Year: 2018

Glitter mops and fashion

This is largely the tale of how a love of Korean sauces helped me realise that it’s ok not to conform to fashion.

I was looking through some slow cooker recipes the other day trying to decide what to make for dinner. I ended up picking a recipe for Balsamic Chicken and added the ingredients to my shopping list ahead of my visit to the nearby behemoth that is our 24hr Tesco.

I don’t actually go to a store to do grocery shopping all that often these days, not because I don’t enjoy it – how else would I have discovered the Korean beef sauce that I could happily live on for months – but precisely because I enjoy it a little too much. All those new things to try, all those new temptations lining the shelves, calling my name (how else would I have… ohh I’ve said that already).

The nearby Tesco is one of those huge buildings with aisle after aisle of home wares, electronics, bed linen, crockery, clothes, everything you need to fill a home and that’s all before you get to the groceries. It offers almost everything you could ever need to purchase and is a convenient place to go when I have an urge to buy some nice candles, or a new roasting tin. But it’s that ease and availability that is precisely why I don’t visit it very often.

Well that and the fact that, like every other supermarket the country over, it’s full of idiots who stop randomly and turn their trolley one way while looking another. Also, whilst I’m ranting, for the love of god can supermarkets please agree where eggs go? Stop making me guess!

Annoyances aside, convenience is a big factor in why these types of store are so prevalent and I’m very guilty of allowing myself to be swayed as soon as I step foot inside. Of course in my defence I can offer a very good reason as to why that new mop was needed… actually scratch that, I can’t. It’s just a mop and I already had one that did the job, but it looked like a nicer mop and hey, it was only £9, they are practically giving it away!

When is a mop not a mop? When it’s an improvement? When it’s aesthetically pleasing? Can a mop be aesthetically pleasing and, if so, why would you even need a mop that is pleasing on the eye, it’s a flipping mop!?!

Of course it’s one thing to have a rational thought process about the purchase of a new mop when you are sat at home, but as soon as we walk through those doors, well, suffice to say we’ve all fallen prey to the power of suggestive buying, we all have a glittery mop purchase in our past, don’t deny it. It’s almost like these stores are designed to make us buy things we don’t actually need, like they are engineered specifically to get you to the point that buying a glittery mop seems like such an obvious decision that, well, why wouldn’t you?

And then a few weeks later you go to mop the kitchen floor, pick-up said mop and, while you watch sunlight dancing off the glittery handle in a joyous little lighting display that fills the room with sparkles, think to yourself “why the fuck did I buy this?”.
This type of impulse buying is something I’ve been guarding against during my efforts to de-clutter and minimise my life, so much so that I’ve largely been getting my groceries delivered and happily paying the delivery fee rather than risk my own lack of willpower/ability to be manipulated by special offers and shiny new things (Editors note: if only he could find a way to resist those fiends at Apple and their pretty offerings).

With that tactic in place I’m more confident that I am winning the war of the creeping invasion of needless things into my but I know the battle isn’t over, as some recent and somewhat frivolous purchases have proven.

And there’s the rub, whilst I’m all for living a simpler life, a life that doesn’t rely on things and belongings, I’m still drawn to pretty shiny things and, let’s be honest here, what’s prettier than a rope of led baubles in the colours of a rainbow! Did I need them, of course not! But after coveting them for some months I finally caved and I absolutely, 100% refuse to give myself a hard time for it.

OK, maybe it’s more like 80% of me that is trying to convince the rest of my brain that this purchase was ok, that it doesn’t mean I’m no longer a minimalist at heart.
I’m not really sure what kick-started my drive towards minimalism. When I first got my own place, a place that was mine to define, I looked at things I’d always liked in the past. The clean lines of Scandinavian design, pristine white rooms with sparse decoration were what I thought I liked but I now realise that my hankering for less clutter was a more a reaction to having to compromise in the past, what better way to say this is mine than to embrace my natural tidiness by taking it to the extreme.

Looking back that compromise was no bad thing but as it was all I’d ever known – I went from living with my parents straight to co-habiting – suddenly having free rein to do whatever I wanted left me a little bewildered.

At first I bought functional things like a sofa, a coffee table, a TV unit, and some bookcases, but soon I realised that I wanted to be more mindful about what I owned and started to look for furniture and decorations that I really liked and would enjoy having in my home; my Eames recliner, the little glass table that sits next to it, the brass peacock, the vintage lamp and reclaimed shade, the vintage drinks cabinet.

At the same time that I was buying those things I was also stripping away my belongings and now I’m approaching the point now where I’m pretty comfortable that I have everything I need and now, stepping back to look at the belongings that constitute my life, I find myself wondering what style I was aiming for as I went along. What is my design? What is my minimalism? And why is it important to me to have one?

I’ve always been a bit of a style magpie or perhaps a style-less one as I don’t really follow fashion all that closely. I’ve always admired those people who have their own sense of style, something distinct that makes them stand out, something that says they are unique and interesting (I definitely have a ‘type’ of person who I’m attracted to and this is definitely part of that).

It is safe to say that I am not one of those people and in both clothing and home decor I’ve always tended towards the safer end of the fashion spectrum; function over fashion.
At least I used to.

What I’m finding these days is that by limiting myself to fewer purchases I’m much more considered when I buy new things and less likely to buy something just because it meets a basic need. Sure IKEA does some great cheap functional furniture but that vintage chest of drawers is far more pleasing to the eye whilst offering the same function. Which would you rather have? That mind set also means I’m less likely to settle for something if it doesn’t catch my eye and sure, I’d like to think I have an overall design in mind, but more often I’m purchasing items based on much simpler factors. Does it do what I need and does it look pretty.

Breaking out of being in-style has other benefits as I’m not bothered about whether my new lampshade is the right shade of copper to go with the slate grey feature wall, and so I find myself drawn to vibrant colours and loud patterns more and more. Clothes falls into the same bracket, with the vast majority of the blue/grey/black options that most stores seem to stock leaving me wondering why kids get all the great clothes!

Safe to say I’m embracing my own style choices more and more, and giving fewer and fewer fucks if other people don’t like what I wear or how my home looks. I’m still not completely immune to criticism but hey, I love my multi-coloured trainers, I adore my lime green sofa and colourful rug, and yes the rainbow lights fit in perfectly well. It doesn’t matter that my home is a mish-mash of items, it’s MY home.

Here it is then, this is my minimalism, this is my style; it is considered, it is colourful, it is a little cluttered but full of things that make me smile. And it feels good to at last have some sort of style even if it is an ever evolving mishmash of ideas, a ramshackle collection of things that I like.

And as it happens, for those of you who’ve been reading along, I think this matches my personality pretty well. I am inconsistent, I am a little cluttered and I like to make people smile. I will never be the most stylish person in the room nor the most considered, but I’ll be me.

So next time you see that person with the multi-coloured trainers strutting his way through the aisles of your local supermarket, do me a favour, don’t judge them if all they have in their trolley is a sparkly mop bucket (the mop was feeling lonely, ok!).

Sunday Mornings

Late last year I met a friend in the pub for a celebratory ‘end of week’ catchup. We got our bitching about colleagues and various crappy work issues dealt with whilst the post work crowds rolled in, but as they started to head home to loved ones, or headed off for a night out on the town, we moved on to other topics; specifically Sunday mornings and just how much they can suck.

As a child, Sunday mornings were largely about going to church. Dressed in my best Sunday clothes, hair slicked down to look presentable, I was shipped off to Sunday School before attending the morning service. Sometimes the Sunday School kids would sit together upstairs and try not to giggle and goad each other through the service. Other times I sat with my parents and their big hymn books, singing the hymns and letting the words of the sermon wash over me, the prayers lulling me towards sleep. Then it was home and time to head off to visit my Grandparents.

I fell away from those Sunday mornings after leaving school; I think the presence of the church was more of a structure that my parents thought would benefit me, than a particularly strong belief they held and, looking back, I have to agree that it had it’s positives. But, ultimately, God lost out to the demonic attraction of alcohol and women.

And thus my Sunday mornings changed to be more about recuperating than worshipping, even when that included an early 7am start at my weekend job. Mind you, typically Sunday morning was already 4 or 5 hours old as I stumbled home to the accompaniment of the dawn chorus.

Then it was time for me to leave home and move in with my then girlfriend (and future wife), and Sunday mornings shifted once more. How long we could lie-in given that we’d only gotten home at 4am, and only kicked the last revellers out of our flat at 5am? Such were the problems of living in the closest flat to the high street, minutes from the legendary Cheers nightclub, where people would decant to ours and there was always one or to hangers-on to be found the next morning, face down on the living room carpet.

We moved a year later and as we grew out of the 4am finishes our Sunday mornings started to change as those late nights became more infrequent. More and more the long lies I’d gotten accustomed to shifted to more grown-up activities, liking getting up and ‘getting stuff done’.

A move to England sealed the deal, with new places to explore and only the two of us to explore them. Sunday mornings were still relaxed but started earlier and always with the anticipation of getting out and about. Faster forward a few more years and a small black furry creature brought Sunday mornings to life around 6am each morning whether you liked it or not.

Which is all pretty standard, life moves on, you change and adapt, your needs and desires change too.

And change they did once more. Since my divorce, and through subsequent relationships, I’ve been lucky enough to try some other Sunday mornings, lazing in bed with cups of coffee, or steaming mugs of tea, snuggled up on cold winter mornings talk about everything and nothing, big spoon/little spoon, early rises for cold winter walks before falling back into bed again to warm up.

I’d forgotten about that conversation until last weekend as I lay in bed, trying to figure out how bad my hangover was (not too bad thankfully) and whether I could be bothered getting out of bed. I had nothing planned for the day and with the remnants of the recent snow still limiting my options for getting out and about, I just lay there for a while and spun that conversation over in my mind, contemplating just how much Sunday mornings can suck when you are single.

I’m not sure exactly what it is I miss. I’ve been single for a couple of years (bar some dates here and there) and I’m perfectly comfortable in my own company most of the time, but I do miss waking up next to someone on a Sunday morning. I miss the gentle arguing about who has to go and make coffee, I miss listening to someone else’s choice of Sunday morning music, I miss the quiet conversations about life.

Sunday mornings were always the mornings you could take a little more time with, you could always lie a little longer on a Sunday. But I guess sometimes Sunday mornings are just a little lonely when you are single, when the bed suddenly feels far too big, the coffee too far away, and your lazy day fills with an air of melancholy.

It was with a sigh that I got up, slipped in to my slippers and donned my dressing gown. Coffee first, for one.

Gig: Elbow and John Grant

We got the train to Manchester in the morning. It rained the entire time we were there, soaking us to the bone as we explored the city centre. We ate in a chain restaurant, Italian I think, before heading to the gig.

That was a few years ago and though it wasn’t the first time I’d seen Elbow live, it was the gig that sits large and raw in my memory. Bawling my eyes out as the lyrics to Scattered Black & Whites ripped my heart wide open, snapshots of childhood memories, my Grandparents, my baby sister, tears streaming down my face.

Maybe it’s because he’s roughly my age with, it seems, a similar propensity for emotion and love and heartbreak, but the lyrics of Guy Garvey have always landed hard and deep. He has the uncanny knack of grabbing a passing emotion, something you feel every day, and capturing it in simple, beautiful prose; “Coming home I feel like I, Designed these buildings I walk by”, tell me that doesn’t strike you when you go back to your hometown.

And that’s the charm of the aptly named Elbow (joints are functional, not glamourous after all) a band that are happy dealing in the humdrum of everyday life, the joy of happiness, the sadness of separation, and even when they do offer the boombastic it is still based on our shared humanities, and still cuts to the quick when needed; from the opening line of Newborn – “I’ll be the corpse in your bathtub. Uselss” – to the closing chords, folding in on top of one another to the cacophonous climax.

More recently, John Grant has started to occupy a similar place, writing with brutal honesty about the fears and insecurities that many people face day in, day out. He occupies a slightly different musical sphere but has the same self-effacing, inclusive natural warmth that Guy Garvey so easily displays on stage. He is equally as fond of the shift from gentle ballad to pulsing electronic throbbing noise, and we got the gamut of his talents in his support slot. Having seen him a couple of years ago at Glastonbury, I can confirm he is definitely one to catch when he returns.

It’d been a couple of years since I’d seen Elbow perform live and it was, as always, a wonderful delight. From the opening blare of the assembled horns of Starlings, through the quiet dark hope of Puncture Repair, to THAT final song that never fails to remind us of our place in this grand thing called humanity.

Elbow have been and have remained consistently good over the 10 years I’ve been seeing them live (which isn’t as easy as it sounds), and whilst they might not be revolutionaries, nor to the musical tastes of some, there is a lot to be said about spending an evening pouring your heart out before having it filled again with compassion and hope, before being hoisted to the rafters as one.

One day like this a year’d see me right, we sang and ohhh how true that is.

Lighting in the dark

“It’s 106 miles to Chicago, we have a full tank of gas, half a packet of cigarettes, it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses… HIT IT!”

Last weekend saw me driving through to Edinburgh as the last remnants of daylight faded to black, I had already taken my sunglasses off, and I don’t smoke, but the sentiment was the same; (mini) road trip!

The previous evening found me and several hundred other people, wandering the streets of Strathbungo, a suburb in the southside of Glasgow, enjoying the labours of many a budding window artist as we partook of the annual Strathbungo Winter Wanderland. With local roads closed to traffic, we took to the streets to peer over railings and hedgerows to see what was on offer. Most of the streets are three story tenements so there was a LOT of window real estate on offer.

The idea of decorating your windows is simple enough, yet the possibilities are endless and it was fascinating to see how the residents had tackled their part of the project. Decorate one window, decorate all of your windows or in some cases, get together with your neighbours in the rest of the tenement and decorate them all in a giant montage. One buliding had a giant lobster spread across several windows, another a homage to Jimi Hendrix in one window and in the next, with a small speaker perched on the window ledge, was someone playing classic Hendrix tracks live.

Smoke machines, projectors abound, balloons were deployed to excellent effect in some, and yet for me it was the simpler designs that often won out. Definitely one to watch for next year.

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It was with these images still fresh in my mind that I drove through to Edinburgh. I was heading for the Zoo and the Chinese Lantern display to see what all the fuss was about; it’s been scattered through my social media feeds for the past month and I was genuinely excited to see it up close.

On arrival one thing was very clear, I had not fully appreciated the scale of what was on offer. It was a bit odd being in the zoo at night and I completely lost my bearings, but we dutifully followed the sign posts and at every turn were greeted with a variety of animals, some animated, all light up bright against the night sky. All the way round to the central Chinese pavilion, where we were entertained by a display of acrobatics by a Chinese troop. Marvellous!

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I didn’t plan my weekend to be quite so themed but such are the happy coincidences of life. I’m also not quite sure why such simple things are such an attraction but both venues brought the same level of delight to my heart, and a smile to my face, so I guess there’s something to be said for the humble light bulb and it’s modern cousin the LED.

And I wasn’t alone. As I wandered the streets of Strathbungo and zipped around the Zoo, it was the same basic human reaction that was on display. It’s the same you get at firework displays which illicit the same gentle smiles as the night sky explodes into life.

Is it a primitive preference of light over dark that draws us to such things? Do the lights offer a sense of primitive safety over the danger our long dead ancestors must have felt before they discovered fire? is it the simple contrast of colours against blackness that is pleasing delightful to the eye? Or, perhaps, in these days of doom and gloom, of Brexit and Trump and Syrian Wars, these glowing colours offer us a few small moments of wonder and marvel, enough to temporarily soothe our battered spirits and give us pause before the dawn comes again.

Gig: Post Modern Jukebox

Everytime I listen to the current hits of the day I come away with a catchy tune in my head. Sure it’s auto-tuned, heavily produced, and reliant on a hook rather than things like a melody or a smart lyric but they are catchy nonetheless. And yes, I am big a huge snob about this and no I don’t care.

For me the sign of a good song is one that can embrace change, that can be rendered new by a change in tone, or pace, or instrumentation. Some bands do it to themselves (think Creep by Radiohead, from thrashy distorted guitars to heartfelt acoustic ballad) and some artists grab a handful of such tunes and make a career from twisting and cajoling them into new shapes.

So, to be fair to the popstars of today, it’s safe to say that SOME of their music holds up to that test; when Scott Bradlee’s Post Modern Jukebox rolls into town and provides a swing/jazz musical makeover to modern pop songs the results are utterly, bewitchingly, fantastic. Check their Youtube channel for some examples.

But how well would those cover versions hold up live? Well, suffice to say that rarely do I remember smiling so much during a gig, and yes there was no small amount of shimmying too.

Covering tracks like Are You Gonna Be My Girl, Seven Nation Army, Creep, No Surprises, Chandelier, Cry Me A River, Shake It Off and more, the performers delivered time and again. With the main compere, who also sings, and four other singers, plus a tap dancer, to entertain us, whilst the voices may change but the style remains true.

And what voices they are, the main singers all delivered whether giving us a jazz hall smokey rendition of Seven Nation Army (quite possibly my favourite of the evening and not JUST for the amazing shimmering dress), serenading us through Cry Me A River, or big banding their way through Shake It Off, you can’t help but smile, boogie and sing along. Ohhh and the clarinet/saxophone player almost brought me to tears when they stepped in front of the mic for a low key rendition of Creep. One voice and a double bass, stunning.

A far cry from the ‘I’m the rockstar, you are the audience’ affairs you see far too often at the Academy, PMJ turned the entire place into a big house party that just so happened to have an amazingly tight band performing that night, ohhh and your friends just so happen to have a fair set of lungs on them and, hey, you know ALL the songs!

This was my first time seeing PMJ perform live, and I wasn’t really sure what to expect, having only really seen some of their YouTube videos (worth noting that the performers in the videos were not on stage last night, it’s a revolving cast) but I was blown away by the calibre of every person on stage, and the entire experience is (obviously) a whole lot more involving up close and personal although, admittedly, we were right at the very front.

If you get the chance, this is one jukebox that is well worth dropping a few dimes into.

Writing sparks

Struggling with the duvet cover I paused and reminded myself just how good it is to slide between fresh bed linen. A few more wafts of the duvet and several curses later my bed was made. It took a lot of willpower not to just climb in right there and then.

What an odd phrase, how many people have a bed so tall they need to climb into it? Isn’t the English language wonderfully obscure at times. It strikes me, without recourse to research, that this is one of those phrases that comes from ye olde times, when beds were an entirely different proposition.

Ohhh how I adore such things, these quirks of conundrums, paragraphs of prose that puzzle and cause pause to ponder.

I miss writing.

Obviously I have been writing and posting here for quite a while now – this is not the writing I am looking for – but it’s been many months since I sat down and tackled any form of creative writing. Yes, let’s call it that, creative writing.

I have three stories that are languishing in various states of incompleteness. One is about a building. One is about daydreams. One is about beauty. None are beyond first draft (if that), and all are of indeterminate length. They may be novels, novellas, or just short stories, but length is not my concern as the aim isn’t to write a specific type of thing but to finish a thing.

It’s always good to finish a thing so it has been somewhat of a mild annoyance that these stories have been languishing in the doldrums, lost to the flat calm of a sea with no muse.

Writing is still an aspiration and remains a topic I read articles about, garnering advice, tips, and how-tos, in the hope that some (any) of them stick and perhaps will bring the spark that lights my desire to again pick up one of these stories and see where it takes me.

As it turns out, sparks can happen when you least expect them. All that time consuming books and articles on writing, all those hours reading short stories and poems, all the while trying to goad my brain into writing mode.

So it was the other night as I finally slid into my freshly made bed. I’m not sure where it came from, but there it was, a tiny flickering bulb of an idea.

It wasn’t a revelation but it was something. And it was enough of a something that I sat up and let my brain follow it to conclusion, realising it might be just the thing to get me over the bump and allow me to finish one of the stories (the daydream one).

It was such a good idea (I think, it’s hard to be subjective) that I got back up out of bed to jot down some thoughts so I wouldn’t forget them.

I’m not sure where it will lead but if I can get one of these stories to some state of completion then that would be a step forward, although if I’m being honest I have no idea if I’ll ever get to a stage that would render the morass of words I’ve thrown down to be anything that is consumable by others.

But that’s never been the point of why I’ve been writing.

Except, maybe it has? The closer I get to feeling like these stories are finishing the more I wonder how they might be received by a wider public. Is my ego trumping my fear? Perhaps, as it does have the echoes of some of my thoughts behind the years and years I’ve been posting nonsense on this blog; I’ve always stated that this blog is for me but knowing that others read it is definitely a factor in why I continue to publish.

It shouldn’t be, I know, but it is.

Regardless, if the writing bug is descending on me again then I’ll welcome it with open arms. I’ve missed the nagging feeling that it brings, prodding me into action with the promise of beautiful prose and cathartic release.

As I lay back in bed that night, my brain was already whirring away, extrapolating my idea into ever wider directions and themes and plotlines. As I started to drift off to sleep I took myself to my writing place and found I was already there, sitting at an old wooden table in front of window that looks out over a remote wilderness. I type the final words that finish every story that has ever been, push the keyboard away and, rising from my chair I lift the empty coffee cup and walk out of frame.

The End.