This weekend is NCT’s annual conference, at which I am running a very dull workshop. So the bar this weekend is in a conference centre, and you can all choose what sort of conference you are at.
Are you living in the same place as in 2004/05?No, I was living in south Manchester back then but have since moved to south London. Never thought I’d like living in the capital, but this big beautiful city has proved me wrong. Since 2006, I have been busily trying out as much as I can of what London has to offer. [Waits for Lyle to make a crude remark.] I am, however, still living with the ever wonderful Topper.
Possibly. Depends on whether or not you still read my blog. My fashion sense has changed a lot in recent years, and my hair has changed quite a bit since 2005 (when I had no fringe) and 2004 (when I was blonde!), but my face is still relatively untouched by the ravages of time. Also, if you follow me on any form of social media these days you’re probably quite likely to recognise me because I do have a fondness for selfies. Years ago I had a webcam – now I have a smart phone and Instagram.
You’re probably asking the wrong person here. I pretty much have no concept of the future, unless it’s fictional and on a large screen in front of my face. I rarely ever make anything that could be termed a long term plan, and pretty much just see where the wind takes me. However, now you’ve pressed me for an answer, I reckon that the concept of shame will eventually disappear entirely, as everyone has every aspect of their lives recorded for posterity and easily searchable via Google. No one will be able to deny their sordid past and so everyone will be in the same boat. That’s probably a long way into the future though!
I do indeed still have a blog. It’s now called Rarely Wears Lipstick (although my old vanity domain still redirects there) and I still write about whatever captures my interest, although my writing has improved immensely since I started blogging back in 2002. These days my site is more like an online magazine and less like the ramblings of someone with an overinflated ego sat in their living room poking at a laptop, even though it is technically still that. If you are so inclined, you can find more self-indulgent waffle from me on Twitter too, where I am @lipsticklori.
Well, my birthday’s in January and I need to have a research proposal for my MA dissertation finished and presented by December, so I guess that counts. Other than that, my innate lack of ambition and planning skills mean that health and happiness are pretty much my only goals, and they both need to be maintained rather than achieved. Thankfully.
Ooh, good question! I’d say, “don’t listen to your teachers when they tell you to take A-Level Maths. It’ll be a waste of two years. Go for English Language instead. You’re worried you’ll get Mrs Jones as a teacher again, but she’s actually far nicer than she seems. She only told you that you’d get a D at GCSE because she knew it would make you work harder.” Mind you, a different choice of third subject might end up changing my entire future. Maybe it’s best not to cross your own timeline, eh?
The MA History and Culture of Fashion course at London College of Fashion has, so far, taught me a great many interesting things. I now know how bespoke suits are made on Savile Row, how to analyse fashion imagery, that there are many more archives of garments in the world than you could possibly imagine, and that no amount of reading can prepare you for how it feels to handle something that is hundreds of years old. The most important thing I have learnt is probably that my past studies, my current hobbies and my lifelong obsessions do all meet in a place where fascinating research happens. Hopefully I will be able to add my own to the mix sometime soon.
It think it’s probably the number of people I follow that changes the way I use Twitter. I treat it as a place to broadcast (in classic microblogging style), and also like a whole load of chat rooms that I can duck in and out of all day as I wish. I follow people I know in real life, folk whose blogs I read, people who tweet interesting links, brands I adore, magazines, journalists, and folk I don’t know but who were retweeted and their bios made me laugh. That’s over 400 people who I can’t quite keep up with, so there’s no way I can worry about catching every tweet. It’s not like I say different things because more people are listening though. I’m just as likely to say daft things as I was when I first joined Twitter!
I’d like you to interview Cat, aka @koshkajay. Can you ask her:
I may have to stop using Radio 4 as my wake up call. It seeps into my consciousness from 7am, filling my head with all the horrible goings on in the world. Twice this week I’ve wanted to emigrate before I even got out of bed, after listening to the Today Programme on behalf of the country’s media colluding with the government in chipping away at our institutions, hearing that America is about to go to war with Russia, and that the Labour Party is imploding.
It’s not the shorter days that are making me sad.
I’ve been sitting on this album for a long time now. I was listening to it for a couple of weeks before we went to France, and a week since. It’s probably about time I laid this review to bed and moved on to the next album in the series.
Things are definitely moving in a heavy rock direction here. For example, She Shook Me Cold (which is, in my opinion, utterly ruined by the fact that the crash cymbal is being battered non-stop for about three minutes during the instrumental). There is also a certain operatic quality in places, which I guess is why some people have said that this was one of the first “glam rock” albums.
I have two main complaints about this album. One is the drumming, which reminds me of Ginger Baker and comprises many elongated snare and tom fills at completely inappropriate times. And the second is the bass playing, which is fairly amateurish and contains frequent quick glissandos up and immediately down an octave, which is one of those things which seems really cool until you realise how shit it sounds. Sorry, Tony Visconti.
So, let’s choose a few songs to look at more closely. Width of a Circle sounds to me like a Cream song, and given how Cream had already split up by this time, it’s pretty obvious who is feeding the influences to who. The aforementioned Ginger Baker -esque drumming is a big factor, but the song as a whole just oozes their sound.
All The Madmen is not free of the annoyances mentioned up there, but it’s so damn good that I can tolerate them. It’s got a nice relaxed pace and plenty of weight. The narrator describes a world where the insane far outnumber the sane, and so if you want to avoid the asylum then you’re going to have to get used to being lonely.
I feel that Black Country Rock deserves special mention because on first listen I almost exclaimed “Did David Bowie just namecheck Makka Pakka?” As it turned out, he didn’t. I quite like the way that this song bounds along, such a shame that it doesn’t seem to be about anything in particular. Weird shit with the vocals at the end though, I think that they did some fiddling with the tape speed to get that effect.
Running Gun Blues is an anomaly for Bowie in that it’s a anti-war song with fairly predictable lyrics. Given how he’s normally very creative in his wordsmithery, this is a bit of a disappointment.
Saviour Machine is a most memorable song about a president who builds a machine to solve all of mankind’s problems ((and incidentally, the way that Bowie pronounces “law” in the line “they called it The Prayer, it’s answer was law” makes me chuckle every single time)). While initially successful, the machine eventually develops contempt for the puny humans and their lazy, easy lives, and lets mankind know in no uncertain terms that if they don’t switch it off then it’s going to ragekill the lot of them. Another reason I’m fond of this song is that musically, it reminds me of the sort of stuff coming out of my local music scene when I was a teenager in Lincolnshire, a scene which, as far as I can tell, is nowhere near as vibrant as it once was. So it makes me a bit wistful.
Hits from this album: That would be The Man Who Sold The World, famously covered by Nirvana.
My favourite song from this album: All The Madmen for the reasons given.
Next up: Hunky Dory.
This week’s episode was all about desserts, and while some may assert that a trifle is not baking, since nobody, but NOBODY ever makes the sponge for the bottom from scratch, there were some charming petits fours and lots of fun with floating meringues. Continue reading
I have read a lot of books over the summer, mostly while lying in a shady corner of the garden in France, but also while sheltering from the rain in Derbyshire. Here they all are: Continue reading
This afternoon’s cocktails are brought to you with a Hollywood theme, thanks to that piercing-eyed patissier Lyle, who has taken off his pinny for a couple of hours in order to rustle up some star-spangled cocktails and then give you an “I told you so” look.
We’re calling it the Great British Cock Off, because Lyle would like that. All drinkers are in a tent with their own cocktail bar (the cakes are to sustain them if they get hungry during the weekend-long cocktail making session without a break), and at the end they get judged by Ol’ Blue-Eyes and his sidekick Baker Boy K, who has not ordered a cocktail today but was nominated in this role by Lisa.
At the first bench, we have Gordon, and a whole new earworm: the Hippy Hippy Shake. I challenge you to watch this and not smile, also to admire the Tom Cruise connection, which actually was just obvious. But smile, and then consider how this is clearly the prequel of Coyote Ugly.
Behind Gordon, and looking to steal his custard, Clair is making magical margharitas and hugging all her weird cousins and telling us she really, really loves us.
Woody Allen said, “Man cannot live on bread alone. Frequently, there must be a beverage,” and here’s a scene from Manhattan for Pixeldiva, which she should probably not treat as any sort of a travel guide.
Lisa is cheating at mixing her mojito, by using one of those just-add-rum pouches that were reduced to 18p in Waitrose earlier this week. These pouches were responsible for me and Pete failing to keep our “no drinking for one week” resolution, but we figured they didn’t count because, erm, oh look a kitten! This is the cocktail equivalent of a loaf of bread with tomatoes on top.
At asta’s bench there is an unusual foray into the deeply lowbrow, with an awful Meg Ryan film to celebrate her umptieth wedding anniversary, something no-one else in the room can even begin to lay claim to. According to tradition, 26 is the first year you don’t get a present. Hard luck!
Graybo is mixing his continents rather than his cocktails, which seems a little ambitious. He can double-check here that Bogart is definitely standing in an airport not at a bar; were you thinking of the “Play it” scene, perhaps? But no, that’s not a champagne bottle, and the lady’s not coming back.
I’m having a Brief Encounter, as long as it isn’t out of hours yet.
I have been much too busy to think of a theme, so first person to place an order has to come up with one. Has to. Or will not get a drink.