media guardian's section on the express is an invaluable resource.

that said, i can't really work out for sure if the below is being written from a bleeding-heart humanitarian perspective or a more pragmatic-cum-cynical perspective; probably the former.

either way, it's always worth remembering that conservative commentators often seem to be disingenuous when they attack social-democratic liberals for sometimes ignoring the predilection of many migrants to end up in '3D' positions.
one recalls Mark Steyn being guilty of this once.

on the other hand, and to change the subject, in the interests of fairness it'd be best to note - and i apologise for repeating myself, as this has been written here before - that the guardian doesn't always get it right on the subject of migration.
the right of reply afforded to Beeb man John Ware rather trumped Blunkett's broadside the day before. basically both articles are reasonable and Ware does not respond to all points Blunkett makes. but you have to give Ware some things, and the Powellite smear is certainly not a pleasant one (Enoch Powell, much like Winston Churchill, loved Indians when they were in India). Blunkett is completely accurate, to be fair, when he writes Ware claimed yesterday that since Enoch Powell there had been a 35-year taboo on discussing immigration. That's frankly risible, as anyone who reads a daily newspaper knows. it might also be significant that Ware apparently wrote for the Daily Mail, not the most open-minded paper on the subject of migration and asylum. Blunkett is again correct when he identifies that Consciously or not, Panorama has played into the hands of those who use the issue of asylum to attack immigration per se. it would, of course, be an unconscious decision on the part of Auntie (after all, both they and Channel 4 news - but especially Channel 4, seem less slightly less 'populist issues thrusting' than ITN {though ITN does make Channel 4 news too, but their flagship programme on the ITV channels, is what i am referring to} : i am not suggesting that ITN-ITV news are evil populists in general or anything, more noting that the Beeb is hardly, of course, the Sun).

here's a fairly realistic look at things from the Bay.

some years ago, the BBC made Blackadder the Third.
these days, they make Coupling.

how is that possible?

i mean, actually, like how?
===

here is Blackadder the Third : -
But I'm afraid there's been a change of plan; I'm now off to the kitchen, to hack my head off with a big knife

and here is Coupling : -
Jib Jib Jib Jib Jib Jib Jib Jib, er, Jib

~

it's a mystery, like why does Kevin Keegan persist in any patience with Bosvelt or Sibierski__
inexplicable really

with reference to young Domingo (see earlier entry) i should point out for the sake of fairness that the circumstances behind the disaster-in-waiting that was the Basque Incident are, at least, widely known.
with hindsight, the introduction of some Spanish into the arena clearly only inflamed matters, though we were able to soothe some appalled tempers with some general low-grade abuse of the French.
all in all, the whole episode cost Mikey dollar and he has been ridiculed enough so i for one am willing to let bygones be bygones.

i was just at some msn site and they had some splash about top ten romantic breaks but the tagline read Paris or New York?

no, don't piss your life away, YOU have the baton,
clearly Venice over either for a start,

numpties.

one to watch

what a surprise (also)

bollocks [see also the informative and balanced site of the UN mission to Afghanistan]

A Kosovan woman mentally scarred by war in the Balkans won a High Court battle yesterday to stay in Britain.
_Metro, 18/11/03.

good.

ah

hmm

Demonstrators in their tens of thousands are expected to turn out to rail against his administration's foreign policy, its environmental record, and his presidency - numbers set to dwarf the dissent which greeted China's Jiang Zemin or the 1978 state visit by Romania's Nicolae Ceausescu.
~
hmm.

superb

derby have got, like, three 16 year olds, they've got a lad who plays in the centre of the park who's massive apparently.
how good must he be?

quality.

my mate went to see 'laurel canyon' last night. he said it was okay

Miguel and i have been involved in many fractious situations down the years, but what i will say is that the circumstances surrounding the Christchurch Road Incident are still not entirely clear

the strength of the two cookies i just ate was such that the world immediately outside was blinded by their special magnificence.
if i was a praying sort i would entreat the deity of your choice to stop the world because i cannot sit here after such a repast of fierce brilliance, and merely allow things to continue as per.
the gushing molten chocolate that melted down my eager throat, the springy lamb's springing turf spongy dough, the brittle Smarties accompaniment.

these were big cookies as well, i'm not talking about the little ones.
these were the big beggars, you understand.

if someone gives me a sign i'd be willing to interpret then i would stop myself and check my head.
otherwise i may have to buy a tuna sandwich too.

clearly the man needs to take himself outside and have a word with himself

fair points

oh, you ROCK

i was into SoCal punk-rock when i was 13 like everyone else, and these NoFX lyrics still scan pretty cool.

i saw the Black Crowes once when i was about 16, and enjoyed it enough.

a fairy nuff sounding first crack of the whip

how do i wuv Jon?

-

let me count the ways ~

in other news, we buttered up the script quite nicely this morning, and things are on track and proceeding with Plan B.

...How can life grant us boon of living, compensate
For dull grey ugliness and pregnant hate
Unless we dare

The soul's dominion? Each time we make a choice, we pay
With courage to behold the restless day,
And count it fair.

- Amelia Earhart

i'm sorry to get all morbid on you, but one must admit that this particular story is the most personally upsetting in the realms of kid murders since the Victoria Climbie case.

just 18 and any opportunity for greatness and all possibilities of love and life snuffed out.

i want to buy this bloke a pint because he sounds soooo lovely

well, that can only be a good thing.

EMO/ALT.POPPERS UPDATE

this intel fresh in from the lovely companion :==

this afternoon i exited my building and proceeded west on wacker drive.
and then i walked right past art alexakis, the lead singer from everclear.
he had a bodyguard with him and everything, and i proceeded then to run right into some scaffolding that has been there for months.
this is because i am a klutz.
i so wanted to spin around and scream, YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE A WHORE, just to see if it was him.
instead however, i walked to the train. after all, i had a phone call to get home to.
art is currently on stage right this second at house of blues chicago.

i note amg reckon third album so much for the afterglow is their best.
well, sorry to rock the boat fellas, it's actually the debut in that cliched 'like the loud bits you do' way i have (this is also why i prefer early Idlewild to their Scots poets/Getrude Stein 'Murmur'-like efforts of more recently, even though this is the stuff of abhorrent punk-rock stereotype).

i heart this place_

i think it's near sidcup.

bexleyheath, on the other hand, that's definitely in Kent.

where is beccles?
it's near sidcup isn't it?

i'm not sure and i've never been.

that's it ted - YOU TELL HER

regular readers may well be aware that here is one of my three favourite websites anywhere.

if you are in a jam i suggest going to a search engine and looking for his rundown on 'Timon of Athens', because you can then see
Now, given how nice Timon is to everyone, you'd think they could be patient about the debts, or even spot a brother a small loan, right? We're all friends here, right? We're all tight? Well, here comes a ten-ton surprise, because it turns out that their gratitude was all talk. Each generates a lame excuse, even Sempronius, who claims to have known Timon from back in the day. From back in the day! This, truly, is cold. which will alleviate any symptoms.

i tried this several months ago.

disappointingly, it didn't work then either.

'scratch' is playing in mcr soon actually, at the bierkeller down piccadilly.

if you don't know manchester or the bierkeller it won't make any sense to you, but if you do then you'll surely agree that lee perry playing the piccadilly bierkeller is, frankly, a fucking odd state of affairs.

dunno what it is about the glorious music of Kompakt that seems to bring out the best in its reviewers, but what a superb rundown from Hackneyed Central

excellent Hockney portrait in the Telegraph, reproduced below :-

Forty years ago David Hockney left Bradford, peroxided his hair and headed for the Los Angeles hills. As a new book of the artist's life and works is published, Nigel Farndale meets a 'Yorkshire Californian'
~
The kidney-shaped swimming-pool is clue enough. It has been painted with squiggles so that if empty, it would look full, its surface rippling in the breeze, glinting in the sun. Overhanging it are giant palm fronds and cacti and, beyond them, a pink-walled house with a blue terrace. On this, looking out over the Hollywood Hills, surrounded by chairs and tables painted in egg-yolk yellows and dazzling reds, stands the owner. He has a boyish fringe, a gentle manner, and a soft, quaint, unhurried Yorkshire burr. It can only be... Alan Bennett.


David Hockney: a Yorkshire Californian

David Hockney is used to the jokes. The two men grew up within eight miles of each other in the West Riding of God's Own County. Alan Bennett once drew a self-portrait on a napkin for a waitress and signed it 'Hockney' and Hockney once signed one of his self-portraits 'Bennett'. But actually, even at 66, our most celebrated living artist can always be distinguished from his literary doppelgänger by his more flamboyant dress sense. Today Hockney is wearing red slippers with yellow spots, a turquoise watch, checked trousers, blue felt braces and a gingham shirt with a poppy in one of its buttonholes (I brought one over from England for him, to remind him of home).

Inside, in a room with a trompe-l'oeil painted fireplace, a grand piano and floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, there is a three-sided box on a table: a true mirror. 'Sit down here,' Hockney says, pulling back a chair. 'Now look at yourself.' I do. Unnervingly my reflection is not reversed. Hockney just bought this mirror and it has given him a new impetus to do self-portraits. 'I usually only draw myself in down periods,' he says, slowly, ruminatively. 'I do, actually. I suppose that's why I often draw myself looking grim. I just think, "Let's have a look in the mirror." When you are alone and you look in a mirror you never put on a pleasing smile. Well, you don't, do you?'

One of the most noticeable things about Hockney is his pleasing smile. It is lopsided, wry, infectious; it makes him seem permanently amused at the world, at himself; and it gives him an air of naive amiability. But, as he says himself, his dreamy bearing has a lot to do with the partial deafness from which he has suffered for 20 years. He can only hear with the help of powerful - and of course, Hockney being Hockney, differently coloured - hearing aids.

There seems to be a lot of activity in the house: Richard, Hockney's studio assistant, is on the phone; Ann, one of his oldest friends and regular models, is talking to her husband David; there is a photographer and her assistant; a home help; and a dachshund. I ask whether I need to raise my voice. 'Well we should maybe go up to the studio where it's quieter,' Hockney says, leading the way up an iron staircase, past a mobile of day-glo cut-out fish hanging from a branch, and up a path to an airy studio. Here there are easels, pots of paintbrushes, large model hands for drawing practice, numerous paint-spattered armchairs, a treadmill unplugged and gathering dust (Hockney, a chainsmoker, had a mild heart attack in 1990, but now he just swims every day to try and keep fit) and, on the walls, new portraits in watercolour.

'I can hear fine in here,' Hockney says, tapping a cigarette out of a packet of Camel Lights. 'It's only when there is a lot of background noise that I struggle.' He lights up. 'You know, the loss of one sense often heightens another. In my case I felt I could appreciate space much better when I lost my hearing, I think it's because sound locates you in space. You have to compensate somehow. I am interested in space, me. That's why I like painting the Grand Canyon. And the Yorkshire moors.'

David Hockney was born in Bradford in 1937, the fourth of five children. He attended Bradford Grammar School, where one of his reports described him as being 'light relief'. Inspired by the work of Stanley Spencer and Picasso he went on to Bradford School of Art and then the Royal College of Art, from which he graduated with the gold medal. At first his work was quite abstract. Then, in 1963, he travelled to California and developed a Pop Art style all his own - blazing colours, delicacy of line, geometrical buildings painted in oil and acrylic. Bronzed and naked young men by the sides of pools were a recurring theme, but it was the play of light on the water, like strands of spaghetti, that interested Hockney as much as the bare bottoms. A Bigger Splash in 1967 marked the apotheosis of the Hockney technique and, after that, he changed direction and became more naturalistic.

His best-known portrait, Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy, was painted in 1970-71. It was of the fashion designer Ossie Clark (who was later murdered), his wife Celia and their cat Percy. Although out of fear of repeating himself Hockney has experimented over the years with faxing, Xeroxing, snapshots assembled into cubist compositions, and opera stage design, he has always returned to portraiture, playing out his life on canvas by painting his famous friends (Andy Warhol, Christopher Isherwood and WH Auden among others), his lovers and, again and again, his parents, most notably with My Parents, painted in 1977. A collection of these, Hockney's Portraits and People, is about to be published and, as I flick through the book with him, I note that it amounts to a visual autobiography. 'The same people do appear over and over,' he says. 'I've found it easier because I really know them. Portraits are about the relationship of the painter to the subject.'

Do his subjects feel as if they are being immortalised on canvas, given that most of his portraits seem to end up in galleries? 'I don't know. But I did once say to Albert Clark, Celia's son, that he and I had a strange thing in common. We both have a portrait of our parents hanging in the Tate Gallery.' He draws thoughtfully on his cigarette. 'I generally don't ask the subject what they think of what I've done. It doesn't really matter what they think. I'm not out to flatter. That's not what it's about.'

Last year he and Lucian Freud sat for each other; what did he learn about portrait painting from that experience? 'It made me feel more sympathetic towards the people who sit for me. I sat for 120 hours for Lucian; he would only sit for three hours for me. He wouldn't co-operate, really. Too restless. The difference between us is, Lucian is shy and I'm a chatterbox, except when I am painting. I don't let people talk when I paint. Well, I don't mind people talking, but I don't answer back because I'm tuned out. Lips moving are very hard to get. Actually Lucian and I talked quite a lot when he was painting me. He let me smoke, too, but only if I didn't tell Kate Moss, who was also sitting for him and who also smokes.' There is a photograph of Freud's portrait of Hockney on the studio wall. I ask him if he thinks it flattering. 'Some people thought he made me look a lot older than I am and I thought, "So what? It's his account of looking at me, not my account." Jacob Rothschild, I remember, said, "He's made you look like a Yorkshireman, David." I said, "Well, I am a Yorkshireman." He said: "I mean, as opposed to a painter." And I said, "Can't Yorkshiremen be painters?"' He gives a throaty laugh. 'I suppose Lucian would always see me as a Yorkshireman because of my accent compared to his.'

David Hockney does say 'twenny' for twenty and 'liddle' for little, but otherwise living in California for most of his adult life doesn't seem to have made much of an impact on his flat northern vowels. 'It's because I did all the talking,' he says. 'It wasn't a matter of me trying to retain my identity over here. I've never bothered about my accent. When I first went to London, to the RCA, I was mocked for it. People would shout, "Trouble at mill, Mr Hockney?" I used to smile and think, "They have no idea what Yorkshire is like, these people." Probably my deafness is connected with my retaining an accent.'

Hockney inherited his deafness from his father, Kenneth, who died in 1978. He also inherited a pacifist sensibility, which was why he refused to do National Service and worked instead as a hospital orderly for two years. His father wore two wristwatches 'in case one was wrong' and once took his armchair out into the street to wait by a phonebox in case it rang - he had placed an ad in the local paper selling a billiard table and had given out the phonebox number. His father, I say, seems to have been an eccentric; does he take after him? 'Some of my friends who knew my father say, "You are getting more and more like Kenneth." He never went out of the house without a hat, a tie and a cane. I suppose he was a dandy of sorts but, later on, he would put string in his boots. He was a conscientious objector, like me, but the big difference between us was, he was ferociously anti-smoking whereas I have always been fanatically pro it. He wasn't a sophisticated man. He hardly ever left Bradford. He was a member of CND and a socialist with a rather romantic and naive idea of what Soviet Russia was like, all cornfields and ballet. He would have gone mad for email because he was always sending letters to world leaders - Eisenhower, Mao, Stalin - telling them what was what. I think he imagined the Politburo would hold up his letter and say, "Hold everything, Kenneth Hockney has written again!" He was a humble Bradford clerk who was horrified by big bombs. Quite right, too. Mother was in charge. She thought my father rather comic, I think.'

Laura Hockney was a devout Methodist who kept scrupulous ledger books during the whole of her married life. In them she noted every penny spent from the family budget on food and clothing. Has he, I ask, inherited his mother's caution with money? 'I don't know anything about money. It's always been a by-product of what I do. The moment I could earn a living as a painter I was rich because I was doing what I wanted to do. There was a time when I thought my money was becoming a burden because I just wanted to spend my time in the studio and I couldn't. I got rid of the beach house in Malibu and now I just have Pembroke Studios in Kensington, and this place. I don't want any more because I don't want to look after them. I don't want paperwork. I'd rather stay in hotels.'

You would need a spare couple of million to buy a Hockney painting - even a roll of his old holiday snaps that were found in Bradford and sold at auction went for £11,000. Does David Hockney know what he is worth? 'Not really.

No, I don't actually. I don't know how I'd add it up. I'm too busy in here to bother, really.' He shrugs.

'I never seem to run out.'

Bradford in the 1950s wasn't a hotbed of liberalism, one imagines. What did his parents think when he came out as gay? 'They never said anything. They wouldn't. On the other hand they knew I wasn't going to take too much notice of what they said about how I lived my life. I don't know whether I would have been so open if I'd stayed in Bradford. Remember, I lived in bohemia here in LA. It's a tolerant place. They know about human failings.' He takes a sip of carrot juice. 'When I first arrived here it seemed such a sexy, sunny, naked place. California having a climate like it does, people wear fewer clothes. That is why they look after their bodies more. The gay bar scene was big here then. I was amazed. I thought: what organisation! I bleached my hair and felt very free.'

He was promiscuous? 'When I first came here, yes. It was so easy.'

How promiscuous? 'I didn't keep count. It was the only time I was. I remember one very attractive young man who was Mr California Dream. I brought him back with me on a trip to England but I had to send him back to California after a week when I realised he had no curiosity about anything. It was just lust on my part.' He flicks through the book. 'I was attracted to California for another reason, though, one which I didn't realise at the time and that was the sense of space. I'm claustrophobic, you see. Also the climate attracts you. It's 20 times brighter here than in London. I don't think the people here really appreciate what they have. It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.'

At one stage he seemed to become almost as well-known for his flamboyant dress sense - the wide-brimmed hats, the peroxide hair, the big owlish glasses - as for his paintings. Was this just vanity? 'All young artists know that somehow you have to attract attention to get people to look at your pictures. My vanity as an artist is that I want the pictures seen.'

That sounds quite cynical. 'I didn't wish to be a celebrity. I just wanted to be an artist. It was always about the pictures.'

When, in 1966, he met Peter Schlesinger, a good-looking young student, his years of promiscuity came to an end. 'That was my first long-term relationship,' he says. 'Isn't that what we are all looking for? My relationship with Peter lasted for five years.'

Schlesinger was the subject of some of Hockney's best-known paintings. Was he the love of his life? 'Not quite. Peter wasn't as keen on music as I was. Think I took him to too many Wagner operas. I suppose if you are not that keen on music, Wagner must be a big bore... I have a relationship now...' He turns and points to a portrait on the wall of a young lantern-jawed man. 'But John is stuck in England. They wouldn't let him back in because he stayed two days too long last time. I'll get him back.'

Is Hockney difficult to live with? 'Well, you do have to be selfish as an artist. Painting is a solitary activity. I like people, I'm just unsocial because of my hearing, not antisocial. My sister pointed out that a lot of my paintings have a lot of loneliness in them. Empty chairs. She did. She pointed that out. I thought, "That's a good interpretation, actually."'

There have been many interpretations of Hockney's work, I say. One thinks of Sur la Terrasse, which shows Schlesinger turning his back on the painter as their relationship came to an end in 1971. Does knowing the narrative behind a painting help appreciate it? 'I don't think so. Everything after a while becomes decorative, which is why you are not moved by looking at a crucifixion picture in the National Gallery. You are looking at it as art, at its formal qualities.' He licks the corner of his mouth, a tic of his. 'With Sur la Terrasse I could just have been thinking, "Doesn't he look cute from the back?"'

He closes the book and, looking over his glasses with clear blue eyes, says, 'Do you want to know what moves me?' He fetches a photocopy of a Rembrandt sketch showing a group of people helping a child take its first steps. 'I think this is the greatest drawing ever made by anyone. It's a very ordinary subject which any viewer has experienced and observed. Think how fast his hand must have been moving when he did this. Look at the way this woman's head is tilted so you can see her expression. Look at the weightlessness here. I think this is far superior to the Mona Lisa.'

Rembrandt's skill clearly affects him but what about the subject matter? Does he wish he had had a child he could teach to walk? He flicks his cigarette butt on to the studio floor and stubs it out with his slipper. 'I did see a child learn to walk. Albert Clark. Perhaps that is why I find this so moving.'

Is it true he had an affair with Clark's mother, Celia? He purses his lips. 'It was never that serious. I would have liked to have had children. I think about that a lot. As a present to my assistant, Richard, I paid for him to have his vasectomy reversed so that he could have children. And he did, too. And is very happy. I used to look at my brother [who is Hockney's accountant, and a former mayor of Bradford] and his children and think he had it all wrong.

I thought, "How conventional of him. What is all the fuss about?" Now I don't.'

Because he's older? 'I was with my mother on her deathbed four years ago. It made me think.'

Did he paint his mother then, as Monet painted his dying wife? 'I did, as it happens.'

Wasn't that cold of him? 'It's what an artist does. It's how an artist responds to the world. I suppose it was a way of dealing with it, or not dealing with it.'

He has had to deal with a lot of grief in his life. 'At one point I was flying weekly to New York where I had four different friends dying from Aids in four different hospitals. I lost a hell of a lot of friends. That is why New York is so different now. Two generations were wiped out, really. Very talented people.'

How many friends did he lose? 'A lot. Friends and acquaintances. I couldn't write it down, I must tell you. I once tried but I couldn't do it, it drove me mad, actually. I got to the point where I didn't even want to answer the phone in case it brought more news of premature death.'

Does he feel lucky to have survived?

'Well, I was.'

On one level a studio high up in the Hollywood Hills seems exactly the sort of place to encounter one of Quentin Crisp's 'stately homos of England'. Hockney seems at home here, comfortable in his skin, at ease with the Californian banality. His language, like his paintings, like the primary colours his house is painted in, seems simplified. And he has a childlike candour and curiosity. He loves gadgets and mirrors and cameras (as he demonstrated in his bestselling book Secret Knowledge, in which he showed how the old masters had used a camera lucida for their portraits).

'I never had any self-doubt,' he tells me at one point in the studio on the hill. 'But there were times when the art world would say, "What are you doing wasting your time on photography?" Of course I didn't see it that way because I was finding things out.'

Hockney is unassuming about his work. And his wit is as dry as a Yorkshire stone wall. When I ask him about his enduring popularity - the critic Robert Hughes once called him 'the Cole Porter of contemporary art' - he smiles and says, 'Sometimes there is a prettiness to my work. I can't help it. I can't help putting the charm in.' And later, when I ask him which place he regards as home, Yorkshire or California, he says without missing a beat, 'I'm a Yorkshire Californian.'

'Let me show you something,' he says, leading the way back down to the house. When we reach the door, he stops and adds, 'Wait here.' He disappears inside and, when he re-emerges, I follow his tall and stooping figure along a corridor. 'Now, look at that,' he says. Through another doorway I can see a mirror which is reflecting a predominately red painting of a village on the opposite wall, out of sight. It looks three-dimensional. 'Amazing what mirrors do, isn't it?' he says. 'That's Sledmere in Yorkshire. I painted it in 1997 when a friend of mine, Jonathan, was dying of cancer in Wetherby. I would visit him every day from Bridlington, where my mother was, and I kept driving through this village. I want to go again to paint Yorkshire next year. Yorkshire is like the American West because you can see a long way. I like that, seeing a long way.'

some more Martin Archer stuff, Annette Krebs bloody 'ell, like that one : -

Wednesday 19th November 2003
ANNETTE KREBS - guitar
Exploring the possibilities of the electroacoustic guitar,
unmissable appearance by this acclaimed Berlin based soundsmith
Also
PER-SON-ELL
Rex Caswell - guitar
Martin Klapper - various objects
Sture Ericson - saxophones
Extremes-of-instrument improv supported by the Danish Jazz Federation
Over the Top, 78 Kingfield Road, Nether Edge, Sheffield
8.00 pm. £5 full / £3 concession, all tickets on door

Wednesday 26th November 2003
VIV CORRINGHAM - voice
PETER CUSACK - strings, electronics
Songs based group from this respected duo
Also
DAVE PHILLIPS
JOKE LANZ
DANIEL LOWENBROOK
Radical and confrontational Swiss performance art
ensemble associated with Schimpfluch-Gruppe
The Grapes,Trippet Lane, Sheffield
8.30 pm. £5 full / £3 concession, all tickets on door

Wednesday 10th December 2003
PAUL HUBWEBER - trombone
JOHN JASNOCH - guitars, mandolin, ud
First chance to see this fine German player in Sheffield
together with our own JJ, following on from their German tour.
Also
SWUNG-DASH
Phil Morton - accidents and treatments
Adam Webster - bass guitar, cello
Phil Lucking - trumpets
Budgie - drumset
Periods of serene psycho-ambience to moments of crashing
intensity whilst calling at many places in between
The Grapes,Trippet Lane, Sheffield
8.30 pm. £5 full / £3 concession, all tickets on door

i’ve been enjoying a few Jake Chapman quotes.
the Saatchi Gallery is simply an expression of one man’s ownership.
Tate Modern is swerving towards a lowest common denominator which de-skills the potential of serious discursive art.
“As he sidles through the Daily Mail-sponsored ‘Not the Turner Prize’, an exhibition of paintings of trains, sunsets and Margaret Thatcher, he likens the crowd of old ladies enjoying the show to single-celled organisms. This is what Prozac does to a country, he mutters.”

Three pounds of veal, five onions stewed in Epping butter, milk, lemon juice, three tablespoons of curry powder.
’Tis, when done, a dish for emperors to feed on
~
_Madhur Jaffrey quotes from Thackeray’s poem ‘Curry’.
an initially suspicious foodie Bee Wilson cooks it, and is eventually impressed, concluding It is nothing like the fancy, herby, fishy curries that the cognoscenti choose to cook in London these days. But it tastes completely authentic.

curry is an older British dish than the chippy – fish and chips per se were ‘invented’ in east Manchester sometime in the 19th century, soon after spread to Barnsley across the hills, and arguably today have reached their perfection in my view in a few key chippy locations, such as Blackpool, Scarborough, and of course, Whitby.
mushy peas are referred to as Manchester caviar.
curries have been getting made in this country for at least the past 250 years, and certainly were being eaten by Britons in India half a millennium ago.

cracking headline story in the Daily Express last Friday (14th). under the splash ASYLUM: THEY CAN ALL STAY, you get a predictable ranting and raving about Mr Blunkett’s most recent measures in this field (see last Thursday’s entry for a BBC news-story link about what he said). the one bit that cracked this reader up though, was He also suggested there should be no upper limits on the number of immigrants allowed into the country, raising fears of a furious backlash from Right-wing extremists.
the irony in that sentence, or whatever, is basically too much to break down.
what about the furious backlash from the Populist Tabloids (that the Odd Angry Rightwinger probably get their news from, i'd be willing to bet dollar, incidentally), guv?

award for The August Harbottle & Laws Magnanimous Prize of the Week goes to that day’s editorial though. one quotes there remains a strong case for carefully-controlled legal immigration.

bloody ‘ell, that’s good of them, isn’t it?

the readers’ phone-in on that day read
Should we slam the nation’s gates shut NOW?
you may wish to take a wild stab in the dark as to whether the Nos, or the Yes’, will prevail…

really rather gratified of late to hear from man like Weaver that The Express is losing sales - indeed they've been haemorrhaing readers for ages apparently, all the way back to 1996 - it's a funny old world.

i was assuming their hardening populist stance was a calculated move that they knew was getting them greater circulation, but it seems like just the opposite may in fact be in full effect.

the stewardship of Rizzla Rosie Boycott was an interesting social-democratic/left-liberal aberration, and they're nowadays back to a strange mixed bag of moderate centrism with some peculiar populist views thrown in (after all, to be fair, they have the new statesman political editor john kampfener as a correspondent and the occasional column from newsnight defence man mark urban). it's a fairly schizoid place, all told.

they did have one truly electrifying editorial i shall take with me to the grave which was on the eve of the 1997 general election and they came out in support of the conservatives. you sensed they knew the game was up as there was this incredibly romantic editorial about conservative values and the worldview of the express' editorial team, an elegy or something.
then of course the tories got stuffed and everybody cheered stephen twigg.
odd.

i have been asked to point out the following

houston vibing on bhangra

it's not quite man like Stelfox but it's all good

babs roche and an earlier guardian piece, both on migration watch

if tony adams takes leave of his senses and brings Gazza to Adams Park it would be bad for all concerned.

whatever they put in their coffee over at the onion i suggest we clearly all start taking our coffee that way

there have been some lovely entries there recently and as for that well it's just top drawer it really is

premier league blogging

not getting bitter at the end there, eh Lord Black?

some of these sri lankan towns sound a bit dicey eh

that's an excellent wrap up of how Scotland are poised on the brink of footballing glory if they can manage to keep their heads above water Wednesday night in Amsterdam

i think that that is possibly the finest individual post on any blog i've ever read.

leathered people fighting each other in pubs - in my experience there's usually the ghoulish car-crash amusement factor to be factored in
quite frankly

points :-

AUSSIES! nobble Wilkinson, get a man off, it's worth it, you'll win, though we could easily win by 40 points as well
it's weird robinson can't defend for toffee compared to lewsey but you'd rather have robinson in attacking form than t'other

good lord

you know it's a good weekend when you've had leek and cheddar bangers and mash and just avoided a stick up down the Royce Road in Hulme.

oh, it WILL be hot there

evertonian beat the Dutch, can they play for a draw in Amsterdam?

GO WALES, dodgy firecrackers however in the manner of to singe people, especially the Taff keeper whose name escapes me
Wales have the best blogger, ergo they can beat Russia i know, you know it, my mate who's a student here knows it

house of jealous lovers actually works as a choon when sandwiched between Kate Bush and Judy Garland

what doesn't work is the Flock of Seagulls/Skinny Puppy/Severed Heads DJ enquiring of requests for Dizzee 'is that a hiphop thing?'
you, my friend, win the BATON

Angus is on form, he mentions fisting and Holly Valance in the same sentence, probably not in the way most of my male friends do though.
(ouch)
shezza crow, first cut is the deepest, that doesn't sound right_

crumblingloaf

CHEST YA Nick GB

true dat

how good has that man been of late?

very much, in other words.

indeed and RIP

Harrogate Town!
your number five is A COCK that's actually a FACT that

whilst Stelfox is ALWAYS on form i feel that bit where he references young Mr Finney about the otherworldliness etc. of his dancehall faves it totally flashed on Simon's epic piece in the wire
about his love for reggae divorced from context blah blah
actually i read somewhere the other day and i REALLY can't remember where it was but someone was slagging off that piece, it's the one where SR talks about a fourway collision between gay uptown Manhattan disco, Hackney gun-runners or whatever, and tings like that
to these people, you are WRONG
you ALSO have the baton
=

this weekend i ate drank danced listened talked a

lot
~
P.S.
sort your fucking life out, DAVID DAVIS
you have the baton my good man and not just a fucking portion either,
MUPPET
Margaret Thatcher was in favour of the death penalty
Yep, she was also in favour of shafting Notts/Yorks/the North East/the scousers/the West Midlands to death mate

there were many quotes this weekend that would light up the week here's one from Gyles B's diary, i apologise for being all profane but you know it's Monday morning and i'm drunk so fuck it
Soames is in the lobby he barks his way through and LO AND BEHOLD!!! who does he see but the Wintertons. Soames tells them - and here i quote -
Your cunts, and ugly ones to boot
at a fellow MP!
you're not a nephew of Churchill for nothing eh

i have been reliably informed that the sixpence none the richer cover of 'don't dream it's over' is utter crap.

still drunk, at work, waiting for hangover.

bad eggs.

OK, i'm off for a three day bender with about eight good lads and true as of tomorrow early afternoon, so i'll read you all half-cut monday
cheers

i am now regretting the chocolate eclair consumed after the satsumas.

cozen may have decided to shut up shop - at least for now - but here on this page are three links to stuff the boy Howie wrote at neumu (it's a quirk to refer, first label, then artist, then label ok?)

-reviews something on
kompakt
-reviews some
foxgloves
-reviews something on
leaf

there you are.

Jon's info' about Vini Reilly playing in town is all well and (very) nice; personally one was gutted to hear that Gangstarr has sold out their date.
gah!

there is a very good photograph in the latest edition of amnesty UK's magazine, taken recently in london. there's a picture of an AI campaigner inside a small cage, head down and cloaked by a red hoodie. his hands are gripping the bars. on the top of the cage is a big canvas, which has a small amnesty logo and bears the words NOT ALL PRISONERS GET THIS MUCH ATTENTION.
in the middle distance, high in the air above this cage and suspended over the river thames, is david blaine's perspex box (you can just about make out the ropes and supports keeping his perspex home in place).
it is, without a doubt, the most powerful photo i have seen all year.

i would just like to take this opportunity to cordially request of Migration Watch UK [also bowblog: - that post is interesting for the comments beneath - check all three for fun and frolics]
that they consider my plea to please SHUT THE FUCK UP
~
in the future perhaps, ooh i don't know, they might even wish to refrain from saying anything at all?

interesting
~
also interesting that the Russian Prosecutor-General's Office has said Once again, terrorists are being split into two groups - good terrorists and bad ones

yes, perhaps in much the same way that some governments are better than others, eh Sir?

...

wow

that's my man Mathews' end (Irish can only afford one 't'); he's o/s at the mo, doing that whole Big Apple/Albany/Hartford/Boston/Philly circuit, picking up his Cold Chillin', CBGBs, and Celtics apparel.
doing his thing.

shout to mathews.

vile

just like to point out that - politically speaking, or whatever - i'm one of these cynical fence-sitters that doesn't actually really get worked up much, one way or t'other, about any possible introduction of ID cards in Britain within a possible decade.

i am a little confused about the logistics of some of it, however_

oh god yes

- startling form.

i do actually plan to post a reply to RC about some stuff he wrote a month ago or so, but it's getting round to it.
For the racially-mixed working-class-to-lower-middle-class continuum - coming from the latter-half of this formulation that seems very much OTM to me.
and Rowan Williams likes the Incredible String Band - well it's not all bad!
that's quite cool that, really.

i told you Jon, Bella Emberg & Robin Page's lovechild.

Daniel Figgis remix compilation - that sounds intriguing.

that documentary about Bryn Terfel is quality: big up yrself big fella!

wot a voice.

it’s always good when you see an advert for a novelist you’ve never heard of and it turns out it’s WG Sebald giving the euphoric praising quote as part of the paraphernalia.

on the front of the Daily Express this morning, there was a picture of the Princess of Wales (R.I.P., Madam) and a headline in large white letters to the left of her image proclaimed DIANA DEATH TRUTH AT LAST. above that, on the mast, white letters squawking “Top lawyers in secret talks to get public inquest” followed a red EXCLUSIVE. The story mentioned turning to “page 7, column 1” for the full skinny. one turned to page 7 expecting to be greeted with what was promised (i.e., SAD AUTO-ACCIDENT IN WHICH A FEW HUMAN BEINGS DIED HORRIBLY; or, as private eye memorably put it around the time her driver was pissed and crashed the car) so the Princes can get on with it and the poor sods not have the tragic figure of their mother being discussed in the press. BUT! there was something far more sinister (and, quite possibly, interesting) about a ‘plot’. what that plot was, i couldn’t say, as i felt a little woozy and had to lie down shortly after, given the terrifying information from the Express that around one and a half million North Africans are headed my way, presumably to take my jobs and women.

goddamn, i gots to get myself a piece, y’getme?

i’ve put up a picture of Chiwetel Ejiofor on my wall actually, man looks piercing.

well obviously that isn't racist in the slightest; why, they'll be telling us David Seaman is an incapable goal-keeper next!

of course he's a positively 'let them all in, lifeboat theory is an absolute abomination' freedom-of-movement ideologue compared to some tabloid editors...

the main problem with that analogy of course is that, whereas - for example - prime-period Richard Pryor is piss-funny and political, David Blunkett is merely political (indeed, some of his announcements strike me as distinctly unfunny)_

what is Mr Blunkett up to with these biometric ID card proposals?

58 to 60 million Britons at present (i don't know what the population will be in the year 2013, but i know it will have grown), plus however many 'ghosts' (a sizeable number, for sure), and yet the biggest memory bank in the world anywhere at present can store 30,000 records for biometrics (scanning irises and all that, like you're in a bad Bond plot_)...

is he not telling us something about secret Star Wars-type technology the British government has access to, or is he actually making like many of the best stand-up comics and making it up as he goes along?

bloody hell, not only does Matt get by far the coolest correspondence (that 'world' exchange! the son et lumiere stuff!) he also gets to sit around the campfire, trading salty tales and swilling Scottish water with Emerald Jim.
enviable.

anyway, what was needing to be briefly said in repsonse to Ingram's latest is that of course, is the recognition that is deserved for the Desert Blues I & II anthologies, sure these are entry level packages, but they sure look lovely on the frontcover (bit exoticised Other perhaps, yet also rippling sands, but hey) and the compelling aesthetic levers his mate points out are too true.
even if you only ever get into Ali Farka Toure and just buy 'niafunke' (Nick Gold is an excellent, versatile producer, it must be owned) to listen to in the bath, well that's something eh!
and who couldn't help but fall in love with such abundant riches.
and also what also needs to be said is his mate there has some good points aired in his wrap-up paragraph about fusion and cross-fertilisation.

i must admit i've not yet had the chance to so much as hear Zuco 103, but they sound okay.

i'm a bit of a tit, i never mail Matt, i sent him a postcard from Chicago but i don't think it got there as i forgot to write airmail on and my mam didn't get hers and i posted that one at the same time without writing 'airmail' on it (Jonny Dale loved his, apparently, chest y')

someone needs to write a decent tome on rai, and i need to carry on listening to this Nuyorican funk comp. (no it ain't on souljazz or nascente heh-heh!)

excellent post about Scritti at mind too_

oops!
splutteringly red-faced apologies all round really to Peter all in your mind, he spotting my scandalously spineless (and rather clichedly hipsterati/pfork-like) lambasting of the neptunes boys and justin t. cavorting together as "middlebrow". sometimes i know what i mean and sometimes i don't. i suppose i mean that my opinion of the album - like Ingram's perspective incidentally, AFAIK - remains fairly low. i picked up the first one before they redid it with the more live band feel and i just don't feel it very much; the rock version even less so (though curiously did see some journo the other day bigging up the rejig, in a discussion of McCartney slagging off Spector for his production handling of 'let it be', the naked version of that hitting the shops soon of course).
that's all academic tho', as live i'd be willing to bet my wanking hand (ouch) they cut the mustard.
must admit, i do wuv Justin (sorry Matt!).
contritely slinks back to hole, resumes burping contest...
~

if Andrew Fraser in the commuter paper doesn't be careful, he might find himself displacing Nigel Slater in my foodie writer's pantheon to third and be all 'occupying the second pedestal behind Torygraph scribe M. Norman' on yo azz.
discussing a countryside restaurant this morning, he notes his companion's braised lamb shank to be tender as a sonnet.
talk about simple eloquence.

of course i won't i'm too busy eating chunky kitkats, making like Craig David ("Bullets all over my boink")

only the 12th of november and one's been humming slade's christmas tune.
this is the fault of shops and their advertising i rate.
i should write to my MP and ask him to do his mints and sort it out.

Nick shouldn't worry - though it's good someone is.
ever since about the Chrimbo before last (wasn't 2001 the year that all the newspapers ran full page articles on the White Stripes hey), even such behind-the-door institutions as the broadsheets have been publishing incredibly half-arsed (the telegraph and guardian bad for this, in my experience) puffpieces about the nu-rock revolution leaving moribund electronica by the wayside in its own little ghetto, dance blah blah, all ver kidz want for Chrimbo is a six string not Technics, everyone wuvs the Darkness (i've been whistling Queen all morning because of them) etc.
as long as Sherburne remains more prosaically convincing than Petridis (i.e. for FUCKING EVAH), i'll not be too bothered...

my lexicon of film~
god i'm a pompous twat haha

fine evocation of lantana, which was definitely one of my more favourite films of last year and rabbit proof fence was also good
hey listen that's high praise off me, in my lexicon
films are either
rubbish
alright
good
very good
superb

heh-heh

also good point about the mystic river comparison
didn't think of that at the time, but lantana did it better i thought yeah,
too many of my mates are in luv with americana at the expense of exploring other possibilities for the sake of it.
and would disagree.
each to their own.

but that perspective that we'll term widescreen home on the range, UNCUT and all that, i dunno, i like to dip my bread in a bit of it, good to get buttered, but too much excludes and that's no good thing
mystic river, that's okay though, don't get me wrong like
i hear Robbins is rumoured to be in the running for an Oscar they give 'em away these days hey?

mac mall's ghetto theme, there's a very fine tune about to break off its top there and start moving its rump

i heard rufus feat. chaka ain't nobody like for the first time ever yesterday and that's bloody good too

just heard Ozzy covering the Bee-gees.
bloody good, i must say,
funky and playful
loud and METALLIC
good

fire albums heh-heh

all this Charlie boy is bi- and was caught in a bed with a servant malark, it's too much to get me head round all the legal angles so i enjoy reading potted articles in the broadsheets, my mate told me there's a new Snickers out, it's called Snickers Flapjack!!

superb, they'll get back to me when they have another one, i had a flapjack some time ago, first for ages, and it was crumbly and held together with brown sugar and honeyed things and the lovely little escarpments of stickyness on the main corrie that is the body of the flapjack stick to the roof of your mouth, all round a generally good eating experience.
yet another promising looking balti house is opening right round my way (not like London alas, it's only Cantonese, Indian, Lebanese, bits of French, Italian and tapas round here) but it's called Mr Spice.
can't work out if this is good or bad.

alright, that was mean about Dave Eggers.

i apologise.

Baal OTM OTM OTM and a half on Spanish artists (Velazquez and Goya for me).

what a joyous sentence :-

I suppose there's four main Spanish artists that have transcended their society and been embraced beyond their land on a wider scale: Goya, Velasquez, Dali, Picasso.

why craftless tat like Dave Eggers is more widely read than erasetheworld i don't know, was looking at the archives last night, they're bang on.

i read in the paper yesterday that Gwen Stefani and some fucking cute Sudanese model whose name escapes me but there was a picture of her there, anyway, i read they're doing well in their own handbag lines.
i also read that Paris Hilton's fledgling handbag line is doing disappointingly.
its not really a surprise, i have to say, reading the above therefore.
QED.

obviously you all wanted to, like, know that

goddamn was my left armpit itchin

This hijacking of the TV news bulletin seriously contradicts the principle of freedom of information which is exclusively the responsibility of the editorial staff
nice bit of Orwellian double-speak from the French culture minister.

i'm off til tomorrow it doesn't really seem appropriate to post after 11am on the 11/11.
'bye.