Music Monday: Metronomy

A tweet appeared on my feed last Saturday morning: "It's a Metronomy, English Riviera kind of day."  Very true: all the sunshine last week kept the album on almost-constant play, with ocassional breaks for some equally summery Beach House.  With end-of-the-pier organ sounds and seagulls and dodgems in the video, everything in The Look is redolent of an English summer (minus the rain).  Of course, the sun didn't last long but, now that my summer dresses are out of their suitcase and Metronomy are top of my CD pile, there is no going back.

Packing my bags

I'm off to London for a few days and looking forward to it.  I'll be...

- seeing my lovely friends, Cara and Dan, and their new flat in Crouch End;

- visiting Hampton Court Palace for a full-on Tudor geekfest;
- going to the David Shrigley and Jeremy Deller exhibitions at the Hayward Gallery;

- having a lovely meal at Marco Pierre White's restaurant, the Kings Road Steakhouse;

- doing some touristy things (which I usually miss out on because of being in the pub!), such as visiting the British Museum, the V&A, and Liberty;

- visiting all the wonderful bookshops - such as Gay's The Word, Foyles, Housmans and Daunt Books - but trying to resist temptation to buy many; after all, I have a backlog of about 50 waiting to be read.

Any suggestions for what else I should see and do in London?  Tips for good craft shops, interesting vintage stores or unusual sights I might not know about would be gratefully received.

Bring me sunshine

Photo via weheartit

The lovely Laura from Make Do and Mend has given me my very first blogger award: the Sunshine Award.  Thanks Laura!  I have also just had some other excellent news, which I will share later this weekend.  But as for the award, it is meant to recognise positive, creative and inspiring bloggers: what a nice idea.  As part of the award there are 10 questions to post, so here are my answers:

Favourite colour: Blue: from shades of teal blue in my spare room, to baby blue in my kitchen, to lots of navy in my wardrobe, it's such a versatile colour.

Favourite animal: I am not really an animal person (too neurotic and convinced that they will bite/scratch/attack me), but I do like cats... to which I'm allergic.

Favourite non alcoholic drink: Tea.

Facebook or twitter: Facebook.

Getting or giving presents: Giving.  I love buying and making things that will make my loved ones smile.

Favourite flower: Daffodil.  They are such a happy flower, heralding the return of spring with their sunny yellow colour.

Favourite pattern: Polka dots.

Passion: travelling, reading, and music: I'm happiest while on a train, listening to my iPod and reading a book.

Favourite number: 19

The five blogs I want to pass the award on to are (rips envelope open...) Jenny Just Stuff, Using My Loaf, Says Ingrid, What Hannah Read and Pretty Much Penniless.

Lust list

After a somewhat serious post on Monday, something more lighthearted today.  It's payday on Friday and I am very skint until then, so have been spending more time than usual window-shopping on Etsy.  A few of the lovely things I have found...

Barry Bulsara is a local artist whose works adorn many a Leicester bar.  This screenprint of a Liz Lemon quote is amazing: "I want someone who likes musicals... and I want someone who thinks being really into cars is lame and strip clubs are gross," might become my new profile blurb on OKCupid.

There are so many cute dresses in Jennifer Lilly's Etsy shop but I especially like this pale beige bird print, which is only £28.99.

We learnt how to make tote bags at craft club last week, and it's so simple that I really don't have an excuse to buy more, but I love the canvas tote bags by Mystic Moose (which are a bargain at only £3.99 apiece).  Now the only decision is which one to get: this typewriter print is vying with the multi-coloured buttons one for a place in my collection. 

Music Monday: Ben Folds Five

There are worrying things afoot in the UK at the moment in relation to abortion rights.  This article from Saturday's Guardian outlines some of the attacks being made on a woman's right to have agency over her own body.  Therefore this Music Monday could be subtitled, 'Why having an abortion isn't the worst thing that's happened to me'. 

When the news broke that someone had hacked the British Pregnancy Advice Service, purportedly to 'expose' the names of women who have used their services, I was enraged.  Angry because, once again, here was a man supposing he has the right to sit in judgement over adult women and the choices they make about their bodies.  Angry because the coalition government - with their inclusion of pro-life organisations on advisory boards, and motions put forward by resolutely anti-abortion Tory MP Nadine Dorries that threatened abortion rights - have created a climate in this country which edges ever closer to that of America.  Mostly angry, though, because his actions presuppose that the worst possible thing to happen to a woman would be to have the fact of her abortion made public; that it is something to be ashamed of.

Well, I refuse to be ashamed of one of the smartest and most sensible decisions I made in my early twenties.  I was not - emotionally, mentally or financially - in any position to become a parent.  Having an abortion at 9 weeks is far from the worst thing that has happened to me and I don't ever, for a minute, regret my decision.  Was it painful?  Yes.  Do I still think about it sometimes?  Yes.  But I don't ever wish I'd made a different decision.  Most women keep abortion quiet and it becomes our dirty little secret (despite the fact that an estimated one in three women in this country have had or will have an abortion).  This in turn gives power to the anti-abortion argument that it is inherently mentally damaging and therefore we poor delicate women shouldn't be put through it: remove the choice and remove the 'damage'.  And make no mistake, the voices of people who would like to remove our choice are becoming ever-louder in the face of government and media tolerance, even encouragement.

To return to the music (after all, it is Music Monday): with lines like "she broke down, and I broke down," Brick is not a song that pretends abortion is all flowers and smiles, but it also doesn't express regret.  I've always liked it for that reason.

The weekend ahead

Despite some fun plans here in Leicester, I am kind of wishing I was back in the north this weekend, due to two great-sounding events being held in Bradford and Leeds.

Tomorrow in Bradford you can visit the Zine Extravaganza, run by newly-formed zine collective Loosely Bound.  So, I lived in Bradford for 12 years and it was lame; when did it become cool enough to host a zine collective?  Colour me impressed.

On Sunday in Leeds is a plus-size clothing swap organised by Kirsty of Fatty Unbound blog and Make It Work zine.  There will be cake, which is all it takes to get me excited about an event.

Here in Leicester I will be visiting the vintage fair which regularly visits the cathedral tomorrow, seeing lots of friends, and going to see Gypsy at Curve on Sunday (I am hoping it will be very jazz hands; I do love a good musical).  Wherever you are, hope you have a fabulous weekend.

Living in the past

So, obviously I'm a bit obsessed with the 90s at the moment.  My current read (Everyone Loves Our Town, a history of grunge) is ace; so absorbing that I am almost believing I'm in early-90s Seattle.  It's a disappointment every time I look up and see noughties Leicester around me, I can tell you.  As a result, I've been collecting things to maintain my delusion that I'm a flannel-wearing teenager in America circa 1992 just that bit longer.

In my 'to read' pile I have Girl by Blake Nelson, a novel about a teenager discovering alternative culture in Portland, Oregon in the early 90s.  I read it years ago (having bought it for about 10p in a charity shop in South Africa) and loved it because it reminded me of My So-Called Life.  The recent publication of a sequel, Dream School, has prompted me to do some re-reading.  Also in the stack are the memoir by Throwing Muses' Kristin Hersh, Rat Girl (published as Paradoxical Undressing in the UK), and Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life.

I have also been having a lovely time crafting a Spotify playlist to accompany all this reading: listen here and let me know what I've missed off.

My Band T-Shirt is a great blog where people submit stories related to... well, you can probably guess.  Funny, nostalgia-filled and moving, there are a number of grunge-related tales on there.  The Hole one only served to reaffirm my love for Courtney; the one about The Pixies seeming to follow a theme of band t-shirts leading to marriage.  Hmm, I'm still waiting for my Sonic Youth tee to attract me a mate.

It's embarrassing how much I love Reality Bites (and especially Janeane Garofalo's character, Vickie, who, with her little black book beside the bed, sarcastic wit and red lipstick seemed to me the very apotheosis of womanhood when I was a teen).  Set in Austin in the early 90s, it's a flannel shirt-filled nostalgic delight and will make a good companion piece to Singles in an early 90s film fest that I have planned for next week.

How to be a good hostess

I found this gem of a book in amongst the boxes my mum and her partner salvaged from their recently deceased neighbour's house.  There's no publication date on it, but from the graphic design I'd put it somewhere around the late fifties.  Not dissimilar in style to modern 'How To...' books (the title alone put me in mind of Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess) but full of lines that make you realise the past really is a foreign country.  Just two of my favourites: "If you're going to the coast, make a gay beach party of it..." and the entreaty, "Why not make it a threesome?".  Yes, I really do have the sense of humour of a 14 year old boy. 

The 'What Shall I Wear' spread is amazing, with lovely line drawings alongside the most specific instructions: "a fork lunch is an occasion for friendly rivalry in smart hats," or (for a country weekend) "nylons should be the 30 denier, fishnet kind".  Detailed directions are also given for how to invite guests, by letter, 'At Home' card or phone ("only for a Christian-name friend!" the book warns).  Being a good hostess sounds exhausting; I think I'll stick to my usual routine of 'send a Facebook message and order in pizza on the night'.

Music Monday: Pearl Jam

I heard this song when I was in the pub on Friday night and it set me off on a weekend of reminiscing.  Pearl Jam were the first band my brother and I ever really bonded over.  I remember being dead impressed that he wanted to listen to them (in fact, I think he owned this album - on cassette, naturally - before I did), deciding that perhaps my younger brothers weren't total townie lost causes (sorry Richard!). 

I find myself thinking about the 90s a lot lately.  Call it a midlife crisis; call it the fact that everyone is wandering around in leggings, Doc Martens and grandad cardigans.  In reality I was slightly too young for grunge (I was only 13 in 1991, when Nevermind came out, and only started properly listening to grunge bands after Kurt had already died).  Britpop was more my era, but funnily enough I'm not finding myself getting misty eyed about Pulp or Elastica like I am about Nirvana and Pearl Jam. 

When I was in Seattle last summer I saw the exhibition Taking Punk To The Masses (nominally about Nirvana, but really a history of alternative music in the USA) and found it a pretty powerful experience.

Reading the book, thinking about the exhibition, remembering Seattle, watching the documentary Seven Ages Of Rock: Left Of The Dial (about the rise of alternative rock in the US, focusing in large part on Nirvana and REM), and listening to Pearl Jam.  My weekend was spent with my mind firmly in the Pacific Northwest, circa 1992.  Can you be nostalgic for something you didn't actually live through?

Good stuff

Good stuff this weekend...

Photo via The Guardian

This article about punk rock in repressive states in The Guardian yesterday was an amazing read.  The writer does dismiss Riot Grrrl as a "fleeting genre" and "overlooked" - erm, not round my house, mate - but otherwise it was a fascinating and humbling insight into how alternative and punk cultures can flourish even in the most repressive regimes.  My favourite line, which made me smile and cry at the same time: "many of their gigs are organised by a local punk impresario called Ko Nyan: his founding place in Burmese punk culture was sparked when he found a magazine featuring the Sex Pistols in a bin behind Rangoon's British embassy." 

I went to see Martha Marcy May Marlene this afternoon and loved the insidiously sinister atmosphere.  My attention was rapt for the full two hours, which is really saying something (I am the worst for fidgeting and wishing films would hurry up), and Elizabeth Olsen's performance as the titular Martha, on the run from a dangerously charismatic, Manson-like cult leader, was superb.