Category Archives: Musings

Hackney through the Looking-Glass

04/26/2012 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

As someone who is comfortable wearing contemporary attire, it is hard not to feel completely invisible when attending Broadway Market. Decorated by the capitalist toils of the British high street, I always develop an inferiority complex when walking amongst Hackney’s bohemian community. It is not just a place to sample Ghanaian pot lunches or vinyl Beatles records. The market is an artistic confederacy of educated individuals who choose to or instinctively diverge from the moneyed paths of middle-class employment. Or at least that is how it feels with layman eyes.

With its extravagant visual styles and fragrant riots of colour, art and music, Broadway Market is a place where every moment feels like an Instagram snap – a grainy artistic mirage dating from 1900-1969, where everything is re-lived in a post-modern era. Pop history has long since ended so all we can do is rewind, pause and live vicariously through the memories of others.

While there is a marked difference between what is genuinely old as oppose to say ‘retro’ – a ludicrous concept. Broadway Market feels more like a pastiche than a parody of the past, as its imitations and community spirit are warmly affectionate rather than mocking in tone. Likewise when I wander towards the nearby Columbia Road Flower Market, I again find myself succumbing to retail ordinariness in my everyday clothes. Even if I am just popping down to salvage scraps of hot street food and a chocolate brownie, there is an unnerving sense of invading a private party – one that I could never be invited to in real life.

Capturing the essence of this lifestyle difference is a gypsy-folk singer, Brooke Sharkey, who offers a window into another lifestyle, one more fanciful and beautiful than my own. She sings pure sweet bohemia and listening to her poetic voice accompanied by a large double bass and accordion, it is hard not to feel utterly banal in comparison. And while I would never ordinarily listen to gypsy-folk music at home, in the right setting, her songs are incredibly beautiful. Her ballad ‘May’ is a gorgeous elegiac lament and is especially moving when it is played on the market floor.

Evoking memories of a pre-war bohemian lifestyle, I can imagine her band holidaying in St Ives drinking gin and sage while indulging themselves on freshly caught scallops. A fanciful life perhaps and it is one that only seems possible on Broadway Market, which on examining the looking-glass, I can’t ever fit in but can always admire from afar. Lacking any starry-eyed garments, I remain an invisible figure in London Fields but it is wonderful to think that nomadic songwriters can survive without ever being coarsened by the demands of modern life.

Door to the River

03/12/2012 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

After graduating from Glasgow University in July 2004, I had several ambitions in life and like many arts graduates none of them involved having a career. Well at least I had absolutely no intention of retraining as a history teacher, which at the time appeared to be the only option available to me. Instead I embraced a hazy world of denial and escapism and this involved travelling around Europe on borrowed money and giving up a £65 a week bedsit on the Great Western Road. Such an undertaking came partly as a lust for knowledge and a desire to explore new cultures and languages. Scotland for all its charms is geographically isolated, monolingual and bordered only by England.

However, I must acknowledge that one of the most compelling reasons behind my desire to travel was the chance to ditch my joke finance job at the Abbey National. So before I abandoned Glasgow for the olive fields of Andalucia, I had one ambition left in life and that involved writing my own fanzine. Such was my love of Kelvinside and its bohemian leafy character, I came up with a pun title derived from a mediocre John Fante novel and set about producing an irreverent guide to post-graduate life in the West End of Glasgow. An inky offbeat publication capturing small town blues, film reviews, Chinese takeaways and unwise polemics against high street chuggers. Ask The Kelvin seemed like a good idea at the time.

Unknown to me in the mid-Noughties, I had set about producing a dead tree publication long before the wonders of tagging, Tumblr and all the social interactive elements that assist writers today. Unable to share my thoughts on a global scale, there was no danger of Ask The Kelvin ever going viral. Living in a make-believe world I knew at the time I couldn’t make any money out of a fanzine but for some strange reason I felt compelled to make one anyway.

On embracing the self-funded model, I produced fifty copies at the local stationary store and distributed them at Fopp, Offshore and a ragtag collection of Byres Road charity shops. Back then Facebook didn’t even exist and the audience I secretly lusted and craved for during my sleepless nights in Otago Street never quite materialised. Indeed looking back it does seem really twee and provincial, especially when I compare it to some of the sexy projects on Kickstarter.

Based in New York and providing a self-funded platform to raise funds on a global scale, Kickstarter allows random individuals to become patrons of their favourite projects. Almost like a counter-culture version of the BBC Dragons’ Den, Kickstarter involves a video pitch alongside a synopsis explaining the reasons why you should support them. Not with a lazy like you can get away with elsewhere but with hard cash.

Kickstarter is an amazing place to support new talent and my personal favourite is theNewerYork, an experimental lit mag based in Brooklyn that celebrates radical poetry, love letters and seriously weird pieces of art. Like stumbling into your favourite record shop as a 17 year old and discovering heroin tainted rock zines for the first time, if you tire of the NewerYork, you are tired of life.

Surreally decorated with unfamous quotes and the occasionally haunting story, their magazine blows my wee Glasgow fanzine out of the water. Beautifully humbled by their efforts, I must confess that on reading their e-version, some 3500 miles away in an English metropolis, I never stood a chance back in leafy Kelvinside. Alas I am now older than the 23 year old locked inside a Glasgow bedsit but still similarly way inclined.

Unlike the NewerYork I don’t think I would get $8,119 in funding for the second edition of Ask The Kelvin, even allowing for the social media tools available to young writers and artists today. However, I do take some inspiration from one of their many slogans: everything has been done before, so do it better. 

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Quarter of a Century

01/16/2012 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Glasgow is a city with a brooding gothic soul. A city I once wrote about regularly, even if it was just the banality of routine. With its violence menace, religious iconography and twee bourgeois sensibility, Glasgow captured my imagination at a particular period in time. Back when I described the insignificant truth of this solitary journey to the cinema on a cold weekday evening. A melancholy love letter so to speak. I had just turned twenty-five. 

Tuesday, 10th January 2006

Moth to a Flame

I go the cinema when I’m bored and lonely. It all begins with an over familiar route through the West End and after several twists and turns I will magically stride through Garnethill down towards the largest cinema building on Planet Earth. The beginning of the journey is arguably the most comfortable upon the eye, it is invariably dark and rectangle shades of affluent light can be seen frozen behind coloured glass. I walk across the Byres Road up towards Great Gibson Street, where mercenary cranes hang over an underdeveloped patch of soil; it is a docile but rapidly changing stretch of road.

The sharp gradient tightens the muscles on both of my legs and I have reached the peak of the road, where in sudden twist of fate I feel compelled to go down the hill towards Gibson Street. I used to live around here, the car park is still a muddy disgrace, littered with crass aluminium shells and alien sized craters. The park dominates the area, it is a spooky place and lit only by a curved silver moon; its iron gates lie open but I dare not enter. I stride past fancy Lebanese and Scottish restaurants, it is an ordinary night but they both appear full of people. I cross over the gentle river, there are no grebes or mallards to be seen and only now do I start to accelerate towards my destination. I twist past two Protestant churches and a cold young fox lying dead in the leaves. The road ahead is empty and without a soul, it appears darker now, the motorway is within walking distance.

I head towards Charing Cross, it is very quiet and all the cars have gone. It is not the right time but I prefer to take to the skies than walk alongside them. I adjust my legs and walk over an arched granite causeway; it elevates me above the carnage of the roads and provides access to the mysterious ways of Garnethill. I am in the city now, there something sinister about this place, something threatening, although my mind is playing tricks on me. It is dark right now and no one is here. The street is awash with neat green lawns and vacancy signs, there are places to stay on my left, while to my right there are scattered bins and graffiti strewn fire exits.

I walk ominously closer and there is a Catholic Church approaching, which is separated by yew, rowan and a piercing iron fence. This secretive place of worship performs mass in Latin and the priest is kept hidden behind a secret silver veil. The church is small but intimidating and I don’t think it likes me at all. I walk on alone and without a God, the winter air is biting my cheeks, my hands are beginning to get cold now.

I walk towards the famous art school and admire its subtle and decorative style, there are no students in the nearby eighties lounge. I am almost there now and feel like a distant stranger, people are on the move down below me, there is a collection of buckfast and vodka sitting alongside a corrugated steel gate. The streets are colliding into one, there are cars passing by me, it is now sparkling with light and the silence has gone.

The Last of the Monoglots

10/04/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

As an island nation geographically isolated from continental Europe, speaking foreign languages has never been Britain’s forte. With the majority of English speaking residents having no practical need to speak anything else, most UK citizens have never bothered to learn a foreign language. Apart from going on holiday a few weeks a year, where the hotel staff, waiters and tourist information guides inevitably all speak English anyway. What incentive do you have to learn a new language that you will probably never use? Speaking foreign languages in Britain is essentially a bourgeois luxury – a cultural reference point for the urban middle classes, a demographic who want to order a bottle of Bourgogne Pinot Noir with their friends on holiday.

With the majority of the population immune to foreign languages, the number of students taking A-levels in England and Wales has fallen to a new low. Likewise Scotland is not faring any better with more than half of all foreign language assistants in state schools axed due to budget cuts. In a provincial region such as Aberdeenshire, which is geographically isolated even in the context of Scotland, the majority of students don’t leave the North East after graduating. Bordering only England what practical incentive does an English speaking child in Scotland have to learn German or French? A truck driver from Luxembourg or Switzerland will be expected to speak at least three or four languages in order to communicate with their clients. Linguistic exchanges are certainly not something a Scottish driver has to worry about when he or she travels through Cumbria to England.

With the English language establishing itself as the global lingua franca due to the British Empire and the economic dominance of the United States, British citizens don’t really have much incentive to learn any language other than their own. If France had won the Seven Years’ War and North America became a French colony then the English language might have been seriously challenged. Such is the historical power of this Anglo-American hegemony then unless British students are learning new languages purely for intellectual reasons the rewards are pretty slim. Understanding all the grammatical peculiarities, complexities and declensions is a tall order, like learning a code, and then you have to be confident enough to express yourself fluently.

The UK education secretary, Michael Gove, has proposed that every child aged five or over should be learning a foreign language at school. Speaking in the Guardian newspaper, Gove says “understanding a modern foreign language helps you understand English better” and “there is no one who is fluent in a foreign language who isn’t a masterful user of their own language”. It’s hard to dispute this and teaching languages at nursery level, where children can learn easily is probably the best way ahead. What language should these children learn to speak though? English still remains the superpower of languages despite Mandarin’s numerical advantage. Will young children ever have the chance to converse in French, German or Spanish?

Languages were never meant to be the ornamental indulgences of the upper-middle classes. Speaking in a foreign tongue requires constant practice and attention. As native speakers of the global language, British citizens are almost given a carte blanche to be lazy. Unless you can practice a new language on a regular basis then these early linguistic abilities are incredibly fragile. Britain is arguably a victim of her geographical isolation and imperial past when it comes to learning new languages.

In the Tamil Nadu state of Southern India, most citizens can speak Tamil, Telugu, Malayam and Kanada by the age of twelve. With the majority of South Indians having to learn the state language of Hindi and English to communicate with the outside world, Britain’s monolingualism looks increasingly parochial. If the UK education secretary’s proposals are implemented on a national scale then perhaps in thirty or forty year’s time, the current generation of monoglots will be an endangered species. Somehow you don’t need to speak three languages to realise not even the most successful of human empires will last forever.

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The Tree of Life

10/03/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Lying on a football pitch on a glorious sunny afternoon, I wake up and strike an imaginary shot off a cross bar in Regent’s Park. Wishing I could lie there forever, I reluctantly accept that half-time does not last forever. Less than a ten minute walk from nearby offices, Regent’s Park is a solitary green delight amongst the hassle, fuss and lies of urban life. Anyone walking around the park at lunchtime will hear little more than birdsong on a weekday afternoon. Feeling at home amongst the leafy tree aisles and playing fields, it is very easy to forget that Regent’s Park is an entirely manufactured landscape. A science-fiction vision of where nature intersects with art. Offering a temporary escape from office life, I am a mere figurine amongst the dog walkers, cheating couples and amateur football players.

Originally part of the dark forest of Middlesex, the ocean of green inhabiting Central London today had previously been a medieval hunting forest. Approaching the Victorian era, the park like so many royal gardens across the city of London were the nightclubs of their day. The park provided a beautiful place for upper-class couples to show off amongst their peers. London has the Prince Regent to thank for this splendid green park. As he helped to make London a landscape as well as a city. It is remarkable that in the twenty-first century we can still enjoy large pockets of countryside within the metropolis.

Victorian parks were conceived as a radical vision of civilisation to the working classes. Like the municipal ‘people parks’ of my Scottish childhood, Regent’s Park remains a civilising and calming influence on the civic population. Forming a part in most people’s lives, I think nearly everyone (on this island) will have childhood memories of their local park. As plots of green land embedded in the city landscape, most residents take solace from walking around neo-Gothic fountains, duck ponds and curving boulevards. Refreshing the body, soul and mind, they remain a universal feature in all of our cities and towns, a quiet green place where your imagination can run wild. It is a place where shrubs, bushes, Japanese cherry hawthorn and walnut can flourish alongside exotic duck species and green spotted woodpeckers.

As the moralistic fantasy of the Victorian planners, parks remain to this day an essential feature of urban life. London’s green lungs are like a snow globe vision of humanity and despite the pantheist connection with nature, parks are entirely man-made inventions. Every blade of grass is sown by hand; trees are individually planted from a young age, while bushes and flowers are created for purely aesthetic reasons. Even the ducks are imported and tagged from abroad. By striking an imaginary shot off a crossbar I realise my dreams of glory have already been captured in somebody else’s. With every curved path and boulevard mathematically planned on a map, they lead me back to the office in just over ten minute’s time.

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Beware of the man whose God is in the skies

09/06/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

The nuns taught us there were two ways through life – the way of nature and the way of grace. You have to choose which one you’ll follow. Grace doesn’t try to please itself. Accepts being slighted, forgotten, disliked. Accepts insults and injuries. Nature only wants to please itself. Get others to please it too. Likes to lord it over them. To have its own way. It finds reasons to be unhappy when all the world is shining around it. And love is smiling through all things.

Despite being devoutly non-religious from a very young age, I find myself emotionally attached to many aspects of Christian life. Waking up to the carillon chimes of a nearby Anglican Church every Sunday morning, I find myself strangely comforted by an institution I have never once considering attending. There is something graceful listening to a church calling out to their flock. Living in a Stalinist Legoland that is home to many different cultures, church bells feel like a wistful homage to past generations. Even as a liberal, modern secularist I find listening to them on a Sunday morning incredibly powerful. However, I have never believed in God and find the key tenets of all Abrahamic religions (in practice) to be inherently backward and repressive. On being forced to attend Church of Scotland services as a school boy, I now only enter churches for weddings, funerals or as tourist attractions in foreign countries.

On travelling through Andalucía, I recall the time I spent in Ronda, and watching elderly nuns carrying bags of groceries along cobbled Moorish streets. Once again I found it a fascinating throwback to a more traditional way of life, although I am sure the lives of those modern day Catholic nuns were very real. Not believing in God or the repressive lifestyle it would require me to live, I find myself conflicted on why I wouldn’t like to see it disappear entirely. The brilliant English polemicist Christopher Hitchens once said if ‘I could convince everyone in the world to be a non-believer, and there’s only one left. One more, and then it’d be done. There’d be no more religion in the world. No more deism, theism, I wouldn’t do it. Somehow if I could drive it out of the world, I wouldn’t’. Divided by his own intellectual disdain and personal fear of extinguishing religion altogether, I suspect he also feared what might take its place.

Sentimentality might strike at the heart of my love of church bells on a Sunday morning. As long as I am not forced to conform to something I don’t believe in, then it’s absolutely fine for others to practice their faith. Although on a logical level, I’ve always taken issue with religious institutions holding sway over people’s everyday lives. On living in a profoundly secular country accommodating many different religions, I find myself aghast at how in the 21st century, we find ourselves pandering to the whims of irrational faiths. The multi-faith English school system is riddled with stories of non-religious parents pretending to be Catholic, Anglican or Jewish in order to get their children into a decent school. A ludicrous situation that only fuels my desire to see religious organisations stripped of their ability to participate in public life.

Alas the romanticism of church bells and the beautiful sacrifice of nuns does come at a price. Even with the rise of secularism, power doesn’t go away. It never does. But in the absence of God, there remains a spiritual void in a secular world where biology and science can now explain anything. Perhaps it’s the absence of grace that makes me nostalgic for church bells on a Sunday morning. Something more profound than mere existence. The carillon chimes are just a metaphor for a way of grace. And despite firmly believing in the power of enlightenment, I do believe we belong to something bigger. Even if it is just the age old question of why we are here.

Out of the Office

08/16/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

With an estimated two billion English speakers in the world, I have been flirting with the idea of taking on more freelance assignments. Anxious to improve upon my curriculum vitae and hungry for additional funds, I have sought to use my creative writing skills for the betterment of mankind. Freelancing is a precarious way to learn a living. With a spasmodic income, no job security and endlessly chasing new assignments, it certainly does seem like hard work. And while I would much rather be writing blogs about sex, riots and Cesc Fabregas in my spare time, I have to confess it doesn’t pay the bills. So like many others with a love affair with the English alphabet, I re-shape atrociously written text and provide elegant prose for companies and individuals who are incapable of writing it themselves.

Many successful writers claim that freelancing is like discovering a new planet. Whether its girls selling knickers on eBay, setting up a recycled teapot business or writing up toilet gags for an industrial cleaning website. Freelancing has the power to shatter the traditional principles of time and labour. No more early mornings, boring meetings or the gnawing acceptance that you are chained to a particular space for months upon end. With the power of modern technology you can now eat sardines in San Sebastian for lunch, before in theory, returning to your laptop to finish off your latest assignment. Such a routine sounds very fanciful and in reality the majority of freelancing takes place in bedrooms and kitchen tables. Cabin fever is never going to be to far away from a freelancer’s mind.

Even poets, journalists and writers require an internal discipline to get things done. There is a misconception that creative types can spend their days watching clouds form into continents awaiting their latest epiphany. Deadlines are an inescapable fact of life whatever your occupation might be. As long as there is a market for what you do and you’re prepared to work hard then freelancing certainly does provide new opportunities.

Previously I’ve found myself writing about the benefits of industrial cleaning, leather handbags and fairytale medieval towns. There are millions of global English speakers transferring their businesses and services online and luckily for me not too many of them can write particularly well. Sadly the financial rewards are not spectacular and you have to be extremely bold to freelance on a full-time basis.

As while nobody likes being told what to do, there are still outstanding benefits of working for the man. Usually these involve paid holidays and luxury of going to Tuscany for two weeks and drinking copious amounts of red wine. Indeed you also have weekends, public holidays and sick days where you don’t have to look at an email, spreadsheet or anything remotely affiliated with Microsoft Office. Freelancing is a young baby that requires constant attention. Those working in the offshore economy don’t really have the luxury of ignoring their inbox for two weeks because business will just go elsewhere. Likewise the pub landlord can’t close the pub in August and expect a queue of thirsty customers when he comes back from holiday.

Even when I am excessively pragmatic about earning a living, I still privately maintain a delusion that somebody one day will offer currency for my written thoughts. Previously I’ve tried to bury my creative desires but extinguishing yourself is not a good ideal really. Even with each passing year the hunger doesn’t go away. It still doesn’t pay the bills though and, wanting to be useful, I take comfort in being a monoglot scribe and having the potential to be my own boss.

Heart Shaped Box

06/09/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

At the beginning it was the maddening fluidity of her walk and the way she made you breathlessly silent just by her presence alone. She never spoke to anyone. And together we felt the imprisonment of being a boy and how our job was to merely create a noise that might fascinate her. With her soulful blue eyes and ripe, pert and desirable mouth, I felt a strange unison with my anonymous colleagues. Well I did until she turned into the kitchen and the shrill ping of the microwave crushed any lingering feeling of desire. For the anticipation lay in her walk and how with every step she took she was a heartbeat closer to my own.

As you might have already gathered by now, offices can be notoriously dull places to earn a living. If you spend the lion’s share of the Gregorian calendar sitting in front of computer, then inevitably the mind will begin to wander. Sometimes I have tried to fancy virtually anyone just to escape the menial wonders of Microsoft Excel. Spending up to eight hours per day in the same allocated spot, usually performing the same tasks without thinking, is almost asking for you to fall in love for 16 seconds. Albeit with someone wildly out of your league, grossly inappropriate, engaged or the intern with phosphorescent eyes and probably still in her early twenties.

Spending so much time in the same place with the same people will inevitably rouse the most dangerous of human emotions – curiosity. As a result most people will develop a crush on a work colleague at some point in their lives. Even if it is someone you wouldn’t ordinarily find attractive in real life. Never advisable and almost certainly best avoided, office liaisons usually end in disaster and whether it’s excruciatingly embarrassing or incredibly painful. The bitter ending will provide a malnourished office with juicy scraps of gossip for years to come.

Curiosity is a curse that has afflicted even some of the most intelligent men and women in the workplace. As anyone engaged in a secret romantic tryst can usually see the tsunami galloping in the distance. But like the stupid footballers who have sexual affairs with reality TV contestants, they continue to believe in the self-inflicted illusion that no one will find out. Although no one will fail to spot the tell-tail signs of you arriving together at the same time, usually late with a sheepish grin and ruffled unwashed hair.

All it takes is one perceptive mind and the keyboards will be rattling out scandal until even the cleaner finds out. Usually such childish behaviour is fueled by jealously at how their previously anonymous colleagues could be having such an exhilaratingly good time without them. The lovers inbox will be a ripe treat and they won’t give a damn about what anyone else thinks. Until it all goes wrong that is.

For silent curiosity is always more exciting than the real thing. As like the regal beauty that left her male colleagues twitching in synchronised admiration, the attraction ultimately lay in enigmatic silence and how difficult she was to attain. Expectation usually kills a party and broadening your horizons away from your desk is probably wiser than aimlessly seeking a distraction from it.

Spring Break

03/28/2011 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

On working in close proximity to Regent’s Park, I cherish the advent of spring as I can now go for a lunchtime walk inside the most attractive park in London. The stirring of nature’s passion has seen thousands of people descend upon the beautiful green plains in the last few weeks. This precious unpaid hour is always welcome in warmer climes but even during the harshest winters I have stoically insisted upon every second of my lunch break.

As a young child the clattering of the school bell signalled an hour of endless possibilities. One lunch time (a long time ago) in northern Scotland, I led a stunning coup d’état against our primary school matron, as hundreds of children gained their first experience of a democratic rebellion. Football had been banned on the school banks because it was supposedly too wet underfoot for hundreds of little feet to chase after a greasy leather orb. A handwritten petition circulated down in the concrete jungle and my fellow rebels enjoyed our moment in the sun, only to be reprimanded by an hour-long detention on the strike of the home time bell.

Despite having no discernible talent for football, I still fondly remember coming back to class soaked in sweat and mud. The ferocious competiveness of our games and high pitched squabbles over what constituted an imaginary bar are one of the few things from school I actually miss. Growing older and being fortunate enough to attend two of Scotland’s finest universities, I realise now that everyday is like a lunch break for an arts undergraduate. Student life on a picture book campus will provide for a wonderful education and grants unlimited access to nearby bars, cafes and newsagents. There is no such thing as a late lunch when you crawl out of bed at the back of noon.

On graduating and having to pay rent in the city of Glasgow, I found myself temping for discredited financial institutions and lunch suddenly became very precious indeed.  When the clocks go back in October, it’s almost like the Arctic Circle imposes a military curfew on Scottish daylight but I always left the office in order to claim my sixty minutes of freedom. Glasgow is like a miniature Chicago with its American style grid system and wanting to claim my precious hour of daylight, I would munch upon cheese and gammon sandwiches, crisps and two pieces of fruit on a well healed parade around the city.

Glasgow is one of the greatest Victorian cities in the world but since I was unwilling to power the glass turbines of big business for the minimum wage, I departed southwards towards London’s advertising and digital heartlands in Goodge Street. Lunch time suddenly became a flexible experience and I can now eat some of the finest cuisines in the world on my unpaid hour. Unprofitable media companies squabble over free deliveries of little Greek pies and nearby cafes, bars and stylish restaurants offer a penny sucking haven for anyone wanting to escape the soulless matrix of databases, targets and Microsoft Excel.

As the clocks move forward and the vernal equinox stimulates life on previously cold soil. The green tranquility of Regent’s Park attracts a primordial gathering around its duck ponds and playing fields. Lunch time may only be one hour but it remains universally celebrated across the Western world and something savoured by school children, workers and chief executives alike.

Leaving the 20th Century

09/07/2010 By in Musings Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

When I first heard the Manics were releasing a new single called ‘(It’s Not War) Just The End Of Love’, I felt a minor sense of exhilaration but this was quickly followed by embarrasment. The Manics always make me cringe. They have done so from the age of 23. The band’s latest single while gloriously melodic is lyrically stodgy and indulges in meaningless platitudes. It is a thoroughly decent pop song nevertheless but it will pass through most people’s daily lives unnoticed. Anna Friel looks absolutely gorgeous as a sexually frustrated librarian and how they managed to get the brilliant Michael Sheen to take part I’ll never know. Although him getting the opportunity to lust over Anna Friel on a chess table probably had something to do with it.

The Manics and teenage hyperbole will never be separated. In many ways they were the closest I ever came to joining a cult. As a shy Scottish teenager I can vividly remember reading their biographies, listening to CDs and reading selective works of George Orwell, Jack Kerouac, Slyvia Plath and Allen Ginsberg. On becoming an obsessive fan in the late nineties, I fully immersed myself in the DIY fan culture and began collecting all of their albums, books and videos at record fairs in Aberdeen.

Not having any money I could rarely afford to buy their handmade early singles but every month I would go just to look at the Situationist artwork or bootleg videos. During the granite wintry months, I would stumble wearing an Aberdeen football scarf and make friends with Clash fans in vintage punk jackets covered in snotty white tipp-ex. Despite knowing I didn’t have any money to feed my habit, I would go back return every month because obsession compelled me every time. What I ask myself is would this happen now? Sure you have vinyl obsessives and niche dance guys looking for old records to pillage, sample and plunder. Otherwise all you have to do is type in a few words into Google and every interview, demo tape and muffled remark is available free online.

The last time I saw them play live was at the Edinburgh Corn Exchange in April 2005 and I vowed at the time that I would never see them again.

The Manics reached their saturation point years ago though and it felt strange seeing them live again. There was something serene and ghostly calm about them, previous landmark singles that were once powerful statements had now become cabaret and were played with a jukebox familiarity. The Holy Bible songs were absolutely amazing, especially Of Walking Abortion and If White America, which were like vicious snarling scabs and for blurring white seconds I felt like I was obsessed and eighteen all over again. They ended their set with a crashing version of Motown Junk, which started off with Paradise City by Guns and Roses and it was coolest send off ever! The thudding drums whipped the crowd to a chaotic frenzy and it was the perfect ending to a heavenly evening. It was the goodbye moment I had always wanted.

By keeping to my word I’ve managed to keep my memories intact. In a way I actually admire their resilence and how they’ve managed to maintain keep their profile up after 20 years on the road. It is quite remarkable really because it is not like they were ever musical pioneers. Although I’ve now come to realise that indie music is for kids really and this can lead to a lot of heartache when you get older.

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