A Conglomerate of Rants

Happy Birthday to Rants. Happy Birthday to Rants. Happy Birthday to Rants....of a Bitter Northerner. Happy Birthday to Rants.

Can you believe that three years ago on a couch in Kentish Town, the first Rant was born. And three years later, not far from the couch - I'm sat at the table which backs onto the couch - it's time for the173rd Rant of this still bitter Northerner.

I've been storing up a few treats for you and so it will be a completely random composition of anything that decides to fall out of my head, or tumble off the pages of my trusty notebook. Prepare yourselves.......

Interval training is a bitch! 
With my first charity run looming, it was time to step up the training regime - good word that, regime - and try my legs at some intervals. So it was a case of running 2km to the track and then sprinting - I use the word loosely - 100metres, followed by a minute rest, and repeating this 8 times. Then running 2km home.

Lucky me, when I got there, there was a group of high schoolers using the grass in the middle of the track for some sort of team game, though I couldn't figure out what it was. I guess it was their PE lesson. So great, I would have a teenage audience for my 'sprinting'. A dream come true. So I start off well, but of course after the third 'sprint' the old thighs are beginning to groan and the minute rests become a little longer, the breathing louder and laboured.
As I start my fourth, I hear some of the lads saying, 'Go on girl.' I think, I'm technically old enough to be your mother, so shut it. And by number 6, it's more of a fast jog. By the final sprint, I think I'm just about jogging, but I still did it and I did it with those pointy hands and swooshing arms, like they do it on the Tele, so presumably I still looked good, right?

No, no. I was out of breath with exploding cheeks and very tired legs, and I was ready to leave at the same time the school group was. Disaster! So I dawdled whilst they got on their bus and then jogged pretty slowly all the way back with thighs screaming the whole way.

The pain lasted the next two days though I think it was topped up on Wednesday from my day of 6 music classes and hours of carting around heavy bags full of instruments. My arms and everything were in pain and I think I even worked my abs. So maybe this will become a weekly thing and then I can ache every week. Whoop! Something to look forward to.

You're not in my class. 
So there's a particular kid who I see every week but she's not in the music class. She refuses to go outside and her teachers never make her, so instead she stands right on the edge of the carpet - where I teach the lessons - and watches. Creepy!

This week, she stood there shouting how she didn't like the music. 'I don't like this song.'
I said, 'Well it's not for you, so it doesn't matter.'
May seem a tad harsh but I've been teaching there 9 weeks, she knows the drill.
A little later she says it again, as another child comes into the room. 'I don't like this music. It's not nice this song.'
It is of course a wonderful song and story and the rest of the children were thoroughly enjoying it. I ignored her this time until I noticed her dancing along to it. Ha. So you don't like it? Stop dancing then, I dare you.
Then again, she shouted at me that she didn't like the music. I said, 'Well you were dancing to it a minute ago.' And what I didn't say, because I'm well versed in containing what I want to say when around children, was: 'Next time go outside like everyone else does and stop watching us you creepy three year old. You are not in the music class, yet every week you try to get a freebie. I don't offer freebies. You pay for the class or kindly toddle off and I don't really care whether you like the music or not, it is not for you!

The benefits of a poky London flat.
You probably don't realise how beneficial it is to have a tiny London flat, with no stairs and a minuscule floor plan, but if you watch a lot of 90's slashers/horrors, like I have been recently, then you will know beyond a doubt that you are one step ahead of that psycho killer.

Okay, so you've no garden. No acres of outdoor hiding spaces. Good. You've probably got an open plan living room/kitchen, eliminating doors and rooms. And you don't have any stairs. Good. These will all come in handy.

So when the psycho killer on the phone asks you: "Which door am I at?"
You're pretty much limited. Er, the front door, because the living room and bedroom doors are propped open; I can see through the glass on the balcony door and if you've climbed up five storeys to get here, well done to you. And finally there's the bathroom door, but that would imply you were on the toilet when you answered, or that he had let himself (or herself) in and shut themselves in your windowless bathroom. A bit pointless really. So yeah I would say, front door.

When the psycho killer says: "What's your name? I want to know who I'm looking at."
Don't panic, if your flat is anything like mine, then there are floor to ceiling windows in the bedroom and living room. People can see us and we can see them. A lot of people don't even have curtains nowadays. So there's no reason to freak out and start screaming. Just wave to your neighbours.

When the heroine of your slasher film says that people are, 'always going up the stairs when they should be going out the front door,' you can feel smug.
If you live in a flat you are less likely to have a set of stairs, meaning you would of course go out of the front door, or just stay inside. If your flat is open plan you'd see said slasher a mile off, and could just get out. Lack of rooms, doors, floor space and garden mean less places for them to hide.
(Scary Movie flashback: 'Where am I?' 'You're behind the couch.')

So by living in a tiny apartment you are already outwitting the slasher in a 90's horror, eliminating his choices and also your own. Making decisions in stressful situations is not conducive to good decision making, so therefore if you have less choices, you are less likely to do something stupid.

I would say the only downfall of a flat is that if your psycho does get in, then you are unlikely to get out, but the odds of them bothering with a block of flats with hundreds of residents is unlikely. Come on, you know the drill: big houses in the middle of nowhere, with basements and attics and twenty five rooms, and a pool and a corn field out the back. Cityscapes, not so much.

I have been enjoying the splattering of 90's movies making their way onto netflix recently. Brings back a few memories. And wow, some interesting fashion choices too. .......

Editing
I have recently hit on an analogy for the editing process. It is akin to sieving. But each time you edit you need to use a sieve with smaller holes, to syphon off even the smallest crap.

The only thing I'm not sure of, is when you stop sieving. I'll get back to you on that.

Katie Bush Box
My parents came to visit last weekend and I asked them to bring my Kate Bush Boxes. What are these? I hear you ask. Well, they are full to the brim with articles, magazines, books, VHS and lots of rare Kate Bush items that I collected during the Uni years. My dissertation was on the way she infused narrative throughout the Hounds of Love album. Having it all at the flat now is awesome. I have some incredible stuff and most of it is really rare and probably, mostly forgotten.

I also found an essay I did for my A-level Music, based on the way narrative is infused within The Creation by Haydn. Hmmm, I'm sensing a theme. Narrative and Music. How weird that I didn't realise that until now. Narrative, storytelling, it's always been there even when I thought I'd put it on the back burner to study music. But it's always been one huge story for me. Writing songs and lyrics, was giving a song a plot. There was always a beginning, a middle and an end for me, that was just how I wrote. Perhaps that was why they didn't particularly like my songs? Maybe there were too straight forward, too linear, too fairy-tale? Or of course, they could have just been crap.

I just thought it was quite interesting to realise how storytelling and narrative never left me, and I used music as a way to explore story, plot, characters and how you could exploit these in music, enhancing them with vocals, lyrics, a guitar lick, a drum beat, a piano phrase. I presume it was some sort of weird destiny that in the end I would go back to writing books, leaving the lyrics behind as my singing voice retreated back inside me and the words flowed out of my fingers instead of my mouth.

Reading
Man I am reading some incredible stuff at the moment, courtesy of Kentish Town Library, Easter presents from A and The Owl Bookshop Sale. The piles of books to be read is growing faster than I can read them, though it doesn't help when I go to the library to return a book and then come back with three more. Oops.

This year I decided to keep a log of all the books I read, in months, and these will be going on my website. I also have a book where I log and briefly review the books from the library. I have definitely had an explosion of all things literary, which I'd like to say is helping my writing, but most of the time I just want to sit in the chair and read, I don't want to be sieving.

Here are a few quotes from books I have read recently. I'm not one to quote from books but I always envy those who can. So I also keep a book entitled: Interesting Words and Quotes, because let's face it, I can't remember stuff like I used to. So instead, it is all written down, some of it on brightly coloured post it notes, shoved in there for further remembrance down the road.

"Sanity is a valuable possession; I hoard it the way people once hoarded money. I save it, so I will have enough when the time comes." Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale.

If only sanity was tangible, I would store it up in an envelope and hide it in a drawer. I have a feeling I'll need some soon.
I just had to mention this book. It is incredible! A dystopian future that feels far too realistic, it actually scares the bejeezers out of you. Women are simply wombs, empty spaces to fill with life, and this is just for the dwindling few that aren't known to be barren. Women are forbidden to read and write. (Erm... Hell!) Any money and property is seized from them, and they are palmed off on men whose wives cannot reproduce, essentially becoming open houses, prime real estate for men to fill.

Yes it is harrowing and as a woman it especially makes you angry, to even think that something like this could happen, and we could be bargained off as nothing more than an oven to cook up the next generation. But it's not all doom and gloom and anger and hatred, there are moments, beautiful moments and fragments of light and laughter, pinches of humour and flashbacks that will make you smile. This is survival and it ain't pretty but it certainly captivates and burrows in deep. Everyone should read this book and then kill anyone who ever suggests anything like it in real life!

"That is what you have to do before you kill, I thought. You have to create an it, where none was before. You do that first, in your head, and then you make it real." Margaret Atwood. The Handmaid's Tale.

Oh and just one more quote from the fabulous: The Humans by Matt Haig:

"Maybe you are a road, not a destination. That is fine. Be a road. But make sure it's one with something to look at out of the window."
 

That's not all.....
Finally, I would like to thank you, the readers of Rants. Without you I would be ranting to myself and losing my marbles at a much faster rate. Thank you for your comments and encouragements, it's nice to know I make you laugh sometimes. 

Maybe I'll toast myself later, with a Birthday drink and a cake of some kind. And please feel free to toast yourselves on my behalf, as long as you find something to rant about afterwards.

Here's to the next three years!

Rants