The cat came to see us while we sitting, waiting to play, and consuming the home-brewed cider. Marie, who plays accordion, says that cats make her sneeze. All cats appear to sense this, and thus approach her with great enthusiasm. This one, after investigating all of us and considering our suitability as nesting places, decided to climb onto her back from a nearby table, and do the kneading-with-paws thing all over her neck. With claws. Much wincing ensued.

Eventually it got off her and had another look at the rest of us in a selecting-next-victim kind of way. Since I really like cats, I encouraged it onto my lap. I don’t have a cat (partly because they aren’t allowed in our flat, and partly because what with being in the middle of a town and with no garden it would be rubbish for the cat to live here anyway), but I grew up with them around, and kind of miss them sitting on me. (And they don’t make me sneeze, fortunately.) So I wanted a cat-fix. The cat decided, after further consideration, that I would make a reasonable enough bed. It lay on me, doing some more of the claws thing. Luckily I had a thick cardigan/coat thing on so I couldn’t feel it very much. I mean, I like cats, but I also don’t like pain, and I’m not sure what level of each outweighs the other. For example, how would I feel about an exceptionally adorable kitten wielding an epilator? I cannot say.

When we were supposed to start playing, I left the cat lying on me, since it looked comfortable. At the point at which we’d got about halfway through the first tune, it slowly sat up, looked around for a bit and then finally decided to get off and go and look for a bed that wasn’t moving slightly from piano-pedalling. Which was a surprisingly high level of tolerance, I thought.

The cat’s owner, whose party it was that we were playing for, said that the cat had been a rescue kitten, which fitted in the palm of her hand when she found him. The vet had said he probably wouldn’t make it through the first night, but she got up every two hours to feed him for two weeks. “And now, we have a stone of cat,” she said.

—

Overheard at the same ceilidh:

Party guest to hostess: “Hi! How are you? Has everything gone all right?”
Hostess: “Hi! Yes, it’s all been fine – although I am convinced that George Swales doesn’t exist.”

also:

“…but if I give her an earthworm in the middle of winter, she doesn’t know what the ‘eck to do with it!”

I’ve decided that all the craft and jewellery stuff that I write about is now going to be posted in a new making-things blog, instead of this one. I have named it helenmakesthings.co.uk because although it’s not a particularly original or inspired name, it is at least straightforward. Also, there are loads of jewellery blogs called things like Purple Fairy Pixie Dust Treasure Box, and helenmakesthings.co.uk was the only domain that was left. Additionally, if I had a blog called Purple Fairy Pixie Dust Treasure Box, you would all have to slap me. If I ever do anything like that, slap me, okay? Anyhoo, if you like the craft stuff, go and see! And subscribe! If you are completely uninterested in it, don’t look, and it will never darken your screen again, unless you get a craft-blog computer virus. (People knit those, you know. But only for Windows.)

Another thing I have done is archive all my very old blogs from when I was at university (and a few years after) so I could delete them from the internet instead of leaving them in cluttered up, broken-templated, and thus password-protected Diaryland accounts. But I found a use for these archives, as it turned out.

A month or so ago, my mum said to me, seemingly at random, “How’s your book going?” And I said, “I’m not really reading one at the moment.” And she said, “No, the one you’re writing. You know, about your exploits.” I had no idea what she might be talking about or where this had come from. I mean, I would like to be able to write a book. For a while I wanted to write a semi-autobiographical one about working in the Lace Shop, except it would have to have included a great deal of fantasy in order to have been more exciting than actually working in the Lace Shop, and therefore saleable. Because it was really pretty dull there most of the time. But I cannot really write a book, because I am very, very bad at writing dialogue.

However, I decided that the first three years of the blog that I started while I was at university (mostly written late at night in my college computer room) would fill a book-sized, er, book, quite nicely, and I could give this to my mum and it would indeed be a Book About My Exploits. (She has read the blog before, admittedly, but not for, like, ten years.) So I made it into a pdf and uploaded it to Lulu, where they’ll make books for anyone who’ll pay for the printing – they’re not fussy – and now it is a book.

So, since it’s there – if anyone is bonkers enough to want one, you can get them from here. (There are pdf downloads, too.)

The book has:

• An archive of the Quotebook
• Stories about Chamber Orchestra and Gamelan Ensemble and Ola and other musical endeavours
• Descriptions of hangovers
• Stuff about drinking alcohol
• Complaining
• Other studenty things

You can even read a preview of it on the Lulu page. (The preview is just a few pages, and leaves the reader on an absolute cliffhanger, I have to say.)

Hairdressers have been a problem for me for quite some time. When I was 22 I decided to stop going to them, because a) I had no money and b) I couldn’t stand the conversations that they tried to have with me while they were doing it (”Are you a student?” “No” “Are you going anywhere nice on holiday?”) and c) they didn’t always do it how I wanted. I started cutting my own hair, which took ages and was a bit dodgy. For a while a housemate did it for me to a much better standard, but she moved away.

This year I decided I didn’t have the time or the patience to do it myself any more, and decided to risk hairdressers again. I went to one, told him what I wanted, and he did exactly what I asked, without trying to have a conversation with me. This was excellent. But it was in one of those “Turn Up Whenever Without An Appointment And Wait X Minutes” places, and I really prefer appointments. I thought I’d try the one near my house. I gave the same instructions, and a girl there cut my hair exactly as I wanted without trying to have a conversation with me either. I thought I’d cracked it.

So yesterday, I went back to the hairdressers’ near my house. This time I was presented to a different, older woman. I told her I would like a trim, please, with the layers putting back in and the hair shaped diagonally around my face. Exactly what I said to the others. But this one was different. She snipped a few bits off the back, and then said, “Hmm.” This was a little alarming. “Your hair’s very thin-textured,” she said. “Are you sure you want to have layers in it? Because mine is thin-textured and I never have layers in it because it makes the hair look even thinner and you really want to be adding volume, not taking it away.”
“It’s thin?” This was news to me. I’ve been battling against too much volume for most of my life; if my hair is all one length it sticks out in a big triangle. And some people who didn’t like me (it was mutual) on my school bus used to call me Fuzz Head.

She very firmly told me a bit more about how she wouldn’t advise having layers in it. She was being quite aggressive about it, and it actually felt like I was being TOLD OFF for wanting the WRONG HAIR. But I had asked for layers; I was bloody well going to have layers. I wasn’t paying her to boss me into having my hair all one length just because that would look better in her opinion. It’s a bit much, having to suddenly become a defense lawyer in the middle of your own haircut.

I wish that I had gone with my gut reaction at this point, and ripped off the plastic gown, announced, “I don’t think it’s going to work out between us,” and stormed out. But I didn’t. I just told her that my main priority was to reduce the volume, thank you, and would she put the layers in. “Oh I’m sorry,” she said, and went round my hair snipping little bits off until all of the back had been done.

Then she came to the front. “Your natural parting is in the middle.” she said. Previous hairdressers have not said this; they have said “Where would like your parting?” I managed to assert that I would like it just slightly to one side, but this took some doing and it was clearly unsettling her further. “Right, so what happens with the front?” she asked. “Is it a fringe or does it just sort of blend in?” I repeated my request for it to be shaped diagonally around my face, indicating the shape with my fingers.

Then she cut what was essentially a long fringe but only on one side of my head.

“Erm, have you done this side?” I asked, when she had declared herself finished.
“Well no because this is a fringe and your parting is there,” she said.
“Um. It wasn’t actually supposed to be a fringe. And this side isn’t really, er, diagonal like I asked for, maybe you could just-” I was trying to be as nice as possible about it.

She grabbed a bit of the front of my hair and held it in front of my face and said, “Look. That bit. Goes to that bit. Goes to that bit” in a very cross sort of way. And then did the same to the other side. Then she fetched a mirror and snarled, “I have put your layers in. At the back. They’re not any shorter than this because that would look ridiculous.”
“What? I didn’t ask you to do them any shorter!”
“*snarling sounds*”
“OK. All right. Can I please go now?”

Then a different member of staff cheerfully took my payment as if everything was just hunky dory, and I went away seething.

Basically, I had just had a bitch-fight with a hairdresser.

I had given her the exact same instructions as I gave to the previous two people who cut my hair. Unfortunately she had a) not listened and b) tried to impose her own ideas about what was correct and normal onto my head, when I hadn’t actually asked for advice. She was making it all about her. But it wasn’t her hair. RAGE.

I’m going to have to be very cautious from now on, but who goes into salons and asks, “Before I book an appointment, can I ask whether your staff harbour dictatorial desires? And are they equipped with ears?” Because that’s what I’m going to have to do.

A good, proper sunset, plus the people having the wedding had installed a selection of lights for after dusk. Those little things on the ground that are glowing in the photo below are paper bags with patterns cut out, and candles sitting in them. Presumably if these are knocked over they transform into mini-bonfires for a while, or they are made from fire-retardant paper. We just don’t know.

We only played for about 45 minutes in the end, but I think that, ceilidh-karmically speaking, this was made up for at a gig last year when we were supposed to play some music for the entrance of the just-married couple into the ceilidhing hall. Someone gave us the signal to start playing, and then there was a delay for some reason (presumably they got lost in a corridor on the way, or were snogging because now they were married and allowed to) which resulted in us playing non-stop reels for half an hour, to nobody. (Which was extremely fun, actually, but I’m not going to mention this if I’m ever, like, on trial for ceilidh-laziness or something.)  So it’s not all sitting around doing nothing.

We played through all of it (except for the bass player, who was in Wensleydale) and then had some chocolate-biscuit-cake and tea, while Catherine Cello’s small son played “London’s Burning” to us on the piano. I showed him how to make the piano strings ring without pressing the keys down, by putting a foot on the sustaining pedal and singing into the front, and some of us played piano duets from a Grade 1 book. I do enjoy hanging out with musicians. Which is good, because I don’t know many people who aren’t musicians.

On Wednesday I went to the gym again. I hadn’t been for two weeks, due to the whole not-being-able-to-walk incident. When I got there, the instructor looked slightly surprised and said, “You came back,” but apparently I looked more co-ordinated this week because she said afterwards that I was doing the lifting-stuff-about in a more proper manner. Also! My thighs did not hurt! Not even the next day! The only part that was slightly sore was my shoulders, and I think this was because there was a Whole New Shoulder Exercise which we hadn’t done last time. I am presuming this means that the muscles which I basically ripped to shreds the first time I went to the class have now repaired themselves in a strengthened manner, and it is now okay to inflict these movements upon them without as much damage. Perhaps, one day, they will even become toned or something.

I have tried doing exercise by going for a run, but there are car fumes, geese, angry people and teenagers on bikes. I have tried various sorts of exercise inside the house such as stretching, yoga, lifting very small weights and things (I used oranges once, because I am actually that feeble). I have phases of doing this sort of exercise very diligently every morning, but something always interrupts them. Sometimes it is hurting my legs so that I can no longer walk down the stairs (an activity in which I must preserve my abilities, in order to collect parcels) by exercising them too much. Sometimes it is hitting myself in the head with one of the weights (i.e. the ones that are actually not oranges and weigh about a kilo or something) and deciding that exercising is too dangerous. Sometimes it is having to go out in the morning, forgetting to do the exercise and thus getting out of the habit. But mainly it is because it is just really boring.

As well as finding it tedious, the other problem I have with doing exercise is that I have to make decisions about it on my own. This is irritating. I don’t want to have to make decisions about something as trivial as which parts of my body to move where, and how long for. I would prefer to lie down, go to sleep and have a machine exercise all my muscles for me while I have a nice dream about kittens or something. So I usually don’t exercise for very long, because I get bored and can’t decide which thing to do next, or see something interesting on the carpet.

Last week I decided the solution to this might be to go to a gym and find one of those exercise classes where a woman shouts at you and demonstrates where you should be putting your limbs. I found out about one on the internet, and I walked to where it was on Wednesday before lunch. Well, initially I couldn’t find the gym, because it was hidden behind a hotel and some other stuff, but eventually I located the terrifying reception. I say ‘terrifying’ because to get to the reception, I was forced to walk through a loads of people doing exercise on machines, all in a circular arrangement around the reception desk as if this was normal. I asked a man at the reception about the classes. I was going to try one called “Total Body Conditioning”.
“Is it, erm, difficult?” I asked.
He sort of looked me up and down and said “It’s, yeah… it’s not too bad…”
Then he showed me the room where it was going to happen. “Got a newbie for you!” he called to the Woman Who Was Going To Do All the Shouting. I tried not to scream and run away.

So I went upstairs, got changed, came back down, and found that the instructor and about four or five other people were now setting up their little exercise kits. There were little platforms with a mat on, and two little weights (I was given the smallest ones) and a sort of bar thing. (I was given the “training” one; the others had proper ones with weights on them). The instructor asked how much exercise I normally do. I told her that I didn’t do any. This didn’t appear to bother her.

After this, she put on some thumpy music and and then basically tried to kill us for about 25 minutes. We did weight-lifty stuff while standing up and lying down, leg bending things and other painful manoeuvres. I nearly fell over a few times, and by the end my legs were shaking uncontrollably. I mean, my thighs felt as if they were actually vibrating. I asked the instructor whether this was normal, but she didn’t seem to think it was too big a deal. She told me that the class would be good for me because it was repetitive – as I am “not a co-ordinated person” (you try being co-ordinated after someone makes you operate your limbs extensively and then stand on one leg) but I might ache a little bit the day after.

“Ache” was an understatement in the same way that saying “the Sahara is a little on the warm side” is an understatement. For the next five days there were very few parts of my body that I could move without wincing. My thighs were the absolute worst. I could not tackle stairs without screaming in pain at each step (although this may have been due to my tendency to over-react about hurting myself). They felt as if all the integral-thigh-parts had been through a mincer.

The evening after the incident, while my thighs were in this condition, I walked (hobbled) to a party. On the way I saw one of those big suing-people agencies with its sign reading: “Have you suffered a personal injury? Are you seeking compensation?” and wondered whether anyone had ever sued a gym for exercise-damage. But I decided not to. In fact, I am actually considering going to it again next week. (Because I am clearly an idiot.)

• Visited Chris in Oxford, where his very kind housemate cooked macaroni cheese for everyone
• Sat in the kitchen trying to play songs that Chris and I used to play in a band at school. Unfortunately the only instrument present which I could remotely get a tune out of was a mandolin. I am not very good at the mandolin, but I tried…
• Went to the Red Star Noodle Bar on the Cowley Road, which provided me with a bowl of noodles larger than my head
• Witnessed hideous products in a discount store. Look at this amazing quilted toilet seat:
  
  (I quite like the positioning of the apparently unrelated sign underneath.)
• Caught a train to Kingston and had a lovely meal and chat with Debbie by the river
• Successfully navigated myself from Debbie’s house to the train station the following morning, thanks to the lovely people at Google Maps and Apple. AND! There is an app on my iPod that tells me how to use the Tube. It actually calculates routes, tells me where to change and onto which line and how long it should all take. Now even complete London-transport-idiots such as myself can be Able to Use London!
• Went to Hyde Park on the Tube, just because I could. (You see, pre-iPod, I would have allowed the entire day for getting to London Liverpool Street, from which I was catching a train at 4.30pm, and then sat in it for several hours doing nothing because of getting there really early.) Hyde Park was, as most people know, nice, with trees in it, and deckchairs.
  
• I sat in one of the deckchairs, and ate my over-priced but reasonably delicious lunch. Then it got too windy and cold.
• Caught another Tube to Covent Garden. Looked at Covent Garden. Bought a nice ring at the Market.
• Did more Tubing, and got a normal train to Cambridge from Liverpool Street. Although, apparently, this was a great big Fail. The trains from Liverpool Street are the slowest way to get to Cambridge. Not sure how I managed that one.
• Stayed with Jane, who is pregnant, and Andy, who isn’t.
• Played with their cat, who is depicted here being apparently startled by a pile of dried up pea-pods:
  
• Caught a number of trains back to York. This involved sitting at Ely station for 45 minutes, which was slightly boring:

  
  Athough, admittedly, quite peaceful.

• Got back to my house at around half past midnight. I spent a lot of the next day playing my viola and my weird-accordion-which-I-haven’t-mentioned-in-this-blog-yet (although at some point I will elucidate). I still haven’t got myself sorted with a travel fiddle so wasn’t able to take one with me this time, although things are underway…

Several years later I’ve possibly had a folk music overdose; I’ve definitely had a generic-singer-songwriter overdose (the latter was against my will), and hardly any live music has had a real sideways-knocking, inspiring effect on me for ages. The last live acts to do so were Bellowhead a few years ago, and, weirdly, a Chinese busker on the Paris Metro (although on that occasion I may have been just a bit drunk-and-emotional). Anyway, the St Martin’s players were brilliant. And since they didn’t have a conductor, it was more like they were a great big band than an orchestra. In my head, when I was younger, I used to separate the classical ensembles and the folk bands I played in quite distinctly, even though the musicianship and ensemble required for both is essentially the same.

When they started the first piece I actually thought I was going to cry. I used to resent being made to go to Chamber Orchestra rehearsals and weekly concerts because I just wanted to play folk music; now I realise that aged 18 – 21 I had no idea of the value of what I had. But I guess the break has made me come to appreciate it.

Some of my friends have emotionally blackmailed me into playing Schubert’s Trout Quintet with them in November (they even plied me with alcohol). I had been unsure about this to begin with, but actually I think it will be good for me.

Presumably the owner of the rap music does not know this is supposed to be the Quiet Coach, because, even prior to the music starting, it was actually too noisy to hear the announcements that were made over the tannoy about which coach it was and how much noise was supposed to happen in it. And this was because a few people have brought small children with them into the Quiet Coach. One of them is extremely small and therefore presumably quite a new one. It is wailing periodically. There are another two right next to my reserved seat. I sat in it briefly, but they were being kids. Not obnoxious or anything, just having perfectly nice kid-conversations, but at kid-volume. Which is loud. Fortunately there were some empty seats so after about five minutes I moved. “Oh are you going now?” asked one of the children, happily. He hadn’t acknowledged my existence up to that point. Evidently he didn’t really appreciate sitting next to me any more than I did next to him.

I don’t understand why anybody with talkative (i.e. awake) children would want to sit in the Quiet Coach. It’s not fair on the kids to force them to shut up, and not fair on the people who want to sit somewhere quiet to put kids who are going to talk near them. What about people who have kids AND want to sit somewhere quiet? I have no problem with this, if the children are included in the quiet. If they want to sit in the Quiet Coach so that they can hear their children’s conversations properly, then they can bloody well go and sit in one of the Noisy Coaches with a set of little microphones, a battery powered mixer and some headphones instead. That is the only way you can have it both ways, dahlings.

The rap music perpetrators have now been told to be quiet by a member of staff. After the member of staff had gone away, they turned the music back on! Now Refreshments Trolley Guy is coming through the carriage, so they have turned it off again. Are they, like, twelve? They obviously know they are Doing Something A Bit Naughty. Wow. What absolute rebels. Now Trolley Guy has gone on his trundling way into the next carriage, they are turning it on and off again in bursts. WHAT IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE? There are about TEN other coaches in which it is apparently acceptable to fiddle with mobile phones and make beeping sounds, watch DVDs with the speakers on, scream, have loud telephone conversations about one’s Gap Year, give birth, practise arias or kill goats. There is ONE Quiet Coach.

And now a girl has peeled the plastic wrapper from her sandwich really loudly! I appear to have become hyper-sensitised. If anyone eats crisps near me I may actually stab (or slice, or scoop) them with my new spork. This is why it is important for people to be quiet in the Quiet Coach. In the long run, it prevents violence, and cuts NHS costs.

There was nobody else in the gallery, apart from the curator. I smiled at her, and then went to look at a collection of ceramic pieces. I was in the middle of reading the artist’s blurb when something changed. Very quietly, some MOR music had started seeping in from somewhere. It wasn’t one of York’s vast population of MOR-cover buskers trying their luck in the garden. It was coming from inside the gallery itself. And it was utterly horrible.

To be clear: I am quite, quite certain that the music was not part of a mixed media installation. I’m all for film scores, theatre scores, music-with-visual-art, and any other mixed media combinations. But entirely unconnected background music in an art gallery? Suddenly it didn’t even feel very much like a gallery any more. Art galleries do not have background music. While (I hope) I’m among the last people to criticise something for not adhering to convention, silence in galleries is for good reason. How can visual art be fully appreciated when there are distractions, unconnected to the art itself, pulling at other senses?

If, for example, there was a strong smell of sulphur in a gallery, perhaps nobody would go in, or at best they would complain bitterly to Reception. If a pack of Jack Russell terriers tugged at everyone’s trousers while they were taking in a Van Gogh exhibition, there would be outrage. I do suspect (well, hope) that if they suddenly switched on Radio 2 in the Tate Modern there would actually be quite a few complaints. But I reckon approximately one third of people would complain about the intrusiveness, one third wouldn’t notice the music at all because they were so used to perpetual background music, and the remaining third would think that it was part of an installation and was a terribly smart post-post-modern expression of the, er, omnipresence of background music. (Actually, maybe people would think the sulphur and Jack Russells were an installation as well…)

I wonder whether the curator in the little gallery I visited had switched the music on because I was in there, and she had suddenly felt uncomfortable at being in the same room as another person with no sounds. It’s as if silence – the absence of reassuring “filler” noises – has become louder than background music.

It’s a pity, because I rather like silence. I don’t know whether it makes a difference being a musician – but I find that if there is something containing pitches and rhythms going on, my brain latches onto that, and cannot concentrate on anything that involves language, numbers, logic or any other kind of abstract thinking. The only things I can do while music is playing are manual tasks, such as washing up or making jewellery. I think when I was at school studying A-level art I was able to paint in the art room while there was music on (although not when some of girls in my art class insisted on playing the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing on repeat for three weeks, because music on repeat makes me want to bite people). Some people appear to be quite happy have music on in the background while typing on a computer, writing an essay, doing their accounts, writing code. Some of them are even musicians, so it can’t just be that. (Maybe they actually have larger brains than me, with more space in them.)

Conversely, if people are merely talking, I can almost completely tune them out. If I’m trying to work I’d prefer silence over hearing a conversation, but it’s easier for me to ignore than music is. I’d guess this is because the rhythms of conversations are not so regular as those in (most) music. While I was at university I once even composed part of a degree project while BBC Radio 4 (which is all talking) was on in the background, as an experiment, just to see whether it was possible for me. It was. (My composition lecturer told me that the Radio-4-composed passage slightly reminded him of Shostakovich. The Radio 4 programme had been about rivers. I think these things are probably unconnected.)

Another aspect of the issue, for musicians, is that it seems music itself has largely become regarded as a ‘background’ thing by many people. For a majority of people working as musicians, trying to earn a living from playing, there is more money to be made playing music that has been heard many times before, to an audience that ignores you, than playing original, new music to an audience that will listen. I personally play a lot of ceilidhs in order to extract cash from people, which is a slightly different matter – the music’s primary function is to be danced to, and was largely composed for the purpose. But I’ve also played the occasional “background music” gig at weddings and functions, in bands and string quartets. The music I’ve played at these was composed for listening to, not purely to “create an atmosphere”. People have paid large amounts of money for it, and yet often left me with a suspicion that they have not really listened to a note.* Background music appears to be merely a form of comfort: ironing out the awkward silences at events, playing familiar tunes in order to reassure people that everything is normal. If the only way to be a musician was to be an Audio Security Blanket I’d stop right now – that’s the opposite of what I aspire to.

I appreciate that some people like to use sounds in order to create ambience, and that in the right situation it has its place – but I just wish the semantics could be changed. In visual art, there is a word for it: wallpaper. Most people do not confuse wallpaper with art. But to use the same word, “music”, to describe something that people ignore over canapes and also to describe something that is there to actually listen to is too broad.

So I would like to rename “background music” as something more appropriate (preferably something incredibly irritating: “live incidental soundtrack”, “life ambience”, “function audio”, “comfort-harmony” or “silence-prevention-buffer” anyone?) and reclaim “music” for what it really is.

—

* A friend of mine reports that she was in a string quartet at a wedding on one occasion, and a man stood directly in front of them for a while while they were playing Pachelbel’s Canon. When they finished, he approached them and asked, “I don’t suppose you could play Pachelbel’s Canon, could you?”