Cine-mattock Orchestra

Me and Mrs Custard have bought a house. As huge and difficult and scary and interesting as this has been I’ve refrained from writing about it here because I don’t wish to add one word to the culture of property porn that has insidiously wormed its way into every aspect of our society. I’m not about to start now just because we got lucky. On a personal note I am grateful not to have to deal with fuckwit real estate agents anymore, and to anyone experiencing what we’ve just been through my thoughts are with you. As Les McQueen would say, it’s a shit business.

My favourite thing about our little place so far is having a garden. We have no back garden to speak of but we do have a big space out the front that the previous owners have been using as a car park for the past two years. Regular readers will know that my gardening abilities are mostly limited to growing very small vegetables in pots but from the first time we visited the house I’ve been dreaming about how to turn that corner of dry, compacted soil and squashed weeds into a proper doing-Grandpa-proud type garden.

So, with great delusions of horticultural adequacy I eagerly turned up at Bunnings two days after we moved in and bought myself a proper spade, a garden fork, a trowel and several bags of organic poo. Game on. Or rather it would have been had our move not coincided with Melbourne’s hottest start to a November since records began. Two weeks of temperatures in the thirties with not a single drop of rain rendered our erstwhile car park dry, dusty and mostly impenetrable. Not that it stopped me trying.

Each evening after work I took to the front yard in shorts and a highly unattractive grey singlet top, trying to get my garden fork more than three inches into the soil. This was far more fun than it sounds. When you’ve been sat on your arse all day shuffling papers at ‘work’ doing a bit of work-work is actually quite invigorating. It’s also the first time since I was at school that I’ve been properly dirty and had to wash proper mud off in the shower. Things got even more fun when, on the recommendations of a sympathetic colleague, I bought a mattock. It’s a kind of flat headed pick axe perfectly suited to scalping vicious weeds from their roots and cleaving huge chunks of earth with relatively little effort. I now love my mattock as much as my laptop.

I suspect my labours were also highly entertaining for our new neighbours, each and every one of whom took turns to peak out of their curtains to watch the only madman in the street with a veggie patch in his front yard. As the days progressed and the rains stayed away I began to feel like Gerard Depardieu in Jean de Florette – toiling in the sun under the suspicious eye of the locals. Midway through the second week of heat and without a cloud in sight I felt like standing on my newly hewn pile of dry dirt and yelling ‘Je suis bossu’” at the sky, just to see what would happen.

The neighbours, yesterday

Thankfully, what did eventually happen was the heavens opened. I mean really opened; in a handy month’s-rainfall-in-24-hours type way. Pools of water gathered in the unploughed bits of our lawn; a trench I’d dug in readiness for some planting turned into a moat. I filled two buckets, half a dustbin and a huge plastic laundry box with rainwater. Taking to it with a fork, the loosened soil came apart easily and I was able to dig about 40 centimetres down into the ground.

From that point on I was away. I staked out a veggie patch and a bed for herbs into which I mixed a 'generous helping' (a technical term favoured by real gardeners on telly which I have decided to adopt to make myself appear more knowledgeable) of manure, chicken poo, blood and bone, seaweed and mulch. A day later I found our first worm... which, frankly, is about as rock and roll as life gets. Even the neighbours have started leaning on the fence for a chat which just goes to show the power of vegetables.

Here be worms!

I'll try and articulate my failures and occasional successes in the garden on these here pages, so if you're a fan of amateurism both journalistic and horticultural, you know where to find me.

Lloyd Cole, Thornbury Theatre, Melbourne

Although he almost certainly doesn’t know it, Lloyd Cole and I have been shackled together for almost twenty years. A school friend did me a tape of the Lloyd Cole and the Commotions compilation 1984-1989 when it came out and it was enough get me hooked on black turtle neck jumpers for life.

Before you get ideas otherwise, I’m not making spurious claims to teenage hipness or music credibility. Kylie was very much on my walls and walkman at that time, and I don’t think baggy XXL James t-shirts were ever cutting edge fashion. It’s just that whenever my teenage brain needed a dose of ‘grown up’ Lloyd Cole seemed like the most grown up and - more importantly - the coolest grown up around.

When I eventually got around to growing up a bit myself, Lloyd remained several paces ahead. By the time I was experiencing the academia blues and government grants he sang about in 1984, he had already given up his search for ‘a religious girl with child-baring hips and a wedding veil’ and was imploring his latest lost love to ‘take a half of everything and please go.’ To me these were the rites of passage chopped into bite-sized pieces, ready to be washed down with glugs of red wine, whiskey and cigarettes – a more interesting mix than the cheap bitter and triples-for-a-pound I was living off.


Fifteen years on I’ve caught up some more. Sadly, whilst I might have learnt how fall in and out of love, drink for pleasure more than paralysis and wear a suit without looking like a complete dick, I still don’t look as cool or brooding as Lloyd on the cover on 1993’s Bad Vibes. And yet – somewhat reassuringly - neither does he.

Not to suggest that he has done a Boy George. The Lloyd Cole who toured Australia last week was still Hollywood handsome and - despite self-depreciatingly suggesting otherwise – trim. What was missing was the attitude. For me the loveliness of songs like Let’s Get Lost and Undressed were evidence enough at the time that his Mr Grumpy act was just that, but Cole’s moody, gentle arrogance and unapologetic seriousness were very much part of his post-Commotions shtick. Album covers and tour posters determinedly keep up the charade, but these days Lloyd in the flesh is humble, personable and a tad less serious than he used to be.

His show at the Thornbury Theatre reminded me of his initials-sake Leonard Cohen’s breezy live performances earlier this year (indeed Cohen's Tower of Song makes an early appearance). Cole’s more relaxed approach is inclusive but takes nothing away from the music itself which, if anything, is more potent for the clarity with which the words can be heard over his lone acoustic guitar.

Reinvented over the past few years as a self-styled folk singer, Cole has become adept at mining and recasting gems from his 25-year catalogue. The concert’s two-part set offered acoustic takes from just about every album from Rattlesnakes to his recent rarities box set, Cleaning Out The Ashtrays with some songs radically reinvented, others trimmed down to their bare bones.

Amongst such diversity, it was noteworthy how often the word young seemed to crop up. The sublime Don’t Look Back (‘life seems never ending, when you’re young’), Music in a Foreign Language ('forgive me if I'm less than awed, by your world-weary twenty-six year old') and Woman in a Bar (in which Cole declares himself 'no longer angry, no longer young, no longer driven to distraction not even by Scarlett Johansson’) share a ruefulness that camouflages the sixteen years that elapsed between their creation.

Such sage self-reflection is nothing new (as if to prove it, the evening starts with 29’s memorable couplet ‘life begins at 30 so I have been told, I can easily believe it the way I’m getting on’) but the idea that youth always feel like it’s slowly slipping away – even when you’re approaching 50 and should probably have gotten over it – is an interesting one; doubly so for someone who has spent time wishing away his youth and looking at people like Cole for inspiration on how to age.

Still I came away from the show with a sense that Cole is reasonably content with his lot. Relaxed and jovial, he seems keenly aware of his position somewhere between ex-pop star and travelling salesman hawking his wares. It’s some way from Top of the Pops and next-big-thing status in the NME, but though his younger self might have baulked at the idea it’s clear he understands the privilege of being a musician and the continued opportunity to make a living from it. Not a bad place to be, babe.

Musically I would be remiss not to admit that after three perfect rounds down under of Cole solo and acoustic, it would be lovely to see him pull an electric guitar out of his kitbag. His folksinger period has been wonderful and I’m sure it’s nice to travel the world without having to worry about others people's egos, but it’s been a while since we saw him with even the smallest of touring groups. Perhaps next time?

As for me, well, as long as Cole continues to document his times with style, there is no chance of me ever closing the age gap. Maybe my lesson is to enjoy being where I am too.

Songs in the Key of Hull

Another Housemartins reunion of sorts to report on with the news that Ted Key, the original bass player and co-writer of many tracks on London 0 Hull 4 including Freedom, Get Up Off Our Knees and the superlative Flag Day, has just released what is technically his first solo LP. I say technically because he’s recording under the moniker Ted Key and the Human Voice whose number apparently includes Mr Hugh “I like toast” Whitaker on drums and congas.

Lest we forget Ted and Hugh were also erstwhile members of the Gargoyles, one of three groups ahead of the Housemartins in their own list of Hull’s best bands (the others being Red Guitars and 3-Action!).



Ted’s album is called Madolescent Street and you can hear decent sized snippets on his Myspace page, here. It’s all nice stuff with echoes of Half Man Half Biscuit and Sheffield troubadour Richard Hawley, especially on the pretty Other Side of the Day. Meanwhile The Boats on the River Go Sailing By is a jaunty paean to the surreal events of the 2007 Hull floods and comes across like East Yorkshire’s answer to Johnny Cash’s Five Feet High and Rising.

Madolescent Street is out now for a mere nine quid. For more information, visit Ted’s website here.

Google Doodles

I want to be the person who is paid to get up in a morning and make funny anniversary pictures for the Google home page. Whoever he or she is, they’ve truly outdone themselves this week:

20th Anniversary of Wallace and Gromit




40th Anniversary of Sesame Street

50th Anniversary of Asterix

I note that Google has declined the opportunity to mark the 30th anniversary of the start of the Iran Hostage crisis which admittedly might not make for such colourful viewing. However I reckon there is still scope to commemorate the 10th Anniversary of the "No" vote for an Australian Republic, replacing the "L" with a cartoon of the Duke of Edinburgh strapped to the bench of a guillotine and making some inappropriate comment about the French...

Grease is the Word

Button up your sheepskin Carraway, rainy cafe, Kentish town, Tuesday
Barry's looking through the racing post,

Orders coffee, another round of toast
Lucy writes a letter, she'd like to spend an evening with Prince B
When we meet for a while, Tuesday morning 10am
Everyone's dreaming of all they've got to live for
Joking around, still digging that sound
Everyone's dreaming of all they've got to live for
Mario’s Café by Saint Etienne (So Tough 1993)

If there’s one thing I love more than food, it’s a list. Imagine my joy then when I found out about caffs.co.uk, a UK-based site which neatly brings these two bits of happy together. Formerly known as the National Greasy Caff Database, it aims to be the internet’s singular resource for lovers of cheap and cheerful cuisine served up in establishments long abandoned by property developers and old father time.

‘But we have café culture now’ I hear you cry, ‘we are a modern, cosmopolitan society with coffee houses and eateries and lattes on every street corner. What need have we of such a guide?’ Well, I say to you – there are cafés and there are cafés - and if you don’t know the difference, caffs.co.uk is here to help you out.

Amongst the identifying features they list are ubiquitous all-day breakfasts, the inclusion of chips with most meals, deep fat fryers that never get turned off and a hot drinks menu limited to tea or coffee (although there is a grudging recognition of Bovril and Ovaltine). Decorative paraphernalia to look out for includes Slush Puppie machines, formica tables, booths, wood panelling and pencil caricatures of the caff owners.

Photo: Getty Images

As a former grease(y) monkey who started working life making early morning bacon sandwiches and cups of tea for tourists and trawlermen (an excellent name for a band by the way) I support these as key features of any good caff. However, I would also like to advance some of my own favourites, including:

- Assorted white bread sandwiches in a glass cabinet with a sliding door, labelled with handwritten stickers that say “HAM” “BEEF” or “CHEESE”

- Star-shaped pieces of card in various neon colours stuck on the walls and windows like exploding post-it notes with things like cans of pop and chips and toast written in black felt tip pen. Apostrophe abuse is a given.

- Menus that add an item on each line like a children’s memory game to give the impression the menu is more diverse than is the case (Bacon – Bacon and Egg – Bacon, Egg and Sausage – Bacon, Egg, Sausage and Chips - Bacon, Egg, Sausage and Chips and Beans and so on before starting again with Sausage - Sausage and Chips – Sausage, Chips and Egg etc)

- The absence of an actual paper menu – just little white plastic letters on a black background that have been there so long that where letters are missing you can still see their outline in grease

- The impossibility of conversation every few minutes as a result of antique steam powered milk boilers for people wanting 'frothy coffee'

I'd love to hear of any others you may have experienced. Caffs.co.uk is still in its infancy and is a long way from being comprehensive. Do your bit for the cause by letting them know about your local greasy haunt.