The average and unique: a love story

On By Laura MorganIn London, Music4 Comments

I can vividly remember the first time I heard Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine. I was fourteen years old, it was late July, or maybe early August, and I was in a field in Wales. I was at a church camp (I’m Jew-ish, but it’s complicated) where every minute of every day was filled with activity, but for some reason there was nowhere we had to be just then; and somebody – probably Marsha, who would go on to make a career out of introducing people to new music, but maybe her impossibly cool older brother – had smuggled in a cassette player, and into the hazy afternoon sun snaked the crashing chords of Prince In A Pauper’s Grave. My tiny mind was blown. It was the most exciting song I’d ever heard.

So when I got home I taped someone’s copy of 30 Something and listened to it obsessively until the following year, when 1992: The Love Album came out at almost exactly the time I met my first ever boyfriend. By the time the relationship ended three months and four days later, I knew all the words to every song. It was a heady time.

That autumn I got a Saturday job at the hippie stall. The hippie stall probably had another name for trading purposes, but I never heard anyone call it anything else. It was run by Pam and Martin, a proper hippie couple, and they hired a series of schoolgirls attracted by the subversiveness of selling candles and incense in the middle of Bromley, where everybody else sold curtains and lampshades.

I worked the morning shift. One day I was early, so I hung around listening to my walkman while I waited for Pam and Martin to arrive. When their beaten-up old van lumbered up, I took my headphones off. Martin got out of the van.

“What are you listening to?”

I hesitated. Martin could be witheringly sarcastic, in a way that was breathlessly funny if you weren’t the target, but less so when you were.

“Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine.”

“Oh yes, I’ve heard him. Very good at playing his…machine, isn’t he?”

It’s not a him, it’s a them, I wanted to say, but I didn’t. They play guitars as well as machines, I nearly said, but I didn’t. What’s wrong with making music on a machine?, I should have said, but I didn’t.

I expect I just shrugged, not realising then that casual dismissal of something I thought heartstoppingly good was to be a standard reaction from other people for years to come. When I went to HMV in Bromley to queue up to meet Johnny Rotten and have him sign a copy of No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, I was careful not to mention it to Martin. I knew his limits.

Nobody ever liked the music I liked, so in later years I learned to like the music other people liked, and my CD rack grew heavy with albums by Blur and Pulp and David Bowie and the Rolling Stones. And I do like them all. But I didn’t find them for myself, and I bought their albums because it was something people did. Carter will always hold a special place in my heart because for a little while they were only mine. (Secretly, I still think they are.)

Which is mad. Everybody should listen to them. They are brilliant. The tunes are brilliant, the arrangements are brilliant, the energy is brilliant, the words, especially, are brilliant: witty, biting statements against the world interspersed with moments of melancholy and occasional whimsy, firmly set in an all too recognisable South London, and sung in a rough diamond, devil-may-care voice that you recognise in an instant.

I was an orderly, list-making sort of a teenager. 1992 was the best album. Prince in a Pauper’s Grave was the best song. Suppose You Gave a Funeral And Nobody Came was the best song title. The best lyric, from My Second To Last Will And Testament, was perfect in its simplicity:

Give my body to medical science

If medical science’ll have me

They can take my lungs and kidneys

But my heart belongs to Daphne

(No wonder Jim Bob is a writer now.)

The genius of their lyrics was always in taking the banal and the familiar and twisting it into something new. Rubbish contained a reference to Elmers End. I lived in Elmers End. Nobody lived in Elmers End: it was tiny, and people from five miles away had never heard of it, but this band, my band, had made it famous.

I learned to draw the red-and-white band logo, and I traced it carefully across my bedroom wall, over the back pages of notebooks; on to the canvas flap of my school bag. The hardest part was making sure the words “The Unstoppable Sex Machine” were centre-aligned in relation to “Carter”. You had to start with the “Unstoppable”, halfway across the “A”, and work outwards from there.

(Other logos I have obsessively drawn: the grafitti spray of BAD from the Michael Jackson album; the clenched fist of the Socialist Worker Student Society.)

But nobody liked the music I liked, so I never went to see them play live, because I could never find anybody to come with me. And they’ve played a few reunion gigs over the years but I’ve somehow missed them all, and when they announced “big news” a couple of weeks ago I knew they were going to be back again, but the London show is on our wedding day, and we’re getting married in Dublin, and even if we were getting married at home I don’t think I could get away with leaving the reception to go to a gig.

(Could I?)

So maybe I’ll never get to see them, and although that breaks my heart a little bit, it also lets me persevere with the delusion that their music belongs to only me. So I’ll keep listening to them through headphones and squirming with secret delight at every delicious angry joke. I might tell people I’m listening to Radio 4, if they ask.

Should you happen to be charged with choosing music for my funeral, however, I have a suggestion. You needn’t go with it, because I’ll be dead so I won’t care, but at sixteen I decided that I wanted to be waved off to the sound of the last two songs from 1992; Skywest and Crooked and The Impossible Dream (they always did cover versions better than anyone else, better than the originals), and I’ve never found a reason to change my mind:

This summer will mark the twentieth anniversary of that day in a field in Wales. Crystal Palace Football Club is the only entity I’ve loved for longer, not counting actual people, but football’s different because it causes at least as much pain as joy, especially if you support Palace. When you find a band you love, though, your life gets uncomplicatedly better, which is why music is better than football.

Now, excuse me while I go and turn up the stereo really loud.

Friday night dinner at Grandma’s house

On By Laura MorganIn TV and radio

I dunno. You wait ages for a post-watershed sitcom about a Jewish family starring a well-known Simon, then two come along at once.

In case you haven’t seen them, the two sitcoms in question are Grandma’s House, starring non-actor Simon Amstell, which went out towards the end of last year; and Friday Night Dinner, starring, frankly, non-actor Simon Bird, which started this weekend. I liked Grandma’s House a lot; nothing ever really happened, but it made me laugh, and its matter-of-factness felt real, even though the characters were caricatures. And everyone except Simon Amstell could act, and Simon Amstell not being able to act was sort of part of the joke, so it was OK.

And I liked Friday Night Dinner, too. It had more proper laughs than Grandma’s House, and the wonderful Mark Heap who is such a brilliant physical clown that I could just watch him moving around silently for half an hour. And Simon Bird plays his likeable self, which is just as well. Had I seen it without seeing Grandma’s House, I would have given it a resounding thumbs up, if gestures can resound, which I suspect they can’t.

But they are really, really startlingly similar! The characters in Grandma’s House may be more overdone than in Friday Night Dinner, but they are, fundamentally, the same characters. There is a Simon (although he’s called Adam in Friday Night Dinner); his irritating younger relative (Jamal Hadjkura in Grandma’s House and Tom Rosenthal in Friday Night Dinner); the married couple whose house it all happens in, who are fond of one another deep down but can’t help squabbling (Geoffrey Hutchings and Linda Bassett/Paul Ritter and Tamsin Greig); the overbearing and dowdy Jewish mother whose main occupation is nagging at the rest of her family (Rebecca Front and Samantha Spiro both play this character in Grandma’s House; in Friday Night Dinner it’s still Tamsin Greig), and the weird outsider who turns up halfway through each episode and unsettles everybody (James Smith/Mark Heap).

Coincidentally, in each case the overbearing mother and the weird outsider have also jointly starred in an earlier sitcom (The Thick Of It and The Green Room, respectively), but that really must be down to chance. Well, of course it’s all down to chance – the creators of Friday Night Supper must have had their scripts complete and ready to go, if not filmed, by the time Grandma’s House aired – but the two are so very alike that I almost wonder why, having seen Grandma’s House, they didn’t go back and rewrite.

But I’m not really complaining; as I said, I am delighted to be able to watch a Jewish sitcom that isn’t Seinfeld, and I like both programmes a lot (although I’ll like them even better if they manage to introduce a comedy Jewish woman who doesn’t look like a 1970s Geography teacher). And anyway, there’s only been one episode of Friday Night Dinner, so it’s a bit early to judge. If episode six is set on an aircraft carrier and Simon is fighting Godzilla, I promise I’ll eat my words.

Trousers

On By Laura MorganIn Stuff, TV and radio3 Comments

I bought two pairs of trousers this week. I don’t very often wear trousers, but I was inspired by this article by Jess Cartner-Morley, the only fashion writer whose advice it’s actually possible to follow, and by Patricia Arquette’s character in Medium, Allison Dubois, who is my office-wear muse because she always looks effortlessly elegant even though she hardly ever gets any sleep and saves someone’s life nearly every week. And she almost always wears trousers. Of course, there isn’t a single photo on the internet where you can see her bottom half, so you’ll just have to take my word for it:

Patricia Arquette as Allison Dubois

So I bought some trousers. I’ve just remembered that the other reason was because last weekend I bought this top in the Dust sale:

Brown cowl-neck top(It looks really drab on the internet, doesn’t it? It’s nicer in real life)

And I thought I needed some trousers to go with it. Trousers or a pencil skirt, but I am even less a pencil skirt wearer than I am a trouser wearer.

So trousers it was. I bought a brownish pair, which goes with the top and anything vaguely warm-toned, and a greyish pair, which I am wearing today with a pale grey polo-neck vest and a grey striped sleeveless shirt. I am a vision of colourlessness.

Anyway, I like the trousers. They are flattering and comfortable and they broaden my work wardrobe by a much higher factor than the simple addition of two new items of clothing. HOWEVER, who designed the fastenings on smart trousers? Both pairs have

  • A button
  • Three hook fastenings
  • A zip
  • A belt

Are work trousers more inclined than most to fall down inopportunely? Or is it just that it’s more embarrassing if your trousers fall down at work than if it happens elsewhere, when you would just laugh it off? I cannot imagine circumstances in which a zip and a belt, or some buttons and a belt, wouldn’t have sufficed.

That aside, I am enjoying my new status as a trouser-wearer. But I still don’t know why anyone would wear them for fun.

Submersible indoor swimming pool

On By Laura MorganIn Architecture and design3 Comments

Inhabitat is my go-to place for gorgeous, innovative, ecologically sound design, at least when I am planning for a future multi-millionaire version of myself, and I was delighted this week to discover, via them, the submersible swimming pool. When you want to swim, it’s a pool; when you need an extra room, you disappear the pool and get an elegant stone floor in its place. What I especially like about it is that it looks quite a lot like something out of Harry Potter (you will have to visit the website to see the full effect). This is top of the list for features in my fantasy home, alongside the cassette lamp and the toilet that you wash your hands in.

semi-submersed indoor swimming pool

Plants: easier to love than people

On By Laura MorganIn Politics5 Comments

I am pleased that the coalition is about to announce that they’re shelving their plans to sell off the UK’s national forests. Of course I am. It’s good news that they will remain in public ownership, protected (one assumes) from the more unconstrained vagaries of the market, and hopefully allowed to continue quietly growing and peacefully sheltering what remains of our wildlife.

But, well, forests aren’t people, nor are they vital public services, and if I were to be given the choice I can’t help thinking that I’d rather save NHS jobs, education funding and, yes, libraries, over woodlands. It’s doubtful that the forests would have been immediately chopped down to make way for motorways had they been sold off: as I understand it this wasn’t a question of saving the trees themselves, but of preserving the woodlands’ status as public property. It’s absolutely worth doing and I’m glad the proposal has been reversed, but I’d still prefer to divert the money into, to take an example from this morning’s news, midwifery services in the West Midlands, which are so underfunded that it’s been suggested that one third of perinatal deaths last year could have been prevented had community midwives not been working at 150% of their recommended caseload. By all means let’s look after the trees, but if we have to decide where to make cuts, it would be nice if we could look after the people first.

On the Today programme this morning it was announced that the proposal to sell off the forests had come under attack from public figures “including several actors and the Archbishop of Canterbury”. Forgive me, but if we ever reach the time when we take our political cues from actors and the Archbishop of Canterbury, we’ll be in straits so dire we may never make it back again.

(Incidentally, that Guardian piece contains an account of a debate on the subject between Ed Miliband and David Cameron which, if it’s accurate, suggests that not only are we all going to hell, we’re being led there by a cabal of schoolboy bullies:

Yesterday Miliband mocked Cameron over the plans. The Labour leader said: “Even he must appreciate the irony: the guy who made the tree the symbol of the Conservative party flogging them off round this country. He says they are consulting on this policy. They are actually consulting on how to flog off the forests, not whether to sell off the forests. Is the prime minister now saying that he might drop the policy completely?”

Cameron replied: “I would have thought the whole point about a consultation is that you put forward some proposals, you listen to the answer and then you make a decision. I know it is a totally alien concept but what is so complicated about that?”

Miliband said: “Everybody knows you have to drop this ludicrous policy. Let me give him the chance to do it. Nobody voted for this policy; 500,000 people have signed a petition against the policy. Why doesn’t he, when he gets up at the dispatch box, say not say he is postponing the sale but say he is cancelling it?”

Cameron replied: “Once again, he read the question before he listened to the answer. I think the bandwagon has just hit a bit of a tree.”

I mean, really. Heaven help us all.)

Number 22

On By Laura MorganIn Food, London2 Comments

(In the light of my sniffy comments about The Rosendale and Pizza Express, it seems only polite to record a happy dining incident in Herne Hill.)

I’m not big on seafood or red meat, so my relationship with tapas has been a tentative one over the years. I like manchego, and boquerones, and patatas bravas and tortilla, but show me an octopus or a pork cheek (what?) and I’ll likely run and hide. However, since the Great Cooking Revolution of 2009 I’ve gradually become more adventurous, so I’m a better prospect for a tapas date now than I’ve ever been. And I’d heard good things about Number 22 on Half Moon Lane, even if it does pretend it’s in Dulwich (it is a two-minute walk from Herne Hill station. It is as much in Herne Hill as a thing can be).

Anyway, it was better than I was expecting, and I would be giving it a round five stars (out of five) if I hadn’t been cold all the way through the meal. I am a naturally cold person, which is why one day I am going to go and live somewhere tropical, but I was wearing a wool dress and tights and furry boots and a scarf and I was still too cold; a problem I exacerbated when I ordered the saffron and passion fruit panna cotta for pudding, having gotten my Italian deserts mixed up (I was expecting a pannetone, and by the way, wouldn’t a saffron and passion fruit pannetone be AMAZING?). A chilled pudding is not what you want when you’re too cold.

But rewind, rewind, because I’ve left out all the good stuff. And there was lots of good stuff. The interior is halfway between a wine bar and someone’s living room, with the obligatory bad art for sale on the walls (this is such a feature of Herne Hill eateries that I would feel bereft if it weren’t there). The tables are well-spaced for such a small place, and we had a nook of our own whose only disadvantage was that we had to stand up and wave to get a waiter’s attention, so tucked-away were we. But rather that than one of my pet restaurant hates: the waiter who comes by and interrupts the conversation every few minutes to ask whether everything’s OK, as though you might not have the wit to let them know otherwise. They always seem to arrive just as I’m at the punchline of a joke. I can’t help suspecting they do it deliberately. I’d always rather too little attention from waiters than too much.

But mainly I want to talk about the food, because the food was terrific. We ordered padron peppers and chorizo and potato skewers with bread and oil to start, and then rabbit, clams, seared tuna with fennel and orange, tortilla and deep-fried goat’s cheese for the main course (unlike in traditional tapas bars, Number 22 times everything to arrive together, so they have the dishes divided into appetisers, tapas and extras), but the waitress told us the goat’s cheese was best with the bread and oil and suggested we have it alongside the appetisers rather than with the main course, which we did. I like it when the staff know better than you and politely tell you so.

All the appetisers were good, although if I had to nitpick I’d say that the bread was a bit dull (but then, is Spanish bread a thing? I don’t think it is, really), but the mains were really spectacular. The tuna was cooked in that way that proper cooks cook it, where you just wave it over the heat for a split-second, and I was nervous about eating it because I thought it would be chewy and jellific, but in fact it melted in the mouth like a pâté de foie gras, only more ethical (just). The rabbit was moist and delicious, the tortilla had exactly the right consistency, and the clams, which I only tried out of curiosity, expecting to hate them (I traditionally gag on shellfish), were completely delicious and the surprise star of the night.

It’s not cheap – our bill came to just over £80 with service, and that was without wine, although it did include a bottle of beer and a brandy, and a ginger beer, which I would heartily recommend as a non-alcoholic alternative to dessert wine – but for a special occasion it’s as good a suburban restaurant as I’ve eaten at. Just maybe go in the summer, or pack a spare jumper.