An Egg-ceptional Easter Sunday

I love banging one out before midnight (blog, that is).

Well, I don't know about you, Jesus, but I'm having a corking Easter.

Following Friday's egg-cellent evening with The Ladies (get used to the egg shit - it's not stopping any time soon), I spent a quiet Saturday with Dr Smith chit-chatting, followed by more of the bunting thing. This was made considerably easier by having a plan. Said plan consisted of me doing fabric prep indoors, followed by a few hours of cutting triangles out in the park, sitting in the lovely sun.

Seriously, bunting has taken over the fucking world. I predicted this about 3 years ago (ask Howard Local) and bless me, if it ain't come back to bite me on the arse. Not only am I making the stuff in my every waking hour, but the word is printed everywhere I read. I'm blaming That Bloody Wedding/The Festival Of Britain/Nostalgia Wankfest.

Spent a lovely afternoon (following a self-disciplined morning of triangle sewing) on the Southbank. Met up with Dr Smith again, replacing yesterday's coffees with cocktails and wine. No idea where three hours went sitting on the terrace in the sun, but it did and it was lovely (suspect chat and setting the world to rights may have had a hand). Suddenly, it's 18.20hrs and I have to scoot. The whole point of me being here is to see Peeping Tom at the BFI. Kiss Dr Smith goodbye and leg it as fast as my tiny heels will carry me.

Arrive breathless at the BFI to discover my film is sold out. What a total knobhead I am. It's a brand new print of the film, there's only two showings and the other is sold out already - why didn't I book??? I am egg-sasperated. The lovely young man behind the desk registers the dismay, but there is no seat to sell me. I walk away. But no, I think (fuelled by a desperation to see this wonderful film on the big screen...and booze), try again, ask again. So, I asked again. And he laughed. "We've even sold the wheelchair seats", he said, with a smile. He read my mind. Very funny. Then, he said, "go ask the girl on front-of-house, someone might not have turned up". So I did - and someone hadn't, bless them, Baby Jesus. And so, film Cinderella went to her Michael Powell ball. For FREEEEEEEE!!! And in an amazing seat. Sometimes, Life can be very serendipitous and kind (not often, but all the sweeter when it is).

Came out of the film (finally seen it on a big screen - knowing this film ruined Powell's career is heartbreaking - were we really so backward back then? Written by Leo Marks - years ago, I bought my Dad his book, Between Silk And Cyanide, about his cryptography work in WWII, not realising he'd written such a groundbreaking fiction/screenplay) and saw the lovely Edilaine (my kind front-of-house fairy godmother) and she waved and did thumbs up. I thumbed up back. Egg-static.

As I meandered back to Charing Cross, I noticed a text off Mr Local inviting me to hook up with him and friends. So, back to Crouch End and The Queens pub for a nightcap. When I get there, I'm thrilled to meet up again with Neil. Neil is a very funny man, and I believe he books the bands for the Reading/Leeds festival. I'm not sure - my experiences with Neil so far involve pub quizzes and football. Tonight, it turns out Neil has a piece of history in his pocket. Back in the mid 80's, Neil (lefty leaning - good bloke) was rather anti-Thatcher but with a sharp sense of humour (it hasn't left him). Following the bombings in Tripoli, Neil wrote to Colonel Gaddafi asking him to send money and tanks to help wipe Mrs Thatch out (he called himself General Neil - I'm almost crying just writing this stuff).

It's a long story. It involves Billy Bragg, who's a good friend of his. Neil's a funny man and he tells it very well. I can't do it justice here (in fact, If I'm not careful I may bore myself to death, and you too, dear Reader). But here's where it gets good. Neil got a reply to the letter. The letter that he posted in Crouch End Post Office in the mid 80's. A letter he addressed by watching the BBC news on the bombing, seeing the Jon Snow-esque map drawn on the screen to show where the BBC thought Gaddafi lived. Neil re-drew this map on the back of the envelope, so Postie would find the Colonel. The front of the envelope simply said "Colonel Gaddafi, Tripoli, Libya", a bit like a wee kiddie would send a letter to Santa.

The reply arrived and is addressed to General Neil. When he told me about this letter a few weeks ago, I thought he was making it up (we were rather drunk). But I've seen it now. And it's fo' real. It has been the icing on my Easter Egg cake (that's not actually a thing, but it should be - imagine cake/Easter Eggs mashing it up!).

It's been an egg-cellent weekend. If Easter Monday brings any more enjoyment, I might fucking pop. Or eggs-plode.

A Bunny's For Life, Not Just For Easter

During my recent couchsurfing stint, I had a couple of weeks in E17 with Smiff and Marc. Very kind they were too, putting me up in their lovely spare room, letting me cook big pans of brown in their kitchen, warm my cold tootsies in front of their new fire, and generally make myself at home.

Smiff has a good sense of humour. Good = sense of the silly and ridiculous to match my own. Daft. On one of her foraging-for-Ebay-fodder missions, she discovered Bunny. Bunny is a small knitted rabbit, very sweet, pink and blue with button eyes. Smiff thought it would be a laugh to leave Bunny hanging out of a shopping bag for Marc to find. He never did, but I saw her handywork and we both laughed our little Northern heads off. Next day, when I got in from work, Bunny had a starring role amongst the tins in my food cupboard, which made me laugh even more:

The following morning, Smiff found Bunny having a little rest with her eggy mates:

And following a short trip up North, Smiff discovered Bunny getting a bit more adventurous tripping the chandelier-light fantastic:

Today was Easter Sunday. Perfect day for bunnies to be out and about. And I wasn't disappointed. Whilst sitting in the Ace Café having my veggie fry-up...:

...I got a message from Bunny, with a little help from Smiff. The perfect Easter picture...Bunny straddling a vase of golden daffodils.

BrooklynBlog #1

"New York, just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers an' everythin'." Correct, Stevie.

Although I've spent a lot of time in New York over the years, I've always stayed on Manhattan. Staying in Brooklyn with LouLou would be a real change. My journey was pretty uneventful - flew with Virgin Atlantic, watched some films (Doubt, Quantum Of Solace), some comedy (Curb Your Enthusiasm - laughing loudly at Larry) and a little music (Okkervil River). Grabbed my case sharpish at baggage reclaim and hopped on a subway into Brooklyn. Got to LouLou's at about 9.30pm. So great to see her and to meet Ted, her very cool Siamese cat (sadly, her lovely husband Andy was away snowboarding). Top apartment too - large open space, exposed brick, huge skylights - she said it used to be an artists studio. We chewed the fat for a while, drank tea, ate biscuits. Finally crashed out.

Next day, she had to go to work on a documentary she's editing, so I decided to have an easy day in the local vicinity. Started off with coffee and a bagel (I'm in New York - what else?), then a wander round Park Slope. Glorious sunshine followed me round. Eventually wandered to the Brooklyn Central Library. This building has a great facade, and opened in 1941:

Had a wander around inside - good exhibition about the history and decline of theatres in Brooklyn. The library is situated at the bottom of Prospect Park, a huge green space (585 acres!) in the middle of Brooklyn. Enough pottering - time for a bit of a lie down...and a listen to the new Bill Callahan whilst looking up at a very blue sky:

Heaven is a place called Callahan

After a few hours, I wandered back to LouLou's and sat on her roof terrace. At this point, I caught my first glimpse of Manhattan's skyline. I hadn't even thought about it! When she got back, we went to a bar called Sidecar for food, then ended up in a bar called Lucky 13. It was like a home-from-home. A cross between the Crobar and a tiny Big Red. A couple of Jack and cokes finished the night off nicely.

Good Friday brought a change in the weather. Overcast and windy, so we reckoned we should do 'useful stuff'. So an itinerary was worked out which included:

• Dumpling Man, St Marks Place - little gem and a bargain, we ate a tray of dumplings each to fortify us for the trek ahead
• Café Pick Me Up - coffee and cake...well a girl needs a lot of energy when she's doing this much walking
• Other Music - to check out about Record Store Day and the Bill Calahan performance. As we entered the shop, I saw a bloke with a bad twitch and mentioned it to LouLou, who said (a bit too loudly), "what? he's got a twitch?" and then she had to wait outside, partly from laughing and partly from mortification...
• Dean & Deluca - foodie heaven. Got some herb tins to replace some I've had in the past. LouLou got a cute bowl for her daily yoghurt fix. It had an owl pattern - is it just me or are owls the bird du jour? They are EVERYWHERE.
• Uniqlo - I needed a vest. It was LouLou's first visit, and she ended up buying knitwear. It nearly did for us both. Banging techno on the decks. Very stress-making. I needed a beer after that...which we had in Sweet & Vicious
  
• Supper - we had supper at Supper. Does what it says on the tin. Had to wait a bloody long time for a table, but oh boy, it was worth it. The food was spectacular, and our seat faced directly onto the hobs where the chefs were making the food, separated only by a glass screen. We were mesmerised by the speed and skill with which they created such delicious grub. This is LouLou's fave restaurant and it was a top call on her part.

Stuffed to the gills, it was about 11pm by now, so we hopped in a cab, got back to the apartment, watched a little Letterman, then crashed out. A very Good Friday indeed.

Day 3 brought rain. A lot of it. And it wasn't stopping. So we did sod all. Lazed about, watched a Woody Allen film (I keep tellin ya - I'm in New York!) called Alice, which was pretty funny. By late afternoon, the rain had just about stopped, so we went to LouLou's local supermarket, Eagle Provisions. What a great shop. Biggest selection of beer I have ever seen in my life, I kid you not. We got some goodies and dropped them off back at the apartment. Then we went to Blockbuster. The two ladies who work in there have a reputation. I think they're not so big on customer service as the rest of New York...I was served by Miss Charm Offensive 2009 (I believe the done thing to do here is put 'NOT!' right about now). Lucky that LouLou and I have sunny dispositions, so no harm done. Collected coffee from Haz Bean (nice guy in shop dissed our DVD selection, and went on to tell us he loves Meg Ryan - eh???) and nice wine from Alex's Wine Shop next door (Alex himself helped us make our selection, then embroiled us in a conversation about how he cannot understand why British police are unarmed. At this point, he flashed his gun in its holster...WHAT??? I only want a nice rosé...steady on, Dirty Harry...)

LouLou cooked the most delicious tuna pasta bake. We ate whilst listening to music, when a really nice piece of fingerpicking came on. I thought it was Mississippi John Hurt, but it turned out to be Elizabeth Cotten. I had no idea about her, so we looked her up on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Cotten Turns out that the lady who became Pete Seeger's nanny had hidden talents...great stuff. Another top find from LouLou's tune archive. We watched a dreadful buddy movie (my fault - chosen purely for Paul Rudd) called Role Models. I think it pretty much killed us both off, so we hit the sack.

The dawning of Day 4 brought Easter - and Green & Blacks for LouLou, Godiva for me (whooo! look at us with our fancy choccies). We decided to check out a fleamarket nearby at Front St, a short subway ride away. It was OK, but nothing spectacular. On the spur of the moment, we decided to go to Coney Island. I'd never been, so we got extra layers and set off on the subway. I have to say that I'm glad I went, but there isn't a huge amount to see once you get there. I'm a;ways pretty happy just looking at the sea, and it's a good job, cos that's about it. We had some fast food from Nathan's famous hotdog takeaway:

(they put the calorie count next to the price - very depressing to know how much flab you're necking...), had a wander, then got the subway back. LouLou had mentioned a place called ChipShop to me before. It's basically a nice greasy spoon, owned by an English couple, and it sells proper fish and chips, crumble and custard, PG Tips etc. You'd think that after travelling across the Atlantic, I'd be wanting to eat pretzels all day, but I have to say that a beautifully cooked fish and perfect mushy peas, washed down with PG and followed by rhubarb crumble and custard was pretty much heaven.

Thoroughly stuffed, we had to summon the energy to head over to Manhattan for Crippled Black Phoenix at the Mercury Lounge. We had a quick drink in a bar called Max Fish in the Lower East Side (doubled up laughing at this huge piece of 'art' over the bar - 4ft high):

Honestly - who painted that kitty???

And then we decided to head to the venue. On arrival, it became clear I should have brought ID. The doorman was a sweetheart, though, so he let me in. I went to wait inside while LouLou finished her cigarette. The door-list guy had a face like a smacked arse right from the off. I can normally charm anyone, but this miserable door Nazi got cross because I didn't have the credit card for the e-ticket list. I was so put out by his rudeness, I went back into the cold to wait with LouLou. At this point I remembered that LouLou had two spare tickets to sell. I told the nice doorman outside that his colleague wasn't the friendliest...

When we went inside, it got worse. Door-Nazi was now annoyed that LouLou wanted to try to sell her spare tickets. He actually suggested that he didn't want her hassling people. LouLou explained patiently to him that when we'd bought the Walkmen tickets from this very venue a few days earlier, the box office had said that we couldn't pick them up in advance, which would have avoided this problem. At this point, the first act was going on, so we went into the gig hall. First act not up to much, so we went back out to the bar. I suggested to LouLou that as he was being such an arsehole about her selling them, she'd be better to just give the tickets away. Oh, how I'm laughing now to think it could be that simple...

LouLou saw a guy and his friend planning to buy a ticket. She went over and said 'you can have one of my spare e-tickets for free'. This enraged Door-Nazi. But there seemed to be nothing he could do... A few minutes later, a couple of girls came in and again, LouLou approached to offer the final spare. Door-Nazi jumped off his perch and shoved LouLou away. Yes, that's right, Reader - the nasty little fucker pushed my friend because his angry little mind couldn't cope with her generosity. Or he was pissed off that his Door-Nazi powers had been diminished? Fuck honestly knows. I was completely floored by this. LouLou came back to the bar, visibly shaken and upset. Ordinairily, LouLou is one of the most eloquent, smart, erudite women I know. His behaviour rendered her competely speechless. I've been going to gigs for over 25 years and I honestly don't think I've ever seen anything like it. I could have understood it back in the days of punk and hardcore, but at some middle-class chi-chi arty venue? What a total cock.

We didn't stay. Upon asking for the venue manager, we were told they weren't in the building (hmmm...), but got the name of the bar manager who had witnessed the incident and also the name of Door-Nazi (damning letter winging its way to the Bowery organisation as I write this blog). As we left, I let LouLou go ahead. I hung back and very quietly and calmly told Door-Nazi that his behaviour had totally ruined the evening for both myself and my friend, and as a customer-facing representative of the Bowery organisation, he should be ashamed of himself and his actions. And then I chopped his head off with a huge machete I keep in my handbag (that last bit is a lie).

We got on a subway back to Brooklyn, and went for a nightcap in Lucky 13. The locals had Star Wars on the TV and we chilled out watching that over a JD and coke. Back at the apartment, we still couldn't believe how the evening had panned out. I'm just hoping Door-Nazi gets a huge bollocking at the very least once my letter drops on the Bowery doormat. That, or they can borrow that machete I keep in my handbag (oh...no, keep forgetting the machete-in-handbag is a made up thing).