dextrous fingers, occasionally glancing at me and saying with sincerity,
"I'm really proud of you, Daisy, you're doing really well."
Well fuck well and fuck you. Fuck all of you, you giddy, laughing, smoking bitches. Those were my actual thoughts, and the beer didn't help because aside from narrowing my already shrinking willpower to that of a gnat, one without the other just didn't seem right.
I fell off that wagon so spectacularly you could have called it a stunt dive. One of those with men carrying panes of glass across a suspiciously empty street, stacks of boxes piled up in alleyways, cranes carrying dynamite toppling over onto firework factories, that kind of thing. So I'm determined not to do that this time. It's only day three, and I'm already discovering that eerie clarity of thought in which objects, perspective and people take on vivid new dimensions which - in my blurred and booze fugged mind - I'd previously never noticed. I don't look as though I've had my hair styled by Ken Dodd as I walk into work. I've found out that I do understand Catch-22, it's just a huge tome, and will be quite laborious. I've fed my goldfish every day instead of just when I remembered, and now they are no longer trying to propel themselves over the rim of their bowl. I discovered I still have a child-like enthusiasm for many things, instead of the dried-up cynical approach I'm familiar with.

I don't advocate abstinence - I don't advocate anything, I'd be a fool to try, especially since the last time -
"What's that noise ?"
"It's bloody Daisy advocating the merits of Paul McCartney. Let's get out of here."
- but I have to say, from my sanctimonious, smug little cocoon of sobriety I'm feeling pretty good. Especially when all those around me are suffering with hangovers. Drink up, losers.

Next week : I'll be back at Threshers, doing the weekly shop.

bushes on mushes

This is my third rewrite in recounting the events of my weekend, so surreal and magnificent as it was. If, upon reaching the end of this post you still feel adrift in a sea of implausibility I can only hold my hands up and say;
"Hey. It's how it happened."
Friday saw the return to Brighton of my friends Sam and Sam, the bi-titled couple who for reasons known best to themselves moved to Bristol over a year ago. The reason for their return was twofold - the World Beard and Moustache Championships were being held at the Brighton Centre on Saturday and Sam and Mitton's Marriage of Friendship at which I, as best (wo)man was to oversee the joining together in some kind of matrimony of these two best friends.

With me so far ? Good.

Friday saw much fun and drinking and the playing of the Minder theme tune in odge's pub, with me trying to usher everyone into dancing to Come on Eileen with me - it didn't happen. The next day dawned bright and sunny which was a shame as the light lanced my parched eyeballs and throbbing head at precisely eight thirty that morning and then stubbornly refused to leave, like an uninvited drunk guest, forcing me up and into a shower which needled my delicate self and left me wet and tingling. Truly, I was suffering, and I only had a few short hours to compose my self before donning my wedding outfit (pinstriped funsuit and tie, trilby, moustache, sunglasses. I looked like a cross-dressing blues brother. I looked like John Belushi in drag. John Belushi in drag after death. You get the point.)
Hoisting my sorry self in a taxi and across town, we finally entered the Brighton Centre a good hour and a pint later and by the powers of all that is hirsute and holy it was quite literally indescribable.
No, it really was, trust me, I've tried. Even photographs don't do it justice, I can only urge you to go and see the spectacle for yourselves and consider the dedication and devotion of each and every man to his facial accessory, and instead of wondering 'Why ?' just think 'Aces'. After all as the song says;
'Every girl loves a fella with a bush upon his mush'.
At least I think that's what it said. Certainly works in my mind.
At this point I'd like to steal wholesale an image which Sam conjured up for us in the pub later, that of Tony Hewittson and his portrait on the stairs. As you enter the Centre there are two staircases - one to the left and one to the right - I, like most right handed people consistently turned right upon entering the building and in doing so we found ourselves confronted each time by a portrait of Tony Hewittson on the stairs. Who he was or what he did I don't know but the artist has captured Tony in a suit, at a desk, on a phone. As Sam said later,
"When I die, I went a portrait of me riding a stallion into the vast depths of hell holding a flaming sword in one hand and a human head in the other. I don't want it to look as though I'm trying to get through to the marketing department."
It's a fair point. Perhaps the Brighton Centre would like to take this into account.
After being touched up by some very frisky gents in uniform - I said put your arm around me for a photo, not go for my tits - and marvelling at one very dapper gent (Number 17 in the Full Beard category) who pulled the chair out for his good lady wife and stood when she stood, was seated when she sat etc, I remarked on how it was a shame manners didn't exist like that any more. Mitton wrinkled her nose,
"It'd piss you off after a while, Daize. You'd end up bobbing up and down all night just to see how long it would take for his patience to snap."
Touché. And indeed, 'Tasche.
The wedding took place on the floor of or local pub's beer garden owing to lack of vacant beaches and was witnessed by myself and Gracie, a stout dog-pig with one of those wrinkled, flabby faces you can't fail to find distinctly unappealing. Then it was shots all round and a magnificent tumble from Lisa 'It's been a while' Mitton on the way home.
Their wedding night was spent with me in the kitchen arguing over whether or no Rod Stewart has ever been hot. (Answer: NO).

Me ? Drinking problem ? Nah, I don't have a problem with it.

Update: I’ve been asked to mention the tequila fuelled band which was formed following the wedding ceremony called Dog for a Witness in which I’m the lead singer. Looks like I’ll have to put my electro project Laser Love Guns to one side for a while.

apples and spice and all things nice.

It's nearly that time of year again - October 21st is National Apple Day (or at least it was last year, I haven't checked the dates this year, I don't have an apple fetish or anything.)
Last year we took ourselves to Middle Farm, a working farm straight outta the Shire and hidden in the Sussex countryside, known for it's homemade cheeses, a monstrous shire horse called - and over two hundred different types of ciders, meads and scrumpies all for the tasting.
These are proper ciders and scrumpies - bitter and cloudy and in the case of the pear cider, a mild laxative. As Odge can tell you. Ten minutes with a 5ml tasting cup and you're already a bit heady, feeling the crab apple flush building on your cheeks and a slow, stupid smile rise on your face. It's homemade and cheap and sold in cleaned out milk cartons with handwritten labels plastered on the front. If it sounds overly twee that's because it is, and if, after quarter of an hour of standing in the low-ceilinged converted barn, surrounded by the musk of old wooden barrels and the tang of spilt cider you don't emerge swathed in gingham chewing a piece of straw then you haven't really done it right, and should keep drinking until you fall through the Cider Portal. Even the names themselves seem to thrust huge innuendos and charmless metaphors into your slowly blinking bovine face. 'Crippled Cock', 'Double Vision' and 'Mangled Perspective' might sound like pro-wrestlers, but the only parallel they have with them is that all may leave you with something either sprained or broken, depending on how long you spend with each one.
They also have an Olde Time Fayre (don't laugh) which consists of the kind of circus music and swirling giddy rides you only ever see in cheese based nightmares and 'drug trip' sequences in bad films. One of the stalls is a Olde Time variation on a shooting gallery with crossbows and arrows instead of air rifles which isn't only perversely dangerous when you think of all the Double Vision seeping into your bloodstream but hilarious, especially when Richard fired vertically instead of horizontally and speared the fairy lights in the ceiling.
No prizes for Richard.
They also have a huge selection of bantam hens, each and every one of which looks as though they are wearing a pair of feathered flares, which, once I'd had enough mulled cider (hot, spicy, sweet and embarrassingly potent) I could and would have laughed at for hours, if Sweetman hadn't taken me by the arm and dragged me away muttering,
"They're just hens, Daisy, they're just hens."
Everyone should go, and if you're not singing the duelling banjos from Deliverance and making ill-judged predictions abut the weather all the way back to the train I'll eat my straw hat.

planes, trains and shitmobiles

We all have mental filters which means we only register certain things. The things we do register sink, sponge-like, into a consciousness bank, to be accessed at will. As a for instance, for me it's theme tunes, advert jingles, ghost stories. I can easily tell you that the ewoks theme tune from it's short lived cartoon spin off went 'we're the e-e-e-e-eeeewoks, one big happy happy family' or that no matter what you say-ay, the muskahounds are never far away. ay. (if I'm drawing on lots of childhood things here, which I am, it's because that was the last time I watched t.v with any degree of enthusiasm).
Other things simply skate off the surface of my brain like greased wheels on ice, leaving barely a trace.
I once asked an ex-boyfriend to explain to me how planes stayed in the air. Jason began describing, in great detail, the necessary schematics needed for flight - I heard turbines, velocity, something about jet propulsion, maybe ? Then I began to wonder whether or not bees could hear themselves buzz. After a minute or two, he paused and peered directly at me.
"You're not even listening, Daisy." He said, justifiably angry, "Why ask me if you're not going to listen when I tell you ?"
"Sorry." I'd said, turning my eyes into big round baby blues in an effort to avoid an argument, "It's just not sinking in."
Jason looked at me for a moment and sighed. "It's all pixies and fairy dust and magic." he said.
"That's what makes planes fly ?"
"No, Daisy. That's what's in your head."
It's not that I don't care. I can tell you that my friend Finch works with people with learning difficulties and that Odge is running a pub. But Lenny and Alex, who I regard with equal affection and a certain fondness, I haven't a clue about. I know Lenny is in his second year at university studying...uh...something to do with music, he has told me...um...sound production ? No, it's not quite right. I know that Alex works in the City, doing something very high-pressured and important with large amounts of money for an enormous salary. But even though he's told me, I still couldn't tell you his job title.
I have a filter for finances, something I've had all my life. Again, it's not that I don't care - left to my own devices I'd be bankrupt by now - I just don't hear it. Bank statements continue to go into the drawer unopened, balances unchecked, withdrawals unmonitored. Someone tried to go through it with me once and gave up in disgust when I asked he minded if I played the playstation while he carried on.
Like I said, it's not lack of caring, or ignorance, it's just the mental filters only process really useless knowledge and functionless trivia into the portals of my mind. It's why I've got no idea how music is transferred to a c.d but I could wang on to you endlessly about werewolf legends or futurama or goldfish.

more than meets the eye

So, Transformers.
I've tried to see this film three times now at have been thwarted at each attempt like a lazy bluebottle. The first time I couldn't go because I was ill, the second time was because Lenny, who had so kindly offered to come with me when no-one else would, got drunk and forget to book the tickets. Then he dropped an even bigger bombshell.
"Actually Daisy, I've been meaning to tell you this." Lenny looked uncomfortable, his eyes dancing away from mine. "It's just that, well , I -uh - I watched Transformers at the weekend."
"WHAT ? Without me ? You bastard!"
"I'm sorry Daisy. It just happened, and I thought of you the whole time. I'll come with you to see it though, it was so fucking great I'd happily sit through it again."
He began explaining a scene to me in vivid detail until I said,
"Alright, alright, we'll go on Thursday."
So last Thursday Sweetman and I (and briefly my parents, who were visiting for a couple of days) were sat in the pub, itchy with excitement. We got a couple of pints, I was doing my Transformers impressions, my parents were asking what the film was - "So it's a bit like that car advert then, when the car transforms into a robot ?" - when my phone rang. It was Lenny, who'd gone ahead to get the tickets.
"Cinema's shut."
"Fuck's sake. How long for ?"
"Just tonight. I'm outside the pub anyways, so I'll come in."
In he came, and sat down beside me.
"Fucking cinema cunts," he was ranting, "titwanks -"
"Have you met my mum ?" I said stridently, pointing across the table. Lenny had the decency to look embarrassed and mutter something about being Irish and therefore entitled to have language which would make a docker blush. In the end we had a few pints and I did my Transformers impression to no acclaim.
The next day I got to work to an email from my friend Alex, telling me all about the film and skirting into the plot and certain memorable lines.
It's okay, I think, he hasn't really given anything away, and the plot isn't the reason I'm going anyway.
Then Sweetman calls me at work. He is hungover which makes two of us.
"Where are you ?" I ask, grateful that he's called. His voice is a soothing balm on the ache of my head.
"Seafront. Well, nearly."
I'm suddenly suspicious. "Why ?" I hate the seafront. "What possible reason does anyone go to that beach ?"
Sweetman, very quietly, "I'm going to see Transformers."
I nearly thrown the phone out of the window. I wanted to howl "It's not faiiiirrrrrr" into the receiver. I managed a "okay then." Sweetman reassured me he'd meet me after work for a Friday drink, and even persuaded me to do a quick decepticon down the phone. Later in the bar garden he was telling me about the film, all the best bits rambling out of his mouth in a neon blur until a slammed my pint down and said,
"Alright stop. I haven't even bloody seen it yet and I already feel like I know most of it."
"I'd defiantly go again," Sweetman says, eyes aglow like an eighties child, "It's fantastic."
On Saturday I'm gaying it up at pride when my phone rings. It's Philip, so I call him back.
"Hey, it's me." he says, unneccesarily, "Look, I've just called to tell you that a mate's just come down and ummmm, well we're going to watch Transformers in a bit." I have to steady myself against a wall. Philip has broken three ribs recently so to call him the name I was thinking of calling him seems a bit harsh. I swallow it back, but it's an effort.
"Great."
"I'm really sorry, Daisy. I know how much you wanted to see it." it sounds like he's grinning. I tell him I hope he enjoys it and think I manage some conviction.
Later, I'm back at the house with a beer when he sends a text.
"They've just captured bumblebee!"
Then another;
"Oh my god! He put the cube in megatron's chest instead!"
Jesus Christ. Charlie Brooker once said that the biggest movie spoiler of all time was the DVD cover to Planet of the Apes with the statue of liberty's head sticking out the sand.
He should meet some of my mates.
Update: Cinema at eight thirty Wednesday. Nothing but the second coming will stop me.