Munki about Town

The nazis are coming back to Brighton

2012-01-06T00:45:00.004Z

Oh dear, it's ages since I wrote anything longer than a Facebook paragraph or 140 Twit characters, so I thought I'd better remind myself that I do actually have a blog and post this burst of activity here.

Prompted by the plans for the EDL to march in Brighton again under their spurious "March for England" front this coming April 22nd, here is my email to local MPs (an adapted one for the Hove Tory, natch) and I'll also contact the licensing committee too about the Railway Bell just in case they decide to go there again.

==============
Dear --

I am writing to you regarding the return to Brighton of the far-right "English Defence League" (EDL) under their banner of "March for England". They are currently planning to return to Brighton on 22nd April.

I wrote to you last year after their Easter demonstration and you kindly sent me back a very considered response. I attach a copy of my email from last year [SEE BELOW], so I won't reiterate those points, other than to stress that I still do not wish to see them banned, rather controlled and kept out of sight of Brighton & Hove's residents and visitors.

However, since I last contacted you, there have been a number of developments in the less than illustrious progress of the EDL, which I think makes action against them even more important.

Whilst the EDL portray their ideology as being opposed to Islamic extremism (which most would agree with, including, undoubtedly, the majority of Muslims), in reality their record shows they are an overtly racist organisation despite their protests to the contrary.

Here is just a handful of examples of their true face from the past year:
- a Plymouth member was arrested for publishing racially inflammatory material on YouTube. He had threatened to put on a suicide vest and blow up a mosque;
- Two EDL members were imprisoned for an arson attack on a mosque in Hanley, Stoke on Trent;
- the EDL were exposed for selling wristbands 'for the troops' while keeping all the money to fund their own activities;
- the EDL organised 'spit on a Muslim day' as a Facebook event;
- two women members attacked a Plymouth kebab shop's staff and are due to attend crown court charged with racially aggravated assault;
- 175 members were arrested on Remembrance Day for threatening to target the police with snipers and physically attack the Stock Exchange 'occupation' camp at St Paul's, as they already had at various other 'occupy' camps around the country;
- the EDL also had a run-in with the Royal British Legion, who were forced to cancel their 90th anniversary Poppy Appeal launch in Birmingham due to the presence of an EDL demo, despite requests to cancel it from the RBL.

But most seriously, Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Brievik was revealed to have been closely linked with the EDL. The EDL 'Jewish Division' (yes really!) said the murdered young people deserved it and were scum Many EDL members claimed that Muslims had launched the attack and used that to whip up anti-Muslim feeling. EDL leader Steven Yaxley-Lennon (who goes under the false name of Tommy Robinson) said that he 'understood why he [Breivik] did it'.

This is all just the tip of the iceberg, and just a few reasons why these people are not wanted in Brighton & Hove by people who appreciate the relative freedom we have here to live our lives as we wish without interference from people harbouring prejudices. Indeed, even David Cameron has described the EDL as 'sick'.

I'm sorry this email is rather long, but I think it's important to be aware of the threat these people present to a harmonious society. They are not a valid political force as the BNP once threatened to be, but their modus operandi has the power to destabilise communities by creating tensions and fostering prejudice.

Regards,
Melita Dennett
etc

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And here's last year's one....

Dear

I’m contacting you in a personal capacity regarding the “March for England” which took place this Easter Sunday in Brighton.

I’m raising my concerns with you because I believe an event like this seriously harms Brighton’s image as a welcoming tourist destination and has a hugely detrimental economic impact on the city.

The March for England was billed by its Portsmouth-based organisers as a ‘family fun day’, and they claim not to be affiliated with any racist group, yet there are clear links between this organisation and the far-right “English Defence League” (EDL) and a lesser connection to the British National Party (BNP).

I was present on Sunday in a personal capacity and observed a flag clearly identifying “Essex Infidels”, who led the march through Brighton. This group is present at many EDL events and appear to have a friendly affiliation with that organisation. I have also seen a photo online of Sunday’s event showing a marcher with an EDL banner, although the organisers asked them not to display them publicly for fear of association with that group, and read a comment on the Argus’s website from a resident in Surrey Street who heard them chanting “EDL”.

Despite organisers’ claims to the contrary, monitoring their online activity on websites, YouTube and Facebook, there was clearly an undisguised presence of EDL activists (significantly, I’m pleased to say, very few from Brighton) on the march, who are very happy to come out into the open after the event.

Therefore I conclude that the march took place under false pretences, and only served to boost the morale of an organisation that started as a group of football hooligans and has developed a racist political ideology overtly hostile to Islam (but covertly prejudiced against many other minority groups), and have created violent disorder in many parts of the country.

I can only start to imagine the image that greeted visitors to Brighton station on Sunday morning. While I found the police presence a huge over-reaction, I would not criticise them for their response as I understand the organising groups of the counter-demonstration (of which I am not a member) had not met with them so the opposing campaigners presented an unknown quantity.

However, the heavy police presence, the kettling of the opposition protesters and the relative freedom of the “March for England” demonstrators to drink beer from 11am whilst chanting and haranguing passers-by outside the Railway Bell pub, then parading through town chanting and waving flags did not present a view of Brighton that many of us would wish to give a visitor.

The police presence, from Kent, Surrey and Hampshire as well as Sussex and the addition of a helicopter must have cost a significant amount of money to the town. I understand a planned Scouts parade for St George’s Day through town was cancelled as a result of the presence of these marchers.

I am concerned about the role played by the Railway Bell pub in facilitating the presence of these marches. It’s not the first time they’ve welcomed them to meet there, giving an opportunity to consume alcohol for an hour or two before setting off, and providing them with a welcoming home base after the march. I passed by the pub that evening at about 10pm and there were still crowds of marchers draped in flags outside bellowing at passers-by. If the pub’s licensee were to be discouraged from allowing them to meet there, this would hamper their ability to congregate (and drink) for an event like this, and may discourage them from returning.

On an associated note, credit must be given to the King and Queen pub which has been used in the past as a place for marchers to drink after the event, and who closed their doors for the duration this year, probably at some economic cost to themselves.

And passing by the Strada restaurant in New Road today, I was dismayed to see two large “BNP” graffiti sprayed on their wall, the appearance of which may just be unfortunate coincidental timing, but this again is surely not an image one of Brighton’s premier tourist streets would wish to give.

I would not for a moment wish for the council or police to ban the presence of these people, as they have a right to express their views, however unpleasant one might consider them. However, I would urge a change in tactics to discourage them from further visits to Brighton such as making it harder for them to congregate, only allowing a static protest rather than a march and rally, or encouraging them to march outside of central tourist areas (a rally in Preston Park would cause far less disruption).

Yours faithfully,

Melita Dennett

Hove

==================
UPDATE 27.1.12
I received a letter from Hove MP Mike Weatherley today, sounding like he's taking it a bit more seriously than last time, and says he'll talk to the police about an alternative option for them gathering, and that he takes "extremism seriously". No reply from Caroline Lucas yet.

Social Media in radio - a Radio Academy panel discussion

2011-07-28T00:59:00.000+01:00

When I signed up for the Radio Academy's seminar on social media I thought I'd come away with ideas, solutions and approaches to integrating the burgeoning world of digital diarrhoea with the essentially one-way traffic of radio broadcasting.

What I did take away, however, was the reality that no bugger actually knows what on earth we're doing with the multitude of platforms through which we now 'communicate' with radio listeners.

Julian Worricker (R4 You & Yours) chaired the discussion, joined on the panel by Laura May Coope (Social Media Producer, BBC Radio 1/1xtra), Matt Deegan (Fun Kids and Radio blogger), Tony Moorey (Content Director, Absolute Radio) and Chris Hawkins (6 Music). So ok, this much we know: social media allows us to market shows and stations, and can generate content from listeners; after that it's conjecture and anecdote.

It was estimated that only about 10% of listeners have access to Twitter and while R1 and 1xtra reckon that a significant majority of their audience is social media-savvy, in our obsession with the holy grail of 'interactivity' and audience feedback, we are focusing almost exclusively on communication from this vocal minority. There may be a risk of disenfranchising the majority who don't tweet/ Facebook/ text/ email, but it looks likely that programmes and presenters will continue to be seduced by the instant hit of the figures and feedback they see on the screen.

Chris Hawkins asked if it matters where feedback comes from, and commented on how much airtime it can now take up telling people how they can get in touch. In my experience it does matter, as listeners still get a buzz out of having a namecheck, and highlighting the variety of channels through which you can now get in touch, encourages feedback. Tony Moorey said Facebook and Twitter can foster a "pop-up community" (not heard that one before!) and there was some discussion later of how message boards can go in a tangential direction that its (minority of active) users send it, and all a station or programme may be able to do is try to steer it into new directions.

Pitfalls for presenters participating in Twitter, especially, can be that they have an impact on the reputation of the station, for good or bad. The BBC is in knots about presenters having their own Twitter vs an official BBC one, which can lead to someone like Fearne Cotton endorsing all sorts of products on her personal account that she'd never be able to get away with on the BBC; on the other hand Dave Gorman's personality and outside activities were acknowledged as pushing people toward his Absolute Radio programme. The rule of thumb is don't say anything on Twitter you wouldn't on air, though quite where that leaves the product-endorsing 'celebrity' BBC presenter is unclear, and it was acknowledged that the old disclaimer of 'there are my views, not those of etc etc' don't wash.

The commercial sector is seeing opportunities for revenue raising: some brands are offering £5-10k for a mention on a Facebook wall, but there was an acknowledgement that you don't want to annoy your followers with endless plugs; it's only a matter of time though, folks.

An interesting point was that the best way to get followers on your social media is through the use and promotion of that medium within itself - simply giving a shout out on radio to 'join our Facebook page' isn't the best way; radio is an add-on to that. However, it can be a powerful way of pulling new listeners into your radio for special events such as an interview or concert, where the social media networks will push people to listen.

And what about the social media users who don't listen to radio? They can be lured in through audio/ video clips, mixes, podcasts, web-only content and other teasers, which can be targeted and tailored for particular audiences.

So what overall conclusions came from this?
* Nobody actually knows what they're doing - it's just because 'it's there';
* It gives a quantifiable indication of listener response, feedback and numbers, but we shouldn't get carried away with it being the main focus;
* Broadcaster have to acknowledge that social media users can take it in their own direction as it's regarded as their own social space;
* We shouldn't disregard non-users of social media, but quite how we do address and engage them in the digital era is another matter.

On witchcraft, bearded men in the sky and cats' whiskers: superstition and stigma in Nigeria

2010-11-01T08:06:00.000Z

Well the end of my trip is in sight, and I’m aware that I’ve hardly blogged at all, despite enthusiastically updating Facebook with peculiar encounters , pleasures and frustrations of my two months here.

Work has gone very smoothly, training 24 radio journalists in radio skills, going right back to basics to fill (the many) gaps in their knowledge, and increasing their awareness of HIV, its causes, the national prevention strategy and ways of addressing it on air, much of which was totally new to them, and some of it quite an eye-opener.

You’d think (or at least, hope) that journalists would be amongst the most educated, open-minded and rational people but in a country characterized by taboo, cultural stigmas, superstition, and unwavering religious belief, they’re as much victim to those mores as the next person. So it was with some horror that I heard you can catch HIV from cat’s whiskers, or faced one group who had no hesitation in stigmatising men who have sex with men (MSM for short – there’s not really such a thing as a gay or bisexual identity, as it’s illegal here, and most men who are doing it are ostensibly heterosexual).

“If it was my son I would cast him out,” or “I would never shake the hand of such a man,” were two comments which were greeted with nodding approval. A quip about MSM standing for “Mentally Subnormal Men” raised roars of laughter until I reminded them that we were supposed to be against stigmatization, but at least when a comment was made to a visiting NGO worker that “There’s nobody like that in this room” we both chorused simultaneously “You don’t know that!”

Thankfully the other group were nothing like that, and I’d like to think that the first group attained at least a modicum of awareness that stigmatizing MSM is wrong even if their own attitudes haven’t changed, and by all accounts there is a growing (urban) gay visibility in the capital Abuja and in Lagos, so change is happening slowly. I assured the man who said he’d never shake their hand that he already had, and in ten years time he would have friends who are MSM. He didn’t believe me but let’s see who’s right.

The rampant superstition is also difficult to deal with (and I include religious belief in that). People who are otherwise informed, modern in outlook and rational have a persisting belief in witchcraft, and I’ve had many an argument about it. It’s an interesting perspective (which goes for god too) that if you believe in something then it exists: people genuinely feel they have fallen prey to malign influences, or believe they are witches themselves, and it holds a powerful sway.

Now, of course I know that people can do horrible things to each other such as poison their food or play mental tricks on the gullible, but my argument that “If witchcraft exists, why doesn’t it affect people who don’t believe in it?” cut no ice. There’s always a “story” about “a maid from Calabar” who went to live with a family and did this, that and the other; of course nobody actually knows anyone involved in this story, but of course it’s true, and so the urban (or rural) myth goes round again and nobody will challenge it.

Which brings me inexorably to god. You’re either christian or muslim, that’s it. I’ve actually met just one atheist and he’s regarded as a subversive weirdo, which he couldn’t give two hoots about, so good for him. It’s an interesting question, when people ask if you’re a christian and you say you don’t believe in god at all. After they’ve finishing slapping the top of their head in disbelief, startled eyes round like gobstoppers, the inevitable questions comes. “Well - what do you believe in then?” Having no certainly of belief (or worse still, not really caring) just sounds lame in the face of such unwavering conviction. “Uh, well, I believe you don’t need a religious faith to do good things, and I don’t really care what happens when we die,” just sounds a bit namby-pamby. But people have promised to pray for me to believe in god, so I’ve assured them that when that happens I’ll let them know, but they’d better pray very damn hard and we’ll certainly both be dead before it happens, so just one of us will be proved right in the end. And by then, I frankly won't give a toss.

Spoon alert!

2010-10-14T19:00:00.000+01:00

I get stopped at Calabar airport today: "You have a spoon in your bag." Rummage for spoon. Spoon is confiscated. I am unaware that a spoon is a prohibited item in hand luggage. "Err, why?" Security man grabs offending spoon, adopts the face of a deranged killer and enthusiastically mimes a brutal act of violence. With a spoon.

I laugh loudly. "When did you last hear of someone being attacked with a spoon?" No response. I shrug and walk on, comforted by the concerns for spoon security but bemused that they failed to spot the pair of scissors in the same bag.

A heathen in a strange land

2010-10-02T20:37:00.000+01:00

David Byrne’s words popped into my head: “My god, how did I get here?” So there I was, in an evangelical Christian centre resembling a cavernous out-of-town warehouse outlet, first making an impromptu speech to group of eighty teenagers then a hundred primary school children, all impeccably turned out in neatly-pressed crisp school uniforms and totally attentive, if a tad flummoxed as myself.

So how did I get here?

I’m in Nigeria to work with radio stations in two states in the south of the country, Cross River and Kogi. The aim is to equip them with theoretical and practical technical broadcasting skills, aligned with HIV awareness to encourage them better to use radio as a medium for imparting knowledge, promoting behaviour change and challenging mythology and misconceptions about HIV and Aids.

As part of that, my brief is to spend a week or so ‘embedded’ with each station I train (apologies for the military terminology there) to reinforce the training, observe and make suggestions about work on the ground, and offer a bit of moral support in their day-to-day work.

Hence I found myself in Calabar, Cross River state in South South Nigeria, as they like to call it, working with an amiable, if slightly ramshackle, radio station crew. It was great to be on site with one of the teams I’d trained and see them in action, so when Ene Ita invited me to join him as he hosted a youth quiz to mark Nigeria at 50, I happily agreed to join him.

We entered a huge warehouse-style hangar of steel and concrete, belonging to the evangelical Christian church which had sponsored the quiz for secondary school students, and also an essay competition for primary age kids, which were to be filmed for their own televangelising TV station. Only two of the four schools had arrived so Ene Ita suggested we retire for a quick drink (at 1030am!). Even I hummed and harred at that but decided it’d be rude not to, so we retired to the nearby cultural centre and sat in the welcome shade supping Star. After twenty minutes Ene Ita’s phone rang to inform him they were ready to start. “I’ll be with you immediately,” he assured them. I made to gulp down my remaining ¾ of a pint but be gestured to stop. “It’s ok, relax.”

Half an hour later we strolled back to find they weren’t ready at all. “Make a speech,” urged Ene Ita. “Um, me? What about?” “Anything!” So, unaccustomed as I am to public speaking, I stood before eighty remarkably polite and patient teenagers, being filmed by some god-bothering TV station, extolling the virtues of education, how you, the youth of Nigeria represent its future leaders, wishing peace, prosperity, health, gra-gra-gra (gra-gra being my favourite phrase, summed up as bullshitty blah-blah) for Nigeria’s next fifty years, and greetings and goodwill from the people of the UK (being the only whitey in town I am of course sole ambassador for four nations).

They clapped in the right places and Ene Ita beamed proudly. “Come with me,” he gestured. We went into the main part of the hall where a hundred primary school children sat, equally neat, patient and quiet. He thrust a piece of paper in my hand. “Introduce this. Go up on the podium.” I scanned the paper. It was an essay competition on “What I would do if I were president of Nigeria”. “Umm, ok…” I took to the podium and extolled the virtues of education, being the future of Nigeria, gra-gra-gra-gra. More polite applause, shiny eager faces turned up to me in bafflement, me looking down on them equally baffled.

Eventually the quiz started, Ene Ita testing their knowledge of how many days a certain president had held power, what was the exact date (“To the day! I don’t just want the year!”) Nigeria adopted the Naira as its currency, who discovered the source of a certain river, in what location was such-and-such a former military leader arrested. To their credit, they did very well and I wondered how many of us would know about such obscure minutiae of UK history (or indeed, why we’d even want to).

The interval was filled with ghastly evangelical music so I hurriedly stepped outside for a welcome breather. The primary schoolkids were also on their break, observing me with curiosity. Then a fierce debate broke out. “It’s a man!” “No, it’s a woman!” I just smiled sweetly and gave them a wave, and unable to stomach the thought of any more fascinating facts about dead military rulers or songs praising the supernatural, strolled into the lunchtime sun, leaving them none the wiser, my work as ambassador done for a day.

Podcast: Interview with Brian Eno at the Brighton Festival 2010

2010-03-03T17:07:00.001Z

This year Brian Eno's in the hot seat curating the Brighton Festival. I met him at the Festival launch at the end of February and here's the interview I made with him.

Eno talked to me about art's role in creating an alternative future, the joys of curating a major arts festival, and why people in Moulsecoomb might just appreciate Afrobeat.

More Festival interviews as they happen, and I must dig out some archive interviews with people like Patti Smith and Kim Deal, languishing somewhere in my flat on minidisc and even cassette!

Listen to the Eno interview here.

All the punk gigs I went to from March 1977 to April 1980 (the story so far - bear with me)

2010-01-17T11:25:00.000Z

Whilst making an effort (ok, it was a bit half-hearted) to tidy my flat, I came upon a terminally anal trainspotterish list of all the bands I went to see for three years.

I was living in Hastings and back in the day the pier was on the gig circuit (it's sadly closed now and falling to dilapidation) and I also used to bunk off school early to come over to Brighton when - would you believe it? - there was actually a 1.30am train back, so I could get to school the next day.

My only regret was not going to see the Pistols when they played the Pier in July '76. I was too scared because I'd just turned 15 and being a weird kid, I was always being verbally and occasionally physically attacked by older blokes, so It wasn't the Pistols I was scared of but the bloody greboes, as none of my schoolmates would go with me. Bastards. Oddly, I never got to see X-Ray Spex at all, and didn't see The Fall or Wire, a couple of my very favourite bands, until 1980.

Being a teenager in Hastings was a largely a miserable experience, so John Peel and the steady stream of bands coming to the Pier was a life-saver. Oddly, there was never any issue about being over 18 to get in (or even to drink, for that matter!) as there often is now.

26.3.77 The Stranglers/Eater, Hastings Pier
I recall this cost 75p! There were about 50 of us there and we were all a bit scared by Eater, with their nasty-looking 14 year old drummer, Dee Generate. Every time Andy Blade lurched to the front of the stage, we all shrank back a few feet, just in case. In case of what, I don't know. High Cornwell did a weird thing rubbing his throat to make a spurt of sick come out. Nice.

7.5.77 The Vibrators/ Sham 69, Hastings Pier
One of the very loudest gigs I've been to. The Vibrators were god-awful C-List hippies who'd swapped their flares for skinny plastic trousers and got lucky for 5 minutes. I can't believe they've re-formed now. After Sham's set, Jimmy Pursey did some idiot dancing in the meagre audience then pretended to wee in his beer glass and drink it. How very punk rock.

21.5.77 The Damned/ Adverts, Hastings Pier
This was more like it. I loved The Damned, having heard their Peel session in '76 then 'Damned Damned Damned' being the first punk album out. After the horrors of Prog and the nadir of music from '75-'76, there was something so refreshingly exciting about a band whose songs clocked in at under two minutes, played at breakneck speed. I'd barely heard The Stooges at that point, so it was all rather new to me, and as I was into wearing black and dinner suits with brylcreemed hair (said I was a weird kid!) I became a bit of a juvenile Dave Vanian stalker and always loved Sensible's utter daftness too. Rat Scabies getting his willy out at every opoortunity wasn't som pleasant though.

By this time the 'straights' had picked up on punk so gigs were getting busier and buzzier. After every gig a rumour would spread that there were "a hundred Teds outside" ready to beat us up. There never were.

16.7.77 The Damned/ Auntie Pus/ Skrewdriver, Hastings Pier
Yes, you read that right - Skrewdriver. This was before they turned nazi, when they were a dumb-as-fuck bootboy band from Blackpool playing rubbish Rolling Stones covers at double speed. Auntie Pus was an Elvis Costello-lookalike who played guitar and sang a song about being "Halfway to Venezuala" which I still bloody remember. His main role seemed to be as a recipient of streams of gob and missiles. I wonder where he is now.

On the way to the gig with my friend Virginia, we were stopped by the police. She was wearing a binbag with real razor blades sellotaped to it, and they made her pull them all off. One early adopter of punk gigs in town was artist Laetitia Yhap, who had curly pink hair and always appeared with her then partner, fellow artist Jeffrey Camp. We always used to get rather excited when they arrived ("The old people are here") as we had a degree of consternation that they were so old they might get over-excited and have a heart attack, which of course neither did. Years later I re-met Laetitia and told her of our anxiety. Turned out she was in her thirties at the time! And I'm glad to say she's still alive and kicking, and still with pink hair.

I also have fond memories of Tracey Shipley, who had the hugest knockers and would wear just a string vest. Cripes, that was some sight when she was pogoing down the front.

17 & 18.8.77 The Damned/ Adverts/ Fruit Eating Bears, London Sundown Club
2 nights in a row in a venue on Charing Cross Road which was still halfway to being built. The floors weren't installed, so you would find yourself pogoing in the throng, then falling into a concrete hole. Bizarrely jazz sax player Lol Coxhill joined them onstage, presaging his performance on the band's second (dire) album. I found a flicknife at one of the nights, which I kept for ages and was rather excited about.

The Fruit Eating Bears were ghastly pub rockers who did a song about wanking as presumably they thought that made them Punk Rock. Their only claim to fame was competing to be Britain's entry in the Eurovision Song Contest a couple of years later. They came last.

I loved The Adverts. They wrote brilliantly wordy and complex songs, waaay beyond their capacity to actually play the bloody things. TV Smith would spend each gig dripping with gob, Gaye standing coolly to one side, staring at her bass as if she was off her face on speed (I suspect she may have been) and cocking up every bassline. One Chord Wonnndeeerrrrsss! Oh yeah!

22.10.77 The Adverts/ Joe Cool and the Killers/ Wrist Action/ Plastix, Hastings Pier
Oh dear, a real C-List support lineup here. The Plastix were Hastings' own punk band, who had a track on a ghastly 'Live at the Vortex' compilation. They were fronted by Hastings 'bad boy' Huggy Lever, who later went on to form nouveau-mod band The Teenbeats (more of them later) then resurfaced in the film 'Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels' and a stint on 'Eastenders'.

29.10.77 The Stranglers/ The Dictators, Hastings Pier
By this time the whole world had caught on to punk and the gig was full - 800+ people bouncing up and down as one had the pier floor unnervingly bouncing too. I hated The Dictators, long-haired yank bullshitters who rode on the coat-tails of punk. I gobbed on the guitarist's hand so he stood on my face, which I suppose I deserved under the circumstances.

12.11.77 The Clash/ Richard Hell/ The Lous, Hastings Pier
Wow, this was a really exciting one. The Lous were a female French band, ok but not that special. I recall Richard Hell being given hell by the audience, presumably for the crime of Being American, and being arsey in return only made things worse. The Clash were amazing, high energy, dripping with sweat, Strummer spitting out the lyrics with passion and venom, the entire audience in one voice on the intro to 'City of the Dead' (the b-side to 'Complete Control' still two of my very favourite Clash songs). I was so excited I had to pogo all over the furniture in the living room when I got home.

30.11.77 The Damned/ Dead Boys, Brighton Polytechnic (Moulsecoombe)
Oh dear. This was The Damned at their nadir. 'Music For Pleasure' was an appalling album, rubbish weak tuneless songs, shabby production from Nick Mason. You know a band's lost direction when they get someone from Pink Bloody Floyd to produce them. Stiv Bators did his best to inject some energy into the proceedings, writhing inside the bass drum, but it was generally a feeble affair.

I recall the Captain smelt rather agreeable, so I asked him what he smelled of. "Egg roll, booze and snot" came the reply. To this day, if someone mentions something smelling nice, those words always come to my mind.

4.2.78 The Lurkers/ Crabs/ Plastix, Hastings Pier
The Lurkers were pretty poor sub-Ramones C-Listers, who released their singles in depserate marketing ploys such as pressing them in red, white and blue versions, and with 4 different picture sleeves, or a gold flexi-disc. Yes, I bought all the bloody things. I recall The Crabs were as creatively and musically suspect as their piss-poor name. As for the Plastix, see above and Teenbeats below.

8.3.78 Buzzcocks/ Slits, Brighton Top Rank
Now, I don't think this was the infamous 'riot' gig, or if it was, I'd gone for thre train by the time it kicked off. Someone else will know. This was before the Slits had become Dennis Bovell-ised, so they were still at their Peel session-era raucous best. As we queued outside the gig, the band came out the side door like terrifying tykes, hair akimbo and knickers over their jeans, and we watched in amusement as they went to the steak house over the roaf (above what was/ became Swifts) and were rapidly ejected by the staff, to be followed by ejection from all the other nearby eateries in West Street. Pete Shelley wore a badge onstage which said "I Like Boys".

18.3.78 (Eddie and the Hot) Rods/ Radio Stars/ Squeeze, Hastings Pier
Eddie and the Hot Rods were fortunate to get a career piggy-back from punk but they were really only part of the pub rock/ white male r'n'b scene of the mid-70s (Dr Feelgood, Kilburn & The Highroads, Count Bishops, Hammersmith Gorillas) and achieved an element of notoriety when fans ripped out the seats at a London Rainbow gig; their 1976 album 'Teenage Depression' without doubt has one of the finest album covers of all time but unfortunately the contents didn't live up to it.

Slimming their name down to The Rods (to escape their pub rock associations?) they at least released the anthemic new wave (rather than punk) song 'Do Anything You Wanna Do' in '77.

Radio Stars were another dodgy pub rock bunch, but with a poppier edge and tried to acquire some punk credentials with songs like 'Dirty Pictures'. Lead singer Andy Ellison had been in original 60s mod band John's Children (with Marc Bolan) and was trting to re-invent himself as a punk, with varying degrees of failure. However, he was renowned for a daredevil live show, and climbing on the speaker stack, managed to shove his head through the ceiling and I think was hospitalised for his troubles.

Squeeze were the new boys, having released their debut EP 'Packet of Three' and their first album coming out around this time. Jools Holland managed to resist the temptation to play bloody boogie-woogie piano over the other two bands' sets.

2.4.78 Doctors of Madness/ Johnny Warman, London Marquee
Another not-punk band who managed to get in on the act, the Doctors of Madness were a post-glam/prog group with spacious sweeps of electric violin and Burroughsian lyrics containing copious references to drugs and sex, most of which were lost on me at the time (I could never figure out why anone would have a load of 'snow' in their head or their "breakfast on a mirror with a blade"). Fronted by the quoteworthy Richard Strange (more of him later) the Doctors had a punkish single 'Bulletin' out in '77, and by this point The Damned were imploding, prompting Vanian to take on a stint as a co-vocalist, hence my interest in the band.

Actually co-vocalist was probably a bit generous: he'd come on about three songs in, growling and staggering a bit, drawl along for a couple then stagger off again, but I was happy. During this gig Vanian jumped off the speaker stack and landed on my forearm; rather than wash off the black footprint, I displayed it proudly to my friends until it went of its own accord after a few days. Johnny Warman? Dia-bloody-bolical. More pub rock. Begone!

8.4.78 The Damned/ Soft Boys/ Johnny Moped/ Prof and the Profettes, London Rainbow
The Damned's first (of many) farewell gigs. Jon Moss (formerly of the band London, later to become Boy George's boyfriend and drummer in Culture Club) had replaced Scabies by now. The gig was a manic mosh, the band playing hard and furiously, to be joined by Scabies a few numbers in and Lol Coxhill again for 'You Know', ending with the obligatory trashing of the gear.

I don't remember what the Soft Boys were like at all, though I did subsequently see them headlining at the Hope & Anchor, maybe in 1980. Johnny Moped and Prof were mates of Sensible's and I recall them being pretty shite.

16.4.78 Doctors of Madness/ Johnnny Warman, London Marquee
Again? Blimey. I loved the Marquee in Wardour Street - the stink of stale beer and fags, the sticky floors, the sweat, being able to see right up the noses of the performers. And always a chance to go to Dark They Were and Golden Eyed, a sci-fi shop up a nearby back alley which stocked ZigZag, Sniffin' Glue, Ripped & Torn and the finest selection of punk badges.

13.5.78 Doctors of Madness/ Roger the Cat, London Nashville
Not sure if Vanian was still singing with them at this point. The Nashville was a grotty pub venue in West London... and who the hell were Roger the Cat?

6.5.78 Here & Now/ Alternative TV, Kent Canterbury University
An open-air afternoon gig. Here & Now had some kind of Hawkwind connection with all the attendant hippy tendencies, who shared a ghastly split album with ATV. Mark Perry was of course a Punk Rock Hero but I fear the hideous barefoot hippiness of this whole event left me with a tarnished image of ATV.

16.7.78 Magazine/ Zones, Canterbury Odeon
The Zones were a Scottish band featuring members of former mid-70s teenybop band Slik, again a bunch of losers trying to renivent themselves off the back of punk. Magazine were superb: their debut album was out about this time, 'Shot By Both Sides' was one of the finest post-punk singles. Devoto was amazing, climbing his peculiar mic stand-cum-ladder affair (Julian Cope later used a similar prop), sneering out the lyrics and prowling the stage.

20.8.78 Ultravox/ L-7; 21, 22, 23.8.78 Ultravox/ Angletrax, London Marquee
I absolutely loved Ultravox. I'd like to point out that this was the original lineup with John Foxx on vocals for the first three albums, the band only finding commercial success when ex-Slik vocalist Midge Bloody Ure joined them. I thought John Foxx was gorgeous and slightly androgynous, and in my teenage angst I was drawn to his lyrics of alienation, sexual ambiguity, drug-fuelled dissipation and walking rainy streets in moody overcoats - pretty much how my life turned out in the end as it happens. Again, a band coming in on the back of punk, they were nevertheless hugely influential on acts like Simple Minds and Gary Numan, and had that good old electric violin too.

Yes, I went four nights on the trot with my mate Walnut and these were some of the sweatiest gigs I've been to in my life. Hanging around Wardour St for a glimpse of our hero pre-gig, on the last night night Foxx recognised us for being there at the front of every gig and put us on the guest list. Thanks! They were still playing tracks from their guitar-based first two albums, but were moving toward the synthier sound of 'Systems of Romance'. All amazing gigs.

As far as support bands went, L-7 were not to be confused with the female grunge band of a few years later and were totally nondescript, and Angletrax did a herky-jerky post-punk thing with a female singer who sang a song about anorexia which involved a lot of shrieking. Three nights on the trot got a bit wearing.

24.8.78 Punishment of Luxury/ Very, Very Nervous, London Nashville
Punilux were a theatrical jerky post-punk band whose single 'Puppet Life' had been played heavily by Peel. I must dig it out and play it as I suspect it's probably unlistenable.

2.9.78 Tanz Der Youth/ Plain Characters, London Nashville
Brian James' pretty poor post-Damned band dabbling in a 'Nuggets' style psychedelic sound. Plain Characters were as memorable as their name. Who?

5.9.78 The Doomed/ Softies/ Rudi, London Electric Ballroom
And so The Damned re-surfaced with Sensible now on guitar, and Lemmy guesting on bass for this gig. Back in action with some fresh songs and a renewed energy, this was an amazing gig. The Softies were the Dutch equivalent of a pub rock band, and Northern Ireland's Rudi had garnered a fair bit of airplay for their first Good Vibrations single 'Big Time'.

20.10.78 The Doomed/ Molesters/ Smeggy & The Cheesy Bits, Sussex University
My loyalty to the Damned meant I forewent Siouxsie's gig on Hastings Pier that night (though I've still got the poster from the gig somewhere). Support from two Brighton bands, the Molesters (shite name) had a couple of quite cute female vocalists, and the diabolical Smeggy went on to form King Kurt.

26.10.78 Doctors of Madness/ Cabaret Voltaire, London Music Machine
I hated the Music Machine. It had probably been quite suitable as a late Victorian/ early Edwardian music hall but as a sprawling gig venue I found it militated against the intimacy I enjoyed of small gigs by virtue of its ridiculously high stage which meant you either had to crane your neck uncomfortably or retreat to a distant balcony to get a better view. It later reinvented itself as New Romantic venue Camden Palace, and is now Koko.

Cabaret Voltaire were suitably noisy and I have a feeling this was the last ever Doctors of Madness gig, accompanied by Vanian and TV Smith (who'd co-written some songs with Richard Strange) on occasional vocal duties. A very pissed Captain Sensible invaded the stage momentarily to do some push-ups for no apparently good reason.

29.10.78 The Doomed/ Snivelling Shits/ Cowards, Croydon Greyhound
Another hideous venue, this time like a soul-less sports hall. The Cowards were Sensible's brother and mates, and pretty shite too. Snivelling Shits were fronted by Sounds journalist Giovanni Dadomo and were a comedy punk band, though I love their single 'Terminal Stupid' for its spoof Rottenisms.

3.11.78 Buzzcocks/ Subway Sect, Canterbury Odeon
Buzzcocks superb as ever; Subway Sect noisy and jangly.

10.11.78 Siouxsie & The Banshees, Spizz Oil, Human League, Canterbury Odeon
Weirdly the first time I managed to see the Banshees, and in their original 'The Scream' lineup. Spizz had a certain charm in this, his first incarnation, but I was excited to see the Human League as I already loved 'Being Boiled' and was into bands using electronics with a punk attitude (the League, Cabaret Voltaire and a bit later The Normal and Throbbing Gristle) as an antidote to the prog vileness of Tangerine Dream et al (OK, I'd not really heard Can at that point, but I was already a fan of Kraftwerk). The League's performance was truly multi-media, with slide projections on two screens behind them; terribly technologically primitive of course, but I'd not seen anything like that before so it was a bit exciting.

14.11.78 Rezillos/ Undertones/ Joy Division, Canterbury Odeon
How's this for a lineup? I didn't catch Joy Division's name but recognised tracks from 'An Ideal for Living' which had been played by Peel. I think they were barely known down south but I was captivated by the bass and drum-heavy sound, and Ian Curtis' manic dancing. Really exciting.

The Undertones were lovely, and I had my copy of 'Teenage Kicks' on Good Vibrations with its fold-out A4 photocopied sleeve with me, which I got eugene Reynolds from the Rezillos to autograph, probably rendering it worthless. Lucky I'm not selling it. Faye Fife looked gorgeous in a yellow PVC mini skirt and when Walnut and I blagged backstage afterwards and she said "Oooh, I saw you down the front," I thought I was going to die.

7.12.78 The Jam/ The Cure/ Patrik Fitzgerald, Canterbury University
I'd missed The Jam in '77 on Hastings Pier due to Damned-following duties I think, so this was the first time I'd seen them, and the time of 'All Mod Cons'. They were tight and powerful, and I thought Rick Buckler the coolest drummer ever, making it look so easy while bashing it out. This was vein-popping sweat-pouringly good.

I loved Patrik Fitzgerald's 'Safety Pin Stuck in my Heart' but was really impressed by The Cure. Pre-lipstick, daft hair and goth, 'Killing an Arab' was just/ imminently out, and they wore anoraks and had a shy charm, songs like '10.15 Saturday Night' and 'Arab' really standing out.

10.12.78 Ultravox/ Snips/ The Skids/ Angletrax, London Lyceum
Angletrax were tolerable again after a quitable break from the screeching, don't remember Snips at all, but whou could forget Richard Jobson's ridiculous dancing in the Skids? I had their first EP and for some reason really liked them, though I think they were pretty much prenentious rubbish now.

Ultravox were amazing - possibly even better than at the Marquee. They were showcasing their new electro direction for 'Systems of Romance' and John Foxx was in fine voice.

14.12.78 Adverts/ The Innocents/ Drill, London Music Machine
No matter how much I hated the Music Machine, I kept ending up going to gigs there. Not a clue who the support bands were.

21.12.78 The Clash/ The Slits/ The Innocents, Hastings Pier
Can this have been the first decent gig on the Pier since March? Seems odd. Those Innocents popped up again and still I don't remember them. Once again bouncing round down the front, loved the Slits for their don't-give-a-fuck chaotic charm.

23.12.78 The Doomed/ Rods/ Waldo and the Wimps, London Electric Ballroom
Waldo and the Wimps seem to have been lost in the mists of time, which is probably a blessing judging by their name. This was the gig that saw the Damned return to form with new songs which would form the basis of 'Machine Gun Etiquette', giving away a free 7" white label of 'Love Song'/ 'Burglar'. Yes of course I've still got it!

26.12.78 Ultravox/ Patrik Fitzgerald, London Marquee
Weird choice for Patrick Fitzgerald as a support. I loved the material from the new electronic direction of 'Systems of Romance'. Walnut and I were always terrible liggers (does anyone use that word any more?) and we hung around backstage in the grotty Marquee tunnel-like dressing room, covered in graffiti and stinking of sweat and beer (us and the dressing rooms). Seem to recall John Foxx had a rather gorgeous willowy girlfriend who we were a bit jealous of.

30.12.78 Elvis Costello/ Richard Hell/ John Cooper Clarke, Canterbury Odeon
I liked John Cooper Clarke a lot but I think this was the only time I got to see him. Elvis was on crackling form, and this was the time he used to do his 'breaking down' schtick during 'Alison' when he'd pretend to lose it and run offstage.

6.1.79 The Damned/ Rockpile, London Venue (Victoria)
The Damned reverted to their proper name, showcasing the new songs from 'MGE'. Support from pub rocker Dave Edmonds. Horrible venue, too big and impersonal.

14.1.79 The Damned/ Heroes, Crowdon Greyhound
You'd think I was sick of them by now, wouldn't you? Don't recall the Heroes at all.

16.2.79 The Pirhanas/ Teen Beats/ Stunshot, Hastings Carlisle
Brighton comedy jangly-ska band with support from Huggy Lever (ex-Plastix)'s neo-mod band The Teenbeats. They played a fearsome live set, and although they were lacking any great musical originality, Huggy was a charismatic and energetic frontman and they were alwasy entertaining. I thiink this might have been their debut gig, and I'm not sure if it was this Carlisle gig or a later one where Ken played guitar so fast and hard his hand bled impressively. Don't remember Stunshot.

14.4.78 UK Subs/ Teen Beats/ 4th Reich, Hastings Pier
The Subs were always a 3rd division punk band, some quite good tunes but they were so bloody old and fat. 4th Reich had a ghastly name and a sound to match.

22.4.79 The Damned/ Auntie Pus/ The Nips, Croydon Greyhound
Notable support from The Nips, who'd changed their name from the charming Nipple Erectors and were the proto-rockabilly band fronted by Shane Macgowan.

3.5.79 Magazine/ Simple Minds, Canterbury Odeon
Another amazing outing from Magazine, this time showcasing songs from 'Secondhand Daylight', a much overlooked album for a reason I can't fathom as it's brilliant. Simple Minds were just starting out, and I became a bit of a fan. Jim Kerr learned everything he knew from Devoto until he stopped copying him and decided he wanted to be fucking Bono instead.

21.5.79 Kleenex/ Raincoats/ Spizz Energi, Canterbury Art College
This was a real goodie. Spizz's third incarnation, raw, angular and energetic, pre-"Captain Kirk"; The Raincoats ramshackle, jangly and shouty, and Kleenex, three moody Swiss women whom I couldn't resist for their chugging pop and "ee-ee" punctuations in their songs. Kleenex later became Lilliput after legal threats from the tissue company (like you'd mistake a Swiss female punk band going "ee-ee" for a snotrag) but their first two singles as Kleenex were always my favourites.

25.5.79 Nicky & The Dots/ Rampage/ Teen Beats/ The Same, Hastings Carlisle
Don't remember Rampage or the Same. Nicky & the Dots were a Brighton 'Vaultage'-era band; much mlore pop than punk.

9.6.79 Purple Hearts/ Fixations/ Teen Beats/ Scooters/ The Lambrettas, Hastings Pier
Now all the punks and skins had acquired parkas and an inane chant of "We are the mods, we are the mods, we are, we are, we are the mods" to accompany smashing the windows down Robertson Street after the gig. This, The Lambrettas' first outing was competent if shy; don't remember the Fixations or Scooters (now there's a shit name). The Purple Hearts made a name for their sharp suits, gobby frontman and pretentions at being the spokesmen for the mod generation. The Purple Hearts and the Teen Beats had a certain punkish energy and I recall this was one of the Teen Beats' best showings.

28.7.79 UK Subs/ Cyanide/ Security Risk/ The Names, Ashford Stour Centre
This gig was vile. Along with the rise of the mods, this was also the era of nazi skins - and this gig was over-run with them. In a hideous sports centre, they sieg-heiled their way through the bands, fighting and thumping anyone in their way. Pretty vile. I don'r remember The Names, but Security Risk were a female-fronted punk band, Cyanide a proto-oi band who were all pretty crap. The Subs did their best in the face of the hostile crowd but Walnut and I left before the end as the aggressive atmosphere was intolerable.

28.9.79 Gary Numan/ Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Hammersmith Odeon
5.10.79 Gary Numan/ OMD, Brighton Dome
Did I really go and see Gary Numan twice in a row? Obviously. Actually I quite liked him. "Are 'Friends' Electric?" had already been a hit, I had the two Tubeway Army albums and I rather liked his Burroughs/ Bowie rip-off and androgyny. Yes I know he's a plonker but I didn't at the time. OMD were fun, they'd only had "Electricity" out so far, which I had, but I remember they also played "Red Frame/ White Light" (a song about a phonebox fer christ's sake!) but I'm not sure what else.

OK, there's more to come later -

The last days of Hellingly Asylum

2009-12-30T09:40:00.000Z

Growing up in Hastings, there was always a joke that the town was so full of nutters because they were all given a one-way train ticket from Hellingly mental hospital. It may even have been true.

Situated in a remote pocket of the East Sussex countryside, even the name of this early-Edwardian institution conjured up an evocative image of - well - Hell. It closed around the time I left Hastings for the more civilised surroundings of Brighton in the mid-80s, but it always retained its fascination for me.

So when the news came that it was finally due to be demolished in early 2010 to make way for a luxury housing estate, a couple of mates from Hastings suggested a photographic mission to capture the last days of this once magnificent building.

We deliberately chose the last Sunday of the year, the day after Boxing Day, when we figured security would be low. Demolition was already well under way lower down the site, but the part we were heading for was as yet untouched. A couple of our small party had already been in and had previously been challenged by security, who have a tendency to patrol with fearsome dogs.

The day turned out to be perfect: bright sunshine, chilly and crisp, so it was over a security fence, through a bramble bush, under another fence, more brambles, up and over through a window, then another, and we were in, unchallenged.

The building is amazing: a huge red brick construction dominated by a large water tower; corridors with more corridors off them; a huge ballroom with an arched ceiling bearing ornate ceiling roses and the remnants of what must have been beautiful stained glass windows; hydrotherapy baths with sinister-looking knobs and dials; the smashed remnant of a hairdressing salon; long ward rooms; tiled kitchens and bathrooms. It's a warren, with angular corners giving the feeling you could walk forever and disappear into an infinite architectural fractal.

Many of the corridor roofs have collapsed, and floorboards are perilous, partly through rot and partly vandalism. Numerous fires have been set and every single fixture, fitting and pane of glass has been destroyed, some by intruding vandals, and no doubt others by the developers to deter architectural salvage. Despite that, there's still enough to see to conjure an image of what it would have been like: remnants of wallpaper, remaining fireplaces, signs, a room full of hoists and other medical implements, the cracking paint revealing fragments of previous layers of colour, tattered orange curtains flapping as nature's green tendrils creep in through shattered panes.

One of the most fascinating aspects is the graffiti. Alongside the usual scrawled knobs and obscenities, artists have used the building as a canvas for an inventive series of works: a ghostly woman rising from a bath; a top-hatted tailcoated figure in the corner of the ballroom; two creepy Victorian girls by a doorway, all adding to the atmosphere of a place where misery, tragedy, fear and joy would have commingled for eight decades.

My pictures are on Flickr but for some reason I can't link to them, but the link to my site is in the left-hand bar here. There's also a link there to Hellingly on Google Earth - catch it while it's still visible.

The Wisdom of the Taxi Driver

2009-12-19T17:33:00.000Z

Last night I was DJing at the Marlborough and, failing to find a taxi by phone due to the wintry weather, slithered down the road to hail one off the street. I lugged the Technics, CD mixer, bag of records and bag of CDs into the boot while he watched and we started off with one of those conversations of niceties, y'know "How's it been tonight?", "What do you do for a living?" sort of thing.

Then I made the mistake of slagging off the council for not gritting the pavements which have turned into sheets of ice, everyone slithering about and lots of people falling over, wondering about the cost of gritting versus the cost to the NHS of all the people who'd be using their services that night.

Big mistake. This brought on a tirade against the council, how evil it is and how all the staff should take a pay cut. Forced to defend my Trades Union colleagues, the driver then admitted his politics veered toward the communist.

Me: Ah well, we remember when the Labour party at least had some socialist principles. I don't know who a socialist could vote for these days.
Taxi Driver: Mind you, if that British Party toned it down a bit, lots of people would vote for them.
Me: [silence]
TD: Was that the wrong thing to say?
Me: Well....
TD: Mind you, that Nick Clegg's an idiot.
Me: Nick Griffin?
TD: Yes, that one.
Me: Yes, he's a moron, but a dangerous one.
TD: I'm not anti-semitic though.
Me: Err, good. They just hate anyone who's not white and anglo-saxon.
TD: Don't get me wrong...
Me: [thinks: uh-oh, what now?]
TD: I do like dark-skinned women.
Me: [pauses to think for a moment] Well I quite like dark-skinned women too.
TD: [quick as a flash] I thought you might. Don't get me wrong, but I thought you were a bloke when I picked you up.
Me: [laughing] Don't worry about that!
TD: I was in the merchant navy for 20 years and if I learned one thing, it's not to be homophobic.
Me: Good for you. It doesn't matter what people do if it's not hurting anyone. It's none of your business. Live and let live.
TD: I wish people would do that. Mind you, I don't think we should disarm if everyone else has weapons.
Me: Oh, so you're a multilateralist.
TD: I don't know anything about that. I bet you went to university.
Me: Uh, a bit later in life.
TD: [doing a U-turn at the bottom of Edward Street to turn past the Marlborough] If you'd told me you were a copper I wouldn't have done that.
TD: [as I was lugging the Technics, CD mixer, records and CDs out the boot onto the icy road] I used to be a champion weightlifter you know.
Me: Uh, call it seven quid.
TD: Thanks very much. You seem like a very unprejudiced person.
Me: Well I try.
And shaking my hand, he bade me a very good night, and drove off into the icy night to flummox his next passenger.

3 amazing gigs in 4 nights! Tom Brossard/ Mary Hampton/ Susanna & The Magical Orchestra/ Monotonix

2009-11-26T11:21:00.000Z

One of the things that keeps me interested in Brighton is the way you can pick any night of the week and know you can step out your door and hear some amazing music that'll change your day, week or even life. And this has been one of those weeks.

The divine Sarah M sent me an excited text on Saturday ordering me to see Mary Hampton and Tom Brosseau on Sunday night at the Hand in Hand, so how could I refuse? It's a tiny pub in Kemp Town (with its own brewery - hurrah!) so it was shoulder-to-shoulder when we arrived. Mary Hampton's set of ethereal folk was amazing: Hampton played piano and guitar, accompanied by cello, brass and violin in an utterly a captivating performance. There's an appealing darkness and fragility to the songs, and the vocal harmonies transfixed the audience.

Californian Tom Brosseau's set was markedly more upbeat by comparison. Brosseau plays country-tinged acoustic guitar folk accompanied here on some numbers by the marvellous Angela Correa, comandeering the seats in the pub's front window as a makeshift stage. A warm and engaging performer, Brosseau's stylish guitar picking left the audience in rapture, encoring with a ramshackle rendition of Irene Goodnight, dragging a pissed old geezer from the pub to join in, despite him not having a clue about the words. Surely no better way to spend a rainy Sunday night in November.

Back to Kemp Town on Monday for Norway's Susanna & The Magical Orchestra in the perfect setting of the Hanbury. I first heard them on Radio 3's Late Junction when the first album, Melody Mountain came out, and was smitten: it's an album of cover versions of the unlikeliest songs deconstructed and stripped down to Morten Qvenild's sparse keyboards and Susanna Wallumroed's celestial, weightless vocals.

Now up to their third album, the set represented songs from all three, mixing originals and slowed-to-a-crawl covers of Kiss's Crazy, Crazy Nights, AC/DC's A Long Way to the Top and their painfully desolate version of Love Will Tear Us Apart. The duo returned to encore with what may well be the definitive version of Hallelujah, Susanna's voice spiralling to registers only audible to dogs, bats and the criminally insane. Magical indeed.

Sarah M rocked up again as my gig guru for last night's Monotonix gig, having been ranting about their last appearance at the Engine Rooms and making me swear a solemn promise to attend their next gig. Hector's House was the unlikely venue, rammed with rocker boys, a smattering of old punks, beery rockabilly types and pissed girls. From the start this was going to be a very messy event indeed, as beer flew and the Israeli three-piece ran wild through the venue, delivering a brain-bursting set of feral rock n roll at its sweatiest, hairiest and most deranged.

The drumkit and stool were passed above the crowd as vocalist Shalev surfed up to beat the tom, held aloft by the audience. Shalev leaped onto the bar to drop his horrid little red towelling pants and stick the mic up his arse, while boots flew overhead as the whole band disappeared into the crowd surging from one side of the room to another, yet still somehow keeping the music going.

A brilliant night that's left me with a mystery bruise on my head, my hair stinking of beer and filthy jeans as souvenirs. Monotonix rock!

2009-11-11T01:35:00.000Z

Well for some reason I've decided to take the plunge and join the (Inter)National Write a Novel in a Month competition.

The idea is to churn out 50,000 words this month - that's just over 1600 a day, and it's about quantity not quality, just getting your ideas down and then worrying about honing it later. 50k is a novella length; most novels are 70k+ and expect an airport bonkbuster to be about 200,000 words. Hell, If Julie Burchill can do it, so can I!

I had some spare hours at Boston airport on the way back from my trip to New York (pics here) and courtesy of a couple of incidents on my travels, set to working on a story on my laptop before the batteries conked out.

Never having written anything to speak of as fiction since school 35 years ago, luckily it coincided with NaNoWriMo so it's given me the push to move it on. Unfortunately my story contains very little literary merit.. err, ok, it's pretty much just lesbian filth with an attempt at a narrative glued in the gaps between smutty episodes. Oh - and some hardcore Catholicism thrown in for good measure.

There aren't any 'winners', just completers who hit the 50k target, and in 7 days I'm a gnat's crochet from halfway to the target and still managing to dredge up enough from my foetid imagination to keep the up wordcount. It's proving an interesting experience, snatching writing time as and when, carrying my masterpiece round on a memory stick, backing it up religiously and stealing snippets of conversation and others' experiences to glue into what laughably passes as a plot. Wish me luck!

UPDATE Saturday 14th:
Well I've just cracked 30,000 words and am running hell for leather to the finishing line. Unfortunately I've got to concentrate on a narrative now, and I really don't know how the blooming thing's going to end.... Quick, more sex scenes needed!

Thursday 19th.... Nearly at 48,000 words and still more than a week to go! I've finished the narrative and am now getting the characters to talk for 5 minutes before they shag.

Saturday 21st - cracked the 50k barrier! I've done it. Whooo!

Tuesday 24th - 55,500 words and the filthy first draft emailed out for critical feedback.

By the people of Brighton, for the people of Brighton - the old Music Library, a triumph over hubris?

2009-10-09T11:46:00.001+01:00

This is one of my favourite places in Brighton, a throwback to the good old days when people opened up closed or derelict buildings for creative use by the community.

According to My Brighton and Hove,
"The building now in use as the Music Library was erected in about 1925 as an office and showroom for the Brighton and Hove General Gas Company, on the site of the Pavilion Baptist Chapel. This chapel was designed by Thomas Cooper in Ionic style and opened as the Trinity Independent Presbyterian Chapel in about 1825, but in about 1896 it was converted into a bazaar and then a warehouse."

I remember going there as the music library, opposite what was the main library in Church Street, now converted into the bar and foyer of the Dome. It closed in about 2000 when the new Jubilee Library was being planned, then in 2004, this slimy piece of hubris appeared:

"New private members club opening for Brighton's creative crowd.

"The Media Pool is a new private members club that will cater to the media and creative industries in Brighton. It will comprise of three floors with adaptable spaces designed for business meetings, quiet working and relaxing. There will also be a dining room offering fine dining and bar area."
(Source: Brighton Media Centre, another slimy piece of hubris)

Endorsed by the Fanshawe (nuff said then, and I've already used the word hubris three times) and with gushing articles in the Argus about how glamorous film stars would soon be flocking to the town - sorry, "city", it epitomised all that was rotten in the state of wannabe London-by-the-Sea.

And then it never happened.

The building lay empty and rotting until the last year or so, when it's been used for some of the most groundbreaking art shows you'll wish to find. On three floors, using the building's nooks, crannies and huge expanses of wall, it's currently home to a show of darkly humurous imagery (giant crows, rats, twisted religious iconography) and the home to underground events like the magnificent Blind Tiger Club.

Rumour has it (well, we all know how Brighton rumours are) that there are plans to develop it into a restaurant. In the midst of a recession? I know that Brighton's showing few outward signs of hardship, but don't we have enough of those poncey eateries with bleedin Jubilee Street Zilli's, bolloxin Jamie Oliver in the Lanes et al?

How about a venue which provides a space for genuine creativity, run by the people of Brighton for the people of Brighton, not by a cabal of council-backed luvvies or reality tv arrivistes?

Links:
Quite a few photos on my Flickr site - search for music library
Rough Music wrote a funny article about the Mediapool in 2005

Back Row Brighton

2009-10-05T23:14:00.000+01:00

Today's cinema-going experience is frequently one of being trapped in an overpriced chav-hole, mobiles bleeping and the rattle of ice in cups of Coke. Maybe some people still subscribe to a notion of the magic of cinema-going, but it seems that idea largely belongs to a past long gone.

QueenSpark Books' latest project conjures up that golden era of cinema-going from the 30s to the 60s, in the book Back Row Brighton, which came out this week. It's hard to believe now that Brighton has had over forty cinemas in its time, with just the ghastly Odeon and Marina monstrosities and the historic Duke of York's left, due to celebrate its centenary next year. And Brighton (well, Hove actually) has its own notable place in cinema history with the pioneering studios in St Ann's Well Gardens, and the early cinematographic experiments of William Friese-Green.

A remarkable number of films have also been made in or feature Brighton, and at Sunday's book launch at the Duke's, Frank Fludd presented a fascinating short DVD he's compiled of extracts from films made between the forties and the early seventies, with famous titles like Brighton Rock, Genevieve and Carry on at Your Convenience, and unknown and often now-unavailable films like the comedy Penny Points to Paradise (Harry Secombe, Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Alfred Marks, Bill Kerr) and thriller Jigsaw (Jack Warner, Yolande Donlan, John Le Mesurier).

The book doesn't pretend to be a definitive history of cinema in Brighton (check out David Fisher's brilliant website and My Brighton and Hove for that); rather it's oral history testimonies of memories, from the charming - the old dear dancing with the Teddy Boys in the aisles at Rock Around the Clock - to the alarming - being sprayed with pesticide at every screening.

QueenSpark's also produced an illustrated 2010 calendar to coincide with the book, featuring 'then and now' pictures. What's saddest is to see how these beautiful Victorian and art deco structures have been ripped down and replaced with 70s and 80s slabs of grim concrete. At least the Astoria (pictured above, closed since 1977) has been preserved thanks to its art deco interior, but the longer it remains closed, the more the fabric of the building deteriorates. Maybe cinema-going would be a more magical experience today if we still had such magnificent places to enjoy the latest Harry Potter epic or Bruce Willis masterpiece.

Brighton under siege

2009-09-29T17:00:00.000+01:00

Residents of Brighton and Hove have been living under a virtual police state for the past few days thanks to the Labour Party conference. Steel barricades, swamping surveillance, the constantly hovering chopper, the incongruous sight of cops with machine guns strolling round Regency Square.

This has given police carte blanche to stop and harass anyone they fancy - a crusty with a can of brew minding his own business on the sea front is hardly a threat to the security of the government.

They don't take too kindly to being photographed and I've been moved on or had to scoot off sharpish a few times for daring to snap back at the state which has been filming and photographing me constantly for the past 30 years - at least on Sunday's demo there were so many of us photographing that we managed to get away with it trouble-free.

While I'm not into conspiracy theories, I get the feeling that this show of strength and so-called Ring of Steel is not so much for the benefit of protecting Brown and co but as a practice run for controlling and subduing the civilian population as a whole at some point in the not-so-distant future.

More DJing gigs at the Marlborough

2009-09-24T07:36:00.000+01:00

Next dates: Friday 18th December, 8-midnight
New Year's Eve, time tbc

Free entry, all welcome
Expect punk, electro, decent 80s (The Cure, Soft Cell), some current stuff which passes my quality threshold, ska, anything else I fancy.
Hope to see you there!

Marlborough Pub, Prince's Street Brighton, opposite the Royal Pavilion.

Check out January 2010's G-Scene for a profile.

And now the Loop festival has folded

2009-09-02T10:32:00.001+01:00

A pity to see another local festival has folded: reports have come through today that Loop has gone bust.

While it's a shame as the organisers were trying to do something a lot more cutting edge than Beachdown, my comments below about that particular scenario I think are pertinent in this case too.

Nowadays I think it's almost impossible to launch a festival on anything like the scale of either Loop or Beachdown without establishing a firm credibility and public following. I really enjoyed the first Loop festival, a one-day affair at Steine Gardens with Fujiya & Miyagi (pictured above at Loop 09), Dan le Sac vs Scroobius Pip, the Go! Team, Mira Calix and more. I don't know how they did financially, but it looked pretty crowded and created quite a buzz.

This year, however, trying to stretch it over three days, cancelling the Matt Herbert gig, and with a great lineup on the Saturday (Fever Ray, The xx, Squarepusher, mum) but a patchier one on the Sunday (James Yuill, Tuung and Fujiya excepted), it was too much and people voted with their wallets accordingly.

Well done for them trying something different, but with many of the newer festivals having to take account of people's tastes, finances and the competition from established festivals with a guaranteed quality of lineup and attractions, tough times are ahead for anyone who wants to take chances.

Beachdown ballsup - Concorde 2 saves the weekend

2009-09-01T09:47:00.000+01:00

Well it wasn't entirely unpredictable that the Beachdown festival would go to pot. Blaming Brighton people or the recession is a bit lame - it's your reputation that cuts it. Cancelling the Fringe Festival tent in May with a week to go, leaving local contractors from last year unpaid or paid months later, and a lineup that could have been interesting-ish fifteen years ago (Ocean Colour Scene excepted - puh-leeze!) all militated against the event.

So more power to Concorde 2 who picked up the local bands scheduled to play, and created a 3-day Bank Holiday free festival.

Personal highlights were the marvellous Gloria Cycles, Puncture Kit (pictured above) who plays drum 'n' bass on his bicycle, Marina Celeste (sometime of Nouvelle Vague) and peace 'n' love reggae from Rebel Control, who were perfect for a scorchingly hot afternoon. A great atmosphere, lots of goodwill and a sterling example of how people in Brighton can actually get their shit together when they try.

Nothing lasts forever...

2009-08-10T08:10:00.000+01:00

Of course, I wasn't naive enough to think it would last forever. But there's a part of me which really believed it would last longer than it did.

We had a good few years together, almost my constant companion. When we weren't together, I looked forward to the times we would be. It was all so unpredictable, and that was part of the enticement. Sometimes hands-in-the air euphoria, followed by heart-wrenching downbeat moods. I never knew what was coming - sometimes it was just plain wrong, but more often than not it would stop me in my tracks.

We were so close, so intimate.

But then warning signs came. The occasional freeze up, stony silences. But all it would take was a bit of gentle coaxing, push the right buttons, re-connect and all would be restored to normality. But it started happening more and more. Some days would be fine, others we'd be on a train or a bus and I'd just get frozen out, no explanation, no rhyme or reason. But somehow things would get back on track again - until the next time.

But sooner or later, it had to happen. And then you just have to be honest with yourself that nothing lasts forever - one day your iPod will simply die.

I love The Proms!

2009-07-25T09:24:00.000+01:00

Whenever I tell I someone love the Proms, I'm greeted with a curious stare and an "Uh, so you go waving a flag?" It's a pity that the ghastly pomp-and-circumstance of the last night is the only thing most people know about the Proms, as it's a truly democratic music event.

The Albert Hall is a beautiful building, a memorial to all that was most overblown and showy about the Victorian era. Queueing for two hours for the Arena brings you into contact with slightly shabby old men with elasticated waistbands, carrier bags and lunch boxes (ok, I admit it, I had a sandwich in a lunch box too), nerdy teenage music students, and, for last night's programme, a noticeable number of Japanese people.

The evening was about cross-musical links between East and West, and France and Spain, featuring Debussy's orientalist Pagodes and swirling La Mer, Ravel's mysterious Rapsodie Espagnol and fiery Tzigane, with rousing solo violin from Akiko Suwanai.

The East was represented by Toru Takemitsu, his dreamy Ceremonial opening the three-hour concert, with barefoot shō player Mayumi Miyata starting the piece. The shō is a small hand-held set of pipes, making a delicate ethereal sound, like a quiet harmonica or accordian. Mitaya also reappeared to play the shō on the UK premier of Toshio Hosokawa's Cloud and Light, and takemitsu was represented a second time with the Debussyesque Green.

Apart from the Ravel Rapsodie, the Franco-Spanish crossover was represented by Pable de Sarasate's 'Carmen' Fantasy, with a stunning virtuoso violin performance by Akiko Suwanai, who rightly had the audience whooping and cheering at the end.

Forget your Union Jacks and Rule Britannia. The Proms represents a fantasic value for money accessible event - a fiver for nigh on three hours of amazing music in a beautiful setting.

Post Office Blues - Lorraine Bowen's new video

2009-07-07T22:46:00.000+01:00

London Road Co-Op closed about three years ago due to a falling demand for flat caps, nylon girdles and long johns. It's now a cavernous hollow shell of a building with just a post office tucked away at the back, used almost exclusively by the ghastly revenants who stagger the jagged lengths of the thoroughfare's toxic ley-lines.

So when cabaret performer, funny lady and all round good egg Lorraine Bowen asked me to lend a hand with her new video, "Post Office Blues", I was there.

Lorraine took her place in the queue, respelendent in leopard-print coat, and a good foot taller than everyone else, while I lurked behind with the video camera, traing not to laugh too hard and she pretended to be an aeroplane, huffed, pouted, mimed the words and generally looked rather odd.

In a typical display of Britishness, with the exception of an over-heated youth who bellowed "We're gonna be on YouTube!" nobody turned a hair, which makes the final video all the funnier, as you see these little glances to the camera from customers, and people looking sidelong at Lorraine without wanting to be spotted staring.

Anyway, I think the finished film is hilarious, and a fitting tribute to a British institution which may well go the way of the Co-Op before too long.

Here it be:
Lorraine Bowen's Post Office Blues

Lorraine's MySpace

Lady Carol in Hastings 4.7.09

2009-07-07T07:37:00.000+01:00

Having seen the astonishing performance by Lady Carol at the Brighton Festival Fringe (review here), Erica and I decided to put her on in Hastings at our occasional night, Another Planet.

And she didn't disappoint.

The audience really didn't know what to expect as Carol's style is a bit hard to explain - comedy with cover versions of songs by Queen, Johnny Cash, Radiohead and Nirvana interspersed by originals, all played on a ukulele and with a huge voice with a delicious raw edge. The audience sat rapt, and while I'm not sure they entirely got the comic descriptions of growing up in Ireland, the temperature rose a couple of degrees when Carol whipped off her dress in the second half to reveal another one underneath and a rather stunning pair of legs. Phew.

On Sunday we did our tourist guide bit and took Carol over the West Hill for a pint in the garden at the Stag and a wander down to the Stade. This was in contrast to the horror of Robertson Street on Saturday night, which rather startled Carol as we walked back through its unrestrained Breughelian chaos and barely contained violence. Nasty.

Thanks to Lady Carol for a lovely gig, to everyone who came, and to Eat@ for their eternal helpfulness, and we'll definitely get her back next year.

Links: Lady Carol's MySpace
Another Planet's MySpace

Stonewall riots - 40 years on

2009-06-28T17:05:00.000+01:00

This weekend saw the fortieth anniversary of New York's Stonewall riots, marking the birth of the gay rights movement.

Tired of being victimised by police, the clientele of mafia-run Greenwich Village gay bar the Stonewall Inn, fought back when cops attempted to raid the venue. For five nights from 28th June 1969, drag queens and gay men battled police, inspiring a defiantly upfront gay and lesbian rights movement in the West in contrast to the previously low-key, almost apologetic approach to gaining equality which had been seen up until then.

In Britain that prompted the birth of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF), fomented in a revolutionary atmosphere of anti-Vietnam war camapigning, the Black civil rights movement and feminism.

To mark the anniversary, LGBT history group Brighton Ourstory Project organised an exhibition and talk at Hove Library. Linda Pointing from Ourstory introduced a sequence from "Over the Rainbow", a long-forgotten documentary shown on Channel 4 in 1995, featuring powerful and frequently funny contributions from people involved in the riots or in radical gay politics in the US at the time. Inspired by the news coming from America and the rapid formation of the GLF in London in response, a group of Sussex University students set up the Brighton GLF, its highlights being a march on the sea front and a 400-strong ball in the Albion Hotel. One of the founders gave a sometimes illuminating, if a bit rambling, talk about those early days, and Linda read a couple of short extracts.

After the talk a group of us trolled down to the beach to set off some giant paper sky lanterns to symbolise the 80+ countries where being gay or lesbian is still illegal. they were meant to be set off at the International Day Against Homophobia but the weather had been too awful, so we had a fitting end to the event as we set off sky lanterns into the sunny evening sky (see Lilac Bonzai's Flickr photo stream to get an idea of it).

Naturally people (ok, mainly children) wanted to know what we were doing and my attempt to explain to a five-year old only received a blank look, so much respect to his mum who told him "When a mummy wants to love a mummy and a daddy wants to love a daddy, in some countries they're not allowed to." Job done!

Spacedog in Hastings 20/6/09

2009-06-25T19:38:00.000+01:00

"This one's about inviting your relatives round for a meal... except they leave without eating anything - because they're dead." That tongue-in-cheek eeriness epitomises Spacedog's darkly humourous take on electronic music.

The Angliss sisters - Sarah on theremin, musical saw, laptop and assorted home-made instruments, and Jenny on haunting ethereal vocals - channel the spirit of classic British horror films like The Wicker Man into a fascinating set of songs by Brel, Weill and traditional children's rhymes with an inevitably creepy edge, supported by an array of other-worldly instuments.

A tribute to the original Spacedog, Laika, is accompanied by robotic bells, while automaton doll Clara twitches and flicks an ace of spades card during a particularly haunting song about a dead child, punctuated by excerpts from a 60s public information film about the dangers of playing near water.

The second part of the show featured a live demonstration of an original 1910 Edison phonograph, playing from a wax cylinder and recording voices from the audience onto another, unnervingly sounding just as if it had been recorded a century ago. Both fascinating and funny, Spacedog are one of the most inventive acts playing at the moment, and the audience at Eat@ in Hastings were left beguiled by this spooky and engaging performance.

Das Fenster 26/5

2009-05-29T12:06:00.000+01:00

I'm always a bit sad when the Festival ends as it's quite an anticlimax after a month of buzzing round town. So I thought I'd stretch it out a bit by popping into the Holmbush Records launch night at the Brunswick.

Holmbush describe their roster as 'folk step, poetronica and kittencore' – well I get the first two, but not too sure about the third. Maybe it was epitomised by Steve Elston, who sang quirky sweet songs about being treated 'like a horse', with a neat guitar style, charming the audience with his delivery.

Harry Neve combined electronics, sampled soundscapes and guitar with an engaging set, and Kopek impressed with a solo set of amazing guitar work and melancholy songs.

I'd only heard Das Fenster's demo but thought I'd pop down on the strength of that, and they far surpassed my expectations. A five-piece of German, Dutch and British origin, they comprise female vocals, double bass, violin, bassoon, guitar and sweet, sweet harmonies. The set of beautiful dreamy summer songs kept the audience enthralled throughout. Quite marvellous.

Copperdollar 23/5

2009-05-29T12:04:00.000+01:00

The amazing Speakeasy at the Blind Tiger Club at the start of the festival set a high bar for cabaret nights – a venue transformed into a sleazy barely-legal dive with stuffed animals, a poker table, kissing booth (where I spent an almost indecent amount of time...) and ballsy house band. Trouble was, it was all a bit illegal and got raided and closed down....

But Copperdollar at the Black Lion rose to the challenge and met it with panache. I'd never normally set foot in the Black Lion, drinking in the Lanes being one step up from West Street, but the venue was rendered unrecognisable with Mexican Day of the Dead decorations, a coffin, giant skeleton and staff dressed in amazing Mexican outfits with painted skull faces.

Every aspect of the night had been thought through meticulously, with a house band playing amazing rock n roll versions of songs like Don't You Want Me and Stayin' Alive, and sporadic outbreaks of cabaret performance – two skeleton people dancing a raunchy tango, a funeral parade passing through, a conga snaking round the bar.

They call it 'immersive theatre' and that's a great description, happening all around you, constantly surprising and with attention to every last detail. It was just a pity that they only ran for two nights, but with the amount of work and participants involved, I don't really blame them. Copperdollar were worthy winners of Best Cabaret in the Latest Brighton Festival and Fringe awards, and I look forward to future events if they're only half as good as this one.

Oh- and the Blind Tiger Club didn't come away emptyhanded – they won Most Groundbreaking Event, so I hope to see them again soon too, when the dust has settled.

Antony & The Johnsons 21/5

2009-05-25T15:49:00.000+01:00

This concert with Antony and the Johnsons was even more of a magical experience than I'd anticipated. With a superb six-piece band variously playing cello, violin, drums, guitar, clarinet and sax, Antony Hegarty sat at the grand piano in subdued atmospheric lighting, his astounding voice soaring across the Dome and leaving you swooning. Hegarty's hilarious banter with the audience between songs belied his sometimes aloof image, cracking jokes about his home town of Chichester, Catholic upbringing and the 'fruitiness' of Brighton.

The preponderence of songs from recent album The Crying Light highlighted their qualities in a way I've not got to grips with on CD, displaying a pastoral character almost in the English folk song tradition, and two rousing standing ovations showed the audience was in no doubt we'd been witness to a truly extraordinary performance.

Group Doueh, Omar Souleyman/ Marina Celeste, 20/5

2009-05-25T15:48:00.000+01:00

This was an evening of North African/ Middle Eastern music at the lovely setting of St George's Church in Kemptown. Doueh is a self-taught guitarist from Western Sahara who plays both ordinary electric guitar and traditional stringed instruments, augmented with keyboards, percussion and vocals.

The guitar playing verged on the psychedelic at times, but the harsh sound mix proved a less than pleasurable listening experience, and the band never seemed to get into a groove. Syrian Omar Souleyman was a different proposition. The sound sorted out, he started with a long vocal intro before the rhythms kicked in and his mojo started working on the eager audience, inspired into bursts of 'ethnic' hand-dancing to his infectious Arab pop.

Then it was a nip onto a bus for Marina Celeste at the Speigeltent. Marina is one of the multutide of breathy French female vocalists to add her talents to the three albums by Nouvelle Vague, who re-work punk, new wave and 80s classics into a bossa-nova style. She's now working on solo material, and her elfin charm, cheekbones and sexy French accent wowed a packed house as she slunk and skipped her way through impressive original material and Nouvelle Vague classics. Lovely.

Eric Walton Esoterica, 16/5

2009-05-18T18:26:00.000+01:00

Saturday afternoon saw an enjoyable magic and mind reading show with suave and sophisticated master of sleight of hand Eric Walton.

A dapper New Yorker, his entertaining show at St Andrew's Church combined a raffish wit with tricks that just left you wondering how on earth he did that? He's on again next Saturday afternoon at the same venue, and appearing nightly as Mephistopheles in And the Devil May Drag You Under, an entertaining late-night musical comedy revue.

The Art of Not Looking Back 15/5

2009-05-18T18:21:00.000+01:00

A world premier from this Brighton Dome-based dance company, led by affable Israeli Hofesh Shechter, this was a stunning piece of work for six female dancers. Opening with a spoken narrative of childhood abandonment by his mother, the dancers performed faultlessly in unison in a tightly choreographed piece to a soundtrack of cut-up electronica, Bach and spoken word.

The physicality and precision of the dancers' moves was astounding in a beautiful piece with an underlying darkness. It's always hard to impose a narrative or decide what a work like this is 'about' but debate raged in the pub afterwards with fellow audience members as we'd all interpreted it in different ways – probably all of us wrong!

This is the first time I've seen Shechter's work and while modern dance is often a 'difficult' medium, I'm sure he'll be winning hearts and minds through amazing works like this.

**** UPDATE: This show won 'Best International Act' at the Latest Festival and Fringe Awards

Lady Carol of the Moon 14/5

2009-05-18T18:20:00.000+01:00

You know you've just seen a special show when you leave the venue too stunned to talk.

That was everyone's reaction last night after a staggering performance by Lady Carol of the Moon, a vivacious Irish musical comedian with a ukulele and one of the biggest voices you'll ever hear. Despite the comic interludes, delivered with an easy charm and engaging verve, this was a dark, unsettling show, opening with a version of Nirvana's Heart Shaped Box which perfectly set the tone for the rest of the evening. The take on Radiohead's Creep genuinely sent a shiver down the spine, and The Show Must Go On was almost heartbreaking.

The couple of hundred of us in the audience were left in no doubt that we were surely privileged to have witnessed this startling one-off performance at St Andrew's Church, and if Lady Carol returns to Brighton, I'll be first in the queue.

However, the same couldn't be said for the Raymond and Mr Timpkins Review show later that evening at the same venue. Raymond and Mr T deliver a hilarious wordless physical comedy performance, using fast-cut snippets of songs which they mime to using placards with mis-heard lyrics, in a high-energy performance.

Unfortunately the acts in between their sketches were frankly appalling: a woman who wouldn't have lasted two minutes in an amateur open mic night and a man who made noises from the Battle of Britain until you wished the Stukas would appear and put us all out of our misery. Final stand-up Noel Brittan almost saved the day and was genuinely funny, but one out of three ain't good.

***** UPDATE: Lady Carol won 'Best Music Event' at the Latest Brighton Festival & Fringe Awards, seeing off Antony & the Johnsons in a close-fought contest!

Review of Lady Carol in Hastings, 4.7.09

Erpingham Camp, Palace Pier 13/5

2009-05-18T18:18:00.000+01:00

My top pick of the 'main' Festival so far has got to be The Erpingham Camp on the Pier.

One of notorious writer Joe Orton's lesser knows plays, the play is set in a Butlins-style holiday camp, and deals with power and pomposity and what happens when you lose your grip on absolute control. But there's a twist - the audience are actually part of the show, divided into three groups and joining the action as it races up and down the length of the Pier from three different perspectives. An electric performance from all the actors, and a theatrical tour de force to perform three plays in one and hold it all together.

Not for the fainthearted who can't cope with a bit of audience participation, this is an astonishing show and very funny to boot.

***** UPDATE: Erpingham Camp won 'Best Outdoor Event' at the Latest Brighton Festival & Fringe Awards

Janis & And the Devil May Drag You Under 11/5

2009-05-12T17:20:00.000+01:00

A stunningly good performance from Nicky Haydn in Janis, a one-woman show at St Andrew's church about the last hours of Janis Joplin. Set in a lonely hotel room, Haydn creates an imaginary dialogue with the audience about Joplin's rollercoaster life, never letting on where the boundaries of doped-out fantasy and reality lie.

One minor criticism is the lack of amplification, as the church's acoustics occasionally swallowed the more intimate moments of the piece, but the sheer energy of the performance itself more than carried the event off. If you missed it, there's another performance on the 16th of May.

Late-night at St Andrews is And the Devil May Drag You Under, a deliciously camp cabaret with musical comedy from Frisky & Mannish (pictured above), stunningly fit acrobats and aerialists and the obligatory hula hoops and nipple tassels, all in the most inappropriate setting. A special mention for Devil Des O'Connor, whose panache, comic songs on the uke and cheeky humour soon perked up a smallish Monday night crowd.

***** UPDATE: Nicky Haydn won 'Best Female Performer' and Fiona Fletcher won 'Outstanding Contribution to the Festival' for her brilliant programme at St Andrews, at the Latest Brighton Festival & Fringe Awards

Legless & Harmless, The Haunted Moustache, Aviator Club & Voodoo Vaudeville, 9/5

2009-05-12T17:17:00.000+01:00

The second weekend of the Brighton Festival and Fringe was packed with some corkingly good events. Surely the most right-off show of the Fringe is Legless and Harmless at the tiny 3and10 theatre. Featuring a pair of useless Scousers who are trying to put together a show about two flatmates, one of whom has lost the use of his legs and the other his arms, this is laugh out loud anti-PC which leaves no target untouched. The surreal dance with the blow up doll will have you gasping with shock at the sheer tastelessness of it. They're back on again on the 23rd and 24th of May.

Dave Bramwell's Haunted Moustache was an entertaining monologue about the weird (and true) experiences Bramwell had when he was bequeathed a Victorian moustache in a glass case from his great-Aunt. Funny and engaging, St Andrew's church was the perfect setting for a quirky and very Brighton show.

It was hula girls, 20s hot jazz and nipple tassels all the way for the last night of The Aviator Club at the Speigeltent and Voodoo Vaudeville finished a marathon evening with surreal comedy, odd films and a star turn from the hit of the Fringe, 75-year-old cabaret artiste Lynn Ruth Miller, whose show Ageing is Amazing gives us all hope that there's plenty of fun to be had even if you don't have all your own teeth.

***** UPDATE: Dave Bramwell won 'Best Male Performer' at the Latest Brighton Festival & Fringe Awards

Spacedog at the Marlborough 8/5

2009-05-11T17:34:00.001+01:00

Where else would you find a Victorian seance, ghostly theremin and mournful songs of death and decay but in the company of Spacedog?

Coming on like a bunch of science teachers putting on an end of term show, Spacedog charm, beguile and surprise with their collection of home-made electronic instruments, including a rack of small bells programmed to work automatically, and an odd construction of steel tubes stroked with a bow to produce eerie other-worldly tones. And of coursethere's a musical saw in there too.

Taking in songs by Brel and Weill as well as originals including a tribute to the original spacedog, the hapless Laika, Jenny Angliss’s soaring vocals augmented by her sister Sarah's electronics, Spacedog's Marlborough show provided a magical escape to other worlds.

The second part of the show was a re-creation of a Victorian seance, conducted by Professor Wiseman. We sat in the darkened room, having contemplated a number of objects which would invoke the spirit of a long-dead music hall star. Holding hands in a circle, the collection of objects before us identifiable only by luminous strips to make them visible in the dark, there were gasps and screams as the wicker ball flew into the air, and the tambourine clattered on the table, sending the candlestick flying. All Victorian parlour tricks of course, but you could see how a gullible audience of a previous era could willingly believe the spirits truly were amongst us.

Lynn Ruth Miller at the Quadrant

2009-05-11T17:32:00.001+01:00

Incontinence pads, smoking crack and checking the obituaries to see who's newly available to date are just three of the subjects Lynn Ruth Miller shared with us in her surprise hit festival show, Ageing is Amazing.

With no buildup, Lynn Ruth's week long late-night residency at the Quadrant's Laughing Horse club became a word of mouth success, pulling in audiences from twenty-somethings to slapheaded oldies, drawn by the sheet quirkiness and charm of this musical comedy show.

By turns shocking, filthy and touching, Lynn Ruth has an innocence in her performance which leaves you gasping incredulously “Did she REALLY say that??”. Taking up comedy four years ago at the age of 71 after a career as a writer, she's showing that her life experience is a rich mine of hilarious comic potential and I hope she achieves her ambition to pop her clogs onstage at the age of 99. I'm sure she'll get what she wants.

***** UPDATE: Lynn Ruth won 'Star of the Festival' at the Latest Brighton Festival & Fringe Awards

The Oyster Princess, Brighton Dome 6/5

2009-05-11T17:29:00.000+01:00

I'm a huge fan of live soundtracks to silent or old films, and there's usually one on the menu in the Brighton Festival. Last year there was Henry V, previously Asian Dub Foundation played along to La Haine, and this year saw German director Ernst Lubitsch’s 1919 silent The Oyster Princess with a soundtrack from Belgian combo Flat Earth Society.

Unfortunately the words “Belgian” “jazz” and “silent film” don't necessarily draw in a crowd, and sadly the Dome was only half-full for this treat of an evening.

The first half was disappointing, a 20s film about a femme fatale 'exotic' Chinese dancer in the dance halls of Piccadilly with plenty of smouldering glances and lively dance sequences. unfortunately it was cut up tediously repetitively as if by an over-enthusiastic VJ, and the improvised soundtrack bore no relation to the film's movement or spirit.

However The Oyster Princess was a different matter. A genuinely funny film with a ludicrous storyline of a spoiled rich girl who wants to marry a prince, this time the soundtrack perfectly complemented the film's action, adding to its comic potential. Disappointing that events like this don't have a wider appeal as it was a thoroughly entertaining evening with plenty to smile about.

Breaking News, Theatre Royal Brighton

2009-05-11T17:28:00.000+01:00

This was always going to be one of those shows where you never quite know what to expect, and you suspect the people onstage don't either.

Set in the plush surroundings of the Theatre Royal, Breaking News stripped the stage back to the bare walls, with a bank of TV monitors, cables and racking to bring us a riff on today's news from around the world.

Real-life journalists from Russia, Germany, India, Syria, Iceland and South America took us through that night's 8 o'clock news from their own country, describing the top news stories, stopping and rewinding to return to noteworthy stories, changing channels around the region to find something more interesting (it was s slow night for news), bouncing back and forth between each other.

This was interspersed with autobiographical details about each individual's career in the media, and readings from ancient Greek texts about the Persian wars, the context the modern parallel with the war in Iraq, and being a story of the bringing of bad news.

However, coming in at more than two hours in length with no break, the show could have done with some judicious editing, requiring as it did extreme concentration from the viewer. The Persian war readings just reduced those sequences to a snail's pace and added an extra unnecessary layer to an otherwise challenging show with an original and fascinating premise.

No Fit State Circus at the Brighton Festival 28/4

2009-05-11T17:23:00.000+01:00

Forget your lions and tigers, this is circus which celebrates human strength, daring and acrobatics.

Originating in Ireland with the aim of training people in the community in circus skills, NoFitState features an international cast of aerialists, trapeze artists, and even a clown, whose spectacular mishaps from on high provide the laughs in the show.

The action takes place in and above the audience so you're constantly moving around the big top, as performers swoop above you, or bounce from one side of the tent's roof to the other. The performers have an astonishing level of fitness, providing an entertaining and impressively physical experience.

Police run riot - 30 years on from the murder of Blair Peach

2009-04-17T18:04:00.000+01:00

Following the recent G20 protests in London, it seems to have come as a sudden revelation to some people about the brutal and lawless way our police force frequently operates.

It certainly makes a change to see the police coming under such close scrutiny following the death of Ian Tomlinson, attacked by police as he walked home from work on the day of the demo. The assault was filmed by a passer-by and rapidly made its way round the world, leading to the suspension and questioning for manslaughter of the policeman concerned, and followed by more home-made videos of other violent incidents.

Videos from the Guardian here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/apr/15/g20-police-climate-camp

Undoubtedly he would have got away with the attack had it not been filmed, and none of the other videos of police brutality would have been taken nearly as seriously as they are now. The police have a long history of filming and photographing - overtly and covertly – demonstrators, dating back decades. I well recall the CND rallies of the early 80s, animal rights demos, miners protests, marches against apartheid and so on, when being filmed by an army of police was an occupational hazard, and failure to remove any item obscuring your face often leading to arrest (although strangely the police are allowed to do this, frequently removing identifying insignia as well).

Yet now the omnipresence of cameraphones and digital cameras is turning the tables. The police can’t nick every one with a phone, and while the National Union of Journalists is campaigning against police harassment, assault and arrest of journalists covering demos http://www.thejournalist.org.uk/Aug08/feat_cops_main.html , they’re fighting a losing battle when it comes to any old joe with their digital device.

There’s much talk of the practice of ‘kettling’ – confining protesters to a small area for hours, yet this is hardly a new practice. Anyone in Trafalgar Square in 1985’s anti-Apartheid demo will well remember being held in there for five hours almost to suffocation point – I really thought someone (possibly me!) would be crushed to death – while the police yanked people randomly from the crowd to receive a beating, or letting small groups of people, into Charing Cross tube, only to be greeted by a squad of police attacking them.

The spectre of the murder of Blair Peach has also risen since the death of Tomlinson. Peach was a schoolteacher marching in east London against the Nazis, ironically thirty years ago this month, and witnesses say he was hit on the head by police, dying later. http://www.thefirstpost.co.uk/46954,features,blair-peach-30-years-on-death-of-a-political-protestor
At the time his death became a cause celebre, attributed to the feared thuggish paramilitary Special Patrol Group, though despite numerous witness statements, nobody was ever charged. The SPG was subsequently disbanded, only to be replaced now by the Territorial Support Group (spot the difference) who are implicated in the death of Tomlinson. Campaigners for the truth about Peach’s death have never let the case rest and they must be having a feeling both of déjà vu and of optimism that just maybe – just maybe – if the truth comes out about Tomlinson’s death and justice is seen to be done, then the facts about Blair Peach’s murder and those responsible will finally emerge after thirty years in the shadows.

Experiment Stage 1 completed

2008-12-08T17:24:00.000Z

Well now, I've just spent a week doing an odd experiment.

You know when one of those daft ideas pops into your mind, and you think "Nahhh...."? Well this time, thanks to a pint of Smoke in the Evening Star, I thought "Hmmmm....." and so I spent a week from 1st to 7th December photographing every single item of food and drink I popped in my gob... and every poo I did too (didn't bother with the wee as it's too boring unless you've eaten beetroot).

I posted the results on Flickr, apart from the poo as there are a lot of weirdo Flickrites out there, and I might have attracted some attention I didn't want. I also gaffer taped a lapel mic to my gut and recorded it squiggling and grumbling, and now I'm going to put them all together in a short film to delight and enthral you.

It was an odd experience as my eating habits are now exposed to the world, and eating and shitting are things people feel a bit personal about, though of course we usually eat (ok and very occasionally crap) in public. Try staring at your best mate eating and you'll soon have them wondering about you.

It wasn't a "Supersize Me" experiment in grossness - I didn't eat anything other than my normal diet - but it did feel odd at first to be recording my intake in such meticulous detail, and letting anyone else in the world see it.

So the full story's below and the pictures are on Flickr (why can't I get any bloody links in here? See sidebar for the link).

Regular updates will be on the blog and when I've finally got the film done it'll be on YouTube. And if you'd like an invitation to the World Premier, just let me know!

Hmm, someone else suggested entering for the Turner Prize today - that's definitely a pattern there.

Seven days of food, drink and its results....

2008-12-02T13:55:00.001Z

First of all, I’d like to point out I do NOT have an unhealthy obsession with food. Or beer. Or poo, come to that. It’s just that, for the next week, I’ve decided to photograph everything that goes in my mouth… and comes out the other end.

And at some point this week I’m going to tape a microphone to my stomach to record my ruminations for posterity, and with a view to making a short film of it all.

It was just one of those ideas that pops up followed by a “Why not?” moment. Picking this time of year probably wasn’t the best idea, as although it’s still only very early December, there’s already a stream of Christmas lunches, events and other causes for celebration which may slew the results a bit, but hopefully it won’t be too unrepresentative of my daily intake and output.

I’ve been mulling over a name for the project, and have already rejected ‘What Goes in Must Come Out’, ‘Alimentary My Dear Watson’, ‘Colonic Irritation’ but have settled on the more prosaic working title of ‘Bodily Functions’ so until I have an inspired brainwave that’s it.

The photos are up on Flickr (see link in side bar) but I’m still in two minds about posting up the poo ones, as it may attract unwelcome attention from some of the odder Flickrites, but I can confirm they will feature in the final film, so you won’t be missing out.

I’m also recording some audio diary snippets, so if you see me with my camera and recorder this week, pop over and say hello!

Day 1, Monday 1st December

Two cups of tea, Erica's lovely home-made apple pie with a dob of Swedish Glace vegan chocolate ice cream. An odd combination for breakfast, but it strangely works. Disappointing-looking poo caused by Sunday night's home-made spinach curry and Guinness.

I wasn't planning on being at work but I popped in to say happy birthday to Gordon, had a cup of blackcurrant and ginseng tea and ended up embroiled in emails, so no lunch. Snack of gathia (the Bombay Mix bits that taste of cat's wee) and early tea/ late lunch of parsnip, potato, coconut and ginger soup with white toasted bread. Another disappointing poo - and only 2 today! Must poo better.

Two cups of tea. Drinks with workmates - two halves of Leffe and two and a half glasses of white wine. Veggie skewer, hummus and salad from Kebab Express ("Where's your hat?" Mr Kebab Man asked. "Right here on my head," I replied. He's definitely odd.) Soya milk hot choc to round the day off.

Hm. I'm definitely finding it a bit strange photographing my poo, which I never thought I would. It's not squeamishness, it's just a bit..... peculiar. But maybe I'll get used to it soon.

Day 2, Tuesday 2nd December

This is terrible. No early morning poo and I'm going to London. I think it must be some form of toilet fright. 2 cups of tea, a quarter of a old cherry flapjack I found at the bottom of my bag. Cup of black coffee.

Half-hearted lunchtime poo at last, then popped over to Brick Lane for 2 samosas and a pakora - lovely. Half a litre of tap water. Pint of 'Reinbeer' winter ale in the Wetherspoon's at Victoria Station, then met up with the lovely Eilish and Kath for 3 small glasses of cava and ten grapes on the train. Two reasonable quality pints of Harvey's in the Crescent back in Brighton, which provoked poo number 2.

Yesterday's parsnip soup kept on giving - three bowls of it eventually but at least I finally finished it.

So I set this blog up today in the interests of making this a truly multi-media experience, and emailed selected people I thought might be intrigued to be in on it. And I had some great responses including links to a colonic irrigation site featuring hideous black strings of turd, a reminder about an artist who tinned his own poo (hm, where there's muck there's brass...) and plenty of “ewww”s. Funny how it's the poo and not the food that people are interested in, though I've started using the shorthand 'Poo diary' myself.

Pictures are all up to date on Flickr, but I've decided to keep the shit ones to myself, though they will appear in the final film, as I know there are some VERY weird people out there on Flickr, and I suspect they're not the kind of people I'd wish to associate with. Mind you, it could improve my rusty German, I suppose.

On the train back from London we discussed entering it for the Turner Prize. No more shit than the ones in it this year.

Day 3 Wednesday 3rd December

Usual start to the day of several cups of tea to the Today programme and two poos. I've found I now think about food ALL the time, which is a bit extreme, though I do think about it a fair bit as I like to plan what to cook, and today's a work xmas dinner (yes I KNOW it's only bloody 3rd December!!!). But I've also found it's made me MUCH more conscious of when and how I eat. There's an element of deferred gratification – only for a few seconds, admittedly, but I'm now thinking “Ooh, hang on, I can't pop this in my mouth til I've photographed it,” which makes me realise how much I do just shove things unthinkingly into my gob (well, after checking the ingredients first, of course).

I feel like everything I eat is being publicly scrutinised and I have to be more conscious of how that's presented to the outside world, and taking photos of it in public places adds to that. I don't think I'm eating anything different to what I'd normally have, but maybe it feels a bit more controlled. Hm, I'm not sure what I'm getting at here, so maybe I'll come back to that idea in a bit.

Right, it's 1020 and I'm on the train to Farringdon, time for one of yesterday's leftover pakoras.

Black coffee then lunch of beany soup which I totally forgot to photograph – though I got the empty bowl – and bemused responses from my colleagues which I recorded, again fixated with poo. Lentil and root veg pie with green beans – very garlicky and tasty. No afters but black coffee with brandy. Nine glasses of wine (yikes) and seven glasses of water. Poo back at home. Three poos today - I'm improving. And yet more suggestions of entering for the Turner Prize. I'm starting to see a pattern here.

Day 4 Thursday 4th December

Four cups ot tea and two enthusiastic poos, heavily influenced by the red wine, for starters. Tried to record my gurgling stomach, then found I didn't have the right mic connector at home to plug a lapel mic into my recorder so I'll try again later.

Late breakfast/ early lunch of two wraps with bean salad, tomato and green pepper, one with red pepper hummus, the other with babaghanoush, and a green tea. Half a litre of tap water. Went to the gym for my free 5-day trial (thanks Lorraine!) and did a strenuous pilates class, ten minutes on the cross-trainer, twenty minutes in the pool and ten minutes in the sauna and steam room, and came out looking like my head had been boiled.

Late lunch/early tea of baked potato (in the microwave at work - boo, it's not the same) with red pepper hummus and more bean salad. Cup of green jasmine tea.

Thank you for your emails, which I've been enjoying:

"What an interesting idea - can't wait to see the results (well, some of them...)"
"Errrrrrrr! Melita!? Errrrrrrrrggggghhhh!!!"
"Possibly the oddest email I've received all year!!!!"
"Bring it on and at least it’s not in smellavision!"
"Do look on German sites – the Germans absolutely LOVE talking about poo/stools/sizes etc!"
"genius, have read blog, bit scared to visit flickr...."
"Definitely the weirdest of the day my dear! But not the weirdest ever....."
"the gut sounds are borborigmy - I know this because I have recorded my own with a contact mic. Most gurgly after a black coffee of a morn" (see, I'm not the only weird one!)
"Good luck with your experiment you nutcase"
"brilliant darling......i can't believe you actually counted the number of grapes you had?? that's 10 you owe me I guess"

At home I settled down with a pot of tea and gaffer taped the lapel mic to my stomach to record the rumbles and gurgles. I got an hour's worth of fizzes, pops, groans and squirls, some of them sounding like sonar pings and some like depth charges.

Tea of stir-fried brussels sprouts with spinach noodles and toasted seeds. Ten nuts, four crackers with red pepper hummus, one clementine and NO ALCOHOL!

Day 5, Friday 5th December

Usual breakfast of a pot of tea, one poo (no, not for breakfast, silly!). Two wraps at work of tomato, green pepper, bean salad and red pepper hummus with another cup of tea.

Lunch of leftover sprouts microwaved with fresh noodles boiled up before I came to work. Nowhere near as nice as last night's fresh offering, and noodles don't microwave at all well. Cup of blackcurrant and ginseng tea, half a pot of fruit soya yoghurt which I forgot had been open in the fridge from two Sundays ago, but no ill effects so far.

Went to the launch of Brighton Open Houses and had a small glass of cava, then home for two bowls of fresh tomato and red pepper soup, made by charring the peppers and tomaotoes to remove the skins, frying with a red onion, some veg stock powder, a dash of red wine - lovely. Another poo.

Off to see the utterly filthy and hilarious Two Wrongies and two small glasses of white wine, snuck in by Kath and Eilish. Off to The Kitchen bar for Louise's Girl on Girl night in a new venue, and three pints of Peroni. I knew there's a good reason I don't drink draught lager. Ugh. Another poo at home then a cup of Shreddies with soya milk (seemed like a good idea at the time).

Day 6, Saturday 6th December

Two cups of tea, then a pot of Shreddies with soya milk on the train to Ashford. No poo yet. Soya sausage roll from Holland and Barrett (not actually all that nice but Ashford doesn't seem to have anywhere decent to eat) with chocolate soya milk.

Takeaway black coffee, two mini vegan mince pies, one grape, and a fortune cookie. Train to Hastings and finally a poo, followed by 2 cups of tea, Erica's delicious parsnip, coconut and spring onion soup, 2 slices of wholemeal toast, off to Eastbourne to pick up Fungus from the parents' house, two cups of jasmine tea and a chocolate biscuit before returning to Brighton. Fungus got the skitters and puked up in the back of the car. Not nice.

DJing in the evening at West Hill Hall so the bring your own policy meant six cans of Guinness.

Day 7, Sunday 7th December

Last day! And I've remembered to record everthing too. Guinness-influenced poo, 2 cups of tea, and one-and-a-half sesame snaps. Lovely day to promenade on the sea front, where Erica gave me a half-chewed cherry drop sweet so I could try what was left of it, followed by Sunday lunch of nut roast at the Cooper's Cask with a pint of treacly King's Old Ale.

Walk up to Zena's in Kemp Town (or is it really Whitehawk!) for 3 lovely glasses of mulled wine and a mince pie, popped into work to get some stuff finished for Monday morning, then a reward of a pint of Solstice in the Evening Star; small bowl of gathia, seven nuts and two cups of tea at home. Mission accomplished.

Goodbye to Sudan... for the time being?

2008-10-07T08:40:00.000+01:00

Ali tapped the map of Ethiopia with his index finger. “I’ve been here…. And here…. And here…”. But he wasn’t a tourist, he was pointing out the refugee camps and routes he’d taken to reach them.

It was sobering to realise that every person I’d met had been touched in some profound way by four decades of civil war: as refugees, soldiers or both, and as people who’d lost family members and friends, witnessed or - let’s admit it – even committed atrocities.

But here they were, hungry to learn, eager to play a part in a country with a still uncertain future, working with small local groups, international NGOs or projects like our community radio stations. When I think back to recruiting our team of five journalists in Kurmuk, taking them from scratch and working closely to train them as broadcasters, seeing them develop and gain confidence in just a few weeks, I knew that it was worth taking the trouble with people who were clearly smart but had been held back by scant educational opportunities and the legacy of war.

My one big sadness was that, thanks to the burglary, I wouldn’t see the team actually get on air. The logistics of ordering and shipping replacement equipment meant a long delay, so the team was to return to base at Rumbek with me and my lovely co-trainer, an ebullient female Kenyan broadcaster, Terry Micheni.

Terry, the team and I were due to return on the one flight out a week, giving us a week back at Rumbek, then each of us back to our respective homes. All the radio station staff were going to Rumbek for a team meeting, so when we weren’t actually listed to get on that flight, my heart sank. The next option was a private charter to collect us and another team who’d not found room on the flight either.

Unnervingly, I was to give Rumbek a weather report on the morning of the flight to see if the plane should even bother taking off, let alone go to Kurmuk. We knew that if it rained and the airstrip became unworkable, the charter would be lost and we faced a nail-biting time waiting for another to be organised, our flights back home looming ever nearer. So when the thunderstorm crashed and the rain lashed at 9pm on the night before, Terry decided to put her faith in god, while I trusted to the vagaries of the local meterological conditions.

I had a vision of a night of heavy rain, then calling in at 7am to be economical with the truth about the weather, and causing an awful crash as the plane landed on a sodden runway. However, at 6am, thanks to god, Allah or meteorology, the day was brightening and the clouds clearing. Much as I loved Kurmuk, the prospect of green vegetables and no sloppy lentils was an exciting one, so I was glad to be getting back to Rumbek after two months.

I was concerned that our team of green journalists would be intimidated by meeting people who were old hands now at broadcasting, but I needn’t have worried, as they charmed everyone they met and held their own in group discussions and our social get-togethers, and when it was time for them to return to Kurmuk after a few days, tears were shed on both sides as we waved each other off to our respective futures.

It was genuinely sad to be leaving Sudan after an eventful four months. I’d met some amazing characters, made some new friends, received invites to several countries, rejected innumerable propsals of marriage, worked intensively with people who repaid that work by visibly developing in their knowledge, skills, enthusiasm and motivation, and seen ways that small changes can lead to bigger things. Much as I needed the break after sixteen weeks of thinking about work, planning work, talking about work and actually working, I didn’t feel like this was a final goodbye to Sudan, more an “adieu” until we meet again.

John's story

2008-09-13T15:13:00.000+01:00

John hitched up his shirt to show the bullet’s entry and exit wounds through his belly. He’d been lucky, he said: he’d been drinking heavily before going on patrol so hadn’t felt the pain, only realising he’d been shot when he touched the blood saturating his shirt.

Like thousands of his peers, John was a child soldier with the SPLA. He told me how he and the other boys and youths in his village would wake at 3 each morning to go out to the bush for fear of the arrival of government troops, only returning at 9 each night to eat, sleep and do the same the next day. He’d lost family and friends, seen infants impaled on sticks, known people shot, kidnapped, enslaved, castrated.

So without a chance for education and little prospects for the future in such an environment, John joined the SPLA at 14. At first he was carrying equipment then made the transition to a fighting soldier. He said he was last in Kurmuk back in ’89, a very different place to today’s bustling market town, though it still bears dozens of ruined buildings as a result of the fierce bombardment it received.

Despite the brutality of his youth, John is optimistic for a peaceful future for Sudan as a whole. He’s now working with a medical charity, and acknowledges the atrocities committed on all sides – including his own - during the decades of civil war, especially against non-combatants, who had the hardest time of all. In his work he’s now shoulder-to-shoulder with people who would have been former enemies, not forgetting the past, but learning from it and working for peace and reconciliation.

John was eloquent on the political future for Sudan as a whole, despite the appalling events in Darfur, and I wondered if we’d see him as a politician in a few years’ time. No, he laughed, he had a plan to return to his home village, buy a tractor, fence off enough land for a hundred smallholdings, provide tools and seeds for people to become self-sufficient and grow extra to sell, then charge the farmers a small amount at the end of each year from their profits.

I’ve often felt despair here for the future of the people in Sudan, but meeting John with his vision, good humour, compassion and confidence that he’s not just a voice in the wilderness, made me believe that there may just be some hope after all.

Nobody said it was gonna be easy....

2008-08-26T19:30:00.000+01:00

I’m sitting under a huge gnarled tree at the roadside to write this, green hills with black rocky outcrops behind me and the town football field below, the blue Ethiopian mountains shrouded in low cloud in the distance, and the company of curious passers-by stopping to see what I’m doing.

And I’m just wondering now if anything else can go wrong here in beautiful Kurmuk. Short of anyone dying or getting injured (well only a little bit, more of that later), just about anything that could have gone wrong since I’ve been here has.

Below is the story of my abortive trip to Damazin, getting intimately acquainted with a very particular type of icky black mud around these parts, and spending a less than comfortable night amongst the thorn trees. It was a bit of an ordeal, so when I returned I was in extreme need of a little relaxation and recreation.

Every Saturday night one of the international medical charities hosts the only party in town (well, that I’m aware of anyhow) with the best mix of African music, great company, plenty of Ethiopian Bedele beer, dancing til you drop, and a mangy disobedient dog which had adopted the compound as its home. Unfortunately the night also involves a roasted goat, which pongs appallingly as it sizzles on the barbecue, occasional ribs, legs and other body parts periodically being thrust under your nose on a huge platter.

That Saturday was particularly lively as one of the staff had completed her year in Sudan and was being given an enthusiastic sendoff by all her colleagues and friends before returning to Ireland, so in the prevailing spirit of harmony I went against my better judgment of being nice to children and dogs, and decided to pat the mangy hound, only to be rewarded with a tenacious bite on the hand, dragging the wretched thing several feet before it decided to let go. I suppose if you’re going to be bitten by a semi-wild dog, being surrounded by doctors and medics is the best place for it. Much concern, enough blood to make it look good, but no real damage done.

Next day, with hand swollen to Mr Blobby-like proportions, two canine tooth puncture marks throbbing, I popped down to the radio studio, only to find a broken window, and a mixing-desk shaped gap in the studio kit. I’d been hearing about a spate of thefts in the area during the previous week (including forty bags of cement – that takes some doing!) so it seems we were the latest victims.

It was all taken very seriously by the police, who sent round Kurmuk’s finest to look, tut and examine cable ends for clues. A final tally of the losses is actually pretty painful, considering the kit’s got to be shipped in from South Africa – mixer, laptop, recorder, pair of cans, mic and lots of software discs – a $10k haul, in fact. Ouch. Fortunately our technician Matt was coming in on Tuesday’s weekly flight, ostensibly to finish off the studio setup, now to replace and repair whatever he could in the time available, and to carry out an assessment of what was stolen.

Unfortunately, Monday night saw torrential rains so no landing for the single prop plane on the rudimentary airstrip on Tuesday. The rest of the day stayed wet but thankfully held off just long enough on Wednesday for the pilot to take a bold chance on landing, urged on by the passengers who had no intention of turning back a second time. The logistics of organising anything here are convoluted, specially during the rainy season, when a beautiful bright day can degenerate to thunder, lightning and slates of rain by mid-morning.

So the rest of the time was spent recruiting, interviewing and training new staff for the radio station. Our scheduled on-air date is September 15th, so taking four or five completely green staff and training them from scratch in just four weeks is quite a challenge. And to give them their due, after one week they’ve been making vox pops, interviewing each other and people in town, recording and editing, learning the philosophy of community radio, news values, journalistic ethics and so on. Let’s just see if any of it actually sticks.

But the main downside of this lovely place is the sheer dullness and predictability of the food. Unfortunately we can’t cook for ourselves at base camp as it’s a complex process of juggling several cooking pots on a small charcoal stove, so each day, twice a day, you get rice, ugali (the most appalling vegetable dish ever invented, a thick white stodge somewhere between week-old porridge and polenta, and utterly tasteless), if you’re lucky there’s potatoes and sometimes even chips – except they cook those two hours before everything else so they’re stone cold by food time – with either lentils or beans, and unidentifiable dead things in slop.

Eating in the market is equally predictable – ful bean stew with flat bread or Ethopian injera – a fermented pancake-like bread which looks more like an old towel - in fact when I first encountered it in Nairobi, I genuinely thought it was a hand towel and was just about to wipe my hands on it before I was told otherwise.

They say khawajas don’t eat in the market here, and after four days of Bashir’s revenge following lunch at a place where the serving kids smoked and scratched their armpits, I can see why. Mind you, I’ve also eaten at a place where the serving guy smoked and picked his nose, so it doesn’t always follow, and having done my student stint in catering, I also know how foul some of our esteemed eating establishments can be at home behind the scenes, it’s just that here they do it upfront. The mangoes in the market are life-savers though.

So it’s five weeks now and counting, rains permitting, til I get back to Blighty, that psychological point where your mind’s neither fully in one place nor the other. But I’ve met some great people and formed a curious affinity with the ubiquitous goats for their quizzical looks, nosiness and nonchalant attitude to life, and I have to admire anybody who can work out here for any period of time without going slightly deranged at the chaos and the inability to get a straight answer to a direct question.

Oh – and if you were wondering about the mangy dog, it ended up on the barbecue the next week..... I wish.

Stranded in the bush of thorns

2008-08-09T13:18:00.000+01:00

It's a funny old business, recruiting for the new radio station in Kurmuk. Normal rules do not apply. We had seventeen application CVs from the town, which is encouraging, but it's only when you sit down and read through them that you realise the majority consist of a hand-written page simply pleading “give me a job”, and bizarrely including so-called references written in their own hand. Only two actually said anything useful about themselves and mentioned why they might want to work in community radio, so it was quite a challenge to shortlist eight candidates, looking for a reason why one person who scored 13 out of a possible 50 marks in the shortlisting criteria should be bumped up a point and be interviewed, versus another with the same score.

So on Sunday I walked around town, sticky tape and A4 announcements in hand, flyposting up the list of interviewees. No such thing as confidentiality when you're going for a job here – no throwing a sly sickie or taking a day's annual leave for 'gardening' – oh no, your employer's going to hear about it alright, and so's the rest of the town.

In the hope of drawing some more promising candidates we decided to broaden the recruitment to Damazin, a university town further north, anything between 120 to 200km away, depending on who you asked, but with a consensus that it's four hours' drive away – in the dry season.

I was keen to go as soon as possible, as fitting all the recruitment in with the training and station launch in September is ludicrously tight, and it's also the only place we could buy a table for the studio, but it was always “Maybe tomorrow,” until Tuesday came, when it was finally “Today”. Great, what time? “Now!” - cue mad rush to pick up bags (already packed in preparation), unplug and grab laptop, don't forget malaria tablets etc – then “now” turned into two hours of faffing, picking up and dropping off people, buying bread and water for the journey etc. until we were finally away at 11am.

So the six of us jammed into a Land Rover embarked on another Clarkson-esque ride across river beds, up sandbanks, down mudslides, through fords, brain-bumping on rocky tracks, slithering, slooshing and swerving through treacherous mud. It had rained on Monday evening, not heavily but consistently, and the terrain largely consisted of sandy black earth, which is yielding and powdery when dry, and viscous and clinging when wet. And boy, was this wet.

Three times we had to extricate the van from deep mud, digging, pushing, heaving and hunting foliage to give the wheels a vague chance of a grip, until we were all splattered head to foot in mud. We must have looked quite a sight as we pulled into a village en route at 4pm to sit down wearily for a bowl of ful – bean stew topped with chopped red onion eaten communally by dipping in flat bread (this I can cope with but I have yet to indulge in the communal public cup, or worse – ditch water).

Our driver Jamel had abandoned the cautious approach to driving, taking instead a full-on headlong run at the muddiest patches, but now the punishment of the engine was taking its toll, and it started overheating every five minutes, to be cooled down with bottles of ditch water. At one point he decided against a particularly muddy stretch and instead steamed through a wood of thorn trees, and when I say through, that's exactly what he did, knocking over any tree in our way as if we were in a tank.

And then, just before 7pm as dusk was falling – disaster. The engine overheated, coughed, spluttered – and died, right in the middle of some thorn bushes. Someone managed to get a signal on the satellite phone and called back to base, who were going to send a pickup truck to rescue us. However, it was soon apparent that this wasn't to be til the morning, so there we were, six of us, caked in mud, camped down inside a dead Land Rover. It was a toss-up between keeping the windows ajar and letting the mossies in, or shut and suffocating to death with our combined pig-heat and malodour from the day's journey, so mossies it was.

If you've ever shared a confined sleeping space with five other people, it's not that pleasant, specially when they all take turns to snore loudly, and not helped by the fact that my teatime beans kept making a break for the border, thankfully just noisily rather then whiffily, though there was some urgent window-opening every time I dropped off and another one accidentally popped out.

Come first light we all surfaced, stretched, joints clicked back into place and another failed attempt made to start the engine. We took revenge on our tiny tormenters by rendering them bloody smears on the van windows, and come 8.15am four of the team decided to walk to the next village to get help, leaving co-driver Abbas and myself as the van guards. Thankfully I had some escapist reading matter – Michael Palin's Monty Python diaries, transporting me back to a chaotic mid-70s Britain of three-day weeks, power cuts, dead parrots and the Ministry of Silly Walks – a perfect antidote to being stranded in a conked-out van in the middle of a thorn bush.

12.30 came and we finally heard our valiant rescuer Adam approaching, only to take more than thirty minutes to find a way to reach us without getting bogged down. We transferred the entire contents of the van, left the keys in it and abandoned it in the thorn bush. An hour later we reached the next village to find our other comrades there, footsore but fed and watered, and having commandeered a tractor to rescue the van.

And so we reached Damazin by 6.45pm, nearly 32 hours after we left, muddy, scratched, bitten, stinking and knackered. And how many job applications were waiting for me there? Two.

So next day, time to work out how I was going to get back for interviews on Monday. There may have been a plane on Saturday, Sunday, or was it Thursday? And if it rained, it wouldn't land anyway. Decision time – Adam was heading back to Kurmuk, so quick packing and an hour and a half in town to find a studio table (700 Sudanese pounds/ £175 for something you'd sniff at paying a tenner for at MFI) and off through the mud for home.

Come 3.30 and we were still eight hours from base. We stopped off in a village where we could get a tukul for the night and met up with Jamel who'd driven us as far as the bush of thorns. The prospect of sharing a mud hut with two less than fragrant guys was hardly appealing but needs must, and I wasn't exactly Persil-fresh myself.

Ready to hit the road by 7.30 next morning, and off we set in convoy with a pickup truck with six people bouncing around in the back. We reached the thorn bushes where the ground had now turned to swamp. So it was drive a hundred yards, stop, survey the terrain, go on, get towed out the mud, crash and bounce over some trees, all out and push, tow the other van out the mud, wash off the splatters in a puddle, stop-start for nigh on three hours. Adam's pedal-to-the-floor approach to driving sailed us over some of the worst patches, careering, swerving and punishing the suspension, and burning out the reverse gear.

Although my Arabic is severely limited to asking for a coffee, please and thank you, and Adam's English not much better, the whoops, cheers and relieved laughter we shared communicated our amazement at finally getting back in one piece, filthy and smelly again, thirty hours after we left Damazin.

So were four days of mud, sweat and toil worth it for the two job applications that were waiting for me? Sadly, no. But hey, the overpriced studio table's just fine – battered and scratched, but mission accomplished.

Radio 4, lizard poo and the Ethiopian mountains

2008-07-30T18:29:00.000+01:00

Well I was somewhat trepidatious at the prospect of spending a whacking two months on a tour of duty at Kurmuk, but my initial impressions are pretty favourable.

Kurmuk is slap bang on the border with Ethiopia, in Blue Nile state buffering north and south, hence a critical flashpoint in the war. Refugees would cross here and troops would be trained, rested and regrouped over the border, so it was heavily hit and you can still see a huge number of derelict and partially destroyed buildings everywhere.

I'm based at compound with the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and its razor-wire fortified compound on one side and the Mine Action Group on the other, nestling at the base of a low hill with views out to the cloudy grey mountains of Ethiopia, chickens scratching in the dirt and almost luminous flowers bravely struggling through the clay just outside my tent.

I arrived yesterday afternoon alone as the advance party, was introduced to all the staff and immediately forgot just about everyone's name, taken to the radio station to survey the chaos within, and had good intentions of getting to grips today with sorting it out and doing a bit of networking with local groups and international NGOs.

Unfortunately today turned out to be a national holiday, marking the anniversary of the death of Vice President John Garang in a helicopter crash in 2005. Garang was leader of the Sudanese People's Liberation Army/ Movement (SPLA/M), and depending on your view, was a) a nationalist hero and freedom fighter for the south; b) a politically manouevring sustainer of civil war at the cost of hundreds of thousands of civilian lives; or c) if you're a woolly liberal, a bit of both, but probably ok on balance. Sort of.

Anyway, using that excuse and the intermittent showers, I spent the morning in my tent, and joy of joys! I can pick up the internet there, so although it flips in and out depending on power surges, I can listen to Radio 4, a little corner of Sudan that is forever Middle England. Except with lizard poo in the corner. Actually, listening to Radio 4 does weird things to my body clock as I'm two hours ahead, so Today finishes at 11, Woman's Hour starts at noon and it goes to “listen again” as soon as You and Yours starts. I enjoyed both episodes of Rob Bryden's programmes on the last few days of Kenneth Williams, so strangely out of kilter with my environment.

Finally got into town, about a fifteen minute walk, depending on how much you get waylaid by kids who all want to chat. The station was in a right state, so – out of character, I know – I took a broom to it and grit my teeth to clean out the spidery corners.

After much sneezing I walked into the market and camped down at a stall for a spicy coffee – bunn (see following blog from Kauda). Soon I found myself joined by a bunch of UN flight guys in mufti on their day off, Hassan with impeccible English and a few of his mates, as well as a couple of Dinka teachers from the local primary school. Hassan fended off a crazy guy who wanted to sing to me to tell me how much he loved me, much to the mirth of the gathered crowd, and my relief, and paid for my bunn into the bargain.

On the way back whilst photographing a group of excitable children building sand mountains, a UN police van stopped to offer me a lift. I was happy walking and was planning to stop at the Peace Hotel on the way back, which sounds like a knocking shop, but has a bar there, and by coincidence the two policemen, Nepalese Basu and Daniel from Zambia, were staying there, so I caught up with them a few minutes later for some bottles of Ethiopian beer. They were great company, educated to a level that would put most British police to shame, and so eloquent about their work and aspirations.

I've been promised a Saturday night party at another compound by a couple of Irish birds I met at the airstrip when I arrived, so maybe two months here isn't going to be quite so painful as I anticipated. I might even find a use for the kazoo.

Oh – and if you're wondering what lizard poo looks like, it's a hard black sausage about 1cm long with a bright white blob at the end. Very curious.

A warm welcome in the Nuba Mountains

2008-07-20T19:52:00.000+01:00

The first thing you see when you fly into Kauda is the sudden dramatic change in landscape. From flat plains with meandering rivers, a green rolling mountain range appears from nowhere.

Kauda is in South Kordofan, ‘officially’ in the North of Sudan, but actually one of the buffer states between North and South. During the war it was a stronghold of the Southern SPLA (Sudanese People’s Liberation Army), but under the 2005 peace agreement, the people of the Nuba Mountains will have no say in separating from the north, as their southern counterparts will in the 2011 referendum.

This is the first place I’ve visited in Sudan which can lay claim to being beautiful. Whilst not providing the most spectacular mountain scenery, the area around Kauda in the rainy season is lush, green and temperate, in contrast to the dry season where it’s apparently parched, dusty and sweltering, so just as well I came now.

It’s an African Arab area, prodiminantly Muslim (though that doesn’t stop them selling you a hush-hush can of out-of-date Tusker if you ask in the right places), and this is reflected in the food and drink, where you can sit inside a rush tukul in the market and enjoy flat bread and ful – aduki bean stew doused in oil and topped with chopped red onion, a glass of spicy chai or karkady – sweet hibiscus tea – or my favourite, bunn, cardomon spiced coffee boiled on a charcoal burner to within an inch of its life in a jug made from a recycled tin can, then decanted into a small round tin pot and served with a toe-curling amount of sugar in a tiny cup.

The radio station there, The Voice of Kauda, is run by an enthusiastic team of four reporters, Ahmed, Walid, Nasreldin and Mosquito, and their female manager, Taysear, a formidable character indeed. In fact they were so enthusiastic, they’d ended up with a programme schedule of numerous 15- 20 minute programmes, starting at obscure times like 9.12am, which they were so confused about that they didn’t really have a clue what they were doing. After a clean sweep of the schedule and some clear programme plans, my colleague Sam and I got to working with the guys and they were great.

We took a trip to the Wednesday market on the edge of town, a buzzy vibrant place with fresh vegetables, chillis, home-made perfumes which looked like they’d strip the skin off you, and some dubious looking hooch, araki, a pinky-grey runny porridgy liquid, sloshing around in filthy buckets and decanted into gourds, which all looked so minging even I wasn’t tempted.

But I did splash out 5 Sudanese pounds ($2.50/ ₤1.25 – khawaja price, I know I was diddled) on a pair of sandals made from recycled car tyres. I’d heard about these a few years ago and always fancied a pair, and several guys were making them here. Not an exact science, so it was a case of trying on a few pairs until one fitted, which I found, and I can safely say they are the most uncomfortable shoes I’ve ever worn. But – hey, it’s recycling and it’s a local craft, so I’m not complaining and I’ll just gaffa tape up the worst blister-inducing edges, and at least I’m lucky enough to be able to afford to buy a decent pair of shoes, which many people here aren’t.

We were staying at the Nuba Relief, Rehabilitation and Development Organisation (NRRDO)’s compound, in concrete buildings with tin roofs and shutters, sharing the compound with several lively chickens and very competitive cockerels. On the first night I was being driven crazy by a constant scratching, nibbling and rummaging under my bed, which stopped every time I moved, only to resume a couple of minutes later. I'd sit up quietly, wait, then snap on the torch, but see nothing. Now, I've shared sleeping quarters with a rat on more than one occasion and I know what they sound like, so at first light I opened the door and shutters, jumped out of bed, pulled it back from the wall and shouted "Right! I'm gonna get you!" only to find a huge plump red chicken nestling in a basket under the bed looking quizzically at me, as only chickens can.

The radio station’s based at the NRRDO compound, and you reach the town via a low hill, across a sandy riverbed which fills when the rains really kick in, and a short path by a football pitch, some tukuls and grazing land. Walking back to the station with Ahmed, we were stopped by two boys herding goats, who pointed urgently to a crater in the ground. Poking out the side of the hole we spotted a white plastic protruberance, which had been cordoned round with logs and thorn branches – the top of a landmine. The Nuba Mountains were the scene of considerable fighting during the war, and both the North and South were responsible for extensive landmining, frequently unrecorded. While most have now been cleared, the rains continue to wash them up, and one was found just the week before, and children and animals continue to be at greatest risk. Four days later at lunchtime the mountains echoed to a resounding boom – fortunately a controlled explosion, not a wandering goat.

Sunday afternoon was spent on what I’d anticipated to be hill walking, but actually turned out to be mountaineering. Nine of us – a Cameroonian, Filipino, two Germans, a Russian, Liberian, Lebanese, Kenyan and Brit – set off in a spirit of international co-operation from a hospital built high in the hills during the war, when the people fled the towns and took shelter in the mountains. We got there in two Landcruisers on a journey that Jeremy Clarkson would have killed to be on – across river beds, up seemingly impassable sandbanks, down vertiginous rubble-strewn tracks, through craters, and deep puddles of squelching mud. It made me wonder if death would be a preferable option to being driven there if you were seriously ill.

The climb was exhilarating, past small tukul settlements, a former SPLA commander’s house which is now a museum, up rubbly slopes then finally clambering over boulders, searching for tentative handholds. After an hour’s climb to the top we deserved the now warm out-of-date Tuskers we’d brought to reward our efforts and take the edge off the wasp stings some of us had acquired.

The view across the mountains was spectacular after the flat lands of the south, the setting sun casting long shadows across the valley below. We were wondering about the viability of actually getting down again, when we spotted a local guy sauntering down a path fifteen feet below, waving up at us. Errr… so we’d been scrabbling on our hands and knees when there was an easy way up after all huh? Never mind, it was all part of the fun, and made us appreciate the warm Tusker all the more.

At the end of the week Taysear invited Sam, me, the reporters and other friends to a delicious moonlit dinner at her tukul. It’s decked out in colourful drapes, really cosy, and she’d gone to the trouble of making a fantastic aubergine and peanut dish and spicy potatoes specially for me, which was without doubt the very best food I’ve eaten here. I was really touched as Taysear gave Sam and me a pair of sandals each as a gift, and one of the reporters, Nasreldin, gave me a bunn set of tin heating pan, little round coffee pot, cup, spoons, coffee, spices and sugar, as he knew I’d become such a bunn-head in Kauda.

For people who live simple lives with bare amenities, you can’t fail to be struck by the generosity and friendliness shown by the people in Kauda to strangers in their community. They’re keen to put the war behind them and rebuild their community and you can only hope they’ll continue to get their wish, which is never certain in this country.

Tukul Fever in Malualkon

2008-07-06T15:43:00.001+01:00

I'm at the tail end of seven days in Malualkon, and things are just that little too chilled out for my liking. Malualkon's not much more than a village, centred round a market which varies from day to day in its stalls, though not its crazies, and there's only so much you can take of going to the same places to drink warm lager (anything less than lukewarm is enthusiastically described as “cold” here) and have the same people come to shake your hand then sit and stare unblinking in silence at you until you move on.

The other side of the coin is of course the kids. I thought for ages they were shouting “Wanger!” at me, in a local variation of “Wanker!” or maybe even a demand for money, but it seems it's their version of “Kawaga” - “white person”, to which my response is generally “Minger!” so we're quits on stating the bleedin obvious.

Malualkon was badly affected by the civil war, raided for livestock by the north, then for any remaining foodstuffs by the southern forces, leaving people who were unable to leave to starve to death. You see very few older people, and many of the the ones that are here are obviously mentally ill to some degree. Seeing bonkers old guys wandering around with guns doesn't exactly reassure (mind you younger guys with guns ain't exactly comforting either). As part of the disarmament process, officials were doing the rounds this week tukul-to-tukul to collect bullets, though you can be sure that an awful lot of people still have weaponry stashed away, just in case.... after all, the destruction of Abyei was less than two months ago, so the legacy of the civil war is still well and truly alive.

Thankfully for my sanity on Saturday we made a trip out to Aweil, a lively market town with a much more Arab influenced culture. I was in search of light bulbs for the radio station (can't get em at all in Malualkon) but drew a blank after five vain tries to get a bayonet variety. My hand signals for “screwing type bad, push and twist good” with accompanying illustrative screwing-in-lightbulb type noises only drew blank looks.

But- joy of joys! There was actually some food to be had there! I bought a newspaper wrap of lovely felafels, of which I ate about a third before they mysteriously fell out the van without my noticing, and some lovely small round flat breads – my first bread in five weeks!

I'm really missing spicy, garlicky, textured food. The few veg that are available here are cooked to buggery, so resemble baby food a lot of the time. Apart from the week in Mombasa, I've not had a single lunch or dinner without white rice – and sometime that's been all the non-meat there is to eat. Here you get okra, which is about five times the size of what we usually see, but obviously it's slimy and mushy, and then there's lentils and spinachey greens, which are delicious, but more goo.

So I feel like I've had a decadent day today as I brought my bean sprouter with me and the remains of a packet of chick peas, mung beans and aduki beans, which have been sprouting outside my tukul the last couple of days, much to the bemusement of my fellow compounders, who think I'm crazy anyway for not eating meat or having four sugars in my tea.

But I like the ingenuity of the people here. So far I've seen bicycles and motorbikes carrying the most unfeasible loads – a goat, chairs and tables, and my favourite – a double mattress.

Oh - and I've gone native too. I bought two huuuge garish African print shirts from the market for a few quid, only to find they're – ironically – made in China. Ho well. At least I now look even more like a curiosity than I did before.

A woman's place - neither seen nor heard

2008-06-28T12:58:00.000+01:00

I came back today from a couple of days in Juba, the de facto capital of Southern Sudan, essentially a pile of shacks nestling on a giant stinking rubbish dump on the Nile.

I was there for a conference on Gender and Development, attended by seventy-four reps from NGOs (Oxfam, Save the Children etc) and CSOs – civil society organisations – what we'd recognise as small community groups and charities. Discussions centred around health, peacebuilding, political and economic participation.

This is a society where women and children are very much at the bottom of the heap. It's not unusual to see women cooking, cleaning, caring for children, tilling the soil squatting in the mud with tiny hand-held hoes, while the men sit around chatting and waiting to be served. A society where literacy rates for males are 37%, and for females just 12%, where women are not allowed to own cattle and are rated in terms of their marriagebility in exchange for cows, where men will happily walk around hand in hand with another man, but never with a woman.

So even to be discussing gender issues is a pretty revolutionary concept, and for local women to be taking part in such a discussion is groundbreaking indeed.

We're pretty much accustomed to hearing the arguments for equality rehearsed frequently, so it can come as a surprise to hear people trotting out old-fashioned sexist views, and while full equality is still some way off, at least just about everyone gets the idea, even if they don't act on it. But the things we'd take for granted aren't even a given here.

Like the fact that girls don't go to school if there's no latrine their for them, or if they have a period, as they don't have any sanitary protection. Or women not being permitted to have a baby in hospital in case someone else sees their body, resulting in serious illness or even death for women and babies, all of it quite preventable.

I was horrified to hear of “morality laws” introduced arbitrarily in many towns (including here in Rumbek) where women are forbidden from wearing trousers, riding on a motorbike, braiding their hair in certain ways. There were numerous tales from the floor of women being arrested, attacked, their clothes ripped for flouting these so-called laws.

And woe betide you if you get a sexually transmitted disease from your husband, because you'll be to blame, and if you're lucky enough to get treated, he sure won't, so you and all his other wives will be perpetually at risk.

Or how about the incident of a woman who was escaping domestic violence, just to be raped by the police who were supposed to be protecting her. So the horror stories went on.

It seems astonishing that a people who fought a national liberation struggle against forced Islamisation from Khartoum should impose equally draconian measures on half their population.

Which is why it was even more amazing to meet the intelligent and articulate women at the conference who are daring to raise their heads and speak out, putting themselves at risk of ridicule, ostracisation – and worse. There's some amazing work being done to change attitudes, but with such a low literacy rate, virtually no independent media and women's almost complete domestic and economic enslavement, it's going to be a long task.

The fundamental issue are the roles of “tradition”, culture and plain superstition in perpetuating this loathsome situation. While some traditions such as the taboo on having sex with a pregnant woman from conception and for two years after birth may have had a rationale in preventing women being made constantly pregnant, now it's just a good excuse for polygamy - just for men, mind.

So it all leaves you wondering just how long it's going to take for women to get on even the first rung of the equality ladder, all the time their value is measured, not in terms of intelligence, capability or economic activity, but in cows.

Corruption, palm trees, ginger tea and Lady Jelly - a week in Nairobi and Mombasa

2008-06-24T16:57:00.000+01:00

My week in Kenya for a conference on democracy and governance began in a way that can best be described as ironic.

Sam and I were collected by lovely Boniface from Nairobi Kenyatta airport to be dropped off at the apartment we were spending the night at. Driving in Nairobi has to be experienced to be believed, so it was odd to find ourselves in a column of slow-moving traffic, until we reached the obstruction – a police road block. Or so it seemed.

Every other vehicle was being flagged down, and we were one of the unlucky 50%. I was in the front, Sam in the back and – uh-oh – he wasn't waring a seatbelt. Delighted, they gave him a bollocking, scrutinised the rest of us closely, then for no reason, decided there was a problem with the car, and they were arresting Boniface. This was not looking good. Here we were, in a strange city, didn't know where we were or where we were going, and about to have to make our own way as night was falling.

Something was fishy. These cops didn't have any numbers visible, though they were plainly cops. Boniface remonstrated with them outside the car for ten minutes, they came back to ask if he was a colleague, why wasn't Sam wearing a seat belt, and they'd have to take Boniface in, when Sam asked “Is this problem solveable?” “If you want it to be,” came the cryptic reply.

OK.... we're getting the hang of this now. Boniface returned to the car to ask if we had any money. We'd only just arrived so didn't have any Kenyan shillings, so no. He fished around in his pockets, found a note, thrust it in the cop's hand and found himself mysteriously de-arrested. We were waved on and breathed a collective sigh of relief. And how much had Boniface's release cost him? 100 Kenyan shillings – a dollar and a half – yup, 75p!

Apparently this experience is all too common, specially when they see a white person in a car, as they think they'll get a wad of dollars. There was talk on the TV of Nairobi marketing itself as an international tourist destination – apart from installing street lighting, mending the pavements which are more like rocky mountain paths and educating virtually the entire male population that it's not a great idea to hassle women on the street, cleaning up the institutional corruption is a task for someone with a lot of time to spare.

Next day we hit Mombasa without incident, and installed ourselves at the White Sands hotel for the conference. This place will be many people's idea of a holiday paradise – palm trees, sandy beach, swimming pools, karaoke, cocktail bars, 80's “sax moods” CD on constant rotation.... you get the picture. OK, I'm an ungrateful wretch, but is was like being under house arrest in a shopping mall.

A conference on Democracy and Governance sounds dry on paper but it proved to be extremely interesting and informative. I was only a couple of weeks into my job, so I had a reasonable grasp on what many of the other groups working in Southern Sudan were doing, but this filled in many of the gaps and it was good to meet people face-to-face. Sessions included corruption (ha!), electoral violence (Sudan has all the factors for it to happen, but none of the answers for stopping it), and many other issues which affect the fragile peace between the north and south.

I hooked up with the gals conducting the census for the South, a highly impressive task as it's the first time a proper geographic mapping of the area has been done, and a very controversial subject as all hell could break loose if the results aren't liked either by the North or South. Understandably, quite a few Southerners are reluctant to take part in a census if information about them goes to Khartoum, which was orchestrating genocide against them for forty years and continues to threaten them even after the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (Abyei in the buffer area between North and South was virtually razed in May – see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7455537.stm)

So I have great admiration for the census gals, and coincidentally I'd already emailed Canadian Erica through Flickr as she's got pics of Rumbek on her site, so we'd previously bumped into each other in Rumbek. Erica was finding the hotel as sterile and mind-numbing as I, so we made good our escape on Friday afternoon after conference closed.

The hotel is a few miles out, further compounding our sense of imprisonment, so we flagged down a metatu, a crazy fleet of colourful camper vans which teem the streets, jostling for space and packed shoulder-to-shoulder with passengers, who hop on and hop off for pennies.

We emerged unscathed at the post office on the edge of the Old Town and popped over to Fort Jesus, a sixteenth-century fortress built by the Portuguese (at the time under Spanish rule), conquered by the Arabs, re-taken by the Portuguese, re-conquered by the Arabs, then eventually in the nineteenth century became a British fortress. It's carved from solid coral overlooking the sea with gun emplacements, turrets, the remnants of a chapel demolished by the Arabs and poo-holes where you sit in little windows on the side and do your business on the unfortunates below.

Our guide was charming if a little pushy, and when Erica said she was Canadian, he was off on one. “I have never seen such beautiful ladies! Beautiful Canadian ladies, under 16!” Oh how we laughed, and agreed through gritted teeth that we'd refuse his kind offer to take us round the Old Town too.

Having paid him off with considerably more that the cop got, we made our way to the Old Town. It was the perfect antidote to our hotel experience – dirty, smelly, noisy, crowded, hassly, and just what we needed. We camped down on the pavement to enjoy a glass of sweet ginger tea from a street vendor, dodged the shopkeepers enthusiastically trying to lure us toward their wares, and marvelled at the beautiful decaying colonial style architecture.

The only disappointment was that we were there for such a short space of time, as I'd love to spend a week there photographing, creeping round the stinky back passages, and rummaging through the endless tat at the market. Oh - and I might even be able to find out one day what Lady Jelly is!

Suggestions here please: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melita666/

Out in the bush

2008-06-14T23:01:00.000+01:00

Well I've just come back on Friday from nine days in the field, with just a pitstop at base in Rumbek to get clean clothes and wash the mud off. These days have been a bit of a baptism of fire, with just three and a half days to find my feet in Rumbek, then straight off to the bush to rough it.

First stop was Leer (pron 'lair'), a village in the Bahr el Jebel flood plain, Western Upper Nile. It was badly hit during the civil war, and now in the rainy season, is home to nomadic Nuer tribes, come to bring their cattle to pasture and camp down in their tukuls for a spot of makeshift farming. It's also in an oil-rich region, which makes it vulnerable territory when it comes to north-south ownership.

Driving in the 70km from Tharj Jath airport in a Save the Children landrover on long straight dusty tracks through a swampy plain, we passed small settlements, flocks of cranes at the watersides and herds of cows and goats roaming the roads. Leer is a settlement of tukuls with a handful of NGO camps and a dirt airstrip running through the middle, home to roaming cattle, goats and people, and which becomes a quagmire after just a few minutes of rain.

It was no surprise that the only camp we could fine some room was also the shittiest. My colleague Sam and I were directed to a brick building with a room which a crackhead would have turned their nose up at – ripped mattresses, fly-blown curtains flapping at broken windows, beer cans and general ugh. We'll have a tent, thank you very much. Apparently it's unheard of for a male and a female to share a tent without indulging in “jiggy-jiggy” so Sam was somewhat taken aback at my suggestion, but we went with it anyway.

The camp was run by people who looked like extras from a Romero zombie film, and its squalour was unspeakable. Ah yes, the flies. Leer is famed for its flies, which have you flapping your arms manically like Ian Curtis until you get used to them tickling all over your arms, legs, hair and face. After that you concentrate on just keeping them off your food and drink, a battle you don't always win.

I was busting for a pee, but was horrified not only to smell, but to hear the latrine from ten feet away, a million flies licking their lips in glee at the prospect of a fresh-laid meal. Needless to say that was my one and only visit and I wasn't sure if I'd live to tell the tale. Sam demanded a chicken, and I was looking forward to the prospect of living on the five apples, lime pickle, tabasco and handful of sesame snaps I'd brought to tide me over the next few days.

Oh well, if you're going to get a taste of developing Africa, you might as well go to one of its worst places first.

So off to the radio station, Naath FM ('citizen' in Nuer), which is run by a team of four guys plus a mentor who is tasked with supporting the manager. I use the words 'run', 'team' and 'four' advisedly, as the manager is awol, two of the staff turn up when they feel like it, and just one reporter/ presenter actually does any work, so the poor mentor has taken over the management role and is struggling with only one reliable person.

First night in the zombie death camp was hellish. Apart from its flies, Leer has packs of dogs roaming it, though many of them have been killed by local youth, but our camp seemed to be a refugee centre for the remaining ones. Of course they indulged in a howling competition much of the night, then came heavy rain and thunder which drove them away, and then cleared to be replaced by a cockerel crowing loudly from 6am right outside our tent. I couldn't figure out whey we'd been honoured with its exclusive presence until I went outside to find it tied by the foot to our tent pole. If you ask for a chicken, that's just what you get.

No breakfast at camp, though I'm not sure I'd want their speciality flyup anyway, but Sam demanded the chicken be cooked for him, and back we went to look at the unfolding disaster of the radio station.

Unfortunately the heavy rains had turned he airstrip, which lay between us and Naath FM, into a sludgfest of Glastonburyesque proportions, and subsequent heavy rains that day made matters worse. Fortunately I had my wellies and rain gear, so it was just the physical struggle to get across the airstrip that was the challenge, avoiding the worst puddles where the kids were spearing filthy fish, landrovers slipping and sliding across it.

A heavy sigh of relief when we heard a tent had become available at another camp, still rough and ready, but with food and a friendly smile from Simon, the Kenyan manager. Most of the people staying there were barking, but at least they were friendly. Got a landrover back to the zombie camp to pick our gear up, to be greeted in our tent by a pot of cold congealed chicken. Well, Sam had asked them to cook it, so that's what they'd done. He left it behind, so I just hope somebody ate it.

Much quieter night in the new camp and although the latrine was pretty minging and you had to negotiate a lake to get to it, if you sloshed it down with water you could damp down the worst of the pong.

The radio station shut down on Saturday due to lack of fuel for the generator, so faced with a prospect of sitting at the camp, I did a rare thing for a non-local and walked to the market. Everybody says “Maly” (“Hi”) and has to shake your hand, so I spent twice as long getting there and reckon by that time I must have met half the population, as well as having a filthy right hand.

All the kids want their pictures taken, and if you find one or two to photograph, within seconds they will become ten or more, all grabbing to see the picture. At one point a charcoal lorry stopped and the two guys got out to demand their picture taken too. Local people travel by foot, motor bike or bicycle, and the bikes are decorated with colourful plastic and cloth flowers, even those ridden by stern-looking military types, and it's not unusual to see men walking together holding hands.

It's proving to be pretty easy to be vegan if you can tolerate the same thing for each meal, as food is either straight veg, or meat, with rice and ugaali (a sorghum polenta-type bland starchy lump), and chapattis for breakfast. This is where the lime pickle and tabasco came in handy, so at least I was able to have a plate of rice with a bit of flavouring on it. Even the meat eaters turned their noses up at some of the food they were served.

Bad news on our last day when we were preparing to fly back in the morning – there'd been a cockup with our flight booking and we might have to stay two more days. However, the office at base was trying to get us 'green lighted' to get emergency authorisation to fly, even in you're not on the passenger list. Phew! next morning it came through so we were back with a team from STC in the landrover to the airport.

The system of catching a plane is intriguing – you check the “manifest”, a list of who's flying where and when, which usually appears about 3pm at the airport the day before your flight, you pitch up and they tick you off the list, carting your hold luggage off to the the plane in truck. However, they don't load it on until you physically identify your luggage on the tarmac by picking it up and handing it to the guy to load on the plane.

Our flights were with World Food Programme twin-prop thirty-seaters, and our hearts sank to hear they knew nothing about us travelling with them, so much conflabbing ensued between Chris the cabin crew and the pilot Simon, finally allowing us to travel. Couldn't have faced another two nights in Leer I'm afraid.

Arriving back in Rumbek after five days was like returning to civilisation, with – gasp! - salads, greens and other veg.

And then out the next day to Malualkon, 180 miles or so north-west of Rumbek. A cheery hello from Simon and Chris, then a stop off at Wau airport to pick up a single-prop light aircraft to Malualkon. One of the things I'm enjoying most is the unpredictable nature of the travel and sitting right behind the pilots is a bit of a buzz.

Malualkon is in direct contrast to Leer. It's much more chilled, no mud, and we stayed in lovely tukuls in the Mercy Corps compound, with – wow! - lentils and cassava leap slop to go with the ubiquitous rice and ugaali.

The radio station Nhomlaau FM (“Freedom” in Dinka) is only as minute away, and it's just as dysfunctional but in a different way. It's beautifully decorated inside with wall drapes, electric fans, it's clean, no flies, and great to see some friendly faces. They just happen to have the idea that they don't actually need to go and get any new programming, preferring to re-play the same eight programmes they've been running since about January.

I'm getting the hang of how people work here: everything's very literal, with clear job demarcations (you'll never get a bloke to sweep the floor, that's women's work), no room for ambiguity and little lateral or creative thinking. There's no place for pleasantries, no please and thank you, just “Give me that”, “Go there”, and it's not just a language thing either. There's a mindset that problems are solved by giving people threats, a beating or worse (seven people were shot dead yesterday here in Rumbek while we were away) and the response to challenges is often “I am a soldier and nobody tells me what to do”. This is not just my experience and it makes you wonder how long a country so damaged by forty years of civil war, a militaristic mentality and tribal rivalries will take to get sorted out to some semblance of a peaceful and democratic regime. Well that's what we're attempting to do, so we can but try. And don't get me started on how women are treated.....

Pics here: www.flickr.com/photos/melita666
Videos on YouTube as and when: www.youtube.com/melitadennett

2008-06-02T19:41:00.000+01:00

So here I am.... Night flight to Nairobi on Friday, arriving 5.30 on Saturday morning (3.30 UK body clock time). Needless to say I couldn't sleep on the flight in case one of the pilots died and I was needed to steer the plane safely over Egypt to land gently in the Red Sea to the applause of the terrified passengers.

Unfortunately this never happened, so I arrived at Nairobi to be greeted by the charming Boniface, my personal driver. I'd always wanted to be greeted at an airport by someone with my name spelled wrongly on a scrap of A4 so now I got my wish. Boniface dropped me off at the hotel Pan Afric after a hair-raising ride and I was ensconced by 7am, so I snoozed to BBC All Africa Radio, which plays the same head games on you in a semi-comatose state that the World Service does at 5am (try it, you might like it - or not).

After a quick shower I decided to walk in to town, much to the consternation of the hotel staff who earnestly advised against it and gave me a tepid farewell of "I hope we see you again".

It was pretty hassly, but nothing I can't cope with, and the hasslers were friendly enough. I saw very few women walking, specially solo, and the Kenyan roads are a bit of a free-for-all, though there's a bit of space given to the scampering pedestrians.

Popped into the museum on the way for a bit of local instruction and sniffed out a pavement bar for a couple of bottles of Tusker, and something promising vegeterian noodles in barbecue sauce, which turned out to be bits of pasta in a bland runny tomato and coriander juice topping, but it was reasonably filling and I was hungry.

I didn't want to get lost by wandering further, so decided to go back to the hotel, and hey, after 2 bottles of Tusker, I was crossing the road like a Kenyan.

Going for a dip in the hotel pool was a grave mistake as it was icy cold and I could feel my faculties shutting down after a length, but at least it was bracing. Becky my predecessor arrived at the hotel where we had a beer and chatted about work stuff, last minute questions etc, then she took me to a delightful Lebanese restaurant where we had the HUGEST veggie mezze, which she was kind enough to let me take the large remains of in several doggie bags for my trip.

Ghastly 5.30am start on Sunday, met by Boniface at 6.15 to take me to Wilson airport. I was disturbed by the rusted and crumbling signs for the various airlines departing from there, wondering if their planes were in as bad a condition and hoping I wasn't going to be on one of them. I needn't have worried - it was a sleek 20-seater twin prop which was blooming noisy and a bit wobbly, but that was all part of the fun. Thrillingly bouncy ride in and out of Lokichoggio airport for refuelling, then my first view coming into Rumbek was mud huts (tukuls) and people herding cattle, before landing at Rumbek airport, a red earth strip with some alarming potholes.

I was met at the airport by Terry and Tony, ensconced in my tent and ready to rock. The tents are pretty posh - like a cross between M*A*S*H and Glastonbury, but with MUCH nicer loos. There's a sleeping area at the front with chest of drawers-cum-desk and chair, and an ensuite loo and sink and shower area. There's a cheeky lizard who lives behind the sink who pops up from time to time to do a poo by the sink, then scoots off again.

Terry took Tony and me off round Rumbek town and the other local camps in the 4x4 after lunch, through deep puddles and across bumpy roads, which involved drinking a few beers at every stop. Tony and I are the only Brits so far, but I met people from about 10 other nationalities, as Rumbek is quite a hub for aid workers. I even met a couple of Sudanese people.

Started work 8.30ish today, and spent the day reading briefing docs and having meetings. I feel like I've settled in quickly and am going out to Leer (that's a place, NOT what I'm going to do!) and Malualkon this week and next to meet people at two of the radio stations, before we go to a conference near Mombassa in a couple of weeks. It's quite early to go out into the field but it's useful for me to see the stations first-hand before the conference, so it all makes sense.

It rained most of this afternoon so the mossies are out like bastards tonight, so I'm popping back to the bar for another quick beer. I thought it was raining again, but Terry's just come in the office and pointed out that the noise is giant moths fluttering against the windows, which apparently have invaded the camp - they're HUGE! Oh no - Tony's just come in and let one in, which he's stamped on on the floor....

More pics being added here: http://flickr.com/photos/melita666/

Sudan here I come! (Is it too late to change my mind...?)

2008-05-29T10:54:00.000+01:00

OK, so here I am, awash with antibodies for just about every disease under the equatorial sun, just had my last cholera drink (rather scrummy actually, in a kind of sweet/ salty way), suitcase stuffed with 4 months' worth of malaria pills.

I was planning on travelling light, just taking the essentials and thigs I can't get out there, but once I'd packed wellies, deet, antibacterial handwash, 140 malaria tablets, soap, torches, mossie net, toothpaste etc, light wasn't starting to look so light after all.

Everyone at work, all my mates and the people around me have been sooo lovely - thank you dear hearts, I'll miss you. And of course Erica and my lovely pussy, who'd better not die while I'm away. Erica I expect to see regular pictures of Fungus looking in the best of health and don't forget to be nice to her while I'm gone.

So before you ask:
1. There is beer there though I'll miss Harvey's, Dark Star, London Pride etc etc like rotten.
2. I won't have to wear a burkha, thank you!
3. I won't be eating cows' ears unless I'm very desperate.

Just off now with the Maplin voucher from my generous work mates to stock up on solar powered chargers, radio etc.

So - farewell and adieu and see you in the autumn!

Daughters of Albion - sheer magic at the Brighton Festival 13.5.08

2008-05-14T08:24:00.000+01:00

I’ve just been to a near-perfect gig (in a post-punk world, at any rate). Daughters of Albion is a collaboration between some of the finest female English voices of today, performing traditional folk songs and re-working contemporary compositions by PJ Harvey, Tom Waits and Kate Bush.

Earlier in the afternoon I’d popped down to the Dome for an interview and had the pleasure of meeting Kathryn Williams and guitarist Neill MacColl (son of Ewan, brother of Kirsty). Williams is a softly-spoken and self-effacing but hilarious interviewee, and they kindly performed a spine-tingling version of Ewan MacColl’s “The First Time Ever I saw Your Face”, sitting in an empty corridor at the Dome, just Williams’ fragile voice and MacColl’s guitar. It was a magical moment which raised the bar on my expectations of the evening’s concert.

And I wasn’t disappointed. Starting with an ensemble performance of North Country Maid with Norma Waterson on lead vocals, we were treated to a thrilling series of stellar performances from old-school folkies like Waterson and June Tabor to newer talent like Williams and Lou Rhodes (ex of trip-hoppy types Lamb) and up-and-coming Anglo-Indian psychedelic folkie Bishi.

Kathryn Williams bumbled endearingly through her role as compere, mysteriously introducing June Tabor as the one who keeps them in stitches on the tour bus, but who’s got such a fuck-off stroppy face you could only really imagine her handing out detention notes for bad behaviour. Tabor’s rich tones brought magic to an English and German version of Lili Marlene, and delighted on A Place Called England, Maggie Holland’s search for the true England, finding it not in flag and empire, but where someone’s sown “Marigolds and a few tomatoes right beside the railway track”.

Bishi is a new name for most of us, coming on like an Indian Billie Holiday, bags of glam and attitude and barely age 20. She played an impressive sitar on her own Indian Skin, Albion Voice and rocked out on Hares on the Mountain, enthralling the audience of old folkies and the younger fans drawn to see Williams and Rhodes. I’d like to see Bishi belt it out like Winehouse as she’s got the potential to be a massive star, but maybe she’s just happy doing what she does, and fair play to her.

Vocalist and fiddle player Lisa Knapp was the only weak part of the evening for me, as I found her voice undistinguished and her contribution low-key, until she performed her own There U R from last year’s Wild and Undaunted album, tempting me to find out more about her music.

The final ensemble piece was a gripping version of PJ Harvey’s dark and nasty Down by the Water, a chilling murder ballad drawing a thread through the traditional songs of the evening to the astonishing comtemporary lyricism which proves the art of The Song is still very much alive and well.

With a magnificent orchestra featuring Martin Carthy on guitar, a hurdy-gurdy player and even a knife player (!), arranger Kate St John deserves as many plaudits as the vocalists for creating an evening of sheer magic bringing together generations of our finest vocalists and celebrating a proud tradition of the English singer and songwriter.

Gravity/ Levity SHIFT at the Brighton Festival 12.5.08

2008-05-13T18:39:00.000+01:00

One of the things I like about the Brighton Festival is you often never know what you’re actually going to get.

Some you win, some you lose… and some are just curate’s eggs.

Often the programme description leaves you none the wiser, so at least I had a sneak preview in rehearsal on Monday of Gravity/ Levity’s SHIFT at the Corn Exchange which gave me a clue.

Described by choreographer and performer Lindsay Butcher as an attempt to break the barriers between dance and circus, taking the action from the floor to the air, Shift featured dancers hoisted up on ropes with a complex system of pulleys and weights.

The show started promisingly with a sequence where a “bad boy” dancer character mischievously attempts to jeopardise two female dancers by kicking poles they’re climbing, and swinging them around dangerously, with much shouting and gesticulating.

However, this initial characterisation is bizarrely never followed up in the rest of the show, with an interminable sequence of a dancer swinging in a circle twirling with a board and another part with two roped dancers counterbalancing each other which was initially intriguing but just went on far too long.

Full marks for having the audience seated in a u-shape on the floor of the Corn Exchange at stage level rather than in a traditional auditorium, which was most effective in the final part where the suspended dancers created a percussion piece with wooden boards and weights thumping to the floor.

The backing music, composed by Luke Creswell of Stomp, was inventive and haunting, the stark lighting - specially in the final sequence – highlighted effectively the complex web of pulleys and ropes but ultimately this was an unsatisfying show as it failed to have any “wow, how did they do that?” moments which you expect both from modern dance and aerial acrobatics.

Bogeys, beer and the coming of summer

2008-05-09T08:10:00.000+01:00

Hastings Jack in the Green, like the Brighton festival, really marks the start of the summer for me.

Although it makes like it’s an ancient tradition, it only started in 1983, but was immediately adopted as a fixture on the Mayday Bank Holiday weekend, as it involved the trusty combination of dressing up, music, reclaiming the streets and lots of drinking.

And this year’s was the best yet.

On Saturday night Erica and I put on the brilliant Chalkwell Ladies Drum & Bass League at our Another Planet night at Eat@ in Claremont. Lorraine and Karina have a great act of two WI tweedy types with a love of folk music, descant recorders and techno, and they mash up traditional tunes with fierce electro, lots of silly dancing and yodelling. My favourite’s “Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring” played on recorders to a techno beat. Brilliant. We had a full house again, augmented by three characters in full little old lady garb, with sticks, bandages and stinking of lavender, who joined the Chalkwell Ladies on stage to dance to “Gasolina”.

Pics here as I can't get this blasted blog to put pics in automatically: http://www.flickr.com/photos/melita666/2473333176/

A brilliant evening, thanks to everyone who came along. Looks like Another Planet’s on ice as I go to Sudan, but Erica will be putting nights on in the park in the meantime.

On Sunday we christened the new garden with a get-together which was lovely, loads of mates came over from Brighton too, and everyone got into the spirit of greening up. Special mention for Jackie who made a BRILLIANT Jack in the Green Cake!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/melita666/2472575637/

Mike and Jackie stayed the night and we trolled around the Old Town to the Filo and Stag until alcohol-induced wilt kicked in.

Surprisingly bright-eyed on Monday and a scorching sunny day when Erica, Jackie, Mike, Terry and I went to see Jack unleashed in the morning.

It’s also the annual Mayday bike rally, so the sea front was jammed with thousands of bikes and bikers, an amazing sight and a real buzz seeing them all roaring into town.

We found the best spot at the junction of Harold Rd and All Saints Street and got there just in time for Jack to arrive, who’s got a different face this year which isn’t as sweet as usual, but he’s still lovely. Definitely the best parade ever, with morris troupes and drummers from other towns augmenting it, lots of black faced goth types, which are my favourites.

I love the way everyone gets into this, wearing masks and greenery, decorating the Old Town and taking over the streets for people as they should be. Most surreal sight was a bogey on a motorbike taking up the rear of the parade:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/melita666/2475002750/

No wonder foreigners think British people are weird……

Hooray! It’s May and the Brighton Festival is here.

2008-05-08T10:58:00.000+01:00

Pictures being added to my Flickr site all the time:
www.flickr.com/photos/melita666

Ah, where could be finer than Brighton during a sunny May? Last year’s Festival was a washout but this year is more than making up for it: the streets are buzzing, it’s t-shirt and shorts weather, and you can sit outside of an evening with an ale in a plastic glass (boo!) without freezing your arse off.

So, one week into the Festival.

The biggest disappointment of last year apart from the terminally shitty weather was the lack of the Speigeltent. It’s an elegant, decadent 1930s Austrian tent-cum-ballroom, a circular wooden construction lined with booths, stained glass and mirrors –hence the Spiegel bit – and topped off with a plush red velvet tented roof.

It’s just my ideal louche sort of hangout so I virtually lived there during 06’s Festival, so its absence last year was a severe disappointment. But it’s back! Well, at least one of them is back. There are a number of different Speigeltents knocking about the world, all with different managers and programmers, and this year’s one’s not looking as radical and outre as 06’s, but it’s still lovely to relax in a booth surrounded by fellow hedonists, flaneurs and epicureans.

Friday’s opening night was a bit thin. The can-can girls were great, really lively and brash, and I like the fact they’re all shapes and sizes and are clearly just “ordinary” gals who like to have fun, and they sure do.

The compere of the late evening show was just lame – being gay does not make you inherently hilarious, and the technical problems didn’t help the proceedings, so maybe he just had an off-night. One of the most bizarre acts was a man who climbed inside a giant balloon and bounced around the stage, popping his head in and out. Really odd, and one of those delights where you just end up scratching your head going “What?”

Ultimately a pretty tame night and I’m a tad underwhelmed by this year’s programming, but hey, we’re less than a week in so far, so that opinion will certainly change.

The biggest hype – and consequently biggest disaster – of last year was the Udderbelly. It’s a giant upside-down inflated purple cow plopped in the Old Steine, and last year it was rain- and windswept, freezing cold, corporate, with nasty scaffolding and seating, poor sound, a crappy stage and an entrance which made you fel like a cow being herded as you sloshed through the mud.

Well it’s back this year and I entered trepidatiously, but it looks like they’ve got it right. The weather helps of course, but this year they’ve got comfortable seating, ditched the scaffolding, improved the stage, sound and lighting, and the bar’s in a lovely multicoloured tent rather than a trailer, so it’s actually a pleasurable place to be. And I have to admit their programming is much more exciting than the Speigeltent’s.

I did the first radio broadcast from the Udderbelly for BBC SCR’s coverage on Monday evening, with live drumming on a bin and beatboxing from the amazing Aussies from the Tom-Tom Club, flamenco from Ricardo Garcia and song and cabaret from the outrageous WauWau Sisters. The Sisters do a spoof southern sisters country act schtick managed to do a song which punned on “country” to make it sound like “cunt”… ho dear, good start for the first show!

Unfortunately the WauWau Sisters were only doing 3 nights here, so Kath and I popped down to see their 9pm show and they were truly amazing. Rude, chaotic, running semi-naked around the (unfortunately small) audience, charming, alarming and impressively agile, with an amazing spinning trapeze act. I’ve seen more trapeze acts than I care to recall, so it takes a bit to impress me, and impressive they were. It’s just a pity that their run is so short, as I think word of mouth would have got around and started filling out the audience.

Le Scandal was a different matter. If you’ve seen La Clique at the Speigeltent in previous years or been to Coney Island, anyone promising bawdy burlesque and amazing acrobatics have a lot to live up to – which this largely failed to do. Yet another lame compere who couldn’t improvise and failed to engage the audience, a lamentable fire juggling act who spent more time picking his stick up from the floor, yawnable ariel work of people twiddling up and down strips of cloth and a strange sequence where some very gay-looking men rubbed their groins while a female trapeze artist swung around in a hammock.

The local house band perked things up by playing entertaining klezmer versions of Britney songs and others I can’t remember offhand, assisted by the audience joining in on kazoos, with gusto. The Evil Monkey act was genuinely startling but overall the show was tame, lacking edge and pizzazz, and failing to deliver to an audience with high expectations who’ve seen it all before.