GirlonaTrain

"...to whiskey and gin"

2009-07-06T11:34:00.021+01:00

8.38 On Time
Red wine, Guinness, vodka, gin (in error), sloe gin, white wine.
By rights the consequences should be dire.
Improbably nothing is amiss.

Still.

It was.

A lovely, quiet, cool walk home.

The streets were deserted, but for us and the nurses.

The State That I Am In - Belle & Sebastian
The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - Postal Service
Until The Night - Billy Joel

2009-07-01T21:36:00.013+01:00

17.41 On Time
It seems unlikely, but I'm sure I know it to be true, that from the window of a National Express Coach pulling into Leeds coach station in 1982 I saw a billboard advert for John Player Special with the slogan "Black Up North".

In my head, right on cue, came the line: "the Northern Lights are in my eyes, they guide me back to you…"

My throat tightened, my eyes burned. Like the billboard almost said I was 'Back Up North.' There are some places you just know you were meant to be, and others where you will never thrive. Although I was still a good hour away from home, once that song started playing in my head I knew that, for a little while at least, I was safe.

They told me they were happy if I was happy, and then undermined it by saying I didn't have to go back if I didn't want to. Walking away, after that weekend, was the most difficult thing I've ever done.

My Mum told me, years later, she'd always felt she should've stopped me.

Of course, she wouldn't have been able to.

Northern Lights - Renaissance

2009-07-01T20:59:00.005+01:00

8.38 On Time
I'm a perfectionist.
If I do something I don't want it to be the best that I can do, I want it to be the best that anyone can do.

It's why I never do anything.

You're The Best Thing - Style Council
You Can Do Better Than Me - Death Cab For Cutie
My Very Best - Elbow
Best Imitation Of Myself - Ben Folds Five

2009-06-30T18:13:00.005+01:00

16.53 Thirty Minutes Late
Five years.
So it wouldn't be surprising if I was running out of steam.

Hold Time - M Ward

2009-06-16T19:27:00.023+01:00

17.41 On Time
The pissed-up Scot opposite hails everyone who passes his seat with an incomprehensible greeting. Other than that, he's no bother.

The dapper man who sits down next to me has the white hair and beard of a not-quite-incognito Father Christmas. He takes out his phone and begins to compose a text. He decides "Sorry I was grumpy" is too much of an admission and changes it to "I'm sorry if you thought I was grumpy".

It seems to do the trick anyway. Both of them look forward to him getting home.

Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan
Richard Pryor Addresses A Tearful Nation - Joe Henry
City Middle - The National
Tea And Sympathy - Janis Ian

2009-06-15T22:56:00.080+01:00

I'm beginning to wonder if there's some kind of bye-law operating in Lancaster requiring that, before you're allowed to put on an event, you first have to be called 'Richard'. Anyway, Friday was the final 'LAWM' .

I was only half-joking at the end of Dan Haywood's New Hawks when I said that was probably the most fun we were going to get all night. I'm coming round to the New Hawks: plenty to watch, occasional tunes, light & shade. Next up, Mary Hampton held the room in the palm of her tiny hand and sang about some spine-tingling scary sounding stuff that I didn't quite understand but was hypnotised by all the same.

It is desperately ungrateful to say it, but actually, two bands a night is probably enough for me - although if I'm sitting down I can sometimes enjoy three. It's all about engaging. For me, Mary Hampton did it, Diane Cluck didn't. Alasdair Roberts attempted it but struggled with the language barrier. Dan Haywood does it - although, I did get an uneasy feeling that he'd really rather be doing it with himself.

Anyway, had a good night, met a fellow Cheesehead and, until Richard comes back in his new incarnation, guess we'll just have to make do with Richard and Richard.

"...it's four in the morning and everyone said that she'd taken some asprin and gone back to bed"

2009-06-14T20:40:00.040+01:00

Although it wasn't so much gone back to bed.

My phone rang (which, of itself, is an unusual occurrence) and the question was: how did I feel about spending an evening playing games I wouldn't understand with some people I didn't know?

It's the kind of question that would normally cause distress. I'd need ten days for the panic to subside enough to allow me to even consider such a proposition but - I don't know what came over me - I had to say it sounded like a great idea to me!

It seemed to work out OK. And Sundays were made for struggling through, right? I'd forgotten that.

Not Every Moment Rules - New Zealand Story

2009-06-08T07:22:00.003+01:00

I voted. I thought it would be enough. It wasn't.
I feel ashamed.

"...bruised black and blue"

2009-06-07T11:31:00.053+01:00

What with the way things have been kicking off lately I'm a bit reluctant to express any opinions on any of the recent audio visual experiences I've been having. Maybe I should stick to: 'all this culture - it's exhausting'.

I was already a bit concerned that last night's event was going to be less easy to love than John Bramwell's Yorkshire House performance - which was pure joy (and he did do 'Black and Blue' and (in my head) it was because I asked for it (I know others were shouting for it too, but I like to think adding 'please' made the difference)).

It was an ambitious programme - Belly dancing, Dada, 'Improvised' 'comedy' (that's just asking for trouble), spoken word, sensitive singer songwriting and Mikey Kenny But, aside from the dour poetry, I enjoyed it all. I think the German was my favourite.

Something needs to be done about those annoyingly noisy doors and the audible hand dryers though.

2009-06-05T21:03:00.049+01:00

17.41 On Time
Feel like shit again.

My head's all over the place – can’t concentrate – can’t focus – can’t be off sick due to the three line whip – so I’m rambling instead ... and thinking about stick insects.

I wasn’t allowed pets as a child, so the pets I did have were unavoidably imposed. The first was 'Twinkle', named after the comic. A goldfish given to me as a birthday present by the woman my mum cleaned for. The fish, the bowl, the coloured stones for the bottom of the bowl. No other ornamentation. I can’t remember being especially thrilled to have been given a fish. When she (?) died I’m pretty sure my dad flushed her (?) down the toilet. I don’t remember being overwhelmed by grief.

The next thing was the stick insects. I can’t remember who they came from. Was it someone at school or maybe even the school themselves, desperately trying to give the wretched things away and stupid me being dumb enough to be keen to have them. Why? What was I thinking? They ‘lived’ - for want of a better word - in a coffee jar and ate privet culled from Grandma & Grandad’s hedge. When I eventually became bored with them I released them into that privet hedge to an almost certain death. I don’t feel remorseful, even today.

The third pet I wasn’t allowed was a mouse. Patrick (I was into a big horse racing phase at the time) was much more interesting. He was given to me by my best friend, TheVegetarian, and I saved up my own pocket money to buy him an aspirational, state-of-the-art mouse cage from my Mum’s Freemans catalogue. I'd had him for a couple of years, then he went to stay with my best friend, TheVegetarian, while we were on holiday. When we got back he was dead. She said his cage had been in their greenhouse and, somehow, some wild mice had "got at him" and he had died. It sounded a bit odd at the time and it sounds even more suspicious now. Although I was sad when it happened, I was also a bit relieved that I wasn't the one to have to have discovered the body .

During the years we don’t mention there were a couple of unpleasant hamsters, a half-wild black rabbit, an unfortunate semi-feral tabby and … I might be going crazy, but, I’m sure at one point, for a brief time there was a goat – how could I not know if that was true? I don’t know…but hiding a goat on some waste ground and then building a shelter for it and, ultimately, ‘giving it away' to a school comes to mind. There was definitely a shelter building episode. And it wasn’t even a nanny: there was no milk, just an evil-eyed billy-goat wtf??? Anyway, none of them were my idea.

Jess was my idea.
My only proper pet ever and sometimes I think: should we get another cat?
But I don’t think we ever will.

XO - Elliott Smith

2009-06-04T21:42:00.020+01:00

17:00 On Time
As I try to work out how to express the sentiment: 'please, just sort this thing out, otherwise I'll have to actually read the four page letter I'm enclosing and work out for myself what’s gone on and then explain to you why you need to fix it, so please just do it now and save us both some time' only in not those exact words, I bat a squeezy rubber stress-ball from hand to hand. It's not really necessary. The letter isn't all that difficult, but it makes it look as though I'm struggling, having to think things through, means I can spend longer doing a job that should take five minutes tops.

To make it look even more serious I'm using my glasses again, which I don't really need for the screen, but I do so enjoy looking over the top of them, especially at ThinksHe'sAllThat, I think it unnerves him. At least I hope it does. Taking a break between paragraphs I hold the stress ball against my bottom lip, giving the impression of a person deep in thought.

When I was about nine years old, for Christmas, I got a huge, rubber, bendy Pink Panther. It smelled fabulous. Sometimes I was tempted to take small bites from it and, in the same way, I’m tempted to bite the stress ball now.

Eventually it perished.

Veckatimest - Grizzly Bear

2009-06-03T17:48:00.018+01:00

16.44 On Time
This afternoon I found myself composing a reply to an email that hasn’t been sent yet. An answer to a question I haven’t been asked. But then that’s nothing new. Most of my conversations don’t make it outside my head. The overlap is scary.

Afternoons are when I succumb. When I have least resistance. Yesterday I found myself making a list of names which I now seem to have misplaced, scarily enough - if it turns up in the wrong hands I may need all my powers of invention.

Afternoons are where I’m tempted to put my glasses on and pretend to be much busier than I actually am. When I have nothing at all to do I make sure I'm wearing the glasses, so I can gaze into the middle distance in a way that makes it look as though I’m seeking inspiration and pondering really important things and not just staring at nothing and having conversations in my head. Which is most likely the case.

Which is most likely the case?

Wrecking Ball - Cranes & Crows
Interstate 5 - The Wedding Present
Inner Flight - Primal Scream

2009-06-01T18:48:00.003+01:00

8.38 Eight Minutes Late
A man on the train keeping notes in a Moleskine.
I’m jealous of the weight of his fibre tip and the firm flowing lines his fine black nib is making on the cream paper.

Pen envy.

"...first night of your life, curled up on your own, looking at you now..."

2009-05-25T20:23:00.022+01:00

Songs that unexpectedly ambush you?

First, TheYoungerBoy rings up to say he's on a waiting list for eye surgery and he's scared.
Later, we're in the pub when a song comes on that, at first, doesn't even register.
Then it does register and then, there it is:

- that line -

And I'm standing, helpless
Outside the SCBU
Not listening to explanations.
Looking down into that incubator...

Wires - Athlete

"I think I've behaved, if I may say so, impeccably"

2009-05-23T14:33:00.012+01:00

Just in case (unlikely as it is) the thought that, maybe, the Tories are not so bad after all should ever creep into your mind - listen again:

"And I'd've gotten away with it too if it weren't for that meddling Labour Government and its pesky Freedom of Information Act."

2009-05-22T19:47:00.084+01:00

16.44 Eight Minutes Late.
I'm realising it's taken me all week to get over Monday night.
Which is maybe why I'm more crotchety than I have any right to be, given that it's a Friday afternoon, and a Bank Holiday Weekend.

Because, as I try to board the train, I'm disproportionately niggled by the pair, already ensconced, who have decided to pick this precise moment to remove their luggage from the rack and open it up, rooting about for something that has become suddenly vital, thus blocking the wave of commuters attempting to take their rightful place on the early train home.

Eventually they sense the disgruntlement eddying towards them and get out of the damn way. I'm able to bag a forward facing window seat and it looks as though I'm going to get it all to myself, until the last minute when ... she flumps down next to me again, immediately expanding over the divide. Our elbows, like knitting needles, engage furiously for a few seconds, then I concede and shrink away. I can't bear her intrusion. Or her perfume which is so cloying I can taste it. She cannot sit still, again. During the fifteen minute journey she searches her bag fifteen times.

As we leave the train I rescue the woman behind me who falls victim to the game of Oranges & Lemons the Pendolino plays daily and finds herself pinioned by the door, arms at her sides, unable to reach the button and free herself. If it'd been her I would have left her stuck there until Glasgow.

Sometimes I should rein in my inner curmudgeon.

The Bitter End - Placebo

2009-05-20T20:00:00.009+01:00

17.41 Seven Minutes Late
Best thing I read all day:

“Satellite UK Ltd recently sold their assets and data base to Satellite & Digital Ltd. Satellite UK customers were supposed to get a letter explaining the changes within 30 days of the takeover.
Payments will now appear on their bank statements to Satan”

Still not sure if it was a typo or a S&D Ltd employee with a sense of humour.

I Am Kloot - I Am Kloot

"...too much time gone by and I can't find you if I try"

2009-05-17T17:27:00.038+01:00

I didn't catch the start of the conversation, but it sounded as though ukuleleleboy's Nick Drake related moaning had inspired djwrighty to compose the BT Broadband couple a song of their very own. (I especially like "I'm going to Cornwall this weekend... I may be some time")

The rest of the night was the traditional curate's egg.
But it did what it said on the tin.

Too Much Time - John Vanderslice
Western Skies - Roddy Frame
Western Sky - American Music Club
Northern Sky - Nick Drake

2009-05-13T20:09:00.038+01:00

17.41 Ten Minutes Late
There are such a lot of birthdays at this time of year.
It’s not something I want to dwell on but my mum did (towards the end, when she'd decided she might as well finish off the half bottles of anything left in the drinks cabinet because, as the Doctor told her, it couldn't do any harm) tell me that I was conceived in Ilfracombe.

So, I probably owe my existence to the fact that my Mum finally persuaded my Dad they could do better than another holiday touring Scotland and sleeping in the van, and got him to blow the budget on a West Country B&B.

If it’s yours today – Happy Birthday. Was it Butlins or Bournmouth? Abersoch or Abroad?

(And speaking of baps, I'm not sure about this top. It's fine in soft focus sepia, but in real life? I just don't know if I can pull it off... )

This Old Heart Of Mine - Isley Brothers
Fly Like An Eagle - Steve Miller Band
Absent Friends - Divine Comedy
Alone Again, Or - Love

2009-05-12T12:40:00.013+01:00

It's another glorious day and I'm off work again.
You would think it's the perfect day to go out shopping and be a bit extravagant maybe.

It's a glorious day and I'm off work.
It's Tuesday morning so it won't be too busy.
What better time to amble round the shops idly picking things up and putting things down.

It's a glorious day.
I'm off work.
It's Tuesday morning so it won't be too busy
And it's my birthday.

I come back with a bag of bird seed and some wholemeal baps.

Life In A Northern Town

2009-05-08T17:59:00.058+01:00

8.38 On Time
I’ve got a bit of a headache now but that’s the tiredness not the wine. Although it’s true we can’t handle it like we used to: and I wasn’t that good at handling it then.

We tried to remember what it was we'd seen in him.

Then we tried to work out who the 'Cool Girls' had been, but didn’t get far.
We didn't think we could remember much at all, except...walking for miles trying to find some party or other, popping out to The Zetland for the last hour, those prawn crackers from The Joy Garden. The bowl of fat under the sink, the empty milk bottles everywhere and that bedroom being freezing.

Trudging up and down St Helens Road in all weathers and at all hours.
The drama studio, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, The Grapes of Wrath and Quiet Flows The Don. Watching FirstRoomMate scribbling notes about 'Henry Gibson' and being almost sure she was getting it wrong. Never ever getting the hang of diphthongs. Or the phonetic alphabet.

And whatever did happen to J’s sister’s shoes?

We tried to remember what it was we’d seen in him, and had to agree that we couldn’t even imagine it … maybe we'll have ourselves a proper reunion come the autumn. If we can get our acts together.

Crash - The Primitives
I Can't Stand Up... - Elvis Costello
Walk Away Renee - Billy Bragg
Tiny Voices - Joe Henry
Life In A Northern Town - Dream Academy

2009-05-07T18:12:00.022+01:00

17.41 On Time
Because I read Blake Morrison's birthday card to Alan Bennett at lunchtime (alright, so it was a little after lunch time, but it's been quiet again today) ThesaurusBoy had to put up with a couple of hours of me trying to remember the name of the man who was in the chip shop at the time of the Kestrel incident in 'Writing Home'. Not for any good reason, just because I knew I knew it and knew I'd forgotten.

It came to me eventually. Then I Googled to make sure.

The chip shop in the Kestrel incident is the one we used to go to on Thursday nights, after Brownies, for a bag of chips & scraps. Not every Thursday mind, if it'd been every Thursday it wouldn't have been a treat would it?

The chip shop, back then (when it was good), was owned by relatives of the ManWhoPreferredSherbertStrawberries.

There isn't a punch line. Just history.

Fade Into You - Mazzy Star
Guest List - Eels
Isn't It A Lovely Night? - The Decemberists
Our Little Angel - Elvis Costello

"...we'll run like we're awesome, totally genius"

2009-05-04T18:11:00.029+01:00

Generally speaking I tend towards 'hell for leather' rather than "wisely and slow".

When something needs doing - and it's something I'm keen to do - I want to wake early and get up early and start the job and keep at it until either it's finished or I am. The ultimate reward is that "so tired, so hungry, so much in need of a shower...so earned that beer" feeling.

I know there are other ways to approach a task.
More relaxed ways that encompass tea breaks and a bit of a sit down. Pacing yourself, maybe going away and doing something else for an hour or so and coming back to it later refreshed.
I'm not saying these ways are wrong ways, but they're not my ways.

Discovered another wall this weekend. This one's going to be more of a challenge. My arms hurt.

Alligator - The National

2009-04-28T22:00:00.009+01:00

8.38 On Time
Standing in a bookshop behind the man from the Guardian drinking wine from a plastic cup listening to a handful of local performers doing their thing on a tiny stage.

On a Monday evening.

Songs To Say I Sung - Jo Gillot

2009-04-23T19:49:00.129+01:00

17.53 On Time
As with so many things I brought it on myself.

Not only did I allow the thought: "Hmmm, what a lot of nice, reasonable people I've been dealing with lately" enter my conscious mind but I forgot to turn my phone off at five and picked up the call that came through at five past.

When the answer I gave him didn't tally with the answer he wanted me to give him (and following a lively exchange of views culminating in him resorting to calling me "Dear"- you know they're on the ropes at that point) he demanded to speak to ExLineManager. Presumably in the mistaken belief that this would intimidate me into changing my answer (the correct one) into his answer (the incorrect one). It didn't.

I sometimes wonder why I bother. What does it matter anyway? Why can't I just agree?

I could say: "Oh, you know, now I've had another think, yes, the law is exactly the opposite of what I just said it was. Turns out you're 100% right! I don't know why you bothered asking me in the first place! What do I know about it?"

After all it's no skin off my nose is it? I'm not going to be the one wasting money on court fees. In fact, if he rings back tomorrow, I think that's exactly what I will do.

Show Me How The Spectres Dance - Liam Frost & The Slowdown Family