2 December - Marmite & Memories

So, the other day I picked up a British Airways/Standard sponsored magazine which featured the 100 most influential people in London in arts/media/finance you know the type. As Toph says ‘You read every page, no wonder it takes you so long to read Sunday papers etc’. and my stock answer is always ‘That’s why I know so much more stuff than you do’. So am reading most of these peeps, and in the food section which is not that relevant to me as I don’t chase around the latest restaurant usually, it says that Ms Marmite Lover is ‘a guerrilla cook who pioneered the underground/pop up restaurant scene from her flat in Kilburn.. blah blah former rock photographer KR.’ Fell off my chair!

Back in the mid 80’s I was a good friend of Kerstin, she was a photographer covering music and her best friend was Clare Muller, another photographer and sister of the soon to be more famous Sophie Muller who did plenty of vids for Eurythmics and practically all of Sade’s up to the most recent output of the not so prolific singer. Try as I May, and I’ve exchanged emails with other friends of that period and nobody remembers introducing me to KR or knowing her though they remember me mentioning her. Maybe it was through my dead ex M. or maybe CM who did some work for Euryth when I knew them? and then Kerstin? My mind is simply not throwing up the info at all. Incidentally a friend now in Switzerland asked me in return if I remembered her gay friend N. who helped out at most/all her parties. Not, a, clue. I said was he tall? She said no, very short. Not, a, clue. She said he was at all her parties and so was I, and they were meals or Sunday lunches or bbqs in the garden, not a druggy crowd and pouf! No, this friend did not leave a trace in my memory.

Anyway I was in and out of her tiny flat in Kentish Town and have various pictures of KR including at a b’day dinner at Pollo in Old Compton St with her in a sari having recently returned from a trek in India/Nepal where she had met her husband to be, the lovely but not quite as frantic as she was, Alain. KB had a horrible relationship with her parents. Dad owned a famous agency and had cash and she was always feeling a) not as good as he was and b) that of course he would be the one to give her work when there was none and therefore resented him/mother. Think she also a had better (according to the parents) behaved sister. So her role was quite rightly the rebel daughter. She was fun and an aquarian but also very outspoken/direct/mouthy (clearly between her and HP and FS I must have been the quiet friend? Is that possible? I am direct but those 3 could kill you). Part of the reason may have been that KR was /is shorter than me by a bit and as they say small people sometime develop this bully behaviour to be heard /stand out. She also had the biggest tits ever for that height and I seem to remember she had a breast reduction. Anyway.. I have no idea exactly why we fell out, not the dimmest. All I remember is going to visit after she had her daughter and bringing a gift. She was then staying at her parents who had a gigantic open plan amazing flat in one of the wharves near the Times /Tower Bridge. Daughter had a suitably hippy name like Saffron but not Saffron, maybe Sienna and things were not looking well with A. who could never get a decent paying job (can’t remember what he did? Chef??). And that’s that. Back in the days one had so many friends that forgetting a few for decades didn’t seem to leave you missing them that much.

So have been reading bits and bobs from KRs blogs, and it would appear that she's doing very well indeed which is nice, she was/is involved with various anarchist/protest movements, (makes perfect sense) but that she is also a great cook and has a book coming out based on her blog and am always jealous of people who manage to monetise their blogs since mine is reasonably crap and not worth a book. She seems to be mentioned even in the Daily Beast etc. which just goes to show how media stories can now really travel round the globe. I bet as we speak there are north Koreans wondering if they can go find/eat at her flat. She appears to still have a confrontational outlook on life, which now, on paper, makes me laugh. Fight on sister.

However, despite being majorly interested in catching up in tons of years of someone I used to know, and there being a blog to help me, I found that I just couldn’t go through it all and dipped in and out. Which must mean that my long cherished thought that when I die, Toph can finally read all about me/us here or some other friend will want to do the same, well it just won’t happen. You’d have to be mad!!It seems all the restaurant/soirees etc are hosted in her flat in Kilburn (which has a yurt in the garden occasionally) so am toying with the idea of dropping into one (have to buy ticket first) and see reaction from there.

Am slightly puzzled as to the daughter (there’s plenty of mention of KR being a single mother so Alain er. .. went) but daughter is 16 or so and that cannot be right. The latest she could have had her was 1990 and so either she’s a few years out or I am memory wise. Got to be me. So if we did fall out in 1994… instead of 1990 it means I was already not going out with M. he was dead by then and I don’t remember KR being someone who was there to support me through the pain? And I vaguely remember where I was working but why didn’t we stay friends? Only thing I can imagine is that maybe she moved out of London for a few years? This being prior to email/ easy link? Or that she as a new mother and me still gallivanting to clubs and wine bars maybe I was no longer well placed to be a good mate? This is going to puzzle me for some time.

16 September - Memory & Dyslexias

Well, I haven't forgotten I have a blog though one day I fully expect to wonder about that too. But.. despite filling in drafts of various things concerning me, there's an element of stress in my life that coincides with work related issues and health stuff and, well, another leak in the new house which is still not sorted to my liking and it makes it just too tiring to muster the energy to write something that's not down/dour/skeptic etc.
Right now I seem to be quietly worried about my short memory just not throwing up names of things/people and also mixing them up. Examples are along the lines of wanting to say 'Please move that chair out of my way' and the sentence that comes out is 'Please move that table out of my way, I mean the chair' . This means my brain is instantly aware that it's used the wrong word but ... what if it then doesn't? Other examples are telling someone at work 'John now can't come to the meeting in Paris' and person replies 'John?' and only then I realise I meant say 'Christian'. And so on.

Today I nearly got annoyed with some guy at jessops because, after jabbing my finger at the machine for half an hour in order to print pictures from sicilian holiday and the receipt telling me to pay £20 odd, I went in search of employee who in answer to my 'how much are your prints if you print more than 100, it used to be 7p?', said, 'yes, it's 7pm but you chose the larger format so it's 14p each'. I said no, I chose the smaller format, 5" by 7". He looks at me and says no, the smaller format is 4" by 6". And I still didn't get it. To me 4" by 6" was larger than 5" by 7". This was simpy a numbers dyslexia in my mind. Thank god I didn't get too annoyed and he sweetly said I'llc charge you at the smaller format charge and still give you the larger format prints and I nearly replied but I don't want/like 6" x 4"!. But can see now clearly when old people say resolutely one thing and no arguing will persuade them they got it wrong. But am not old enough for all of this to happen now. Hence the .. getting worried.

Or maybe it's my gum infection and the ... the... I was about to write antidepressants but that's not it, don't take them and it's the wrong word! What I want to say is the.. the.. (30 seconds later i still don't have the word... the , you know those things they give you to fight infections and you can't drink alcohol whilst on the course. What the fuck are they called. This is driving me insane, forgetting everyday words, it's just not on.

Left this for a few minutes and the word has not come to me yet. It may be an hour before it appears. If there's someone like Toph around I can ask him but you can't go asking colleagues 'what do you call that thing, that thing , you know' or you sound demented.

This is now ten mins later and the word still hadn't come so I broke down and asked a colleague. And the answer is... antibiotics. Obviously. She very sweetly said it's not age but speaking several languages. Mmmmh, I do but it's not that. And I can't blame too many drugs 'cause I hardly did.

31 July - Ecclestone

Darn, the one night I cry out from going to a drinks at the home of a friend of a friend (on the grounds of 'tiredness', do you need to ask), is when I get a text from said friend to say that Christopher Ecclestone is at the drinks since he's dating another friend of the friend.
Would have been nice to stand there and say 'But I think you're great since i saw you in Jude the Obscure many years ago on TV'. Or maybe not.

At the time I received the text I was busy shredding some papers from 1999 and re-organising others. Including the ones that show that my one and only £500 ISA (an experiment, taken out with Virgin over 10 years ago), at the most had earnt £50 and right now is worth less than £400. And you wonder why people still trust into bricks and mortars more than shares, though they don't fare much better. I quite like my 'loss'. It allows me to reply to any robot in a bank or building society who asks me if I wish to have an account or investment review, to go check their own ISAs and ask me again...

I was also busy re-arranging other old papers, letters, photos. I think the tide has turned. There's a point reached in life when you really start to think that this stuff, you can't take it with you, you kept it all this time in case someone needed to piece together your life (had you become famous as a talented something or other) and /or donate it to scholars. But... then you have to be real. There aren't attic rooms in your large estate to deposit all of these 'mementoes'. They have to go. Granted I throw one page out for 30 I keep but I try. But why is it that I find it hard to part from a tenancy contract an agency gave me ten years ago when I went travelling and rented out my property to two girls named Sarah and Anna? Or the paperwork related to a savings account thingie that matured and was cashed in 2002? What would any of this say about me to the scholars digging into my oeuvre? And am now so casual about the love letters and other forms of love communication that not knowing where to store them, they're in a drawer easily accessible by Toph. Somehow he wouldn't care to delve. The mystery we held out for each other is slowly eroding. This process of ageing means that I either know all there is to know about him and/or I don't care for what I don't know. Same goes for him, no doubt. Now I can undertand my mother every time I go home, presenting me with boxes of my life age 0 to 19 and demanding I chuck some out, which has now largely been done. All those cherished school books, gone. The diaries and stuff are somewhere in my storage and only serve to illustrate (to the scholars, not) that age 13 I had the same concerns/mind that I have now. Give me the seven year old and all that.
Tonight I'll tackle some clothes and attempt to consign to storage the tartan mini skirt that sent a few people, namely the doctor, into a frenzy of passion but sadly doesn't do it for Toph. Should really throw it away....

9 May - Island 50

The other day a friend told me about the impending celebrations/marking of 50 years of one of the best record labels, ever, Island Records. I sort of did a double take since I remember going to the party for the 25th anniversary which was held on the grounds of Chris Blackwell's house somewhere an hour further West from Heathrow. I remember dodgems and a funfair. Back then it wasn't included in every single party so novelty enough. I must have left at usual decent time however becasue subsequent stories of spiked punch and people reminiscing about out of their heads great times leave me with a blank. I must have retired too soon as usual. I had a good time anyway but can't really plug into it. If this blog had been around then, I'd just shift back a few thousand entries and find the relevant one. Maybe there's mention in some old diary.

I do however go on the milestone website and since am at work so better attempt to be discreet from time to time, I'm listening but not watching the vids. I easily recognise what I don't like, never did and can't give a toss about though have never gone out of my way to listen to them, they're well known and so my brain does somehow know it's Keane. Yep, I open the screen and there they are.

More shockingly worryingly (you know by now my recent obsession with registering my own mind's memory failings) is that I don't recognise Portishead's rather distinctive, one woudl say, sound and have to switch to the screen to actually watch to see the name under the youtube clip/Beth. Clearly I know it's Tricky when his tune comes on but by the time I get to the Fratellis, am back to the Keane feeling, 'don't like this' but I don't know it's them.

This website sets me off trying to remember band members names or people who worked there but the black holes are multiple. Then of course the whole thing links on to corollary and external other people /personal events of 25 years ago and so on. At least in 25 years if the whole internet thing hasn't been blown off the sky, I will be able to re-read these current entries but it will be most likely totally boring because I won't be able to tell I'm reading about myself and w/o that link, this will be like finding a copy of Gas Power Magazine and glazing over?

21 May - Flats & Heels

I’ve clearly shocked my girlfriend G. with the simplest of phone exchanges.
‘So what did Toph get you?’
I list a bunch of things, this and that and that ‘And something I can’t mention…’
‘Oh, a vibrator?’
‘No darling have those already, no, something I’ll tell you some other time after the event, but he also got me a lovely pair of shoes’.
‘Oh darling, Loubutins?’
‘No, Clarks.’
There is a long silence whilst she processes the information which clearly doesn’t compute. So I add:
‘I asked for them, they’re cute, white, with crossover straps and buckles and I wanted them for travels, as I don’t do trainers and I think flip flops are for the beach and these can work with trousers or a dress, though they’re a bit nursey comfy what can you do, I can’t do Liz Hurley high heels on the cobblestones or Ravello or Taormina, I’d fall over’

But yes, it happens, mystique ebbs away and you get… comfortable. I’m sure I’ll look ok and will only use them in emergencies. Plus Toph is genuinely finding them sexy. Deep down he likes a girl in a vest (an Urban Outfitters one was included in his gifts), jeans and flat shoes. That’s what I get for having Carrie Bradshaw as my spiritual guide… a guy who likes girls the likes of which don’t even figure in that show. Ever. Or maybe they’re the waitresses, the studenty ones in the caffs, not the done up to the nines ones in the clubs. But hey… I should take it as an omen that he won’t mind too much the progression to retirement home attire that will assail me oh, in thirty years or so. He loves smart too but is just happier out of smart. Justifies him wearing his favourite faded t-shirts. I once had a boyfriend who was always in casuals and blurted out 'How can you go out with a scruff like me?'. To which the only reply was 'Your huge penis darling, oh, and your intellect'.

However, what I fail to tell G. is that the following day, I went into Clarks again and got a pair of cute red flat sort of Todd’s style driving shoes. Just to walk to work you understand…. And they have a cute grosgrain bow that I can change for a velvet one of a different colour if I want to match them to some other outfit.

To be honest I was surprised at how mobbed the shop was. They all seemed Spaniards and Italians in there. I wonder why. Maybe they don’t do Clarks or comfy shoes in those countries. But surely they do? Or maybe Geoxx are too expensive? It has to be said that the range was reasonably modern in design. Oh there I go again, trying to justify rubber shoes.

Oh dear, just had a thought. In some 'Summer/travel clothes' storage box, I have two pairs of air Nike sole design flat shoes bought in HK when I was thinking the same thougth 'Need some plain and stylish flats to use on holiday /go to work'. Both are black. So now I have four brand new flats to go to work with, plus all the other crappy flats that these are meant to supersede - you know, the silly ballerinas you buy here and there when your feet hurt and you dive into any shop. So, two things here, memory fading, and the worrisome trend for admiring/purchasing flats. The thing that's even worse is that I often get into work and fail to swap them for the heels and spend the day in them. Which is plainly wrong as my clothes don't match flats on the whole. I need to re-progam back to the 'younger me'.

24 April - Gifts & Goddaughers

An early beneficiary of the decline in memory function is… the beloved daughter of a best friend who now lives in Rome. I sent 12 year old G. some crucially good b’day presents recently. Not on the actual b’day date you understand, I have already publicised in the past that now I cannot remember but a few dates, I remember ‘periods’ and yes, I know she was born in April. I get a sweet thank you note for the ipod speakers housed in a white patent leather handbag (perfect for showing off at a girlie party) the Clarice Bean book and a Girls Aloud CD. But she also thanks me for the Juicy Couture dress and the No.li.ta sweatshirt I’d previously sent…

Heh? Now I remember… back in Feb or was it March I had sent the clothes with a note saying ‘As you know I can never remember when your b’day falls so here’s some gifts in advance as I no doubt will forget to send later…’
So I sent two lots of gifts… Lucky girl and lucky me that I still have the touch for teens. Well… she loves them all. She’s going to wear the dress at her proms in fact (she goes to an American school). Ahhhh, am chuffed! But dotty too and that’s a novelty. I have a friend who’s always been known to our circle of friends as ‘ditzy A.’. Am sure my goddaughter now refers to me in a similar way.

10 February - Memory & Rings

I have found, perhaps, an advantageous aspect of losing one’s memory. Last week I got a voicemail from the Swarovski shop telling me I could pick up an item I had left for repair. First of all I thought they had the wrong person and then I had a faint memory of having indeed left something for repair, but try as I may, I couldn’t remember what it is I took there. I certainly have no idea as to where I may have put the receipt. Ok, let’s switch to the present tense as it’s easier. When I go and pick up the assistant asks what is it. Naturally. She’s taken aback, when I say no, and can you not find it via the my name, after all you called me. She answers we have trays with earrings, necklaces, rings etc so it takes time to look through all. I say uh ho, no, don’t know, sorry you have to look through it all. But I add that I probably brought it here 6 months ago. As if that helps. She looks at me like I’m crazy, like we’d never take this long to return an item, madam, but she’s a good sales assistant and I’m the client and she has to indulge me.

When she eventually emerges from the store room, I’m delighted to be reunited with this lovely ring I took in because it had lost a stone and that wasn’t on! Swarovski stuff is not that cheaply made. Or, I should imagine, back in the days before marketing and re-launch. Now I doubt it’s made in Austria… I had totally forgotten this ring probably because it was not chosen by me in the first place, but was a hand me down from my sister.

My memory however worked well on the dates. The chit says I brought it in on 18 May last year. Fancy that, 8 months to the day almost. I was out by 2 months only. So not all the synapses are that disintegrated. It’s nice to have the surprise, it's like it's a new ring, what a joy. Wonder if I’ll forget people and then be happy to meet them for the first time again instead of being bored by the same same conversatons we have. Next time however, I shall demand a substitute item from the shop, like the insurance people do when they give you courtesy cars when yours is at the menders.
It would be interesting to make some study too about memory loss as I could be compared with some friends who’ve done drugs constantly over the years and drunk absolute caseloads of wine more than me. Containers full in fact. Wonder if their brain is failing them as much as mine is me.

6th February - Adele vs Duffy

Laura Marling wins. And I know about these things.
So, it was great being away most of January, and also only half paying attention to music things these days. It meant that I didn't know who Adele or Duffy are though since seeing the vids I remembered catching Adele on Jools Holland and thinking 'mmmh very accomplished' and 'mmhh wonder if they've asked her to lose weight, the poor girl, this year's Alison Moyet, she'll be fighting off the stylists and cry at night'. (Incidentally, I find body maps of tattos a' la Winehouse, more gross than size 18, so don't hang me on this one).

So, as I was told by friends to go see Duffy but found out it's all sold out, it was time to check these two out on youtube/myspace. From a marketing point of view I totally get it. And I thought it was genius to film Adele inside a car so you could mostly only see her face. But from a musical point of view it was dire. You mean this is what's being hyped? More retro sounding girls? I weep. I wouldn't know who'll fare better. Probably Adele has the better songs but Duffy is more immediate and it can only help that she looks like a scruffed up pammy anderson. If she was too polished the Brits wouldn't buy her. But I wouldn't buy either.

I was however played Laura Marling back in Oct/Nov. when I hooked up again with a former lover who has something to do with her. It's a good sign when the person who plays you the music has an enraptured look on his face when listening to tunes he's by now heard hundreds of times. Of course I thought Laura was also very retro (not Dusty but folksy) and when I looked her up, she too was tasty looking and only 17, thus making her even more of a marketable find. But ... the songs are so much more ... unique. You just have to trust me on this one. So it was a hard choice choosing a family committment last Friday over going to see a tiny gig of hers in Soho on the night of her 18th b'day. But I made the choise, and that was that. Only after, reading some ecstatic review on the Independent only compels the 'Oh no, I totally missed a good one here'.

It will never be the same after those early gigs that you remember forever. Like missing Oasis up at King Tut's back on the days McGee had just signed them or Nirvana at Waterats or wherever it was that year they first played in London, just days before everyone named them as their favourite band. Ok, I can still turn over in my head some Smith's second gig at Hacienda or Pop Group at the Scala, but they've gotten really blurred over the years. Like, the other day, I was on FB as you do and stumbled upon a 400 plus collection of photos posted by various people who'd gone to the Mud Club in '83/84 and therafter. I was not in any. In fact I don't remember any of us ever taking a camera there but, more to the point, as I looked at all these kids, the only people I could recognise were the major players involved (Philip Sallon, Boy George, Marylin, Fat Tony etc) and none of the punters. In fact I couldn't remember who I went with if not by working out who were my friends over a longer span in early 80's. Memory definitely gets wiped out. It doesn't matter, it's largely irrelevant and I do have diaries if I really care to check, but not even a photo? The two Anita's at least had the required gelled up hair and I had some very favourite Bodymap togs. Someone should have photographed us surely?
Sigh....