Category: Archive

Singles of the year: #78

78. Mosh – Eminem

The second track on the list that wasn’t an actual A-side, and the first not to appear in single form at all, Mosh – both the track and the gobsmacking video – was strategically released onto the Internet in advance of both Eminem’s new album and, more pertinently, the US presidential election. Squeal as America’s amoral, nihilistic bad boy acquires a new-found righteousness to fuel his anger! Thrill at the appropriation of stock protest-march sloganeering, as Eminem barks “no blood for oil” over the relentless long-march plod of the almost martial-sounding backing track!Sigh as it makes no discernible effect whatsoever upon the voting patterns of American youth! Slap yourself for daring to think otherwise, even for a second!

Singles of the year: #79

79. Run Run Run – Phoenix

The second Phoenix album initially underwhelmed – so slight, so inconsequential, so gossamer thin – until a) a support slot with the Scissor Sisters fleshed the new material out and helped slot it into place and b) the hot, sunny weather arrived – at which point, tracks like these – languid, yet taut – became the soundtrack to the summer.

 

Singles of the year: #80

80. Tropical Ice-Land – The Fiery Furnaces

Although it took me a long time to “get” this act, there was always something right from the off which made me return to their music time and again. This has happened a few times before over the years (the first Prefab Sprout album springs immediately to mind), and it’s always a good sign.

(If you’re still struggling: the quirk-ee! zan-ee! randomness beds down with increased familiarity, as the sharp angles convert to pleasurably familiar kinks.)

Singles of the year: #81

81. Your Game – Will Young

Hear’say, David Sneddon, One True Voice, Alex Parks, Michelle McManus – and, unless I have severely misread the situation, Steve Brookstein before the end of January – of all the winners of the souped-up-for-the-C21st TV talent shows, only two acts have yet to run out of steam (*), and only one act could ever have been said to have any measure of true artistic control over his career. Precision-tooled mainstream pop-funk with a pleasing gospel edge, which probably sees itself as being of the Simply Red/Jamiroquai school of sleek blue-eyed soul, but which actually elevates itself well clear of such dodgy comparisons.

(*) Yes, yes, I know about Lemar – but he didn’t actually win, did he? Do stop muddying the waters.

Singles of the year: #82

82. See It In A Boy’s Eyes – Jamelia

Co-written with the Blessèd Chris Martin (*) out of Coldplay (peace be upon him), but don’t let that put you off. In a notably thin year for decent R&B (so what happened there then?), it was left to plucky Brits like Jamelia to show the Stateside lot how to do it properly.

(*) Say what you like about the “special relationship” between U2 and iPods this year, but at least none of them went so far as to name their children after the f***ing company. Did Chris & Gwyneth get special trademark clearance for that, one wonders?

Singles of the year: #83

83. Somebody Told Me – The Killers

…whereas, a month or so after the Big London Clubbing Night Out (see post below), I find myself being dragged along by the Young People (well, early thirties, but it’s all relative) to a good old-fashioned Indie Disco, on a Saturday night at the Cookie Club in Nottingham. And, well, don’t all those NME guitar bands sound a whole lot better when you’re lurching around to them in a lagered/Red Bulled frenzy? (Distorted fuzzboxes and cheap booze: it’s one of life’s classic combinations.)

Except that, quelle horreur, I don’t recognise all the tracks that are played. Aiee! My powers, they are fading! And, curiously, whenever I ask one of the Young People for a track ID, it always seems to be the same band. “It’s The Killers, Mike! You must know it!” Except that I didn’t, not at all; must have missed that particular meeting. (*)

Of all their, um, hugely popular and successful hits this year, which you obviously all know and love, Somebody Told Me was the one that stood out then, and stands out now. It’s a perfect lager-frenzy record, with just that nice lyrical touch of polymorphous perversity to lift it above the fray (see also Franz Ferdinand, #87 below).

(*) Come to think of it, Razorlight and Kasabian must have been on the same agenda. Totally passed me by on the other side. Wouldn’t recognise a single note. Are they any good? They’re not really my sort of thing, are they?

Singles of the year: #84 (NMC)

84. Flashdance – Deep Dish

This year, I only had one Big Clubbing Night Out in London: a late summer excursion to DTPM @ Fabric, followed by Beyond @ Fire. Both pleasant enough events in their own ways, and yet, and yet… was it just me getting older and more jaded, with priorities re-aligned, no longer buying into the collectively maintained illusion, or was there something fundamentally missing? Because, compared to my glory days at Trade in the mid-to-late 1990s, both events seemed terribly… I dunno… polite, restrained, buttoned-up, just another leisure time routine/lifestyle option to be consumed, rather than to actively participate in. Where was the heady, delicious sense of freedom, of letting go, of surrendering yourself to the mayhem… of community even? Because frankly, you’d find about the same levels of friendliness and interpersonal connection in your nearest out-of-town supermarket.

I suppose that what has changed is this: firstly, that all remaining connection with late 80s/early 90s rave culture has long since been severed (whither PLUR these days?), and secondly, that the shock of the new has vanished: even at Trade in 1996/97, there were still plenty of newbies each week, experiencing full-on club culture for the first or second time – and their sense of amazed wonder and delight was infectious, influencing the overall mood of the night. Whereas now, gay club culture is an entirely known quantity, fully documented and codified – and largely static, it has to be said.

So, anyway… there we were, Buni and I, early on, finding our way round the unfamiliar hi-gloss labyrinth of Fabric, feeling for all the world like nervous country cousins in the big bad city, having our first shy little bop in the main room, and I’m wondering what the music’s going to be like, and this track comes on with this nagging, repetitive rock guitar riff, and I’m thinking: goodness, wasn’t expecting this sort of thing… and three or four weeks later I hear it again on the Top 40 countdown, and oh, this is Deep Dish is it? Wow, they’ve changed their sound since the Junk Science album (my favourite album of 1998, no less). So, you know: memories and associations, basically.

Postscript: A couple of hours later at DTPM, and I’ve got well into the swing of things, away with the fairies, lurching about to funky tribal house or whatever the hell they were playing by then, when this short girl next to me nudges my elbow, looks up at me with a concerned expression, and asks whether I’m feeling all right.

– Yeah, I’m fine, why do you ask?

– Well, you were pulling such a face – it looked like you were in pain or something.

You see? You can’t even do cheesy-quaver gurning no more. Kids today, they’ve no idea…

Singles of the year: #85

85. Matinee – Franz Ferdinand

I like the stuff about sliding fingers inside blazers, and the bit about being on Terry Wogan, and the way that the intro makes me think of TFI Friday when it was still fresh new telly with loads of good bands on.

Oh, and I forgot to mention: there’s another competition. The first person to guess correctly which single is my personal Number One of 2004 wins a copy of my (compiled but as yet unburned) best-of-year triple mix CD. One guess only per person, please – you can leave it in any of the comments boxes attached to this list.

(So what are you going to do? Try and get your guess in early, with longer odds, or hold out until the last possible moment and risk getting beaten in the rush? Ooh, that’s a tricky strategic poser to grapple with.)

Singles of the year: #86

86. Surfing On A Rocket – Air

Now, you see… in years gone by, I would have excluded something like this from a Best Singles list: an album track shoved into the wrong format, merely as a promotional tool, and issued after the album had been purchased in any case. But that was before this year’s iPod/MP3 blog paradigm shift, which has served to turn songs back into individual tracks all over again, just like the old days. Since I’ve enjoyed Surfing On A Rocket on its own many times over, it has to qualify for inclusion. Which is why last year’s Top 60 has become this year’s Top 90, I guess.

Singles of the year: #88

88. Love Is War – Ignition

As Bloc Party’s She’s Hearing Voices is to c.1981 post-punk, so Love Is War is to c.1983 electrophonic phunk. (Only more so; if you’d told me this was a newly unearthed obscurity from that era, I would have believed you.) Meaning, once again, that I cannot help but be favourably disposed. This is all it takes to please me, you know: give me a painstakingly accurate reconstruction of a genre I understand in detail, tell me it’s The Sound Of Now, and I’ll feel all pleased with myself for being au courant and hip to the beat of the street and shit. Been happening on a regular basis ever since electroclash.

Singles of the year: #89

89. Everybody’s Changing – Keane

Look: I did my best to loathe Keane, I really did. Because you know how much I hate all that corporate-indie misery-lite dirgey droning – the musical equivalent of beige – as espoused by Coldplay, Snow Patrol, Starsailor and the like. Indeed, my prejudice against Keane ran so deep that I successfully avoided even listening to Everybody’s Changing until a week ago, when curiosity finally got the better of me. And guess what: it’s lovely, and really rather moving actually. Nevertheless, by my standards of cool, which I do realise are rather different from most people’s – this is possibly the most uncool single on the entire list.

(Cool, uncool – bah. Ghastly paradigm.)

Singles of the year: #90

90. She’s Hearing Voices – Bloc Party

So pleased that I remembered this at the last minute, as it knocks U2’s Vertigo out of the all-important Top 90. (A good tune, but I have historically had Issues with U2, meaning that rating it would have felt like too much of a climbdown. Besides, there would have been that awful iPod commercial of a video to contend with.)

Yes, it’s a Top 90. Because the gap between Stuff That’s Good and Stuff That’s Really Good fell at around the 90 mark this year – whereas in 2003, it fell at around the 60 mark. So does that make 2004 a significantly better year for music than 2003? I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Anyway, the inclusion of She’s Hearing Voices in a Best Singles list, when it was actually track #3 on an EP, warrants some explanation. This year, I’ve widened the scope of the list to include any track which somehow took on a life of its own, independently from any parent album. This still stops the list from simply turning into a list of favourite songs. And in any case, only a tiny handful of the tracks listed fall into this category; the vast majority did see the light of day as A-sides during 2004.

Bloc Party are being very much talked up as a band to watch in 2005; I am already kicking myself for missing the opportunity to see them at the Rescue Rooms in Nottingham a couple of months ago, as I could then have basked in Scissor Sisters-esque “I saw them first” smugness for, ooh, months. She’s Hearing Voices owes a heavy debt to early 1980s post-punk (which is more than fine by me), with echoes of the Gang Of Four, Bauhaus, and some very specific song whose identity continues to elude me.

Pre-festive ramble.

(Think I’ll just switch this thing on and see what comes out…)

K has been sick this week. Horribly, incapacitatingly sick. So sick that he had to go to bed for two days… and K never spends the day in bed; he’s one of life’s Brave Strugglers On.

(How very different from my own attitude to viral infections, which I view as a God-given chance to do f*** all and not get stressed about it. This makes me a thoroughly good-natured invalid – indeed, I’ve been complimented in the past about my Positive Mental Attitude – when all I’m really doing is gratefully yielding to my default factory settings of extreme indolence. K, on the other hand, tends towards vocally expressive martyrdom, with regular five-minute bulletins on the precise state of his health, linked together with a non-stop mantra of groans, wheezes and theatrical exhalations. But that’s because he’s fighting against his condition, instead of graciously accepting it and working with it.)

Returning home from work yesterday, and fully expecting to find him draped over the sofa in his jim-jams, hand poised over brow, in an artfully assembled tableau of suffering, I discover him cheerfully bounding round the kitchen, voice restored, eyes aglow, busily preparing anchovy and pancetta palmiers for Boxing Day. In other words, he has been miraculously reborn as Martha Stewart. Hosanna in the highest!

Ah bless, the things they say, etc.

Me: So, have you seen Shrek 2?

L, aged 8, curled up contentedly in her father’s lap: Yes, Daddy got it on DVD.

L’s father: You enjoyed it, didn’t you?

L, beaming: Yes… but now I’d like to have the non-illegal version.

L’s father: Shhhh. You’re not supposed to say things like that…

God, we’re good at buying presents. That’s going to be one happy little girl tomorrow morning. Gloria in excelsis deo!

Boxing Day aside, we’re having a quiet one. No tree, no turkey, no house guests tomorrow at all; instead, we’re going out for a walk with friends in the village, followed by a beef supper round at their place. We’ve took our holiday three weeks ago, so the pressure is off Christmas to deliver what it singularly fails to do each year. (You know: peace, quiet, tranquility, healthy pursuits, a chance to catch up on some reading, that sort of thing. Whereas the reality is days on end of waking up late, blobbing around in a bloated haze, and never actually getting anything done with the day.) In fact, we’ve de-prioritised the festive season to such an extent that, for the first time ever in my (hem hem) “professional career”, I’ll be going back to work for a couple of days between Christmas and New Year. Because I’ll be saving two perfectly good days which could be spent going somewhere nice, later in the year. Yes, the penny has dropped at last. Four days off; two days on; four days off again. Good enough for me. Right, I’m off down the pub with my co-workers. Christmas Eve’s a doss day at work, innit? Deo gracias!

The Troubled Diva Old Curiosity Box… has got… so much… GOING for it. UHHH! OOOH! YEAHHH!

Cristina – Disco Clone (Disco Mix) (1978)

Whip crack-away! Now that you’ve had time to get used to the “proper” song-based version, I think perhaps you might be ready for the full-on perv-fest of the Disco Mix, in which Cristina (and Kevin Kline) get low down and dirrrtay (and in the process, showing up latter day pop strumpets like Ms. Aguilera for the lightweights that they are). Warning: do NOT listen to this on headphones in crowded lifts. Yes, I speak from experience.

Katina – Don’t Stick Stickers On My Paper Knickers (1973)

Ooooh, cheeky! There were at least two, if not three, versions of this whimsically jaunty little pop-reggae confection knocking around in 1973 – none of which charted, probably having been deemed far too risqué for radio play (if not quite risqué enough to build up a Judge Dread-style cult following).

A period piece, this one; a social historian could have a field day with it. I particularly like the way the second verse fails to scan properly, and the Carry On-style banter towards the end.

The ALL NEW Troubled Diva Curiosity Box remembers the 1984-85 Miners’ Strike.

enemywithin

The Enemy Within – Strike (1984)

Lest anyone should think otherwise, Band Aid’s Do They Know It’s Christmas wasn’t the only topical, “issue-based” single of December 1984. With the UK miners’ strike moving into its tenth month, three singles appeared at much the same time, each offering its own commentary on the longest – and (give or take the odd scuffle down Wapping way) the last – of this country’s major industrial disputes.

Listening to them again twenty years later, Strike by The Enemy Within – the least commercially successful of the three – emerges as the strongest piece of music by some distance. Put together by the same team (Adrian Sherwood/Keith LeBlanc/Tackhead) that had been responsible for No Sell Out, 1983’s pioneering Malcolm X cut-up, Strike does the same job for Arthur Scargill (“The most gorgeous redhead since Rita Hayworth” – Julie Burchill, The Face), setting excerpts from his speeches against stark, stuttering electro. Surprisingly for such a time-specific piece, it retains a good deal of its resonance to this day.

redskins

Keep On Keepin’ On! – The Redskins (1984)

But can we say the same for The Redskins? Led by a former NME journalist, this deeply politicised punk-soul trio were effectively the house band for the Socialist Workers Party, with singles such as Kick Over The Statues, Bring It Down! (This Insane Thing), The Power Is Yours and It Can Be Done! Impeccable left-wing credentials aside, there’s something tinny and strained about the would-be clarion call of Keep On Keepin’ On!, with its Motown-pastiche bassline sounding as if it had been lifted from A Town Called Malice rather than Holland/Dozier/Holland. It’s also now impossible to listen to its earnest exhortions (“If it takes a year, we’ve gotta take it…“) in isolation from the knowledge that the strike collapsed just three months later, the miners’ defeat also signalling the inexorable decline of both the trade union movement and the British coal industry.

A heroically principled and uncompromising stance – or naive, shallow, manipulative posturing which barely disguised its hidden agenda? Oh, but you had to decide. For this was an age of binary choices and clear-cut ideological certainties, where fence-sitting was derided from both sides.

council

The Council Collective – Soul Deep (12 inch version) (1984)

However, listening to Paul Weller & the Style Council, Jimmy Ruffin, Junior Giscombe and a cast of thousands trying to imbue clunkingly prosaic lines (“Just where is the backing from the TUC?“) with some approximation of gritty “authenticity”, on this borderline-embarrassing stab at re-creating the “hard times” funk of US outfits such as Brother D & Collective Effort, Defunkt and the Valentine Brothers, you might find it increasingly hard to suppress a smirk. To say nothing of the cringingly misplaced “solidarity” of a bunch of pop stars deploying the first person plural so readily – because, like, this is our struggle too, yeah? You know those two adjectives that the right have always delighted in bashing the left with: “sanctimonious” and “self-righteous”? Well, it is difficult to argue convincingly against their presence on this effort (which nevertheless crawled as high as #24 on the UK singles chart, giving Paul Weller his smallest hit in over six years).

On the other hand, it does put Weller’s curmudgeonly scowling on the first Band Aid single into context. Don’t they know there’s a war on?

Coming up later (after a six-hour round trip to an industrial estate outside Rickmansworth chiz chiz) … one more MP3, which might put a somewhat different complexion on things.

However… flipping over to the B-side of the Soul Deep 12-inch, for its first playing in 20 years, I find this…

The Council Collective – A Miner’s Point (1984)

…which is a lengthy interview with a couple of striking Nottinghamshire miners called Bob and Chris (complete with a baffling writing credit for “Weller/Talbot”, but I’m sure there’s a VERY SOUND EXPLANATION for that). Instantly, the cynical smirk that had been spreading during the previous two tracks was wiped straight off my face.

In December 1984, in the rather less than glamorous surroundings of the John Carroll Leisure Centre in Radford, Dymbel and I DJ-ed a benefit night in aid of the miners’ strike, as organised by the local branch of the Labour Party. (My first DJ gig ever, in fact.) This turned out to be a decidedly disillusioning experience.

For – as PJ O’Rourke infers in this month’s Word magazine – in those almost unimaginably far off days, one of the great things about lining yourself up with the left was that you were simultaneously lining yourself up with all the cool kids. All the sharp, aware, sexy people, with the just-so flat-tops and the button-fly shrink-to-fit 501s, were sporting “Coal Not Dole” stickers on their donkey jackets and rattling collecting tins outside the refectory in the Portland building on campus. And, wa-hey, I was going to be DJ-ing for them!

Except, well, perhaps there were better things to do that night than shuffle on down to the John Carroll Leisure Centre. Which just left a couple of dozen morose old hippies – lank, centre-parted hair and shit-brown sweaters – skinning up in the corner and displaying absolutely no interest whatsoever in the contents of the singles boxes which Dymbel and I had spent all afternoon putting together. (Except for one solitary over-enthusiastic punkette from Tyneside who kept fruitlessly pestering us for “Nellie The Elephant” by the Toy Dolls – but to be frank, she was neither here nor there.)

With less than an hour left to go, Dymbel and I decided that it was only right and proper to play something that was directly related to the strike. Out came the just-released Soul Deep… and over to the decks wandered a solidly built man in his twenties, incongruous in sober suit and tie, who politely asked if he could take a look at the record sleeve.

“I’m on the B-side of this, you know. Have you listened to it?”

It was Chris, the younger of the two men interviewed. Decent, dignified chap – as you’ll hear if you play the MP3 (encoded at 96 kbps, to save space). I’d forgotten this until now, but I think we stopped the music and let him make a brief speech. Actually, we must have done – because then Dymbel introduced the Redskins record as being about the strike, in the hope that this would finally get the hippies off their arses.

It didn’t. At which point we just went “oh sod it”, and – all lingering aspirations of credibility finally cast aside – slapped on Jumpin’ Jack Flash. It filled the floor. As did Free’s All Right Now, and all the other dinosaur rock classics we followed it with. (I can still remember shaking my head in scornful disbelief: imagine only being able to dance to records which were at least 12 years old! I had a lot to learn.)

I wonder what happened to Chris and Bob – whose voices on this interview (and is that Gary Crowley talking to them?) sound like echoes from a world that has all but vanished. Impossible – utterly impossible – to imagine these sentiments, or anything like them, being expressed in the Britain of 2004. For of the wide range of emotions I experienced in the course of listening to this, the one that ultimately lingered was one of a great, ineffable sadness: at all which has been lost, and replaced with… what, precisely?

Coming soon: that filthy version of Cristina’s Disco Clone. Best stock up on the Kleenex, lads!

Balancing me Chakras, like.

I dunno: CBT one day (see post below) and Reiki the next… all of a sudden, it’s Self Help City round these parts. (If you ever spot me reading a copy of The Little Book Of Sodding Calm, then you have permission to shoot me. There are limits.)

So, yes: Reiki session #2 two took place just after lunch in the empty meeting room upstairs, and once again I am feeling cleansed and re-centred and all that scary guff. Perhaps more so than last time, as I was more familiar with the routine, and hence more relaxed about it.

Just before the session starts, you’re asked to visualise a “safe place”, to which you can “return” if you feel uncomfortable at any stage. Last time, I picked the morning room in the cottage, where we sit with the papers after breakfast on Saturdays and Sundays. This worked fine at first, but after a while I begun to feel a bit stuck in the chair; a sort of spiritual numb bum, I suppose. This time, the choice was immediate: our lovely villa at the Banyan Tree from two weeks ago, which had been a source of such utter peace, tranquility and superior interior design. This had the added advantage of letting me wander about the place in my mind’s eye, from pool to sunbed to Sala Thai to sunken bath and so on.

Aided by the noodly New Age music in the background, which the Banyan Tree were also rather keen on, the whole session felt like I was being transported back to Phuket. Indeed, I actually started to smell the place, with all its incense sticks and aromatic oil burners (as lit in your room every evening at turn-down time) – to the point where I became convinced that incense was burning in the room.

(Which was bizarre, as during the de-brief session afterwards, my somewhat amazed Reiki Master – I know, I know – admitted to using nothing more than lavender-scented handwash. Wow, have I started channelling olfactory hallucinations, he muttered.)

A further word about the noodly New Age music, which I would never normally listen to by choice. Too bland by half. Too gift shop. Too emotionally thin. Embarrassing, even snigger-inducing. Well, within the context of the Reiki session, it actually came into its own – forming a kind of backwash, blocking out the distracting noises of the building, and of the traffic on Maid Marian Way twelve stories below. Of course, you couldn’t possibly listen to it, but then it was specifically designed not to be listened to. With no specific points of interest to latch onto, its purpose was to aid mental de-cluttering – a purpose which would have been defeated if I had started actively concentrating on it, and emotionally responding to it. A sort of musical beige, then… and there has always been space in my life for beige.

The best bit of the whole session comes at the start, as the Master wafts his hands across the face and head, sending repeated surges of blissful warmth fluttering over and through you, while amorphous blocks of colour swirl and coalesce in front of your eyelids. Yes, it is a bit trippy. Then, as the initial rush wears off, you settle back and relax for the next hour or so, as the hands move between each energy centre, or “chakra”, channelling and balancing the…

Yeah, yeah, okay, okay. I know that this sounds like the most ghastly, self-deluding mumbo-jumbo. And maybe it is, but it’s something that makes me happy – which I read in The Four Agreements is the key to a content life. A large part of me – probably the most part, and almost certainly the best part – still thinks it is. But the point is this: if you choose to imbue a ritual with meaning, then it has meaning – even if the ritual is arbitrary in the first place. And the other point is this: any prolonged relaxation/meditation session is going to do you good. Especially when that session is structured, guided and witnessed by a second party. For the Master’s involvement keeps you focused in a way that would be far more difficult to achieve on your own, when both mind and body would be significantly more likely to fidget and stray.

Besides, I was always the little boy who liked to believe in Santa. “Harnessing the power of your delusions” – come on, that has to be a self-help book in the making.

Of course, K – being the hard-headed scientific rationalist that he is – has nothing but scorn to pour on the proceedings. Witness the following exchange, which took place after I returned from my first Reiki session:

K: So, you say felt all these warm sensations?

M (eagerly): Yes, that’s right – I don’t know how it happened, because his hands never touched me.

K: And he told you to keep your eyes shut at all times?

M: Oh absolutely, that’s very…

K: (picking up electric fan heater and wafting it over me) “Yes Mike, that’s right… keep your eyes shut… woooh… can you feel the heat?”

M (indignantly): That’s… that’s… you cynical bastard!

K (triumphantly): You know what you were, don’t you darling? You were ironed!

(collapse of both parties)

Today’s stress-engines.

1. Pre-best-of-year-list angst is mounting, and I’m not sure whether iTunes and the iPod are a help or a hindrance. iTunes tells me that I have 1304 songs on my hard drive with a 2004 date stamp – which is a hell of a lot to wade through and evaluate.

But most crucially of all (crucially, I tell you!), what I am I going to do about this year’s “Best Singles” list? Because for the first time, I really have no idea whether half of my favourite tracks came out as singles or not; I certainly didn’t consume them as singles, but rather as stand-alone MP3s or favourite album tracks. Can I really be arsed to sift and Google, in order to determine whether each track should be included? Or should I do what the NME has done this year, and opt for a “Best Tracks” list instead? But then, should I allow favourite album tracks, or should I confine myself to tracks which, in some sense or other, had taken on a life of their own this year, removed from the context of any album? Or should I go the other way and keep it mostly to hit singles?

Oh, stop rolling your eyes like that. You love me for it really.

2. Regarding this evening’s programme of activities: a rather complex etiquette problem, as I have managed to double-book myself a) for an Indian meal with the Posh Crowd, following on from an awfully smart drinks reception for the city’s Great and Good (K’s patch, not mine, as if that needed spelling out!) and b) for drinks at George’s, over on the other side of town, with Miss Mish and the divinely decadent Bohemian set.

(Note: I am aware that “divinely decadent” is something of a played-out epithet these days, being mostly used by copy-writers for confectionery companies, but in this case it is a perfectly accurate epithet, which I shall deploy without shame.)

In the end, I have opted for an early exit from the meal, and a late rendez-vous with Mish. Which raises the possibility of the Posh Crowd deciding that it would be rather fun to come along to George’s, which they’ve heard so much about, and wouldn’t it be jolly?

I am therefore currently feasting my imagination on the delicious prospect of a slightly sloshed county court judge tangoing with the trannies to the strains of Ethel Merman’s Disco Album. When worlds collide, and all that. Oh, say it will happen!

(Note: I am historically not awfully good at managing these When Worlds Collide scenarios, as I always feel it incumbent upon myself to be all things to all people, and cannot cope with the personality split which ensues. However, having stressed about this during the morning, I now find myself feeling unexpectedly relaxed, even to the point of actual anticipation. In this respect, I cannot help but wonder whether Episodes Six and Seven of Joe My God’s “Terrence” series have been of use. Of all Joe’s stories to date, this series has been particularly dear to my heart, and these two new episodes are among his very best. Mandatory reading, I’d say. Start here, then go here.)

3. After a wait of around three months – during which time my wobbles have thankfully subsided to a broadly manageable degree – my first CBT appointment was scheduled for today. My attitude to this, while essentially neutral, was still coloured by various worries.

What if my recovery was so pronounced that CBT would no longer be deemed necessary? (Because, having read up on its guiding principles, I was very much in a mind to proceed.) Would I end up feeling like a time-waster?

Was I really justified in doing this through the NHS, when a course of private treatment was well within my means? Would opting for NHS treatment mean opting for an inferior service?

Would I like my therapist? Would we connect? Would the appointment be unduly distressing? Or would it feel like an anti-climax, which hadn’t even begun to address my needs? Would there be another three month wait before the next appointment?

None of this was helped by an unusually vivid and realistic dream this morning, in which my therapist appeared as a scatty professor type, bumbling around vaguely in a tatty old tweed jacket and loose crumpled chinos, with a shock of wispy, thinning ginger curls and funny little specs on the end of his nose. In the “interview” which followed, he simply handed me a lengthy questionnaire to fill in, and disappeared into the next room. This turned out to be mostly comprised of pop trivia questions: enjoyable, but manifestly irrelevant.

Having taken receipt of questionnaire without so much as glancing through it, my therapist then took me for lunch at County Hall (where I had worked for 13 long, under-achieving, soul-dampening years), where he made cheerful small-talk over the sandwiches and continued to avoid asking me any personal questions. After lunch, he made to excuse himself, explaining that he was running late for his next appointment, and could I come back in six months?

At which point I flipped my lid, and launched into a furious, tearful tirade. How dare he play with my expectations in such a cavalier manner? Had he no interest in me at all? Couldn’t he have posted me his stupid questionnaire before the meeting? How could he possibly expect me to wait another six months? And how could he ride so roughshod over my emotions as to take me back to a place of employment which had caused me so much unhappiness in the past, because if he had troubled himself to discover even the slightest thing about me, then he would never, never…

I woke up still ranting. Not a good way of preparing myself for the matter in hand.

Anyway. It turned out that my appointment wasn’t with a therapist after all, but with an another doctor, whose remit was to assess my suitability for further treatment. This made for a rather weird situation, in which I was invited to talk about all my deepest, darkest, murkiest Stuff, but in the professionally detached manner of a job interview. Weird, but actually quite manageable, as I found it quite easy to give a reasonably eloquent, thorough but at all times relevant account of myself. In fact, it was made all the more easier by her politely interested yet dispassionate manner; being spared any overt displays of head-nodding, eye-contact-retaining empathy, I felt all the more comfortable.

I got the referral, and left the building feeling no more than a little shaky, and pleased that I had been able to give a good account of myself. Another long-ish wait will now ensue, but I’m cool with that.

Ooh, and now a fourth one! All this burbling and I’m running late for dinner! Make haste for the shower, and bollocks to the grammar checking!

“Love your work!” (3)

Look, is nobody going to write a proper report of Saturday’s London blogmeet?

Nobody at all?

What, no great long lists of linky-love anywhere? No incomprehensible “you had to be there” in-jokes? No photos, even? (OK, apart from these four.)

My, we have matured as a community.

So, in the spirit of keeping it Old School, I’d just like to say that it was lovely to catch up with familiar faces, super to meet so many new faces, and look, I didn’t know he was there until it was all over, OK?

(There, that’s more like it. These traditions define us as a community, you know.)

Particular thanks to Sasha for a) putting me up in her spare room, b) feeding and watering me, and c) finally convincing me that yes, both Firefox (1) and del.icio.us (2) really ARE the dog’s bollocks and well worth getting into. (I can be awfully slow on the uptake sometimes.)

And no: despite a kind offer to join Eric and his mates at Heaven, I decided to leave my middle-aged bits resolutely un-shaken. This had quite a lot to do with the excesses of Friday night’s office party – which had me out boozing, noshing and bopping (1980s retro night at The Cookie Club) for seven and a half hours solid. To have attempted a second consecutive marathon of debauchery would have been to tempt providence just a little too far.

(Indeed, never have I been so grateful for an expensive Thai suntan, which covered the evidence of the previous night’s ravages remarkably effectively. You look so well, they all cooed, gratifyingly unaware of just how dog-rough I was feeling on the inside.)

On leaving the pub, I was pleased to see that someone had corrected the sign which the management had put up: UK Weblogger’s Webloggers’ Party downstairs. For if our movement stands for nothing else, let it at least stand for proper punctuation.

To those who were there: please feel free to deposit gossip and in-jokes in the comments box below.

To those who weren’t: may we crave your indulgence in this matter.

(1) Faster? Safer? Tabbed browsing? Google search box? Nifty features which you never knew you needed until you saw them? Well, why didn’t you say?

Although it’s far from perfect. No support for lengthy link titles in the “we listen” section. The dashed border lines around my “see also/trackback” boxes vanishes. Can’t search for text strings in my Blogger template window (particularly annoying). Can’t log in to view my comments in YACCS. Can’t look up domain rankings in PubSub (not that I particularlywant to, mind). And that’s just what I’ve found after a few hours of use. So I won’t be ditching Internet Explorer just yet.

(2) As you might already have noticed, I have exported the whole of my Linkrack to del.icio.us. Although it has the disadvantage of being one extra click away from the main site, and although I’m stuck with a bog-standard generic template, the amount of coding effort this will save is considerable. It should hopefully also result in my posting a good deal more links than I have been doing of late.

(3) Catchphrase of the night. You had to be there.

Trackbacks:
Silent Words Speak Loudest: We’ll meet again…
McFilter: UK Webloggers End Of Year Party