Urban Tractor Scene

Sitting at a bus stop on Stoke Newington Church Street I heard a sound both familiar yet strange. In the midst of the normal sounds of the city - police sirens, buses, cars, motorbikes, car alarms, roadworks -  came a low rumbling engine rasp. Then, chugging slowly from Green Lanes, along came a weather beaten John Deer tractor, pulling some kind of plough/rake contraption. It carried on towards Albion Road then disappeared into the centre of Stoke Newington. 

Is this now the fashionable drive of choice for the smart Stokeyites?

Quink (black)

"Do you sell Quink?" I said to my local stationer."Do we sell Quink? Of course we sell Quink. That's a strange question.""Well, it's the digital age. I wasn't sure that people still used Quink."He snorts with derision and sells me the Quink, while also slipping in some crafty cross-selling and getting me to buy two expensive black ink cartridges for my inkjet printer.I used to do loads of stuff in Quink, until I bought myself a Wacom art pad in 1997. There was a girl I worked with when I first came to London who drew wild landscapes in Quink. I fancied her, of course, but she had an on-off relationship with a Scottish rugby player so I didn't get involved. He didn't play for Scotland or anything, he was just Scottish and played rugby. We lost touch around 1989 but I kept her memory alive by starting to draw my own pictures in Quink. My pictures weren't wild, mostly just sketches of fat people at Walthamstow market or caricatures of my flatmates.The stationer also cross-sold me some nice writing paper. I'm going to stop emailing my friends and write them proper letters instead. Masterpieces of the genre such as:"Howdy. Fancy a pint Thursday? T."

Treadmill late appointment simulation jog

I did just over two and a half km on the treadmill in an attempt to recreate that excruciating jog to an appointment or interview on a hot day when you're late and the buses are not running properly. Ideally I should have been carrying a big art folder or at least a bag with lots of papers inside.

In front of me were  three screens with no sound. On one screen was discussion of the budget with the BBC's Nick Robinson and  a woman in a purple blouse. There were subtitles but because of my detached retina eye I couldn't really make out much - the odd word here and there, that's all. Then we saw shots of MPs in the Commons. A screen to the left showed a cookery programme about bread making and on the right was a period feature film. Could have been Gone with the Wind. On my Ipod was a new playlist called running music:
1. Autobahn 66 - Primal Sceam
2. Swastika Eyes - Primal Scream
3. Mr Blue Sky - ELO
4. School of Rock - School of Rock

I won't be using these again, apart from maybe the first one. 'Mr Blue Sky' made me want to change my running speed to stay in time to the music. School of Rock was too all over the place for running music.

The Woman Out Of Hot Gossip

I'm trying to remember the name of the singer who had that hit with Hot Gossip in 1978. 'I lost my heart to a starship trooper'. She was The Woman Out Of Hot Gossip. But there's a hole in my memory where her name used to be. I watched them on Top of the Pops when I was 13, so I know she existed, in fact she ended up marrying Andrew Lloyd Webber. Was it Elaine Page? Arlene Philips? Gloria Steinem? Maybe it was Anthea Turner. No, that doesn't feel right.

How are you supposed to remember stuff without resorting to looking it up? I've been concentrating really hard all day but it still won't come, just this bleached out area of nothing, with dancers cavorting about all around it. Why do I want to know anyway? It was just a sequence of thoughts and then it came to a stop with whatever-her-name-is. I refuse to look this up on Google. It's a matter of principle. I must get my memory working again. 
Was it Susan Stranks?

The acne red faced bloke dogshit incident

The bloke was in his early 20s and had a stripey t-shirt and a spotty red face. He swaggered out of the King's Head with his dog then watched, transfixed, as the dog did a big runny shit all over the pavement. He was about to swagger off in the direction of Finsbury Park when I announced that if everyone acted like him the whole world would be covered in dogshit. He looked at me in disbelief. How will I clear it up? he whined. I pointed to the paper bag he was holding, which contained a brand new tube of what I presume was acne cream. The dog looked up at his master as if to say "want me to bite his gonads, master?" but the bloke in the stripey t-shirt still seemed confused, as if he had never realised that leaving dogshit in the middle of the pavement was wrong. I left him standing over the pile of crap, wondering what to do, though my daughter informed me that as soon as my back was turned he had swaggered over to the bus stop as if nothing had happened.

It's Great To Be Back!

IGTBBIt's Great To Be Back! are a supergroup made up of the more well-known members of the French late 90s country and western scene. Rejecting all chords except D7, in their first album Be. Be One Yourself IGTBB have stripped the music bare revealing the vanity of unrequited love in 1-chord steel guitar rhapsody. (translation from French by the band)

The Origins of Danebottom

My six year old son often asks me, when we walk up Canning Road, to tell him about the Viking battle of Blackstock Road.

"How do you know about that?" I said the other day.
"You told me."
OK. I did read something about that a few years ago and must have mentioned it to him once. So I took to researching - on the internet, you understand - where the story comes from. 

The archived paper 'Perambulations in Islington' by Thomas Edlyne Tomlins (1858) can be found here:





http://www.archive.org/stream/yseldonperambula00toml/yseldonperambula00toml_djvu.txt






In this he mentions Danebottom several times, such as:


"in writings so far back as the reign of Henry II. demon- 


strates that this name of Danebottom has peculiar reference tosome of those encounters our Saxon ancestors had with theDanes."


"some battle fought there in earlier times,perhaps so far back as the period of tlie Danish incursions, the memory of which, as I have ventured to suggest, have been tra- 


ditionally preserved in Danebottom, at Highbury Vale."


There is no older source for this story but what Tomlins is saying, essentially, is that the Saxons held the bridge over the Hackney Brook, presumably near the Arsenal Tavern, and the Danes came down from the heights of Finsbury Park and tried to 'take' the Arsenal Tavern, er, I mean bridge. There was an almighty rumpus but luckily it took place on the site of the present police station and most of the miscreants were carted off, though not charged because no witnesses came forward.

Coloured fine liner pens


FinelinerAt Fish & Cook on Blackstock Road I buy three fine liner pens - pink, purple and green.

"Strange colour scheme, there" says the stationer. He often feels the need to comment on my purchases.
"Doing notes and referencing," I say.
"In purple?"
I want to say to him "Why do you have purple pens if you are uncomfortable about people buying them?" but I just smile.

The coloured pens are actually a trap to prove to my kids that they are always stealing my fine liner pens, but that is too complicated to explain.

Cafe with Art Blakey CD Playing, Mornington Crescent

I went in for a chicken and avocado toasted sandwich and a coffee at a little cafe opposite the station. As soon as I sat down Talk Radio was turned off and what sounded like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers came blaring out of the speakers. A middle aged man comes in and tries to get pally with the bloke behind the counter.

- So, you Italian?
- No.
- Maltese?
- No.
- Iranian?
- No.
There's a brief silence. The older man looks around.
- So you do food?
CobdHis new mate looks around him at the sandwiches and salads on display and arches an eyebrow.
My toasted sandwich is still very hot. In a pedestrian island in the middle of the road I can see a 
statue of the anti-Corn Law campaigner Richard Cobden. The Corn Laws were a vital part of my 19th Century British history module at A Level, but I failed to concentrate in lessons due to the presence of a very pretty and very young substitute teacher who had just arrived from teacher training college. When it came to the exam a few months later and the relevant question, all I could thinkHistoryteachersm of was her face, smiling and blinking in slow motion, as she says something about Peel and free trade.

There wasn't much avocado in it.

North London Fathers' Triathlon

One of the main reasons to stay fit is so you can run for a bus and catch it. I've always prided myself on being able to catch just about any bus I want -  even if I miss a stop I'll sometimes run for the next one. In the last couple of years this has been getting harder. But recently I tried the North London Fathers' Triathlon, in which one runs for a bus after completing two even more gruelling events. 

1) Getting to school to pick up kids while pushing a pram and you're a mile away and five minutes behind schedule. 
2) Trying to find every overdue library book in the house within a 15 minute period (at advanced level, there'll be two or three toddler books hidden behind bookshelves)

Is it too late for this to be included in the 2012 Olympics? It could be a gold medal bonanza for Britain...

The Neck of My Guitar as Seen Through a Heat Haze

I'm testing out my eyesight this afternoon and I still can't see straight lines. I try out my wang eye (the left) on my guitar and the neck shimmers and breaks up at the edges, as if looked at from a distance in a heat haze. Everything is thinner, too, especially people's faces. If I try to read it's as if publishing has been taken over by incompetent typesetters. Not that anyone uses typesetters these days - mostly to do with technology but also because typesetters were always incredibly grumpy and bad-tempered. You could be having the best day of your life, but after a five minute conversation with a typesetter you'd be left feeling desolate. 

Shredder

I'm as worried about identity theft as the next person, which is why I invested in this high performance shredder. When boxed up it fits perfectly into the back of my store cupboard behind my practice amp. I've had it for nearly three years but only used it twice, both times to eradicate some really bad draft lyrics for political folk songs that I'd written on the back of my VISA card statements. If someone does steal my identity they might as well take the shredder, so that nobody can steal my identity again. Though come to think of it, if it's possible to steal an identity then one could just as easily steal your identity back. That's not theft, it's identity justice.

I think I'll print out this blog entry and shred it.

Jump In Cafe, Holloway Road N19

Bacon sandwich and a coffee. White sliced bread. The bacon fat is nice and crispy at the edges and the sandwich as a whole has just the right amount of moisture.The coffee is very good, strong with a slight aroma of a sweaty Venezuelan female salsa instructor. They lock the door after I've sat down, perhaps to give the impression that this is an exclusive venue. Various Michael Jackson songs are playing, one of which - 'Off the Wall' - was  written by Rod Temperton, who went to the same school as me, though a decade or so earlier. I think it's about scrumping apples from the headmaster's garden, though Jacko de-emphasises that aspect of the lyrics in his interpretation.

Talking with The Dog People

While the numbers of Dog People frequenting Clissold Park has grown enormously over the past few years, one of the things that hasn't changed is their inability to 'see' normal humans. I have always been able to walk amongst them, seemingly invisible, without so much as a glance. I could have marched into the middle of a group of them and emptied a bag of Winalot on their heads and they wouldn't have noticed.

This week, because  our neighbour is poorly, I've been walking her dog most days (breed? Er, it's a little brown dog that looks uncannily like Robin Smith the late Labour MP)  and today we ventured into the park. I wasn't in twenty seconds when two Dog People approached me, smiling in a strange friendly way.
"Hello!" one of them said. Was she talking to me? I must have looked startled.
"He looks like he needs a good run!" beamed her friend.
"Aren't you going to let him off his lead?"
"He's very friendly!"

Their eye contact was unbearably intense. I didn't dare let him run free yet, I said. But if I let go of the lead perhaps I would become invisible again. Most likely the effects of the dog wear off over time. Luckily I was pushing a pram with the other hand and my son was able to get me out of danger by crying. 

The Liquorice Tree

Between two smallish trees in Clissold Park there is a long length of red twine that somebody (conceptual nature artist or mischievous kitten with a ball of wool) has wrapped round and round many times. It's saying "we are connected in ways that we don't fully understand". It's also saying "imagine a world where red licorice grows from the trees. Yum!" It might also be an advert for the wool shop on Blackstock Road. Or perhaps it's saying "look how fragile is mortality" or "look how fragile is the Arsenal back four when a ball is played over the top".

2 foot roll of bubblewrap

I was in my favourite stationery shop in all of London, Fish & Cook on Blackstock Road, to buy some of those horrible ink cartridges for my printer. I was halfway home before I realised that my two year old son had managed to nick a 2 foot roll of bubblewrap (he'd managed to conceal it under his pram). We took it home and I phoned The Stationer. He said he wouldn't get the police involved this time, which was very gracious of him. The 2 foot roll of bubblewrap was immensely versatile and the kids loved using as as a chunky light sabre/intercontinental ballistic missile/head rest. I now wish I'd kept the 2 foot roll of bubblewrap. 

I've a mate who used to have a roadside bubblewrap fetish. I don't love it that much, but it is amazing stuff

N19 Cafe, Holloway Road

I came in the early evening and sat down with my strong little cup of coffee to watch  the sea of humanity on Holloway Road flow by -  families, workers, couples, old folk, kids, joggers, bikes, cars, lorries, buses. Lavazza Americano is served in a little white enamel cup. Midge Ure on the radio and he's actually quite interesting talking about how he got to become the singer in Ultravox but inevitably all the presenter wants to know about is Bob Geldoff and Live Aid. The melancholy-eyed woman sweeping up is half listening to it then a bloke comes in and says it's time to shut up now so I go a bit further down the road, about 100 yards, for a  similar coffee where 80s power ballads are blaring out and at a nearby table a young woman is talking very loudly about her girlfriend and  travel escapades and how she could never have sex with a bloke. "Urgh, the thought!" she says as her quiet friend tries to calm her agitated baby.