anyone who knows me knows how much i love this particular genre of music, and it all started with roni size‘s new forms.
i was at home wrestling with a particularly nasty essay, and my then-boyfriend had come over to give me moral support. he’d been to the record store the day before and brought his purchases over for me to listen to. “tell me what you think of this”, he said in a tone i couldn’t read, popping new forms into my stereo.
i had never heard anything like it. i was not prepared for what came out of those speakers, much less the very visceral effect it had on me. each slight shift in rhythm, the tiniest modulation in the syncopation, or a new melodic element, fired off another spark of interest that sent a wave of euphoric energy through me. it was a palpable rhythmic bliss.
my boyfriend had been watching me with a somewhat bemused look on his face. “you can keep it if you like”, he offered. the way my face lit up was all the answer he needed. “don’t you want it?” i asked. “nah, i don’t really like it”, a slightly curled lip and a shake of the head, “it’s too random.” too random? i couldn’t believe my ears, but i was too happy to care.
since then there have been other artists and other albums – from bukem to bricolage – but new forms still energises me in a way no other album can.
(want to hear a bit? click here. and listen to the shift that happens halfway through the track here.)

I’ll admit I can be somewhat brazen at times. Not that often, but when it happens I tend to just go with it, after all why fight Mother Nature?
One afternoon in late summer I was in a pub waiting for a chap I’d been seeing a while. For one reason and another we’d not met up for a few weeks. He arrived and we sat there soaking up the smells and sounds particular to a country pub at that time of year.
Why we didn’t arrange to meet up somewhere more private I’m still not sure, but there we were sipping our drinks getting hotter and ‘friendlier’ by the minute. Eventually he told me of a hayfield he’d passed close by.
“Wonderfully romantic and secluded” he said.
Those of you who have ever been in a hayfield in late summer know that neither of these things is actually true.
Events started well enough. Fragrant waist high stalks surrounded us as we became reacquainted. Then things began to go downhill.
Firstly I managed to get a stalk fragment in my eye. He removed it and we continued.
He temporarily halted proceeding a few minutes later to alter positions due to an inconveniently placed clump of stalks digging in to his back.
We had settled down again when a clearly visible train passed within shouting distance on a hitherto unnoticed track.
A low flying light aircraft circled the field just as the train disappeared. And repeated this manaouvre three times.
We were nothing if not determined. We continued.
A very short while later I made a comment about a diesel engine sound, which appeared to be becoming louder. Two inspections above the hay revealed nothing. I was convinced the sound was louder still and so the head ventured above the hay once again.
Third time lucky.
He picked up my shoes, thrust them in to my hands, along with various items of clothing, and told me to run for the car.
We made it to the edge of the field just as the combine harvest passed the spot we’d just flattened.
I had hay stalk induced scratches on my skin for days afterwards.
Hayfields. Not romantic. Or secluded. Trust me.

i was 19, it was the year after i finished high school and before i started uni. i was doing alot of theatre work, mainly as backstage crew, the experience of which can be summed up in one word: waiting. we did a lot of it.
we were sitting outside the theatre, just at the stage door, waiting for the set to be built. according to the production plan, they were about 6 hours behind schedule, which meant that we had to be there so that the moment they finished, we could rush straight in and try to make up for lost rehearsal time.
we were hungry from not having eaten all day, tired from having been in the theatre overnight, and very very bored. to take her mind off her growling stomach, my friend z took out her cigarettes and lit one. she offered me one, as usual; instead of declining as usual, i took one. z’s face registered surprise. “you’re going to have teach me how to do this”, i said to her. so she did.
(this is also the story of why i still smoke menthols, even in winter weather – something many people find strange. in short: it’s hot in singapore. most people smoke menthols there for that reason. for me smoking is inextricably linked to singapore, and therefore to that particular kind of cigarette. emotional memory and all that.)
so now that you know the story of my first cigarette, tell me yours.

I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for mechanical things, being more into Meccano than Barbie when younger.
I had scooters then motorbikes long before I thought about having a car. So I was approaching my 21st birthday when my thoughts turned to 4-wheeled transport. I began having lessons when a friend mentioned that someone he knew was selling the perfect car for me. Mechanically easy to maintain and fairly trendy at that time.
I went to have a look and fell in love. I tend to lose my heart fairly easily.
A baby blue, curvy bodywork, chrome bumper 1972 VW Beetle. The clincher was a small glass ‘posy vase’ mounted on the metallic dashboard. I’m a girl. The small touches matter.
I bought the car there and then and he waited in the garage for me to become street-legal. He was definitely a ‘he’. In true girly fashion I called him Bruce and had his name signwritten in inch high lettering just below the rear side window on both sides.
Befitting my optimistic nature, I’d booked the day off work for the test. I passed and made my way home from the test center to release Bruce from the garage. That first solo drive was invigorating. A drive around the country lanes then up into the Chiltern Hills. I pulled into a layby which looked down upon the town I’d grown up in. Cliched but true, I felt freer then than ever before. Anything was possible.
I cherished Bruce. His bodywork shone at all times and mechanically he’d never been in better shape.
When I decided some years later to up sticks and go to university, naturally, Bruce came too. He was loaded up with my meagre worldly possessions and we began our exodus to the coast. He ran smoothly, seeming to enjoy the prospect of life by the sea.
We’d reached Southampton when without warning, the engine blew up. Literally. Metal scattered, flames engulfed, the whole kit and caboodle.
Bruce died by the side of the M27.
I’ve had numerous cars since then, powerful, quirky, drop dead gorgeous, but none have ever really got under my skin the way he did.
I hope he’s happy in the great scrapyard on the sky.

At the age of eleven I was living on an RAF base in Germany. Normally I enjoyed the relocation to a new country every three years or so, but the move from England a couple of months earlier had been more traumatic than normal.
I had fallen in love and had to leave the object of my affections behind. He had large brown eyes, lashes to die for and a wonderful glossy sheen to his body.
I had succumbed to that girlhood passion which afflicts so many prepubescent females. Horses.
In the overly dramatic manner perfected by girls of this age I’d declared that my heart, broken by having to abandon the four-legged love of my life, would never heal.
Then I got my first job. As a Saturday stable-hand in a Stud.
I hardly slept the night before, so excited was I to be almost back amongst the creatures of my obsession.
I walked in and there they were. Magnificent. Powerful. Arrogant. Beautiful to my eleven-year-old eyes. And I was to help care for them. Indeed I was to have a specific, exclusive role in catering to the needs of these fabulous animals.
It was my sole responsibility to clean that part for which the stallions were prized.
I was a willy washer.

in my family, my father is the risk-taker, the gambling man. but my mother is is the one with the luck. she has something of a reputation for it. there must be something funny with the wiring in the big probability machine in the sky, because my mother has won more lucky draws than seems humanly possible (or fair, as it were). i’m not exaggerating. you know the raffles that are the staple of every company dinner? my mother always came home with something – always. it got to the point where we used to tease her every time she left for such functions – mum, can you try to win a [insert electronic or whitegood here] this time? ours is getting kind of old..!
i, on the other hand, never won a thing in my life. by pure luck, that is. the lucky draw kind of luck. until the january of 2000.
i had been on holiday in singapore, where i got to welcome the new year (and millenium) at a house party with my best friends in traditional new year’s eve style, that is to say, with much alcohol and (subsequent) inebriated dancing. said dancing took place mainly to basement jaxx‘s remedy, courtesy of kat, who had recently purchased it. several days later, i bought a copy for myself, to remind me of that holiday. at the counter i was given a lucky draw form to fill – the prize being two passes to zouk to see basement jaxx, who were to perform there after i had returned to sydney. not wanting to waste the form, i filled it in with kat’s details, slipped it into the box and promptly forgot all about it.
a fortnight later i received an email from kat. she’d won the free passes! i had to laugh. it figures that the first time i ever won anything it would be by proxy.