THE TEARS OF A CLOWN

It was ten years ago today

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 11:36:45 -0400

It?s the tenth anniversary of Princess Diana?s untimely death in a French road tunnel and how the media is full of it. This morning the two major channels covered the church service commemorating her death and f course there are thousands of words of text in the newspapers about the subject.

Does anyone tire of this scene, this mass grieving for someone most of us never met? I am ever incredulous at the supposed interest after all these years and can only assume that it is stoked up by a media who short of genuine stories to print and broadcast. This may all sound a little harsh and certainly I?d admit to being no fan of the royal family - far from it, but I find the way that the story of her life is continuously foisted on the public to be tiresome and transparent. It?s time they let it go and has been for a long period of time.

Most of us have lost loved ones along the way. I don?t see any vast outpouring of grief for those close to me and others, who have departed - after a much harder life than the Princess?s. It was a shame when she died, time to let it go now.

Stay Alive

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:08:40 -0400

Big Country, Rescue Rooms, Nottingham.

Friday, 17th August, 2007.

It was a friend north of the border who gave me the heads-up about this impending gig in the heart of Nottingham?s Studentland. The gig and tour are being carried out as a twenty-fifth anniversary commemorating the band?s brilliant debut album. ?The Crossing?. Sadly of course, the band?s singer, main songwriter and twin lead guitarist, Stuart Adamson is no longer with us after his desperate loss through his suicide in Hawaii in 2001. His influence on the band and it?s music is still evident though. So is the love and respect for him from his former friends in Big Country.

Big Country in 2007 consists of the remaining three members, Bruce Watson (guitar), Tony Butler (bass and lead vocals) and Mark Brzezicki (drums). The band felt Stuart to be irreplaceable and I have to say I am in agreement with this. It seemed fitting that the three should celebrate the band?s major, landmark success from all those years ago.

Big Country remained something of an enigma in the eyes of much of the music world. Perhaps one might even refer to them as having a cult following. Irrespective they achieved great success in record sales, particularly in their earlier career and gained a huge reputation as a terrific live band.

It was my first visit to Rescue Rooms and at first I was a little surprised at how small the venue is. Nevertheless it?s a good venue that feel comfortable with people in the various nooks and crannies drinking and socialising, happily much of it outside on a warm-ish night. We entered in the midst of what I hoped was the opening tune and took our place near the back of the crowd. The crowd demographic was an interesting one with many people of an age group that had them marked as fans of the band from way back. It was a good-natured crowd too.

Tony Butler mentioned a few words about Stuart Adamson and the reason they were back playing in front of us on this occasion. He also explained that they had written some new material to ?get them motivated?. As one might imagine, many of the old favourites were there, ?Look Away?, ?The Teacher?, ?Fields of Fire? and ?Chance?, spread amongst a healthy amount of hitherto unheard material, some of which sounded promising. A personal high spot came at the band choosing to play ?Restless Natives?, written as part of the soundtrack for the movie of the same name.It was Tony Butler?s job to recite the memorable opening words

?Alone among the hills and stone
Through summer sun and winter snow
The eagle he was lord above
And Rob was lord below?

I wondered how many of the audience understood the relevance of those words: ?Two-hundred-forty years we lived, without hope and without pride?. Probably quite a few I reasoned. How well Stuart understood what it is to have a Scottish heartbeat and to feel the constant pull of those beautiful mountains and glens of our homeland, the love that is forever a corner in all of our hearts and will never die.

?I?m not expecting to grow flowers in the desert.

But I can live and breathe and see the sun in Wintertime?

Although a great fan from the past, I had never actually managed to see the original Big Country. Even so I had a strange feeling about the three playing up there on stage without Stuart. It was almost as if one expected him to run out on stage at any moment. Of course the loss was felt but that is meant in no way derogatively against the remaining members who toiled a little at times over the new numbers but excelled in the old ones.

The crowd lapped up every minute of it enthusiastically and the end came all too soon. I don?t believe the love and affection for this band will ever die. It certainly won?t in my mind. Apart from the Scottish sound which appeals to me for obvious reasons, I enjoyed the songwriting of Stuart Adamson, the way he tackled historical issues from his traditional, folk-inspired consciousness and the way he championed ordinary, working-class people and their trails and oppression. As well as THAT sound, that?s what Big Country and Stuart Adamson mean to me.

Just one encore of the expected ?In a Big Country? to a rapturous reception and the band were gone into the dark, inky night.

Will we ever see their like again?

Stuart Adamson, 1958-2001. Rest in Peace.

?In a big country, dreams stay with you, like a lover?s voice fires the mountainside, stay alive?

God Bless Scotland

Elvis - 30 years today

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:43:57 -0400

So, thirty years today then. It?s three long decades since the ?King? of rock and roll died an undignified death. I remember the night but I can?t say it was memorable in itself. I?d paid one of my regular trips into the city of Nottingham to go drinking with college mates from my printing course of the day. On arriving home the TV was playing out a homage to the rocker from Tupelo Mississippi. It wasn?t exactly a ?the day they shot Kennedy? moment for me but, yes I do remember what I was doing that evening.

Perhaps everyone has been touched by one Elvis song or another. It would have been difficult to live in an exclusive bubble without hearing some of his music at some time. Though I?m not particularly a fan I do believe he was perhaps the original artist that one liked ?at least something that he?d done?. Whilst respecting his huge and influential place ? perhaps at the very paramount of the rock pile, he did however leave a somewhat strange legacy along with hours of vinyl history.

The Elvis impersonator.

There were a few ?Elvis?s? weren?t there. There was the snake-hipped young teen idol with the dark good looks that smouldered and shook all over a shocked America in the mid/late fifties. There was the slightly homogenised Elvis, post army in his celluloid reconstructions according the word of Col. Tom Parker. Then came a little time in Beatles-created semi-wilderness before he came back with a bang in his comeback ?68 special, slimmed down and be-leathered. Lastly, and devolving from the Las Vegas Elvis came a strange mutation of the original talent. A bloated and often ridiculous Elvis clad in ever-expanding white jump-suits beloved of the Vegas era, bedecked with glitter and not rarely a cape.

Can anyone please tell me why THIS is the incarnation of Elvis that the army of impersonators practically always favour? They?re legion aren?t they? They appear in the social clubs, they were even on my daytime TV programs this morning looking totally hideous. Please somebody tell me why, if there really have to be this army of impersonators, nobody try?s to be the young, cool and energetic Elvis belting out rockers and crooner with equal aplomb? No, instead we are regaled with men with ebony-blacked hair in overdone parodies of Elvis?s fifties quiff. Large real-ale bellies straining at the pearlised buttons of their glittery jump suits and the tired ?uh-huh, thang ya very much ladies an gennulmen? stuff.

There is a saving grace though. The comic Elvis impersonator (aren?t they all?) In Nottingham there lives man known after his local suburb as ?Sneinton Elvis?. Now I?ve never been ?fortunate? enough to see Sneinton live but they tell me it really is a far-out experience man. Apparently this Elvis is actually a mentally-disabled man who once stood up at a karaoke when after people began booking him for gigs. Nice eh? Sneinton Elvis apparently still retains his admiring fans in the area, many who visit his live performances in t-shirts emblazoned with his features on the front. He?s apparently absolutely hopeless (which I can testify to from a YouTube video) but it?s not clear who the laugh is on here.

I am told also of another strange Elvis by a friend from County Clare in Ireland. Apparently this version travels between pubs performing to unsuspecting customers (whether they like it or not). In the inclement ?soft weather? of Clare, he can be seen sporting a rather fetching ladies plastic head scarf to keep his luxurious dark locks in fine fettle. A problem is that when the rain does catch his follicles the black dye has a tendency to run in rivulets down his cheeks. Let nothing be said about this Elvis though. One leaving the room he will always bless you with ?God loves ya baby?and so do I?

Face-off?

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:42:53 -0400

Social networking sites are one of the latest big deals on the Internet. It seems as though owning a straight-ahead personal website is now considered somewhat passe. Is this possibly because they take greater effort in constructing?

Facebook, often favoured by students, MySpace which offers opportunities to promote your band, organisation or various talents and Bebo, tending to be loved by the younger set, offer an easy gateway and presence onto the world wide web. In but a few minutes, one is proclaiming his or her favourite colour, band or latest profound thoughts to a network of friends but there are concerns about these sites

Although thousands of new personal pages appear every day on the Internet, there are several noted reservations about this new phenomenon. Security for young people is one of those concerns. It might be offered that such sites are suitable hunting ground for less savoury characters searching for young people on the Net. Certainly many personal details are routinely offered up for consumption on them, including images of the people who own the sites.

Having recently embraced Facebook after having several invites from fellow students and acquaintance, I have attempted to keep an open mind about the subject. Certainly the sites have their uses. The allow friends to keep in touch of course, they also allow people to become friends of friends of friends, though I?m not convinced how often this might happen. The personal ?wall-to-wall? messaging can be fun whilst one is always conscious that ones words are visible to other people. Perhaps indeed this is part of the appeal, a slight narcissism though this should not be taken as a serious criticism when we think of say, blogging as a comparison for example. Some of the applications offered are interesting, music players etc, whilst some are undoubtedly facile.

Personally my biggest criticism of Facebook in particular and the genre in general is that they are almost necessarily ?thin? in content. For anyone who truly feels the need to express themselves in an individual way over the Net they do not provide the best conduit. In my opinion blogs and the various Internet messageboards and forums present a superior environment for that activity and need. On the other hand, what the networking sites provide is an environment to find people with not only similar interests as do messageboards for instance, but also others who have different interest but are connected by friendship only.

I?ll reserve judgement on networking sites for the moment and at the same time watch with interest what happens in this ever-expanding corner of the Internet.

Miles Better

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 16:40:43 -0400

You really have to hear this.

Last night, my mate Mike was telling me about this minor car accident he had been involved in recently. Nothing particularly unusual about it, just a standard rear-end shunt when a guy hit him up the rear end of his little Audi.

Nobody hurt, they retired to a quiet road opposite to exchange details. Here?s the good bit. the other driver handed his business card to Mike. His name was?
MILES PONSONBY!!!

Mike was very proud that he had at last met a guy named ?Miles Ponsonby?.

If anyone can offer a suitable headline for this incident I shall forward it. I can think of a couple straight off but I won?t spoil the fun!

Love in the Asylum

Sun, 29 Jul 2007 09:43:18 -0400

Something a little different today then, a poem. Not just any piece of verse but quite possibly my favourite one, Dylan's Thomas's "Love in the Asylum". I first read this poem in senior school and was immediately attracted to it. There was always something about the bohemian ways of Thomas that appealed to me but the darkness in this piece of work reaches particularly deep into a soul. For me it's a cry of helplessness, frustration and longing. A longing for the love and companionship that any person deserves to have, in spite of one's disability or problems.

Love in the Asylum
(Dylan Thomas)

A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

Lowdham Book Festival (2) Blog-talk with Mike Atkinson

Fri, 27 Jul 2007 00:58:38 -0400

Although a now rather overdue admission for the Lowdham Book Festival, I thought this event was well worth recording. The event itself had been moved from the Women's Institute Hall down the road, having fallen prey to the inevitable floods the village and surrounding area had been experiencing. On a damp and soggy day then, my partner and I skipped into the talk just a minute or two into proceedings

Mike Atkinson of the 'Troubled-Diva' blog gave an extremely informative, lively and humourous account of the world of blogging. Blessed with the light-hearted style his blog is written with, he recounted tales of this relatively new phenomenon. Notable was his tale of a serious blog stalker who was actually prosecuted for her misdemeanours towards a fellow female blogger. This talk however covered the subject most comprehensively and would have appealed to people who had an interest in beginning a blog, and expert 'first wave' blogger alike. Mike covered the thorny subject of book deals for bloggers and the jealousy that can arise between fellow bloggers due to this. He maintained that there was no easy way to achieve acclaim in this idiom as blogging is strictly a meritocracy.

The small group of people that braved the inclement weather to hear Mike talk will have been singularly impressed. It was unfortunate and no one seemed more perturbed than Mike himself that he finally ran out of time and had to abbreviate much of his prepared talk. I dare say that the majority of the audience will have been as disappointed as myself not to have heard the balance of the material in full. Mike did not disappoint however and, as promised, has posted up the notes he prepared on Troubled-Diva for all to peruse.

I can heartily recommend dropping by Mike's blog, which has deservedly been nominated for an award or two. His main focus is music but if it isn't yours don't let that put you off as there is much in his several years of archives present to maintain your interest. For those of us who share the same city as Mike and myself, Nottingham, his entry series entitled 'Nottingham, My Nottingham' is a must-read. Rarely have I ever read such a comprehensive review of some of the lesser-know delights of the city which one would have to experience intimately to be aware of.

Troubled-Diva:

http://www.troubled-diva.com/

Shaggy Blog Stories. A collection of top blog entries compiled into a book my Mike Atkinson. All proceeds to Comic Relief.

http://www.lulu.com/content/739873

Tales from the Ark

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 17:45:17 -0400

What a 'summer' this has been. Incredibly the rain goes on and on, day after day and people continue to suffer. Many poor souls have had their homes flooded more than once with the filthy water infiltrating their home. Even worse, as one might surmise there have unfortunately been fatalities.

Evacuations continue as main streets are transformed into rivers of muddy water with people wading through chest-deep levels. Some rivers are said to be up to 26 feet above their regular height.

Main Street, Woodborough, Notts. July 2007

As usual someone is sought to blame - even for a natural disaster falling from the sky, there has to be a better way than this though. More knowledgable people in the land buying profession tell me that short shrift is given to pre-empting what in fairness is an exceptional situation. The building of local 'sump' areas is said to be neglected in the search for extra profit. I have no notion whether this is true but wouldn't find it difficult to believe.

Flooding appears as though it will be a more permanent fixture of life in the UK in the future and it's apparent that measures will have to be considered to assist in what is nothing but a national calamity repeating itself. One can only feel sympathy for the poor people affected.

Lowdham Festival (1) The Brian Clough Evening

Sat, 14 Jul 2007 11:19:09 -0400

The inaugural event of the Lowdham Book Festival, 2007 then and it very nearly didn't happen at all. As for much of this soggy summer, Lowdham and it's surrounding villages had been the victim of a huge deluge late afternoon and early evening before Brian's event was due to kick off at 7.30. An apt time one may have imagined due to the subject matter under discussion this evening, and one that almost became a 'match abandoned'. Finding that the stream in the field where the marquee for the night sat had been all but two inches from overflowing it's banks and therefore sabotaging the evening was the first information imparted. Apparently the good people that labour to run the village event had to search around furiously in the locality for sand bags to keep tonight's entertainment running. This was again exacerbated by the large rivers of water cutting Lowdham and other nearby villages off.

Lowdham at high tide!

To our relief the event began, a little later than scheduled but one could hardly complain. Certainly the event on offer tonight gave most people great enjoyment ans was a rich pastiche of the great football manager's life and times. Curiously bitter-sweet and all the better for it, the talk began with Marcus Alton, webmaster of www.brianclough.com who had many interesting tales to offer about Brian Clough, his family, and importantly the progress being made to commemorate the master manager's achievements here in Nottingham and elsewhere by way of a statue.

I remember quite early in Brian's long stay in Nottingham there was inevitably much speculation as to how long he would be persuaded to remain on Trentside by Nottingham Forest. His answer was a blithe 'I'll be here longer than Billy Walker', referring to the former Forest chief who had spent twenty-six long years at The City Ground. Well Brian didn't quite manage that but he did stack up eighteen years of startling achievement, wisdom, fun and great entertainment in the Lace City. It seemed for most of us here that he had been, and would remain, here forever. How we would have wished that to happen. I think even some of the more rabid Notts County fans would have even said that in the cold light of day.

The evening moved onto perhaps it's most entertaining period. Stephen Lowe, playwright of 'Old Big 'ead - In the Spirit of the Man' began to talk and occasionally engaged the excellent Colin Tarrant who played Clough in the production to great effect. Stephen, with credits including Coronation Street, explained that he had be asked several times to write something about the great man but had always refused. When he did finally relent he decided on a different tack - to show Brian having passed away to the 'other side' where in customary fashion he ruffled the feathers of two other distinguished men of Nottingham, General Booth and D. H Lawrence!

Most moving were Colin Tarrant's thoughts on Brian. Colin recounted how he had been a local boy from Kirkby-in-Ashfield 'where they only dug coal to make electricity for the country's lights' he pithily added - a sentiment that was not lost on the audience about the strictly working class town of his roots and it's importance. The man who played Clough reiterated in our minds that Brian was very much a working-class hero, that were no Cloughs these days (was there ever another?) The way that Colin reached out to the audience about football and therefore life itself being a 'team game', reflecting the integrity, love and honesty he believed that Brian showed to us all by his actions and words, was beautifully portrayed. It certainly formed a large lump in mine, and I know my friend's throat. Colin reached down into the very depths of the man and what he stood for, decency, fairness and honest-to-goodness graft to achieve the best one can. The way he identified with Brian manifested the way many of continue to mirror his views on life, and made it easier to understand this very complex man and why we associated ourselves with him.

Finally, and one can never be sated by talk of Brian Clough I find, Duncan Hamilton, journalist and author of a new book about Brian, 'Provided You Don't Kiss Me', appeared for the second half of the evening. Duncan had the enviable (but not always he explained!) job of following Nottingham Forest and particularly Brian Clough around for the Nottingham Evening Post. Duncan, as one might expect told many illuminating tales about his good times and sometime difficulties with the mercurial Brian. Once he had been banned from the City Ground by an irate Clough for some imagined slight but soon welcomed him back as a prodigal son as if nothing had happened!

An interesting question and answer session ensued for a short period after the final talk. There was hardly the sometime lack of people coming forward to ask questions. Still there is much to know about the complexities of this wonderful man and it seemed almost unspoken that this evening's entertainment had been only the most recent attempt to understand what made him so great and what made us all love him.

An exceptional event for the Lowdham Book Festival then. What else might one expect about a truly exceptional man.

Nosmo King

Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:23:41 -0400

Almost a couple of weeks in and it's been interesting to observe some of the changes since the smoking ban came about in England on July 1st. Being a person not adverse to visiting the odd public house or two I of course as a non-smoker welcomed that fateful day when I and my friends would be able to catch our breath in a public bar and other public places.

I've always tried to live and let live with smokers as we all have our own particular vices. This has not detracted from my dislike of going home smelling of stale tobacco after every evening out, nor the displeasure at struggling to draw breath, especially in some bars with low ceilings. The latter is a frequent occurrence as the pubs I often visit tend to be older, more historic buildings with just such a construction. It's been a source of resentment to me that some of those places I would no longer visit because of that problem. Now no longer however.

There have been a few problems with the fallout from the ban. Outside every public building there now appears to be an ugly pile of disused cigarette ends from the groups of people taking a desperate drag outside. One also has to fight through a thick smog to get into those same buildings sometimes. The litter bins are often draped with discarded cigarettes, balanced precariously in lines across the edge of the bin, uggh!

Another development has been the types of constructions pub managers are setting up outside their businesses. These range from a few 'martini trees' with strategic outdoor heaters to full blown marquees. The latter plastic abominations often look incongruous stood outside some of the more handsome old pub buildings and have fallen foul of the authorities. One of my locals, The Four Bells at Woodborough, Notts found itself with a visit from the police one evening for an illegal marquee stuck on the front of the attractive old pub. Apparently it had three sides to it which constitutes a need for planning permission one presumes.

England was being overtaken by a
new breed of temporary building in 2007

After trying to accede to people's need to smoke for practically ever, it dismays me to hear smokers referring to themselves as 'victims' now. What on earth do they think the rest of us all were for all those years whilst being forced to inhale their smoke second-hand and smell like a dirty ashtray after an evening out?