Gestingthorpe is a hamlet tucked inside the northern county boundary, but estate agents prefer to say Suffolk borders. The pace of life is unhurried. I watch the vicar tacking posters to the church noticeboard as sunlight spears through medieval glass exposing arcs of dust. Thatched Tudor cottages surround a tidy green, coated in pretty pastel colours and overhung with winter roses. “No to Stanstead Expansion” says a handwritten sign in a ground floor window and as if on cue, the throaty buzz of airplane engines pass over.
A Georgian manor house stands on higher ground at the end of a narrow lane. A century ago, Titus Oates became Lord of the Manor, but itchy feet led him all the way to Antarctica and he died in 1912 on the way home from the South Pole. His memorable final words are inscribed on a polished tablet in the church nave, “I’m going out, I may be some time.”
Friday, 30 March 2007
Monday, 26 March 2007
The Grove Tavern, Walthamstow
I like the Grove for three reasons: 1) It has proper locals, 2) Sunday night is ‘song night’ and 3) I used to live opposite.
The Grove is a small square boozer on the corner of a late Victorian terrace. There was talk of ‘doing it up’ once but talk was all it was. I like the fact that nearly everyone in the pub has an armful of tattoos and claims to be on the fringe of east London gangland, “Ronnie was a nice guy, but with Reggie you had to be careful.” All pinch of salt stuff. If you ask the right questions to the right people it’s like a local history museum of east-end bullshit.
The Grove comes alive on Sunday night. The locals (including ‘Young Terry’ who is mid-fifties) sit around the edge sipping stout or sticky sherry. Pipes are puffed, cigars are sucked and visibility is at a minimum. The sound of coughing wavers in pitch, but never falters. A pianist tinkles away in the corner for a while and then asks for volunteers. It looks spontaneous, but there is a strict hierarchy. One by one the regulars clamber onto the tiny stage and belt out terrific music hall songs. Frank’s party piece is “Give Me a London Girl Every Time” which he sings with a lecherous grin. Joyce is revered among her peers for her voice. She sang “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” one night and I almost wet myself with excitement. In the summer I used to sit in my back garden and the songs would float across the road.
I remember going to the Grove the night the twin towers collapsed. The regulars were in and the telly was on. They looked at us as if to say, “see, we told you things had gone to pot”
The Grove is a small square boozer on the corner of a late Victorian terrace. There was talk of ‘doing it up’ once but talk was all it was. I like the fact that nearly everyone in the pub has an armful of tattoos and claims to be on the fringe of east London gangland, “Ronnie was a nice guy, but with Reggie you had to be careful.” All pinch of salt stuff. If you ask the right questions to the right people it’s like a local history museum of east-end bullshit.
The Grove comes alive on Sunday night. The locals (including ‘Young Terry’ who is mid-fifties) sit around the edge sipping stout or sticky sherry. Pipes are puffed, cigars are sucked and visibility is at a minimum. The sound of coughing wavers in pitch, but never falters. A pianist tinkles away in the corner for a while and then asks for volunteers. It looks spontaneous, but there is a strict hierarchy. One by one the regulars clamber onto the tiny stage and belt out terrific music hall songs. Frank’s party piece is “Give Me a London Girl Every Time” which he sings with a lecherous grin. Joyce is revered among her peers for her voice. She sang “I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles” one night and I almost wet myself with excitement. In the summer I used to sit in my back garden and the songs would float across the road.
I remember going to the Grove the night the twin towers collapsed. The regulars were in and the telly was on. They looked at us as if to say, “see, we told you things had gone to pot”
Pop Pilgrimages No.6 - An Empty Bench in Soho Square
I didn’t realise how much I liked Kirsty MacColl’s music until she died.
I sometimes feel sad listening to her voice, it carries weariness even in the happy songs. An anthology released earlier this year captures it well, all the heartbreak and make-ups and curious diversions. She wrote so many good songs about herself and when her own life dulled, she covered others wisely. There was also a period as the 80’s flipped to 90’s when every single record in the charts featured Kirsty on backing vocals.
I loved the Tracy Ullman version of her first single, the way the guitars chimed and the baaaaayyyyyyybe yell that could shatter glass at fifty paces. I remember sitting in a school girlfriend’s garden and kissing her enthusiastically as this record soared from an upstairs window. Her parents were in the kitchen and I thought it prescient, they don’t know about us. I also didn’t know she had glandular fever and kissed my way to a fortnight off school.
And so it’s Soho Square where I find myself. One of those windy days when the sun is dancing through the clouds and you’re forever taking layers off, then hastily replacing them. Grey skies then shocking sunlight and where is my brolly? The pigeons shiver in the naked breeze she wrote in the song, Soho Square. Maybe, but they also poo on the bench to your memory. A shiny plaque gives the years of her life. She was just 41.
Kirsty’s bench was free so I sat down and munched through three veggie sausage rolls. Soho Square was buzzing with life; office workers quickstepping to the tube, twitching nutters with hands glued to dark beer tins. Everyone else was Japanese. I threw the end of my sausage roll onto the grass and started a pigeon riot.
I thought of Kirsty and that early kiss to her song, then all those years when I never really paid attention until a pub conversation with a friend in late 2000. “What about Kirsty MacColl, then?” I didn’t know what he meant, but the look on his face told me she was dead. And she died the most un-rock’n'roll of deaths.
The Justice Campaign for accountability for her death
Originally posted May 18th, 2005
I sometimes feel sad listening to her voice, it carries weariness even in the happy songs. An anthology released earlier this year captures it well, all the heartbreak and make-ups and curious diversions. She wrote so many good songs about herself and when her own life dulled, she covered others wisely. There was also a period as the 80’s flipped to 90’s when every single record in the charts featured Kirsty on backing vocals.
I loved the Tracy Ullman version of her first single, the way the guitars chimed and the baaaaayyyyyyybe yell that could shatter glass at fifty paces. I remember sitting in a school girlfriend’s garden and kissing her enthusiastically as this record soared from an upstairs window. Her parents were in the kitchen and I thought it prescient, they don’t know about us. I also didn’t know she had glandular fever and kissed my way to a fortnight off school.
And so it’s Soho Square where I find myself. One of those windy days when the sun is dancing through the clouds and you’re forever taking layers off, then hastily replacing them. Grey skies then shocking sunlight and where is my brolly? The pigeons shiver in the naked breeze she wrote in the song, Soho Square. Maybe, but they also poo on the bench to your memory. A shiny plaque gives the years of her life. She was just 41.
Kirsty’s bench was free so I sat down and munched through three veggie sausage rolls. Soho Square was buzzing with life; office workers quickstepping to the tube, twitching nutters with hands glued to dark beer tins. Everyone else was Japanese. I threw the end of my sausage roll onto the grass and started a pigeon riot.
I thought of Kirsty and that early kiss to her song, then all those years when I never really paid attention until a pub conversation with a friend in late 2000. “What about Kirsty MacColl, then?” I didn’t know what he meant, but the look on his face told me she was dead. And she died the most un-rock’n'roll of deaths.
The Justice Campaign for accountability for her death
Originally posted May 18th, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.5 - Wayne Hussey’s willy, London
I used to be a bit of a goth. No, that’s not true, I used to be a lot of a goth; a suede-booted, black-haired, cross-in-ear, bangle-wristed embarrassment to my parents.
My gig-going days began when the Sisters of Mercy split, a spawn of goth bands scurried from their ashes. Ghost Dance one night, The Mission the next, reborn Sisters at the weekend. There were various establishments where people like me could congregate away from those who wanted to punch us. The Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh and Prince of Orange in Chelmsford were both places with Snakebite-varnished floors and Nephilim friendly DJ’s, where gothic sub-culture almost looked like a movement. However, these places were merely staging posts on the path to goth enlightenment.
The holy grail of goth pilgrimage was the Intrepid Fox in Soho. In the late eighties acceptance in the Fox (by barstaff, by crimped nutters) meant you had passed your goth finals. The Guinness came decorated with a five-pointed star and the pool reserving system was based more on bullying than leaving a coin on the table. I revisited about a year ago for the first time in a decade. The Fox looked lighter, cleaner and a bloke in a suit sat at the bar. A gang of bikers should have been beating him with a stool, but no. It had changed irrevocably, although the smell of ancient sick still haunted the place.
My finest goth moment came at the Fox. All About Eve were touring their hippygotharse nonsense about harbours and meadows at the Astoria. Post-gig, Wayne Hussey of the Mission sat in the pub with his hairy bandmates. In an interview in that week’s Goth Times he’d complained about the inadequate size of his manhood. In the scrum for his autograph I asked him if it was true. He sighed and scrawled small willy Wayne on my arm in black biro.
So this meeting between the goth singer and the goth fan ends in anticlimax with the former writing ‘willy’ on the latter’s arm. Using the law of diminishing returns (scientifically proven by Cult albums) I think this ends the pop pilgrimage.
I washed my arm a week later when my manager in the Bank of England Financial Markets division asked what the writing under my sleeve was all about.
Originally posted March 23rd, 2005
My gig-going days began when the Sisters of Mercy split, a spawn of goth bands scurried from their ashes. Ghost Dance one night, The Mission the next, reborn Sisters at the weekend. There were various establishments where people like me could congregate away from those who wanted to punch us. The Pink Toothbrush in Rayleigh and Prince of Orange in Chelmsford were both places with Snakebite-varnished floors and Nephilim friendly DJ’s, where gothic sub-culture almost looked like a movement. However, these places were merely staging posts on the path to goth enlightenment.
The holy grail of goth pilgrimage was the Intrepid Fox in Soho. In the late eighties acceptance in the Fox (by barstaff, by crimped nutters) meant you had passed your goth finals. The Guinness came decorated with a five-pointed star and the pool reserving system was based more on bullying than leaving a coin on the table. I revisited about a year ago for the first time in a decade. The Fox looked lighter, cleaner and a bloke in a suit sat at the bar. A gang of bikers should have been beating him with a stool, but no. It had changed irrevocably, although the smell of ancient sick still haunted the place.
My finest goth moment came at the Fox. All About Eve were touring their hippygotharse nonsense about harbours and meadows at the Astoria. Post-gig, Wayne Hussey of the Mission sat in the pub with his hairy bandmates. In an interview in that week’s Goth Times he’d complained about the inadequate size of his manhood. In the scrum for his autograph I asked him if it was true. He sighed and scrawled small willy Wayne on my arm in black biro.
So this meeting between the goth singer and the goth fan ends in anticlimax with the former writing ‘willy’ on the latter’s arm. Using the law of diminishing returns (scientifically proven by Cult albums) I think this ends the pop pilgrimage.
I washed my arm a week later when my manager in the Bank of England Financial Markets division asked what the writing under my sleeve was all about.
Originally posted March 23rd, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.4 - Rachel and James, Manchester
A different sort of pilgrimage this time. Rachel was a college hanger-on. One of those lost souls who drifts about campus, knows everyone, but doesn’t technically belong there. A rumour surrounded her and excited a lad of my disposition and record collection; Tim Booth of James wrote Come Home about her.
Anyway, she fell into my orbit. This was Manchester. Hang on, it was 1992, this was Madchester and my taste in fashion was curated by Afflecks Palace on Oldham Street.
So I’m at the Boardwalk one night at (forgive me sweet lord) a Northside gig, when Rachel flashes her lashes in my direction. The band are chugging along in their bowl cuts, playing Conference level indie-dance and saying “fookin’ yeah!” between songs. I tuck curtain hair strands behind my ears. Rachel has a beautiful lilting Irish accent, a voice that sings through sentences. I’m enraptured and better still, I’m in.
So we head back to my digs in the hard-to-find-beauty of Bolton, where the mills that Blake found satanic are just crumbling away, a town living on past glories of looms and spinning mules and where it never stops raining. The house is asleep although upstairs I can hear one housemate, Good Looking Grant, playing Sonic on the Megadrive. She puts a shushy finger to my lips and we retire to the lounge. We drink homemade beer from stained coffee mugs. I try, with subtlety, to confirm the rumour about the James song. This approach is skipped around, so I just blurt it out, “are you the Come Home girl?” She smiles a maybe, says she knows the band well and tells a complicated story about Tim Booth, Attila the Stockbroker and her teenage runaway self. It sounds feasible and before I get the chance to interrogate she kisses me and storytelling for the night is at a close.
She left town a week later and I never did discover the truth. If this sounds too romantic, let me tell you she also got it on with Good Looking Grant before she went.
Originally posted March 22nd, 2005
Anyway, she fell into my orbit. This was Manchester. Hang on, it was 1992, this was Madchester and my taste in fashion was curated by Afflecks Palace on Oldham Street.
So I’m at the Boardwalk one night at (forgive me sweet lord) a Northside gig, when Rachel flashes her lashes in my direction. The band are chugging along in their bowl cuts, playing Conference level indie-dance and saying “fookin’ yeah!” between songs. I tuck curtain hair strands behind my ears. Rachel has a beautiful lilting Irish accent, a voice that sings through sentences. I’m enraptured and better still, I’m in.
So we head back to my digs in the hard-to-find-beauty of Bolton, where the mills that Blake found satanic are just crumbling away, a town living on past glories of looms and spinning mules and where it never stops raining. The house is asleep although upstairs I can hear one housemate, Good Looking Grant, playing Sonic on the Megadrive. She puts a shushy finger to my lips and we retire to the lounge. We drink homemade beer from stained coffee mugs. I try, with subtlety, to confirm the rumour about the James song. This approach is skipped around, so I just blurt it out, “are you the Come Home girl?” She smiles a maybe, says she knows the band well and tells a complicated story about Tim Booth, Attila the Stockbroker and her teenage runaway self. It sounds feasible and before I get the chance to interrogate she kisses me and storytelling for the night is at a close.
She left town a week later and I never did discover the truth. If this sounds too romantic, let me tell you she also got it on with Good Looking Grant before she went.
Originally posted March 22nd, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.3 - Athens, Georgia
REM of course. And the B52’s. And Pylon I suppose, but REM mostly. I’ve wanted to visit for years. I remember old interviews with the band where they raved about the city. I grew up on REM and I stick by them even now, in their run-out-of-tunes twilight.
Athens is technically a city, but with the feel of a town. The vast campus of the University of Georgia sits downtown and the place fans out around it. I could tell it was a university town because I was the only one about at eleven in the morning and, sadly, the only one getting ready for bed come eleven at night.
In Starbucks the barista asked my name. I was caught off-guard and (in typical English reserved formality), I said, ‘Mr Gregory’. This produced behind the counter mirth, “Can I get, ahem, Mr Gregory a tall latte to go, please?” He bowed stiffly as he handed over my coffee and I left in red-faced embarrassment.
Athens has attractive suburbs. Away from the buzz of the university, hilly residential districts hide wonderful homes. I discovered pristine antebellum houses framed by manicured lawns and arcaded porches. There was a tree that owned itself and a great vegetarian grocery, and behind the cash register, the prettiest girl.
I did the REM sites. Weaver D’s Cafe with its Automatic for the People sign (now placed well out of nicking it reach), Peter Buck’s old house, the 40 Watt club. Outside the club a guy stopped me and introduced himself, “I’m DJ Zee” He was handing out flyers for the weekend with his buddy. He asked if I had heard of him and I said I hadn’t. He looked upset, so I told him I was from England. He relayed this data to his mate who looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked me if I knew someone in Swindon called Kenny.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
Athens is technically a city, but with the feel of a town. The vast campus of the University of Georgia sits downtown and the place fans out around it. I could tell it was a university town because I was the only one about at eleven in the morning and, sadly, the only one getting ready for bed come eleven at night.
In Starbucks the barista asked my name. I was caught off-guard and (in typical English reserved formality), I said, ‘Mr Gregory’. This produced behind the counter mirth, “Can I get, ahem, Mr Gregory a tall latte to go, please?” He bowed stiffly as he handed over my coffee and I left in red-faced embarrassment.
Athens has attractive suburbs. Away from the buzz of the university, hilly residential districts hide wonderful homes. I discovered pristine antebellum houses framed by manicured lawns and arcaded porches. There was a tree that owned itself and a great vegetarian grocery, and behind the cash register, the prettiest girl.
I did the REM sites. Weaver D’s Cafe with its Automatic for the People sign (now placed well out of nicking it reach), Peter Buck’s old house, the 40 Watt club. Outside the club a guy stopped me and introduced himself, “I’m DJ Zee” He was handing out flyers for the weekend with his buddy. He asked if I had heard of him and I said I hadn’t. He looked upset, so I told him I was from England. He relayed this data to his mate who looked thoughtful for a moment, then asked me if I knew someone in Swindon called Kenny.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
Pop Pilgrimages No.2 - Leonard Cohen, Chelsea Hotel, NY
The man on reception seemed a bit put out, but reluctantly conceded we did indeed have a booking. “How did you hear about the hotel?” he asked. I said something that I don’t normally say to hotel receptionists, “From the Leonard Cohen song.” He nodded and brightened up, “We were trying to get Len (Len!) back for his 70th birthday. Not sure he can make it what with the Buddhism.”
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. A rest stop for rare individuals says the website which doesn’t explain much. It was the only place I wanted to stay in New York, but the online reviews didn’t exactly sell it. “I was scared to walk the corridors in case I got mugged” said one, “I got electrocuted by the shower” said another. I netted these minuses against a whole load of plusses from pop history. Dylans Bob and Thomas both had rooms here, Sid killed Nancy in another and Janis Joplin gave Len (as I now always call him) head on the unmade bed.
The whole place is stacked with art, it hangs on every landing and in many of the rooms. Some of it is great, but much of it is not great at all. Guests are encouraged to hang their own creations and the quality threshold leaps and dives on an ongoing basis. It is certainly unique and I spent one elevator ride trying to work out if the person squashed against me was male or female. There was barely enough room for two people, let alone his/her four yapping dogs.
We were up high on the sixth floor and the windows opened behind the neon sign, level with the ‘O’ in Hotel. I asked if anyone famous had lived in our room, “a writer” the receptionist said, but he couldn’t remember the name. The room was lined with empty bookshelves and decorated in faded everything. I asked a maid if she knew who the writer was. She thought he wrote science fiction and I was a little disappointed.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. A rest stop for rare individuals says the website which doesn’t explain much. It was the only place I wanted to stay in New York, but the online reviews didn’t exactly sell it. “I was scared to walk the corridors in case I got mugged” said one, “I got electrocuted by the shower” said another. I netted these minuses against a whole load of plusses from pop history. Dylans Bob and Thomas both had rooms here, Sid killed Nancy in another and Janis Joplin gave Len (as I now always call him) head on the unmade bed.
The whole place is stacked with art, it hangs on every landing and in many of the rooms. Some of it is great, but much of it is not great at all. Guests are encouraged to hang their own creations and the quality threshold leaps and dives on an ongoing basis. It is certainly unique and I spent one elevator ride trying to work out if the person squashed against me was male or female. There was barely enough room for two people, let alone his/her four yapping dogs.
We were up high on the sixth floor and the windows opened behind the neon sign, level with the ‘O’ in Hotel. I asked if anyone famous had lived in our room, “a writer” the receptionist said, but he couldn’t remember the name. The room was lined with empty bookshelves and decorated in faded everything. I asked a maid if she knew who the writer was. She thought he wrote science fiction and I was a little disappointed.
Originally posted March 21st, 2005
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