bignoseduglyguy

Watching the BBC4 documentary John Martyn: Johnny Too Bad, I wondered how on earth I’d ever lost track of John Martyn and his music. A little careful mental backtracking brought the realisation that when my last turntable died and didn’t get replaced, I simply stopped listening to vinyl. The programme was as entertaining as it was enlightening and was a very pleasurable way to spend an hour – rediscovering old tracks I half remembered and hearing earlier work I’d never heard. As someone who is usually labelled a folk artist, Martyn is ten times more rock and roll than any of the usual so-called hellraisers. Although being pissed, wrecked, argumentative half the time and in possession of a schoolboy’s sense of humour the other isn’t meant to be big or clever, there is a part of me that sneakingly admires him for this.

Wanting to fill in a few gaps after the programme, I Googled for his website which is, much to my delight, not some slick A&R person’s wet dream but a lovingly downbeat site tucked away on Freeserve. There, amongst the fan’s Top 40 tracks, quotes and the photomontage, you’ll find a great page called ‘Stories‘ where folks have submitted their JM-related tales. One you won’t find there concerns the time when Martyn verbally harangued and abused a bloke who was delivering beer to the Hammersmith pub whose bar he was barely standing at one fine evening back in the mid-eighties. Having given him a right earful, Martyn proceeded to ‘let’ the bloke buy him a drink in order to make up for what ever transgression he had unknowingly committed. Two pints were duly served and a barely coherent conversation ensued. I still have no idea what he said but he went for a piss and never came back so I never got a drink out of him.

As I still have no turntable on which to play vinyl, I purchased a few of my favourite JM albums, erm, CDs over the weekend to enjoy all over again. The only problem is that I am now wondering what other essential albums are buried in my vinyl collection that I have forgotten about. This could be expensive.

Grahame’s post about his new kitten over at tptb dragoon brought to mind another bit of cat and computer interaction involving Jessie, one of our cats. Jessie was wont to sleep on top of the monitor of my PC, curled up on the warm casing. So, when she wandered in to find me setting up a new PC earlier this year, her feline nose was put out of shape for a while. Job done, I sat back to admire the new screen and speaker setup and by doing so had a grandstand view of Jessie leaping up to reclaim her spot on top of the screen, only to disappear down the back of the desk in a tangle of cables. I had swapped the old monitor for a new flat screen. Given the sharpness of her flailing claws, I was extremely grateful that I hadn’t yet removed the protective film from the screen. Jessie has never really trusted me since.

In the year that sees the Olympics return to Athens, it somehow seems fitting that Greece wins Euro 2004.

Last night’s acting school get-together was a hoot. Top marks to Martin for getting us all in the same place at the same time and Lori for the venue suggestion. With his story about his Mum at the premiere of ‘Chaplin’ – or was it the one about going for a curry with Robert Downey Junior in Haringey – Lawrence reminded me that he truly is the Jackie Mason of Finsbury Park. Craig was gracious enough to gloss over the fact that I called him Mark for half the evening whilst Robin cruelly reminded me that I once died a thousand deaths performing Bowie’s Andy Warhol. Helen saved my blushes by entertaining my opinions on Anglo-American relations before went on to recall Angie helped us recall a selection of the romantic entanglements that we had all put ourselves through. Someone, I forget who, pondered on the absence of others we knew, corresponded and worked with over the years – too busy? too famous? too shy? too aloof? – and I suddenly found myself thinking of the Britpack mawkfest ‘Peter’s Friends‘, a film about a bunch of actors having a reunion. Whilst their Oxbridge-fuelled country house reminisences were in no way reflective of our more down to earth East End flashbacks, I felt a little like one of those characters – more than happy with my lot in life but always harbouring a small desire to still be in the business. This, in turn, reminded me of the best line in Peter’s Friends, where Emma Thompson, naked except for a candlewick dressing gown, implores Stephen Fry’s bisexual Peter to “fill me with your little babies.” Fry responds with a great line (penned by Rita Rudner): “You’d be at the top of my list, along with Michele Pfeiffer and River Phoenix.” Talking of films, last night’s festivities have been rush-released in .avi format for your viewing delight here and here.

Two events this week are united by the common uses of i) the internet as the catalytic medium and ii) curry as a focal point for social interaction.

On Thursday evening, I met three of those who also post regularly to the UFDI newsgroup, serving those with a burning desire for the food of the Indian subcontinent and its restaurant equivalent around the world. We all met in a great pub, The Good Samaritan, that keeps good beers properly and mostly serves the medicos and nurses of the Royal London Hospital and curryholics heading for Brick Lane. After a couple of foaming ales, we headed off, away from Brick Lane to my favourite Pakistani kebab house, The Lahore in Umberston Street, E1, There we ate heartily of the reknown lamb chops, sheek kebabs, masala fish, chicken and mutton tikka, chana, dhal, rice and roti, choosing to drink water as no-one remembered to bring their own booze – The Lahore has no drinks licence. This blowout, which can be witnessed here, cost us just £12.50 each. If anyone knows of a place which can match the quality and the value, I’d love to hear about it.

Tonight, after ending a stressful week with a quiet night off yesterday, I am back out again tonight. I’m off to a small but select reunion of folks that I went to acting school with twenty two years ago. When I say select I am talking about folks that I want to see again rather than those I’d rather not bump. Reunions are usually the work of the Devil, where one has to swap life stories with folks who, it transpires only half way through their monologue, you recall you didn’t particularly like back then. Tales of broken arms (“We do Val d’Isere every year”), broken dreams (“That Senior Deputy Assistant Manager job was mine until she came along with her Nino Cerruti suits”) and broken marriages (“We’d been together since the third year school trip to Wales – funny that, cos now she’s living with a vegan in Rhyll”) abound at such events so I usually steer clear – but I digress. Tonight will see me supping more ale in the Queen’s Head in Denman Street, which has an excellent comedy club upstairs, before moving a few doors down to Chowki, for ‘home style’ food from India. I haven’t been to Chowki before so I had a look at diner’s reviews on the web and found that they range from the rave to the grave. Far from being a put-off, this is a good sign for me, because The Lahore gets similar love/hate reviews. Should I survive the beer and the balti, I will report back.