Twelfth Night madness

The arrival of the Twelfth Night triggers in my parents some kind of biological switch, sending them into a manic state of overdrive where everything festive must be taken down and put away in the shortest possible amount of time.

As I write this the Seven household has entered the primitive no-man's land that lies between the sequestering of the Christmas glassware and crockery, in the wall cupboards on the landing, and the emergence of the ordinary chinaware (The stuff without snowmen or sprigs of holly on it) from its hibernation at an undisclosed location. If I want anything to drink during the next few hours I will have to fashion a primitive goblet from my cupped hands.

When I ventured downstairs this morning, my father (who is capable of divesting the ornaments from a Christmas tree at roughly the same speed as a shoal of piranhas in a feeding frenzy can strip the carcass of a capybara) was laying down dust sheets in the hallway. I returned a few minutes later to find him dismembering the tree in situ with a pair of garden sheers. This grisly act of dendrocide, which bore the facetious, ritualistic hallmarks of a serial killing, was juxtaposed with the folk singer, Kate Rusby’s, Christmas album (a woman with a voice like your favourite pair of slippers) playing sweetly in the background.

 

Writing as a man who still has Christmas cards dating back three years blu-tacked to the door of my wardrobe I am more relaxed to the end of the Yuletide season. I spent the previous evening (January 5^th) writing down my New Year’s resolutions, including the one about procrastination.

I was hoping that retirement and old age might mellow my parents in this regard, but if anything it's made them more militant. My mother, upon her return from a wedding fair, which she had attended with her future Daughter-in-Law,  reminded me of my duty to dispatch the festive balloons that she blew up a month ago and then sellotaped to the top of the dresser in the morning room. This is an annual ritual and one that, for some unfathomable reason I always feel compelled to film. I subsequently post the footage on youtube so that for future generations may know something of my achievements.

A short conversation with Ira Middleton

It is a typical wintry day in mid-July. Ira Middleton and I are sheltering from the blizzard conditions among the genteel clientèle of The Brady Rooms in Royal Mayfair. In accordance with the hotel’s stringent dress code we have both donned quilted dressing gowns. On an adjacent table, a pair of elderly twin sisters are celebrating their 90th birthday. The flimsy white satin nighties that shrink-wrap their gaunt, bony frames leave very little to the imagination.

 “I once met the lead singer from the death metal band Septic Entrails at a convention centre in Detroit...” says Ira. He takes a sip of camomile tea from a dainty bone china cup.

“...I asked him whether he perceived the history of rock and roll as a conversation, predominantly between England and the U.S., regarding colonial Africa.”

 “What was his response?”

“Distinctly noncommittal. He called me ‘a whining, bleeding ass faggot.’” 

It is at this point that we are interrupted by a waiter, voicing concerns about the level of audible profanity peppering our conversation. Ira spends the next five minutes explaining to him that he is presently engaged in the telling of a story in which a certain coarse vernacular is a vital element as a means of conveying both veracity and colour. At the end of his explanation the waiter apologises profusely and leaves the room. We are later informed by hotel management  that this presumptuous member of staff he has been dismissed as a direct result of his inability to distinguish between anecdotal swearing and casual abuse.

Middleton, who made his name on the wrong side of the tracks, is no stranger to uncouth language. In 1974, three years before punk broke, he had word “Effete” tattooed across his back in lavender-scented ink. In 2007 he was banned from the institutional radio programme - Desert Island Discs - for selecting the first eight tracks from the NWA album - Straight Outta Compton - in sequential order.

“They un-marooned me! My luxury item was a Glock and an unlimited supply of ammunition. It dates back to when I used to be in a gang called The Cripes, who were an English, home counties chapter of The Crips. We were pale, public school types  who wore striped blazers and penned sonnets that expressed a mild disdain for society. It all came to an abrupt end when I was given 4 weeks worth of detention for writing disrespectful letters to a policemen. The beak bumped 2 months off my sentence because I wrote my correspondence in exemplary Latin.” 

Upon his release, Middleton renounced the thug life, and his incipient status as an OG, to work with endangered species:

“There’s a Britpop group called Queen Cauliflower who signed to EMI in 1994. Recently the company accountants realised that, due to a contractual anomaly, the Universal Music Group could reap a substantial return on its tax bill if the band split up. As it turned out Queen Cauliflower didn’t want to split up, but felt under tremendous pressure to do so. I arranged for them to be flown to the Galapagos Islands where they now enjoy protected species status. Essentially they have same rights, with regard to hunting, as giant tortoises.”

I ask him whether there is any truth in the rumour that he has joined Take That.

“I formally joined the group in February. They’ve entered an interesting conceptual phrase of their existence. I had a long chat with Gary Barlow. He feels that over the past few years their fanbase has become more open to experimentation. Their latest piece is a three hour song cycle inspired by the foundation of The World Wildlife Fund  I’m on board for one album and a world tour, in which I play the narrator. I recite spoken word passages between the songs. Originally Jason Orange was going to do it but they thought that I would bring more gravitas to the part.”

“2013 will be a good year for you then.”

 “Things are going to get real in 2013. I can’t go into specifics at present.”

As I get up to leave, we bump fists in a gesture of enduring solidarity. 

The following day I take delivery of a picnic hamper. The gift card reads: “Raise ‘em up. R U Still Down? Ira.”

When I open the basket I find that it contains six miniature bottles of champagne. Nestled in some straw at the bottom are several small cans of ‘Premium Boneless Vagina’ which, I learn from the label, has been processed in the Philippines on behalf of Maldon Comestibles Ltd. 

I donate it to a local food bank .

The So Solid Crew no longer have enough members to command a tank in battle

In 2001 The So Solid Crew were a imperviable hip-hop combo, riding high in the UK singles charts on the success of their song 21 seconds. They were also part of a well-established lineage of rap groups who chose to bolster their income by a registering as a ‘crew,’ thereby making themselves available, on an ad hoc basis, as pilots of a variety of ocean going vessels and commercial aircraft.  

This morning I was saddened to read that So Solid membership has fallen during the intervening decade, from a respectable peak of eight (source: Wikipedia) to just three. That’s barely enough bodies to pilot a Boeing a 747 on short and medium haul flights, and certainly nowhere near enough to adequately man a 17^th century pirate ship, without having to draw upon the assistance of un-vetted tertiary members, of the kind who might conceivably form an entourage or posse. This must be a bitter irony for the remaining core members who, despite their rise to fame through a network of pirate radio stations, now lack the manpower to effectively stage a campaign of plunder and terror on the high seas.  

The decline of the So Solid Crew also casts some doubt over their claims toward an extraordinary state of solidity, with its implication of an unusually high melting point and general immutability to the effects of weathering over time. Clearly some form of attrition or evaporation has occurred since 2001 to account for their greatly diminished mass and the corresponding lapse in their ability to keep things real. By comparison So Solid’s 1980s counterparts - The Rock Steady Crew - boasts a roll-call of past and present members that must surely number in the low triple figures, amply justifying their chosen moniker.

Non-haterz have presented the counter-argument that, in this modern age of computer assisted technology, a leaner crew of specialists is a more efficient prospect. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that the So Solid Crew could competently pilot the Space Shuttle on a mission, were it still operational.

Regrettably this hypothesis does not stand up to close scrutiny, in the same way that the lyrics to 21 Seconds do: The 2 Live Crew boasted six members; more than enough to effectively command a modern tank in battle, giving them a clear tactical advantage over the So Solid Crew in a theoretical ground assault, where the latter would be forced to rely upon static artillery. In addition, the aforementioned doubts over So Solid’s claims toward invulnerability must surely call into question whether the three remaining members would be able to withstand a barrage of depleted uranium shells of the kind routinely deployed on the modern battlefield.

We must also take into consideration scenarios that might require So Solid to operate a vehicle over an extended period, during which shift work would be a necessity in order to meet the stringent demands of health and safety legislation.  When this is taken into account their continuing status as a crew seems hopelessly compromised.   

The sexual desert of Owen Lars

Nerds who live their parents and fluent Klingon speakers may recall Owen Lars as a minor character in the film Star Wars: A New Hope. He lived on the desert planet of Tatooine with his wife, Beru. Although the couple had no children of their own, they raised a young boy called Luke Skywalker, and did their best to shield him from the attentions of his abusive father, who had suffered a midlife crisis and reinvented himself as malevolent cyborg-wizard called Darth Vader.

Owen and Beru eked out a meagre existence as moisture farmers beneath the burning glare of Tatooine’s twin suns. The fiery desert heat was a stark contrast to their passion for each other which had long since cooled. During the few scenes that the pair share on screen  there is no evidence to suggest that their relationship is anything other than a world-weary drudge, shaped by a need to scrape together the bare necessities for survival on this hostile world of gangsters and Freudian sand monsters. Neither one playfully slaps the other’s arse or makes a flirtatious allusion to saucy bedroom proclivities. I have often wondered whether Owen is aware of the irony of his situation: That a man whose business is the farming moisture can no longer cause wetness to surge from his wife’s vagina.

Owen and Beru met their deaths off camera at the hands of Imperial Stormtroopers. One catches a brief glimpse of a charred body lying in the sand outside their homestead, smouldering in a way that the couple were never able to smoulder for one another.

I Saw Steve Ellard

I Saw Steve Ellard

You don’t have to believe me
if you don’t want to,

but I saw Steve Ellard,

who is also known as Doctor Ellard,

following a misunderstanding

in the Pathology Department

where we both worked

some years ago.

It was along Victoria Avenue, 

near the museum.

I was walking to work 

and Steve Ellard was heading

in the opposite direction,

towards the high street.

We acknowledged one another

in that cursory way that men do.

When he had gone past

I paused to retrieve my

‘Eye-Spy Book of People Who Live in Southend’

from my rucksack

and checked the box denoting  

that I had seen Steve Ellard.

Then I retrieved

one of my other

‘Eye-Spy’ books
that is to do with birds

and recorded that

on the same morning

I had also seen a seagull and a pigeon.

Where was Steve Ellard going

at that fateful hour,

during which our paths crossed?

That knowledge is forbidden.

You do not know.

You cannot know.

Donkey

Donkey: Designed by Roman Diaz. Folded by backwards7.

My Life as a Junior Reporter for 'Pop Vision' Magazine

It was my Classics tutor at Eton who first noticed my talent as a writer and took it upon himself to nurture my gift. By the age of 18, I was a seasoned reporter, having worked my way up to the position of Features Editor at The Etonion Journal of Metallurgy. This venerable periodical, first published  in 1873, was initially dedicated to the study of minerals and metallic elements, but broadened its scope in the 1970s to encompass an exciting new generation of denim-clad, shaggy-permed, hard rock groups, who had united under the banner of “heavy metal.” During my tenure on the magazine I commissioned articles investigating the mineral lattices prevalent in the music of mid-period Black Sabbath and the trace metals existent in the founding members of Motley Crue. Collectively we attempted to definitively answer the, still as yet, unresolved question: What metal is Bruce Dickinson made of? I penned many of the articles myself, among them: Is Biff Byford from Saxon Magnetic? and Were Mercyful Fate’s Drums Forged by Iron Age Blacksmiths?  The journal, which is still published on the first Friday of every month, continues to be written exclusively in Latin.

After I left Eton I landed a job at Pop Vision – a magazine catering to the base musical tastes of the Proletariat. The culture at Pop Vision was very different from the hermetically sealed world of my alma mater. I was unprepared for how many of the staff, which included many of my former school chums, had adopted the speech patterns and mannerisms of East London gangsters. The word “Guvnor” was banded around with much greater frequency than I had anticipated. 

The bands I interviewed were different too. Talk Talk were oddly silent, while Mute Records artists were capable of holding court on a wide range of esoteric topics, from Hungarian existentialism, to the peculiar back-to-front plumbing that is a feature of many properties within the city limits of Los Angeles and gave birth to the term “shit cannon.”

Britpop was in the ascendency and I soon became a familiar face among the ranks of the Indie paparazzi, accosting Luke Haines from The Auteurs as he exited Camden branch library with a Sainsbury’s carrier bag filled with yellowing Danielle Steele novels, and then chasing after him down the street, calling out: “Luke! Luke! It’s Mark from Pop Vision. Say something acerbic!”

On another occasion I was dispatched to a skate park where the guitarist from The Bluetones had become trapped at the bottom of an artificial concrete dell. Watching his feeble, abortive attempts at scrabbling up the steeply sloping concrete walls, I was reminded of a spider trapped in a bathtub. Somebody threw down a guitar and told him that we’d fetch a ladder if he played Chasing Rainbows.

Writers at Pop Vision were encouraged to use their articles to air any political opinions they had. It was considered very bad form if you didn’t bad mouth Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party at least once in every piece. Many of the articles published were the result of half-baked ideas – for instance I was once asked to conduct an interview with Stereolab in mono.

In 1997 the Pop Vision camera broke. After that no further photographs were printed in the magazine. The sudden absence of any pictorial content was passed off by the editor – Terrence Berkeley - as a Dadaist act of spontaneous deconstruction. When the office CD player ceased to function, a memo was circulated, informing us that any further single or album reviews would be penned as speculative pieces in which we would muster our latent psychic talents to describe the music contained on the CDs that had been sent for our appraisal. To aid us the Pop Vision office was relocated to a building in Kings Cross where three Ley Lines were said to converge.

It was this anti-listening to music policy that resulted in my description of Blur’s comeback single - Beetlebum - as “like being serenaded by a chorus of rowdy whelks, dressed in barnacle-encrusted Aaron sweaters, in a pub, in Leigh-on-Sea.”

I  resigned from the magazine in 1999 to work on my fathers estate in Buckinghamshire. As I left the office for the last time I passed a stark naked Brett Anderson from the group Suede, who was waiting in the lobby. It was early Spring. A single yellow daffodil drooped from the tip of his flaccid penis.