Rocking the night away

I have been absent again, mainly because I spent the weekend in Rye at the Rockabilly Rave weekender. Lots of jiving, strolling and lame attempts at bopping, plus drinking, dressing up and not sleeping. I have lots of pictures of hotrods (and hot girls and guys) which I will upload asap. It was so great meeting like-minded people and making new friends.

Luckily haven't got too much time for the usual post-festival blues as am going to Glastonbury this weekend. It's going to be something of a sartorial downshift (wellies and plastic ponchos rather than red lipstick and circle skirts) but I'm hoping, travel nightmares and mud nonetheless, that it will be as good as last time. I'm not even going to look at the line-up for Reading, especially as I've sworn off it after feeling like Auntie Emo the last time I went. It was like something out of Lord of the Flies and I found myself wishing 'the kids' would 'keep it down'.

I am currently reading Among the Bohemians by Virginia Nicholson, about a small number of creative types in the early 20th century who turned their backs on strangulating Victorian moral codes and rules of behaviour to pursue freedom and, most of all, creativity, often deliberately abandoning bourgeois ideals to embrace poverty and hardship – and scandal.
In some ways they were proto hippies, ‘dropping out’ of society’s strictures to revel in sexual emancipation and a rejection of the mainstream’s expectations of conformity, work and consumerism (although I note that things were, in both cases, a little less free for women, who still had to bring up the children resulting from all this free love, and also to spend more time being ‘muses’ than actual artists).
They were certainly the rebels of their day, and, at risk of sounding like Carrie Bradshaw, it made me wonder: what would constitute rebellion today?
Our Western society is a descendant of all that Bohemian experimenting, and perhaps we have more freedoms and opportunities than ever before. But it still seems to me there is an ‘accepted’ path, and the true rebels of today would have to reject the 9-5, Eliot’s famous crowd flowing over London Bridge, individually isolated yet stoically en masse; being tied into endless commuterism and consumerism, the endless pursuit of money and promotion, cars and gadgets and houses. Perhaps returning to ‘the land’ if there is any left without tarmac or a Barratt home on it.
I don’t know whether I could be such a rebel. I have been addicted to the traditional acknowledgements of what it is to be ‘successful’ ever since I first realised what an ‘A’ was at school. I am prepared to travel four hours a day just to get to and from work. I can’t help but feel that to ‘drop out’ now and sit around writing unpublishable novels and living off the land in some remote village would be something of a failure, not only in my eyes but others'.
But I feel an intensifying unease at the march of consumerism, the juggernaut of cheap clothes and plastic packaging, by the constant cycle of earning and spending. It would be exhilarating, if terrifying, to abandon all that.

Some images from Brighton's encampment of Knit in Public day - it was nice to meet some new SnBers and to sit around on the beach with my knitting, but the wind was just this side of freezing and I didn't stay long. I didn't really get up to much the rest of the weekend, having even less money than usual, although my friend and I spent a happy hour or so wandering the streets of Hove and ogling the nicest houses. It must mean you're getting on a bit when you start fantasising over pink spatulas and wooden writing desks rather than hot boys.

Smut

My friend recently gave me some tunes for my iPod (the equivalent of the mix tape, anyone else old enough to remember those?). Hence I have discovered a new(ish) band who are excellent to knit to - She Wants Revenge - especially this. The perfect combination of relentless '80s beats, synthesisers and a monotone vocalist similar to a sex-pest Tom Smith from Editors (all ideal for a smooth moss stitch). The lyrics also have enough dark smuttiness to captivate the mind during the often tedious back-and-forth along the needles, and also to add a wry smile to the lips of any knitter who is aware that otherwise she appears rather demure. I particularly like "You taste like tearstains and 'Could've beens'/But our love, like a train wreck/Your hair balled up inside my fist/You tell me, 'Don’t get too attached like this, it’s just entertainment'...". Shiver...

Brighton days...

Lily

How damn cool does Lily look? I love the bleeding Bambi dress too.

Shambles

It's been a whole week since I last posted, and I have no excuse apart from general busy-ness. At the moment, I feel a little like Bridget Jones, listing her achievements and failures every morning. My bedroom seems to signify the 'things to do' list in my head: the stack of books to review, the notebook half-full of ideas for the as-yet-unwritten novel of the zeitgeist, the heap of charity shop clothes 'to adjust', the patchwork blanket looking at me reproachfully, even the secret double-figures of the list emerge as the stash of prospectuses for the Masters in English Lit I will probably never do. And that's not to mention the general crop rotation of physical maintenance: having time to eat something other than sandwiches and go to the gym, ironing clothes, even my hair is a work in progress.

Still, some good things have happened: my Glastonbury tickets came this morning (even if I look like a drug dealer on the photo), as did my new very kitsch necklace from here and also I found half a packet of chocolate buttons in my bag. As Bridget would say, v gd.