The importance of play

I often joke that I would never want to be below the age of 25 again. My formative years were the 1980s and I have some fairly horrific fashion mistakes to blank out, but I also dimly remember some good times wedged somewhere between the geeky angst and the ski pants with bodysuit and deck shoes combos.

Thinking back to my childhood pastimes I have three particular favourites:

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1) Duetting with myself.

As a youngster I was a bit of a musician (and still am occasionally). In junior school I used to play the recorder, and this is the reason that I have never performed in a school play - I was always the accompaniment. At home I never liked practicing, as I preferred to play in groups. As people would rarely want to play along* I used to tape record myself playing one part of the duet, then play it back and play along the other half. I don't know whose idea this was. It was probably suggested by one of my parents to shut me up, but I like to think it was my own ingenious idea. And it worked brilliantly! I spent hours at this at a time, and would still if I had a cassette recorder and my trusty book of Handel and Telemann recorder duets.

(*I blamed their lack of skill, others may argue it's because I didn't really have many friends!)


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2) Making patterns

I love art, but was never as fond of drawing 'real' things as I was abstract patterns. I loved my Spirograph, which always was great until the last turn, when it would bounce off and ruin my otherwise perfect squiggles. My set was bigger than this one, with more different sizes. I think it is lost in the wilderness somewhere now... tragic...


Another firm favourite was my Altair Design books. I think these must have been hand-me-downs as I'm pretty sure we had this exact copy, but they were amazing and instilled in me a love of geometric islamic art. I wish I had one now.


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3) The 'Worcester Sauce Contest'

When I was an early teen, my friend Mel and I used to do terrible things with food. One of which was to get the deep fat fryer out and deep fry *everything* in her mum's larder freezer, smother it all with ketchup and vinegar, and scoff to our hearts' content (I shudder to think of the calorie content of one sitting).

The second was the Worcester Sauce Contest. We'd crack open a tin of baked beans or spaghetti hoops, then we'd add as much Worcester Sauce and vinegar as we thought we could take, microwave until nuclear, then see who cried first. For those aware of my hot pepper and pickle obsession, all may be becoming clearer...

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So - music, art and food. Not much has changed in 30 years :)



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Festival Fun

I've just got back from the Hydro Connect Festival in Argyll, in the grounds of Inverary Castle (not a bad venue!), and it was a pretty top weekend. My run down of events was:

Friday:

• Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks: a bit disappointing, I'd expected better...
• The Breeders: as good as I could have possibly hoped! They played loads of The Amps and old Breeders stuff as well as the new tracks

• Sparks: good fun and utterly mental, though I wish they'd played more of the really early stuff. Ron Mael rocks!

Saturday:

• Firstly some disappointment as Joan as Policewoman was cancelled...
• Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band (random rants about being "from the United States of Fuckin' Americarr" (several times) annoyed me, and was accompanied by some fairly tepid music. Disappointing...
• The Levellers: despite not being even remotely trendy to like them, they put on a great show and much dancing was to be had.
  
• Friendly Fires: we didn't know what to expect and were pleasantly surprised.
• Black Lips: we were promised nudity, on-stage vomiting, and biting heads off live animals (maybe I made that last one up), none of which were delivered.
• Glasvegas: the music press claim that their album is "of national importance". I disagree.
• Grinderman: Nick Cave was awesome on stage. "Honey Bee let's fly to Mars. Bzzz bzzz bzzz!"

• Gomez: they played the "Bring It On Album" from start to finish for its 10 year anniversary. Brilliant!
• Gossip: I'd already seen them in a small gig and they were ace, but it just didn't work well at a Festival and I got bored... we then tried to go see Bloc Party and missed them :o(

Sunday:

• Young Knives: Pretty good! Again we didn't know what to expect but we really enjoyed them.
• Santogold: Not quite my cup of tea but some catchy tunes and the most awesome backing dancers I've ever seen!
• Elbow: Guy Garvey had some nice banter and the new tracks were good, but I'd already seen them earlier this year so nothing new here...
• The Coral: a nice mix of old and new that got us dancing about.
• And the pièce de resistance... Franz Ferdinand: Absolutely brilliant show, the new tracks are ace and they played plenty of the popular tracks. I danced my socks off whilst lusting after Alex Kapranos.

All in all a pretty good weekend, though it has higlighted my need for a better camera :o)



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Another quick revamp

I was inspired by Vanessa's post on Wardrobe Refashion a while back where she cut up her old T-Shirt to make a nice fitted number, so I thought I'd give it a go with an old unflattering T-shirt from the Copenhagen Jazz festival I accidentally went to in 1994 whilst in Denmark on a Bromley Youth Concert Band tour (oh happy days!)...

(Please excuse the partially decorated hallway and my miserable face!)







I don't think it was quite as successful as Vanessa's but it's still a vast improvement from before (despite the paint spatters!). Now I've got the (sort of) hang of it I might go and see if I can get some more baggy t-shirts to try again...

I must be getting old...

... because I don't understand fashion anymore. Boys: Why belt your jeans *underneath* your arse, thereby showing me your greying pants? Why think that trucker caps look good? Why emulate Russell Brand's hairstyle? The latter I would hope is pure laziness, though I have a sneaking suspicion it takes longer to style mops like that than to cook a 3 course meal...

I went to a gig on Wednesday night at Birmingham University's student Guild (it was rather excellent and involved amp fires and drummer fights - rock and roll!) so I was probably asking for my eyes to be assaulted by dreadful 'fashionable' outfits sported by 18-21 year olds. The pinnacle of nastiness was a girl who was wearing extremely tight and extremely high cut jeans with neat little turn ups to show off her black patent sensible lace ups (last worn by my mother in 1985) plus a puffed sleeve white shirt tucked in. If I'd have worn that I'd have been quite rightfully beaten with sticks and hounded out of the town.

I came to the conclusion, with the help of C, that this is because these people never had to live through the 80s when they actually happened. Horror of horrors the next crop of undergraduates will have been born in 1990. I was aged 3-13 in the 80s, and these were formative years where you make your worst fashion and hair mistakes. My worst that I can remember off hand, which I may dig out a photo of if you're 'lucky', was ski pants with deck shoes (blue with white cording), topped off with a lilac bodywarmer. (As an aside - when did bodywarmers suddenly become gilets?).

I've realised that most people are happy with the fashions of their early twenties. Hence people in their forties still dressing in a slightly 80s way (though not to the ridiculous extents of the youth of today) and people of my age sticking with the mid-late 90s (I am at my happiest in slightly flared cords plus a top with different coloured sleeves - which in turn is an homage to the 70s). It's all extremely cyclical, and I'm just hoping that in 5-10 years time that young people will not be stalking the streets in shellsuits...