Bordering on the ridiculous

Ever eager to escape the thrall of that specky bloke, I have elected to eschew Photoshop in favour of GIMP for the purposes of gussying up some of m' photos.

So, software downloaded and installed, I hied me to Borders in Churchill Square in search of a manual or two. Checked the (as usual, monstrously untidy) shelves - no manuals visibly (though rank untidiness made visibility difficult). Accosted sales assistant - sales assistant, haughty and dismissive, responded in a manner that suggested that I (a) am an idiot for daring to want such an arcane item and (b) should be horsewhipped for daring to waste his precious time with such an outre request.

He could, he lukewarmed, probably order something in if I really wanted it. No thanks, says I, I'll get it from Amazon (which, of course, I probably won't, as they are running dogs of capitalism, but he doesn't know that and it gave me a frisson of pleasure to toss this threat in his haughty and dismissive teeth). And so saying, I turned on my heel and consigned Borders to my (increasingly long) list of shops I boycott because they are utterly rubbish.

Then I went to Waterstones. They didn't have any GIMP manuals either, but at least they had the decency to be humble and apologetic about their shortcomings. So I bought coffee and cake and two expensive books about photographic technique.

See, that's how a good bookshop works - they treat me nice, I spend lots of money.

And they gave me extra loyalty points for using my own carrier bag.

That said, I did go back to Borders this morning for breakfast in the Starbucks concession ... but I didn't buy any books, honest!

What ever happened to ...

... The Temple City Kazoo Orchestra

Of spozhinki (7th August)

To the middle of August on the entire Slav earth concludes harvest, hence and the name of holiday - Spozhinki/dozhniki. Last sheaf they reap silently in order not to disturb the spirit of field, which migrates in it.

Thank you Babelfish. And thank you Russian Calendar of Holidays.

The wonderful English language

It's something of a marvel to me that, in the compass of one small island, a single concept (in this case 'the narrow passageway between two sets of buildings') is expressed in so many different words, to wit:

ginnell/gennell/jinnell,
gitty/jitty,
wynde,
twitten,
twitchell,
snicket,
snickleway,
enog,
cutting,
fold

... and many more *with jazz hands*

Oh play me a blue song and fade down the light

You know how it is. You're walking past the radio on a Sunday morning (or a Friday, if you're a lazy slacker like me), a bit of Radio 4 accidentally gets in your ears and, before you know where you are, it's out with the paper and pencil and you're committing your carefully considered 8 discs (plus luxury item and book other than the Bible or Shakespeare) to paper just in case you ever get famous enough to be asked to participate in a long-running British radio institution!

Or is that just me?

Anyway, having long ago failed to narrow down the possibilities of my Desert Island Discs Vanilla to under 1000, I've recently taken to categorising them (being an ex-librarian) into subgroups: Desert Island Folk, Desert Island Patti Smith, Desert Island Classical, Desert Isalnd Kazoo Orchestras and so on.

So today I offer for your entertainment Desert Island Weepies – the eight records which, above all others, make me blart my eyes up (or “cry” as I believe you call it on this planet) every time I hear them . If you have tears to shed, prepare to shed them now:

1. 1952 Vincent Black Lightning – Richard Thompson Not the whole song (though it is damned good) but just the bit where he sings “I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome/ swooping down from heaven to carry me home”. Even typing it now brings a lump to my throat.
2. Bloody Motherf***ing A**hole – Martha Wainwright She sings the refrain with such desolate passion – gets me every time
3. Mama Hated Diesels So Bad – Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen So corny, so cheesy – a real quesadilla of a track – but so very, very touching once you get past all that.
4. Bridge Over Troubled Water – the Johnny Cash version Not got much time for the original, which is far too sweet for my taste, but Johnny Cash plays a blinder and you just know he's singing it for June.
   
5. No Man's Land – June Tabor Quintessential WWI story, quintessential English folk voice. I love June Tabor so much I want to have her children.
6. Bandera Del Sol – Tish Hinajosa Not all my weepy songs are sad songs. This one is beautiful, triumphant, celebratory and makes you want to go “yeah!” very, very loudly
7. Beneath the Southern Cross – Patti Smith What can I say - she is a god, I am her acolyte and this makes me cry.
8. Individual – Rose Kemp 17-year-old scion of folk royalty sings about being as good as anybody else: “Every girl wishes she was/ thin like all the other girls and / pretty like all the other girls and/ smart like all the other girls are”. My own story exactly.

Luxury item: neverending box of tissues. Book: The Nation's Favourite Poems for Funerals. And bring on the blartathon.

OK, I've shown you mine, now you show me yours. You know you want to.

In clubland

Back in 1970 when I was 15, and the only regular entertainment available to us was the weekly Youth Club discotheque in Blackheath, my friend Dangerous Hazel got wind of something special happening in Dudley: a club, she said, a club for people like us - weirdos, prog rockers and crypto-hippies - somewhere we could get to hear stuff other than the chart-toppers and bubblegum pop that was the Youth Club's staple fare.

It took her a bit of digging but finally Hazel tracked it down. It was (and still is) called JB's and, at that point in its history, was based in the clubhouse at Dudley Town football ground. Not long after, it moved up the town to the back of a gents' outfitters near Top Church and, for the next five-or-so years, this became our musical home-from-home.

On Thursday nights there was a disco of sorts, but without the dancing. Fridays and Saturdays were band nights. In those five glorious years I must have seen hundreds of bands, most of whom I've forgotten now, but some standout gigs remain in the memory banks - Richard and Linda Thompson several times (even before they were married and Linda was still Peters), Dr Feelgood at least twice, Stan Webb's Broken Glass and Chicken Shack, legendary bluesmen Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee (yes, I now all bluesmen get called legendary, but this pair really, really were). People say the mid 70s were rubbish for music, but not from where I was sitting, they weren't.

There was memorable drinking to go with the memorable music. The beer of choice was Newcastle Brown, drunk from the bottle. One night John Woodhouse peeled the label off his bottle and gave it to me as a memento - I kept it for years, sellotaped to a peice of card in a box with all my concert tickets from Birmingham Town Hall and the stubs of two joss sticks from a Quintessence concert. At that point in my young life, though, I was not much of a beer drinker, preferring the more girly delights of port-and-lemon (10p) - the infamous post-Sonny-Terry-and-Brownie-McGhee port-and-lemon-bath-staining incident did not please The Mater one bit.

Anyway, in 1976 I headed off to university, discovered folk music, let punk pass me by, started to feel I was 'too old' for that kind of thing and lost touch with The Club (as my particular group of regulars called it). Even when I moved back to the Black Country after university, I never re-established my JB's habit.

I still miss it though.

And I did perform there once, myself, in the early 80s, as a member of Dudley and District CND's Street Theatre troupe - I think the audience was just slightly bigger than the company, but not much.