Pregnant cousin comes to visit

“So,” I hear you cry, “what the blazes did you get up to last weekend?”

Well, it was all rather exciting. My cousin, Jane (we’ve been close all our lives), suddenly announced that she was pregnant with her first baby and wanted to come and visit with her boyfriend Martin; probably to get top parenting tips from me. Yeh, yeh, I say that ironically. There are numerous past instances that will point to the fact that I am unequivocally not the most conventional (apparently that is the kind way of putting it) of mothers.

Like when the Health Visitor told me off for teaching Izzy to drive a Fork Lift Truck. She said it was ‘inappropriate’, but to this day, I still view it as an essential life skill.

Then there was the time Izzy when was first born and the Midwife visited to find out how I was getting on. I was desperately trying to impress her, and would have probably managed it if it wasn’t for Naughty George. Firstly, as soon as the Midwife arrived, Izzy decided to fill her nappy with the brown stuff, so it looked like she had been sat in it for ages. DOH. I nipped out the room to get a new nappy, and when I got back, Naughty George was licking the baby’s face. What a git.

At this point, I was getting increasingly nervous, but still managed a passable nappy change – a little skewiff, but it was still on. I lifted up Izzy to show the Midwife when all of a sudden, Naughty George created a commotion behind me. I turned to find him ragging Izzy’s dirty nappy like it was a dead rat, showering the immediate vicinity with baby plop. That dog has got a lot to answer for.

Anyway, I digress. Jane and Martin arrived on Saturday afternoon, and we sat down for a cup of tea in the garden.

“Blimey”, I said to Jane, “I can’t believe you’re up the duff.”

“I know, it’s freaky isn’t it. Do you want to see a picture of my scan?” She replied, rummaging about in her handbag and producing a black and white grainy picture.

“Where’s the baby?” I asked, studying it closely.

“There,” Jane pointed at something in the black blob in the middle of the picture.

“Blimey, it looks like a pair of testicles,” I replied.

“I know,” she nodded.

“Cool,” I said.

After our tea, we had decided to go into Oxford and have a wonder around the city.

“Before we set off, let me take some pictures of you guys in my garden,” I said. First up was Martin.

I took the picture and then turned to Jane, “blimey, is it me, or is he a right poser?”

“He’s a right poser,” confirmed Jane, adding “he has to look in a mirror at least 100 times a day.”

“Wow, is that true?” I asked Martin.

“Yep,” he nodded proudly.

“What do you do if there isn’t a mirror available?” I asked out of curiosity.

“I always carry one with me, just in case,” he said.

“Good thinking,” I replied, impressed.

Once we arrived in Oxford, we decided to visit the oldest pub in the city which was tucked down a small alley off High Street. It was called The Bear and was built circa 1242 which is nearly 300 years before Shakespeare was born, and he is really old.

The pub was divided into two tiny bar areas, both of which were full when we entered.

“Hey cous,” I said to Jane, “can we play the pregnancy card in order to get some seats?”

“No,” she said shaking her head.

“Why not? I thought it was one of the perks of the condition,” I said.

“You’re just bloody embarrassing,” she replied, as I rued an opportunity missed.

After visiting The Bear Inn, we had 45 minutes to spare before going back to the Forest Hill to eat. So what better way to complete our cultural tour than a visit to another pub, called The White Horse Inn, this time situated in a building which dates back to Medieval times.

So, even though we were in one of the world’s most historical cities, we had only seen two pubs. That is a pretty poor effort even by my low standards. What’s worse, was that we left Oxford in order to go and eat at yet another pub in the village where I live.

Rather confusingly, it also was called The White Horse Inn. Blimey, the day was turning out to be a dobbin-fest.

We had a large meal of Thai food, and then out came the camera again. At first things started out quite normally………

And then everything rapidly degenerated into a pose-fest, inspired by Martin ‘I should’ve been a model, me’………

Sure enough, after thirty minutes our ears were ringing after being bombarded with 1980’s high octane dance music. Martin was jumping around the living room in appreciation of his choices.

“Blimey,” I said to Jane, “is he always like that when you give him access to youtube?”

“Yep,” she nodded despairingly, “and he can keep going for hours.”

And so he did, and I can confirm that it was the very early hours when everyone eventually went to bed. Not bad stamina for a pregnant girl eh?

Fez, 26 June

This time Fez is much less about us and much more about the place itself, the people here. Now I think it extraordinary that we came here when we did – only six weeks into our relationship, the future (our future, that is, he being English, me being American) only a cloud through which we could not even imagine passing. But we trusted each other completely here, and lay on our hotel bed taking photos of our sweaty, hairy, unclean selves.

Now we are staying with friends. But it is also different because three years of living together has made it so. It is lovely but also, weirdly, lonely. If you are no longer getting to know each other in such an active way (now I can make jokes about his past and he knows the geography of my history and there is much less exclaiming over a tajine: ‘oh, I didn’t know you’d done that!‘). It is sometimes almost like travelling with oneself. If he knows, now, that I like to wash my hands more than strictly necessary, and I know without thinking about it that he will smoke almost twice as much here, then there is little (nothing!) to try to hide, and even less to be grateful for the revelation of.

And this is such a sweet thing, but also scary – suddenly here we, this one thing that is a “we” but also an “I”, are, in a foreign country. Perhaps in a way this is why I slept badly last night – for, in spite of him being beside me, loving, handsome even in sleep, smelling and feeling more familiar than anything, than even myself, I felt a sense of being also alone. And perhaps also this is why people (eventually) have children – I had this thought yesterday, as we were discussing the merits of trans-national relationships: that at a certain point you become so close that you almost need someone else – who will be like him and like you but different and constantly, forever, surprising – again. Is that a strange thing to think? But then, everything is strange here.

Sweet milestones……

Last night I was trying to sort out the hundreds of photographs that were supposed to go into various blog postings, when I stumbled across a video that I took a couple of months ago.

It was a video of Izzy on the day she first learned to ride her bike without stabilisers. I remember it distinctly.

Izzy’s dad, Steve, called me at lunchtime with the news; “Izzy is desperate for you to come over, she wants to show you that she can ride her bike.”

“Great stuff,” I said, “I will come round whilst I am taking Naughty George on his drag.”

As I walked up to Steve’s house, I saw Izzy sitting at the top of the driveway, poised for action on her bike.

“She’s been like that for 15 minutes, waiting for you,” Steve said. Awwwww, how cute?

Izzy saw me, and instantly became animated, “Mummy, watch me, I can ride my bike,” she shouted excitedly.

“Go on then, show me what you can do,” I said. 

“No,” she replied.

“Why not?” I asked her.

“Because you haven’t said 1-2-3 GO!” she retorted. Ah …. the things that are important to four year old minds.

“Ok. 1-2-3 GO!” I repeated. And so she set off on her wobbly, slightly out-of-control journey around the carpark in front of the houses, with her legs rotating furiously because the pedals were too short. 

She pedalled determinedly up the hill and swooped and turned, narrowly missing parked cars, and tall kerbstones, before pulling up in front of me.

“Izzy, that was absolutely awesome,” I said to her, clapping my hands and trying to shut up Naughty George who was barking vacuously for no reason at all. She swelled with pride and had trouble containing herself.

“Shall I show you again?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” I said.

“Well go on then,” she replied.

“What?”

“You haven’t said 1-2-3 GO!” she added indignantly. Hey girl, is that a bossy streak I see in you?

So that was how I spent the subsequent hour, and it was great. 

I tell you, there is nothing better than witnessing your own child’s achievements. Well maybe that was bit rash; a Hot and Spicy from Domino’s comes close. And Pimms with Soda.

Sometimes I actually *like* winding people up

Dear Aurora Berg,

I feel eminently qualified to assist your company in a diverse range of operational solutions, but I feel that I could add most significant value in the area of helping you to read, write and speak English to a higher, more professional level.

For example, we never commence a business email with the salutation ‘Greetings’. Not unless one’s name is Joey Boswell and one is a member of the fictional television series ‘Bread’, as written by Carla Lane, in the mid-1980s.

‘Dear Sir’ or ‘Dear Madam’ are normally considered acceptable but, as you have taken the time and trouble to mine my email address from some portion of the website, ‘Dear Brennig’ would also be satisfactory – as would Dear Mr Jones.

Please allow me to congratulate you on becoming a manager of the HR department of a large multinational company. I can only hope, given the unfortunate circumstances in the United States, that the ‘large multinational company’ is not BP. Perhaps you would be kind enough to let me know the name of the large multinational company, so I may make some appropriate entries in my records?

Your next sentence puzzles me. ‘Our company is met in many departments, such as:
- property– bank account operations – transportation and logistics – private enterprise service– etc.’

Could you tell me what, precisely ‘is met in many departments’ means? I would also appreciate some supplemental information as to the precise nature of the core business of the multinational company. Let’s face it Aurora, all multinational companies have HR, property, banking operations, transport, logistics and service divisions. You should also note how I rephrased and improved the syntax of your sentence, whilst managing to make it more economical. I feel this further underlines your need for my services.

Unfortunately, I have to tell you that I am completely baffled by your next phrase:
‘Currently, we are looking for managers in Europe:
- salary 2.600 euro + bonus
- 1-2 working hours per day
- free timetable’

Are you telling me that my working day would be 1-2 hours for which you would pay me a salary of €2,600? That seems ludicrous. 1-2 hours (let’s call it 1.5 hours for the purposes of a mathematical equation) multiplied by an average of 220 working days a year is 330 working hours – for which you are proposing a salary of €2,600? That’s less than €8/hour, and that equates to £4.93/hour – which is substantially lower than the national minimum wage of £5.80/hour. Still, perhaps this illegally low wage might be offset through the deployment of what you call a ‘free timetable’. Perhaps you could explain what this means?

Your next sentence has, I fear, somehow become corrupted during the transmission of your email. ‘If you are ready to work as a regional manager in Europe send us the below information on…’
Once again, you have underlined just how much your large multinational company needs me to proof-read everything! ‘Send us the information requested below’ is grammatically correct. Your own effort fails the quality test. And, just a passing thought here Aurora, but wouldn’t all multinational companies be, by definition, large? Is there such a thing as a small multinational? I’m now wondering if multinationals are sizeist? Do they hang around behind the multinational equivalent of the school bike sheds comparing the width and girth of their corporateness in a ‘mine’s bigger than yours’ kind of way? Perhaps you could advise me on this?

I do love your bold use of post-modern irony in the next paragraph. The use of hyper-spacing in the first line and the total absence of spaces in the second, comprise an innovative blending of the rules of business writing and a subtle use of humour in the workplace:
‘email:h r m @ h i r i n g – w e s t u n i o n . c o m [please delete spaces before sending]
Name:Surname:Country:City:E-mail:TelephoneNumber:Mobile phone-number:’

I am so impressed with your humour that I am providing you with the information you have requested – in exactly the same format that you have requested it:

Brennig:Jones:Wales/UK(Ihaveputmycountryoforiginandmycountryofresidence):Witney(technicallyWitney
isatownnotacity):03001231212:+447765969952

I do feel that your next line has no place in a business letter. It looks contextually out of place and, frankly, it isn’t even written in good English:
‘Attention! We need just the people residing in Europe.’

‘Please, write your name and Telephone Number so that our manager could contact you, ask the necessary questions and answer yours.’
This, too is not written in English. My name is Brennig Jones and my telephone number is +44 7765 969 952. I would be thrilled to speak to your manager. While I am conversing with him/her I would be able to set out my proposals for a significant role in your organisation and give you my views on an acceptable remuneration package.

Yours sincerely,

Brennig Jones

____________________________

Original Message:
—————–
From: Aurora Berg Aurora.Berg@we-help-u.biz
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:15:01 -0300
To: brennig.jones@xxxxxxx.co.uk
Subject: Position Opening

Greetings

I am a manager of the HR department of a large multinational company. Our company is met in many departments, such as:
- property– bank account operations – transportation and logistics – private enterprise service– etc.

Currently, we are looking for managers in Europe:
- salary 2.600 euro + bonus
- 1-2 working hours per day
- free timetable

If you are ready to work as a regional manager in Europe send us the below information on email:h r m @ h i r i n g – w e s t u n i o n . c o m [please delete spaces before sending]
Name:Surname:Country:City:E-mail:Telephone Number:Mobile phone-number:

Attention! We need just the people residing in Europe.

Please, write your name and Telephone Number so that our manager could contact you, ask the necessary questions and answer yours.

I want this comedy dog

How come everyone else has a dog that can do cool stuff like this (see video below), whilst I end up with Naughty George whose party tricks include pissing on children’s toys and vomiting up bile during dinner parties?

Does technical thinking ruin songwriting?

I’m quite a technical songwriter. I have methods of writing. I can justify my choices of rhyme, structure and language. I studied songwriting. When I hear songs I analyse them. I see songwriting as a craft (ie. something you can learn and improve with practice).

A lot of songwriters I know don’t see it this way at all. They see songwriting as a pure form of artistic expression that can be ruined by overthinking. They see justification of musical choices as a weakness, as if you’re bowing to the demands of the imagined audience instead of being authentic and true to the soul or emotional message of the song.

It’s difficult to think about this objectively. The fact that I’m even writing this puts me firmly in the thinking camp. A feeling songwriter wouldn’t write about songwriting. They would just write songs. I’m sure a carefully balanced approach is best, but I can’t do that.

So I’m going to be entirely subjective and tell you why I think songwriting needs to be approached as a craft. I hope some of you feelers might be able to help me see your side of the argument.

Songwriting is a craft, not an art

There’s no such thing as a conceptual songwriter. As an artist you are free to choose from all sorts of funky media and part of the game is to work outside the box and provoke thought and criticism. Songwriting isn’t like that. Composition is like that, but songwriting isn’t. As a songwriter you’ve signed up to write songs, and the popular song isn’t a very flexible form. It’s not quite as restrictive as being a sonnetwriter, but it’s closer to that than, say, a novelwriter.

There’s nothing to stop you exploding the confines of the form and writing 15-minute one-chord freeform poetry, but that’s not a song. You could argue that it is, but you’d be wrong (the word song refers to a pretty specific musical form, and let’s assume we’re talking about popular song, even late 20th Century popular song to keep things simple).

Given that you’ve chosen to write in such a specific musical and lyrical form, it makes sense to understand that form as deeply as possible. To study the greats. To analyse and practise and learn, until you can write so fluently that the form becomes transparent to the listener and the message, the emotion, the feeling is transmitted as purely as possible.

As a listener, there are lots of things that can make you aware of the form, and distract you from the message:

• boring bits, where a song goes on too long, repeats too much or is too formless to follow easily
• uncomfortably dissonant moments
• surprising and unprepared musical moves
• embarrassing lyrics, cheesy rhymes and empty clichés
• unnatural turns of phrase
• words wrongly stressed

Any feeling songwriter can point out a bad song. If you can recognise a bad song from a good one, you must know on some level what makes the bad songs bad. And once you know that you can avoid the bad things in your own writing and do more of whatever makes the good songs good. All feeling songwriters do this more or less consciously. So how is there still this idea that thinking about the technicalities of songwriting can ruin the feel of a song?

Are thinker and feeler songs different?

At this point, I imagine a feeler would point out that we’re talking about different kinds of song. I’m talking about heartless, muso, technically brilliant Nashville-style thinker songs, they would say, while they are talking about good, authentic, passionate songs. They may even raise an eyebrow and mention Steely Dan or drop in a quick Beatles/Stones comment.

While it’s true that I’m partial to some ‘classic’ songwriters like Ben Folds, Carole King, even occasionally Neil Diamond, most of the music I listen to and love is good, authentic, passionate music – The Band, Janis Joplin, Hendrix, The Small Faces and all that. And all of this real, true, passionate music is played over carefully crafted song forms.

Songs and recordings are not the same thing

If I were a feeler reading this, I’d probably start listing great tracks that have almost no song structure. There are loads. So I think it’s important to remember that we’re talking about songs here, not recordings. There’s a track on the Ben Folds Five demos and outtakes album Naked Baby Photos called For Those Of Ya’ll Who Wear Fannie Packs that’s just a recording of them jamming Rage Against the Machine in soundcheck. It’s a great recording, and I used to listen to it all the time, but it’s not a good song. At all.

Maybe that’s the answer. Good songs require thinking, and good recordings are about feeling. Does that ring true to any of you feelers? Or am I overthinking the whole issue? ;)

TheTowersey Fete – it’s oh-so-English dahlink

You will be pleased to hear that in amongst all the carnage that I have been dealing with the last couple of weeks, I managed to sneak an enjoyable day in.

Yep, last Sunday Sam and her husband Pete asked if I wanted to go with them and their three children to a village fete. The sun was out, and it was the perfect day to partake in something so quintessentially English. Cucumber sandwiches with Pimms, Tarquin?

[For the benefit of my overseas readers, a fete is an event organised by volunteers, generally with the intention of raising funds (in this case for the local church). The fete has games, entertainment, stalls and refreshments, and is a focal point in country life].

So, without further ado, I jumped into my car and followed Pete and Sam to the village of Towersey where the fete was being held. On the way, Pete nearly knocked down a pheasant that was in the road. “What pheasant?” asked Sam after I pointed out the bird’s near demise.

“That big multi-coloured bird that you swerved to avoid,” I replied.

“Nah, can’t say I noticed it,” she replied. Phew, good job it didn’t get run over otherwise it would have died in vain. There’s nothing more annoying than dying and nobody noticing.

Enough of discussing dead wildlife, let’s get back to the Fete which was held in the magnificent grounds of Towersey Manor. If I was to try and recreate the atmosphere, I would say that it was like stepping back in time into a 1930s Miss Marple film; a band was playing, there were Morris Dancers jingling their bells, and there were stalls around the main lawn advertising various activities.

Because I am kind – like Ghandi, but not wearing a sheet – I am going to give you a picture tour showing some of the idiosyncracies of the English fete.  

I hope you enjoyed my guide to the quintessential English fete. It was actually last weekend that we went, so you can see how far behind I am with my postings. Also, I need to apologise for the pictures being a bit grainy. After my iPhone went down the toilet, and I lost my camera at the Cornbury Music Festival, I am now reliant on the camera built into an ancient (circa 2004) Sony P900 brick phone. It’s one step above a pinhole camera.

Inception Review

If you like your films smart, action-packed and completely original, look no further than Inception, Christopher Nolan’s latest epic since his career defining Batman sequel The Dark Knight (2008). It has been getting rave reviews from prominent film critics and extremely vocal online fans and for good reason – it is perhaps one of the most riveting and visually original films I have seen in a long, long time. In a single stroke it has reassured the film-going public that ‘blockbusters’ don’t have to be dumb, mindless star vehicles full of action and no heart. As a result, Nolan is quickly making a name for himself as one of the most exciting writer-directors of a new generation of filmmakers creating psychological thrillers on smart drugs. His first major film, Memento (2000), was the most original film I had seen for some time and has fast become a template for later films such as The Prestige (2006). Playing around with ideas of memory, dreams, perceived reality, and grief, Memento laid the foundations on a far less grand scale for Nolan’s latest release.

Official Website of Inception

So, this eventing lark…

Ho hum.

The commentary starts before we even left the yard because Tom, evidently, was having one those days.

Tom, who normally marches up the ramp in to the lorry, decided he didn’t want to load.

He went up on his hind legs and waved his front hooves around my ears. And again. And again and this time he pulled back as well as going up. And then he did it again.

On the last flying rear-up he pulled the lead-rein out of my hands (I will have rope burn for a week), turned, cantered at a five-bar gate and then flew over it.

He spent the next ten minutes evading capture (despite still having his head-collar on and trailing his lead-rein) galloping round and winding up the horse he’d jumped in with.

Bastard.

I fetched a bowl of feed and he turned, mid-gallop, and headed straight for it.

This time he loaded OK and we drove up to the venue.

Our dressage netted us 39.5 penalties which, frankly, felt that we had been harshly-marked.

Prior to show-jumping, we worked-in over the practice fences brilliantly. But as soon as we cantered in to the show-jumping arena Tom changed gear and wanted to do everything quicker than I did. He had two fences down and gave me a nasty run-out at fence 3, so that netted us 12 penalties.

The cross-country started off brilliantly. We attacked the first six fences with style and assertiveness; they felt excellent.

Unfortunately at fence 7 (the first part of three parts at the water), Tom decided he didn’t want to get his feet wet and no amount of riding could convince him otherwise.

So we bit the bullet and retired.

I’m not scrabbling around for the positives, they’re actually there for everyone to see.

Our show-jumping was more focussed, better controlled and despite Tom’s carelessness over the SJ fences, was far more fun at a competition than we’ve ever had.

The first six of the cross-country fences were also brilliant. I know that last time out we finished the track, but this felt *better*.

Hey ho.

Onwards and upwards.

Words and Pictures 2010-07-17 12:01:00

One of my self-portraits (Sundance) has been included in a photobook designed specifically for the iPad. Mirror Mirror features nearly 30 full screen self-portraits from 28 fantastically talented photographers who have made their work availble via creative commons. Unlike veiwing photosites (which look stunning on the iPad), this photobook can be viewed offline, as the editor states it’s “something to view when I’m offline, something that I can keep in my virtual library to whip out whenever I want a high-quality photo fix.” It’s available to download totally free of charge from theLearningLight.com.