Paganini In No Time

Sorry about the sideburns in this shot, I forgot to shave this morning.

In my continuing battle against terminal boredom I have taken up the violin.  I am aware that at the frankly alarming age of 27 I have no business inflicting ‘Violin Star Book 2′ in the key of screech upon my poor husband.  I am also conscious that by the sounds of it the neighbours are having problems enough without me introducing a wobbly and melancholic soundtrack to their upcoming divorce.  However, I have always wanted to play an instrument of such soul and beauty, so play I shall.  Besides, I’ve already bought ‘Violin Star 3′, a music stand and enough rosin to wax the arses of all the runners in tomorrow’s Grand National.  I’m committed now.

To be fair I’m already reasonably musical having played piano and a few other instruments when I was younger to a fairly good standard.  I’m not very good at reading music so I’ve always had to play everything by ear anyway and when you’re attempting to bow out a tune on a fretless instrument then playing by ear is useful.  What isn’t so useful is being used to relying on the visual element.  Let me explain; playing the piano is easy.  If you were subjected to forced piano lessons as a child and failed your grade 1 exam then you may wish to fling your dinky little netbook across the room with contempt for my arrogance.  Please don’t – it isn’t insured and I won’t buy you a new one.  Hear me out will you?  Playing the piano is easy once you’ve cracked the pattern.  The notes are already tuned for you, all you have to do is push the right key.  If you hit a middle C a millimetre further to the left than usual then nobody would ever noticed unless you habitually hit middle C right on its extremity anyway.  Then you’ll be playing either a B or a D you fool.  With a violin however I have discovered that even when you begin to remember where all the notes are, then in the middle of a delightful little ditty your fingers will be moving fast and you’ll think you’ll have pressed your clammy little digit into the exact same spot as last time.  You haven’t and it sounds awful.  Most people would carry on through the blip but at this point my latent obsessive compulsive tendencies will kick in and I have to start it all over again.  Bugger.

Well check me out - book 2 already.

Playing the violin is not easy, or at least it’s not easy for me.  I’m having to work at it and I’m enjoying the work.  I cannot wait until my fingers have developed sufficient dexterity and muscle memory to be able to write my own music with confidence.  It makes me feel all gooey with excitement.  No-one but my husband and the neighbours will ever hear them but I simply cannot wait.  I have only ever played instruments that either need to provide their own accompaniament or are really only worth playing as part of a team sport.  The violin with its sweet soaring trembles and heart-wrenching glissandos is something you can play alone in a darkened room or prancing about as part of a larger ensemble as the mood takes you.  It’s like song but without the irritation of someone putting words to it and making it all about them.  Quiet you buffoon, the violin will transform and transcend your emotions and make them all the more potent and real.

I know what you’re thinking and you’re right.  I will never be that accomplished at the violin.  The best I will ever be able to hope for is to the ability to pick out a tune comfortably and without too many burst ear drums in the vicinity.  I should have started 20 years ago or more if I ever wanted to play in the way I rhapsodise about.  I know that.  I do.  But so what?  Even just one minim played exquisitely in an otherwise piss-poor five minute piece will make it worth it.  The response I have had from many people when I tell them that I am learning the violin has been either ‘you’re too old to get that good at it’ or ‘God, my kid/little brother/friend/child next door learned the violin and it sounded awful’.  Small-minded and terrible people.  Is that all people can ever see – the end product?  Learning something for your own pleasure is immensely satisfying.  Look beyond what you think is the end product, concentrate on the satisfaction to be gleaned from progression and for God’s sake, stop commodifying it.  And please please please – if you’ve ever wanted to pick up an instrument and learn it but you’ve always told yourself that you’re either too old, too busy or too tone deaf – ignore yourself and everyone around you.  To rather sickeningly pinch a well-known advertising slogan, just do it.  So you’re never going to be Paganini and make a living out of your violin, you’ll never be Elton John and play the piano all over the world, you’ll never be Bob Holness and play Baker Street in secret - prrrrft.  Play for pleasure, for relaxation, for concentration, for the joy that comes from learning a new skill.

Just play it.

Rebekah Brooks Doesn’t Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

You can lead a horse to a Brooks but you cannot make it hack Black Beauty's phone.

So it seems that trouble is still brewing for Rebekah Brooks and News International, with today’s top story being the Leveson Inquiry’s revelation that the police lent her a retired horse.  The old mare apparently enjoyed hacking, taking people for a ride and combing her mane.  The police horse however seems to be more of a mystery.  Anyway, back to Miss Brooks.  Now, I don’t mean to stirrup trouble but someone really should rein this woman in.  She can protest her innocence until she’s horse but she must remember that she is currently on bale. After the number of people’s privacy she has invaded, she should get down on her ponies and beg them for forgiveness.  What the equus she thinking?  Well let me be the first to say that she’s not foaling anyone.  Call me a neigh-sayer but her behaviour leaves me colt.  I also hear that she’s not always the most stable of people and she can be a bit of a nag.

Mind you, perhaps we should be a little more forgiving ourselves?  Miss Brooks has been having a bit of a mare lately what with being pulled into Knacker’s Yard by the police for questioning and being put out to pasture so perhaps we should spur her on and encourage her to get back in the saddle.  Let’s be honest – you whinny some, you lose some.  I mean there’s no point in shutting the stable door after the horse has been borrowed so filly your hearts with compassion and moo-ve on.  Wait, wrong story…

Liv Tyler, Michael Gove and Me

If she's this upset about her split ends, for God's sake don't tell her about her alopecia round the back.

Well hello there, meaningless ether.  How’s it hanging?  I haven’t posted for a while so I thought I should spray some half-hearted venom and snot over my personal corner of the intertron.  Nothing much has happened in the past few weeks to really chat about as such, apart from the usual lurching from wide-eyed chortling hysteria to incandescent rage like the blueprint for the stereotype of every drunk in film and literature ever, so I’ll spare you the things I found funny.  I doubt as many of you will rewind, watch and shriek with laughter at the cereal advert with the mousey rodent thing repeating ‘honey’ and ‘nut’ as much as me anyway.  Give me a break – I’ve got a high temperature and that mouse has a funny voice.

So here it is – my list of things that have pissed me off recently.

1)      Liv Tyler’s advert for Pantene.  Has anyone ever sounded THIS distressed about split ends EVER?  I’ve heard charity appeals for dying puppies that sound less upset.  Everyone who’s ever been on Red Nose Day to talk about AIDS orphans plus Chris Martin being really rather wistful could not be as close to tears as Liv is.  She sounds like she’s in rehab, discussing the terrible things she does to herself.  Admission is the first step Liv.  Embrace your emotions.  Except, you woefully and appallingly simpering booby, you are talking about HAIR and what YOU DO TO IT.  Don’t want split ends?  Stop fucking about with it.  Better yet, shave it all off in public and sell your breakdown story to the tabloids.  The crack in your voice when you tell us what you do to your hair every day of the week would indicate that you’re close anyway.  Take the final step if it’ll stop you blathering on about the tragedy of your barnet.

2)      Michael Gove’s tacit acceptance of homophobia in faith schools.  Read the full article here and allow the bile to bite at the back of your throat.  For the lazy or browser impaired allow me to summarise angrily.  Apparently the equality laws that we have in this country to protect people from dickheads and wankers don’t apply to the school curriculum, meaning that faith schools who want to tell their students that homosexuals are evil/sick/wrong/unnatural etc. are perfectly entitled to.  And some do.  In the UK.  In the 21^st century.  Well let me say that this sort of shit might be acceptable in some classrooms, but not in mine.  If any kid I teach started spouting hate like this they would get a serious bollocking.  Don’t get me wrong – if your faith states that homosexuality is evil and unnatural then that’s up to you.  You’re wrong of course and I raise my eyebrow in your general direction, but you’re entitled to your opinion.  But you are not entitled to be a bigoted bastard and spout your nasty arsegravy all over young people.  Sorry for the mental image there.  Anyway – sort yourself out Gove, you’re coming across as a knob.

Come on Gove, you're not making any friends here. Unless you count bigots.

3)      My immune system.  Seriously, white blood cells – get rid of my cold.  At least I think it’s a cold.  I’m certainly producing sputum of an interesting hue, and copious quantities of it.  I felt pretty nauseated the other day, and now my throat has swollen up and currently resembles a diseased cartoon minge that one may find on an informative STI leaflet.  This morning when I woke up I found that I could barely hear anything in my left ear except a stabby pain.  Surely, I thought to myself, surely my ear must look different from the outside?  Pain and deafness must show some external sign.  Nope, just looks a bit pink.  It’s making my balance crap.  I’m staggering around looking permanently confused, smacking my great lumbering and swollen head into doorframes and moaning softly.  My nostrils look as if someone’s trying to flay me in the least efficient way possible.  Today I have done nothing but eaten milk jelly, ice cream and scrambled egg.  Even swallowing these squishiest of victuals feels like gargling broken glass in vinegar.  I can’t even really taste anything properly.  Enough now immune system.  Sort it out or I’ll sort you out.  I will drop kick each and every one of you white blood cells into next week if you don’t.  You’re looking nearly as knob-like as Michael Gove.

End of phlegmmy rant.  Go away, I’m not in the mood.

Pantomime Dame

There ain't nothing like a dame...

There’s something intrinsically amusing about men in drag.  I don’t mean that in any way to be offensive to proper cross-dressers or transgenders, and I’m not really talking about drag queens (although they are fabulous in every way).  I’m talking about the pantomime dame or the bloke that will dress up for a laugh.  I don’t know if it’s a particularly British tradition – or Australian; look at Dame Edna right here, she’s brilliant – but the idea of a man dressing up as a woman in a completely non-sexual and simply hilarious way does seem peculiar to far too few places in this world. 

For those of you who don’t know, a pantomime dame is a usually older gentleman who dresses up as an older woman and seems to talk only in double entendre and innuendo (no, inYOURendo).  They tend to wear rather grotesque parodies of women’s clothing and will play characters like Widow Twankey or the Ugly Sisters.  Pantomimes are traditional fairy stories retold camply on stage e.g. Aladdin, Sleeping Beauty, Snow White etc. but with lots of suspect jokes for the adults and sweets for the kids, and they’re usually shown at Christmas.  Take a peek at this.

BIGGINS.

This post is not going to be a long dissemination of cross-dressing comedy because a. I don’t want to destroy the spontaneous giggling and b. I’ve got to cook dinner in a minute but I will just say this – would a man not in drag or a woman dressed as a woman be this funny?  Probably not – drag seems to liberate somewhat, and enables people to say and do stuff that otherwise might just seem bitchy, stupid or just plain weird.  Huzzah for pantomime drag.  A thousand times huzzah.  I’ll leave you with comedian Rufus Hound’s charity to dance to Cheryl Cole’s song ‘Fight For This Love’.  Laugh, and then appreciate just how well he’s actually dancing.  Tatty byes, dear readers.

The Daily Mail Is Terrible

The Daily Mail - we command you to become more anxious.

Have you ever read The Daily Mail?  Isn’t it awful?  Always first on the morally outraged high horse, hysterically shrieking about encroachments on the rights of ‘middle England’ and how decency should be protected at all costs, but also capable of some jaw-droppingly insensitive, rude and prejudiced articles that would make even some NF members say ‘steady on’. 

My Dad says I only dislike this rag because it’s fashionable.  Not so – I dislike this rag because time and time again both the paper itself and its weird readership are so puke-inducing.  Take today for example.  There was an article today from some bloke who is, “…the father of a mentally handicapped 14-year-old girl — who has severe learning difficulties and the mind of a five-year-old child,” bewailing the fact that Ofcom said that when Ricky Gervais used the word ‘mong’ some months ago, it was not meant as a slur on the disabled.  By the way, the description of his daughter?  A direct quote, as unbelievable as that might sound.  These are the sort of people who describe their own children with words like that.  Aside from using his own daughter to construct a ridiculous argument, this man also seems to argue against over-reacting to free speech.  Pretty odd.  It was the disgusting comments left by the decent and law-abiding readers suggesting, amongst other things, that Ricky Gervais would only be funny if he was dead that got me.  Clearly these morons are unaware of the concept of hypocrisy.  We shouldn’t be surprised at this over-reaction to a throwaway remark which was intended as a joke however.  This is the same paper that continued to howl over the Jonathan Ross/Russell Brand/Andrew Sachs furore long after Mr Sachs had begun to look embarrassed and appalled at the whole sorry spectacle a few years ago.    (Click here to read all about it)  These tits seem to imagine that just because they are offended by something, everyone else should be as well.  Many of them never even hear or see the original bit of naughtiness but end up becoming offended once removed.  I am reminded in this of that MP who got really upset at the comedy Brasseye’s paedophilia special  who then had to admit that he hadn’t even watched it!  It’s very funny by the way, I highly recommend it.

So much for attempting to promote surge after anguished surge of outrage amongst the general population.  How about the Daily Mail’s track record of homophobia, racism, Islamophobia and articles supporting the class structure staying as rigid and defined as possible.  The continual exaggeration and sometimes downright falsehoods they tell about asylum seekers for example, about how they receive benefits in excess of what ‘indigenous’ people receive and live in palaces.  Did you hear the one about the immigrants having so many babies that they’re breaking the NHS?  The article is right here, complete with a handy picture of some Muslim women with pushchairs just to increase the general Islamophobic tension as well.  The implication of the headline almost seems to be that these hospitals are turning away British mothers in favour of foreign ones.  So instead of writing an article which is either concerned at the fact we don’t have enough midwives in general or worrying about the world’s population explosion, it makes so much more sense to focus on foreign mothers, coming over here with their loose ways, having children and requiring medical support whilst they do it.  Sterilise ‘em I say.  Yeah, by the way official organisations that represent midwives have formally and vehemently rejected the Mail’s claims.

This picture is here by coincidence and I am in no way comparing the Daily Mail editorial team and its readership to Nazis.

How about this travesty written just after the death of Stephen Gately?  Apparently he can’t possibly have died of natural causes because he was young.  Not true – one of my students died last year from a heart attack, and she was a seemingly perfectly healthy teenage girl.  The worst part of it though is the insistence that happiness in civil partnerships is ‘just a myth’ and is rather a ‘dangerous and different lifestyle’.  I don’t even know where to begin with these breathtakingly terrible rectums.

I don’t get how they can justify saying some of the awful shit they say and then lambast comedians who tell a couple of joke.  There are loads more things to be said (such as the Daily Mail’s support for fascism and Nazis – an old headline once said ‘Hurrah for the Blackshirts!) but I’m in a bad mood now.  In short, shut up Daily Mail.  Please just shut up.  You’re rude and impolite and just too damn loud.  You give the rest of us British people a bad name.  Now go away.

Sleepless In East Kent

I can't get no sleep. Listening to Faithless turned up to 11 probably isn't helping.

I’m not sleeping well at the moment.  I’ve undergone periods of interrupted sleep for years now, each one lasting for a few weeks or months and then it’s back to normal again.  Sort of.  Anyway, those of you that have never experienced the grinding and monotonous panic of spending hours trying to stumble into the soft and fluffy arms of sleep don’t know what you’re missing.  It’s invigorating, running around during the day oscillating wildly between crazy-eyed bouts of unknown energy and bleary-brained slumps where you can hardly sit upright; you really must try it.

Sleeplessness descends for many reasons – perhaps you’re worried about something, maybe you keep hearing creepy noises downstairs, some people really are stupid enough to drink an enormous Starbucks offering just before bed.  I know that for me it’s the complete inability to switch off the useless grey blancmange that lives in my head.  I don’t even have to be thinking of anything Earth-shatteringly important or angst-driven (although it helps – I saw ‘Threads’ recently, the 1984 post-nuclear apocalypse grim-fest and goodness me, did that make for some fun trains of thought, both whilst conscious and unconscious) – it just have to be bothersome/compelling enough to keep me whirring away.  You allow a train of thought to be followed for just so long until with a jolt you realise that you should be asleep.  Panic overcomes you.  You close your eyes again and try to will yourself into the land of nod.  Fail.  You roll over, open and close your eyes and all to no avail. You need a plan, something to do.  Something which will inevitably help you sink into a sighful slumber.  You need a top 5 list of things to do when you’re desperately trying to sleep.

1) Make sure that you check the clock every ten minutes.

Nothing gets you closer to your elusive REM sleep than knowing what time it is.  After all, how can you possibly realise how essential it is that you sleep NOW unless you pull the clock to your face and wake yourself up by peering at it?

2) Work out how many hours sleep you’ll still get if you fall asleep right now.

We all work better with a little pressure, right?  I find that nothing makes me try harder to sleep than constantly updating my internal clock and reminding myself of all the studies that suggest that to function properly and healthily you need 6-8 hours of sleep a night.  Get your head down, Miss Laura C!

3) Remind yourself of all the little failures you’ve had during the day.

Wish you’d stiffened your shoulder against the rude and obnoxious tide of wankers who wouldn’t let you off the train before they got on?  Just thought of a witty comeback to that slight at lunchtime?  Should’ve done that work before bed?  Concerned about the state of the planet?  Racked with doubt?  A complete letdown of unfulfilled childhood expectation and ability?  So bloody useless that you can’t even fall asleep properly?  Well now’s the time to chew it over thoroughly.  You might as well – you’ve got bugger all else to do but lie there and stew.

4) Remind yourself of other times when sleep was hard to come by.

Look back in your past – you couldn’t sleep that time your mum took you to the London Dungeon when you were a kid and made you promise not to have nightmares but you had them anyway.  You couldn’t sleep that time when you were the only one in the house and the weird noises were coming from downstairs so you made a mental note of where the cricket bat was only to remember that it was downstairs where the weird noises were coming from.  You couldn’t sleep that time you were all over-excited because you were going on holiday the next day and you’d never been on a plane before even though you were 20.  Remember them?  Well there was a reason why you couldn’t sleep for them.  What’s your problem now, moron?

5) Remind yourself of other time when sleep was very easy to come by.

Look back at your past – you were 2 and you slept through the hurricane when your parents spent the night holding in the windows and the tree crashed into the house.  You slept through that fire alarm at university and those people had to break into your room to make sure you were OK.  You (sometimes) slept through the permeating wall of noise which was your ex-boyfriend’s throat-grating snores.  Remember them?  You slept through them all.  What’s your problem now, moron?

6) (Bonus item!) Get up and potter about aimlessly like the Ghost of Sleepytime Past

Turn on the light and feel it stab the back of your eyes like a wavy mugger.  Go downstairs.  Bump into everything.  Treat yourself to a wee.  Sit on the sofa and watch those late night channels that seem devoted to texting in the answer to a strange quiz question.  Read something.  Eat some crisps.  Whatever you do, do it quietly.

I do hope these have been of some help to you.  Good luck to you, and sweet dreams.

Blackout

Blackout

Tomorrow the homework I will get in from my classes will inevitably be awful.  Find out why here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonso_Ribeiro (NB this link will only explain for the next few hours.  After then, just enjoy the link).

Good for Wikipedia and WordPress.  If you’re on the other side of the pond, do something or the internet might end up being shit.  No-one wants that.