Glimpsesofcolour

I finally did it! Yes, I matched Steve Tomkins’ score of 185 in Word Twist on Facebook, and am now joint first on my friends’ ladder. Oh frabjous day!

Secondly, is it just me, or does anyone else ever listen to Cream’s ‘Tales of Brave Ulysses’ and when it gets to the line ‘Her name is Aphrodite’, feel an uncontrollable urge to sing ‘And she wears a flannel nightie’? No? Just me, then.

Thirdly, the daily headache has shifted to the other side of my head. I am not sure this is an improvement.

I spend a lot of time at the moment listening to iTunes and playing Solitaire, which when I was young was a game with pegs and a hole in the middle, but is now what we used to call Patience (clearly the Americans, from whom this new nomenclature comes, have no Patience).

Any road up, iTunes classifies songs as Pop, Rock, Country etc, and I often disagree with their choice and change it myself (for instance, that lovely ballad ‘Never my Love’ by The Association is classed for some reason as rock). So I was listening to Serge Gainsbourgh and Jane Birkin’s breathy offering ‘Je t’aime – moi non plus’, which for some reason always sends me into gales of laughter, when I noticed that the iTunes classification for it was neither rock nor pop but simply ‘French’ – which sent me into even more laughter. Clearly French music is a law unto itself!

…is that you can sing ‘On top of spaghetti All covered with cheese, I lost my poor meatball’ etc, to the tune of Dire Straits’ ‘Brothers in Arms’. Betcha didn’t know that.

OK, so I didn’t sew the buttons on or do the ironing – I watched TV with The Grouch and Genius Brat instead. How did you guess?

I did however manage to find enough clean clothes without buttons missing, to pack for the wonderful Greenbelt Festival which is where I spent the Bank Holiday weekend, wandering happily through crowds of people and stalls with gorgeous clothes and edible food, and stopping every few minutes to talk to someone I knew. As I remarked to Genius Brat, ‘There are twenty thousand people at Greenbelt and I know all but six of them’. I even had a lovely cup of tea and chat with people I had been at university with, and another chat with the curate and his wife from my old church in Waterloo. I also saw two parents from GB’s school and had a good talk with one about how bad the school now is on special needs! The Grouch says: ‘There are three great Christian festivals in the church year: Christmas, Easter and Greenbelt’.

I also managed to take in a few talks, exhibitions and a fair amount of music, including a talk on my hero Thomas Traherne (they have discovered new manuscripts, woo-hoo!), a set by Royksopp who were amazing, the film Man on Wire and a concert of music by Taverner, beautifully played and sung. It was good to see some Wibloggers there as well – it’s extraordinary how my different internet lives cross over.

Being on duty on the Mennonite church stand was fun as well, even though Health and Safety had cracked down on our usual gorgeous homebaked cookies, and so we had pipecleaners to make things out of instead (there was a secret stash of cookies for stand workers and close friends…)

Close shave of the weekend was when The Grouch drove to our Travel Inn (we don’t camp) which he had booked on the last day of the festival last year, and they had lost our booking. Fortunately he hadn’t left it till late at night, and they found us probably the last room in Gloucester, which wasn’t too far away. Otherwise we might have found ourselves camping without a tent, which ought to be left to our gay friends…

Now shattered and shaky because of the sheer amount of walking and talking I did over the weekend, but I don’t think I am going to go into another post-holiday depression. I actually thought the other day that God was speaking to me through Bible reading notes (a rare occurrence) and saying, as was said to Bartimaeus: ‘Take heart, get up, he is calling you’. Might be a good verse to get me out of bed, actually…

Extraordinary how easy it is to waste an entire day (and quite a lot of money) downloading songs from iTunes and listening to them. All in the cause of locating my lost youth, of course (now where did I leave him?).

After my ‘ladies’ lunch’ today I did a bit of Christmas shopping in Woolworth’s and Tesco (yes, I’ve got class, me). For son’s best friend I picked up a promising contemporary compilation CD engagingly entitled ‘Cigarettes and Alcohol’. This is entirely so that I can tell his parents that I have bought their 15 year old son cigarettes and alcohol for Christmas…:-)

Driving home from singing tonight with the Stranglers* on the CD, my passenger remarked what good names some bands have. This led to a mention of the Killers, and speculation on whether there is a band called the Murderers. At which point I observed that there are never bands called things like the Parking Infringers, or the Tax Evaders. Anyone know if there’s a band called the Jaywalkers? There’s something about minor offences that just doesn’t have the same cachet. Although a band called the Minor Offences does actually sound quite possible…

Back on Freecycle, I note that one desperate offerer has sunk to offering ‘yet more stuff’ and ‘even more stuff’. At least it’s an honest description.

*I don’t mean that I was singing with the Stranglers, I mean I went singing and then listened to the Stranglers afterwards. Although I’d be perfectly happy to sing with the Stranglers, should they invite me.

In support of my ongoing quest to find obscure 60s tracks for my mp3 player, my helpful hubby has actually succeeded in digging up ‘Back Street Luv’ by Curved Air. Which isn’t as good as I remember it, except for the rather compulsive electronic keyboard (or synth?) riff.

He hasn’t however succeeded in finding that wonderful track ‘Dismal Swamp’ by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, engagingly described on their website as ‘progressive bluegrass’. The compilation album on which I have it on vinyl (the immortal ‘Gutbucket) quotes it as being from an album called ‘Pure Dirt’ but no such album seems to exist in their discography. However it is listed on their eponymous debut album, which sadly is out of print. There is a track called ‘Return to Dismal Swamp II’ on both their 20th anniversary and 30th anniversary albums but I fear it’s not my beloved original version.

Such are the frustrations of a not very well informed lover of some seriously esoteric tracks.

1. There is a natural low after Christmas due to the festive season being over and January weather, owing to global warming, being damp and grey rather than white, crisp and sparkling.
2. A general feeling of uselessness can be alleviated by large doses of 60s and 70s pop and rock, even on a rather crummy MP3 player (The Grouch got me a cheap one for Christmas, promising to get a better one if I ‘get into it’).
3. Listening on crappy earphones can be got used to.
4. A supplementary dose of the ‘Pop Britannia’ season on BBC-4 will enhance the cheering effect.
5. Jimi Hendrix is not, however, the greatest choice to play when one has a headache.

A select few friends, lots of Marks and Spencer food, mulled wine, Scrabble and fairtrade champagne at midnight – all adds up to a recipe for a moderately merry and generally enjoyable New Year celebration. Followed this morning (after a necessary lie-in) by watching the whole of the New Year’s Concert live from Vienna, with the usual mix of lots of Strauss, ballet and gorgeous shots of gorgeous Viennese buildings.

My parents did their courting in the Musikvereinsaal, where the concert is broadcast from, and every year while my Dad was still alive, they would turn on the New Year’s concert and waltz round the living room to the strains of ‘An den schönen blauen Donau’. I didn’t attempt to emulate the waltzing bit with The Grouch, but he did come and listen to the encores with me. I ate my last Thornton’s Continental chocolate to the accompaniment of the Vienna Philharmonic, which seemed appropriate.

Just to demonstrate how catholic my musical tastes are, have spent afternoon putting hits of the 60s – Beatles, Kinks, Stones etc – on my new MP3 player which Grouch gave me for Christmas (that and some new Bible software were the main presents).

Just as the Queen has two birthdays, as a Jewish Christian I am entitled to two new years! (in addition to the double Christmas we always celebrate, Austrian style on Christmas Eve and British style on Christmas Day. Greedy, moi?)