Green Man- bank Holiday fun

Green Man
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

Had a marvelous time in Hastings at the Jack in the green celebration on Monday! Near perfect day out friends, beer, chips, seaside,giant dancing bushes!

Larkin about on the Beach

Seaside Special:
To prolong the hols that bit longer and to share this top bit of marineside verse from the Lord of the Grump and bleak lyricism Philip "there's a 75p fine on this one" Larkin. It's from a mini horde of poems a found the other day. I'll transpose the Auden soonish.

Yes it's Alan " no I won't thank you we've just had our lunch and the beetroots plaguing me something rotten it's does look lovely..." Bennet reading it.

Philip Larkin(read by Alan Bennet) To the sea

Hot Sand Hot Love

Well the weeks tipped over towards the weekend and it’s hotter than a pie oven on match day so some summer tunes are in order. You may not be able to wander along the beach where you are but pop music has been whisking us to beach since well about 1947 probably.

First up some Dutch style sitar pop freak out. I do think that any call to make love on the “hot sand” is always metaphorical, as most of us can’t munch a round of cheese and pickle in a deck chair without it getting the gritty stuff everywhere, let alone get it on with Deborah Kerr. Hot sand is the b-side to the original version of the global smash Venus. It’s got some peculiar lyrics written before appearance of Viz, isn’t the “sea gulls head” one of their summer annuals! I love it for being a full on sea weed stomping sensation.


“Summer day over
And darkness come with mighty wings
The sea gull's head is tired
And when he's tired then he sings”

Also I like the way that even hot sun, hot sand, hot love has a twist to it and not just the effect of amber solaire and silica between your Clark's sandal straps.

“ I'm waitin' for the hour
I'm waitin' for a place to stay
Some place where I can rest
And not think about the empty day”

Hot Sand by Shocking Blue



Speaking of melancholy and possibly darker summer thoughts it seems bladder rack and Punch and Judy shows aren’t the only slightly creepy things on the tide line. I recently found "Our party will be on the beach tonight" by Jonathon Richmond. Is it me or is this faintly sinister as if this particular beach blanket bingo hasn’t gone quite as planned. And you thought only Mozza wrote moopy marine melodies.

Our Party Will Be On The Beach by Jonathon Richmond




Seaside special: can I thank BLBW for my Battle-Action summer special all I need now is some gritty swimming trunks and a swig of some warm Ki-Ora and it will 1976 all over again!

Pier review.

Staring at the sea...
Round up of the ones we’ve seen so far.
Swannage pier: rating 8/10
Style: Victorian/Edwardian(recently restored)
Cost: Entrance fee at some times of the day.
Attractions: pier, recently restored paid in part by hundreds of plagues to locals in the piers planks, nice display of old gaming machines you can play, people scuba diving & fishing, nice multi-height bit at the end, plenty of seats, some shade. Sadly no café at the end of the pier but you could carry a tea from the museum/shop I suppose.
Ideal for: trysts, moody introspection and sullen fishing.

Bournemouth: 7/10
Style:1950’s (?)with modern bits.
Cost:10 bob entrance fee.
Attractions: Small kid’s rides at the end. The amusements in front of the entrance where ok although there was only 2p’s and no tat in the penny falls!
Has a café/restaurant in modern dark wood cream walls latte friendly style but no shaded seating for drinking outdoors but does have free wi-fi. The views along the coast are excellent.
Ideal for: sun worshipping retired types perhaps with grandchildren to entertain.


Clacton (formerly clapton!): 9/10
Style: Edwardian Moorishly domed frontage with corrugated sheds and cafes behind the facade.
Cost : Free
Attractions: Excellent undercover amusements and rides. Plenty of tat in the penny falls and supposedly a “sooty and sweep” animatronics display.Outdoor rides for teenagers to scream on. Excellent pier end café that sold chips and little packet of biscuits etc with panoramic steamed up views of the endless briny nothingness that is the North Sea.

Ideal for: loud parties of teenagers, nice strolling couples in rain hoods and car coats, close to tears couples having “a moment”, daft types like me who like peeling corrugated iron anyone really except people who get excited about new ranges of food at M&S or anyone who knows the model number of their pressure washer .

Clacton: seaside special
L, BLBW and Me took a wander “darn ta Clacton”, putting aside the rail company’s tricks and the slightly gloomy weather reports we had a marvellous time.

Seaside checklist
Parade full of charity shops open on bank holiday Monday tick
Excellent corrugated iron pier hiding behind golden domed façade tick
Suitably noisy cheery amusements tick
Café that sells strong tea and custard creams (& jam(my) rings some say dodgers) tick
GPIC tick (are you listening Hastings!)
Penny falls full of “quality” Teetering Tat tick
Waltzers playing the Jam tick
Chips with curry sauce next to a Sikh family actually eating bhajies on the beach tick
Mini golf course with a tricky “volcano” hole tick
No good beer boo!
A Tractor pretending to be a train to take you to Holland tick
It not raining until 5 pm hurrah
The crappy rail system making us pay £25 for a bus ride and then moving us out of the empty first class carriage so we didn’t have table to put our flask of tea and display our Tat mountain on boo!

Coming home tired happy and having slightly “caught the sun” perfect

How I stopped worrying and learned to love ..... Morris Dancing!

Chippy tat tableux
Originally uploaded by bltphoto

God bless bank holidays,....and god bless the sea side. It's years since I've been to Hastings but me and BLBW had excellent time at the Jack in the Green festival this May Day.

And yes we even enjoyed the Morris teams, not so much the traditional white hanky teams but the covered in weirdness scary face paint mad drumming ones! The traditonal ones still seemed a little repressed and full of people who needed a lot help getting into their groove. The other wilder teams (often tellingly with female dancers) just seemed to be having a better time.

In a mass with giant dancing sculptures, a weird dancing bushes (jack himself) and the crowd dressed up and draped in greenery it was excellent spectical, even in the chilly breeze.

It was much more fun than the parallel Bikers convention that was also going on, which seemed a little staid (curiously), lots of people in their leathers wandering round eating chips and looking at strangely uniform bikes. Where the hanky morris teams had a strong hint of accoutancy about them the bikers had a whiff of the free lance IT consultant, even the mulleted rotund bikers on home-made trikes seemed to be strangely conservative (such careful stitching on their rebel patches) .

I'm, always surprised how bland Harley Davidson's look even with their chrome and fringed saddle bags they always seem a little smooth and corporate, thankfully the Modernist Brotherhood (79 vintage?) made a small showing later in the day even if the had just called the AA :(.

We had such a good time we didn't even manage a round of mini golf!

So which is the next seaside town we should visit and why?

Piers of realm/Elbow update

NO Pier Here
With some inevitability another pier has burnt down.

From all these recent coastal conflagrations the reason seems clear piers are made of wood and chip fat and so burn easily and also once they are a blaze fire crews can’t get near to put enough water on to stop the fire.

The only ray of light in this story is that the present owner a Mike Simmons is better known as “comedian” Joey Blower thus taking the whole thing into episode Phoenix Nights.

Quicksilver music prize:
Hurrah that there Elbow have won that there Venus music prize. Seeing as they are one of favourite bands I'm made up for them.If you can catch them live on there present tour they truly great.
Here's a demo bside from a recent single to celebrate (it's about drinking to prove it's not just thrown together)

Li'll Pissed charmin' me by Elbow

I got 99 problems but giant plastic ice cream cones ain't one

Weston Super Mare Plastic cone, originally uploaded by quietloner.

You'll know of the Flickr group I set up full of lovely if entirely fake ice creams well rather pleasingly we have over 99 pictures posted now!
This is one I like because it's shows a GPIC and a burnt pier hurrah! see also the Polish pics and some others which are just good photos!

Piers of the realm: slight return

I was going to post some Stephen Patrick to go with my Pier post but I assumed any right thinking type would have “every day is like Sunday”. So I did a search for cover versions and found that most were rotten. This chap here saved my the bother but are any of them any good?

I don’t think this is a song for Americans to sing, I don’t think even anglophiles like Chrissie Hynde full understand the horror of British Sundays before all day drinking, or have danced on towels trying to avoid getting sands in their smalls in a icy cold gritty gale. Also none of the covers have help from Stephen Street and Vini Reily.

End of the pier show?...

Obviously we love a pier round here even the one in Wigan! So the one at Weston burning down is obviously bad news and I hope no one has been hurt.

But kudos to a Mr Roger Fry on the BBC website for getting a top slightly shabby seafood hut in his shot of the inferno. “Coastalgia” and high drama in the same frame good work fella!

It’s a shame Turner passed away before the heyday of seaside piers he could have captured some excellent portrayals of the seemingly endless parade of pier fires!

Pop quiz:
Which is the only English pier never to burn down?
Answer here.

Interpool

Interpol
Empress Ballroom
Blackpool
28th Dec 2007

I recently raved about being able to go to BSP gig at the end of my street well this being the strange modern world I went last Wednesday all the way to Blackpool to see another (4 in a month get me !).

“the subway is a porno pavements they are a mess”

After an atmospheric drive over the tops, in a winter gale, me and S rolled up in a wet and empty Blackpool. As we walk to the Wintergardens (sadly we will miss Chubby Brown) we are joined by a growing knot of similarly grizzled looking big coated fellow fans.
I’ll talk about ‘pool’s bleakness later but the place tonight seems shut, even the Christmas lights aren’t fully working.
We search for a pub but are thwarted so after meeting R and A, we go inside. Inside the Ballrooms, we find a marvellous timber clad “galleon themed bar” (no time sadly to check out the “baronial renaissance room”) have a drink and catch up!

Heading inside the hall we sadly only catch the last bars of “Blond Redhead”. While the stage is reset we admire the ballroom’s ornate plaster roof and chandlers, its striking big old barn.

"Put on the big light “
Soon Interpol amble on, if you’ve never heard them, the easiest comparison is to Joy Division. They play stark bass driven portentous tunes, if

anything more abstract lyrically than JD. Tonight they play a mix of mainly their first and third album. Having warmed up (it is late November) it’s clear that in 2-3 yeas since I last saw them they have learned to be a bit more animated live, they will never give Bruce a run for his money, but Carlos D ( the strangely bearded and cardiganed) bass player does at least face the crowd now a days! Lead guitarist Daniel Kessler is particularly animated and evens cheerily thanks the crowd at end, although being booted and suited he does have the air of a victorious snooker player.

Thankfully the music bridges the gap with the audience and between songs, footie style chants break out. Apart from a bit of a dodgy “prog” moment in the middle, tonight is a great gig. (Even if the didn’t play NYC)!

Highlight: Song title of the year “No I in Threesome”
Lowlight: No where to get a pre-gig drink.

Its official I am a poetry groupie:
On the way out, who should be 5 ft in front of us but Simon Armitage. Sadly I didn’t get close enough to congratulate him on his new book. Although I probably wouldn’t have known what to say (not being a poet!)

Blackpool, Blackpool …
Now I love a run down seaside town out of season, but Blackpool has gone past the stage of some flaky paint and a bit of cracked Formica, it just seems defeated.
Look at the town’s logo. not building a “greener”, “brighter” or just “better” future just “a future” as any it seems will do. Now I’m not particularly in favour of casinos, they just seem to be a way of parting poor peoples from their money, but the decision to award the NW franchise to Manchester seems perverse.

That being the case here’s an alternative way forward, why doesn’t Blackpool play to it’s strengths, look at tonight hundreds of rock fans travel from all over the north (and further a field) but when we got there no one wanted to take any money off us. Why weren’t more food places open, why not open some normal pubs/bars (not grim garish drinking sheds awash with Alco pops, thongs and happy hours). Why doesn’t it go for an “all tomorrow parties” style festivals (I was going to initially suggest a Moz themed “everyday is like Sunday fest” but it seems that might attract too many Daily Mail readers and the BNP hang on maybe Stephen Patrick could do a set with Chubby Brown?) There’s plenty of venues (the staff at the Wintergardens were really efficient and friendly) and loads of empty hotels rooms. Oh and they could make a start and replace the odd light bulb.

Interpol are
Paul Banks - vocals, guitar
Carlos Dengler - bass, keyboards
Samuel Fogarino - drums
Daniel Kessler - guitar