Change:

Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.

-AA Milne

Retox.  Detox.  Repeat ad infinitum. 

So, I came through the festive season relatively unscathed.  I had the proverbial ‘good Christmas’, which Scouse readers will know is a euphemism for ‘you fat bastard’.  It had gotten to the point where if I had one more Celebration, I could have joined Kool And The Gang.  My mental health, after several counselling sessions was slowly improving.  The physical health was not being dragged along in its slipstream.

Therefore, something had to give.  I saw a picture of myself, on that great leveller Facebook.  I’m playing video games with my stepson.  I’m wearing an Arran sweater, and I look like a fat fisherman, mystified by this little box of delights.  I therefore decided that, something had to give. 

The mental health is slowly recovering.  And sometimes, this new sense of clarity is a struggle.  Sometimes, it’s easy.  I’m starting each day with stretching and breathing exercises. It makes my mind settle; birdlike in the tree of my soul.  I also do this before I start writing.  I’ve always seen this as a ritualistic process, maybe this is another iteration of the same thing, but it seems to get results.  I recognise an honesty in my writing, that I didn’t have five years ago.

I’m still walking, but going in a different direction.  Rather than downhill, towards the lurid lights and fleshpots of what most people call ‘the garage’.  But uphill, with the sheep and cattle wondering who the Scouser in the Star Wars hat and Liverpool FC gloves is.  The farm animals are the only thing out there; the valley dips and settles itself into the land.  The walks are longer, quieter, more reflective.  Occasionally, I stop to let the hourly bus pass me by.  More often, I pull myself into the bushes; as someone flies past – driving like Ed Sheeran, ninety miles an hour down country lanes.

 

I’ll stop at the signpost that points back to the village; or to the nearest market town of Tiverton.  It all helps with the weight loss, let alone the mental de-cluttering.

As readers will now, I am a stepfather to a ten year old boy.  Who never stops talking, never stops moving, never stops eating.  I have to take him to play football once a week, running around the long grass and pot holes, of what is laughably called ‘ the village park’ is much easier.  I’m still, eagerly awaiting the call from Jürgen Klopp, telling me that Mo Salah is injured.  Can I get up to Liverpool this afternoon? 

Boom. 

My boy is also growing up to be a thrillseeker.  He went zip wiring a few months ago and Papa had to come with him.  Now, that I am much lighter I am genuinely looking forward to the experience.  He’s also planning our trip to the one at The Eden Project, where you fly across the bio domes.  As he gets older, I have a feeling he’s going to be an extreme sports nutter, throwing himself out of planes listening to Soundgarden.  Maybe, I’ll join him.  Maybe, I’ll join him. 

I’ve fallen in love with books again.  I’m actually greedy for them, fascinated by them, spending in general a fortnight over them, dealing with deep, crisp, even prose. And then I want the next one.  I recently finished (and heartily recommend) Anthony Beevor’s book on Arnhem.  I’m going to start Detroit ‘67 by Stuart Cosgrove next, which looks an equally weighty, well-researched, luxuriant read.

That’s not to say, I’m going to read everything or experience everything to feel something.  I’ve taken a load of books and DVD’s to the charity shop.  It was a detox of negativity, the darkest books imaginable; the most harrowing films I had.    I don’t need to watch It’s A Wonderful Life for the umpteenth time, to make myself feel better.  I also did a digital detox, deleting the last four episodes of S2 of The Handmaid’s Tale I hadn’t seen from the TV box.  I recognise its craft, but at the same time what is going on is much darker, much more relevant, and more important.

If you look at this way: I live in a country, where my leader is an opportunist.  Her Plan A was shite; Plan B was an even shittier version of Plan A.  I’m seeing more RAF plans flying low, presumably practising for food drops.  Over in America, we have a toddler in fake tan, who has unleashed several kinds of hatred upon the world.  What’s going on in Gilead is a little less important. 

So, it’s a symbiotic process, making the mind and body a little better.  It’s the same process everyone goes through, at this time of the year.  Everyone in the universe, even those in distant, alien civilisations, light years away; wakes up on New Year’s Day and goes ‘What the fuck?’ I’m not a lifestyle guru.  I’m not Marie Kordo, who recently advocated getting rid of books that you’ve read.  In a book.  I’m not saying follow me.  I’m suspicious of people who need followers.  I’m just saying, in the words of a great Indian philosopher: ‘Is this the real life?  Is this just fantasy?’  If you want 2019, to be a year in which you make changes, change the world, change a habit… anything is possible.

Radio:

‘TV gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains;

-        Peggy Noonan

If I can remember my first radio, it was among my late grandma’s possessions.  It was a weird beast, a mix of red leather and battered chrome.  On reflection now, it resembles the kind of thing that could be bought from a steampunk branch of Ann Summers.  It certainly gave me pleasure in bed, anyway.   I used to lay there, listening to late night Radio City, surreptitously beyond my bedtime. 

Radio City, was a glamourous name for the local station based in a dingy Liverpool backstreet.  It’s owned by the multimedia monster that is Bauer.  Its home now is what used to be St John’s Beacon, a Liverpool landmark and like all Bauer stations; playing Taylor Swift twelve times a day.  Back in the late 1970’s, it featured Alan Bleasdale doing a whole show as his creation; Franny Scully.  Social satire, with pop music in-between. 

It was followed by Keith Chegwin, so maybe nostalgia isn’t what it used to be.

Radio, is a reflection of personality.  I moved onto wunnerful Radio One, soon enough.  To my shame, I enjoyed the laddish bollocks of Chris Evans/Moyles.  Perhaps the two were interchangeable, like a Lego figure, where the head can be removed at the neck and what I can now recognise as men, behaving like teenage pricks and getting paid for it.  Your taste in all things, from religion to radio evolves as you get older.  Peel was always there.  Urbane, laconic and playing music that ranged from the Damascene; to the wildly uncommercial. 

Now, a quick clarification: I’m not one of these people who claim to have listened to Peel every night.  I don’t believe anyone actually did.  When I did, it was a metaphysical sound of someone wilfully setting their own boundaries; inviting us to the edge of what is sonically possible – let alone acceptable.  He continued this one week when he sat in for Jakki Brambles (again, ask Alexa); terrifying the populace by playing The Fall(uh) during daylight hours and taking off Chris Issak (Alexa, why did Chris Issak get a record deal?) midway through a plaintive/solipsistic ballad called Can’t Do A Thing (To Stop Me).

Maybe, radio is all down to personality.  Maybe you have to listen to something that suits your personality, reflects back your very soul.  Maybe that’s why I listen to 6Music so much, since I discovered it in the dim and distant past (or ‘2005’, as historians now call it), it’s been my go-to station. I’m a critical listener though.  I don’t like everything they play: there’s far too much Shenzhen Northern Soul and records that are both mentally and tonally stuck in 1984. I also find Mary Anne Hobbs massively pretentious.  Let’s see how her predilection for telling us about the sun rising over Salford Quays plays out mid-mornings. 

The converse is the grumpy wit of Shaun Keavney, now shifted from sunrise to lunchtime.  And there is that thread of DNA to Peel in Tom Ravenscroft.  He’s just as obstinate as his Dad, displaying the grit and steel of the Liverpool midfielder he’s named after.  Maybe as you get older, you develop your own taste, filtered through the tongues and speech of those around you.  You sort of notice the common threads of radio, the same nifty feature idea that everyone else had.  As we travel the country a lot, I can tell you that originality is in short supply.

For instance, everyone does a local radio phone-in.  That safety valve for the mentally distressed/Daily Mail readers.  They don’t incite debate or good radio; they just raise my blood pressure.  Particularly those with an hourly theme for calls.  We heard a BBC Somerset Phone-in where the theme was ‘If a vegetable was hidden under your mattress, would you know what it was?’  No, I’m not making this up.  See also: The Golden Hour.  Radio and TV signals travel into space.  I guarantee you in a star swept, dark corner of the galaxy; an alien civilisation can guess the year where these records were hits. 

Then again, Popmaster is the best quiz on the radio.  I also used to love Brain Of Devon (a crossword on the radio) on BBC Radio Devon.  I recently found out it has came to an end and I mourn its passing.  It’s replacement (yet to be announced at the time of writing), won’t be as good. I guarantee you.   

I have the radio on constantly, whether it’s on a bus, writing this blog  or doing the dishes.  It’s a constant friend and like a constant friend, it has an alternating current of joy/annoyance.  I love football, but hate listening to on the radio.  It’s one person’s opinions, spread thinly for ninety minutes, the mispronunciation of player names and a poor substitute for being there/watching it on telly.  It may well have been the origin of the phrase ‘back to square one’;  but it remains one of the things that boil my piss, to use a great Scouse phrase. 

How I listen to it, will change.  What I listen to… is never fixed in stone.  But the weird beast is still there, singing its siren songs.  Informing, educating and entertaining.  Turn it on. Now. You might learn something; you might hear yourself reflected back in a way you never knew.    

John:

‘It is important to feel the anger without judging it, without attempting to find meaning in it. It may take many forms: anger at the health-care system, at life, at your loved one for leaving. Life is unfair. Death is unfair. Anger is a natural reaction to the unfairness of loss’

Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

We were always the bookends of the family. I was always the youngest child: precious, indulged and protected by some kind of angel.  You were always the wayward one: always off doing something that was, in your own mind cool; but to the rest of us an ill-advised venture. 

I idolised you.  I don’t know whether you ever knew that, I think you did, in some deep, unfathomable way.  Our Mum worked shifts, weighing and checking boil-in-the-bag food.  You brought me up, got me up for school, and cooked my dinner when I came home at midday.  It’s because of you I don’t like tomato ketchup, as you used it to thicken tins of beans.  But no matter, you were a reliable presence in a mustard jumper and gray sweat pants. 

It was when I was a teenager when you became a more glamourous, exotic presence.  It wasn’t the fact that you had a girlfriend (your second, I believe).  It was the fact that you began writing for a local newspaper.  This led to you writing for the NME, whipping an acerbic tongue across the fragile dreams of indie bands.   You bought a stereo to review albums and this led into djaying.  I was attempting to revise for my A Levels; which I failed miserably with a backdrop of old school hip-hop coming from your bedroom.  It’s hard to understand the complexities of Bismarck’s foreign policy; when all you can hear from the bedroom next door is Biz Markie.

 

I became a writer myself, progressing up from the local rag to section editor of a local arts mag.  Your were progressing to bigger to better things; not just as a journalist but as a DJ.  You were part of the divine madness of The Hacienda, amongst other places.  I was coming out of writing and becoming more interested in being a teacher and a performance poet.  Still massively interested in music though.  In a way that was that little neural link that kept firing between us. I can remember my Mum and Dad going out to the parish club on a Saturday.  It was here, I heard stuff like Yes and ELP: although prog isn’t quite my bag, I was interested.  I also heard stuff with eloquence, intelligence and wit; such as Steely Dan and Joni Mitchell.  Later on, old school hip hop, but things like The Smiths and Prefab Sprout.  I also think you were one of the first people to write about Half Man Half Biscuit. 

You moved to Manchester, acquired a succession of ever more exotic girlfriends.  An American singer, tall, black, sassy: like a friendly version of Grace Jones.  A tiny Geordie, who worked in the trendiest record shop in Manchester (and supplied me with cheap CD’s),.    What’s not to love?  You visited us, occasionally. Quarterly, usually.  We talked about our lives, confessing our thoughts and sharing music to tea and biscuits.  I visited you, occasionally.  Usually on a six monthly basis.  I like Manchester and I had vague, unformed, plans to move there, once.  It never came to pass.  I like it, but it’s busy, wired like a teenager on coffee.  And anyway, I couldn’t afford the suburbs. 

You visited us every Christmas Day.  The day usually panned out in a familiar, annual fashion.  Mum cooked Christmas Dinner, which would be boiled into oblivion.  You generally rang about half twelve, having slept in after a heavy evening of drinking/djaying.  We usually saw you about two, just as Dad was getting pissed off and was deciding to sit down to dinner on his own.  We swapped pressies and talked, swapping secrets.  I felt an awful sense of loss when you left, but I always knew I would be seeing you again in the Spring.  Always knew. 

The last time we saw you, was Christmas Day, 2004.  The day passed, pretty much as it would do any Christmas.  A few small changes: you acquired both an iPod and an MacBook.  My musical suggestions went straight into waveforms.  You were able to rip me a CD, there and then; rather than give me a mixtape.

Oh brave new world, that hath such people in it.  

I listened to it, walking to work on a dark, cold, icy morning a few days later.  I didn’t know then, that it would be the last time I would physically see you.

I could and have gone over that day in microscopic detail a thousand times.  I cannot recall a word, a phrase, a look, a concept that would have offended you.  We parted as friends, with a hug and masculine expressions of love.    You haven’t contacted us, though we have tried to contact you.  Phone calls, letters and invitations go unanswered, into some sort of nameless, wordless void.  During that time, I have had seven house moves, three serious relationships and one marriage.  Have you a concept or inkling of the damage that causes a missing piece in a family machine?  The empty place at the table?  The extra, unfilled teacup?   

There are rumours, from my brothers about what has happened to you.  I’d rather hear it from your own mouth.  I’d listen, I wouldn’t judge.  Whatever it is, it’s not a problem.  However, this open door swings both ways.  Fourteen years is a long time to be absent.  You might have missed a chance and the door may never swing open again. 

But you’re my brother.  I think of you every day in some way, but Christmas most of all.  My hand is open, but the choice to take it is yours. 

Oh, and by the way: Merry Christmas. 

Blackberries:

‘So it is with blackberries. If you pull too hard, you may get the berry but you will lose the sweetness of it. On the other hand, if you leave it, it may be gone the next time you come by. Each person must find this point of equilibrium for himself’

-        Robert |Finch 

Black Pool.  Black Lake.  Black River.  Blackberries.

So, the inevitable happened.  I let three things flow into one thing and then it completely overwhelms me.  Firstly, the loss of a part time job at the beginning of this year.  Then the death of my Mother in law.  And then the subsequent fallout of trying to look after two grieving people’s emotions; whilst trying to avoid the radioactive dust of my own.

I know, heady cocktail of emotion isn’t it? 

This is not going to be a blog post with a small moment of triumph at the end of it.  I am still in some form of recovery, finally overcoming suicidal thoughts and treating the loss of possessions – from a gnome to a mobile phone – as some kind of major disaster.  I am in some kind of therapy, which I understand to be some form of CBT. It’s not the Rogerian therapy I was hoping for, but when you’re drowning, you’ll throw yourself into the nearest boat, regardless of the flag. 

However, sometimes the answer to your illness is at the end of your own fingertip.  Too much pressure will destroy it, but the lightest pressure will pluck it.  I am, of course talking about blackberry picking. 

There have been a lot of books in the last few years, which deal directly or indirectly about depression.  I’d recommend the lyrical brilliance of Helen MacDonald’s H Is For Hawk.  The bucolic ache of The Outrun by Amy Liptrot.  On a more practical basis, Saved By Cake by Marian Keyes is a cookery book, written out of a severe portion of the blues.

But no, blackberries.  In response to the impending facepalm of Brexit and the chance to eat healthier; we’ve been making our own chutneys and jams.  Like everything else in our relationship, it was a collobrative process.  These mainly took place in the late Summer, early Autumn days when you could still get away with wearing a t-shirt and a pair of trackies.  I go out, with an assortment of old ice cream tubs in my backpack.  Sometimes I would take my iPod, sometimes not.  This generally depends on the location.  I love Shaun Keavney, but I have no desire to get hit by a car; whilst I’m standing on an A Road, looking for blackberries. 

I go out for hours, sometimes to the extent that my wife would wo nder where I was.  I’d literally work my way through the village, down the backlanes and into the park.  Back up again, around the garage (always looking in for reduced food) and up the hill, across the railway bridge.  I’d come home, drenched in sweat, hands like a hangman.  But feeling relieved that I’d felt something, achieved something.  At this point in the system of the down, feeling a spark was just as good as the rumble of the engine.

It’s a sensory process, picking blackberries.  If it’s something you ever plan on doing, I would advise you to wear gloves.  This means you can test the ripeness of the fruit, but also means you can become adept at moving the thorny branches out of the way.  Watch out for spiders.  They don’t really bother me, but they will be there.  Sometimes these will accompany you home.  Washing one days picking, I saw at least three spiders rise from the lavender sea of the ice cream tub, like arthopodic submarines.  These met a watery grave, lest they disturb the fragile psyche of my wife and son. 

Make sure you cover up, that sun is fierce. In the late Summer days, the sun hangs dazzling low, poking through leaves and temporarily blinding you.  The Japanese have a word for it, Komorebi.  Once home, relax with a cup of tea.  Boil the berries once washed with jam sugar.  That in itself, is some sort of mystical process that I’ve only witnessed at a distance. I leave these arcane processes to Mrs McCready.  But like some sort of Preserver’s Apprentice, I’m learning quickly. 

This combination of a symbiotic/organic/sensory process has led to my brain, rebooting, reformatting.  I’ve actually enjoyed reading for the first time on months.  At the behest of my wife, I’ve read two Marian Keyes books.  I’ve also read a great little book about the history of redheads. Back to Japan again, Tsundoku means ‘books you’ve bought, but not read’.

 Music, is returning to me.  I’ve got that little auditory spark back, of hearing a great tune and wanting to download it immediately.  Current favourite is the new John Grant album; which is a grower.  It has taken several listens to appreciate both the rich, bitter tone of both his voice and writing. 

John Grant suffers from depression.  See also Marian Keyes.  It’s weird that something so corrosive is part of your psyche.  It’s also eldritch that you become drawn to people that are so like yourself.  That’s not to say you have to live there, or experience stuff that may send you over the edge.  I recently had a clearout of books, DVD and CD’s that I consider may send me over the edge.  There was a point when I watched It’s A Wonderful Life every Christmas, just to feel some sort of emotional release.  I’m past that now.  I’ll be watching The Apartment, which has better jokes. Or Die Hard, which has bigger explosions.  Or In Bruges, which has more swearing. 

If you want a point where everything began to make sense, it would be one Saturday in September.  I emerged from a bush in the park, wearing a pair of old trackies and a Liverpool FC shirt.  I’ve got scratches down my arm and I’m wearing a pair of gloves. A little girl on a swing enquires: ‘Excuse me, but what are you doing?’ She must have read too many Enid Blyton books, inquisitive little moppet.

‘Picking blackerries’, I said.  Because, ‘Re-acquainting myself with my own soul; through the process of making jam’ would have sounded weird.   Wouldn’t it?

Festivals:

‘Festivals are the best because you can’t control anything; and for a control freak like me that’s a wonderful experience’

-        Jack Garrett

Time was, this time of the year. I would pack a bag.  I would buy some new CD’s, which I would play on the train journey.  I would spend a week at The Edinburgh Festival, do four shows a day and see the great artists of our time doing mundane things in back alleys.  Time was also, I would stand in the cold of the Mersey seafront; and see bands I absolutely hated and bands I could see for free.  I would then go home and file a review. Repeat the next day.

I’ve been to two festivals this year, neither was actually like this.  Firstly, I went to BBC Gardener’s World Live.  This, is the kind of thing I would have run a mile from a few years ago.  But, time changes and seeds grow.  I looked at the rows of gadgets to make life easier.  I bought a pair of gardening gloves, which I was told were rip proof.  They’re already ripped.  My wife laid claim to the contents of the free goodie bag, especially the tube of a well-known spray for aches and pains. 

Later on this Summer, we took our son to see CBBC Summer Social.  I stood at the front with him for a demonstration of Art Ninja’s, erm ninja skills.  We got his autograph later, he’s a nice man.  The thing that really got me though was thousands (and I mean thousands) of toddlers, singing along to Mr Tumble; with the kind of joyful adoration that is given to someone on the main stage on a wet Sunday at Glastonbury. 

I like a festival as much as the next person.  But as you can see, they are only a reflection of your organismic self.  Standing in a field, trying to hide my disdain for the arrogance of The Dandy Warhols seems like a million years ago.  See also: walking across Edinburgh, four times a day in drizzle.  Footsore and lonely.  See also, hiding myself in my flat as Africa Oye made my window’s rattle.  See also: nipping into Liverpool to see a friend’s band; avoiding the hordes of pissed up scallies that made up the audience.  Still, I got to see Laura Mvula free one year.  Admittedly, with pissed up scallies, but you can’t have everything. 

So, in that respect festivals are a reflection of your own interests.  At the same time, they reflect your own personality.  As much as I sang along with Laura Mvula, as I was ready for a kick-off with the teenage blurt who was throwing a beach ball around the audience.  I covered Sound City for a well-known music website.  For whatever reason, there was a point where they stopped publishing my stuff.  I still don’t know why, but no matter what exclusive I gave them; it remained unopened, silent, forgotten. 

That’s me, my personality.  I am reverential of music, despite the often passive role it plays in the background of my life.  I also consider myself an open and friendly person.  However, treat me with disdain or a lack of respect and I will cut you dead.  Evidence of this: my curt response for an offer to cover Sound City from said website.  You can get the gist, the motion of what I said. 

From that time though: a sense of what friendship truly is.  A friend’s wife (and I use the term, loosely) treated me with the warmth of advent in Siberia.  It was at this point, I started to realise the people whom I thought were my friends, weren’t actually my friends.  I actually started to realise that the people I shared a desk with; actually were.  I also met a musician, with whom I occasionally exchange emails.  He’s a beautiful nutter of a man, an extremely talented musician.  But at the same time, not a constant in my life. 

Ultimately then, festivals are a change of season.  There comes a time when the landfill indie circus packs up and the bijou hotdog van shutters up as the sun goes down.  I don’t think I could do a music festival for a full weekend.  Traipsing over the same piece of concrete, or the same blade of grass, pen sharpened, and piss boiling to see a band I’m already not that keen on.  They are the proverbial ‘young one’s game’.  You need a strong constitution, an aversion to overpriced beer and a tube of peppermint foot cream to see one through.

Other kinds of festival though? Bring it on.  At Gardener’s World, I sat and internally nodded as Monty Don said: ‘You don’t own a garden, you borrow it’.  Festivals are transient, mendacious things.  A weekend, that promises to live for a lifetime. They are however, a short space to celebrate before Autumn arrives in a brown car.  A season that noted philosopher John McCready (my Dad) says ‘has nothing to look forward to, except football and crumpets’.  They are a reflection of what you like, what you love and whom you love.  At the moment, this is raising my son to the best human being he can be.  Plus, solving the mystery of the failure of our Brussel Sprouts this year. 

Next Summer, hopefully we’ll find the answers. 

#HMHB

Someone set up a hashtag on Twitter recently, #lyricsyoulove.  I thought of all my favourites immediately, but as only as I reached the eighth or ninth I realised with a bittersweet combination of chagrin and regret: I hadn’t mentioned Half Man Half Biscuit.  They seem to be a band that everyone knows, a kind of musical equivalent to a nodding acquaintance. Few can claim to love them; many can claim to know of them.

What do I like? I’m from Liverpool, so I used to sing Beatles songs in school.  I love The Smiths, but recently fell out of love with Morrissey; since he became Nigel Farage with a quiff.  I adore the fact that John Grant can sing the most about the most harmful, toxic things to happen to a human; so mellifluously.  I love the lyrical puzzles of Donald Fagin and Walter Becker.  More recently, no-one is expressing the rage of a divided nation as articulately as Jason Williamson of Sleaford Mods. 

But Half Man Half Biscuit.  Named, allegedly after a portly employee of the late, unlamented Birkenhead record shop Skellington.  33 years in existence, on their thirteenth album (not including compilations). An incredible, intelligent band, which use biblical quotes, poems, the blues, and parodies of well-known songs to chronicle the sheer banality, frustration, and often (but not always) joy of human existence.  They are still, stunningly on the same label: Probe Plus.  An offshoot of the Liverpool record shop, where it was often a Scouse rite of passage to be insulted by Pete Burns.

And there are bands out there, which use humour to get their point across.  Carter USM, The Beautiful South, Shellsuit, The Lancashire Hotpots.  These all have their own evangelists, claiming that they use laughter to distract us.  We can argue forever about the psychological effect of humour, to mask horror.  Let’s leave it to the psychologists.  They know best.  Possibly. 

Perhaps the ire and the fire of HMHB come from the fact they are not a Scouse band (a common misconception), but Birkenhead.  For those who don’t know it, Birkenhead is the dark side of The Mersey, literally and figuratively.  Once through a looking glass of a tunnel, you are looking back on the Liverpool skyline.  If you support Liverpool or Everton, you’re a ‘tunnel rat’. Appropriately enough, the band are Tranmere Rovers fans, a club who have a song that goes ‘Fuck your cathedrals and fuck your Pier Head/Don’t call us Scousers/We’re From Birkenhead’.  The wrong word, the merest glint of a wrong look can lead to an altercation.  I should know, I lived there.

 

No-one does what they do: the day to day doledrum of living, the hope that there might; possibly be a better life out there, the ameliorative effects of bad TV, football and laughing at the foolish and banal concept of ‘celebrity’. Considering this process began in 1985; and it is easy to see why you can call them more of a working class prophet than any sensitive soul with a low grade in AS Level and within earshot of a Nick Drake album.

They are not often on the radio, sadly.  Joy Division Oven Gloves became the theme to the campaign to save 6Music from closure.  Having been successful, it’s only Gideon Coe; the erudite, phlegmatic soul of the station plays them on a regular basis.  I would urge you to put your tablet down and download some of their albums.  Or maybe go to Probe and meet with the holier than thou vibes of the staff. Another reason to do so:  you won’t get every line, every joke, straight away.  It’ll percolate down, like a nice, intellectual cup of coffee. 

We live in strange times.  The country is represented by idiots, careerists and ideologues.  The lights grow dimmer and the price of bread rises.  As things change, we should be angry: but thoughtful at the same time, laughing in the face of entropy, the use of your voice in some satanic plot.  We need to be mindful, but disciplined. Or, to use the title of their latest album: No One Cares About Your Creative Hub, So Get Your Fuckin’ Hedge Cut.