Worship Street

I had a meeting on Worship Street this week, and I realised it ran directly between two working-class poets we have mentioned before here on TANH.  To the West, the street ends at Bunhill Fields, where the poet William Blake is buried.  I realise we have posted a lot about Blake over the years, so let's move to the East end.

Where Worship Street meets Norton Folgate, celebrated by Madness and now a Radio 4 play.  And just over the road is Folgate Street, mentioned before, named afterr the Water Poet, John Taylor.

Of course, I'm not claiming that Taylor was as great a poet as Blake, but it is nice to thing of them being joined by this otherwise dull city street.

Radio 4 Liberty

Oh, and there was a marvellous radio play based on The Liberty of Norton Folgate on Radio 4 yesterday.  Catch it while you can!

Poem of the Week

Is That All There Is?
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller

I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire.
I'll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up
In his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement.
I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames.
And when it was all over I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a fire?"

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

And when I was 12 years old, my father took me to the circus, the greatest show on earth.
There were clowns and elephants and dancing bears
And a beautiful lady in pink tights flew high above our heads.
And as I sat there watching the marvelous spectacle
I had the feeling that something was missing.
I don't know what, but when it was over,
I said to myself, "Is that all there is to a circus?"

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Then I fell in love, with the most wonderful boy in the world.
We would take long walks by the river or just sit for hours gazing into each other's eyes.
We were so very much in love.
Then one day, he went away. And I thought I'd die -- but I didn't.
And when I didn't I said to myself, "Is that all there is to love?"

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing

I know what you must be saying to yourselves.
If that's the way she feels about it why doesn't she just end it all?
Oh, no. Not me. I'm in no hurry for that final disappointment.
For I know just as well as I'm standing here talking to you,
When that final moment comes and I'm breathing my lst breath, I'll be saying to myself,

Is that all there is, is that all there is
If that's all there is my friends, then let's keep dancing
Let's break out the booze and have a ball
If that's all there is

Suggs' Inheritances

Suggs Inheritance Tracks on the usual execrable Saturday morning programme on Radio4.  His choices were nearly as good as Alexei Sayles's.  Miles Davis 'Sketches of Spain' and Leiber and Stoller's 'Is That All There Is?' sung by Peggy Lee.

Mad Word

Earlier this year, I mentioned the Guardian's series of Top 10 mentions of Cryptic Crosswords in fiction, plays, music, etc. 

I've just checked back to see who eventually won, and I'm pleased (and surprised) to see Madness in 6th place for Cardiac Arrest!

Poem of the Week

Embarrassment
Madness (Michael Barson, Lee Jay Thompson)

Received a letter just the other day
Don't seem they wanna know you no more
They've laid it down given you their score
Within the first two lines it bluntly read

You're not to come and see us no more
Keep away from our door
Don't come 'round here no more
What on earth did you do that for?

Our aunt, she don't wanna know she says
"What will the neighbors think, they'll think
We don't, that's what they'll think, we don't"
But I will, 'cause I know they think I don't

Our uncle he don't wanna know he says
"We are a disgrace to the human race", he says
"How can you show your face
When you're a disgrace to the human race?"

No commitment, you're an embarrassment
Yes, an embarrassment, a living endorsement
The intention that you have booked
Was an intention that was overlooked

They say, "Stay away
Don't want you home today
Keep away from our door
Don't come 'round here no more"

Our dad, don't wanna know he says
"This is a serious matter
Too late to reconsider
No one's gonna wanna know ya"

Our mum, she don't wanna know, she says
"I'm feelin' twice as old", she says
"Thought she had a head on her shoulder
'Cause I'm feelin' twice as older
I'm feelin' twice as older"

You're an embarrassment

Tickets

So.  In sorting out my desk at home I came across  mementoes, tickets and receipts from some of the events, shows and places that I've posted about.  Here are some:

The Bill Bailey show last year. It also demonstrates just how expensive it can be to sit in the front stalls in the West End.

Much more obvious: the visit to the RI Christmas Lectures in 2009.  On Albemarle St - the world's first one-way street, and all because of the popularity of Humphrey Davy's lectures.

Also from 2009, the entrance ticket to see a small pre-Romanesque church in Northern Spain.

A platform ticket for Bodiam station- where we discovered a license to crenellate.

The Sam Wanamaker Festival at the Globe a few weeks ago.

A ticket for The Now Show.

The road train in Leon, Spain.

And finally, the Madness Concert, last December

Poem of the Week

My Girl
Madness (Michael Barson)

My girl's mad at me
I didn't wanna see the film tonight
I found it hard to say
She thought I'd had enough of her
Why can't she see
She's lovely to me?
But I like to stay in
And watch TV on my own
Every now and then

My girl's mad at me
Been on the telephone for an hour
We hardly said a word
I tried and tried but I could not be heard
Why can't I explain?
Why do I feel this pain?
'Cause everything I say
She doesn't understand
She doesn't realise
She takes it all the wrong way

My girl's mad at me
We argued just the other night
I thought we'd got it straight
We talked and talked until it was light
I thought we'd agreed
I thought we'd talked it out
Now when I try to speak
She says that I don't care
She says I'm unaware
And now she says I'm weak

The Joy of Fez

- and porkpie hats, plastic trombones, skinheads and their children, ties and two-tone jackets...
In summary, to Earls Court through the snow to see Madness play the last gig in their latest UK tour:

A mixed crowd, to say the least. Age range from 4 to 60 and still older.  But then I suppose they have been going a while...

The crowd were quiet when the supporting act was on (some dancing when classics were covered), but exploded when Madness started.  And stayed raucous, noisy and exploded to the end.  Youngest likened it to being a marble on a tin tray full of marbles, when suddenly someone picks it up and starts shaking it vigorously.  And you aren't the biggest marble.

But everyone seemed to know the words, and it was pretty good-natured.  Lots of apparent skinheads singing and dancing to anti-racists songs.  All of the well-known tracks -  Our House, My Girl's Mad at Me, Night Boat to Cairo, Baggy Trousers, Driving In My Car, It Must be Love, One Step Beyond, plus the the marvellous Clerkenwell Polka from Norton Folgate.

Immensely enjoyable, I thought (but then I'm a bigger marble I suppose...).

Meandering

For reasons tedious to relate I ended up in Toytown last week.  I had a somewhat complicated, difficult meeting, but when I came out I was - of course - right next to one of the joys of Toytown. 

The trainset. 

Otherwise known as the Toytown Light Railway (TLR).  I was right by South Quay.  So I had to have a go.

The TLR was always a bit of a joke.  Seen as a 1980's Thatcherite dream of what public transport ought to look like, servicing a new land of Yuppies and Fat Cats.  Originally it didn't run on weekends and was often breaking down.

But in the afternoon sunshine last week it seemed far more benign.  It is a strange and beautiful railway.  Mostly built on stilts, it still swoops into tunnels; it rollercoasters around  ridiculously tight curves; and it often ducks and dives for no visible reason.  And the area around Westferry (? - I took no notes) is a topologist's dream.

So I spent an hour or so pootling around and generally enjoying myself on the world's largest and silliest model railway, and then decided to have a go on the East London Line. 

Because everybody's talking about it and I felt somewhat left out.

So I changed at Shadwell (interesting - I took a wrong turn from the TLR station and found myself in an Asian street market before retracing my steps and eventually finding the super-posh new ELL).  And everyone is right - the new line is super - and for me the best bits are the trains themselves, with carriages you can walk between just like the halves of a bendy bus.  I just had to stand at one end and look the entire length of the train as it moved sinuously along.  A thing of beauty and grace.

After a fair bit of this, I was heading south again when I took a quick decision and jumped off.  A few hundred yards walking and I was, really and truly, in Norton Folgate.   Just a little bit of this. 

Just a little distance from the unnecessarily huge station of Shoreditch High Street (which would have been a quarter of the size on the TLR).

More specifically, I found myself in the beautiful Water Poet pub on Folgate St. - recommended in the sleeve notes of the album, and rightly so.  Huge and airy, with an open space at the back (I hesitate to call it a garden).  Stuffed sofas and a pool table.  Smashing. 

The pub is named after John Taylor, a water boatman and poet who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries, and who was known as the "Water Poet." 

According to Wikipedia, as I write, he was also at the Siege of Cadiz (1810-1812).  Surely shome mishtake?  I suppose I ought to go in and change it - they mean the capture and sacking of Cadiz by the English in 1596, not the French siege of the then-Spanish capital as part of the Peninsular War - but I probably won't.

Taylor also appears to have been one of those people who invents their own languages.  His was Barmoodan, which he claimed to have translated into Utopian.  From VRZHU:-

And here’s a bit from his Poem in the Utopian Tongue (1613), which I take to be his nonce language, Barmoodan:

Thoytom Asse Coria Tushrump codsheadirustie,
Mungrellimo whish whap ragge dicete tottrie,
Mangelusquem verminets nipsem barelybittimsore,
Culliandolt travellerebumque, graiphone trutchmore.
Pusse per mew (Odcomb) gul abelgik foppery shig shag
Cock a peps Comb sottishamp, Idioshte momulus tag rag.

He also wrote on poetry publishing and the politics of the water boatmen.

And then I went home.

Poem of the Week

The Liberty of Norton Folgate
Madness (Graham Yates and Jonathan Young)

This is the story of the Liberty Of Norton Folgate

Old Jack Norris, the musical shrimp and the cadging ramble…..

A little bit of this, would you like a bit of that

But in weather like this, you should wear a coat, a nice warm hat
A needle and thread the hand stitches of time
Battling Levinsky versus Jackie Burk
Bobbing and weaving, an invisible line

So step for step and both light on our feet
We’ll travel many along dim silent street

Would you like a bit of this, or a little bit of that? (Misses)
A little bit of what you like does you no harm, you know that
The perpetual steady echo of the passing beat
A continual dark river of people
In it’s transience and in it’s permanence
But, when the streetlamp fills the gutter with gold
So many priceless items bought and sold

So step for step and both light on our feet
We’ll travel many along dim silent street (together)

Once round Arnold Circus, and up through Petticoat Lane
Past the well of shadows, and once back round again
Arm in arm, with an abstracted air
To where the people stare
Out of the upstairs windows
Because we are living like kings
And these days will last forever

Cos sailors from Africa, China and the archipelago of Malay
Jump ship ragged and penniless into Shadwells Tiger Bay
The Welsh and Irish wagtails, mothers of midnight
The music hall carousel enspilling out into Bow fire light
Sending half crazed shadows, giants dancing up the brick wall
Of Mr Trumans beer factory, waving, bottles ten feet tall

Whether one calls it Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Tower Hamlets
Or Banglatown. We’re all dancing in the moonlight, we’re all
On borrowed ground.

Oh, I’m just walking down to, I’m just floating down through
Won’t you come with me, to the Liberty of Norton Folgate
But wait!
What’s that?
Dan Leno
And the Limehouse golem

*Whistling duet*

Purposefully walking nowhere, oh I’m happy just floating about
(Have a banana)
On a Sunday afternoon, the stallholders all call and shout
To no-one in particular
Avoiding people you know, you’re just basking in you’re own company
The technicolour world’s going by, but you’re the lead in your own movie

Cos in the Liberty of Norton Folgate
Walking wild and free, in your second hand coat,
Happy just to float
In this little taste of liberty
A part of everything you see

They’re coming left and right
Trying to flog you stuff you don’t need or want
And a smiling chap takes your hand
And drags you in his
Uncles restaurant
(ee-yar, ee-yar, ee-yar)

There’s a Chinese man trying hard to flog you moody DVDs
You know? You’ve seen the film, it’s black and white, it’s got no sound
And a man’s head pops up and down
Right across your widescreen TV
(Only a fiver)
(’Ow much?)
(Alright, two for eight quid)
(Ee-yar, ee-yar, look, I’m givin’ it away)
(Givin’ it away!)

Cos in the Liberty of Norton Folgate
Walking wild and free, in your second hand coat,
Happy just to float
In this little piece of liberty
You’re a part of everything you see

There’s the sturdy old fellows, pickpockets, dandy’s, extortioners
And night wanderers, the feeble, the ghastly, upon whom death
Had placed a very sure hand,
Some in shreds and patches,
Reeling inarticulate full of noisy and inordinate vivacity
That jars discordantly upon the ear
And gives an aching sensation to both pair of eyeballs
(Noisy and inordinate vivacity)

Ohhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhh etc etc

In the beginning was a fear of the immigrant
In the beginning was a fear of the immigrant
He’s made his way down to the dark riverside

In the beginning was a fear of the immigrant
In the beginning was a fear of the immigrant
He’s made his home there down by the dark riverside

Ohhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhh etc etc

He made his home there down by the riverside
They made their homes there down by the riverside
The city sprang up from the dark river Thames

They made their home there down by the riverside
They made their homes there down by the riverside
The city sprang up from the dark mud of the Thames
I’ll say it again

(Ha ha ha, that’s right)

‘Cos in the Liberty of Norton Folgate
Walking wild and free
And in your second hand coat
Happy just to float
In this little taste of liberty
Cos you’re a part of everything you see
Yes, you’re a part of everything you see

With a little bit of this
And a little bit of that
A little bit of what you like does you no harm
And you know that

Ohhhh ahhhhhh ahhhhh etc etc (repeat to end)

Picos Folgate

Driving up from the main Potes road to the village of Bes, from which the rest of the family have launched themselves on a guided walk. (‘It says it’s easy – or does that word just mean ‘lower’, as in, the walk is in the foothills?’). The temperature has climbed into the nineties in old-fashioned money; there are stunted trees I don’t recognise with succulent-looking leaves and more butterflies than I have ever seen, in a huge variety of colours and sizes. A lot higher than we are, the Picos de Europa show touches of snow just below their summits.

I switch on the CD player and the latest Madness fills the silence. They are a London band and The Liberty of Norton Folgate is a love letter to London. Possibly their best ever record – certainly for some time. At home, this album sounds richly allusive, yes - full of dark rainwashed streets and London characters in all their complicated lives and sinfulness - but also an affirmation. It reinforces a sense of the place where you are. However strange, it is about home. Here in the Picos however, it seems wildly exotic. NW5, Holloway and Chinatown seem fictional places; unlikely inventions in this bright, green and mountainous landscape. London in some way becomes like all of its fictional manifestations – an outlandish, rare place that teeters on the edge of impossibility.

On not being Fifty

Last year I had a smashing, amazing birthday party (well I enjoyed it anyway), as it was one of those with a zero at the end. Attendees included Hearns, Millers, Crooks, Harrieses, Deardens, Brown, Herbert, Speedwell, Cousinses, Turtle, Gray, Parrs, Bracegirdles, Chubbs and Proudfoots. And many others.

And I got lots and lots of lovely killer presents, too many to mention, really. Lots of books of course (I'm still reading them) and booktokens, a shiny new camera, and a CD from Mr Miller that I very much appreciated. Ian Dury's New Boots and Panties, including the original demo tape version of many of the tracks. Since it is a fave of mine, that was pretty good. I want to write at more length about the differences between the two versions another time.

But it is now a year later. For Bilbo, 112. A quiet birthday, then. One main present, from the family. But like the Dury last year, a perfect choice.

The Liberty of Norton Folgate - is getting lots of rave reviews. Some saying things like it's Madness's best album so far. It certainly is great fun - a cod Dickensian whirligig theme album based upon a tiny area of Spitalfields. I keep playing it and humming it (not a pretty sound). See http://www.youtube.com/user/MadtubeMTV.