Ducking Off To California

"Got any spare change, duck?"

I went to Santa Barbara last week, and the sexual highlight of my trip was to see two mallards humping in a public park one morning as I was peacefully trying to read a book. To describe bird sex as wham, bam and thank you mam is inaccurate - it’s much, much faster than that. This duck spread its wings, mounted its chosen partner, and clocked its climax amid a flurry of ripples in less than three seconds before swimming back to its male entourage to quack about the conquest.

This virile pond dweller was positively strutting on water, floating swiftly among its male mates with a certain air of, “Did you lads see what I just did?” When it happens that fast, you have to broadcast the event just in case your contemporaries were momentarily pulling a strand of duckweed from the bottom of the pond and missed it. 

After briefly circling its buddies and vigorously shaking its body a couple of times in a manner suggesting that, if it could speak, it would have been growling the word, “Whoooooooarghhhhhh!” the duck was still bursting with testosterone. How best to work it off? A young turtle was relaxing at the pond’s edge, oblivious to all the lightning hardcore activity just feet away from its sun spot. Usually, ducks and turtles co-exist peacefully. But on this day, the customary protocol was breached and the mallard charged at the stripling reptile, which fled underwater with a hurt expression that said, “What the fuck did I do to deserve that?” 

In many parts of America, a shock of moral Mums would have had the area cordoned off and tented over by now in case their kids caught an eyeful of this unholy extra-marital humping and unprovoked post-coital, inter-species violence. But in California, everything’s a bit more relaxed. Even the Republican-voting mega-rich are kind of hippy.

In the same park, I saw a young woman with tattoos up and down her arms walking a scraggy dog with her companion, a grey-haired bloke with a ponytail (beards and/or ponytails are mandatory on the west coast – something to do with the aerodynamics of surfing). I watched to see which circle of joint-toting dropouts they’d join on the grass, but instead they climbed into a rather smart car, which bore the bumper sticker ‘Vote Ron Paul’. 

On the street where I was staying, a woman tended her own chickens while her husband was off on a month-long Buddhist retreat. There was barely a house on that street worth less than $2 million, and there’s not much cash in a clutch of free-range hens. The money’s coming from somewhere, but it’s not polite to ask. Still, if you’ve made a fortune out of, say, the defence industry, then perhaps you need to go to a Buddhist retreat to balance your karma.

America’s homeless follow the money too, and thanks to the climate and the abundance of spare change many of them hang loose on Santa Barbara’s main drag. The city used to encourage them, but then changed its mind when the numbers got out of hand. The park bench from which I witnessed the humping ducks featured metal arm-rests to prevent those without a bed for the night from stretching out. 

Nonetheless, the high-end restaurants and shops alongside the clutches of shopping trolley dispossessed on State Street in Santa Barbara provide the archetypal snapshot of advanced capitalism’s stoic tolerance of both extreme wealth and poverty. Interaction between the two – the transfer of quarters or small dollar bills – lasts for about as long as it takes for two mallards to make cute little ducklings. 

Momentarily Amazed

Baby, I'm a little bit amazed

Last night I was in the kitchen making dinner and listening to music on my iPod, on shuffle as usual. While the stew was simmering, I read the latest film reviews in the Washington Post. In the review of the new Queen Latifah/Dolly Parton feel-God vehicle Joyful Noise, I read the following sentence: “And to ease in non-believers (or those apathetic toward religious ditties), many of the early ballads – Michael Jackson’s Man In The Mirror and Maybe I’m Amazed by Paul McCartney – are crowd-pleasers.”

When I read that sentence, the song playing on my iPod was Maybe I’m Amazed by Paul McCartney. As there are over 21,000 songs on my iPod, that was quite a ‘Ha!’ moment.

I know a few people who would immediately read more into it than just pure coincidence. A sign of something. Unlike the thousands of other times when I’ve heard a song on my iPod and haven’t come across a mention of that song in whatever I was reading at the same time. Or the several dozen times I’ve heard Maybe I’m Amazed in my life, but wasn’t reading a newspaper article that mentioned the song at the exact same moment.

At the same time, you can’t just ignore such moments because you abhor superstition. “It is wrong… to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidences,” Milan Kundera wrote in The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, “but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty.” Maybe you’re momentarily amazed, or maybe you’re not. Just for a second or two, I was, and that’s better than another evening when I wasn’t amazed at all. 

Farewell To Another Great Record Shop

Soon-to-be-missed Melody. Pic: one photographaday.com

Not that anyone seems to have very high expectations any more when they verbally churn out the statutory New Year’s wishes, but this one’s already off to a bad start with the news that 34-year-old Melody Records in DC’s Dupont Circle will close before the end of the month. Since Tower and Olsson’s closed down, Melody – one of the few remaining independent record shops in the area - has been my sole browsing bolt hole on slow or melancholic days when I’ve needed a fix of new music to culturally invigorate my aging soul. Now I’m left with either waiting for the Amazon package, or taking a trip to the strip malls for the hit-and-miss experience of the second hand graveyard warehouse.

Well, that’s where CDs belong, isn’t it? One contributor to a DC chat forum told users to get over it, because going to a record shop was like hanging out under the trees on the village green with the smithy. Never mind that some of us would quite like to hang out under the trees on the village green, or under a tree anywhere. The presence of the smithy wouldn’t matter to me either way, but I’d not be against lutists, harpists and accordion players venturing out and sitting beneath the leaves to air their compositions.

In the same ole-fashioned way, I love to flick through rows of discs and find the one I’ve just read garnering a Grade A review in The Onion or on The Quietus. Or find that release by a band I’ve always loved but didn’t realise had brought out a new record. Or (and this, tellingly, has become my biggest thrill) discovering that my favourite LP from 30 years ago has been re-mastered, re-packaged, and re-released with two bonus discs of live versions, outtakes and acoustic re-imaginings. See, there are still some suckers out here prepared to support the music industry.

I was last in Melody just before Christmas, spending a $50 gift card that was burning a hole in my pocket. At that time I was receiving daily e-mails from the totally legal, Russia-based downloading site Legal Sounds, offering me $50 worth of free music if I put another $50 on my account. For that money, I could have downloaded around 120 new albums, most of which I’d never get around to hearing. In Melody I bought four CDs for that money. Of course it doesn’t make financial sense, and it illustrates exactly why such shops are closing their doors. But the 90 minutes I spent in there looking and listening, and ogling the boxed sets in their locked cases, and watching what other customers were buying, and fondling the new wave of vinyl, and getting out of the fucking house, were all part of what I paid for.

Market Rasen's top record shop with
 model customer, circa 1982

If you sink the price of something to the point where you’re almost giving it away, it has no value. If I download the entire back catalogue of Neil Young, it’s never going to mean anything to me except if I make getting to know his music into a controlled, academic exercise. It won’t be the same as catching one of his songs on the radio or in a bar and noticing that it’s something special, then hunting down the record and playing it several times. Music is losing its signifiers. From the vinyl LPs I bought in The Electrical Shop in Market Rasen as a teenager to the handful of superb CDs on the Six Degrees of Separation label I bought unheard at Rockville Tower’s closing down sale, the personal experience of the music I own is closely related to the time and place I bought it. When you only need to press a button to own a song, it’s just a song you got by pressing a button.

I’m sure that at least ten per cent of over-40s agree with me. In the meantime, a huge thanks to Melody Records for staying around so long, and the very best of luck to owners Suzy and Jack in whatever they do next. One of my fondest memories of your shop is being interviewed there one afternoon by a local cable TV company a few years back. The question they asked me was something along the lines of, What’s a middle-aged man doing in a record shop on a week day afternoon? My answer: Where else could I possibly want to be?

Books of the Year, 2011

Here is a list of the ten best books published in the year 2011. Admittedly, there are a few thousand others I didn’t get round to, so you’ll just have to trust me that these ten are the best. Though I’m happy to entertain alternative views.

Water matters

10. Elixir: A History of Water and Humankind by Brian Fagan (Bloomsbury Press)

What it says on the bottle – an accessible account of how various past civilisations engineered water sources to irrigate their crops, flush away their shit, supply themselves with drink and, when supplies were abundant enough, prettify their gardens and public spaces. Being mankind, though, we’re on the way to exhausting our natural supplies through illogical idiocy like too many golf courses, gardens and swimming pools in places like California, Phoenix, Texas and Arizona, resulting in a chronically cost-ineffective use of energy and precious H2O. Sample quote: “The Owens River turned Los Angeles into a megalopolis, located in an arid landscape where, by the rules of common sense, no city should ever stand. Los Angeles hefts enough political clout to capture any river within 600 miles. Today, the city receives water not only from the Owens River but also via aqueducts from the Colorado River and the California Aqueduct, which runs from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to Lake Perris, in Riverside County, 444 miles to the south.”

9. Absolute Monarchs: A History of the Papacy by John Julius Norwich (Random House)

This is an objective but entertaining chronological rundown of everyone who’s ever claimed to be Pope, how they got there, and what they did when adorned with the office of the Papacy. It wasn’t always good and godly things, you know. Sample quote: “Hadrian’s successor, John VIII (872-882), was at least energetic, but he also had the dubious distinction of being the first pope to be assassinated – and, worse, still, by priests from his own entourage. According to the Annals of the Abbey of Fulda, they first gave him poison; then, when this failed to act quickly enough, they hammered in his skull. The enthronement of his successor, Marinus I, in 882 is said to have been marked by the murder of a high Roman dignitary, that of Hadrian III two years later by the victim’s widow being whipped naked through the streets. On Hadrian’s death on his way to Germany in 885 foul play was also suspected. The next two popes, Stephen V and Formosus, died in their beds,

2011 Albums of the Year

This year I return to the tried and trusted formula of the meaninglessly numbered list. The reason? I looked at last year’s entry to see which album I’d chosen as my number one, and was disappointed to find I hadn’t bothered. Too lazy, I reckon, and it wasn’t a particularly good year. This year, though, I was spoilt for choice, and so (already thrilled readers, musicians and music biz executives), I gift you the shivering anticipation of the countdown. As ever, my criterion was simple: I chose albums I wanted to keep playing, again and again. It’s not really a list of records classified for technical or creative or cultural reasons, but a list of albums I most fell in love with (though from around number 30 downwards it’s less love, and more ‘fancied a lot/bit’).

20. Beirut – The Rip Tide (Pompeii Records)

With this band, you feel that anything’s possible, although more than likely it will involve brass bands and some kind of folk influence from an unlikely source. iTunes laughably classifies this as “indie-rock”. Think of any other combination of genres besides indie-rock, throw them into a catalytic converter and let Beirut toy with the result using seductive syncopation, blasted riffs, and a pale but fetching vocal. Track you’d want your town band to play at the annual parade: The Rip Tide

Classically Deathcabbish

19. Death Cab For Cutie – Coats and Keys (Atlantic)

I sometimes buy albums by bands like Death Cab For Cutie out of a sense of duty that they’re the kind of band I ought to be into, rather than actually being into. So it’s always a pleasant surprise when their records turn out to be far better than I’d expected. This is a solid, archetypally articulate DeathCabbish collection, though it sometimes takes years for their best songs to sink in – I only realized when I saw them live how much I love their earlier work. Indie-pop track to the core: Doors Unlocked And Open. Advice I won’t take track: Stay Young, Go Dancing.

18. The Feelies – Here Before (Bar/None)

Seeing as no one makes blissfully good old-style indie-pop any more, call back the old hands that did it right the first time around, as the album title hints. Okay, second time around, given that so many 1980s bands like The Feelies and Galaxie 500/Luna unblushingly but very successfully rode on the riffs of the Velvet Underground. They’ve still got what they always had – cheerfully shambolic but somehow addictive scratchy guitars on top of understated vocals in a world beyond Autotune. Track to dance badly to while wearing your retired leather jacket, smoking a cigarette and drinking get-pissed-quick, extra-strength lager: the whole album

What Do Women Have Against Loud Music?

"Mind if I turn it down a tad, honey?"

What’s wrong with this picture? Last night I was ironing and listening to music when my 15-year-old daughter came into the room and said, “Dad, can you please turn it down? I’m trying to study.” For Christ's sake, girl, dump those books and get down to the golf course with a bottle of vodka in a brown paper bag, some cigarettes, and a boy to snog. Kids today, eh?

Or it could just have been her gender-dictated disposition to turn down music. Stick with me here. I’m not prone to making generalisations about the opposite sex, because the feminist peers my dad claims metaphorically castrated me during my formative years taught me otherwise. And believe me, I’m 100 per cent behind any female’s right to empowerment, a career, and even a driver’s licence. But experience has taught me that any time a woman walks into a room where music is playing, the first thing she’ll do is walk over to the amplifier and turn it down.

A chauvinist would say that it’s because a female can not bear any competition to the sound of her own voice. If I’m listening to music, then I might not be giving the female my full attention. I am appreciating the beauty of something besides the female.

Fortunately, I’m not a chauvinist, so I realise this is complete nonsense. Unfortunately, I

Mascot Madness: When Life Mimics Art

Topsy? You in there?

This story in the Manchester Evening News, about Oldham Athletic's mascot Chaddy the Owl getting thumped by one of his own fans, reminded me of my own short story The Man In The Mascot. Except that Chaddy's inner soul is a little more forgiving than the vodka-swilling narrator inside Topsy the Toucan.

"I don't even want him banned as we need as many fans as we can get," says Chaddy. Bless his owlish little heart. (I've no idea why Oldham should have an Owl as a mascot, by the way. Couldn't anyone imagine what a Latic would look like?)

Contrast this with Topsy, who was faced with unrelenting hostility from the crowd at lowly East Park Academy. These fans were happy to scapegoat him for the team's lack of success, on the grounds that Topsy was supposed to bring them luck. And as the failed drama student within knew, "these fans weren't all stupid, they knew when the club was trying it on, and they refused to be coaxed into a forced jollity, to be told by some prancing puppet when they were supposed to get excited. Was the mascot's tomfoolery not a tacit admission by the club that the players themselves were incapable of pushing the crowd into the realm of emotion?"

I can only think that the as yet untraced Oldham fan felt much the same way about Chaddy. Makes a nice change from calling for the manager's head.

Go on, go on, ask me. Ask me how I got on.

The ball was placed therein, 5 times

There are days when you have some news, but no one to tell it to. It may not be very important news, but you want to get it off your chest. I have this particular urge to share after I’ve played football, and my team has won, and I’ve scored.

The other night I played in an eight-a-side game in an outdoor league. It was one of those dark, sodden, autumnal nights when you really question your own sanity for making a 40-mile round trip just to play football for an hour. You feel like it’s going to be one of those games when you get shellacked, and then think it’s time to give up football for good. And then, the goals come. Your team wins 6-2, and you score five. You leave the field aglow, and climb into your car in an unstoppable mood. Now all you need is someone who wants to know how you got on. If you get stopped for speeding, you won't mind - you'll just tell the cop all about the game until he lets you off.

“We won 6-2 and I scored five goals.” That’s the sentence in your head that you want to

Blondie and Bandy

Straight-legged Deborah

We went to watch the still magnificent Blondie last night at the spanking new Fillmore concert venue just up the road in Silver Spring. Now that I’ve heard Deborah Harry sing Heart Of Glass live, I can die happy. But that’s not the only reason I can head for dead with a smile on my wrinkling face. For the first time in my life, someone truly appreciated the strange shape of my body.


As the Fillmore only opened last Thursday, the staff are all being extra courteous. They even have ushers outside the bogs holding the doors open for you (though no one said, “Have a nice pee.”). When I came out of the loo, I was browsing the concert posters on the walls, when one of the ushers pointed at my knees with a seriously amazed look on her face. I looked down, expecting at the very least to see a three-headed serpent emerging from my knee cap.

“You’ve… you’ve got such… bowed legs!” she exclaimed.

I laughed and said I’d had them quite a while, and that I was the last of the great British cowboys.

“But... but, they’re great,” she said. “I love them!”

“You love them?”

Bad Books On The Beach: No.3 - 'Everything Is Illuminated' by Jonathan Safran Foer

J. Safran Foer (right) in happier times.

Back in the 1970s, I was a keen reader of the weekly football comic Roy of the Rovers. Roy Race, the free-scoring striker with Melchester Rovers, was also the editor. Well, why not, it was named after him. It’s nothing Oprah hasn’t capitalised on. Except he wasn’t really the editor, because he didn’t exist. But he signed his editorial column every week, and expressed his opinions about his favourite players. The best striker in England, he maintained, was Portsmouth’s David Kemp. It’s possible that a few readers vehemently disagreed with Roy on this, but Roy was so determined to endorse the forward that he went to see him personally. And that’s how the picture to our left appeared as a magazine centre-spread, much to the delight of myself and my friends. And after that, we stopped buying it, both literally and figuratively.

We were prepared to believe that Roy could fire in a 40-yarder to win the game in the last minute, week after week. We accepted that goalkeeper Gordon Stewart, despite the panther-like antics that made him The Safest Hands In Soccer, only played for second division Tynefield City. We didn’t mind that Subbuteo-playing genius Mike Dailey of Mike's Mini-Men had absolutely nothing in his life besides table football (in fact I probably related to him more than I’d like to admit). We cared not that Johnny ‘The Hard Man’ Dexter’s Danefield United team were playing in the English top flight, just like Melchester Rovers, but the two teams existed in parallel worlds (one in colour, the other in black and white), and that the fixture list never brought them together. But we couldn’t take it seriously when Roy posed as a cardboard cut-out next to David Kemp. Like Danefield and Melchester, the two were never supposed to meet. Not credible. Not at all.

Jonathan Safran Foer’s widely acclaimed novel Everything Is Illuminated raised a similar credibility problem for me. The main character is a Ukrainian translator, Alex, who narrates