H is for Hendrix

When Jimi Hendrix played a psychedelic version of The Star Spangled Banner at a muddy music festival called Woodstock in 1969 the moment became forever fixed in the imagery of the sixties along with B-52s raining bombs on the paddy fields.

The rendition was interpreted by some as an anti war statement but the guitar guru himself was more cryptic.

We're all Americans. . .it was like 'Go America!'. . .We play it the way the air is in America today. The air is slightly static, see," he said.

Although his fiinale is interpreted as the highlight of Woodstock, the video of the time makes it clear the crowd wasn't large. Hendrix didn't like performing in front of massive crowds and pushed back his performance to early in the morning on day four. Even the effects of LSD can only fortify festival goers from the effects of mud, little food and overflowing toilets for so long. The crowd had thinned from about 400,000 people to a tenth of that number by the time Hendrix took to the stage.

Those who saw him felt they were part of history but still the American bombs and burning napalm fell on an obscure corner of South East Asia. Hendrix himself would be dead in just over a year.

Like Elvis who he idolized for a while, Jimi Hendrix grew up in abject poverty. It's impossible to do justice to him in a short blog posting.

The man who would later be acclaimed as the world's greatest electric guitarist was born in Seattle of African American, European and Native American ancestry. His upbringing in cheap hotels, sprinkled with acts of random violence and abuse reads like a Tennessee Williams play.

Hendrix went on to forge a reputation a as great guitarist and the wild man of the sixties. Hendrix made his name in London where he hobnobbed with the Beatles and the Stones and formed the Jimi Hendrix Experience.

Hendrix made a mark with his distinctive fashion sense and his party piece of smashing up his guitar and setting fire to it at the end of his performances.

Hendrix's death proved that sinister things happen in Notting Hill as well as fop haired idiots who run bookshops falling for humorless American actresses. Jimi Hendrix died in the Notting Hill flat of then girlfriend Monika Dannemann on September 18, 1970.

Although Hendrix was known to take psychedelic drugs it appears he had taken nine of his girlfriend's sleeping pills not realizing they were a very strong Belgian brand. It seems Belgium was to blame for the death of the world's greatest electric guitarist as well as the brutality of the Congo.

Numerous conspiracy theories fly about Hendrix's death. The doctor who attended him was later reprimanded for medical malpractice. He reported the presence of red wine that was inconsistent with the autopsy. Monika Dannemann was accused of failing to treat him and another book said a former manager plotted his death because Hendrix was about to pull out of a contract.

Dannemann committed suicide in the 1990s after she was found guilty of contempt of court for repeating a libel against Kathy Etchingham, who had been a girlfriend of Hendrix in the 1960s.

Sadly the Jimi Hendrix experience did not end up well for anybody, but at least his distinctive sound remains as a legacy to an era that seems so fast moving at times, it was very easy to fall out of it. Hendrix must be one of the few people to have a star on the Hollywood walk of fame and a blue plaque from English Heritage in London.

Curious fact about Jimi Hendrix - his father had six fingers on both hands.

G is for Garbage

For a band named after a stinking pile of compost Garbage seem to have done rather well for themselves. A bit grungy with a pop edge and a Scots-American composition, Garbage were one of the bands that gave the Nineties its distinctive sound.

They have had something of a revival in recent years and appear to be a hot-ish commodity again.

Garbage were formed in Madison, Wisconsin in 1994. American musicians Duke Erikson (bass, guitar, keyboards, percussion), Steve Marker (guitar, keyboards) and Butch Vig (drums, percussion) auditioned for a woman to front the band and settled on Shirley Manson, a fiery Scottish redhead who says fuck a lot.

I first heard Garbage through Stupid Girl, during the nineties but people were too fixated on Blur and Oasis back then to give Garbage much attention.

Looking back there were rather a lot of good tracks such as Milk, Special and You Look so Fine. You can still sometimes hear Garbage today in places like malls in America so they clearly have some staying power.

In a March 2012 interview with Vanity Fair Manson suggests bands and artists are so abysmally pants these days - my words not hers - because everyone is scared post 9/11. I don't know if this is the reason or if I'm just dismissive about new stuff because I'm old, but it sounds like an interesting theory.

"It’s a post-September 11 thing, where we have been living essentially in wartime. People are fearful and are unable to articulate their fear, so it’s buried under the carpet. I think that’s one of the reasons why we’ve had a proliferation of happy pop music, to buoy one’s spirits and make everyone feel safe," she said.

Or maybe it's because someone let Simon Cowell rule the world.

In another exert from the Vanity Fair interview Manson says: "Now everything has fallen back down a little, and it’s almost like the Mad Men era, where women are supposed to be perfect. They can do their job, but they have to have children and they have to be good moms and they have to look pretty at all times and they have to be always smiling and it must be fucking exhausting."

Manson, who has also been cast in some acting roles seems to have a rather pragmatic view of the world. Still you are unlikely to get carried away with yourself if you spend half of the time half freezing to death in Scotland and the other half of the time in chilly Madison, Wisconsin.

Curious fact about Garbage - Manson described her first session with the other band members as a "disaster" and said both herself and the other band members were "totally uncomfortable" with the situation.

F is for Frankie Goes to Hollywood

(oh no - people in Australia have already written G)

Frankie Goes to Hollywood may not be the biggest band of all time. But they had one of the biggest and most controversial hits.

The Frankie saga is a cautionary tale about censorship not to mention sex and bondage.

The group's debut single Relax had crept up to Number 6 in the charts in 1984 when the BBC Radio 1 disc jockey Mike Read took a closer look at the front cover design on the record and got his knickers in a twist.

The DJ was appalled at the "overtly sexual" nature of the record sleeve and the printed lyrics, which prompted him to remove the disc from the turntable live on air, branding it "obscene."

For younger readers a turntable is... oh never mind.

Two days later, even though the record had been played for a couple of months, the BBC decided to ban it from all its radio stations and other outlets. Somebody had picked up on the fact Relax contained a reference to ejaculation.

The ban meant uninitiated folks like myself who had never heard of Relax suddenly knew all about it. Predictably the single shot to Number One in the charts and stayed there for five weeks becoming the biggest selling single of the year after Band Aid.

For week after week it seemed when the chart show got to the Number One slot the DJ would start clearing his throat a lot and sounding shifty before explaining he couldn't play the Number One hit because it was banned.

The video was banned by the BBC and MTV. Perhaps the case for banning the video was slightly stronger than the single.

The video is described thus by Wikipedia: "The original video ...depicted a gay S&M parlor where the bandmembers were admired by muscular leathermen, a bleached blonde drag queen and a large-bodied gentleman dressed as a Roman emperor. The video featured a scene where one of the bandmembers wrestled a live tiger, to the admiration of the clubgoers, and ended where the "emperor" was so excited he shimmied out of his toga."

There was a substitute version. I'm not even sure which one I'm posting here. The tame on I think. Relax became the seventh best selling single of all time. It was followed by two other Number Ones - Two Tribes and The Power of Love, before the outrageous boys from Liverpool faded out.

While Relax is a good dance track I'm not sure it deserved the mass sales it achieved. But it certainly left the folks at the Beeb looking straight laced and a bit like the authorities that banned Lady Chatterley's Lover back in the day.

Even American radio stations play Relax from time to time and I don't think they bleep out the offending word, although if the Beeb had such a problem with Relax I don't see why they couldn't have bleeped out one word like American stations do when Alanis Morissette sings: "Are you thinking of me when you bleep her?"

Curious fact Frankie Goes to Hollywood: Frankie's fourth single Welcome to the Pleasure Dome in March 1985, was promoted before its release as "their fourth number one." In the event Frankie fans didn't think it was worth shimmying out of their togas for and it only reached Number Two.

E is for Elvis

The couple of hours left of E is not enough time to do justice to Elvis, the King of Rock 'n' Roll who was more of a cultural icon than anybody before or since.

There's a Talking Heads lyric: "One day you may find yourself living in a shotgun shack." Elvis didn't have to wait. He was born into one in Tupelo, Mississippi.

There can be few less promising places to rise to stardom from. Elvis was said to be mediocre at music at school but he was inseparable from his guitar. When his family moved to Memphis, occupying rooms in boarding houses, the influence of the musical Mecca, rubbed off on Presley.

Elvis ushered in a new age of music and his matinee good looks and gyrating moves ensured he became the first global teen idol.

Britain is often hailed as the home of cool music but in the 1950s and early 1960s British youth looked wistfully west and had to make do with Cliff Richard closer to home, a singer who would years later have a Number One hit called Mistletoe and Wine. Enough said.

Elvis was also launched into movies with dizzying results. The audience response at Presley's live shows became increasingly frenzied. One commentator recalled, "He'd start out, 'You ain't nothin' but a Hound Dog,' and they'd just go to pieces."

If Elvis was the world's first superstar he also had a classic superstar downfall. Ruined by wealth and a failed marriage to Priscilla he became increasingly dependent on a cocktail of drugs. There are tales about Elvis ordering dozens of hamburgers a day and shooting TV sets to liven up his miserable existence.

By the early 1970s the idol had become a huge and grotesque mockery of himself. Guitarist John Wilkinson recalled, "He was all gut. He was slurring."

There are now two personas of Elvis in the public imagination; the energetic young crooner and the big bejeweled Elvis with heavy dark glasses so beloved of Elvis impersonators. There didn't seem to be an in between Elvis.

Elvis died in 1977 and his home at Graceland instantly became a shrine. Later there was an unsuccessful attempt to steal his body.

Elvis' life and death should have been a clear lesson to all of those who came after him. But it's not one that the Amy Winehouses, Michael Jacksons and Whitney Houstons of later years, chose to heed.

Curious fact about Elvis: He had an identical twin brother who was stillborn at birth. It's curious to think what would have happened had he lived. Would he have made a living as an Elvis body double?

D is for Duran Duran

A-Z Challenge fatigue shouldn't be setting in by "D" but there you go. In last year's challenge I pointed out that there are a lot of doom laden words beginning with D - doom, for instance. Or disaster, dire and depression. So perhaps "D" is officially the hump letter of the A-Z challenge.

The best artist beginning with "D" must surely be Bob Dylan. But I don't have time to do him justice; the most intriguing band is surely the Doors. I have never heard anything from Dying Fetus and I really have no inclination to.

Duran Duran may not have the depth but they are hard to resist because they had the glitz. Perhaps it was the element of escapism that drew me to Duran in my teens. Cities were going up in smoke, acne was making inroads by the day and Duran were hanging out on yachts and making glamorous videos, while singing about girls called Rio.

The other curious thing about Duran is the fact they came from Birmingham, the city I was born in. This was remarkable because I don't believe anything glamorous has ever come out of Birmingham before or since, although it's home to a great chocolate factory. If you ever encounter anyone from Birmingham you have to remember to be patient. People from Birmingham have a genetic defect which means it takes longer for messages to travel from their brain to their mouth than other people. It doesn't mean they're not as bright.

Apparently the band would play at a venue called Barbarella's in Birmingham in the early days. They would later name the band after the villain from Barbarella, Roger Vadim's French science-fiction film. The villain, played by Milo O'Shea, is named "Dr. Durand Durand".

Duran at the height of their fame in the early 1980s comprised lead singer Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor and Andy Taylor. None of the Taylors were related and half of the teenage boys in Britain wanted to be John Taylor.

Duran worked very carefully on their image with the likes of Vivian Westwood and Giorgio Armani. Their early video for Girls on Film was infamous for its topless mud wrestling women. It did the band no harm.

The band became so big they gained a "fab five" image that aped The Beatles. Princess Diana was a big fan. Later they came to regret the heartthrob image and spent a long time trying to distance themselves from it.

"We used to be a very chi-chi name to drop in '79, but then the Fab Five hype started and something went wrong. Something went really wrong. That wasn't what I wanted. [...] Not that I didn't like being screamed at. At one point I really did," commented John Taylor.

Duran were clearly not The Beatles but some of their stuff sounded pretty good and still does. I still hanker to visit the island where Save a Prayer was filmed.

And a View to a Kill is certainly one of the best Bond themes around.

Duran also had a surprising renaissance in the 1990s at a time when most of the frilly shirted New Romantic bands of the 1980s were as dead as Monty's parrot. Ordinary World and Come Undone remain two of their best songs. They even gained a presence in the United States.

Given the fact these guys had the world at their feet, it's amazing how much time they seem to have spent being disgruntled or squabbling with various Taylors in a perpetual state of departure.

Curious fact about Duran Duran: Simon Le Bon inadvertently hit a falsetto note singing A View to a Kill during Live Aid which he later described as the most humiliating moment of his career. It's uncertain how he continued to live from this moment on.

C is for Cranberries

There's a lot of choice of artists beginning with "C" too with some obvious talents like Coldplay, Elvis Costello, the Cult and I was oh so tempted to go with the Cure, the soundtrack to the closest I got to teenage rebellion. I often wonder if Phil Collins realizes how much of his mediocre stuff is regurgitated on American radio stations.

I went with the Cranberries not because I was overwhelmed by them and purely because of Zombie. Linger and Dreams were catchy but not quite sublime. But Zombie was something else altogether.

Quite possibly you may have had to grow up in Britain to tap into the powerful mood of Zombie. For as long as I can remember the TV carried scenes of the funerals of soldiers and small boys with faces of 52-year-old men, the muddy puddles and the dilapidated back-to-back homes on the Falls Road, the threatening murals on bleak walls, the men with guns, the marches, the Maze, the hunger strikes and slowly but surely Ulster would eat into our souls.

It wasn't quite war but it certainly wasn't peace. And the Troubles were disconcerting because the road signs and the homes looked just like the ones on our street. Just the worse for wear.

When I first heard Zombie it blew me away because it captured the feel of Northern Ireland so well, down to the real footage of the British soldiers who didn't know they were being filmed, patrolling a conflict they didn't understand.

If there was no war there could be no winners. But with such hatred across the religious divide there could be no peace.

Mr T was a hapless history teacher. He sent us away to create a project on Northern Ireland. He didn't expect anyone to turn it in. He certainly didn't expect my graphic drawing of a victim being tarred and feathered. At least he wasn't being knee capped. That came later.

It wasn't very eloquent but it's hard to sum up the Troubles in Ireland without going back to King Henry VIII in the 16th century or the Easter Rising - "It's the same old theme since 1916."

By the time I first visited Northern Ireland in 1999 the Troubles were on the wane and it was hard to imagine sectarian violence on the wind swept cliffs of Antrim. But now and again you would drive through a staunchly Unionist village to see the curb stones painted red, white and blue and the red hand of Ulster raised aloft on signs as high as the wire around the police station.

Two years later airliners crashed into the Twin Towers and suddenly all the support from across the Atlantic for the "freedom fighters"of the IRA started to dry up as we saw terrorism for what it really was. Mud and blood, slogans of hate on walls, burnt out houses and hollow eyed people hardened to violence. Zombies to the last man and woman manning the barricades.

CURIOUS FACT ABOUT THE CRANBERRIES - In 2009 Cranberries lead singer Dolores O' Riordan became an Honorary Patron of University Philosophical Society (Trinity College, Dublin)

B is for Bowie

B is a difficult letter to find an artist for, not because of lack of choice but because there is too much.

The B-52s, Bananarama, Billy Bragg, the Beach Boys and Bjork all come to mind and then on a higher tier entirely there's Blondie, Blur and the Beatles - surely the most innovative and creative group in the history of forever.

But I chose Bowie because he's a bit out there and is surely the coolest singing artist alive. I didn't fully appreciate him growing up, although the eerie other world nature of Ashes to Ashes had a big impact on my early teens.

Through his outlandish costumes and numerous changes Bowie helped set the scene for punk and the New Romantic era and all of the movements that made it so exciting to grow up in the eighties.

 While Bowie emphasizes British coolness he has a curious transatlantic quality. While Americans often see Brits as cooler and more innovative, it was the other way round growing up in Britain.

Bowie, formerly David Jones, whose voice was considered "adequate" in the school choir, famously heard "Tutti Frutti" by Little Richard and declared he had "heard God."

One interesting line stands out from his Wikipedia entry.

"When Bowie left the technical school the following year, he informed his parents of his intention to become a pop star. His mother promptly arranged his employment as an electrician's mate."

Fortunately Bowie sought electricity elsewhere and became Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, generally forgetting who he really was, taking too many drugs and losing the plot while still producing amazing material. At his most androgynous best Bowie was compared to Lauren Bacall, although his Ziggy character reminded me more of my aunt Joan on acid; or at least how she would have looked on acid.

Then Bowie reinvented himself again in the eighties as a slick character with blond hair and a white suit.

Bowie faded out somewhat after that but when I saw him on stage in the 1990s I was amazed by his energy to think here was a guy who was born in the 1940s, throwing himself around the stage.

Bowie's biography suggests he was a pain in the backside, as well as a perfectionist, a sure sign of real genius.

Curious Fact about David Bowie - David Bowie appears to have different colored eyes. This is a result of serious damage to one eye sustained in a fight with his best friend George Underwood over a girl in 1962. They remained friends and Underwood was tasked to do the art on Bowie's early albums.

A is for ABBA

The theme of this year's A-Z challenge is bands and singers which is really great because when I'm too tired to post I can just shove a YouTube vid. on here and write a line about how Curiosity Killed the Cat was the best band in the history of the solar system. Ahem.

Anyway A is a no brainer. ABBA seem to have been hanging around in some shape or form for my whole life, although in more recent years more in the form of tribute bands and musicals. Still there are few bands that have come to be as synonymous with a nation as ABBA. Ask someone who the most famous band from Sweden is and it's a no-brainer. Then ask them for the second most famous band and time the silence.

To be fair the Cardigans were pretty cool for a while.

When I was a kid ABBA always seemed to be Number One in the charts. My father was rather pleased when be brought home a crackly old radio and cassette recorder. It was cutting edge technology. You could actually push a button and record ABBA songs on the radio, notwithstanding all the static and the voice of the DJ on Radio 1.

ABBA made it big after winning the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest with Waterloo,a song that revolves around the strange metaphor of a girl surrendering to romance in the same way as Napoleon was forced to surrender at Waterloo. Apparently in the Seventies it was cool to dress like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz.

ABBA were made up of Agnetha Åse Fältskog, Björn Kristian Ulvaeus, Göran Bror "Benny" Andersson and Anni-Frid Synni Lyngstad.

But, let's be honest, no self respecting Ford Cortina owning guy in bland 1970s Britain gave a rats about anybody other than Agnetha, who appeared to be the epitome of Swedish blonde perfection, and sparked a million crushes from guys in cheap flannel shirts with dubious side burns.

Rather unhealthily, as anybody who has been married to a co-worker will realize, ABBA were two couples - Benny and Anni were an item as were Agnetha and Bjorn. Both couples divorced. Neither Benny nor Bjorn proved to be anything like the character of one of ABBA's biggest hits Fernando.

And in one of those ironic quirks of fate the hairy guys ended up making all the money out of ABBA, Anni married an obscure prince and Agnetha, the real superstar at the time, went into a spiral of decline and became a recluse living on an island who even dated her stalker for a while. There's a strange irony here because Napoleon himself was exiled on the remote island of St. Helena after his Waterloo, although there's no evidence he dated any stalkers.

At least ABBA's catchy if inconsequential tunes live on. I can never paint a room these days without thinking of the line. "Don't go wasting your emulsion. Lay all your love on me."

CURIOUS FACT ABOUT ABBA - The band was named after a fish canning company. Sexy.

Y O Y did I enter the A 2 Z Challenge?

Dude. Why did I sign up for this? Am I out of my mind? This challenge of a blog a day for 26 days almost killed me last year so what possesed me to sign up for it again, particularly as I know I won't have as much time as last year and my blogs will be inferior?

And while I say now I don't care, at some point around "M" it will hit me that my writing is inferior to last year, I'll have a hissy meltown and wander around the back yard muttering about the direction or lack of it my life is taking. Because if there's one thing I hate it's regression. An Italian tank may have 9 reverse gears and one forward gear, but I'm the other way round.

Sadly this runs counter to the ageing proces that suggests at some point in our lives we'll all be sitting in the corner of some godforsaken old folks home, drooling on ourselves or muttering "winning" like Charlie Sheen, every time the nurse mashes up our food.

I had forgotten about the A-Z challenge until someone emailed me about it this week. They suggested I keep blog entries short which is rather good advice but not advice I always heed.

I decided to narrow it down to a more specific theme. The first thing that popped into my mind was parts of a toilet cistern. Don't ask me why? It's been that kind of week. My laptop that once seemed a ticket to freedom has become a sinister jailer. And an image of the guy who stole it recently occasionally pops up. He looks like such a friendly sort, sitting there on the sofa, idly caressing his colt 45 and running his hand lovingly through the matted her on the head of his pit bull. I digress.

I discounted the cistern idea due to the quite practical fact I can't name any parts of a cistern, apart from the ball cock, and I don't even know if that's it's proper name. You have to pity plumbers, though.

"Good morning Mrs. Jones. I am here to check out your defective ball cock."

The good news is I now have a theme for the A-Z challenge. And I do feel it will be easier than last year. And I do hope I will gain more followers even if they don't come back any time soon. Because life is a big numbers game. Only then are we winning, Charlie.

Enjoy the A-Z ride.

And here's an entry from last years. Just because.

B is for Busybodies



When Jackson attended a daycare closer to home I used to have time to drop into Starbucks. I didn't have much time but 30 minutes in the morning was a great interlude to chill with a book before work.


I like Starbucks, even though you can end up remortgaging your house to pay for a triple cherry, quadruple fluffed mattressochino if you are not careful.


I always order a small house coffee and make a beeline for the comfy chair. While Starbucks was seen as an extension of American cultural imperialism back in Britain because the company would take over all the nicest historic structures. over here it feels rather sophisticated and abstactly ethical for a chain.


However, Jackson's daycare was switched up a couple of months ago. I no longer pass Starbucks. The best I can hope for is a roadside 7-Eleven.


Now 7-Elven coffee is a strange concept. The first time I found one I was rather excited by the choices that include Colombian, Mountain Roast and a number of other exciting sounding brands.




It's only after trying them all that you come to the conclusion there's one basic flavor; and it's dessicated camel poo.


So now I am under no illusions. I am there for the caffeine fix; nothing more, nothing less.


Except the 7-Eleven I am frequenting in Suffolk has one other factor going against it, the resident busybody.


I'm moody enough knowing I'm going to work and am about to ingest camel poo. As if that weren't bad enough, this individual, a rangy middle aged employee with oversized hair, is always at the coffee counter with a rancid looking cloth in her hand, pretending to be doing something.


When I move to the left to grab a coffee pot she'll move to the left; when I move to the right, she'll move to the right. I daresay if I performed an amazing leap to the ceiling I'd find her blocking my way to the strip light.

"Oh, I'm not in your way am I?" she'll say as she again blocks my path to the stirring sticks and starts refilling them one by one with the speed of a tortiose coming out of hibernation.


"Not at all."


Of course I want to say: "Can't you sod off Doris and stack some mints somewhere else."


I don't actually know her name but if it's not Doris, it should be. That or Doreen, certainly not Paris.




Now my coffee coordination skills in the morning are not at their best as it is, mainly because I am caffeine deprived. I have to get out my notebook and draw a flow chart that links pouring to milk to lid etc. So imagine my consternation when the busybody is blocking Route One to the lids.




Yesterday she was grabbing the creamer container, mindlessly refilling it, even though it was almost full. A guy almost got into a circular kind of altercation with her as he pulled it one way and she pulled it back again.


I couldn't even dispose of my sugar wrapper down the chute without her throwing herself into my path with her manky old cloth, wiping the rim. Note to self: Resist the urge to scream out 'please stop cleaning my hole'


I'm not sure what's with the 7-Elven busybody but I'm starting to get a complex that she lies in wait in some busybody recess and ambles over to the coffee counter as soon as she sees me getting out of my car. This is probably exess paranoia on my part but busybodies can do this to you.




I'm not sure if my definition of busybodies is the same as that of the national debate which seems to equate the term with liberals who are taking away our rights.




U.S. Senator Rand Paul’s toilets don’t work. And, he says, it’s the government’s fault, reports Bloomberg.com, for example.


This seems to relate to low energy flushes and efficient lightbulbs.


But frankly I don't care too much about that. I'd just like this infernal woman to stop getting between me and the miserable jar of coffee that might keep me awake for a couple of hours longer.

The Secret to the Next Big Thing in Social Networking

I don't go on Google+ much partly because I don't really understand it. I find myself going round in circles; literally and what's with all the subgroups and circles within circles? It reminds me of a when I was forced to draw Venn diagrams in maths. I could never see the point but whoever has come up with the site Fuck Yeah Venn Diagrams on Tumblr seems to be rather keen on them.

This site has got me thinking. Not just about Venn diagrams of the most exotic and sexy kind but about Tumblr generally. I'm not really sure what it is but should I join? I'm a sucker for joining clubs I know little about. The scouts took me unawares;  it was years before I could to escape from their sinister clutches. And what about that time on a press trip in DC when I was almost persuaded to join the Hare Krishna because the girl who collared me was pretty and I rather fancied the idea of hanging out in some commune in India for a couple of years. In the end their bad taste in clothes put me off. Their singing was pretty bad too.

I suppose Hare Krishna was a prototype kind of social network but when you use the contemporary social networks you don't get to stare at people's hairy feet much. Unless you are friends with hobbits who like to post footy pics.

Still I have social networking angst. I work for people who want me to get their message out on the latest social network but I'm not sure what it is. Facebook has been with us so long it's like an ingrowing toenail. We check on it a lot but there is little pleasure particularly as it's populated by dozens of people from old jobs who we don't like anymore who are always posting mindless nonsense about Tim Tebow and other football players.

Twitter has grown on me because it's quick and doesn't involve such a lot of interaction. You quickly tweet something, often automatically, and get out of there. It's like putting your head into a room of stuffy old executives, telling them they suck and getting off the premises with no adverse consequences.

So the time is right to stumble on (I think this is the name of a social network too) the next big thing in social networking. My good friend and last link with the world of young people, Jennifer, tells me Pinterest is for girls to post girl things.

Actually blog friends are a good social network and one I don't use enough. But I try to take a few minutes on a Sunday to skim read blogs and to concur that 45 isn't old Robyn, although when I was a kid I assumed I would die a geriatric at 30.

Blog followers are great because they provide a window into other people's lives. I would really not have known Megan dressed as a pirate at school had I not checked out A Daft Scots Lass. Had I not read Pearl Why You Little I would be blissfully unaware of the practice of "butt dialing."

But this really strikes a cord because I do butt dial sometimes and unfortunately it's usually to a very bad tempered, former council member called Barry whose last scheduled conversation about three years ago contained the expression: "I'm going to sue you."

Reading Daisy's blog makes me feel unvirtuous and aware that I should do some community work, in the five seconds I have during the day when I am not searching for the next big social network.

Jayne's Suburban Soliloquy never fails to blow me away on a Friday night. "Places saturated in deep alluvial and poseidon hues, where prismatic skies swirl and lime-coated mountains plummet madly into ravines."

I have never heard of Newark, NJ described in such terms before.

Tim Riley takes me back to the world of education - The whole intrinsic vs. extrinsic thing. Emm in London  makes me think of those blue remembered hills. Happy Frog makes me think of lots of random things, but mainly Champagne and drinking. And St. Bloggie de Riviera, those exotic times in Monaco, which was so expensive the only place we could eat was outside McDonald's where the local seagulls decided to show their disdainful attitude at our cheapness by unloading on us from a great height.

Seriously there are so many good writers out there, like Rek from a Chronicle of Dreams, and Li from Flash Fiction, and I often take them for granted and fail to read them because they are parked there on the blog roll.

There are probably a lot of us out there parked on a great virtual blog roll, waiting for our next big chance or a parking ticket, dreaming idly of our names being written large in fuzzy fluorescent letters on a virtual cloud up and the very top of the blogisphere. It's probably a bit like standing on the sidewalk on a rainy November night in Newark, NJ, waiting for a big yellow taxi to take us somewhere else, although we don't know where.

In the end, as Deborah from Fashion Plate points out it's all about words. But words are contradictory little constructs that can have many meanings and I don't know for the life of me why we send so many of them spinning out there like big old irresponsible slabs of space rock that may hit or miss their targets.

Given my increasingly disjointed life that contains a myriad of different demands, I have no idea why I signed up to the A-Z challenge again - maybe a lonely impulse of delight drove to this tumult in the cyber clouds. But at least I know I have the support of Sue from Traverselife and L from Nubian, when she's not taking pictures of elephants' arses in South Africa.

So when you have such fantastic people, as well as many others I have failed to mention, in your blogisphere why do you need to find the next new thing in social networking?

The same could be said about the South Pole. Was there a reason why men had to perish to find a few feet of snow that looked the same as any other two feet of snow? Only Captain Scott has the answer and 100 years ago today he was dragging his feet back from the pole, only to perish a few days away from safety.

I'm going away from the computer now. I may be gone some time.

Getting the novel back on track

Returning to my novel after an absence wasn't easy. I had panicked at the apparent requirement of the writing class to complete up to 30 pages. No matter how verbose I tried to be it wasn't approaching 30 pages. Not even when I increased the size of the text.

In the end a bereavement meant the class was cancelled until April. This gave me another reason to slack off because I normally need a deadline. But here it is on track again, in a manner of speaking, but who knows where it's going. Not me - that's for sure.

At 7 p.m. sharp the door of Court Number 3 swung open and I was reunited with Moriarty, his Puma bag and his beige squash shorts from a bygone era. Two weeks had gone by but little had changed about him.




Once again he struck his hand forward and clasped mine: "Moriarty," he said in a measured tone.



"Yes. We have met."



"Oh, right."



Moriarty seemed just as distant as before, although there was an uncertain hesitation and an attention to detail as he weighed up the better of two squash balls.



We tossed for who would serve. He won and he was soon back into his mechanical stride, expending little energy and giving even less away. His silence started to get to me after a while and I toyed with the idea of barging into him to get a reaction. Still, my game seemed better tonight. I was getting the measure of him and while he had a lot of upper arm strength there was a certain predictability about his game, a lack of imagination behind his power.



I won the first set.



"OK," said Moriarty without any visible evidence that he was a bad loser.



I felt confident I had the measure of Moriarty's game, but whenever I felt myself surging ahead, I would play a poor shot and be punished by his powerful back hand. All the times in my life when I had struggled to find the killer instinct came back to haunt me, pushing the elusive killer instinct further from my grasp. Even so I found myself serving for the match. Just then a vision of my small room overlooking the empty park came to mind and I didn't want the game to end. I paused with the ball but realized the futility of my actions which must have wasted no more than 10 seconds.



Just then Moriarty's phone sounded from deep inside his giant bag.



He muttered an apology and pulled out a giant black brick-like object from his bag. His phone was outmoded even for the nineties.

There was a stream or barely audible and shrill words tripping over each other from the receiver.



"She's what?" said Moriarty.



More urgent sounding words, followed.



"Oh, God."



The brick went crashing into the bag with a force that approached urgency.



"Look," said Moriarty turning to me. "I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave. Family problems. That sort of thing."



"OK. No problem."



"Bugger."



"What is it?"



"I just realized I came here by train," said Moriarty, to himself as much as me.



"I have a car nearby. I can drive you." I realized, as I said it that it was a curious notion for London; I felt I had informed him my flying saucer was parked behind the squash courts.



"I can get a cab," he snapped back.



"In Southgate, you'll probably have to wait 40 minutes. If it's an emergency..."



"Bugger," he repeated.



He hesitated and I realized it was tantamount to accepting my ride. Part of me felt a thrill to be part of somebody else's adventure.



"Well it's Hackney, I'm afraid," he said. "You can just drop me off. You don't have to hang around."



I led him out of the squash court, firm in my resolution to hang around. On the way out we caught a withering glare from Mavis who was clearly perturbed at our clear breach of protocol in leaving without pencilling up the scores on the cork board by her office.



Hackney called again. When we reached the car I felt a wave of shame come over me at the modest chicken tikka colored Ford Escort with handles to operate the window and chocolate wrappers strewn over the front seat. I imagined Moriarty had something like a Saab tucked away in a garage somewhere but if I wondered why he would take the train if that was the case.



"Ah Dagenham's finest," he remarked morosely, patting the flimsy panels on the side of the door.



We weaved in and out leafy streets, Moriarty looking distractedly out of the window all the time. Then his phone rang again. "Yes Laura. I'm on my way. She's done what?"



Soon the trees gave way to concrete and stores that had lost their right angles and seemed to be sinking into the street, flimsy cardboard signs and bars over their windows. There are parts of Tottenham and Hackney that look more like Calcutta and I had a knack of finding them. Drunks saluted us with their middle fingers and street dogs picked up their pace to slide back into the shadows. It was hard to imagine people living in parts of the city like this, but I said little as Moriarty grunted his directions in monosyllables.



Then somewhere near Hackney Wick, the baleful yellow street lights gave way to blue light and I realized we were on the edge of an incident scene.



"Thanks but really, you can drop me off here," said Moriarty.



"I should get you closer," I said.



"No really. Here will do." There was a steeliness in his voice which reinforced my impression of him as a one time Army man.



"OK," I replied, trying to hide a sharp edge of resentment.



"Yes. Thanks again old boy. Good game." And he was gone, his long legs carrying his bulky frame at a bewildering rate towards the blue lights at the end of a rundown street of high rise apartments.



I hit the accelerator, but eased off around the corner and parked. The evening had become too interesting to end just yet. I parked the Escort and crept slowly down the pavement in the direction of the blue lights. There was such a melee of police and firefighters it was easy to go unnoticed.



There was a large firefighter who seemed to be acting as a gatekeeper but I slipped past him when his back was turned. The whole scene was a ghastly pastische of flashing blues and reds, turning faces in the crowd on the street garish. All eyes were looking upwards to the 4th level where a woman in a nightgown with hair that may once have been blonde, tottered on a ledge. Even from that distance I could make out the whites of her fear filled eyes as she moved backwards and forwards.



The whole scene appeared so like a movie, down to the firefighters holding a large net below the apartment block, that I started to wonder if it was real or if I had walked into a set. But the shrill expressions and the way some people were covering their eyes gave authenticity to the Hollywood style scene in a less then glamorous part of town. To the left of the crowd and apart from them, I noticed Moriaty and a teenage girl. He was shouting something at the woman and waving his hands, albeit with little urgency. I had no doubt he was integral to the scene. I recognized the girl from the railway platform.



The woman waved her arms around, took a jerky step back and over compensated with a shriek. Suddenly there was a puff of powder from the ledge and she was falling through the air. I saw her twist in slow motion and her face contort as if this wasn't at all what she intended, before she headed fast for the ground.