If there’s one thing that miserable old me likes even less than people going on holidays for charity, it’s pop stars recording songs for charity. So you’ll imagine that I was delighted to hear that national saviour Simon Cowell has gathered together all of our very favourite musicians (Rod Stewart, Susan Boyle, someone from Westlife) for an over-emotive mangling of REM’s classic ‘Everybody Hurts’ for the people of Haiti.

Great. Lucky them.

Why are charity songs so lazy and so bad? Increasing the profile of a cause is almost always welcome, as is raising money, and I’d like to think that the motivation behind the charity single is largely genuine (and I dare say it was once upon time – in 1984). Somehow I suspect though that the opportunity to generate some column inches in a non spouse-cheating/my-drug-hell/help-I’m-having-nervous-breakdown kind of way is the real selling point for ‘the artists’ involved these days.

Honorable intentions or not though, doesn’t it make more sense to choose a decent song in the first place? Being associated with dirge like ‘Rocking around the Christmas Tree’, hideous sap like ‘Earth Song’ or point-missing remakes of ‘Perfect Day’ might raise some much-needed cash, but it’s hardly helping the long-term credibility of either party is it?

The original versions of ‘Do They Know it’s Christmas Time?’ and ‘We are the World’ worked not just because raising money to alleviate famine in Ethiopia is a good thing, but because the actual songs weren’t cynically chucked together in five seconds flat à la Band Aid 20 and everything ever featuring the X Factor finalists.

So who buys these crap charity singles? Who is encouraging their recording? Is it you, dear reader? Have you ever bought a charity record? Come on, be honest now.

Lots of people are of the mistaken opinion that I am a chilled, laid-back and accepting kind of person. This is completely and utterly not true, and here is the proof.

I recently had to take a 40-minute journey on the tube. This did not bother me. Although the tube is not the most pleasant place to pass time,  it is a good opportunity to immerse oneself  in ‘a good book’.

So I settled down and all was well for a while. Well, until precisely the next stop where a man, a deceptively ordinary-looking man, got on and sat opposite me. He had an old supermarket bag which he placed on his lap. This should have warned me – ever since I witnessed a seatside fight between a cinema-goer and a rustler at the National Film Theatre, I have been weary of men and plastic supermarket bags.

But I digress. This supermarket bag was full of bananas. And the man proceeded to take one out, peel it and eat it, all the time gazing straight ahead into the middle distance behind me. This was fine. He wasn’t staring at me. And he was after all, just a man eating a banana.

Then he ate another. It was at this point that I noticed his Keith from Nuts in May eating style – that kind of slow, methodical, thoughtful chewing where you just know that he is carefully counting the correct number of chews in his head. And still he stared straight-ahead at that mysterious point just behind my right ear.

By the third banana, my skin was beginning to creep and by the fourth, all attempts to concentrate on my book were drowned out by an intense desire to shove it down his throat and choke him with it.

I didn’t wait around to see the fifth banana. As he pulled it from his bag, I leaped to the door and defiantly turned my back on him and his stupid, bloody bananas.

Later, I told my sorry tale to a friend. ‘But’ she said reasonably ‘he was just eating bananas. What’s wrong with that?’. ‘It was the way he was eating them’ I explained. ‘I thought that you Australians were meant to be laid-back.’ was her puzzled, yet completely irritating reply.

She is lucky that I didn’t have a banana on me as I know where I would have placed it.

Right, so I haven’t blogged for over two weeks and during that time I’ve completed a formidable amount of work, narrowly refrained from killing a few people, seen a fab gig (Portuguese Fado wonder Mariza), been to the movies five times and even met some of you – so you’d think I’d be able to write something interesting wouldn’t you? But no, I’m just going to moan.

You see, this weekend someone asked me if I wanted to go on a trek to Nepal – for charity.

Now call me selfish, naive… downright mean if you will, but this is something that I really don’t understand.  Oh, I know that people sponsor you for your efforts and it can raise lots of money, but it’s really just going on holidays for charity. It’s not particularly honourable and it’s certainly not showing your level of ‘commitment’. Cycling the the length of the Alps or climbing K2 may be a personal achievement, but it’s hardly the same as actually doing volunteer work or campaigning for a cause day in, day out. It’s more like guilting someone else into financially indulging your foolhardiness.*

So as much as I would like to visit Nepal one day, I won’t be going for charity. And if I want to support said charity, I’ll take the less glamorous route and simply send them a cheque.

* Speaking of which, if you need an excuse to give money to a not-so-good cause, you can sponsor my annual JJJ Hottest 100/Countdown-athon where I stay up all night with a bottle of vodka and watch old Cure, Stone Roses, Mondo Rock and Marilyn videos and mourn my lost youth. I promise the money will be going to worthy cause, even if its just my Asprin Fund.

A recurring theme in this blog as well as many others  (yes, I mean some of you listed over there on the right hand side) is fretting about the state of manners in the world today. People are just so rude we complain, wringing our hands and feeling generally exasperated.

Well, I’ve had my comeuppance this week.

Our mailing house at work has screwed up royally, sending out our latest missive to the wrong names at the right addresses. Now because all the recipients on this list have signed up to receive the mailing, are expecting it, have received it for years and could probably guess what it was from the envelope, I hoped that most of them would recognise that there had simply been a stuff up and open it anyway.

But no.

We’ve been besieged by calls from people asking what they should do. In response, I carefully explain the problem to them, stress that as usual there is nothing personal inside and that they should feel free to open it anyway. ‘But it’s not addressed to me!’ they say, ‘It’s not right, it’s impolite to open someone else’s mail’.

Grrr.

Just when I want people to rude and impolite, they’re not.

Typical.

I caught a brief glimpse of the BBC’s pre-emptive review show, The Story of the Noughties, last week. The bit that I saw was waxing lyrical about the importance of big name brand handbags and how, just two weeks ago, way back in 2009, no woman was complete without a vile, expensive but strangely tacky handbag on her arm.

By delicious co-incidence I happened to be reading a book called Factory Girls: Voices from the Heart of Modern China at the same time. Amongst the captivating and inspiring stories of the young immigrant women who make our shoes, mobile phones, televisions and trousers, was a chapter or two about a feisty young woman called Min who worked in yes, a handbag factory in Dongguan, a major manufacturing city in south-east China.

Min’s factory made loads of big name brand handbags and she and her colleagues nonchalantly nicked the bags left over at the end of an order.  Leslie T. Chang, the author who followed Min’s life over several years, describes her factory dorm room as ‘awash in Coach bags’.  For Min, the handbags’ value came as an easy gift for friends e.g. as a quick thank you to someone who let her kip over when she was job-hunting. But on most days the £££ bags were ‘worthless because almost no one in Min’s circle had any use for them or knew what they were worth’.

Maybe it’s just me, but I love the idea that somewhere in China a factory dormitory full of  20-something year old girls is disinterestedly kicking posh £300 handbags out of the way as they go out for a night on the town with their mates. And that’s how it should be.

Orriel Smith
Tiffany Glass

I strongly suspect that several regular readers will already own this piece of ‘fuzzy felt folk’, but it seems to fit the icy weather and the glacial mood that I am in.

And shock discovery for the day: did you know that Orriel Smith now uses her exquisite soprano to record albums of er, operatic chicken impersonations?

I love this world.

‘Tiffany Glass’, Orriel Smith from ‘Now we are Ten’, Trunk Records, 2006 but originally released as a single in 1968.
Download audio file (tiffany_glass.mp3)

As cliche demands, I usually write some kind of personal review of the past year around late December/ early January. Unfortunately, a lowlight of 2009 has been my rapidly loosening grip on time. Essentially time has kaleidoscoped and for me, recent events seem to take place at one of two points -  either within the last two weeks or at some time within the past five years.

So lets keep things simple. Here are some highlights from my past two weeks of delicious holiday freedom:

1. The Shop Around the Corner remains the charming film that I first thought it was 13 years ago. This is one of James Stewart’s earlier films from 1940 and was remade as You’ve Got Mail in 1998 with Tom Hanks. And try as he might, Tom Hanks will never be the new Jimmy Stewart.
2. I have finally discovered, at my tender and youthful age, the delights of TinTin. Captain Haddock = fabulous. And it’s written in proper grammatical French so I can actually read it.
3. I have officially given up on Doctor Who and it is a weight off my shoulders. You know that TV programme Are You Smarter Than A Ten Year Old? Well, it’s clear from Doctor Who that I’m not. The show must be aimed at ‘the family audience’,  but I still can’t understand it. I struggled through both the Christmas and New Year’s shows,  completely bewildered by the excess emotion and random plot points. If Doctor Who is the last of the Timelords as I previously thought, how can they be back? When did the Timelords turn evil? Why does everyone always want to take out London? And why the hell does the head Timelord look like Robert Kilroy-Silk? Well, I no longer care.
4. The David Sedaris Christmas special on This American Life.
5. Neu! I have been listening to their first fantastic album for the past week. My delight at this new discovery is only undermined by the equally new realisation that Stereolab have spent the past 20 years ripping them off.
6. I finally got round to watching the film of Carousel. As you may remember, this is one of my favourite soundtracks but I’d never actually seen the musical. It was as bad as I suspected it would be. Stick with the music folks.
7. Despite it’s inappropriately time limited name, the Wedding Bells cocktail has made our new year. Try it: 3/4 oz orange juice, 3/4 oz gin, 3/4 oz Dubonnet and 1/4 oz cherry brandy.

Kay Martin and Her Body Guards
The Horizontal Twist

Yes, it’s time for my yearly concession to Christmas. May this er, sleazy little number by Kay Martin (who is apparently not featured on the cover of the album from which the track is from) put a festive spring in your stride. And if that’s not enough, you can just re-listen to last year’s selection.

Merry Christmas everyone and see you on the other side.

 ‘The Horizontal Twist’, Kay Martin and Her Body Guards, 1962

Download audio file (the_horizontal_twist.mp3)

I had a horrible dream last night that my parents’ house was burning down. In the dream I ran madly around their home trying to rescue all the things we most cherish – Grandpa’s war medals, treasured items of jewellery, favourite books, seemingly endless shelves of my Mum’s carefully arranged photo albums documenting 100 years of family history.

And as the fire engulfed the Swiss Family Robinson style tree house that they were living in (it was a dream you know), I awoke in a panic desperately hoping I’d got to every single one of those bloody photo albums in time.

Awake and in a slightly fevered state, my mind naturally turned to the location of all the items in my house that I needed to save if by chance, it suddenly caught on fire right now.

1. Passports (I’m not going through the hassle of replacing them).
2. A quilt my mother sewed for me.
3. The excellent present that my Aunts gave me for my 18th birthday.
4. The shoebox of letters and postcards from my nearest and dearest.
5. The other shoebox of old photo negs.
6. The external hard drive back-up with the rest of my life on it…

Digital isn’t romantic, but it sure beats lugging piles of photo albums around.

Loretta Lynn
One’s on the Way

I don’t have much to say about this fabulous tune other than:

1. contraception is a wonderful thing
2. you can’t beat a bit of pedal steel guitar 
3. Loretta Lynn was the first lady of country.

‘One’s on the Way’, Loretta Lynn, 1971

Download audio file (ones_on_the_way.mp3)

I am currently attempting to sort out some financial matters and need to obtain a certified copy of a document. The instructions on how to do this stress that the copy needs to be certified ‘by a professional person (e.g. a banker, lawyer or doctor).’

Fantastic!

Isn’t it lovely that social workers, sales assistants, builders, IT people, photographers, nurses, administrators, graphic designers, plumbers etc. etc. are all considered too untrustworthy and downright dodgy to be able to verify a photocopy, yet a banker or lawyer is.

At least someone still believes in them.

I see that it’s almost the end of the decade.

I’ve been too busy lately to reflect terribly hard on this fact, but reading the current issue of The Word on the train this morning did get me thinking about what the naughties ‘means to me’.

So putting aside climate change, 9/11, people routinely degrading themselves on national television, ongoing threats to bio-diversity, the global collapse of the banking system, the disintegration of feminism, the re-emergence of religious extremism, the widening gap between rich and poor, the ongoing imminent collapse of civilisation etc. etc. one of the biggest impacts of the past decade for me has been the cementing of instant gratification culture and its evil twin, information over-load.

Once upon a time, I scoured second hand record shops, fairs and garage sales for records I knew I couldn’t get anywhere else, I traipsed into town to look for books I’d read about in the single paper I’d read that day (and if the shop didn’t have it they’d order it for me and I’d wait patiently), if I forgot to set the video for a TV show I thought I’d lost it forever and I didn’t ever think that I would see childhood favourites like You Can’t Do That On Television again*. Once upon a time I wrote letters.  Once upon a time I actually feared that I would either run out of music or run out of space in my house to put it in.

Faster internet speeds, email, DVDs and the like were beginning to make all these fears redundant around the year 2000, but information was still manageable. Over the past ten years though, almost everything has become available – and instantly available  if you want it.

It’s lunchtime as I write this, I’m sitting here at my desk and I’ve just read the headlines of three international newspapers, WBGO a radio station from New York is playing in the background and two Twitter accounts** are constantly updating me on ‘stuff’ from around the world. Last night I watched a Canadian sitcom on Youtube, looked at my mate in Vietnam’s latest photos on Flickr, ordered a DVD boxset from the States and listened to a record I’d tracked down on ebay after years of unsuccessfully searching for it charity shops. And there is so much more I could have done – waded through all that music on Spotify, read even more newspapers online, listened to some of those podcasts I’ve got queuing up on itunes…

I’m not complaining you know. It’s just an odd sensation to realise that in the course of ten years I’ve gone from craving more knowledge and more music to almost drowning in the stuff.

*Surely no one in their right mind would put this show out on a video/DVD boxset?
** I changed my mind alright. I blame work.

If you spend your evenings in front of the TV engaged in excessive hand wringing over the current state of ‘popular entertainment’, then I’d like to cheerfully and annoyingly remind you that it was ever thus.

Yesterday I was at the British Library enjoying the 19th century’s version of mass novelty entertainment thanks to Professor Heard’s Peerless Magic Lantern Show. There, in the dowdy atmosphere-less BL conference centre, Professor Heard enthralled us with some of the most popular (and beautifully hand-painted) magic lantern slides of the day:

1. skulls and phantoms blinking their eyes and grinning menacingly
2. a tree taking revenge on its role as firewood by coming alive and attacking a human with an axe
3. a monkey throwing a live cat onto a fire
4. a boy starving to death whilst his sister dies of cold
5. a series of drunks falling to their death
6. some particularly gruesome, blood spurting battle scenes
7. a man lying in bed, amusingly eating a succession of rats

Of course, there were other lantern slides and shows – fables, bible stories, morality plays, nice scenery from around the world and the like – but who wants to see those when you can watch someone eating vermin…

In some strange turn of events, I recently decided to shun my usual non-fiction and French textbooks and read a novel. I chose The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – a book I have been thinking about reading for ooh, 15 years.

Now Huckleberry Finn is ‘the first of the Great American Novels’ and people have undoubtedly been deconstructing Mark Twain’s tale of a runaway boy and an escaped slave ever since it was published in 1884. Indeed, the debates you could have about racism and slavery are endless – but apart from that what most struck me about the book was its sense of freedom.

By freedom, I don’t mean the obvious type of freedom that inevitably results from escaping slavery or an abusive father for a life of hi-jinks on a raft floating down the Mississippi. I mean the freedom that Huckleberry Finn, a young teenage boy, could actually approach complete and utter strangers, have a chat with them and perhaps stay around for a bit. i.e. freedom from the thought that they might look at him weirdly and tell him to piss off; freedom from the idea that all strangers are potential murderers, rapists, thieves, con-artists and psychos; freedom to believe that people are, by and large, quite nice.

Obviously this is a made-up book in a different place and time, and I’m sure that late 1800s Illinois had its fair share of untrustworthy tossers, but I wish I had it in me to be like Huck Finn and less suspicious of strangers.

I’ve been tagged for this meme by I Should Be Working (who I’m secretly pleased isn’t working as she wouldn’t have time to write such a top blog otherwise). Anyway, the drill is to select a song which always makes me smile and to then tag others with the same request, adding a comment about their blogs which should be smile-inducing.

I’ve spent the weekend pondering over which song to choose because well, quite frankly every song I bung on this blog makes me happy – so what makes this selection different from any other?

To make this ’special’, I’ve decided to be (kind of) radical. I’m throwing away cool and embracing honesty. This tune has probably never been written about in the pages of the NME, The Word or The Wire. My DJ heroes like Giles Peterson, Norman Jay and Stuart Maconie would probably prefer to die than play it. And if you actually listen to the words, you will soon discover that they are so naff that Morrissey’s larynx would probably choose petrol gargling and sword swallowing over singing them.

No right minded music snob should like this song. Come to think of it, no right minded feminist should like a song from a musical whose key message is that domestic abuse is fine and dandy if you love someone.

But hey, we all have failings and this is mine. Rogers and Hammerstein make me happy, and this song says happiness best. Even in November.

‘June is Bustin’ Out All Over’, from Carousel, 1945
Download audio file (june_is_bustin_out_all_over.mp3)

Now to spread the joy, I’d like to tag Mr Hoops Hooley over at Horse Overboard.  Although we share a common love of Teenage Fanclub, classic pop and tuneful softrock, his ever-enthusiastic musings about his recent musical discoveries always remind me that there is more out there. He is also one of the few people in the world who actually makes me think that I really should get out more and see some live music.

So in stark contrast to the miserable woman in the supermarket was the lovely David Sedaris who we went to see at the BBC Radio Theatre this afternoon.

I’ve heard writer and essayist David Sedaris quite a few times on the This American Life podcast so I was hoping for more of the same – autobiographical stories that ramble along somewhere between pathos,  observational comedy and pure self-deprecation.

And so it was.

But what really made the afternoon was Sedaris’ obvious and genuine delight in reading to a live audience. Happiness oozed from the man, positively bouncing off his shoes and radiating around the room, and when we all applauded and whooped (does anyone actually whoop on anything other than Radio 4 comedy shows?) his bashful grin was just plain charming.

At the end he thanked us all very much coming, said he was so pleased to see us, signed some books and drifted out of the theatre with the kind of goodwill that someone like say, the ant eating fools on I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here, can only ever dream of.

His show, Meet David Sedaris, will be on Radio 4 next April.

‘How old are you? Do you have any ID?’ the woman at the register asked politely.

‘Er… 35′ I replied, adding jokily ‘I guess I should take this as a compliment?’

‘No’ she snapped back ’You just look young and I have to ask.’

Now what I should have asked her is exactly how many under-aged drinkers buy single malt whisky, real ale, stilton and stuffed olives. Or perhaps I really do look young and teenage girls don’t just drink Malibu and coke anymore.

No, it’s not just one song this week, it’s a suite!

But they’re not here. They’re over at Planet Mondo’s - who has been foolish kind enough to offer me a guest spot this Funky Friday.

So get over there now, and as the good man himself would say, fill your boots.

To be honest, I’ve found it hard to motivate myself to write much lately. This is not because I haven’t been thinking about anything I assure you. Certainly not. In fact, here are just twelve random subjects you’ve been spared my half-baked thoughts on over the past month:

1. the genius of Mark Twain
2. the alleged death of the long playing record
3. the shoddiness of my iPod
4. the strange long-term impact of school-forced poetry
5. exactly why Bono is a tosser
6. is it possible to have too much music?
7. the Disney take-over of Marvel
8. the joy of our compost heap
9. whether it’s ethical to doctor your own blog stats
10. the role of cherry blossoms in Japanese art
11. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers
12. my general annoyance with Christmas cheer in November

I think I’m distracted. I think I’ve got too much on. I think it’s an autumnal thing. I think it’s something we all go through. But it makes me wonder, exactly how many blog posts never get written because we’re too lazy?*

* And if this completely and utterly self-serving sentiment doesn’t put you off and if you’re a regular reader based in the South East (which I suspect at least half of you are) and you would be interested in a Christmas blogmeet over a drink (not a bottle of water from home), email me (top right) and I’ll see if I can arrange something.

To an extent this is par for the course with late night drunken, disillusioned and stress-relieving conversation, but I think we were almost all most shocked by the vitriol that came from the mouth of the local councillor. Cynicism about the political system, disillusionment with the party, scorn for national politicians and disdain for the disinterested voters in his constituency – all poured out with the provocation of a few drinks. And because of his day-job and because of our general resentment towards expense-claiming politicians (local or otherwise) we took him to task in a way that we didn’t each other. ‘How can you possibly say that? You’re a politician – show some respect!’ we shouted across the table, confident in our self-righteousness.

But since then, I’ve been wondering why. Why were we surprised by his attitude? Why don’t we expect our elected representatives to feel the same negativity, cynicism and despair that we do about our own jobs, and indeed, the political system? Why would we  expect them to keep up the pretence when we don’t?

I think that part of the answer to this lays in the question I wish I’d asked him: ‘Why exactly are you doing this job and if you really feel that way, why are you still doing it?’ Sometimes we all probably need to ask ourselves this.