Click to enlarge and read the blurbs for each talkI'm looking forward to participating in a Post-Internet Working Group at Brunel University that'll meet on two occasions, on Feb 4th at 2pm, when Michael Waugh will be giving a talk ('Post-Internet Popular Music: From the Underground to the Mainstream'), and on March 8th at 1pm, when I will be giving a talk ('"Accelerated by the Digital Age?"An Ambivalent Aesthetics of the Digital World in Underground Electronic Music'). Why not come along for some IRL content creation? ;)

Back in Varanasi

It's been a fortnight of ups and downs as I'm whirled around on the bumpy path that is India.  Don't get me wrong, I'm so grateful I'm here, but sometime I have to remind myself of why I'm in such an alien environment where everything is topsy turvy, dirty and I'm away from my friends and family! In actual fact one of the biggest reasons is to have singing lessons and spend time with a wonderful lady called Anitaji. The ji at the end of the name is an Indian term of endearment and respect.  I've been using it as I integrate back into Indian culture and family life.

Cows and kids – the most common of sightings in India

I'm fortunate enough to be living with her and her husband Rohitji in their family home in the sacred and super busy city of Varanasi - a place of pilgrimage for many Hindus.  Dying in Varanasi is particularly auspicious as it's meant to overcome the cycle of rebirth.  Anita and Rohit live in a residential area called Sakat Nagar which is about half an hour away from the holy river Ganges and the Old City (an area made up of narrow alleys, temples and lots of cows and monkeys).  This means I'm somewhat isolated in that I'm away from the main tourist area (and thus creature comforts such as Wi Fi!).

How things unfold

I met these talented and kind musicians on my previous India trip when I was totally mesmerised by the singing lessons I had with Anita in Bhagsu, a backpacker town in the Himalayas.  I enjoyed the lessons so much I stayed there for a month and then later in the trip also spent a month with them in Varanasi for an intensive course and had four hours of lessons per day! I had such an incredible stay being immersed in study and expanding my voice – it really inspired me so much to sing, a supressed ambition I'd had for a long time.  Choosing to dedicate your energy to singing is the kind of insane thing that only happens on travels in India when you have time and a little money (for us) goes a long way.

Singing has now become a huge part of my life – five years ago I couldn't even have imagined I'd be running my own community choir and performing at Glastonbury Festival - it's all a bit surreal.  My Indian music lessons paved the way for this and if anyone could appreciate how far I'd come; from not even being able to sing in front of others or sing high notes without grimacing awkwardly at the sound, to where I am now - it's Anita. So it felt really nice to come back and share with her my achievements over the past few years and develop my singing further so that I can continue to develop my choir leading skills.

Feeling Frustrated

I've been feeling a huge irony in being here again to have singing lessons, even though I've waited five years to return.  I'm here to develop my singing ability and yet it feels like one of the least conducive environments for this.  The pollution here feels really horrific!  Even in just five years it feels a lot worse than it used to be.  There's so much dust and smog in the air and the amount of traffic that blocks the roads is overwhelming, as it's constant traffic jams and often times it is faster to walk past the traffic than be in the rickshaw.

I've noticed my throat feels quite dry all of the time, I'm coughing – I may also have a cold or be adjusting to the climate, but in any case it doesn't feel good for my health.  It's so frustrating as I have had quite a struggle in class not being able to use my voice in the way I normally can.  However it's not just me who has had difficulty, Anita has also struggled.  It concerns me a lot that these are the conditions that people here have to live in permanently.  Without a doubt, if this continues a lot of people are going to get very sick and although the government is bringing in more measures to create positive change, like encouraging more push bikes, change takes time to infiltrate and we need action now.

Varanasi traffic on a good day Protecting the voice

Every time I go outside a wave of fumes hits me. I've begrudgingly resorted to wearing a scarf around my head that covers my mouth to try to stop this.  I don't want to walk around like this, as if I'm in disguise (though to be fair in India it has it's uses to blend in more) but I feel like it's necessary to protect my voice.  The other option is just to not go outside, but I'm too restless to do that.  I can't sit inside all day, especially if I can see the sun outside - I have to move or I go a bit mad.

All being said, it's making me really appreciating clean air - even London air.  I'm lucky that I can choose to live in places that aren't so polluted.  Although I am hugely grateful to be in Varanasi, I already know the fresh air of the Himalayas will be very much welcome.  For now I just have to deal with the pollution, as millions of Indians do every day!

My dramatic voice and throat protection! Or am I a spy? Welcome to your Indian Family

I've very much enjoyed being part of an Indian family, it's been lovely to catch up with what's gone on over the last few years for them, it's been great to practice my Hindi and it's reassuring there are some people looking out for me.  I feel so welcome in their home - they've introduced me to so many family members, they let me borrow their smart phones if I need to check something, they showed me their 90's wedding video –  jam packed with amazing retro Indian special effects such as their pictures spinning round in a love heart and gods flashing across the screen.

Each evening at 9pm we settle down to watch our favourite Hindi soap opera - Salaam ee Ishk, packed full of drama.  Each love scene the soppy music starts and the actor's hair starts to blow in the wind as they stare longingly at one another.  They have the classic evil step mother who is the villain of the family and is always scheming.  I shout at the screen a lot reacting to the drama as it unfolds, despite not being able to understand a lot of what is being said, but it's fairly obvious and I get regular translations given to me. At home I never watch TV but it feels nice to have something familiar each evening and it's definitely entertaining.

Singing from the same sheet?

I’ve resumed lessons – but this time only 2 hours per day.  Given that the school I a meant to teach in hasn’t been open (due to unexpected construction) I have felt a bit like I’m just hanging around too much. However I realise this isn’t for long.  I do love our early morning singing sessions which are very meditative just singing lots of low notes to warm up the voice and doing scales.  I'm also being reaquanited with songs I haven't sung in five years.  Some are very beautiful but overall I'm already realising that, although it's incredible to sing in the Indian Classical style, it's so complex and isn't really where I want to focus my musical energy.

The singing I 've been involved with in England is so much about making music accessible to all and this is basically the opposite as the true singers are trained one on one for hours per day over a life time.  However it's helping me realise the styles of music that I do want to explore further next -  bluegrass, folk, gospel, old spirituals.  I think that what I'll most benefit from is the opportunity to develop my technique, to really sing from the belly and expand my range.

My first week in Varanasi

I spent some days acquiring an old fashioned Indian mobile phone, having completed my fair share of bureaucracy - filling in some forms, giving copies of my visa and passport and of course also passport photos - what hoop jumping as usual in India.

I've had a few trips to the tailor to fit Indian garments for me - I now have several kurtas (an above the knee length top with slits down the side) and some kurtis (same as kurta but longer).  I have way too many Indian clothes, but as soon I'll be teaching and am not just in backpacker areas it feels like the right thing to do to blend in more and it's quite fun as I get to wear a completely different style of clothing to anything I would normally wear.

The colours and patterns I select are nothing like I would wear at home and the leggings I wear in purple and green are also way brighter than anything I'd normally wear.  Yet people here would probably still say my style is quite demure as they love their bling and bright colours.  Seeing Indian men wander round in the classic Indian sparkly jumpers makes me chuckle - they are so in fashion here, they're amazing.

This photo doesn’t do the Indian sparkly jumper enough justice

I've also gone on a few trips to Anita's mother's house (known as 'nani' or grandmother) who also  tries very hard to feed me so that I fatten up.  It's quite amusing sitting in their house as several people chat, laugh, sometimes bicker and I try to pick up on what's going on but don't have much of a clue.  I just sit quietly and sip tea.  Last time I was there they had a special guest - a family relative, who came to deliver a wedding invitation as it's wedding season.  So now I have a wedding to attend on Tuesday evening, my first one and already a sari is being arranged for me to wear!

Mother away from home…

I feel a bit like I've slipped into the role of an Indian daughter!  In some ways this is lovely and it's nice to be cared for, but it's also difficult!  Anita is a wonderful woman, but she is extremely stubborn and refuses to let me do any washing, cleaning or helping. I feel really guilty as I sit there watching her do it, but she just won't let me and gets quite angry if I do. I think as it's undermining her role and she wants to welcome her guest.  So I guess I should just make the most of it whilst I can, I'm starting to let go but it's difficult.  Then once I leave Varanasi I'll be meeting my real mum, so the mothering may continue!  I think it wouldn't be so bad but at the moment I've had quite a free schedule and so feel like I'm just sitting around too much doing nothing.

I've been going out as much as I can – I know Anita is really grateful to have someone she can venture outside with.  She explained to me that it's difficult to go shopping alone as women still get inappropriate comments made about them  which I find unbelievable.  Luckily, as I can't understand anyone, I'm not scared to venture out alone as I am oblivious to what they are saying and I know I'm doing my best to be respectful in how I dress and behave.

Nearly every day I accompany Anita on some errand that needs doing, including buying new t-shirts for Rohit, fetching supplies and helping her to find a smart phone for Rohit (I'm the 'expert' with this apparently - again ironic as for anyone that knows me I am not so great with this stuff but the fact I can download an app is even advanced so I am also helping them with this).  I've been their mobile consultant helping when something isn't working, something new needs downloading or when they want help writing a message.

Anitaji shopping at a local roadside market

We've also been going for walks together around 6am in the morning for exercise before it's hot and busy.  The park is full of men and you certainly don't see women on their own. It's quite eye opening how much freedom we have at home, to not even have to think about that.  Anita shared with me that as a teenager she could run and played lots of basketball on a team, yet when she married this ended and she really missed it so much.  I can't imagine having to stop doing exercise because you get married and can't go out alone.  She also sits a lot when she teaches so I really understand why she wants to walk whilst I am here and why she is so keen on moving about doing housework.

The park I walk in every morning The next chapter

I'm really looking forward to starting teaching next week.  It's been a great fortnight but I've felt isolated at times or a bit stuck at the house and frustrated I can't do anything to help.  I've been going for walks to Assi Ghat, the most Southern of the ghats which is the nearest to the family home which has helped.  The ghats are the steps down to the holy river Ganges that people use to bathe their and wash their sins away, although on a physical level it’s some of the most polluted water in the world – the Indian ironies…

Assi Ghat, my place of rest

It's nice there as it's far more peaceful, I can make the most of the sun, there is less pollution and I get to use internet in cafes with wifi (if I'm lucky and it's working).  The atmosphere is just very beautiful and sacred.  It's also a great place to people watch as I drink chai and I've already had my first Indian 'Selfie' Pic – hilarious.  Missing all at home, but grateful to be here and see Anita and Rohit as well as my good friends the cows!

First Indian Selfie (so I had to get a copy!)

... the lynch pin of the Jam

Listening to this on the way to work, through frost fronds creeping sunlight and reminded (again) of how great this album is... absolutely of its time (never get why that is supposed to be a bad thing and 'timeless' such a great thing - being of its time has to be at least one of the goals, doesn't it?) in the sense that it doesn't really sound like anything else... the first bit, with the bass turned up, could be some kind of early Photek jam (that perfect tumbling, falling-down-the-stairs drum sound) before taking a slight turn into the kind of deep-seated, slow-burning mania of Comus, then adding in a bit of Bowie, maybe even Dylan at one point before...

Ah, I'm running out of references (and forgetting why I felt the need to mention them in the first place... Guess I'm still caught up in a wave of Silver Age Blog nostalgia where it was all about describing... now you can just listen and that's probably what you should be doing...

Ok, maybe not exactly like an early Photek jam.

I don't dream much, mainly because I don't sleep much. But when I do, and can remember it, I make a note of it. I'm looking for clues, really. I know from bitter experience that there's nothing more boring than being told someone else's dreams, so feel free not to read this post. I haven't tweaked any of the details, but I have, at least, tried to make it short and to the point.
I was in a holiday camp. It reminded me a little of the Butlins holidays I used to have as a kid, but it was all enclosed, so it may have even been a cruise ship, although it was apparently situated in Lancashire. At the top of the building/ship there was a large auditorium where loud but inoffensive techno music was playing. I looked at my phone and saw that the home screen had been replaced by a countdown - 29, 28, 27, etc.
When it hit zero, the room exploded with light and noise and I became weightless, as did everyone else. I wasn't expecting it, and wasn't quite sure what to do. Around me, people were enjoying the process and dancing and grooving in the air. It looked like fun, so I tried a few tentative moves. After sixty seconds we all floated slowly to the ground, all smiling. I looked at my phone, the countdown had begun again: 4.45, 4.44, 4.43…and I was filled with great excitement about shortly being able to fly again.
This went on for a bit and was very enjoyable, and I became ever more daring in my aerial choreography. Then a girl I used to go out with twenty five years ago came in and said she had a job interview and would I tuck her blouse in for her.      

Calling all contributors past and present  Carl and I have had a discussion about whether there could be a Best of the Decades Blog book. The blogs have featured some great writing over the years and it would be nice to give them some recognition. Also, Blogger will stop working at some point, people move onto other things, and it would be a shame to lose so many good posts.
Exactly what form this would take I don't know. We could follow Woebot's example and do it ourselves, or see if a publisher is interested.  But before going any further I would like to hear what other contributors think. So email your thoughts, pro or anti, to: belovedenemies [at] gmail.com
Even if you only posted one piece, I would still like your opinion. Readers who feel strongly are also welcome to express their views. 
Thanks,William

Calling all contributors past and present  Carl and I have had a discussion about whether there could be a Best of the Decades Blog book. The blogs have featured some great writing over the years and it would be nice to give them some recognition. Also, Blogger will stop working at some point, people move onto other things, and it would be a shame to lose so many good posts.
Exactly what form this would take I don't know. We could follow Woebot's example and do it ourselves, or see if a publisher is interested.  But before going any further I would like to hear what other contributors think. So email your thoughts, pro or anti, to: belovedenemies [at] gmail.com
Even if you only posted one piece, I would still like your opinion. Readers who feel strongly are also welcome to express their views. 
Thanks,William

Calling all contributors past and present  Carl and I have had a discussion about whether there could be a Best of the Decades Blog book. The blogs have featured some great writing over the years and it would be nice to give them some recognition. Also, Blogger will stop working at some point, people move onto other things, and it would be a shame to lose so many good posts.
Exactly what form this would take I don't know. We could follow Woebot's example and do it ourselves, or see if a publisher is interested.  But before going any further I would like to hear what other contributors think. So email your thoughts, pro or anti, to: belovedenemies [at] gmail.com
Even if you only posted one piece, I would still like your opinion. Readers who feel strongly are also welcome to express their views. 
Thanks,William

Am I really doing this again?

I can't believe I'm back in India - it's been five whole years since my last trip and this year has seen me back on the road and in traveler mode.  In 2011, I vowed to come back in the not too distant future and now I finally have and am most grateful for the opportunity.  I've felt strongly about returning for a long time, as if it was something I had to do otherwise I'd forever regret it.

Yet despite knowing deep down it will be an incredible trip, I still experienced a lot of the pre travelling apprehension –  that sense of the unknown, wondering how much it would have changed, how I'd feel once I was actually there, awareness I was leaving behind the choir that I'd so proudly built up, saying goodbye to friends and family and basically any sense of stability, routine and familiarity.  Yet I'm now realising in many ways how much more familiar and normal this backpacker way of life somehow feels to me and so within that there is a great sense of stability for me!

A home from my Hertford home – Hertford Lane in Kolkata! Failing to plan, is planning to fail (except in India)

Before leaving England, India logistics felt a bit overwhelming - the two simple tasks I wanted to complete both turned out to be way more difficult than I felt they should be.  Firstly, I needed to book a guesthouse for my arrival to Kolkata, but ringing around the 'nice' budget ones recommended by Lonely Planet (of course), I quickly found they were all full.  On my previous trip I never booked ahead but I wanted to know I would have somewhere to stay upon arrival after a long journey, not yet quite being in my free flow traveller mode.

Secondly I knew that I wanted to get the train from Kolkata to Varanasi as soon as possible upon arrival. I'd made arrangements to visit and stay with my wonderful music teachers/Indian parents for five weeks, who were probably the greatest reason I felt such a need to return.  I knew that staying with them would be the best way to get back into the Indian culture, Hindi and that I'd be comfortable and well looked after in their home with good food to eat and a nice bed to sleep in.

Yet, busy train routes in India become booked up quickly months in advance.  I could see online all the trains I wanted to take were filling up fast. It turns out that booking trains online, which used to be simple, is now close to impossible for foreigners as you require an Indian mobile to receive the necessary 'validation code'.  In theory you can get around this by emailing a copy of your passport and some 'basic details' to an indicated email address.  Yet after two weeks of emailing back and forth and trying to set up an account with different email addresses, I gave up with the bureaucracy as a different person kept answering my query with another reason my details weren't correct which was so frustrating.

And thus, I remembered lesson number one (how could I forget?)  that if you can surrender to India, it will make your life a great deal easier. I could make plans as much as I liked, but in India you have to expect the unexpected, so it's a fatal flaw to try and control everything because you'll just end up really frustrated, which was totally happening to me. So I just had to let go of being in control of everything and to remember that it will all work out, it always does.

Surrendering

Through the wonders of the internet I found some guesthouses that were still available.  They were more expensive that I was looking for (at ten pounds per night which is actually my daily budget living out here) but prices in India are rising fast and Kolkata is known for it's dodgy accommodation which is limited to mainly dingy rooms at a high price. So essentially I got to pick the best of a bad bunch.

I went for one that I knew would be in a good location in the backpacker area.   This is where my previous Kolkata knowledge came in so useful, as I was confident that at least there I could meet other travellers, access internet and find some good places to eat.  The 'Hotel Continental' had three great reviews at the top and about twenty advising not to stay (bed bugs, cleanliness, dingy, small etc). But t I really just needed a bed for the night.

In the end my guesthouse turned out not so bad as I'd had really low expectations.  It wasn't worth what I paid but I had a decent bed, the room was fairly clean and I had my own bathroom.  It was quite noisy, but it's hard to find any peace in this city and it felt safe and secure and was well located (if somewhat hard to find).  I couldn't really have hoped for more given the reviews, I was just glad my room at least was bedbug and stench free.  It's funny how quickly my standards can adapt from my what I am used to in England.

Adjusting to Indian guesthouses in Kolkata – this was a pleasant surprise! Lost is the new found

On the day I arrived I decided to brave the city and walk to the Eastern Railways booking office, a place near the train station where it's possible to book trains under the 'tourist quota'.  They reserve a certain amount of seats for foreign travellers on busy train routes and I was hoping under this there'd still be space.  Fuelled only adrenaline I braved the madness of the busy streets and had to get used to the confused looks and people trying to sell me things.

Finding the booking office, felt like such an achievement.  As I have no smart phone I'd printed a map with more detail than in the book but what did not help was that it turns out that many of Kokata's streets have two names - the Colonial name and the new name, either of which could appear on a street sign and on the map. Also as the roads are so big it's hard to know when to cross as you can't see the street sign. Added to that crowds of people are everywhere and you have to cluster in small groups to have the power to cross the busy roads, edging confidently forwards until the traffic starts driving around you as they can see the direction you are all heading in.  Terrifying, exhilarating and hilarious all at once.

So I just went in a general direction, trying to keep my bearings. When I did have to reluctantly get out my the map and random Indians gave me directions, I ignored them as apparently it is common for people just to want to be polite and helpful even when they have no clue!  This is so true and if I'd followed the street man's directions I would have headed totally in the wrong direction and yet he seemed so adamant of where he was pointing me.

What I did do was ask lots of official looking people along the way, such a security guards in government and bank buildings who were very helpful and seemed quite excited to be talking to a foreigner.  So I found it after forty five minutes and when I arrived I was so proud of myself.  When I managed to also book onto the train that was advertised as full online I was delighted, the form filling and waiting around had paid off.  I am totally winning at India - phew.

The backpacker hub of Sudder Street Arriving in topsy turvy India

Despite my initial nerves, I had so many nice encounters even just on the journey there - with chatty Indians returning home, with the security men in Gatwick asking me to play them a song on guitar and with another girl who I had to wait with for ages before my bag arrived.  By the time I was stepping through the doors at the airport I felt a huge sense of excitement sweep over me. I felt the warmth of the sun on my skin, which I'd been missing so much in England.  Then I got a whiff of that familiar, musty air (honestly not a bad smell, though there are definitely some of those around).  There was a sense of familiarity among the madness and it didn't feel like much had changed or five years had passed.

And it is mad – yet of all the big cities Kolkata is my favourite kind of mad.  The best place to people watch - my taxi journey to Sudder Street, the backpacker area, took me through familiar sights of traffic filled streets full of cars, taxis, motorbikes all beeping their horns as much and loudly as possible to indicate their presence. In time this would probably drive me mad, but at the moment it still has a nostalgic feel to it as I walk the streets or hear it through my guesthouse window.  To us, it seems odd but in India, not beeping would be rude as it is alerting every one of your presence!

I was reminded of the colours and smells of India, so much brightness – in people's clothes, the trinkets and treasures the street stalls are selling, the billboard adverts everywhere showing how much of a consumer culture India is turning in to trying to sell us a Western lifestyle with an Indian twist.  That set amongst the dusty, drab, crumbling colonial style buildings makes a unique place, yet I find it quite mesmerising.

There's so much life everywhere.  People are just going about their business, Indians on the street polishing shoes, cutting hair, selling chai, drying out their washing in the middle of the road, reading newspapers, chattering away at the bus stop - it's just so fascinating to watch.

So happy to have chai back in my life; This stuff is seriously addictive. Times are a changing

I'm so curious this trip as to how much things in India will have changed.  Kolkata still has a very similar feel to last time, the back packer area hasn't expanded and is still small and has that lively but dilapidated character.  It does cater for backpackers but there's still also a local feel to it, with Indians going about their daily life and many of the businesses there exist not to cater soley for tourists. There is still the same mix of extreme richness and extreme poverty.  Prices have gone up a bit, but I am still sussing out how much by.  You can still buy a small chai for 5R which never ceases to delight me and I am already using them as a way to wake me up in the morning to overcome the jet lag.

However I am sad to see the decline of the Kolkata style clay tea cup - to me this is classic Kolkata, as much as the yellow taxis are, and I was so astounded by them last time taking several home- the clay cups can just be thrown on the floor and will disintegrate in the rain. They look most charming and are nice to drink from.  Yet very few road side tea stands have them anymore, that horrible plastic cup has replaced them which is discarded on the floor.  We need to start the 'Bring back the Kolkata Cup' Campaign!  This is a tradition we should be moving towards globally, not away from surely?

#Savekolkatascup

My little Kolkata Chai Cup 

I also came across the same beggar women as last time, who I have to say, look not too bad, they have somewhat of a relaxed swagger, they are chatty and wandering around you can tell this feels like their home turf.  I think their way of giving tourists henna is a fair way to earn money and a fair exchange for those who want it.  However I did hear from other travellers that after long conversations they would still ask the traveller to buy some rice for their kids, which is fine, but then at the shop they would charge 700R it should be about 20R).  I don't like this scam, in comparison the henna seems like quite a fine idea.

Their kids run around the streets together holding hands, the youngest maybe 2.5 years old being carried by elder siblings.  The children just wander in pairs without adults, easily managing the traffic and just playing.  It is incredible how independent these young children can be when they have to be/their parents let them be.  It does make me think that treating children as young, makes them act that way but they are capable of a lot from a young age.

A big change I am still adjusting to is the presence of Wi Fi.  On previous trips the internet cafes were packed full of backpackers communicating home.  My favourite one of these was always buzzing.  They did well as they would also sell Ali Baba pants, brightly coloured bags and sequined wall hangings, but this has now closed as everyone just uses either phones, tablets or laptops to access Wi Fi in the guesthouses or in cafes. There's something I miss about the good old days of not being connected all of the time, I think this is really going to change the nature of my trip as for the first time travelling I now have a laptop with me.  I just hope café's with Wifi won't just turn into the London tube carriages - where everyone is on their device and no one is interacting with each other! That was so much the magic of travel, meeting strangers who you'd otherwise never connect with.

Back to my traveller ways

I already have a favourite street side chai place where you can sit and people watch without too much disturbance.  Their Indian food of curry, rotis and omelettes breakfast is just divine.  That plus 3 chais cost me the grand total of a pound – amazing.

As I sat down, the chai man pointed to another white girl and said 'your friend'.  Turns out she was, at least from that moment on for the rest of that day which was really nice to have someone to wander and explore with.  Another girl from England, also a true traveller who had returned to India after seven years – we had a lot in common and we spent the whole day chatting away and visiting temples and eating street food, being super grateful to be back and grateful for the company as we adjust back to India life.

My favourite chai drinking spot on Sudder Street, Kolkata

We visited the ISKON temple - aka Hari Krishna temple - I hadn't heard much about the story of Krishna until now.  He is an incarnation of 'Vishnu' the god who is known as 'the sustainer of life' in Hinduism.  Apparently he was quite the cute, cheeky baby hence lots of depictions of him as a child and then quite the charmer as a young man, drawing lots of attention from the ladies. Hari Krishas  show their devotion to Krishna through their singing and chanting, all of which is to send out love to him and the world. I didn't see any Hari Krishna's as I do parading around Oxford Street but the food at Govinda's next door was super tasty (as it is in the London branch).

In the afternoon we visited the Kali temple - Kali is a fierce goddess who is associated a lot with mother nature but also death - she has a fierceness about her but is also very protective.  Often she is depicted with bones around her neck and holding weapons.  She is the goddess of Kolkata and we enjoyed seeing the temple with it's full Indianess - flowers, incense, crowds, blessings, a 'small' request for donation in return for a blessing, lots of bling trinkets and tacky (in a charming way) shiny gifts such as necklaces and bangles. A few 'one photo please missss'…  Yet it was that time of day when the sun was setting and walking back through the alleys, we experienced a more peaceful side of the city and the beautiful light of the city.

Being able to speak some basic Hindi, which I learnt on my last trip, has truly been wonderful. It's a great conversation starter, you can have a bit of a joke, it indicates you already 'know what you're doing' and it's nice to be able to pick up bits of what people are talking about.  I honestly know very little but have just worked out what top ten phrases are useful for everyday life as a traveller!

Getting back into the swing of India – visiting the Kali Temple in Kokata

I quickly remembered the traveller tricks of the trade - holding onto and always trying to aquire change as people never want to give you any, you have to spend your big notes in the bigger places like 'proper shops' so that you can gather change to get rickshaws, buy street food etc.  I have also resumed my Indian English voice, which is most strange sounding thing but it genuinely helps people understand me so much better.

I try to look like I know where I'm going, even when I have no clue.  If people try to engage with you to sell you something and you don't want it, just don't even start a dialogue.  It's hard turning off a part of the friendly traveller, but experience has taught me that sometimes this just has to be the way and you learn through intuition who you can and can't talk to.  I've already politely declined a few requests to give my 'Email ID' so that the person can practice English and had to ignore some child beggars, it's so horrible to do but I just can't handle opening that flood gate right now - that's a whole other blog.

This evening I head to Varanasi, I have enjoyed the chaos of Kolkata but I am also really happy to stay with my Indian family where I know I will be well looked after, can gently be reacquainted with the culture and I get to have wonderful singing times again.  :-)

I'm listening to Moondog. It keeps coming up. I can't explain what it wants with me or where this relationship is going but it is going... It's ineffable and uncertain, it's past-commentary, almost incorrigible. People don't still listen to Moondog, do they? I'd always been suspicious.

Great hat though. Digging that Merlin-chic.

Fifteen years ago, I worked for the Civil Service, in one of the huge provincial offices that used to be dotted around the United Kingdom like a necklace of bee hives. This one was in the North of England, but not to its farthest and fullest extent. The Department of Work and Pensions building was on a site where social housing had once sat. A few hundred years before then, it had been the hill where public executions were carried out, so there was a fairly high probability that it was haunted by at least one disgruntled working class ghost. Around 1,500 people worked in the building, and there was a shop and a pub and a gym and a canteen and a dentist's and hairdressers and, right in the middle, a swimming pool. This building was a public sector citadel, a hub of hubbub, a palace of bureaucracy nicknamed (by me, it never caught on) 'The Ministry of Love'.
As the staff swarmed in each morning, they were met by three immutable things: two chunky security guards, both called Ken, looking at every single ID, and a sign that, rather like the menu outside a bistro, displayed the day's specials - the BIKINI STATE, the alert code that indicated how close the UK was to war, terrorism or civil disorder. The alert codes ran from white to red, white being stable, red meaning that shit is either coming down or is on its way, scudding across the clouds to take out this building and everyone in it in a flash of blinding light.



In the five years I worked there, the alert state was always at Black Special, an intermediate level that meant that there was an increased likelihood of attack, but no defined target. It could have been worse, of course, but, instead, was just incredibly sinister. Something awful was in the air, but it was also secret, unknown, undesignated, undiscovered. It was a constant, low hum of foreboding. But, ultimately, there was nothing you could do, so we did nothing - or, rather, we got on with our jobs, working towards a future we couldn't be sure would arrive. The peril of the world situation has not improved since I left the civil service, but they have changed the way it is measured. The Bikini State was replaced in 2006 by UK Threat Levels. The Threat Levels rely on words rather than colours, and run from Low to Critical. The current level is Severe, and has been since August, 2014. This means an attack is highly likely. It's worth quoting the expected response to such an alert, remembering that perhaps a hundred people were consulted around the wording of the definition:'Additional and sustainable protective security measures reflecting the broad nature of the threat combined with specific business and geographical vulnerabilities and judgements on acceptable risk'.

In other words, just do what you can and be afraid, be very afraid. In other other words you are probably fucked, but we'll have to let you know. I preferred Black Special, with its cheerful pink lettering, slither of hope and diplomatic inversion of Lottery logic that, hey, with a thousand targets out there, it might not be you.

Blue sky makes all the differenceThe sky was blue today after yet another storm hit the UK. This was the 9th storm this winter which is more than the average.
Rain approachingStorms in the UK are certainly not international news, no twisters or snowmaggedons. Just rather dull and continuous rain, accompanied by howling winds. There hasn't even been thunder and lightening to add some excitement. Some areas have experienced flooding or downed power lines, yet it is theunusual pattern of weather that makes it news-worthy for me.
Very wet and muddy dog walksIt is an El Nino year, which has spread a mixed bag of extreme weather across the world. Even so, I can't just shrug it off and expect next year to be 'normal' again. Have we had a 'normal' year in the last decade? A year when rainfall or temperature  records haven't been broken?
I wish rainbows were the only thing coming from this coal-fired power station.The climate change predictions for the UK (that I read a good few years ago now), indicated that winters would be milder and wetter, with much less frequency of snow. Summers would also be milder and wetter, except for in the Southeast. This describes 2015 pretty well. Last summer was warm, but can anybody remember a day that was actually hot, like sunbathing-on-the-beach hot? We kept wondering when summer would start. And this winter has been exceptionally mild so far, though very wet and stormy.
Are we moving to a 'season-less' climate in the UK, with far less definition between spring and summer or autumn and winter? That is not to say that every year will be like that, just that a trend may be emerging. I mean we can't expect to ignore all the danger signs about climate change and not have to face the consequences.
Lovely traditional stone terraced housingThe good news is that buildings in the UK are built to withstand this kind of weather, at least most of the dwellings are. The majority of dwellings are built of brick or stone, and feel solid and secure whilst the wind is howling round them. The style is for low-rise, compact and often terraced dwellings. Even hurricane strength winds only result in a few chimney pots being toppled, trees falling and power lines being damaged. Watch the scenes in other areas of the world and whole streets of homes get reduced to matchsticks.Old brick built factory still looking amazingThis is also why we have some of the oldest housing stock - brick houses are expensive and slow to build (compared to timber) and as they last well and are expensive to replace, we keep them. Even more so with stone dwellings. My friend's cottage is over 300 years old, and the thick stone walls would have taken an enormous amount of energy to demolish.Any excuse for more nice photosNow I know that old houses get a bad name for not being energy efficient, but that is not entirely true. They tend to be small, so have less volume to heat, and if they are terraced they reduce heat loss by having less external wall area. Houses were built with good natural light in all rooms, before we had electricity and had a cellar and a pantry instead of a fridge or freezer. 
That is not to say that older buildings don't feel cold and draughty, but it is worth bearing in mind that a new efficient double-glazed window provides no more insulation than an old solid brick wall. Modern buildings with vast glazed areas are really not a great idea if you wish to reduce your heating bills. You will find that there is more focus on building houses airtight these days, to reduce unwanted draughts, and adding additional insulation to any building will always improve the thermal comfort and efficiency.Survived since 1483Other bloggers have noticed changes in their weather patterns too, sometimes major scary events like the forest fires and drought in Tasmania that Jo mentioned, or even small signs of change such as still picking raspberries in November as Mrs Thrift noted. I would love to hear of any changes that you may have noticed, wherever you are. It may be plants flowering earlier or areas flooding that have never been flooded before. It all helps to build up a picture of how the climate is changing and prepare us for what might come next.

You can see Holly Herndon doing this kind of thing I guess but, if Sesame Street is still going, I can't see it happening again in quite the same way. Kids TV used to be a kind of deregulated fug, full of off-cuts of audio and odd animation even in the most banal settings but now... Well, maybe there's corners of the internet / cable TV where something like this prospers; it's not on Netflix.

Is it really true old age when you start bitching about Kids TV not being avant-garde ??

What next? Breaking out in hives over the Gold Standard, I guess. Fistfights about the fifty year anniversary celebrations of 2nd Annual Report's release?

Jeff Harrington's work also found at

http://parnasse.com/jh/blog/

It is an impossible task to understand the depth, breadth, height and area of man's desperation to fill the gaping void of existence with stuff. In some cases, this hunger may lead to positive things, like a dedication to medicine, or exploration, or the authorship of a great book or a timeless LP. It could be countered with love and kindness, or by a devotion of one's life to a noble cause. Mostly, however, this bottomless desire manifests itself, particularly in men, with a time filling, life squandering fixation on trivia, ephemera and miscellany, which, usually, is far from the spiritual quest it is presented at, instead being a massive waste of time, brains and cash, and a generally really stupid thing to do.

I found out recently that there were men who were obsessed with warning sirens. This did not particularly surprise me (there will be someone somewhere who has every type of hoover bag, or collects the autographs of Micronesian heads of state), but it made me wonder. A warning siren is a harsh, horrible thing - deliberately so. You're not supposed to like it, let alone stand there filming it go off for ten minutes before uploading it to YouTube to share with others. A warning siren evokes panic and fear - screams and disorder, children being trampled underfoot, short notice and long odds against survival. Yet, there are men (I'm assuming they are all men, I'm almost certainly right) who have made it their mission to seek out these clarions of chaos, and travel from county to county, country to country, to see examples, document them, and to place a tick against their name and location on a list. It seems crazy, doesn't it?And then I watched the films and heard the sirens for myself. They are extraordinary. I can't say that they would ever become an obsession for me, but I felt more than a little of their baleful gravitational pull, and remembered that the original siren song was powerful enough to lure men to their death. These eldritch shrieks, infinitely varied, but all full of dread and doom, and the simple but effective convolutions of pipes and horns that deliver them, are utterly compelling - although I'd happily live my life without ever having to hear them again.



 

I don't know the protocol, the series of events and orders that might finally set the sirens wailing. I don't know whether they will serve as an actual warning or merely as melancholic countermelody to our destruction. Perhaps they will be the final annoyance on this infinitely annoying planet: we won't even be allowed to die in peace. What I do know is that The Crisis is coming, and the sirens will have their part to play.

And therein lays the dilemma of the true obsessive. When the sirens go off, we are all finished. But there are those amongst us who will welcome this as a fair exchange for hearing those sirens en masse, for finally filling that hole within them, albeit for perhaps only a few seconds. Given the well-established link between extreme obsession and sexual stimulation, it's horrible to think that, when The Crisis comes, so will these men, absolutely in their element, capturing the chorus of doom on their expensive recorders and furiously wanking their way into Armageddon.  

* My thanks to JPa311979 for the film clips. His interest is clearly sound in general, rather than simply being mad for sirens and, as such, he is absolutely NOT the target of this post.

One of the changes with going to work each day, is that I can no longer walk the dog whenever I feel like it. Popping out at lunchtime or in between rain showers has been replaced with a walk after dinner, in the dark, whatever the weather. This seems like a bit of a disadvantage in winter, when it is mainly cold, wet and very muddy.

Where daytime walks offer the opportunity for foraging, photos, ball throwing and chatting with other dog walkers, dark evening walks are....well dark....though somehow still very lovely.
To start with I tried my normal walk through the muddy woods, but slipping and sliding through the mud and tripping over roots that I couldn't see was downright dangerous. I could have taken a torch, but it only lights a short distance and spoils my night vision. After a spectacular fall off a wet slippery stile, I headed for more open spaces, where on a cloudy night or with the moon out, visibility is fair.
And now the cold crisp evenings are wonderful, and blissfully quiet with all the people tucked up in their cosy warm houses. Even rainy evenings are really not that bad, but the best are when the stars come out.
The bright stars at Orion's belt are easy to spotMy knowledge of stars is rubbish, but I really wanted to know if what I thought was Orion's belt really was. So I got a stargazing app, and I'm loving it. Yes, if you ever see the silhouette of a woman stood out in the dark staring up at her mobile held above her head - it's me :-) Of course it is easier to just lay in bed and aim it at the ceiling and the app still shows you the stars, but I like standing alone on the hill overlooking all the twinkly lights from the town and feeling like a speck in this vast universe.I could always find the saucepan shape but didn't know it was Ursa Major, the Great BearAnother night-walk discovery is that all the trees have dog tags. On a windy night they jingle at you as you walk past. It did take me a while to realise that we were not being followed everywhere by a cat with a bell on its collar.
I have known for a while that the bigger, older trees, that maybe need protecting have numbered tags, and I am sure this must help to keep track of which tree is which, and find them when they get lost. But all the trees? Right down to the scrawny little things, that are more of a large shrub? Surely not!
If anyone knows the purpose then please do share it, as I am sure there must be some good intentions somewhere behind this madness? Is someone watching and recording all the trees being wiped out by climate change? Or maybe it is just part of the council's maintenance program? It just seems a waste to me. The time and money spent hammering tags into trees and recording them all, could surely have been better spent on planting new trees, to help our degraded landscape heal.
Next time you listen to the wind whispering through the trees, don't be surprised to find that they jingle now instead!

This is Dr. Milton Zigo, Physicist, Academic and amateur cutlery bender. Zigo has been absent since New Years Eve, and was last seen weaving his rather unsteady way across the quadrangle at the University of Exeter, where he has taught for the last twelve years. 
Zigo knows stuff, science stuff, and we need him on our side or to be definitely dead. Please note: this photograph was taken at a party, so he is unlikely to still be holding a handful of twisted forks. 

Well, this looks pretty good... twinkling, with a little shudder; gert big beats as well and the merest hint of mushroom madness, psi(locybe) breakdowns; the fear of burping up your hash-pipes in the heart of the wood... horrifying, in it's way and apparently put together by someone who's got still occasionally for that flashbacked thousand-yard stare but (maybe) has managed to come out the other side, still smiling.

Buy it here, if you fancied a go.

This tripped me out on the way to work today. I don't even know how it got into the car.

Yesterday I made almond croissants! Yes the kitchen smelled delicious and I do love the whole anticipation of cooking, especially when it is a bit of an unplanned adventure.

I popped out to the supermarket at 8pm, and found lots of lovely reduced items, including croissants for 40p. Croissants always remind me of holidays in France, though these would be but a pale comparison of the freshly baked croissants from the boulangerie.


This summer my cousin had told me how delicious almond croissants were - they are truly divine. To use up leftover croissants, they are filled with frangipane and baked again to make more of a sweet Danish.
I used a simple frangipane recipe shown below, but it used vanilla essence, whereas I will be using almond essence in future for a stronger almond flavour. This is my first attempt, but next time I will also spread more mixture on top to stop the croissants getting too dark. And maybe a sprinkle of sliced almonds to top them off.
100g ground almonds100g butter80g golden caster sugar
1 egg
1 tbsp. vanilla extract (or almond)

Mix all the ingredients together. Stuff and spread your croissants, then bake them for 18 mins at around 180 deg C. This made enough mixture to generously stuff 4 croissants and would have stretched to 6.



I also bought 3 packets of dill reduced to 10p each. I have hung them in the kitchen to dry out, so that I can chop and store them for sprinkling on salmon. It is nice to feel that I have got a bargain and saved some food from being wasted.

I should probably mention that I have started a new job and I am back working the 9 to 5 again. 2015 was so busy for my little consultancy, that I had been working days and nights to try and keep up. Now that I am starting to get my evenings back I can enjoy cooking and blogging again.

I am not sure how things will work out with my allotment. Spring is fast approaching and I have barely started the gardening jobs that were due back in the Autumn! I am not ready to give up on it yet though. I just love that I still have a supply of my home grown potatoes and squash in the garage, and raspberries and runner beans in the freezer. It is so nice to announce at each meal that I have grown the cabbage, or the tomatoes in the sauce.


What began as a journey to be more green, by eating organic, locally grown food and reducing waste, seemed like hard work from the outset. Yet it has turned out to be rather enjoyable. Food makes me happy. I enjoy growing it, shopping for it, cooking it and sharing the end result with family and friends. I love that I substituted a handful of weeds for parsley in my stuffing at Christmas and no one was the wiser. But most of all I love..... almond Croissants ;-)

What do you love about food?

I like women. I like women so much that I'd rather they ruled the world. I think they'd be so much better at it, and there'd be far less chest beating and tanks and genocide and things. During The Crisis, women will be at risk from their most deadly natural predator: men. Let's face it, the female gender are in danger in our so called civillised society, so life is bound to be unpleasantly precarious for them once our law and order system is reduced to a educationally subnormal man-child who likes dressing up in uniforms and hanging out with a hungry pack of stray dogs. I am not in any way suggesting that women are incapable of looking after themselves, but nobody should underestimate the aggression and danger posed by ruthless men who find that they have nothing to lose. It worries me, it really does. 




The stock response, from sympathetic men and women alike, is 'well, just kick 'em in the balls' and, to a certain extent, that pretty much sums up the thrust of this bulletin. But just kicking someone in the balls is the same as just slicing someone's toes off with a smatchet, or just breaking their oesophagus with a big stick: easy to say; much, much harder to do. For a start, regardless of your gender, your first and smartest response to any kind of physical threat should be to get the fuck away from it. If you can possibly help it, don't get anywhere near their balls. Run fast, and keep running, as far away as you can. If this isn't possible, of course, you are going to have to scrap. It won't be easy. No man is going to let you kick them in the balls early doors, they are born wise to it: male children are born cupping their testicles, a pre-emptive wince on their tiny, pink faces. To this end, it is vital that you have a few more moves than a ball kick in your repertoire: a gouge, a chop, a punch. Learn defensive moves. Grow your nails, especially the thumb. Know how to get out of holds. 

Most importantly, remember that this is a fight, and it's fight that you must win. All people contain hidden reserves of strength, and you must access this in times of trouble in the same way that a parent suddenly finds themselves able to lift a car from their pinioned child. Without wishing to become lurid, you must be aware that your attacker does not have your best interests at heart: he is not going to do anything other than hurt and degrade you, and he must not get away with this. Your first duty is to protect yourself. Your next instinct will be to hurt him, to nullify him. Only do this if you can do so without putting yourself back into danger.



So, The Balls. The balls is a rather jaunty term for that area of the male body that houses the penis and testicles, the reproductive organs that men think so very important (well, they obviously are, but not so much on an individual basis). A smack on the penis itself will result in little more than a shocked expression, so you need to focus on the undercarriage, the recess of the groin, where the testes hang like fat pink bats. This is your target, an area of great sensitivity, so much so that you can cause excruciating discomfort simply by flicking them with the outside of your hand. Catching them with a foot or a fist will cause great pain. Squeezing them will prove excruciating. Be emphatic in your grip and relentless in your pressure, they will get the message. If you are squeamish, please remember that, for the most part, the agony will only be temporary, although, as with any defensive move, there is a chance that you may permanently damage your attacker. Them's the busts. But don't feel too sorry for him, he is YOUR ATTACKER after all. Who knows, you may have put him out of business once and for all. 



Always remember, the second he is incapacitated your best bet is to escape, quickly. If you can immediately find other people or angry animals you trust, you could set them on him before he has recovered. If you feel the need to take revenge on his recumbent, squirming form or, indeed, see yourself as a vigilante ridding a horrible world of terrible people, then you probably need to do something a little more definite, but this is always a matter of conscience. This is not a halfway measure, so if you can't walk away then you must either kill him or permanently incapacitate him. In the post-Crisis world, however, maiming or disabling will not be any kind of mercy, so be careful not to be too kind, it will be cruel. 

Take your revenge and, if there is a pitchfork around, use it, and leave his body out as a warning to the others.

A PREMONITION
A few weeks ago I had a dream. It may even be considered a nightmare, although I was not so much frightened by it as profoundly unsettled. The dream-mare, which was in black and white and had a similar stylistic mood to an episode of The Outer Limits, featured a train compartment and a man who clearly represented me but had a much better wardrobe. The train was extraordinarily busy. I don't mean that it was rush hour busy, with people stood in the aisle and rather uncomfortably wedged together, the sort of scenario accompanied by the smell of frustration and unwashed clothing: this was a different type of busy altogether. The compartment resembled an ant hill, a place alive with frenzied, seemingly random activity - or perhaps a slide seen under a microscope, full of swarming germs. People moved around the compartment seemingly without any control over their bodies, bumping into each other, rubbing up against each other. There was no eroticism here, this was horrible: an involuntary dance from which there was no peace, not a moment of stillness or a second of calm or quietude. 

In a corner, my avatar, clinging to a dangling strap, trying to distance himself but buffeted again and again by the other passengers, some of whom looked at him apologetically, some defiantly, but most as if he were not there at all.  The man pushed through the scrum of people and moved into the corridor, rattled the door handle. Locked. Very quickly, the corridor filled with the same helpless, hopeless people as before, and he found himself pressed into the door, his face squashed against the glass, half registering the indistinct outside rushing by. Then, suddenly, everyone disappeared apart from the smartly dressed man. The train stopped. There was no announcement, no punchline, but I woke up convinced that the man had finally escaped from the madding crowd in the way that people have been escaping misery and unbearable circumstances for eons: by dying.

I'm not a scientist, so I can't be sure of what the dream meant. It came at a time when my life was full of pressure, and full of people, so it was perhaps influenced by that. The message, if there is one, is that life is relentless and restless and people simply won't leave you the fuck alone. I don't know what to do with this message. There is virtually no practical response to it. Perhaps it isn't a message at all. It doesn't require a reply. It is not a warning, as it is already happening. It seems more like a flat, fatal statement of fact, like 'You're never going to be a millionaire' or 'Eric Morecambe is dead': an unpalatable but immutable piece of information that you simply have to file away and live with. So I'm living with it, but I can't help but notice now how many other people there are out there*. Tricky things these dreams, they continue to work when you're awake.  




AN APPARITIONIn the town where I now rather begrudgingly live, there is a neglected area that used to have something to do with the canals and is now largely deserted, apart from at night when it becomes a hotbed of vice and intoxication, of dogging, drugs and prostitution. It is place full of empty units, things that used to be something but are now nothing, less than nothing, and a little less every day. Almost everything seems to be under a bridge. The town's prison is there, surrounded by a smooth, dirty brown wall and identified by a sign that says in an informal font (Mistral, thank you, Andrew Demetrius)) 'Welcome to OUR Prison'. I wish I'd made that up, but it's 100% true.     Just before you get to this fun factory / penal collective there is a bridge over a river. On one side, water rushes down a slope before meeting an abrupt but very definite drop. Here, in the broiling water, float a strange, eerie selection of tyres and balls of all shapes, sizes and colours, some free, others enclosed in the hollow 'o' of a worn out radial, trapped in groups of twos and threes, bobbing wildly but never breaking free. It is uncertain how these objects got there, how far they have travelled or how long it took them to arrive - but now they are stuck, having met an immovable object that resists the force that has carried them there. The worst thing is that this is not a case of arriving and, realising there is no way forward, settling. There is no settling. Instead, this is a relentless, exhausting existence, a never ending battle, like drowning all day, every day, but never sinking to the bottom. Without any outside agency the balls and tyres would butt up against the weir wall forever, or at least until the water froze or became thick sludge or dried up completely. It is a horror. It is horrible. 
At night, I think about the balls and the tyres and the branches and their pointless, endless struggle and I feel afraid. I see my corpse caught in the turmoil, stuck like Ahab on the whale, waving not drowning, deader and deader, but never at peace. I get up and turn all the lights on, as if to reassure myself that The Crisis hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet. Soon, I will flick the switch and nothing will happen.  

*   The Crisis will be a big help in this regard.
** Mistral. Thank you, Andrew Demetrius. 

Life is like this.

I read recently that the Yeti hasn't been seen by anybody since 2006, a conspicuously long gap after living in close proximity to human beings for hundreds of years. The Tibetans do not believe for a second that the Yeti is dead, but his absence worries his neighbours: what does the Yeti know that they don't? And where the hell has the Loch Ness Monster got to?
Generally speaking, sightings of all cryptozoological creatures are down, and UFO reports are at their lowest since the end of World War Two. These complementary issues can be interpreted in two ways, neither of them particularly good. Let's go back to the Yeti as our example for the first interpretation. Has he disappeared by default or design? Is it a forced migration or a tactical withdrawal? Or maybe he just got sick of us and our smells and noises and hissy fits and hydroelectric plants and simply wandered out into the wilderness, very deliberately climbing a little higher than we can follow. Perhaps he knows something bad is coming and wants to remove himself from the source of the problem: human beings. Yeti's no fool, he'll come back when it's all over to make his bed on our bleached and broken bones. It's the same for all the cryptids: they can smell bad vibes. So perhaps Nessie and Big Foot and Ogopogo and Chupacabras are keeping their heads down, just as Aliens are giving us a wide berth: they'll be back to probe what's left in due course. This is bad, very bad. How long will it be before birds fly south and just stay there; before bears go into permanent hibernation; before eels decide to give the Sargasso Sea a miss this year? Nature is backing away from us.
Conversely, let's say that there's no such thing as the Yeti, no such thing as Nessie, no such thing as aliens. With that in mind, it's not at all surprising that no-one is reporting encounters with them. The issue is, however, that, previously, people were seeing them all the time: they had a major presence for something that didn't actually exist. So, why aren't people filing false claims about them now? Why aren't people still pretending to have married Big Foot, or claiming to have been whisked away to Venus for intrusive medical experimentation? Is it a failure of imagination, or a loss of hope? When people stop making shit up, you know we're in trouble.
As with everything on this blog, there are no answers, no solutions, no conclusion, just a bad feeling, and a dull ache about The Crisis to come.

In a surprise statement, the ARTS-GOV computer has announced that, from now on, all British films must star Laurence Harvey. The Lithuanian born actor was unavailable for comment, having died in 1973. 

Lips. Lips are wonderful things: useful, decorative, sensitive, erogenous. Many of the best things that life has to offer are experienced through the lips: fine wine, fancy cakes, a consensual kiss, crack cocaine. They are marvellous, fabulous devices, like sculpted scar tissue, like little chipolatas, like a soft seagull of sensual promise. Parts of the lips have evocative names like the vermilion border, and the cupid's bow. They are also full of nerves and blood vessels and muscles, and the skin there is thinner, making these perfect, pink protuberances extremely vulnerable to twisting, pulling, scratching, pinching and tearing. They don't like being bitten either.
In body part terms, they are weak, effete, as if their epicurean life has made them weak and decadent, like swooning dandies. Punish them, test them - they will not stand up to any great scrutiny. Oh, and sometimes lips have hair attached to them, in the form of a moustache or goatee / standard beard. This hair can be pulled, causing eye watering discomfort. A most effective technique.   

ARTS-GOV North has released this charming prototype verse from one of their Poem-Plex 2000s. As you will recall, all Northern machines are set to write poems about old things that remind you of other things. This particular verse is from unit TED26 although, to be honest, it's all the same, really, they're just machines.

CHURNED UP IN A FIELD

Held in the hand
An unearthed oval of ancient gold
A strong head, recalling my own
What thoughts there? What complications?
It does not matter, what cannot be known
A millennia and a half of dirt wears such cares smooth
Poem-Bot has encountered a problem and needs to close.
We are sorry for the inconvenience.

I have a friend. There is more to that statement, but I thought I'd just let that basic fact hang there for a while as I'm rather proud of it. My friend, who I have known for almost forty years, is a man who, within my hearing at least, has never ever referred to a qualified medical professional as anything other than a 'quack'.
To him, quacks aren't just general practitioners, the phrase encompasses the entire sphere of medicine, including all of the NHS and, latterly, the elements of private health care he has engaged with. Whether free at the point of contact or paid for in advance, they are all quacks: back quacks, foot quacks, tooth quacks, blood quacks, gut quacks and, in the late eighties, clap quacks. In summary, he has no respect for any kind of nurse, doctor, medic, surgeon, dentist or healer whatsoever, despite his frequent utilisation of their skills and expertise, particularly the antibiotics.


It's an inherited condition. His father, Geoff, now sadly deceased, was a man in the classic mould of the English naysayer, the sort of timeless moaner and iconoclast who would have stood behind the catapult at Agincourt moaning about the higher wages the Longbow blokes were on, or critiquing Henry V's speech. Two hundred odd years later he would have been chafing the collar of his New Model Army uniform, complaining about Cromwell cancelling Christmas.

As a man mainly of the 20thcentury, he spent an inordinate amount of time cupping a crafty roll up and detailing what he would do if he were to ever assume his rightful mantel as the ruler of everything. His manifesto was, of course, the absolute opposite of what those who actually wielded the power were doing. He was a tremendous character, and he is greatly missed for his wit and wisdom, as well as his ingrained, endless chippiness. He was often spectacularly incorrect: politically; factually. He called a spade a fucking shovel and to him, all solicitors were crooks, all policemen pigs, all male dancers poofs, all footballers pansies, and all doctors quacks.
Geoff's distaste for professional people was, again, a family heirloom, a legacy of a working class background that stretched all the way back to serfdom. His race memory clearly included bitterness carried over from when sawing peoples legs off and causing them to die, not of gangrene, but of trauma and infection, became the preserve of specially trained people, putting the ordinary bloke who had simply invested in a saw out of business. His distrust of these interlopers was lifelong, and he spent his final hours mocking them for trying to save that long life. According to Geoff, his doctors were quacks: amateurish, ridiculous, dangerous. They did everything they could to keep him alive; he did everything he could to die - just to spite them. Just to prove his point. He most likely died without knowing that he was both part of a long and honourable continuum of working class subversion, and ahead of his time. Geoff, and his son, my friend, and the generations of English men and women like them, will be ultimately proven right as, in the unpleasant aftermath of The Crisis, the quacks will reign supreme.
Seven years of training and countless hours of experience will be of little value in a world without medicine, a world without equipment, a world where surgery is a lottery, and therapy an impossible luxury. Professional medicine will become like visiting a fairground gypsy: a crossing of silver, a crossing of fingers, guess work. It won't be their fault. Even if their diagnoses are as sharp as ever all that will be left in terms of treatment is stuff that they definitely did not train for: homeopathy and butchery - in short, quackery. In a generation's time, those that retain any vestigial training and knowledge will most likely be burned at the stake for witchcraft, and the avaricious, ham-fisted artisans that take their place, with their clumsily adapted and rarely cleaned instruments, smelly poultices, reliance on superstition and almost total lack of accountability, will be quacks in the purest possible sense: pretenders, charlatans, bunglers, frauds, killers.
Geoff would have loved The Crisis, fucking loved it, even as he went unanaesthetised before some gap toothed yokel with a talent for divination and a large, dirty knife, giving the thumbs up to oblivion in a world that was finally working on his terms. 

Sign language is a hugely important communication tool, yet there are currently only around 25,000 users in the UK. This will change post-Crisis, when everyone still alive will be able to quickly learn the only four words that will still have any meaning. Which is a sort of good thing when you think about it, just don't think about it too much, because it becomes an awful, terrible thing.

I used to work for a large city council, one of the largest in the UK. I did various project related things and, as is my modus operandi, I also interfered in areas I had no right or reason to be involved with. One evening, I was poking around in the central CCTV room, the ten floors up eye in the sky where a kaleidoscopic monochrome summary of the daily drama of the city was played out on fifty flickering screens. All human life down there was up there, constantly monitored for flash points and flare ups, traffic accidents and human collisions. Mostly, people drifted silently around, floating past the various cameras like flotsam, the unintentionally discarded rather than deliberately jettisoned. 

After about twenty minutes, I turned to the silent operator and, half-invigorated by our God like view of the world and half-appalled at the pathetic diorama, decided to ask a question:
'Where is it?' I said.  
'Where's what?'

'The vaporise button', I smiled.

I expected him to either laugh or to look at me as if I were an idiot. He did neither, instead, his mouth an unrelenting line, his eyes never moving from the screens, he put his fingers to his lips and said 'sssshhhhhhh'.

I don't know anything anymore. Maybe I never did.

Christ.

This

Found via Bob

In 1979, I was 8 and I liked 2000AD. I got this and it was immense and it still is.


Here's Breakfast In The Ruins talking about it and giving up loads of scans.

That guy with the plant on his head has been very influential.

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Starting slow this year. But I think it'll end up immense.

This crept up on me when I wasn't paying attention. I'm hoping for more of that kind of thing.

Here are the slides from my recent talk at the 3hd festival in Berlin. It was a bit more freeform, so apologies if the threads are a bit unclear from them. It was a great festival altogether, with a great line-up of performances too - there was a write-up about it on AQNB.

I've written a blogpost - click here to read it - for Verso reflecting on some of the aesthetic implications of the critique of 'folk politics' in their new book by Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work:

When, in Inventing the Future, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams critique the collection of tendencies within the contemporary left they call 'folk politics,' they could also be lamenting the aesthetics that now dominates those areas of popular music that were once progressive. Whether it's underground, or 'indie,' or even happens to be in the charts, contemporary popular music routinely 'chooses the familiarities of the past over the unknowns of the future;... habitually chooses the small over the large' and 'value[s] withdrawal or exit rather than building a broad counter-hegemony'. For independent music as in folk politics, 'organisations and communities are to be transparent, rejecting in advance any conceptual mediation, or even modest amounts of complexity' and both 'emphasis[e] the local and the authentic, the temporary and the spontaneous, the autonomous and the particular'. Srnicek and Williams show that these strategies arose and achieved much in the special political circumstances of the mid-twentieth century, and again, as aesthetic strategies in popular music, they arose during the same period in the countercultural atmosphere of jazz, rock, punk and, indeed, folk musics. And for both folk politics and folk-political music, the time has come to invent what happens next...

I'm not interested particularly in adding to the canon - everyone loves Spanners don't they? - but in the spirit of revisiting it recently...

It is striking thing. It's a thinking thing. I remembered hearing it for the first time all over again & thinking that these guys were properly aligned with the avant-garde in a way that most of this era (every era) techno / IDM just weren't. I loved Aphex Twin and Autechre and Reload but The Black Dog were entirely odder & clearly unwilling to make commercial leans even in the vaguest of senses. The disco and techno bits of this album show they could easily be assimilated into (what would become) background music for Masterchef / Football Results / Home Improvement shows but the other bits were just so bowel-churningly creepy & psychedelically awkward that you can imagine advertising execs & music placers not being able to... place it.

There's bits on Spanners that make it exist in the world of Coil or The Residents rather than Hip Hop (or Kraftwerk, or Tomita, or Eno), bits that prevent a lay person wandering through the Warp catalogue keeping going....

Bytes was good but Bytes did attempt a theme of sorts; you had a clue as to what was coming next. With Spanners, the chimera / Cerberus is much more evident; this was the multi-headed techno beast in all it's directions, all at once...

I'm going back in. Bits of it our soundtracking our regular live action Angry Birds simulation (you hurl a 5 year old boy towards stuffed toys and pillow constructions) and it works perfectly: scary, silly, serious, soft. The 5 year old says some of it sounds like 'the pigs have gone crazy' and he's right; they really have.

Woebot in various iterations has been hugely influential on this blog and on IX Tab (and on my relationship with unicorns / small horses) and on the www's relationship to music in general and this is his mix for Paris:

For Paris by Woebot on Mixcloud

Plus, I have a Woebot t-shirt that I was wearing yesterday when I went to visit my Mum. So, fate.

Fell into this via some wormhole or other. It's maybe not meant for me but I've been playing it a lot.

Actually, I'm not sure what is for me.

Not sure I really believe music is for anyone.

These days, I'm always awake, it seems.

Yeah, I think so.

Some good stuff here about Voodoo Ray from Woebot on hardcore vocal samples. I didn't know it was Peter Cook but it seems perfect that it was. The best thing about those early acid / hardcore tracks was the entirely odd choices of sample material and the dullest thing about what came later was the insistence on 'obscure' horror samples or bits of Blade Runner - Tricky is the exception there, since the Blade Runner sample sounds like it couldn't have been absent... and in fact Tricky's use of Japan's Ghosts was one of the more interesting things about his first album; that kind of non-more-white(skinned) Newpop framework wrapped itself around Tricky in an almost sinister, post-colonial way... I like most of his stuff but none of the later albums seemed willing to disengage from the musical frames that Tricky ought to have been in (Specials, Ganja boys, Grandmaster Flash, Jungle)and so failed to sound.

And when we're talking about vocal samples, I guess this ought to be mentioned because I vaguely remember the moment I first heard this and started giggling uncontrollably for reason I mow really question:


In fact, Woebot's point about the odd nature of vocal samples very much affected my choices of vocal samples on the IX Tab albums - bearing in mind that most of the reviews of both albums focus on the avant-garde / occult nature of the music, the vocal samples are generally utterly prosaic (I can't mention all the sources, for reasons) seem many of them are utterly, and very deliberately prosaic: Dangerous Liasons, Hollywood after Oscar parties, Children's TV, TSW News, Gus Honeybun, Hal from 2001 (yawn!), ITV Drama Specials... It's a kind of occult banality that interests me. that feels truly occult because it's truly personal; it's the detritus of everyday lives that make it occult. I mean, I love all that Crowley / OTO / Hellraiser guff but using it as it is a resource seems totally beside the point.

Simon and Garfunkel, half-heard on my parents stereo on a Sunday is Bay-B-Kane and is darkness incarnate.

Well, if there's any kind of avant - scene that I'm aware of (maybe even a little part of), Nick's the kind of Kingpin: playing on LP, on big boy's labels; undisputedly popular and critically acclaimed where most of us are (at best) critically acclaimed and resoundingly unpopular. He's been quiet recently but he's almost back. You'll love this as much as you loved the other ones. I'm never sure if there's a change in methodology / sound that goes along with a change in name when Nick Edwards / Ekoplekz is concerned but the Eko sound is very much here, give or take some IDM techno lashings, here and there.

He's probably not even using the Eko, anymore but the sound is a thing-in-itself now, has it's own logic.

This is happening in Bristol at the weekend and it features Kemper Norton, who is always a delight to meet and watch and hear. I'm going despite the fact that I'm normally deeply suspicious of musical events that cross over into art. I love Art, love music but don't think anything about soundpoems or soundart (both deeply flawed concepts, as far as I can see). I loved it when Throbbing Gristle shifted out of the Art scene and into Pop (sort of) and didn't much care for anything they got up to when, in recent times, they got sucked back in. Coum seemed interesting, as Art, TG were much more interesting as music - and so it goes...

We should watch out for Art, creeping into our musical scenes.

We should resist.

The rules of engagement are different over there.

Hi. I'm Dan Hodges. And I tell it like it is.

Like. It. Is.

If you believe everything you read on Lefty Twitter you'd think that time progresses in linear fashion, one day after another, week succeeding week, month upon month.

But hang on. Let's stop and think for a second - is this really what's going on here?

No. It's not.

And I'll tell you why not. People like me - go on, call me a 'Tory' if you like - know that in the real world things like this just don't happen.

Apparently, when the clocks strike 12 tonight, by some magical process of Socialist metamorphosis, today will just magically turn into another, newer, and different day. When the Earth gets to the end of its daily cycle it will just spontaneously keep on spinning, in a kind of Hard-Left utopia of ongoing movement.

Except it won't. Not now. Not ever.

Because this is the Real World. Where Real Things Happen. In barely formulated tabloid-ish sentences that have somehow made their way into a broadsheet where they masquerade as incisive realism. With their no-nonsense tone. And their full-stops.

My trick is to take exaggeratedly cynical negative statements with absolutely no intellectual basis and make them seem like bullshit-free common sense. The sort of common sense that just so happens to coincide exactly with the latest Conservative Party policy announcement.

I say things aren't going to happen. Categorically. End of story.

Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. That gives me a roughly 50% success ratio, which is just about enough to insulate my reputation and guarantee my salary at a newspaper for which pessimism and demagogic mean-spiritedness are strategic imperatives.

So for the last time, oh my Lefty comrades.

Tomorrow ain't gonna happen.

Not now. Not ever.

Not even tonight.

Deal with it.

Yesterday I gave a talk on the history, nature, and pros and cons of accelerationism at the Unsound festival. These slights might not give you the full picture of what was said, but since they're full of quotes and references, people have asked that I upload them.

Man, this is good.

Really good.


I've been offline / limits / thick with flu & driving lesson woes for what seems to be ages but I've finally got around to listening properly to this Shape Worship album (another in the ever-predictable - in that every release is going to be great - line of outsider-chic that is Front And Follow) and it's a little bit immense. This is what I thought Burial was going to sound like when I'd read about them but not yet heard anything. I like Burial, but this is better; this feels less mannered, lighter but paradoxically more intense, less rooted in the (rather obvious) slow-car-garage trails.

This isn't just a car drive. This is a slice of collective consciousness. The cranes are flying.

It is extraordinarily confident in its approach, taking on Burial's shuffling gun-cock / ratchet drums (hopefully without the mythology that they were just created in Audacity) and sending them into new territories, deep in the heart of Britain. It's not all like this (it's better than that), of course but still... each cymbal hisses like a winter yawn. This is Britain not submerged but hanging on a thread; socio-political agitations, key council estate worries, local government politics.

I've not read much about this release because I wanted it to wash over me without contamination (of perhaps the terrible truth) but it's clear that every squeak and every whistle and every hummingly slurred vocal (although many of the samples are clear as day) has a very definite purpose and a place: when the light breaks out at the end of Heygate Palimpsest, for instance, it feels like we've been waiting a long time... like when they finally do put in that zebra crossing that everyone's been asking for... other bits sound like the tiniest snatches of vocal behind and within some of The Shamen's best techno squiggles, pre-C. That sense of delirium can certainly be found in tracks like Zoned (Hecate) which has a tinkling, endless, post-acid comedown vibe to it that is just perfect.

And then the voices come in and make the world real again. Some of them hum with static, with echo but other times they are naked and alone

Although this is some kind of master work and is clearly (I hope, I think) following a concept, it also seems small scale and intimate - cocktail synths, even, at the start of the gently stirring An Exemplar. And the scale works perfectly for the kind of psychogeographical details attended to here. This is a boiling down of issues and virtues; it has a sense of place that has often been neglected in music (replaced with sense of feeling or atmosphere) but not in the sense of windswept moors or smoked bracken (ha!) or goat-noises; instead Ed's attempted to approximate the place as a political satellite, as microcosm.

Easily one of the best things I've heard all year...