Sunday Swoon. June 17th

I raced around Torbay on a trawler listening to Azealia Banks on Saturday. What did you do?

1. Thanks to National Theatre Live I got to watch Danny Boyle’s Frankenstein at the beautifully old Gate Picturehouse after missing out on tickets when it was performed last year. I was slightly apprehensive about watching a theatre production as a piece of cinema but concerns were immediately quashed. We attended with Benedict Cumberbatch as the monster, and Danny Boyle’s production gives back the monster his voice, it is told from his perspective. I sobbed, quite a bit, it was utterly moving, challenging and bleak.

2. This  book deserves, and shall have, a blog post of its own but I have to include it in this weeks round-up as it inspired me to the point of scribbling in the margins, underlining passages and bursting into tears on the tube. I shall save my words for when I write that post but for the time being I urge any woman with a creative bone in her body to read A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf.

3. Hot Chip released In Our Heads on Monday and from the opening track (Motion Sickness) I was in love all over again. Hot Chip make music anyone could dance to. White middle class boys slapping out rhythms that Prince would bow down to. People making whatever music they like, irrespective of whether it fits with outward appearances, and damn the consequences. Play it, buy it, improve your life ten fold. At least.

4. Despite growing up in Brixham I have always shied away from the annual Trawler Race as it tends to be fairly rowdy and as a teen I was too painfully introvert to join in. This year the town tradition saw its 50th race. My cousin is a skipper of a boat (star of Sky TV’s Trawler Race don’t you know) so this year I finally clambered clumsily and without grace over three boats to get to his boat with dear friend Lizzie on Saturday. We didn’t puke, the weather was so dire that it was called off halfway round the  race across Torbay, we didn’t fall overboard. A success.

 Also, Brixham appears to really, really, really like Azealia Banks 212. ♥

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Little Lies

I’m not a clever political commentator or blogger, I would never be able to wrap my head around the scripts that Armando Iannuci creates if someone asked me to dip my toe into fiction. What I am is an Executive Assistant, have been for too many years I care to count, and one that has been *obsessed with the Leveson enquiry.

So, here I am typing away at my desk listening to our Prime Minister claim he barely recalls what days of the week end in the letter Y, let alone anything of importance to Robert Jay QC (the man fast replacing Jarvis Cocker as the thinking womans crumpet). Of course I have tabs open and a complicated excel spreadsheet to hide my blog if anyone walks into my office, multitasking is key to my job.

Also key to this job is diary management. Given every MP that has appeared on the inquiry has claimed that their diary does not reflect their actual meetings and whereabouts I can only suggest that

1. They’ve hired the monkeys from the PG Tips adverts as secretaries and dressed them in black dresses and pearl necklaces, which although is an endearing image for some sorts I am sure the Animal rights groups would not be happy about the chimps alternative employment
2. They’re all telling whopping barefaced lies

After a milliseconds thought I am willing to bet my ovaries it’s the latter.

I’ve had dealings with MP’s offices frequently. More often than not they have a very efficient PA and a second staff member whose job title is “Diary Manager”. That’s their one remit, nothing else. All day, five days a week they make sure every minute detail is in the diary. The where, what, why and with whom. Quite simply, you don’t randomly leave meetings in the diary that get cancelled, rescheduled. Neither do you put meetings in that don’t exist. Lies, lies from tiny eyes. The whole lot of them.

*So obsessed that I dedicated Prince’s You Sexy MF to Ian Hislop’s performance at the Leveson Inquiry on Shaun Keaveny’s 6 Music’s Breakfast show on a feature called Songs Of Praise.

Sunday Swoon. June 10th

Technically not events that happened within the past seven days but all that real life/bad hangovers got very much in the way of Sunday’s recently. Macaroni Cheese, Baseball and some seriously skill, brill & ace music….

1. Feels like I’ve been waiting an eternity to hear the album from Friends. Such perfect indie pop. Think Karen O fused with Debbie Harry. Makes me want to wear those 80’s neon headphones and pretend I’m in a music video (which I am sure people do frequently in Dalston irrespective of soundtrack so perhaps I should move there). Manifest! is making me smile. A ton.

2. Finally my stomach got to try Pitt Cue this week. Guess what’s inside those panko breadcrumbs? Go on guess. Macaroni Cheese! Sounds bizarrely suspicious but oh my does it work. Topped with pickles and pulled pork in a brioche bun, with a side of shiitake mushrooms. I’m not sure if this is their invention but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen such a culinary combination. Pitt Cue, if you are responsible for this invention let me know so I can leave you something amazing in my will as a thankyou?

I went to the trailer instead of the restaurant which is on the Southbank, lovely to sit by the river with a book and some decent grub. Follow their Twitter updates here.

3. I’ve been playing Crybaby for a couple of weeks now, unable to blog about it on its release date due to weddings and hangovers (which often go hand in hand). If I could buy everyone that reads this blog a copy I would. Think early Richard Hawley, scrap that, think better than early Richard Hawley. It’s heartbreaking and truly beautiful music from Danny Coughlan. It will give you goose bumps and tingles.

4. It takes a talented teller of tales to make me invest so heavily in an American college baseball team (Geena Davis and Madge never managed to peak my interest in the game after all). Chad Harbach has created such flawed, painfully human, broken but brilliant characters in The Art of Fielding. Amazing debut novel.

5.  Technically not this week unless you include the hour I got home after Field Day but they deserve to be mentioned as my ultimate highlight over the bank holiday weekend. Of course I didn’t get to see all the bands I wanted, I am never quite militant enough when it comes to festivals but those I saw (Pond, Summer Camp, Kindness, Sleigh Bells, Theme Park, Franz Ferdinand) gave me that muddy knees wild abandon experience I cherish so much at festivals. It’s impossible to pick an absolute favourite but Kindness excelled all expectations. At all costs I would dash to see him and his band again, anyone that covers Womack & Womacks Teardrops is the boom and the lick. ♥

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