Gary Glitter

Newcastle, mid 70s: not the urban city of haircuts it is today but a rather tough mining city with a cruel wind, pit ponies and extremely specific accents. In amongst this rather industrial city, the youth culture found a way to survive by inventing it's own subculture, markedly different from that of their parents. In the case of my family, my Mum, young, single and employed, turned to disco. Oh yes. There were union jack platform boots [sadly lost] and emergency flares and my Mum and her friends spent their money in the haunts of Newcastle, drinking babycham and working on their dance moves, all whilst pretending to ignore the whelpish lads who would make rather clumsy passes at them or indeed any other interchangeable female of breeding age. It was simple back then...

Friday and Saturday nights were established and, much like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, they truly lived for the weekends. Only they wore less white. However one of the group, Tracy, started to be a little aloof, she stopped coming out. For weeks my Mum would call and invite her but the answer was always the same, 'no'. This Nun-like seclusion was quite out of character and the heroine of this tale [Ma' Mama] resolved to find out what was happening.

Had she met someone? Was she broke? New friends? What o' what could it be?

The answer was unexpected to say the least: Tracy confessed that she had always disliked her nose... Now I've asked my Mum about this, apparently it was fractionally larger than the average nose but she was in no danger of being mistaken for a sundial. News that young Tracy was unhappy with her nose was a shock but my Mum could accept her discomfort but had not yet worked out why this would stop her, suddenly going out. There was more, there always is...
Tracy was saving up for a nose job. Now, once again, I want to highlight that this was all taking place circa 1973. "Nose job" was not even a phrase back in this forgotten decade. This also was not California, this was stout, dour Newcastle where any personal vanity was seen as a rather Southern affectation and would be duly mocked for the rest of your life. There was revolution in the air! Tracy was questioning the validity of the nose god gave her, hell, she was questioning her very parents and the nose their night of love gave her. It was a huge deal.

My Mum, a little shocked but impressed at her conviction then understood that Tracy was staying in, to save money for the nose job. For, as it turned out, there was a time restriction. Tracy was a devoted follower of the pop singer Gary Glitter, someone subsequently arrested in Thailand for his predilection to jailbait, but at this time, those heady 70s, he was an extremely popular, if somewhat absurd singer who was on 'Top of the Pops' with various number one hits. Tracy wanted to see Gary in concert, to convey from the mosh pit her desperate devotion in a crowd of teenage girls all bearing their breasts and shaking their mamaries! Hot! For Tracy, her natural nose was the only thing between her and some Glitter-tastic love. A nose job was vital for her peace of mind and future happiness. The new nose was the passport to the gilded land of Gary, leaving behaind her groupie status forever.

Somewhat bemused, my Mum went away and left Tracy to her own devices for the 10 months it took for her to save up. Jump forward 7 months: Glitter's concert was coming up in 3 months and they were planning to go together, after the operation.

Tracy goes in for the operation, now, this was an involved procedure and, to reiterate one more time, plastic surgery was not recognised outside medical circles and the aftermath was undocumented. This meant that when Tracy emerged from hospital an incredible 10 days later no-one expected the bruising, swelling and bandages. Newcastle was unprepared for the hidden cost of surgery but Tracy was adamant her new life was about to begin... after a further two months, the swelling had receded, the bruising had gone and Tracy was duly reborn. She went on a strict diet to slim down for Gary, she got a new hair cut to show off her new, proportioned nose, she went shopping for an entirely new wardrobe. In short, Tracy was on fire! The only tiny problem was that her nose did not look any different. Being of a collectively considerate disposition, none of Tracy's friends pointed this out to her and she was happy in her state.

So the concert countdown started. They went shopping for concert-specific outfits, they resoled the platforms to ensure maximum height and comfort. The new album was bought and some low-level dance moves were practiced in front of mirrors so they would look cool and nonchalent if the Glittered one ever looked their way. Lyrics were learnt, hair was IRONED for crying out loud. There was seemingly no end to the preparations. As mating rituals went, this was elaborate.

On the evening of the concert, my Mum and Tracy, in their very gladdest-of-rags, made their merry way to the concert some 6 hours before the concert began, to get a good spot. Six long hours on those first-issue platforms made of unyielding mdf wood, six hours being pushed around by similarly perky teens, six hours of making one drink last an hour, to ensure they wouldn't run out of money. six hours and then, gradually the time passed. Here it was, the moment Tracy had literally spent twelve months waiting for, one year of her life, absorbed with the single task of looking irrestible. The Glitter chords started, the crowd started clapping, my Mum was looking around in wonder at the theatre of it all. Every other pair of eyes in the room was drawn to the stage. And then suddenly, in the shadows, there he was, with the skintight leathertte trousers, a little more squat than he appeared on TV, a little older too, but still him, undoubtedly him. The preamble was over, here was the moment when worlds collide and life is forever changed. Mum reported that she was holding her breath in reverence for Tracy's Big Moment. The Glitter walked into the centre of the stage, towards the microphone... Here he was at last! He opened his mouth to speak and, looking around, Mum noticed that Tracy was not where she had been for the last six hours, namely just on the right of her field of vision. No, Tracy was nowhere to be seen. Mum scanned the room, a little alarmed by her sudden absence. She then noticed people to her right pointing at the ground. Tracy was lying in a crumpled but skinny heap at her feet, she had fainted. She missed the entire concert.

Witness the fitness

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I've just realised that they all look alike. Sinister social engineering or preference adaption? Still, at least I'm consistent.

Mid-90s: slave auction at a girl's school... what could go wrong?

"The tyrant grinds down his slaves and they don't turn against him; they crush those beneath them... allow me to amuse myself a little in the same style..."

Wuthering Heights

Indeed, whilst my friends and I were certainly the brunt of the posse at school it did not stop us all uniting for one rather cruel episode. A bit like the United Nations, but uniting for malevolence rather than peace.

Anyway, in the jolly hockey-sticks tradition of the aspirational but ultimately dull private school, there was always the odd charity event that in hindsight could only be described as morally dubious. The slave auction, the auctioning of teachers to the highest bidder now seems absurd, like the idea of opium-smoking and snuff boxes. However, in this estrogen-loaded environment, slave auctions were deemed permissible and given the fevered hormones, anyone male was always a popular choice. Our class in perhaps the only moment of unity we ever displayed, decided to 'buy' Miss Corbeau [not her real name, but it's hardly a stretch]. Miss Corbeau, in our defence was not a 'nice' person. She had turned up at the high school, having apparently been hounded out of her last job at a school that was yet more small-minded than the one we were in. Teaching us French, something as a school, they did well, Miss Corbeau was both dull, untrusting and had an annoying habit of uttering 'tiens, tiens' after everything she said, for no particular reason. Perhaps she was trying to hang on to her fluency, itself a hallmark of a more exotic period in her life, perhaps it was an oral tic, however it came across as a rather affected, disparaging attack, it's very formula was abrasive, just saying those words out loud isn't satisfying, they don't fill the mouth as some french phrases do, no, it was simple and grating: "tiens tiens!" and reminded us, surly as we were, of being told off by someone else's mother. It's fair to say we despised her intently. That we despised her says something about the arrogance of youth and the central position we allocated ourselves in judging all that was, or was not reasonable. The facts that we were brats aside, she does seem in hindsight to have been rather small-minded and ungenerous but this does not justify the zeal we which decided to wear her down.

So the slave auction...

to be continued...

Pre-ironic leggings, limited trouser options.

I am rolling with laughter at the idea that fashion has, once again, come full circle and is now endorsing the legging. This is an eat-your-own-face sort of development. Whatever next? The Snood?

Leggings: what makes them so flobby?
Is it the way they cling to every nodule of fat? Is it the way they make even normal people look like aspiring trapeze artists? Fat trapeze artists Or is it simply that now every Target Mom in the other 50 states [who counts Alaska anyway?] are now wearing them with their Crocs?

OK, I'm not THAT mean however I simply remember the nightmare the first time around. This was the 90s and plaid was a big statement. I blame Seattle but no matter whose fault it was I definitely got the tail end of this sartorial misfire. Perhaps I am still holding on to the disaster that was ski pants... anyone else remember such a thing? Now we have the vile fusion of the ski-pant and the legging: it's like an old childhood friend mating with the niche North European blonde kid in the corner then the two of them joining forces to steal your pony and copy your haircut [only better].

A websearch has confirmed that I am not alone with my distaste, it does offer some solace but now I think of it, what trouser options are available?

The low-slung jodhpur pants that make you look like you've put your legs through the sleeves of your boyfriend's jumper. Or worse, that you are sporting incontinence pads and need a low girdle for space. When is flirting with the bladder-control look ever good? How many people have you seen wearing them on the streets?

The Mom jeans? Bootcut may be flattering but nothing spells late 90s like bootcut jeans. Oh, except 'The Rachel'.

Back to that slave auction idea... Post II

So the slave auction, 800 teens crammed into a room without ventilation, expressing their ongoing frustrations in a grotesque parody, by selling human labour. What could go wrong? Yup, the teacher-slave auction. Sick. Anyone with any sense would have seen that our form was more or less baying for the teacher's blood, even the mean girls dropped the act for a few nano-seconds to express small emotions like glee, delight and joy. There she was, this teacher, quivering on the stage, the beady eyes bulging, a revealing sheen on the forehead, shining in the overhead lights. She was nervous during the auction and a wreak by the time the gavel fell and 'U4R' were declared the winners. This small victory now was the highlight of a 6-month smear campaign: strict non-compliance, answering only in English, tipping back on our chairs, hiding behind the obligatoy mane of hair, spraying nasty body sprays everywhere. You know, the usual teenage rebellion in an unimaginative girl's school in England. Now, casually discarding the past three years of carefully-constructed animosity between all class members, we united in our common goal of humiliating this teacher who would be ours for one day. The suggestions were ludicrous and overly elaborate, much like the death scenes of a James Bond villain. As a group we quickly warmed to our theme and to list just one rather telling suggestion, we opted to make said teacher crawl on her hands and knees along the corridor and pick up rubbish. With her mouth. Now remember, this was allowed to go on.. As the time passed we whittled out the more obviously demeaning options but something funny started to take place: the old bitchy hierarchies crept back in and the actual task or organising the afternoon from hell for the teacher became rather dull. Why unbalance an adult's carefully-constructed notions of balance when we could all just bitch about each other to each other? why deliberate when you can dive straight in and ruin someone's afternoon? why flirt when you can, ahem... you get my point.

So, with most things at that school, it was over before it began. In the end, the luckless woman was made to run around the school for the lunchbreak before retreating to the staff room for a double and a breakdown. I am not sure anyone really paid attention in the end, which makes the spectacle all the more pathetic, being humiliated is one thing, but to be humiliated and not even have the expected audience? Needless to say, she left at the end of the year. I think I speak for most of the friends with whom I am still in contact when I say that there is some lingering guilt, that woman must have dreaded our lessons and given that we had French 3 (or 4) times a week that was at least 20% of her life.

Yet still, "tiens tiens" is un-effing-believable. I'd rather knit my way to freedom using oatmeal and spoons.

My job description

"Executive Assistant"/Child-minder

Tasks:

1) Making travel arrangements

2) Compiling call lists.

Travel Arrangements
This job requires the patience of no less than twelve saints as you will be working closely with someone who is never wrong and who changes extensive travel plans on a daily basis. A comprehensive understanding of European travel opportunities will ensure success, particularly if the candidate can recite the journey times from any one station/airport in Europe to any other station/airport in Europe by the following means of transport: airplane, train, car, hovercraft, ferry and helicopter. Initiative in making travel arrangements is strongly discouraged.


Call Lists
Everyday your manager will ask for a call list, it is not possible to know whom from the previous day's call-list he has contacted so these lists become up to 25 pages long. Your job is to keep this going and present one everyday.

This is it.


Further qualities:
Any candidates with psychic abilities are especially encouraged to apply as low-level mind reading is a component of this job.
Open-minded attitude towards escorts is essential. Candidate must enjoy working with children.

Please note: this job is not a route to career progression.

Chair dancing is funny

Simple yet true. it's one of those odd things that is funnier than it should rationally be, the joy it generates is greater than the sum of it's parts. I might do an equation on the subject. However, this is the exact opposite of most films, whereby the artistic endeavour is tortured and minute but the end result falls a little flat to the average viewer [or is this just me?] Chair dancing on the other hand is a delight. For true chair dancing joy I recommend a song that is similarly, more enjoyable than it should be. You know, the odd, cold dance track that for some reason captures a great beat which somehow imbues it with soul anyway. For example, Freddie le Grand's, 'Put your hands up' (for Detroit) Perhaps it's the refrain, I love this city, which unites the listeners to others, perhaps it's simply the beat production, however it works. For reasons that are probably still a mystery to the songsmiths themselves.

So chair dancing, consider it my gift to you, the gift that keeps on giving.

There are four types of people in this room

1994: It was hot and after the pointless hysteria of the internal exams we were, as a class, united in the countdown until the summer holidays. Our last lesson of the day was geography with our prickly teacher who was a rather wry individual, however this was largely wasted on my 13 year-old self. Listless, tired and wishing for an easy class I remember being lazily pleased that we were going to be spared further discussion of the slums of Bogota and were instead going to have a talk. To "talk" in England means trouble and my fellow class mates picked up on it. There was a barely perceptible stiffening in the room as slumpers sat up in their chairs, hair was brushed out of eyes and hands emerged from sleeves. This was a third-tier private school for girls in a provincial southern city in the 90s: we did not indulge in 'talk'. "You're ok, I'm ok" hadn't made it to Norfolk and whilst there might be the odd admission of these intangible, inscrutable reactions [read 'emotions'] we would not, as a class, as a school, as a county, do anything as sinfully obvious as acknowledge them. This was for our chirpy counterparts over the Atlantic. To 'talk' meant that we needed to and to need to talk was frankly, a little embarrassing. And yet, here it was, but then almost as soon as the implications of 'talking' were understood so came the realisation that when adults say they want to 'talk' it actually means that you, as a youth, listen.

In short, we were due a bollocking and make no mistake.

And so it began, the talk, the teacher calmly and economically listed our failings. There was theatre in it's restraint. The quieter the voice, the more we leaned in to hear it. It's like rewatching a film: you know exactly what is coming but you can't quite believe the drama of it. We were so stunned that, for once, the 26 individuals to whom this speech was intended, did not make eye contact with each other, seeking validation among their own personal peer group and thus confirming that the teacher was wrong, no, for once, it felt as if this speech was aimed at the individual, a collection of individuals and we reeled, collectively for once, we reeled.

There was truth in it, as a class we were horrible, precocious, mean, arrogant and proud of it. The other three forms in our year group were skanky, wet or boring, at least we demonstrated pluck and verve. Within the class there were two warring factions. The posse: so cool, so 'fucked-up, so what? Then there was me and my friends, we were the sad group, because we weren't in the sports teams and we did our homework ourselves. Yes, we were sad. The confines of our lives were such that you had these two options in this girl's school in Norfolk of the 90s. The teacher however saw things a little differently. He listed The Four Types of People in this Room as follows:

" there are fools, people who thoughtlessly plough through life, hurting feelings and creating tensions, then there are the loud-mouths who ensure that every minute situation escalates into a drama, then there a couple of individuals who are bitches..."

I felt myself flinch at this word, 'bitch' was certainly not within my received dictionary of suitable teacher vocabulary. The teacher was a renegade, going off book to shock us! My god, was all of this true? Were we these people? He then resumed that the final group was the group of nice people, just trying to get on with their lives. Before we got too carried away with the idea that we had all been discussed, that we had elicited attention, we were drily informed that each and every single one of us knew which group we were in and we all knew everyone else's label. This last development was a relief: finally a return to stoicism, we didn't need to talk about it at all, we all understood implicitly our place within this particular hierarchy. Couldn't we just get on with it now? The socio-economic growth of Bogota never seemed so interesting to those twenty-six girls trying to forget this entire experience.

As the class recovered we began to fidget and adjust, yes we were horrible but now what? A staff meeting with all the teachers unfortunate enough to teach us had been unequivocal. We were on probation. Things were apparently so bad that we were all on a three-strike system, and out meant expulsion which, as a threat, carries a fair amount of clout when you're thirteen and likely to get into seven kinds of trouble at home. It was fine to act big at school but no rational person took the attitude home to parents unlikely to humour it.

To be continued...

The role of women

Without wanting to beat my breasts as a militant feminist, I am currently furious with myself. I'm self-raging as frankly I've accepted a new job where, once again, I am someone's assistant. Now, it's irrefutable that in most cases the boss is of the peen-owning variety and the woman of the submissive, ordered, administrative sort. I fit into this perfectly and yet it seems so confined. My beloved manflesh and I both went to 'good' universities, not Oxbridge grant you, but still recognised institutions. He is doing fabulously and, within his chosen path, he is certainly considered something of a precocious talent. Whilst I organise the travel plans of a Little Man. How did this happen? I am going nowhere, I have no transferable skills, in short, I am qualified for nothing! Must I accept my own mediocrity? Now? So soon? I'm not talking about changing the world, simply exercising my brain from time to time and experiencing some uncharted thoughts in the course of the day. Not just considering how to break the news to Little Man that due to company allegiance the airmile program will not recognise five flights booked through a rival operator.

Did I mention that I am not a travel-rep?

1987, snow, nostalgia

I was all of 8 and to my brother and I, heavy snow storms meant big snow drifts. Snow is now fairly rare in the green land of England, and when it does fall it tends to form into grey sludge to match the sky. As we are utterly unequipped for any sort of extreme even 2 inches can undo the entire country. When the snow arrived it had retained it's American origins: namely being bigger, brighter and whiter than any snow I had ever seen, and oh the portion size! The cosy nook of Norfolk was smothered and glorious. For children it was a welcome excuse for an extra holiday as the schools were forced to shut because of menacing icicles the same size as the pupils. The impromptu holiday ended up lasting three weeks and our village was snowed in because the main road to the city was blocked at Booton dip, situated about 3 miles out of the town. Milk and bread were helicoptered in to the next village along, Cawston, to keep the townfolk fed. I heard the bigger boys talking with authority about snow drifts and quickly learned to spot them and take advantage of the weightlessness they lent, fleetingly, to a small child.

But all of this reminds me of the infamous Winter of 1947 when the sea froze [see attached image] now this may happen in the wilds of Canada but our the small island this sort of extreme is impossible.

Earth girls are easier than ever

This movie-film is a gem and I'd forgotten how I loved it soooooooooo until I had the blissful chance to revisit her charms and delights. Is it Gina's skinny ribs? The Blonde song? The 'Curl up and Dye' salon? Or Jeff, simply Jeff in his stately hotness?

I have my personal theories on the magic of this film but it is more than the sum of these considerable parts, what took it over into cult status? Devotes of 'The Fly' wanting to commeorate that glorious Gina-blum fusion in an altogether perkier world? The convenient reemergence of 80s fashions? LA?

Roach-gate

O winged minion of hell!

There it was, climbing the wall of my bathroom. I felt queasy. I felt greasy and it was nothing to do with the dirty burger I'd eaten in a haze just moments before. There it was, it's siena brown shell gleaming defiantly at me, in filthy contrast to the clean, cold white tile it was scaling with nimble prowess. I screamed, the scream of a soul just sent forth from the bowels of the earth, manflesh came running... But the nifity little bugger had disappeared! How he could hide his shiny brown self with such success in our sterile room of ablutions? We slowly took out every extraneous item: shower curtain, "bath robes", shampoo, conditioner, conditioner, conditioner [note to self: walk PAST Duane Reade, no need to go in every single time], flannels, shower gel etc.

No sign of the beast. Where had it gone? Unable to locate it we surmised with touching optimism that it had gone out of the window.

We returned to our prior distractions: playing the lute and working on the dance moves, but still we could not rest. Heart pounding, I retraced my steps in to the sorry bathroom and turned on the bath tap. Evil fears nothing but discovery and sure enough, a flurry of brown started tap-dancing in my tub. The 'clickter-clackter' of it's unquantifiable number of legges was repulsive, some sort of dance-hall spectacle directly out of William Burroughs. The beast was crawling and so was my flesh. The scream burnt up out of my throat and signalled to my long-suffering manflesh that the bitch was back. We were armed this time, with wine glasses and cardboard, employing the spider-specific method of entrapment. The beast practically laughed at our efforts and unleashed his top trump: wings.

Freakin' wings!

It could now traverse beyond the plane of the wall! O unhappy development! This beast was wily and escaped into unchartered territory, namely the rest of the apartment. The brute made straight for our living room, which, furnished with sofas, chairs, books, guitars and stereos, is a roach's delight for hiding places and dusty nooks. The ante was up and nerves were running high, the bug situaiton had reached defcon 5 and if we were ever to sleep again we would have to catch the roach. Sacrifices would have to be made, it was us or it and 8 months into our lease, we weren't going under without a fight.

Our only option was to trail it's luckless path, tracking it with the light-giving torch. It scurried like a common crim, seeking the murky shadows, from stray object [boxing glove] to stray object [wine-rack]. It was vile. It was also vast. The size and weight of a small child at a conservative estimate. Finally we broke it's stride and it made a heady bid for the entire floor space. Foolish ambition! Heroic manflesh threw a tumbler with calm precision and... managed to imprison the chestnut-brown roach and it's indecent number of limbs! Those years of playing darts were not in vain and we were safe at last.

The hour was late and the vibe was fatigued, so feeling safe we reinforced the trap with a chunky French dictionary and went to sleep, confident that we would not be faced with unwanted bedfellow.

Bleary-eyed but chipper, we returned to the scene and were relieved to see the beast was in his box. It was time to rid ourselves of our Pacific Heights horror so we took it to the roof to fling it over the edge to perish. However the crunchy, cantankerous cock' of a 'roach employed those wings again and simply flew back on to the wall of the building. I feel cheated. I feel wronged. I feel it might one day want a rematch. How to protect the hearth from such a sequel? Wire wool? Rentokill? Answers on a post card please.

Having survived an encounter with the great white of the bug world, I have no interest in meeting another.