I'm woken by sunlight streaming through the living room windows of my mezzanine flat. I'm snug in bed but it's good to wake up and rise early and prepare for my day.
In recent weeks I've generally had three online lessons to prepare for on Tuesdays, now two of them have come to an end for a while. One of the students for my early morning double hander has cancelled and I just need to prepare myself for the eventuality that Juergen arrives.
I put on a Mercury Rev album on my headphones and start to prepare stuff for the possibility that Juergen might show. I adhere to routine these days since I went freelance and spend much of the week at home. I'm happy that my life has taken this turn.
One thing I don't and will never miss is the office space. I came to the conclusion that it had nothing to do with what I was doing, which was teaching. Now I'm my own master and my bank account seems reasonably healthy without giving me enough money to really make a nuisance of myself.
Every morning I've got a handful of albums to work my way through in the ascending and descending chart lists I chronicle on her. It's a comforting routine. The Rev's All Is Dream is a smooth listen this morning although I've never cared for the guy's voice. He sounds like a homesick ET cast adrift in a Bond OST here. I shrug and get up to run my bath.
I put It's a Sin on. That's better. It takes me instantly back to the late Eighties. The Pet Shop Boys always do. Not always the happiest time of my life. In fact quite the opposite. The first time I was ever really tested. But I was young and I came through. Even though it has the most painful memories.
When It's A Sin runs its course I put on their new album Nonetheless and listen to a few songs while my bath runs. Tennant and Lowe know exactly what they're doing. They always did. The humdrum meets the widescreen. Works for me for precisely the reason why Mercury Rev doesn't. Because Tennant's persona doesn't grate while the homesick ET at the heart of Mercury Rev always does. Nonetheless is excellent. They've never put a foot wrong. They've got great taste.
Juergen is prepared for anyhow. If he turns up we'll talk and seewhat he wants to do. I've got some grammar work on the back burner which I'd say is what he really needs. Just in case. He's in charge. This work with German business people that I'm embarked on is fundamentally reactive. Responding and teaching to students needs. It's enjoyable work and often doesn't actually feel like work. Early retirement in many respects. I'm responsive but I also feel in charge crucially. I've cut out the middle man.
Before my bath I take a brief listen to Stiff Little Fingers Nobody's Hero which is another one on my lists for today. Stiff Little Fingers is not something I'd normally choose to listen to before seven at my age. Maybe when it came out and I was 14 in 1980.
I take my rablets while Jake Burns rants and the guitarists mount the barricades and come on like the Irish Clash. StiffLlittle Fingers were big at my secondary school. The kind of band name that the boys in my year liked to write on their pencil cases. I could write an essay about the hierarchy of cool between boys at secondary school.
Tablets taken and ablutions completed I'm ready for breakfast. Ordinarily I'd wander down to the fitness centre and spend an hour in the sauna, the plunge pool and the pool. There's been a leak of some kind in the building and its closed. Irritating. I don't like my routine broken.
I put XTC's Drums & Wires on my record player while I sort out breakfast. In the bath I'd been ruminating between Squeeze and The Teardrop Explodes but this will do. 'She's up there turning round. Just like a helicopter...' Andy Partridge's manic spectrum Reggaisms. I used to love XTC when I was young and I stand by my 14 year old self. I still like his taste. Well perhaps I didn't need that record by The Fixx.
Drums & Wires fits my mood anyhow. You can't fault a band that wants to be The Kinks one minute. Captain Beefheart's Magic Band the next, But you know at heart that they're really just a bunch of dweeb non-conformists from Swindon. And are just mightily relieved to avoid the 9 to 5 mortgage, unhappy marriage shift. Or else the job in the warehouse or the garage.
At half eight I click on the Teams invitation and Juergen is there. From his flat just North of the Swiss border in Freiburg. Wearing a baggy Techno Festival t shirt. Just after nine. Rico, the other guy in the class shows up. Even though technically he cancelled. It's always a pleasure to see him.
The lesson that proceeds is anarchic though very funny. We laiigh a lot. Neither Rico nor Juergen has much grammar. Their sentences are unmoored and sometimes it's a struggle to hang on to what they are talking about when they describe their work practices. Generally Germans are highly proficient given ten or fifteen years of rigorous schooling in the English tongue.Not these two, They missed out on the schooling for reasons I don't need to go into here.
It's a real riot of a lesson anyhow. I keep circling back to them to the need of preparing using the given tools and apps whenever they have a meeting in English. We discuss Rico's forthcoming holiday with his partner on a North Sea Island. Germans seem always about to embark on a holiday. Sensible.
I'm done by ten and the rest of the day is mine. It's quite nice to have some down time after a few weeks of fairly relentless, online lessons. The day is bright, the heavens are full and I've got the full range of Newcastle's hostelries and restaurants to choose from.
In some ways since breaking away from my nine to five at the beginning f the year, I'm starting to think of the phase I'm going through now as early retirement in some respects. That opens up a lot of choice and that's how I'm approaching my life these days.
I decide to get in touch with Louise. An old school friend. Within a couple of messages we set up a school reunion event on social media. Always a slightly risky manoeuvere digging up the past. Stirring up memories. That's the space I'm in now. And partially will be until the reunion happens in September. 'The past is a foreign country. They do things differently there.' J.P. Harttley
But today I'm free. So I visit haunts. Rosie's where a couple of great ladies are setting up a birthday meal in the rooftop restaurant in Chinatown. Freeplay on the jukebox so I put on a Queen and a Rolling Stones on for the pair of them.
Then to RPM Records. Have they got a copy of Eat To The Beat. They have and for eight quid.I love record shops for this kind of moment. I don't hesitate. I have a brief chat with Marek and Ritchie. Record Store banter. About Debbie Harry on this occasion. Blokes love to talk about how Debbie Harry and Kate Bush made them feel when they were young.
Then I'm home and put the record on full blast. Sing along. My younger sister attached herself to Blondie before she was ten. Had every record until The Hunter. Sang their songs at full blast round our family house in Richmond.Younger sisters are generally right. She slipped a few years when she and her friends switched allegiance to Duran Duran a couple of years later. Teenage hormones demand such reckless switches. Eat To The Beat though doesn't date or tarnish. It deserves to be held in the same respect as Parallel Lines. I'm so glad I have a copy.
Blondie was Alison's contribution to our families soundtrack growing up. I countered with the Bunnymen, Simple Minds, Associates, an most importantly R.E.M. when they came into my life. I played Murmur, Reckoning and Fables relentlessly in my room at the top of our house.
I play the first side now. No time for more as I've booked myself at the French Quarter for five. Always sensible to book ahead at TheF rench Quarter. I'd say its the best restaurant in Newcastle.
But I have time for Feeling Gravity's Pull and the rest of Side One of Fables. Never mind Gravity's Pull. That record has a centrifugal tug on me that drags me down the years into the vortex of youth. It's magical what music can do to you. Few recotds like this particular one. There's nothing quite like a record that takes you back to being nineteen as this invariably does for me. Memory and the change, the relentless change that occurs in your teenage years that is unmatched elsewhere in life.
Once Old Man Kensey has had its say I'm off into the sunlight and make my way to The French Quarter where they open the doors for me and take e to my table. French Quarter is classy, The food is fantastic. The waitresses and waiters are smiley and chatty and love their jobs as much as it's possible to love a job. The one I know best rolled me a rollie that takes me from the doors of The French Quarter to the doors of The Bridge Hotel.
I must make my way to The Bridge Hotel at least three times a week. It never lets me down. I don't drink alcohol much anymore but pubs are special places. And The Bridge Hotel understands what most discenrning punters want from a pub. Best you go there and appreciate what I'm getting at for yourself.
I pop in briefly at The Central acroos the High Level Bridge in Gateshead. It's Book Club Night and it always pays to make an appearance. But it's a brief appearance and Bill who's also going to see Baxter make our leave and we're off into the sunlight and head down the slope and through the doors to the Sage.
Just in time for Ernie. And I'm not taking about the fastest Milkcart in The West. I've just settled down in my seat at the back of the fantastic Glasshouse Venue and they're on. A sensitive local fourpiece just starting on their way. They've got a great sound somewhere between Elbow and Travis. No that's not wet. They have heart..Ones to watch,
A non alcoholic beer in the foyer. A chance to appreciate light and space again. Then back for the main event . Baxter, The Man.
Baxter is Ian Dury's son. There's no disguising the fact, He doesn't bother to hide it himself. He's the son of The Guvnor. Both Ian and Baxter remind me of the things I cannot stand about London. The cheap, fake machismo of being a Cockney lad. The stuff that Ray Winston and Michael Caine before him built their personas upon. Fagin's mantra. 'You gotta pick a pocket or two.' Jack, the Lad.
Baxter projects it. The aggressive, phoney ugly aggression. The constant threat of violence. The vast aching loneliness inside. Baxter's not taken in for a moment. he can 'talk the talk' but has no interest in Walking the Walk. No interest in becoming a 'total cunt' in the words of Oi, one of his defining songs, which he plays and is a set highlight tonight.
He stays in persona, Its only right. I love persona. It's a lost art. Bowie, Ferry and Ayers specialised in this in the early Seventies. Ian himself. Never let the mask slip.
We get our money's worth. Then after a brief pause, the encore. Baxter lets his hair down. After a disciplined performance of throwing shapes. he let's us know he loves us. There's some manic almost Acid Techno. The audience gets to its feet like only a Newcastle audience can and the venue is alive. 'I love you.,' he shouts and its clear that he means it. 'I hate London. I love it here.'
It's what I want to hear I grew up in London adn despite many things it has going for it, I reject much of it too, It's a facade that's not for me. I'm happy here, Newcastle's my home now., It's been a great night. A great day. I make my way across the serene Newcastle streets and home. Play the second side of Fables in my darkened flat. You have to respect the narrative of a great record. Then hit the sack.
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