This is England

I watched the aforementioned film last night. As anyone who knows me, knows, any film that doesn't have a montaged dance-training scene doesn't usually come onto my radar, but I had read good reviews and thought I should educate myself.

I found it really disturbing, not so much because of the violence, although it was brutal and often unexpected, but because of its vision of an England that exist(ed) on the periphery of 'normal' society. The skinheads are disenfranchised, anarchic, chaotic, but also seductively stylish and loyal (up to a point). I was a child during the Thatcher era, and so have never really understood the extreme emotions, the hatred and rage, that her actions stirred up. My knowledge of the Eighties is more of a second-hand, nostalgic one, similar to the (ironic) use of 'Tainted Love' blaring out of a radio at one point- New Romantics, kids dressing up like Boy George, a mum with enormous glasses and perm like my mum had when I was a child.

It was also touching and spikily humorous and affectionate, and left me thinking about the nature of masculinity and sexuality and identity and integrity, and of art's capacity to be politically more effective than any number of dry treatises or speeches.

Meep

Ok, this is not a proper post, but this blog is possibly the cutest thing I have ever seen...

Rainy days

What is this appalling weather all about? Saying that, I am tucked up inside, intermittently lurking on Craftster and knitting yet another scarf. I made a mistake about five inches in, but have kept going in a stoic, I-don't-care sort of way, even though it is as niggly and annoying as the pub sign outside my flat which promises 'complimentary champagne'. I have an urge to perform some kind of nerdy stealth graffiti on it.
Have been at my mum's for most of the weekend. She lives in the middle of nowhere, and so I have spent a very pleasant, calming time doing country-ish things like gathering apples from the garden, star-gazing with binoculars and painting the stairs a very Cotswoldy shade of pale. There's something about taking time off work that seems to make it acceptable to eat cake after every meal and to regard stroking the cat as half an hour's worth of constructive activity. It would probably drive me mad in the end, but I find the idea of living in the depths of the country very inspiring creatively. Perhaps because London at the moment feels all wet concrete and people in identical black coats and the monotony of Tube adverts, but everything in the country feels more tactile and real: onions in a brown bowl, the pink dawn filling a curtainless window, nights so black and silent.

Michele Roberts

This is the book I am reading at the moment. I'm down to the last 20 or so pages actually, and trying to eke it out. Roberts has probably handbagged Margaret Atwood down to second place in my favourite authors ever list. I just love the way she writes, particularly her descriptive passages: "The trees are turning bronze and rusty at their tips and the sun hangs low and heavy like a yellow plum". Very apposite for the time of year, as autumn clings on with its fingertips before the big, scary, middle-of-the-night blackness clamps down around 5 o'clock.

I am, admittedly, an ardent Virago-type reader (although have been trying to educate myself in manly, recent writing with some Philip Roth). But there is something so earnest and truthful about the way Roberts writes, that the strident '80s feminism doesn't feel too anachronistic, although it does bring you up short to realise that the struggles she saw were going on even 20 years ago.

On that note I am going to some sort of anarchic cross-stitch event this evening. Someone at work rather sweetly said 'Even nice girls are radical sometimes', which I think would be an excellent T-shirt slogan. And there are going to be cup cakes (thought: who has decided cup cakes are cool and trendy, is it some kind of ironic 50s revivalism? What next - macaroons?)

I went to see the Francis Bacon exhibition at Tate Britain yesterday. It was quite strange afterwards strolling around the Pre-Raphaelites and their crowd-pleasing, glamorous paintings - after seeing Bacon's images of pain and torment and despair, human bodies reduced to ripped meat. It came to mind: where can art go, after this? It made me think of Adorno professing that there could be no poetry after Auschwitz. It was also a savage depiction of masculinity, particularly the screaming men in suits. And all the bestial twisted teeth and jaws, the rawness of human emotion - a contrast to the day-trippers with their handbags and headphones, wandering around. I thought, what would reduce you, with your iPod and trendy jeans, to a figure from one of these paintings?

Literally one whole person requested to read my Rockabilly Rave feature (thanks Mike!) so if you want to actually have a copy in your hand, and see me in all my pink-haired glory, head to Borders . . . and y'know it would be nice not to just read it on the stand as I -er- never do, of course, as the Nude people produce the magazine without making any profit, and it is such a beautifully produced work of (he)art.

And another thing, what is with all the anti-Madonna rage? Alongside all the gleeful schadenfreude about the Ritchies' divorce, and I doubt she needs my feeble support, the press was vitriolically anti-Madonna. Guy Richie received some flack about his Mockney-twattishness, but most of the commentary was on how her success was too much for him to deal with, with some wags wondering which was "the husband". How is it in this day and age that a woman still can't be more successful than her partner without being called a "ball-breaker" etc etc rant . . .

Exciting

Exciting news. My Rockabilly Rave feature has finally come out, although I haven't laid eyes on a copy of Nude yet. Plus my favourite magazine in the world has at last got back to me about a feature idea, but I daren't mention it in case of jinxing possibilities. I also have an interview here - check out that massive coverline!

And at last I have moved into my new place. It's not perfect-the floor in my room slopes uncannily and the landlords didn't exactly clean it before we moved in-but at last I have somewhere to put my books on a shelf and 'stuff' somewhere that isn't boxes. I also have a desk, which may not sound that monumental, but after several years of balancing laptops on knees, possibly frying any future Allens, or using my sewing machine in the living room, and annoying anyone watching TV, it feels very satisfying.

Kinky boots

So I have some new boots. The lady at the vintage fair swore they were Edwardian, and although they are in suspiciously good nick I am determined to believe her. They remind me of my days of (re)reading Little Women and Anne of Green Gables, and I quite fancy wearing stays and a picture hat with them. I can pretend I live in more innocent times when putting your skirts 'down' and your hair 'up' were the signifiers of moving from childhood to womanhood (and hence, presumably) on the marriage market, and when all Anne wanted was a pair of leg o'mutton sleeves (you can imagine the confusion that cast in my nine-year-old mind). I also bought a royal blue frock, although I am a little concerned that it looks a bit - medical.

Enough about my shopping, these were spontaneous and very naughty purchases in the week I am supposed to be paying extortionate amounts of rent and deposit (denial is a wonderful thing). It was supposed to cheer me up in a weekend of being constantly damp and blown about. Perhaps I am shallow, but it does a bit.