The Very Hungry Reader

Books are a blessing. The best ones stay with you, and repeat on you for years to come. Generally I don't have the best memory for plot and action, but I tend to remember intricacies and details. The way light is described, a turn of phrase, a strange historical fact - my perception of the world is coloured by these little facts that rattle around in my brain, and occasionally pop to the fore when I am trying to recall all the information I have on a particular subject.

I am a reader, a rampant devourer of the written word, a literary glutton. I go through stages were it seems as though book after book passes through my hands, and I struggle to disentangle the subtle nuances in the plots. And then I go through reading droughts. Terrible, intellectually arid times when I can't commit to a storyline and when the words float through me and refuse to take hold. At the moment I am experiencing one of these self propagated phases of famine. I have a shelf of volumes, each with their own charms, and yet I cannot seem to settle with any of them. I flit from one to the other looking for god knows what to reel me in.

This has been going on for weeks, and alarming me somewhat, and then yesterday I sat down and read a whole book. I read The Very Hungry Caterpillar. This Eric Carle classic has been known to me as long as I can remember. At first I am sure I was fascinated by the holes in the book, as he munched his way through, and then by the amazing illustrations, and then by his sheer greed, and eventually by the message of transformation. I love this book, and with my sweet second cousin turning one (and me being one of those nightmarish people who buy children books) I bought it. And because I am one of those even worse people, I read it before the poor child had even clapped eyes on it. And as I read once more this original make over story (through binging - who knew?!) I vowed to return to my neglected tomes. And tonight I finished a chapter!

Meet Toren - the proud new owner of The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Don't let his poor personal hygiene fool you, he is going to be a literary genius.

African Rain

London was steamy for two days. Heat radiated off the cities sea of concrete edifices, and it slowly baked itself. Dew faced commuters shoving onto trains on Monday morning were still cheery in these first tropical days and at lunch bankers and bus boys alike peeled themselves of clothes like bananas and worked on turning their milky tea skin into something more mocha. I went to work as drippy as everyone else, and as cheerful, but slowly wilted heading towards lunch and lay under a tree instead of attempting to get myself anything other than alabaster.

As I toiled, computer bound, towards early evening and its promise of water beaded beverages and barbecues, I couldn't help but feel there was something else I was looking forward to...

The heat continued to close in over me as I rode home on a train that would be more aptly described as a fast moving sauna. English summer nights are long, and walking home at seven the sun still rode high and proud in the sky, and I noticed there was not a cloud marring the perfect blue. And that's when I realised... All the heat and pressure was not building to anything. And I was shocked - because in Durban right now the air would be filled with a crackle of a promise, as an electrical storm gathered its powers from god knows where and prepared to unzip the heavens and pour down buckets of strong, life affirming, drenching rain. You can feel the moment approaching, as the air thickens and begins to jump with electricity, and suddenly the sun bleached sky darkens, and the clouds gather and with a crack visibility disappears as the deluge begins.

People shut doors and windows against the ricocheted spray, others dive for cars and verandas as the rain pummels the tin roofs over head. An umbrella is useless against it. We don't even own them - we know to instantly give in and not fight this, take cover. An instant torrent rages down roads and out of storm drains, and everything from flowers to kids perk up as they are given brief respite from the ravages of the day's heat.

I refuse to believe that it is not an inner fight for every person to stay out of that rain. I have often given up wrestling with myself and dashed out from under cover to dance in the rain. The sort of rain that soaks you in seconds, so that your hair becomes slick dreads and your lashes starfish and your eye-liner melts away with all the dust of the day.

And so while my sun blushed skin revelled in the beginning of a London summer, it also missed the tropical mad fury of a momentary African storm, and its ability to wipe the slate clean.

Udderbelly

I love silly! Silly is not stupid, silly is not self conscious, silly is irreverant, silly is not subtle, silly is childlike, silly is fun and funny, silly is necessary to cope. I love silly! And what is sillier than a purple cow? I'll tell you what is sillier... An upside down purple cow, that is in fact a tent! Yes this summer the Udderbelly tent has landed on Southbank and brought with it much ridiculousness and Pimms and cider - all such good things. Outside the tent is a glorious little cider garden, complete with picnic benches, umbrellas and foosball. The setting is perfect, with a view of the London Eye and the Houses of Parliment, and of course many vitamin D starved sun worshippers cripsing themselves rather revealingly in the first watery rays of the English summer - but what would a London sumer be without pink Poms (she says, rather pink herself).

One happy birthday kid

My lovely friend of Charlotte has had a week of Birthday celebrations (as you should) and we ended these off on Friday with a good splash of summery beverages in the shade of said purple cow. Charlotte is silly, in the best way, and looked totally at home among the cow print, astroturf and udders. A variety of comedy shows will be held inside great violet belly well into July, so try and catch one, I am gonna...

Mixed Tape Track 6 - Lucky Soul

It's been a bit of a harrowing week. There has been a lot of sadness and indecision in the world of the gypsy, and with the arrival of the weekend (and the sun), things have certainly gotten better, but traces of the week's melancholy remain. This sombre mood has of course resulted in a solemn playlist. And so, a sad addition to our mixed tape...

Baby, I'm broke - Lucky Soul

This track comes from my latest obsession, Lucky Soul. A London band, I was fortunate to catch the launch of their second album at Cargo in April. I was properly impressed. A polished performance by a band that still retained a sense of wonder at having some of the crowd sing along with them. Lead singer Ali Howard has an abundance of charm to go with her little girls voice, and was somewhat Debbie Harry's debutante sister - Debutante Harry if you will.

Generally their music is pretty upbeat and cheerful, so the plaintive Baby I'm Broke might not be the best introduction to Lucky Soul, and I will attempt to post a few more of my favourites when a little cheerier, but for now...

"Baby I'm broke,

Nothing to lose,

I want you to help but, baby, you're cruel.

And talking to you,

I might as well just throw my head back and howl at the moon.

Yeah, for all the good it will do...

But baby, you're strange,

You're heart's all a flutter

You head's in the sky, but your mind's in the gutter."

The Ideal...

"...the ideal should be to be capable of loving a woman or a man; either, a human being,

without feeling fear, restraint, or obligation..."

- Simone de Beauvior -

Hayley and the Machine

Finally I got to see Florence and the Machine in a big solo show. She overawed me last night at the Hammersmith Apollo, with her huge show(wo)manship, and even bigger voice. Florence is totally worth falling in love with...Haunting voice, beautiful red hair, more energy than I expend in a week with each song.

Being the biggest show she has ever performed in London, we were spoiled with an entire string section, a choir and a HARP. She handled the crowd with an amazing blend of gratitude and arrogance. Listening to the songs from Lungs tumbling out of her with (if possible) even more emotion than on the album made me see even more vividly her world of emotion turned gothic fable. Her voice blew the cobwebs out of every corner of the Apollo, and out of my brain, and from the croaking of her voice when she chatted to the audience between songs, she gave everything and a little bit more to make the evening both familiar and riveting. Apart from the plain and simple fact that she is awesome, there is a reason I am so transfixed by Florence, her power and femininity, the tales she tells through her music, the mythical nature of her lyrics and melodies.

Anyone who knows me, or indeed has been following this blog, will know that music is central to my very existence. I sit in my office all day listening to the radio, I iPod in and out of work, bopping along to anything from the Foo Fighters to Edith Piaf. I have eclectic, but definite taste in music. Music is an instinctive pleasure, based on feeling, memory and submersion. It is also subjective. Different music speaks to me at different times.

In my ebullient late teens I felt a great affinity with the ultimate feel-good anthem “I’m Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the waves, I have wept through the end of many eras with Time of your Life by Green Day on repeat, my dear friend Julie and I once listened to Vampire Weekend compulsively in the car to cheer us up after a completely disastrous weekend that included a car wreck and missing out on a music festival), and who hasn’t stared rather self indulgently into a mirror, mascara running down cheeks ala Gene Simmons, with the mournful tones of Damien Rice as the soundtrack to any range of life crises.

Yes music has the capacity to heal and help us, as well as the ability to immediately transport us back to the time and place it became poignant. Sometimes that can be painful, sometimes redemptive, always powerful. Music has saved me many times in my life. A song or an album has proven to me I am not alone in feeling the way I do, comforted me when I was staring into the rather black abyss of depression, kept me company during nights of insomnia, given me the vicarious power I need to get through the day.

And so, my latest saviour comes in the form of fire headed fay Florence. Florence and her wonderful Machine gave me a soundtrack to a year of exploration, loneliness, loveliness and learning. Moving to London was one of the hardest decisions of my life, and one of the most necessary. That is for an array of reasons, which I may go into one day, but not now. 2009 was a year of reconnections with my roots, in the form of my beloved family, of rediscovery as I learnt who I was away from a group of friends who had become a family, and of reunions as I returned to a group of friends. All of this came with a triumphs and challenges, and the unavoidable melancholy of missing people and making change. But through it all I had Florence promising me that “the dark days were over”, the empowering Drumming song setting up a tribal chant in my heart, reminders that I need to become “Lion Hearted” and not “Rabbit Hearted”, and I couldn’t help but recognise the ghost “in my lungs…that sighs in my sleep, Wraps itself around my tongue, As it softly speaks. Then it walks, then it walks with my legs, To Fall, To Fall, To Fall, at your feet.” Walking through London’s crowds, in underground tunnels all over the city I felt the emancipation of admitting that “My fingers crawl your skin, try to tempt my way in, You are the moon that makes the night for which I have to Howl…”

And so after the stirring journey, of seeing my early London anthems sung by their mistress, I couldn’t help but have a very small weep as she sung the words, “The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out, You left me in the dark. No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight, In the shadow of your heart.”

Thank you Florence.

The End of an Era...

I landed in London in the middle of an Economic Meltdown. This was the worst employment crisis my generation had seen (so far, touch wood), and I had just quit my job, packed my bags and touched down in the supposed land of milk and honey. I considered myself a creative, a graphic designer who had risen rapidly in her previous small company, with a good education and a lot of ambition.

In my naivety I had not realised that creatives are this first casualties of financial fall out. Companies are not in the mood for shelling out so that others can get all artsy, magazines close down because the public rid themselves of all but the necessities, ad revenues go down - in short, we're toast. And so, after numerous calls to media agencies that had ended in gales of laughter and hang ups, I headed off to an admin agency and signed up for the first job I could find - Data Input.

When I was interviewed, the lady employing me actually said previous employees had actually described the position as 'soul destroying' and 'worse than death'...Did this deter me? Oh no, the allure of the shiny, golden pound coins was too strong. And so it began...

My interviewer had not overstated the 'challenges' of this job at my interview and over the past year I have, at times, be more bored than I believed it was possible to be. You know that feeling when a Geography teacher has been rambling for 2 hours about the difference between concave and convex - worse. Or when you go to a prize giving and the keynote speaker mumbles through forty five minutes of god knows what, and you have counted the ceiling tiles, and the hairs on the head in front of you and indeed the dust - worse! In fact that only thing that could possibly be more dull was the job of the girl next to me. Said girl is a waifishly pretty Northerner called Anna. Aspiring actress, political soul mate, fellow Doc Marten aficionado, it was love at first witty comment. In fact the only thing keeping me from running away at high speed was our budding friendship and the knowledge that Anna understood, and was perhaps the only person in the world that was more bored than I was.

Gradually our little group grew, and it became a lunch time haven of witty banter, company gossip and generally a reason to stay alive until 1pm. The tedium of our jobs and the endless amusement of life in a large institution formed us into a tight knit group, who understood each others gripes, celebrated each others achievements, mourned each others sorrows. From casual relationships, we developed strong attachments cemented with many glasses of wine, a lot of laughs and the odd few tears.

But now the end of the era looms. Anna leaves on Friday, and I am floundering. I have moved within the company, and now have a job that I find a certain amount of satisfaction within, and yet my main reason for staying, the people, is starting to give way. Anna is not the first of our little group to depart, but she was the first I met, the one who started at the same time as me, the job yardstick I supposed. And as I begin to look to horizons new I realise that while the last year hasn't been my most productive career wise, it could not have been more rewarding socially.

Misery does indeed love company, and a bottle of a wine, and a healthy dose of sarcasm and shared experience.

All you need is love...and The Beatles

I have finally made the ultimate pop pilgrimage. I spent the weekend in Liverpool paying homage to the Beatles. It was like going on a second honeymoon and falling in love all over again. Being there on the streets that they walked, seeing the things they must have seen, dancing in the Cavern Club – it was all kind of surreal. I have loved them for so long that I kind of forgot why. It’s natural – of course you love the Beatles. But when I was there reading all their history, and imagining what it was like, I began to appreciate their upbeat naivety anew.

Their early music was cheerful and positive and hopeful in such an un-self conscious way, totally unspoiled and pure. It’s strange to try and comprehend how ordinary they were in so many ways, and how extraordinary as well. Walking past their modest homes, seeing Strawberry Fields, and Penny Lane, you desperately look for the key to what set these men apart from their contemporaries…where their sparks of genius came from. But at the end of the day Penny Lane is just a road sign, Strawberry Fields just another wooded area, and the Cavern one of thousands of clubs just like it. Like putting on John’s glasses on - It’s no use, unless you have his eyes. They saw everything differently, and the only way to appreciate that is through their music, where they try to show us what they see.

I find this sort of tourism strange – trying to recapture an age, or walk in someone’s shoes. A life is intangible – you can’t measure it or recreate it. However, Liverpool is very proud of being the birthplace of the Beatles, as proud as the Beatles were to have come from there. 60 000 people visit Liverpool every year in search of the Beatles story. And Liverpool caters to it. But in the understated English way - this is no Graceland. The Cavern club has been restored to its former glory (meaning very little glory – unplastered brick tunnels, merely adorned with photos of the hundreds of acts that have played there, including many of the fab four). Unfortunately it now appears to be frequented by dress wearing stags and tiara totting hens, in various stages of uproar and disarray. However, the club has a very good house band called The Cavemen, who regularly trot out Beatles tunes (much to the endless horror of the staff I’m sure) and with the familiar melodies ringing through my head I couldn’t help but tingle at the thought that this was were it had all started.

Opposite the Cavern club Mathews Street displays a primitive and odd shrine to the ‘Four Boys Who Shook the World’. Mary holding three angels representing the Beatles (the fourth babe, representing Paul, went missing years ago but was recently returned anonymously, by someone who called it a childish prank – it is yet to be returned to the monument.) The memorial is oddly organic, and after the assassination of John Lennon another cherubic figure was added which carries a guitar and is surrounded by a halo with the words, "Lennon Lives".

Further into Cavern Quarter sits dear Eleanor Rigby, a solitary figure on a bench, dedicated eternally to all the lonely people. Her face, which must still be kept ‘in a jar by the door’, is shapeless. She was a labour of love by the sculptor Tommy Steele, who placed a number of objects inside the figure, "so she would be full of magical properties". They were an adventure book (for excitement), a page from the bible (for spiritual guidance), a clover leaf (for good luck), a pair of football boots (for action) and a sonnet (for love).

Feeling in a particularly reflective mood, the trip was tinged with a certain melancholy. The Beatles were ‘just a pop band’ but there is no doubt that they changed the world. Their messages, their style, their causes, still ring as true today. It seems so sad that they are no more. The loss of John Lennon, such a profoundly different pioneer, I felt all over again. To lose him to violence seemed an intolerable cruelty. To lose anyone to violence is intolerable. As our train chugged out of the city I couldn't help hoping that we might all Give Peace a Chance.

Yesterday...and the day before that, and the day before that...and...

Sorry for the silence, dear readers! Have had a nasty bout of the influenza for the last four days, compounded with sneaky little wisdom teeth popping out all over the place. This is just a short post to tell you that exciting posts are on their way, as this weekend I am off to Liverpool to do a bit of a Beatles pilgrimage... So from this little Daytripper, I will soon have a new post for you, With a Little Help From My Friends...

Post your secrets

I tend to be a bit fickle when it comes to blogs and sites. I will check them compulsively for a couple of weeks of months, and then my interest will taper off, or I will just forget. But there is one blog that I have been reading weekly for years. PostSecret is, by its own definition, an ongoing community art project where people mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard. Every Sunday creator Frank uploads a batch of secrets, and the voyeur in me has to pop over and read these confessions, some strange, some inappropriate, and some could be mine. Every now and then one really speaks to me, or tickles me and I have to save it. This is a collection of those secrets...

Let the Dream Begin, Let Your Darker Side Give in

So recently I came clean about my love for musicals - so at odds with my usual tast in music. And I may have also mentioned that I have a mildly obsessive personality type. Some might refer to it as unhealthy fixation or compulsion (ha ha), but I like to think of it as passion. It has been in full force since I went to see Phantom for my birthday (tickets courtesy of my bruv and his girlfriend, Tiff). After singing every song ceaselessly for weeks, I have bought the DVD, and Tiff and I are now regularly watching it (and singing the whole way through, naturally).

Silently the senses, abandon their defences, helpless to the music that I write, as I compose the Music of the Night.

What I have always loved about Phantom is the binaries - the fight between light and dark, such familiar ground for any narrative, and yet this rock opera was so ground breaking. Instead of straight forwardly wanting her to end up with Raoul I always wish she would choose the Phantom - his love and devotion to her is terrifying and yet compelling. He only has to be near her for her to feel his pull, a pull that makes the wholesome, saccharine Raoul seem all the less appealing.

Screw Twilight and The Vampire Diaries with their morality tales and watered down take on the darker side of all of us...Christine is a woman pulled into a passionate relationship of Master and Teacher with a ruthless murder who will do anything for her and his music - makes Edward and all his tortured posing seem a little weak. And yet, despite his mad obsession, when it comes to it, he lets her go - the true test of love.

A lot of puritans were not big fans of the film. I on the other hand love it. I felt the film was a more polished version of the stage show (as of course it would be) but it still held true to the imagery in the original productions. Film allows the maker to extend on the story, and do things that would not be possible with the limitations of a stage - and why not, the stage show is still there to be seen, and the film maker gets to create something beyond the original. When I first saw it on the big screen, there were moments that filled me with as much wonder as the first time I saw the stage show - The amazing chandelier restored to its former glory and taking its rightful place at the centre of the Opera House, filling us with expectation, only to be devastated once more in the crashing down of the dream. The Gothic night time lair of the Phantom, lit gently with a thousand candles, rising mysteriously from the fog to welcome he and Christine. The beauty of a snowy graveyard, where Christine finally says goodbye to her father.

As I never saw Sarah Brightman live, I really can't compare, but Emmy Rossum is my ideal Christine, in her delicate, celestial beauty while the cleaned up, and barely recognisable, Gerard Butler smokes as the Phantom - both sinister and debonair. I am not sure who I am more in love with?! Their attraction is palpable, which is so essential to the story. At all times they seem so aware of each other. It is beautiful to watch.

And so, that is what is making my soul take flight this Sunday.