Twist In My Sobriety

The first gun-metal-grey streaks of dawn knife their way across the slow-to-materialise sunrise-skyline while the tugboats plough their way up the oh-so-still Hudson; up river a couple of hours by train and turn left, inland a bit and over the hills and not too terribly far away… and, there’s Woodstock – forty years ago this weekend – oh, boy.

But first, look left and there’s Union City on Jersey’s shore; home to the Union Dry Dock upon which Blondie shot their helicopter-led, day/night-time video for the track from Eat To The Beat that, curiously, was never issued as a single in America yet reached #13 on its first outing in the UK. A song penned by the ubiquitous Ms Harry together with bass-player Nigel Harrison, one time native of Princess Risborough, itself not too far down the road (or up, depending on one’s direction of travel) to one of the legendary UK venues of the seventies and eighties, Friars Aylesbury.

And home, at that point in time, to one of the very best independent record stores in all of Britain – run by a couple of music aficionados (Steve and Sue) and owned by the man behind Friars itself – Dave Stopps. Just a small middle-England market town yet one which boasted not only that tiny shop which was stuffed to the gunwales with must-have domestic vinyl as well as the very latest, de-rigeur imports but also an absolute must-go concert venue whose reputation was such that it could justifiably claim to have been pivotal within the development of a number of acts; Genesis (like ‘em or loathe ‘em) would be one of many.

I lost count rather a long time ago of the number of times I made that one hundred-plus mile round trip; seeing some extraordinary acts in the process – Queen (as one example) supporting… now, who was it… pretty sure that’d have been Cockney Rebel. Otway and Wild Willy Barrett; the Ramones; Jess Roden not long after the release of his first solo record in tandem with Iguana when they’d become the imaginatively named Jess Roden Band; Lindisfarne; String Driven Thing; Mott The Hoople who, for one reason or another, will always be associated with that particular gig; OMD; Osibisa – that was a hot night indeed – and of course… Stackridge… nights when Let There Be Lids rang out loud, proud and clear; the Saw Doctors of their day – a band who never sold a great deal of records yet who were utterly irresistible live.

Friars was also a jumping-off point to the US for so many bands of that era touring new albums.

Hey, Manhattan – look, there’s the Carlyle where Kennedy stayed… The Brooklyn Bridge laying before me… Paddy MacAloon’s paen to the city of blinding lights from Langley Park To Memphis; and off to the right, the signs for Queens that’ll eventually lead to the Whitestone Bridge, immortalised in Sonny Condell’s song on Tir Na Nog’s third, Matthew Fisher (the court-case-winning organist from Procul Harum) produced, magnum opus Strong In The Sun; just a little below that would be other signs for Jackson Heights – the group formed by Lee Jackson from the ashes of The Nice when that band imploded and Todmorden’s favourite son, Keith Emerson took his organ and knives off to fill enormadomes with Lake and Palmer. Jackson Heights, of course, variously featured both Mike Giles and Ian Wallace on drums – both, equally, stalwarts of King Crimson with the former also part of the long-forgotten duo MacDonald & Giles who recorded their one and only, eponymous, album for Island – the gatefold cover featuring both arm in arm with their ladies of the time, perhaps wives of now.

Further still up on the Jersey-side there’s Hackensack – giving of itself (by name) to Nick Moore’s band that formed in 1969 to release just the one, Roger Dean cover-designed, Polydor album Up The Hardway which, by all accounts (cement-hard-rock not exactly being my forté) is quite a considerable collector’s piece some forty years after the warmth of that and other vinyl hit the shelves of record stores up and down, across the length and breadth of… days when the newspaper adverts proudly proclaiming ‘available at your local record shop’ meant exactly that.

Now, there’s barely a record store at all.

At present, in the UK, there’s something like four-hundred independent record stores trading; in 2003 – there was well over a thousand. And, way back then – there must have been in excess of five times that number.

Do I bemoan the days of vinyl passed?

Yes… actually… I rather do.

Because there is no longer any real experience that goes with the purchase of a new recording.

Look at it this way – nowadays, the new (for sake of example) Bob Dylan waxing sits alongside a Beatles 2010 calendar in a book-shop; Waterstones, Barnes & Noble – take your pick, they’re one and the same. Woolworths (r.i.p.), Boots the Chemists, Sainsburys, Tescos, Wal-Mart or WH Smiths – their ‘record’ departments trotting out top forty as if there was / is nothing else to tempt the eager punter with. Fill up with petrol or diesel and take your pick from dozens of compilations that sit right next to the crisps, nuts and chocolate bars in any Shell / Mobil garage. Did you crave the new U2 album? Available at cut price when you purchased a cappuccino at Starbucks.

And online – what’s really there? A huge mass of… stuff – you can look but can’t touch. And, about as enticing a manner of shopping as glancing at the cellophane-wrapped top shelf volumes in an immigrant run, seedy newseller’s in East London.

The online process is… well, there isn’t a ‘process’ as such. Think about it for a moment – you dial up your latest, all singing, all dancing version of I-Tunes and log in to the I-Tunes store. So far, so ok – but, what greets you? Their (beastly) recommendations – which aren’t really theirs at all – nope, corporate label X or Y has ‘paid’ to have their ‘product’ ‘promoted’.

There is no possibility – any longer – of wandering through the racks, looking through album sleeves; all the cds that are for sale are so heavily protected by being put inside security coffins that, the simple pleasure described above is no longer available.

And here, maybe, is where the grey area is – for me at any rate – no longer grey. This is where black becomes the new white.

And… it comes down to the one, single, word – product.

And, many years back, it got me into a whole heap of trouble… for daring to question my (then) paymasters at EMI. Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to 1972. Act one, scene one – the EMI annual sales conference.

I’m twenty years old (ok, so that means you now know how ancient I really am). The venue is some terribly swish London hotel and all of us nonentities (ie, sales reps) are there in our best haircuts, suits and kipper ties.

Some of us – self included – had beards; they were all the rage back then and, I confess, I rather thought I looked a little like a young King Charles – the first of that line who, you’ll recall, had a minor disagreement with Parliament which ended with one single blow of a well-sharpened axe when his head rolled onto a sawdust laden scaffold outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall, one chilly Tuesday lunchtime, the 30th day of that particular January in 1649.

The great and the good were there from ‘head-office’, those inhabitants of the hallowed turf known as Manchester Square – the office building that featured, rather fetchingly I always thought, on not only the cover of an early Beatles album but also on the blue and red double-compilations of later years.

Many of them sported beards too. And, one by one, they took their turns up at the lectern in front of a slide-show to deliver a ‘presentation’ of their new ‘product’ for the coming autumnal sales drive.

And what delights did they and the relevant label-heads from the EMI distributed labels of the time have to tempt us all with..? Well now, 1972 was, of course, the year when quadraphonic sound came out to play… remember that or never heard of it? No… ok then, a little refresher – quad sound meant that you had to buy a load more audio equipment (amp and two more speakers being the bare minimum) and, in essence, sit in the middle of the room with the speakers cunningly positioned so that the sound… surrounded you.

It was a little like sitting in amongst the violas if orchestral was your preferred take on music or being uncomfortably close to Jon Lord and his Hammond if that’s what musically got your rocks off.

Quad meaning four and… speakers set in four corners of one’s room wasn’t a bad first step. Did it work… well, it was an interesting audio experiment but, really nowhere near as sophisticated as the kind of surround-sound you get in film theatres today.

The boffins loved it (of course) as did my pub-landlord of the time. Late night sessions with him and his wife just outside of Newbury (he was a monocled, Swiss baron and she learned the art of cooking Steak Dianne from the French bloke who actually invented the dish) playing Elgar, Wagner and Vaughn Williams at colossal volume whilst imbibing too much whisky saw to much of that year… as did the bar bill which saw a goodly portion of my EMI wages.

So… what did we get… hmmm… Deep Purple and Machine Head (and yes, they released a quad – or Q4 – version); Babe Ruth, Pink Floyd and Obscured By Clouds, a Gallagher and Lyle album, most probably Steely Dan’s Can’t Buy A Thrill which was on ABC but, so far as I recall, that was distributed by EMI at the time (and did anyone actually know that a steely dan was a name of a dildo-variant… I think not); there’d have been a Gensis album – Foxtrot; Island would have weighed in with the first Roxy Music offering. The Music For Pleasure label would have given us a Magic Roundabout album and Twiggy – that was the year of The Boyfriend. There was ELO because Roll Over Beethoven had already clogged up the summer airwaves and The Shadows – of course there was a Shad’s album, there always was… and… yes, The Wurzels too – on the Starline label. Oh my, such delicious memories.

And, up they trotted, one by one, to extol the virtues of this or that… piece of… product.

Ultimately the assembled company were introduced to a new high-up-in-the-ranks chap. I think he may well have had a beard too. His name was… Bob. And, for the life of me, I can’t recall his surname. No matter… Bob had a background in… canned food. And, during his speech, extolling the virtues of the fabulous EMI, he used the P-word a great deal.

Later that evening, there was the company dinner at which we were all jumbled up with regard to seating – meaning that you’d have someone frightfully important hosting a table which’d be filled with people within the organisation but all from disparate backgrounds and jobs.

I was on Bob’s table.

And, after partaking a couple of glasses of the well-chilled, I was in belligerent mood and took him to task for using the P-word.

How on earth could he justify calling the music that an artist / act had sweated over for (perhaps) weeks / months and which had been committed to vinyl with a cover / jacket / sleeve that had been equally lovingly designed (so long as it wasn’t on Music For Pleasure) and… term the end result… product.

So far as I was concerned, that was equating music to baked beans.

And, it was as fundamental as that.

And so, in no uncertain terms, I made my views known

What I didn’t know – at the time – was that the canned food company from which he’d been recruited was called… Heinz.

Needless to say, my opinions didn’t go unnoticed and a severe dressing down was my reward a few days later, administered by my area manager, one Jimmy Parmenter… a kindly soul who did what he had to with, I believe, a heavy heart since he equally well knew that what drove me was passion. Equals – was it any wonder / surprise that I jumped the EMI ship at the earliest possible opportunity to join Island in ’74.

Passion – it drove me then, it does today and will until the day I bowl up at the pearly gates… and its passion about music. I’m just not passionate about music seen as / termed as / known as / referred to as… product.

Which, basically, is all one gets nowadays.

Unless…

Trawling around the wild west wait a lot earlier this year, I came across an absolutely fascinating site. It was almost as if it’d been built purely to satisfy me / my kind of person… One quick look and I immediately knew that DB, holed up in his Aunac lair in the rural idyll that is the Charente would love it… and… in fact, pretty much everyone I knew who loved… music.

I fizzed the link across to France. Two days later came the reply which I’ll paraphrase here… thanks hugely for sending that link, it is indeed amazing and fully satisfies my vinyl-junkie cravings. However, you’ve not endeared yourself to the wife, she unplugged me after five hours spent online, gazing avidly – claiming that was enough for anyone. I plan to have another look when she’s out shopping tomorrow.

And the site… its called 991.com.

Its run by a couple of blokes who’ve set up what could be, loosely termed, the ultimate vinyl-junkie’s fix – they specialise in rare or hard to find, vinyl and other recordings. In short, a collectors site.

And, I’d argue strenuously that its probably the very best out there.

A few weeks after discovering said site, I’m parked up in my borrowed car in a once and almost forgotten backwater in Kent – the home of 991.com. It’s as non-descript and somewhat run-down as the warehouse looming large before me.

The façade belies the interior, however. Because, once through the portals, it’s a different matter altogether – a veritable treasure-trove of vinyl / cd – long forgotten jewels are racked cheek by jowl and all lovingly tended / catalogued by staff who care equally passionately about… the music.

In one respect, I’m almost glad of my suitcase existence since it precluded the purchase of a great deal laying before my eyes.

Yes, its an online shopping experience but… what sets it apart from the rest is this: the manner in which everything is laid out is as close as it can (online) get to browsing through the shelves and racks of yesteryear. Its (almost) as good as sifting through the imports bin in a shop that simply doesn’t exist any longer. Its also markedly different – and all the better for it – from the other collector’s sites out there because, the cataloguing is done / written up by people who one just knows would have worked in one of those stores; the kind of people who’d have unpacked a gleaming new import, inbound from the States way back when, and immediately played it to a shop-full of curious customers.

What could make it better... hmmm, only one thing - and, that'd be the boffins at 991.com installing a facility to play bits of music (a bit like they have on I-Tunes).

This weekend, forty years ago, half a million – give or take a few – trudged to and from the mudbath that was otherwise known as Max Yasgur’s farm in Sullivan County, upstate New York.

The counter-cultural revolution was in full-flow yet man had, but a few days before, walked the Sea Of Tranquillity having journeyed to the Moon on board Apollo 11 while Jimi Hendrix closed out the three day Woodstock Music & Arts Fair by de-constructing the Star Spangled Banner – one was a product of man’s invention, the other as eloquent a musical statement as can be made that, no matter how many times its is heard or viewed, could ever be described as… product.

Clare Island (Will You Meet Me On...)

I was running a tiny bit late… what can I say but admit it… not too late as to be hugely rude but… just enough to bring about that level of self-annoyance with which one berates oneself from time to time.

Left bang on time but kyboshed by that law unto itself – public transport… hey, what can you say..? Doubtless the same the world over.

Added to which, while the address to which I’d been bidden had been carefully written down in my diary that, in turn nestled deep within the bowels of my trusty basket-weave shopping bag – I still managed to bowl up at the wrong place.

Shopping basket is actually more appropriate for trawling around the markets at Brantome or Thiviers as I did in days of yore; eager to meet up with Asparagus-bloke in early-April – one kilo of his very finest, a baguette from sing-song lady’s Boulangerie just opposite the Puy Joli café together with a bottle of nicely-chilled out of the fridge and Luncheon used to be well and truly sorted.

Nowadays, shopping basket serves as my de-facto briefcase; the proper one has been gathering dust down in the dungeon at Merle Hq for many months now.

In any event, coat-tails flapping bat-like behind me, I stride purposefully into the building to which I believe I’m due to arrive; clickety-clacking my way across the anticipated marble floor and… brilliant… there’s a sign saying ‘information desk’.

Shopping bag, sexy sexy boots and self then encounter the first missing-link of the day.

Blokey-bloke who manfully mans this haven of knowledge is bent over, stuffing leaflets and other frightfully important things into pigeon-holes; he’s clearly intent on his task as a polite cough to attract his attention fails miserably.

I opt for the more direct approach… Hello..? Again… no response as the bent-over figure in his lair stuffs more and more leaflets into their respective pens. Hmmm…

Excuse me… could you help me, please?

Que…? He stands upright, massaging his back… Que..?

Oh shit, I’ve met Manuel.

Hello… I grin somewhat foolishly… I’m looking for the offices of… and could you direct me please?

Niet…

Drat… he’s a Mexican-Russian… I know… I’ll speak v e r y s l o w l y.

I ask again for directions, pronouncing the words ever so carefully… single syllable stuff; my mouth making shapes like a landed Salmon gasping for air.

He grins… nods… shrugs his shoulders… grins again and points… Que..? Niet… Police… there…

Damn… I’ve no chance. Glancing over my shoulder in the direction in which Manuel has pointed I can’t help but notice an enormous Policeman wandering in the distance, flanked by a squatter colleague who is talking confidentially into a hidden microphone attached to his jacket; one is as tall as the other is wide and both are carrying sub-machine guns. Maybe they're staking out Manuel?

I wander over… Do you think you could help me, I’m looking for..?

Out the door, turn left… left again… straight in front of you… ok? His colleague is eyeing me up and down, caressing his carbine with more than due attention as I thank Police-bloke # 1.

Time to about-face, retrace steps, head through the revolving door and out into the outside world again. Three minutes later, I’ve dodged the rushing traffic and made it to the sunny side of the street and finally found where I should have been a few minutes ago. The Security Guard here has been trained at the school of nonchalance. He has no gun (that I can see) and is reading his newspaper. He glances up and merely nods as I walk by – destination the sixth floor.

A little over seventy minutes later and the tall-bloke in the black drainpipe jeans with whom I’ve been discussing Project-X is walking with me as I leave. We’re still discussing all the possibilities of X but pause in their secondary reception area; the walls are festooned with posters… images from my own past… that black-drainpipe-jeans-chap has collected over the years.

Pride of place are given to three, two of which I know really well – the first has become one of the most iconic images of Jimi Hendrix ever shot; Gered Mankowitz’s original 1967 black and white of Jimi wearing his trademark military coat staring straight into Gered's camera at his Mason's Yard studio.

Some years back, this became the image that was used as the front cover for the uber-selling compilation, The Ultimate Experience as well as the flagship image for the exhibition that toured the world… The exhibition that began with not one but two preview nights in a skinny little Notting Hill Gallery in London… the crowds so vast that the entire street had to be closed off by the Police and people queued to get in… the day that Q Magazine published their one and only retrospective Hendrix cover story.

Rob and I framed two copies of that cover… both blown up to 30x40 size – his hangs just outside his old – soon to close down – office at Coalition, mine hangs on one of the back walls of the barn at Merle Hq.

An artist’s proof – of which I believe only two were manufactured – of the David Costa / Gered Mankowitz colourised and manipulated black and white original used to hang at the top of the stairs at every home I’ve owned since. A positioning that used to annoy the hell out of my (aged) Mother who complained bitterly every time she came to stay… I wish you’d move Jimi… it scares the life out of me every time I go up to bed. That now lays face to the wall in the attic at Merle Hq.

The other is a hand-coloured Adrian Boot image of a Bob Marley black and white; Bob sitting with a half-smoked spliff hanging from his lips strumming an acoustic guitar. It’s early Bob – probably from the mid-seventies… dating his pictures is usually pretty simple as they’re always governed by the length of his locks. In this instance, they’re pretty short so, it’s probably from around the time that the Burnin’ album was recorded. And, another that we used in the globally touring Marley Exhibition.

The Irish quartet are represented (a picture that I erroneously first identify as being by David Corio) but almost immediately realise is, actually, an image that looks suspiciously like an outtake from a Paul Slattery shoot that, I suspect, would have originally been commissioned for the now defunct Sounds – one of the UK weekly inkies that long since bit the dust… the days of Melody Maker selling hundreds of thousands of copies each and every week being long long past.

Indeed… one would have thought that periodicals as crucial as the likes of Melody Maker would have been properly archived. Curiously enough… not so.

A number of weeks ago and a flurry of back and forth e-mails between the production company that are putting together the forthcoming Island50 tv programme and self started up again. Did I have any idea where old pictures could be found of 22 St Peters Square since Island, themselves, had nothing on file. Oddly enough – yes. In fact, two places…

Steve Taylor’s article in an early-eighties edition of The Face and Rob’s own early-seventies Melody Maker article (referred to here in an earlier Voltaire); the former I have – the latter I’ve lost along the way. No matter… maybe a chance to get hold of it all over again.

Spot of research and… everywhere I looked drew blanks. Hmmm, bollox. I can’t access my own copies of The Face so… surely I can get a hold of a copy of the Melody Maker from… shit, I can’t exactly recall when… this is the kind of research that needs one to be a bit more precise than vague.

Ultimately, I hit paydirt… Melody Maker do have a sort of archive and finally I find someone who’s prepared to trawl through old bound editions and… locate what I’m after and… email over photostats turned into .jpegs.

It was quite curious re-reading that article after so long… the style of writing for instance very much in the seventies vein… but yes, the images were there and the photographer was easily identified and… contacted by the production company and… even better, it appeared that he still had the original negatives. Jobs a good ‘un.

Not only that but… Rob’s being posthumously awarded with the hugely prestigious Strat Award at the forthcoming Music Week awards in a couple of week’s time… and, the headline in that article – Island Of Dreams – came out sufficiently well to be sent over to the editorial bods there for them to add it (or not as the case may be) to the images that’ll be used in amongst the talking heads waxing lyrical about Rob for when Tina steps up onto the dais to receive his award.

Which is what all these pieces to camera that I’ve been doing have all been about… and, while its been a bit fraught getting files of the size they came out at FTP’d over… job’s now done.

Actually… no… Its not quite safe to head out of these particular woods just yet because… just back from my Project-X meeting, brimming with positivity and what am I greeted with? An e-mail in-bound from the ever-so-patient lady who runs the production company who are putting all these talking head interviews together that tells me:

Hi Neil, I’m so sorry, but the saga continues! It would appear that 3 of your files have been created at 8frames/second:
Chris Blackwell G
Rob A B C
Rob & the Chicken
Would it be at all possible to have them re-supplied selecting 29.9 frames/seconds. Otherwise we will have the Benny Hill affect on all the footage from those three sections. I’m so terribly sorry about this, hope I don’t make you want to through the computer out the window!!

Oh dear… its her incredibly courteous way of informing me I’ve fxxxxd up; I’d not re-set the bit-rate gadget within Final Cut Pro – plus, her adjectival use of Benny and Hill makes me wince. Darn… the chances of my looking even more foolish than usual have shot up like an over-excited priest’s robe stumbling across a gaggle of skimpy-sunbathing-behind-the-high-walls-of-the-convent novice nuns.

Time to get to grips with technology. Firstly, Fetch – which is the software that I’ve been using – appears to crash horribly with any attempt at overloading it past the 100Mb rate… hmmm… time for a spot of Googling… there has to be a FTP thingie out there that’ll take and transmit and not trash all this work… surely to goodness there is.

And, sure enough there are, dozens of the blighters. But… while certain ones download terribly easily, they don’t always open as applications. And, when others do, one finds the interface about as user-friendly as Jenson Button’s steering wheel – not to be approached by the faint-hearted or clinically incompetent, the latter category in which I currently reside.

Dammit, its enough trying to figure out the latest Facebook interface without having to learn an entirely new computer language. Talking of which, what on earth were the boffins behind that doing when they chopped and changed something perfectly usable into… total shite.

Anyway, eventually one FTP thingie both downloads and launches. Cape Canavaral… here I come.

The application that promises to do all I require of it (other than make me a bacon sandwich) is called… CyberDuck… I feel better already.

The icon that appears on the desk-top is a rather good imitation of a Rubber Duck… gloriously yellow with a little red beak; more properly suited to aqua-pursuits for a young child than computing for adults. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into this little blighter.

Double-click – as one does… and it sparks into life. So far, so OK.

Next step… find the up-load gadget… that’s easy enough… transfer file from one folder to another… easy-peasy… and depress play. It starts to transmit – in just under an hour it’ll hit the magic marker of 100Mb so, nothing much to do until then… time to cook a spot of Red Cooked Pork.

Rubber Duck doesn’t just get to the 100Mb marker, it passes Go like a machine fed on Emu oil and collects its 200 squiddlys. This is all looking really rather promising and… ultimately the first file – the one which is marked up as Rob and The Chicken – heads off into the ether and… so far as I can work out, lands the other end.

Whether this is a usable bit of Storey-waffle for the Music Week Awards, I’ve no idea but… they (patient-lady at the production house and her gang) now have the tale of Rob and self attempting to hail cabs in the middle of a bleak midwinter somewhere along the Goldhawk Road, destination St Peters Square, W6.

We'd had a couple of preparatory bracers chez Rob & Tina Hq... and... Rob had decided he'd hide in the bushes while I’d been dispatched kerb-side to hail the cab.

None stopped although quite a few slowed down.

Proof positive that its not that simple a job getting a cab to stop and actually pick one up while dressed as a Chicken as Rob adjusted his Darth Vadar outfit… the one with the close fitting helmet that meant that his glasses as well as the visor steamed up every time he breathed out.

It was a bit better the next year… we tried the same trick… Carmen Miranda hid in the undergrowth, the Nun hailed the cab… they began queuing up when I started flashing a be-stockinged leg.

Next up… the missing Blackwell file. Follow the same procedure and… bollox…

Rubber Duck refuses to get its feathers wet.

Try again… same result. Try for the next two hours… same again and again and again; I’m turning into a TeleTubbie.

Right, you yellow-bellied swine… I’ll download you all over again and try it that way. Another hour later and I’ve got Rubber bloody Duck’s breeding all over the screen… One little yellow bxxxxxr is there and there’s another down at the bottom of the screen and yet another hiding under that application over there. And, none of them are prepared to play. Start to delete them but… the bloody things keep breeding and won’t go away. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh.

Time for an excessively large vodka that comes perilously close to the bottle of tonic that I’m waving at it. This does the trick because, within a few moments, one of the cousins of the original Rubber Duck, sparks into life, accepts the connection and the second transfer starts up. Phew.

I delete all the other Rubber Ducks and, as the transfer wobbles away, hit the hay. Magically, Rubber Duck – first cousin, almost removed – behaves in the morning and the third transfer heads off into the ether with barely a backward glance.

All of which, of course, has little to do with Project-X.

So, come on Storey… what happened… its all very well being entertaining with stories about Chickens, stockinged Nuns, Darth Vadar getting all steamed up, Carmen Miranda and Rubber Ducks but… can we get to the meat and potatoes… please?

Oh… very well then.

It was a very positive step forward overall; it was great meeting with someone who – unlike the Education Strategist – got the plot from the off and didn’t seek to unravel it with a fistful of ‘wouldn’t it be better if you approached it this way, that way or any other way’. Someone who cut to the chase from the opening salvoes and who saw all the inherent possibilities and wanted to explore them further by sharing with his colleagues on a near-as-dammit immediate basis.

All to the extent (though without revealing too much that occurred behind closed doors), that I’m cautiously optimistic that it won’t be the last time we meet by any stretch of the imagination.

He’s a thoroughly good bloke too – music courses through his veins like the elixir of life; he knows his stuff… and… yeah… I'd say a great step forward.

Added to which, next Tuesday’s noon-time meeting has also just been confirmed – which means that the sexy sexy boots will probably come out to play all over again.

I pretty much know where I’m heading to and… baring further encounters with Mexican-Russian illegal émigrés, aim to be there at the appointed this time around.

Stories For Boys

Today, while trying to avoid the mental roadblock (or the traffic lights that seem have become stuck on red as I've been wont, of late, to phrase it) the milk-churn of thoughts has been trying to grasp (what I consider to be) one of nature's weirdest side-shows.

Men and women of a certain age... dressing and acting whereby they pretty much parrot their children.

Weird... don't you think?

The thought process (which formulated a number of years back while idling about in a Surrey-suburban shopping Mall one wet, Saturday afternoon) was somewhat brought back into focus by earlier today seeing a headline concerning a new book called Men to Boys - The Making of Modern Immaturity by a bloke (worthy no doubt) called Gary Cross. Great surname that - perhaps that was what attracted me to it in the first instance.

Anyhow... according to him, they (adults but men in particular) have transmuted what was formerly a stage of life into a lifestyle with no end in sight.

Those are pretty long words for me and dangerously close to gobbledygook-speak for my liking but, I think I get the gist of what he's driving at.

And certainly enough for me to start thinking that I'm in agreement with this Cross bloke... because, nowadays... it seems that that parents somehow seem to aspire (hell, I used that word yesterday and more than once)... can't think of a better one so... off we go again... they seem to aspire to a state of almost perpetual adolescence.

Why? I'm bemused. Don't grown-ups want to be... errrr... grown up? Seems not.

Look at it this way then... these are just random examples... Soccer-dads who get very very worked up, standing behind the white-touch-line, egging on their children... to such a degree that its not unknown for punch-ups between parents to occur - Your Jimmy tripped my Billy... If I were on that pitch, I'd have flattened you. No you wouldn't 'cos I'd have nailed you first... and so on and so forth... And the Mums are just as bad. Handbags with the half-time oranges anyone?

Hoodies... how often do you see dad's in hoodies? Far to bloody often. And Mum's aping the dress-sense of their teenage daughters, with jeans that are far, far too tight, moulded over birth-given hips to the extent that they look like caricatures of their siblings.

Nothing seems sacred anymore... teenage daughter X dresses (in her mind) to thrill and kill at thirty paces only to find Mum, five steps asunder, wearing a similar(ish) outfit that makes her look like a clown.

Getting off on the same music... another weird one. Time was when my son was so heavily into Ibiza re-mixes played at volume eleven that he'd lost track of the fact that any other form of music existed. He'd play me stuff that - even to a musically liberated mind such as I have - was, to me, beyond help. Don't you get it Dad? he'd ask. Nope... sorry. Ahh, that's 'cos you're old. Thats fair enough... I am. Older anyway.

Its a bit like my parents blanching at their first sight on TV of The Beatles or The Stones or... heaven forbid, Jimi Hendrix.

For many years and in various homes I've lived in, a startling portrait of Jimi - the original artists' proof that became the cover for The Ultimate Experience - hung on the stairs. Why there - well, basically, it was too bloody big to hang pretty much anywhere else and besides, I really wasn't into the idea of it being hung in (say) the dining room or drawing room because I didn't much want a room like that to look like an outtake from a record shop.

A beautiful, some might say stunning piece of art that it was (is) but... it scared my aged Mother every time she saw it when she came to stay.

Which is a sort of opposite of what one tends to see around one nowadays... with parents seeming to want nothing more than to stay as young as their own teenage children, by sharing in their choice of TV, music and computer games.

A bit peculiar, I reckon. Plus, when I was a load younger and my own raft of grey hairs were way over a distant horizon, I loved the fact that my Dad (in particular) couldn't get a grip on Monty Python. He hated it. Quite right - he was old (in my mind) thus... don't come near what I like. I'd have hated him coming into the pub with me in the days when it was de-rigeur to wear jeans with bell-bottoms that would put a sailor through all shades of blue-shame wearing similar to mine. Hated it..? No, I'd have been bloody humiliated.

And, can I make head or tail of much of what my teenage daughter has on her own i-Pod currently? Nope... At least sixty per-cent is of bands I've never heard of. She'll play me stuff - some I like, some I don't. But, the point is, I don't get off on it / or pretend to be into it 'cos I want (need) to ape her developing musical tastes. Equally a shed load of stuff I like, she loathes - one day maybe she'll arrive at the same conclusion I have with regard to (say) Puccini... maybe in time she'll learn to love Opera as I do... maybe not... and, more importantly, it doesn't matter.

None of this makes her or me / me or her any better or worse than anyone else but... at least there is no pretending or aping.

But, nowadays... look around any urban environment and... there's too much evidence of that, of older wanting to be young in some kind of bizarre never grow-up recreation and its there for all to see.

I do, however, love the idea of being Peter Pan but... isn't that in the mind as much as anything else? I reckon so. The whole growing old disgracefully bit... thats for me. Oooops, another digression...

Somewhere I came across another take on this whole adolescent / adult scenario... and, I just found what I'd written down in amongst a whole heap of Project X notes... which, I suppose, goes to show just how wildly my mind wanders from time to time.

Anyhow, this is a early-teen explaining their thoughts on what they reckon it'd be like to be an adult.

When you're properly grown-up you don't have to do stupid things like hobbies... you don't have to worry about tidying your room because you live in your own house... you don't have to worry about finding a girlfriend and how to do things with her because you have a wife and children... you can tell other people what to do, and you can say things like 'take my word for it'.

And... you can grow a moustache.