On The Move Again, Again

For the two of you that care, this blog is on the move. It's relocating to Occam's Typewriter, after six years in the wilderness, which I felt was long enough. From henceforth (or hencefifth, if you are reading this on a mobile device) you'll be able to find it here. My thanks to Mr R. P. G. of Gravesend for the technical know-how and the warm welcome.

Bookish Thoughts

Here at the Maison Des Girrafes we only ever had one rule for the kids as they were growing up. Except that it wasn't even a rule. What it was, was this:

No Reasonable Request for Books Will Ever Be Denied

I am happy to report that the Offspring, who have flown the nest, are highly literate individuals currently at college, and are as well-balanced and happy as you'd expect with me as their father. We must have been doing something write right, though, given that a recent study showed that children brought up with more books are generally more literate in later life than those not so fortunate.

Chez Gee is absolutely stuffed with books, as you'd expect, given the interests of the parents. 

Mrs Gee has a degree in what would now be called media studies; is a former journalist, sometime classroom assistant, full-time hoarder and now a student nurse, who's taken up many classes and interests during her three careers, and has left a trail of textbooks, cookbooks, novels, and other stuff in her wake. 

And I'm a writer (a calling that implies a fondness for books), occasional academic, and a longtime editor with a large publishing house, an environment in which to stand still for any length of time means that one runs the risk of being buried in a constantly falling shower of books. Let's see. There are review copies sent to my place of work;  copies of other books that other people have sent me to review; books that people send me because they like me, or because I've sent them some of mine, or both; and books for which whose existence in my extensive library I am at a loss to account, except that I haven't stolen them. 

Our idea of a fun family treat (at least, before the lockdown) was to browse in bookshops, especially secondhand ones -- a love we have passed on to both Offspring, and especially Offspring 2, now studying history. The main suppository repository depository place where books are found Chez Gee is in my Home Orifice, which used to be the kitchen, and which has shelves in every available space.

The Home Orifice, Recently

The Shelves in the Home Orifice are now full, and have spilled out into some shelves in the front hall. And the kitchen. And the sitting room. The rooms of both Offspring are crammed with books. The only rooms where no books are found are the utility cupboard, the bathroom, and our bedroom -- for fear of attracting dust. Although they do tend to build up in small drifts on the windowsill and nightstand if we aren't careful.

I suspect, however, that our home library is modest by some standards (I have visited houses of academics where books are found in the bathroom, for example). I had the pleasure of knowing a senior scientist at a large botanical garden who had lived most of his life in a house that went with the job. Being a botanist and keen antiquarian he had spent his career collecting books about plants. On his retirement, he and his wife (the kids had long since left home) had to find somewhere else to live. They were looking, so he told me, for a house with seven bedrooms. One for them; a spare room -- and FIVE for the books. FIVE.

Still Locked Down and Blue

You'll both no doubt recall that I have started to record some music at home, as a displacement activity while I cannot play with my regular beat combo for reasons that will hardly need to be explained. You can listen to it here, in this free-to-air link on SoundCloud, a social media app for sharing one's own music. The set is called Locked Down and Blue. Here are some liner notes.

Wish I Could (Coleman/ Gee) started an idea from Dominic Coleman, lead singer with the D. C. Wilson Band, with whom I have been writing songs lately. It turned into a monster. Inside my head it became a stadium rock number that might, in an alternate universe, have been performed by Supertramp, latter-day Fleetwood Mac or even Steely Dan. Outside my head ... well, you can judge for yourself.

Strangelove (Coleman/ Gee) was the title of a song written by Dominic, which I'm ashamed to say I discarded entirely but kept the title. It's my first attempt at hip hop, and probably my last, given that I am about as urban as a combine harvester. Writing the song, however, gave ms a new appreciation of the genre, which combines clever external and internal rhyme with witty use of rhythm, stress and alliteration. As a wrangler of words myself, I admire and wonder at people who can do this on the spot. Apart from that, I am rather proud of my funk guitar riff.

Rent Party Blues (Coleman /Gee) is an early collaboration between Dominic and myself. I had intended it to be more of a jump-jive than it is, but I could never get it to work. Eventually I simplified it as if Dr Feelgood were playing it. With Chas'n'Dave.

What BB Did Next (Traditional, arr. Gee) is a new spin on Black Betty, a traditional song whose origins are lost in the mists of time. The identity of the eponymous Betty is a mystery - some say it was a musket; others, a slave-overseer's whip; yet others, a bottle of whiskey. The earliest known recording dates to 1933. By the time Leadbelly recorded it in 1939, Black Betty had coalesced into the blues cliche of the loose-woman-who-done-me-wrong. Leadbelly's recording is as simple as can be imagined - just a singer accompanied by the tapping of his own foot. I first heard it as a teenager in 1977 when a rock band called Ram Jam added instruments and turned it into a hit, a formula since copied by many others, from Pat Travers and Spiderbait to Tom Jones and Norfolk's own Ollie Brown. Although I have always liked the song I found some the lyrical content, frankly, rather noisome.... so I have updated it for the BLM generation. I've also stripped away the rock excrescences to just me and a djembe drum.

 

Girl On The Train - the first ever song I've composed and performed mainly on guitar.  The subject is very personal. I've written on a similar theme before.

No More Cane (Traditional, arr. Gee) is more vintage Americana, this time discovered decades ago in my parents' record collection. It seems that they'd had a brush with the US Folk Revival in the early 1960s. Their records included discs from Pete Seeger and the Kingston Trio, but the ones that stayed longest in my mind were two albums from the Limeliters. This comes from one of them, 14 14K Folksongs, originally recorded in 1963. The arrangement, however, is mine, and is similar to the way I played it in a band called Hippies With Mortgages, in the early 1990s. WARNING: contains accordion.

My Big Boots (Gee) is a song that popped into my head while walking the dogs. I was wearing my big Timberland boots that I've had for 25 years; have trod five continents; and are only now falling to pieces. 

Where Shall I Be? (Traditional, arr. Gee) is another cover of a traditional song, again done by the Limeliters, this time from their gospel album from 1963, Making A Joyful Noise. It was a closing-time crowd-pleaser with Hippies With Mortgages in the late 1990s. When I announced that the next song would be 'Where Shall I Be, when that Great Trumpet Sounds?' the guitarist would say 'listening to Kenny Ball and his Jazzmen'. WARNING: contains accordion.

Average Feat (Borley/ Coleman/ Gee/ Sales/ Stevenson/ Thompson) started as a funky blues riff, at a soundcheck with the D. C. Wilson Band. We thought it was what might result from a collaboration between the Average White Band and Little Feat, hence the name.

Down By The River (Coleman/ Gee) is is a gospel-tinged tune - Dominic came up with the words and the chords just wrote themselves. 

Can't Change The Past (Coleman/ Gee) is another collaboration between Dom and myself.

Wet Dog (Borley/ Coleman/ Gee/ Sales/ Stevenson/ Turner-Hook) came from a rough song I came up with at home. I didn't have a name for it, so for the sake of a label I named it after the first thing that came to mind... I must have just come back from the beach with the dog. Dominic took this literally when the band worked it up at a jam session. It was meant to be fairly light but during the recording I seem to have channeled Jim Steinman.

Green To Play The Blues (Borley/ Coleman/ Gee/ Sales/ Stevenson/ Turner-Hook) is another one that came out of a D. C. Wilson Band jam session that happened 'down in the country'. This one started as a riff from guitarist Simon Sales, but I developed it to include an hommage to the late Peter Green, with whom I'd had the immense privilege of joining at a jam session -- twice. The first version of the song featured faux GarageBand guitar played from a keyboard, and I wasn't really very happy with it. However, I updated it with real guitar after having bought an Epiphone Les Paul I-P90 during the recording of this set. I think it sounds a lot better now.

The Gambler (Traditional, arr. Gee) is yet another cover of a traditional song, again done by the Limeliters, also from 14 14K Folksongs. The roots of this song are once again lost in the proverbial mists of time, but it surfaces occasionally with titles such as 'Gambler's Blues' or 'St James Infirmary', so I felt I could give it a new title - especially as I have reworked it extensively. Perhaps the best-known version is 'St James Infirmary Blues' by Cab Calloway (listen here, and watch this bizarre Betty-Boop-Snow-White visuals). And here is Arlo Guthrie, performing another version.

Lockdown Blues (Gee) was something I came up with while walking the dogs. I expect many other people have written similar songs. Here I wanted to recreate the atmosphere of a jam session. The only GarageBand sound here is the stand-up bass. Everything else is 'real' - piano, electric guitar, two acoustic guitars, djembe drum and accordion. I did it in free time, which shows, rather. It's much faster at the end than at the beginning.

A Change AMJ (Cooke/ Holler) is a medley of two favourites, the first by Sam Cooke, the second made famous by Marvin Gaye.

-=0=-

Technical Notes for People Who Like That Sort Of Thing: My recording platform of choice is GarageBand 11, which I have used on a previous project. I trigger the GarageBand sounds with a Keystation Mk3 49 USB keyboard from M-Audio. For anyone who asks, I do not intend to upgrade to Logic or any other platform, for fear of being lost in minutiae and distracted from the business of making music. Yes, it has its limitations, but I enjoy working with (and around) them. 

Nearly all the organ, clavinet and electric piano sounds are from a Crumar Mojo 61 drawbar keyboard, and most of the acoustic piano sounds come from a Yamaha Clavinova CLP20. 

Some of the accordion is from a tiny 12-bass Bell model reputedly once owned by John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin. The rest is from a great big Galotta 120-bass model I got for my 18th birthday and which still offers hours of innocent pleasure forty years later, for me, if not my neighbours. 

Some of what sounds like guitar is faked through GarageBand.This includes everything that's meant to sound like lead guitar. My capability in guitar is strictly rhythm. What passes for real electric guitar comes from an Epiphone Les Paul I-P90. There is also some real acoustic guitar (a budget 6-string with the top string removed, as I kept bumping into it) and real acoustic slide guitar (a different budget 6-string acoustic). There's also a metal djembe drum, which supplies all the rhythm in Lockdown Blues and is the only instrument on What BB Did Next.

Vocals (as well as accordion, acoustic guitar and djembe) are recorded through a no-name microphone, and all external sounds go into a Behringer Xenyx 802 mixer, which feeds the sound into a 2009 model 24-inch iMac running OSX Lion. (Don't knock it - it's much stabler than my other iMac, which has OSX Catalina, and also has a handy CD slot, so I can burn CDs). Monitoring is through a Behringer Xenyx 302 mixer, Bose bookshelf speakers and Beyerdynamic DT 150 headphones. So now you know.

What I Did In My Summer Holidays

The Gee Family had planned to spend the past week in Wales, but we postponed our trip until next year after a well-placed tzores sauce source told us that there'd be sheep at the border with guns. Instead we vacationed at home. Not that there was much vacationing going on as three of the four human elements of the Gee Family, none of them me, are students involved in various sorts of advanced study. What with the first draft of my book at the publisher, that left me spinning my wheels.

I had therefore promised the world that I'd be spending the week just elapsed making music, jam, and a nuisance of myself.

First, the Music. My beat combo having been temporarily derailed because, you know, the THING, I have set up a small recording studio at home, and have been busily recording things. I have so far recorded five six things, and you can listen to them on this Soundcloud Playlist, Locked Down & Blue. I'll be adding to this list as and when I record more material, so do check back. Some of the things are covers of old blues, folk and Americana: others are originals, either written myself or along with members of the aforesaid Beat Combo, in particular the Main Man, D. C. Wilson.

Second, the Jam. The Lockdown has turned me into quite the countryman. Mrs Gee and I have been growing our own crops, or as much as we can in our small garden. We have our hens for eggs, of course, and I have been baking the family's bread for some months now. It was only natural for me to get out the jam kettle and start preserving things. Now, I usually do a little of this each year, but this time I've been doing it like I really mean it. Here is a portrait of my efforts over the past week.

Jam Today

We have been growing lots of marrows (trans: oversized zucchini), and what with our apple tree, reliably cropping large numbers of cooking apples, each one as large as a baby's head and raining down on the garden at this time of year such that it's advisable to go outdoors with a hard hat, I made marrow and apple chutney. For the recipe I went to the tzores source sauce of All Knowledge and Wisdom, in short, my Mum. Here is her recipe:

MARROW AND APPLE CHUTNEY 

4lbs marrow, peeled and chopped; 
2lbs cooking apples, peeled, cored and finely chopped;
1lb onions, chopped; 1lb soft brown sugar; 
2 pints vinegar ; 
1 teasp. ground ginger;
1/2 oz pickling spice;
3 oz salt 

METHOD: put the marrow pieces into a large bowl in layers with the salt and leave for 12 hours or overnight. Next day, rinse the marrow pieces and drain well. Put into a preserving pan. ADD the apples, onions, sugar and spices. Cook gently UNCOVERED for about 2 hours, stirring from time to time, until the chutney is thick with no excess liquid. Pour into warm sterilised jars and cover with vinegar proof tops.

My Mum said that these days she tends to 'free wheel' with the spices, so, as I couldn't find the pickling spice that Mrs Gee swears she'd ordered from InSainsbury's, I ground up some mustard seeds, star anise, Chinese five-spice, coriander and cinnamon with a handy and mortar and pestle.  It tastes great.

A taste of childhood was my Mum's Marrow and Ginger Jam. Nothing like those golden gingery cubes of marrow on a piece of thick white bread and butter of an autumn evening. Here's her recipe for that, too:

MARROW AND GINGER JAM

2lbs marrow PREPARED WEIGHT (that is after peeling and deseeding); 
2lbs white sugar; Rind and juice of 1 and a half lemons; 
3 oz fresh ginger, grated; 

METHOD: cut the prepared marrow into smallish cubes and STEAM them until they are just tender. Put into a bowl and add the grated lemon zest, lemon juice and the ginger. Add the sugar, mix well. COVER and leave to stand for 24 hours. Put in a preserving pan, heat gently, stirring until the sugar has dissolved and cook uncovered until the marrow is transparent and syrup is thick (about 15 mins) Test for setting point and pot up in sterilised jars.

It will have escaped the notice of neither of you that the hedgerows are currently groaning with free food. Offspring#1 and I have been out collecting blackberries and with the haul I made blackberry and apple jam, using our own apples. I think I got this recipe from the intertubes:

BLACKBERRY AND APPLE JAM

1kg blackberries;
4 large apples (peeled, cored and chopped);
Juice of 3 lemons;
1 kg white sugar;

METHOD: Put apples, blackberries and lemon juice into the pan and set on a low heat, stirring occasionally. After 15 mins stir in the sugar and boil for 10-15 mins until set. Leave for 10 mins in the pan and then spoon into sterilised jars.

While Offspring#1 and I were foraging for blackberries, we found several bushes laden with sloes damsons bullaces very tiny plums, and picked 1200g in short order. There is some debate about the identity of the fruit, but a quick google revealed that they are all much the same things (that is, plums) and often interbreed. Anyway, I made these into jam as well, and here is the recipe, adapted from BBC Good Food. Not surprisingly, it tastes like plum jam:

FURIOUS DAMSON JAM

A quantity of damsons/ sloes/ bullaces/ plums;
The same weight in sugar;
Water (100ml per 600g of fruit).
Knob of butter.

METHOD: Splosh the fruit and water into the pan and bring to the boil. Lower the heat and simmer until the fruit is soft. Stir in the sugar, ensuring that it is completely dissolved.  Raise once again to a rolling boil. Keep on the boil for 10 mins. Do not stir. When the jam is ready, stir vigorously. Remove from the heat. Skim off any scum, stir in a knob of butter, leave for 15 mins to settle and spoon into jars.

Third, the Nuisance. The dogs need a lot of walking, and what with our shopping largely limited to home deliveries, with few top-up shops or cheeky snacks or visits to cafes, I have been saving money and losing weight. The Offspring are also bringing me up to speed with elements of popular culture. Offspring#2 has reminded me of Torchwood -- a Televisual Emission from the BBC that's a kind of grown-up spin-off from Dr Who. Meanwhile, Offspring#1 has got me as far as the end of Series 3 of an anime called JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, which is precisely as billed - bizarre, and adventurous. Kids, eh? Without them I'd have remained in ignorance of manifestations including but not limited to Hamilton (the musical); Frozen (the magic-lantern-production) and Lady Gaga (the popular music artiste). My life has thus been enriched.

The Pandemic notwithstanding inasmuch as which, the Offspring will shortly be returning to their Institutions of Higher Learning. We'll miss them.

We Don’t Need No Edyucayshun

My two penn’orth on the exam-results debacle - What needs to happen is a complete rethink in how pupils are assessed, and before that, a thorough overhaul of education. It’s far too academic, too early. On the whole, education is wasted on the young. They should be taught the basics of English language and elementary arithmetic, basic civics and car and home maintenance, but otherwise encouraged to follow their own stars.

At the same time, there needs to be more provision for continuing education. I did A-level English at 33, and I’m sure I got a more lasting appreciation of literature than had I done it at 17.

Youngsters need to be literate, but not to be force-fed Shakespeare, unless they want to study literature- which they will do if given an opportunity by an alert teacher.

They need to be able to count their change and fill in a tax return, not solve quadratic equations, unless they want to be a mathematician - something that an alert teacher will spot and encourage.

All the science a child needs can be found by futzing  around at home, in the insides of cars, or roaming the woods and fields - a tendency that a sympathetic teacher will spot.

This  won’t happen, of course, because educationalists lack imagination and are cursed with poverty of ambition.

Above all, exams are a lousy way to assess a person’s potential and should be scrapped. Universities and employers should set their own tests to suit their needs - and university degrees should be reorganised on a US-style liberal arts model with a foundation year for all students.

DISCLAIMER - I speak as a former Steiner-school pupil. Waldorf education isn’t perfect, for sure - but I know from experience that it’s far better at producing happy, rounded and able citizens from mixed-ability classes than the current wasteful and misguided system. And yes, I still did GCSE’s and A-levels.

Locked Down and Blue

Lockdown has got to me, people. So much so that I have recorded a slice of vintage Americana. You can listen to it here. The song is 'No More Cane On The Brazos' originally sung by the convicts sentenced to life with hard labour in the sugar-cane fields on the Rio Brazos in the early Twentieth Century. It's been covered widely -- from the Limeliters to Lonnie Donnegan, The Band to Ian Gillan. I did it in a band called Hippies With Mortgages, somewhat later in the Twentieth Century. WARNING - may contain traces of accordion.

I Speak Your Weight

Lockdown Life -- Here at Chez Gee we have tended to view weighing scales in the same way that Queen Elizabeth I viewed mirrors. Despite the reputation that fat people are harder to kidnap, Mrs Gee noted that COVID-19 has a particular fondness for people built in, let us say, a more 'traditional' manner. So we've been on a health kick.

Helped by the fact that we only shop online and put up with what we have, so no cheeky choc bars, bags of M&Ms, take-away meals, cafe breaks with, noblesse oblige, a sausage roll, for all that the sausage roll is a 'diet' sausage roll as some of it ends up in a dog, combined with Mrs Gee's strict portion control, and her strenuous efforts to hide the biscuit tin, as it is a fact universally acknowledged that when I am shut in a room with a packet of biscuits, only one of us comes out alive, and, notwithstanding inasmuch as which the presence of a lively Pupperino means I am taking more exercise, and Mrs Gee is devoted to a YouTube exercise channel for Ladies of a Certain Age -- we have lost weight.

But how much?

Well, the weighing scales arrived yesterday. When I stepped on them I expected them to go AAARGH! and explode, leaving a wisp of purple smoke and a bad smell, or at the very least say NO COACH PARTIES before expiring or announce ONE AT A TIME PLEASE in starchy schoolmarmish tones.

But no! The scales remained whole and entire, and gave a silent, oracular and definitely digital reading, which I couldn't read from 6 feet up. However, the digits persist long enough such that I can read them once alighted, and, noting the numbers, I discovered that my weight is measured in some newfangled units such as steradian parsecs per cubic millisieverts. What the what? A handy google allowed me to convert this, via troy ounce per cubic acre, to something intelligible, which was... wait for it ....

18st 3lbs. 

Now, this means little as I don't know how much I weighed before, but the last time I weighed myself I was 19st and upwards, whence the Elizabeth I attitude to scales. I'm still of a form such that were I to indulge in sea bathing, someone would call the Sea Mammal Research Unit.

However, I have had to make new holes in the short end of my belt, and people have remarked on my relatively svelte appearance in my Facebook profile pic. Mrs Gee, too, has started to assume a sleeker profile. Don't worry, folks, we don't look like the young gods we did when we met ... YET.

*** UPDATE, 1 September 2020 *** 

Yesterday I weighed myself and was

17st 7lbs

So the diet is working.

*** UPDATE, 13 October 2020 ***

 17st 3lbs

So that's a stone lost in two months. Not bad, but still no danger of my slipping between the cracks in the pavement.