Joys – Page 16 – syntaxfree

Bigging Up The Borribles

While randomly surfing Facebook groups after first joining, I found and immediately joined “The Borribles would kick Harry Potter’s bourgeois arse“, a view which I heartily subscribe to and have hinted at here before too.

From that group I discovered the author’s official site and this article by Peter Lyle for TANK magazine which captures much of what I really love about these books, as well as my usual experiences in trying to tell people about them.

“They’re called the Borribles.”

(Blank look)

“It’s this children’s book from the ’70s.”

(Blank look)

“They’re these oiky kids with pointy ears who live in all the shitty bits of London and fight the grown-ups and the Wombles and…”

“Do you mean the Borrowers?”

Except that for me, no one brings up the Borrowers either. (Which is fair enough really, they were pretty lame.)

Anyway, I just wanted to encourage anyone who’s done with the latest Harry Potter and feels a sense of loss or whatever to give the Borribles a try. They are some of the most memorable and gripping children’s books I have ever read, and I really don’t understand why no one seems to know about them.

Reading the books again as a grown-up living in London gave me new insights into what made them so great (Lyle likens the presence of London in the books to its presence in the writing of Dickens, and to the Dublin of Joyce’s Ulysses) and the rest of the article continues to open my eyes to things I hadn’t thought about before: that the areas in which London’s Borribles choose to make their home – Battersea, Tooting, Wandsworth, Stepney, Whitechapel, Neasden and Hoxton – are today an “index of then down-and-out, since gentrified, bits of the city,” and that “in an era when children’s books about chosen ones, picturesque and ethnically-cleansed boarding schools, timeless English architecture and the universal use of received pronunciation dominate the entire fiction market, The Borribles is a celebration of everything that doesn’t fit with that vision.”

You can read the first chapter of each Borrible book at the site, though if you’ve never read any of them then I recommend (in case of spoilers) that you only read from the first book.

Random Joo Chiat

I’m a bit weddinged and kittened out. Here are some photos of Joo Chiat instead.

Can you believe this is just sitting in a Joo Chiat driveway? I did a double take as we walked past and Googled my hunch once I got home – yup, I’m pretty certain it’s a Ng Eng Teng work.

Another view

Peeling pillar on the five foot way

Not the best photo – I was too busy drooling in anticipation of this place’s divine otah. You can get better in restaurants, but as far as cheap street-side otah is concerned I haven’t tasted better. The site says it’s open from 7 am to 7 pm, but they’ve definitely also sold us otah before at about 3 am, which is of course when it tastes the best.

If You’re Smitten, Adopt A Kitten!

Seriously, people, we need to find them homes. I’m gonna pimp them a bit more right now, and if you think you know anyone who might be interested in gaining karma, increasing the cuteness levels of their daily existence and falling deeply in love, please direct them to this post!

You might have noticed from the pictures in the previous kitten post that two of them are pirate kitties. So after naming them Jack Sparrow and Davy Jones, my mother and sister went on to name the remaining two Smee and Blackbeard, but after some genital scrutiny it was concluded that Blackbeard ought to be renamed Tigerlily.

This is Smee. I think he’s the second cutest after Tigerlily, but don’t tell the kittens I’ve been ranking them like this in case it’s damaging for their self-esteem.

Davy Jones is perhaps a little less photogenic than his siblings, but he’s just as happy and healthy and I think his centre parting is quite sweet, like an old man with Brylcreamed hair. Or Hitler.

Jack Sparrow is so hyperactive that none of his portraits came out well, so I had to settle for some action shots instead. Here he is trying to climb the cardboard fencing we initially used to keep them enclosed, while Smee snoozes on the left.

And here he is inspecting a flowerpot for clamberability. Tigerlily looks as if she’s playing with a dead palm frond, but she was actually falling asleep in that “head droop… head droop… I’M AWAKE I’M AWAKE! …actually, no I’m not…zzz” way.

Lastly, here they all are with their long-suffering mom. You can even see Smee’s little paw kneading her belly.

If you’re interested, please contact me! “name of this blog” at gmail!

Stray Thoughts

Over time my family has come to be responsible for the care and feeding of about nine stray cats, three of which live in our house and six of which hang out regularly in our driveway. The numbers change over time depending on which cat wanders into the neighbourhood and gives birth (my parents sterilize as many as they can but some slip through the cracks) or which cat meets with tragic death.

Mandy was a orange tortoiseshell kitten who, when carried, would snuggle blissfully in our arms, look up adoringly at us and beg to be carried again once we put her down. We loved her, and were in the process of slowly cleaning her up for life indoors with us. On the same day Alec took me to Sultan Shoal to propose to me, back at home my mother gave Mandy a bath, let her scamper around on our carpet until she dried off, and then put her outside to play. Shortly after, she wandered into our neighbour’s driveway and their dogs mauled her to death.

My family ran over when they heard the commotion but it was too late. My mum tried to carry Mandy out from under their car, where she’d crawled, but Mandy was in terrible pain and bit my mum deeply in the hand. My sister then took over while my mum attended to her gushing thumb and carried our dying kitten back to our driveway. Her body fit perfectly into a small shoebox.

Not wanting to spoil what they already knew would be a joyful weekend for me, my family didn’t tell me what had happened until I returned the next day with a ring on my finger. At mass that evening, I knew I was meant to be happy, thanking the Lord for the wonderful blessing of having Alec in my life, for the rest of my life. But I couldn’t stop thinking of Mandy.

I didn’t write about her here at the time either, because I was trying to focus on being happy about what had just happened in my life, and to share that with all of you. Since then my family’s fallen in love with two black and white tom kittens, adopted into our home in anguish after their brother got killed by a car and we couldn’t bear the thought of them meeting the same fate. So we’ve gotten over Mandy, as well we should, because like it or not, these things happen to strays, and we can’t give all of them homes. But that doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten her. I don’t think I ever will.

I don’t have a picture of her to show you, but I take pictures of the orange tortoiseshell strays I see, because they remind me of her. Here are two of my most recent ones:

On the way to Aljunied MRT

In Old Airport Road hawker centre

I know the hawker centre cat looks a bit sullen here but he was actually very friendly and got lots of pats from people passing by on their way through the hawker centre. When an aunty at the popiah stall saw me taking photos of him, she came over excitedly and asked if I could help take some for her on her camphone, which she didn’t know how to use. “Can you put the cat as my wallpaper?” she asked (in Chinese), “My husband’s photo is there now but I want the cat instead.”

There isn’t really a point to this post, it just struck me that it’s been nearly a year since Mandy died, and I haven’t written about her, plus with the new camera I’ve been photographing lots of cats lately. Be kind to strays, it’s a hard (and often very short) life for them.

Pitch Perfect

Tessa organised Pitch Perfect, a cosy little iPod DJ event, at Pitch Black on Saturday night.

I used my 15 minute slot as follows:

Gareth Brown Says (McLusky): I’ve always liked the rather surreal playground taunting of this one – “All your friends are cunts / your mother is a ball-point pen thief”.
Drunken Butterfly (Sonic Youth): Because if I don’t play Sonic Youth at every public opportunity to impose my taste on other people, somewhere a fairy dies.
How Can I Love You If You Won’t Lie Down? (Silver Jews): Awesome title aside, this is a rather delightful departure from Silver Jews’ usual, rather minimalist, formula of alt-country (though even that’s been good enough to sustain nearly a decade of my fanhood). It’s a lovable, sturdily unpretentious little ditty and I always love singing along with the girl echoing David Berman – “Lie down” “Lah daawn!” – in every word of the chorus.
Fuck You Pay Me (Killer Mike): My most recent aggro-hip-hop-dancing-in-my-bedroom song of choice. Though it does get a bit embarrassing when I listen to it while walking along the pavement and have to stifle some of those moves.
Sh-Boom (The Chords): Enough aggro, let’s finish with some happy! And this is, quite simply, one of the happiest songs I have ever heard.

Later on, I learned that because Ci’en hadn’t brought her iPod, Peishan had ingeniously appropriated Ci’en’s 15 minute entitlement to play a second slot. This got me thinking (and looking craftily at the empty-pocketed fiance sitting next to me), and so it was that about an hour later DJ “Alec” made his public debut. And I must say I thought his, uh, “choices” were truly magnificent.

Enter Sandman (Fade To Bluegrass cover): This isn’t just a novelty cover, I do actually think the bluegrass harmonies and musicianship are pretty tight.
Pussyhole (Dizzee Rascal): Sorry about the pun, but this is just such a banger.
Long Snake Moan (PJ Harvey): Big dense noisy riffs, quintessential PJ Harvey attitude and a chorus which you just have to shout along to. “You wanna hear my long snake…MOAN! You oughta see me crawl my…ROAR!”
Dance Music (Mountain Goats): It took me a while to warm to the Mountain Goats, but this is the song that sold me.
All The Things She Said (Cinerama cover): You shouldn’t expect this song to surpass the original because, well, nothing can really surpass Russian lesbian pedophilia. But I like Cinerama’s take well enough, especially the weighty stabs of the chorus and the pensive guy-girl harmonies that bring us to the close.

Whatever Makes Her Happy, On A Saturday Night

A good Saturday night – chicken claypot rice, coffee pork ribs and sambal petai for dinner in Geylang, then lazy couch potato-ing at Alec’s place watching Children Of Men (lots of cats, a random flock of sheep, Clive Owen being a motherfucking rockstar and the best movie-making I’ve seen since Downfall) and Humbug (one of my favourite X-Files episodes ever) over cider, with Alec bearing my periodic exclamations of “Cats!”, “Sheep!” and “Rockstar!” with admirable indulgence.

Oh and just for the hell of it, here are some photos taken over the weekend with my brand new Fujifilm Finepix F31fd, which I’m very happy with. They’re not spectacular from an artistic point of view, they’re just my attempts to test out the universally raved about low-light capability of this camera. Basically, the following pictures were taken totally hand-held without much forethought or technical knowhow whatsoever.

Clarke Quay restaurants

Clarke Quay reflections

A durian stall in Geylang

Cornershop temple in Geylang

Study of the Clarke Quay canopies (my favourite shot)

As much as I loved my previous camera (Canon Ixus 430), there’s really no way it could have managed these – the darker shots, in particular, would have come out totally unusable or at least would have required a lot of post-processing. I’m very new to a lot of what this camera has to offer, such as aperture and shutter priority modes, but if it gives the above results to a clueless user, I can’t wait to see what it can do once I get to know it a bit better.

American Anticlimax

I wrote a rant last night about how abysmal the American Idol finale was and then fell asleep without saving it. Sorry, I know most people are too cool to love American Idol – once I get this out of my system I promise I’ll get back to writing about indie music.

Blake:

You Give Love A Bad Name: Ballsy the first time, blah the second time. Vocals were terrible and he was clearly out of breath.
She Will Be Loved: Case study in the blandness that is Blake. The same dumb preppy clothes he wears every week, the same dead eyes, emotionless face and flat reedy voice. Also an awful song choice strategy-wise – if your third song’s already a treacly ballad, why do the same with the second?
This Is My Now: Look, I know you think you’re soooo much better than this song and you want everyone to know it too but honey, even unicellular organisms are better than this crappy song. Suck it up, lose your “I listen to underground hip-hop” pretensions and sing the hell out of it. You’re not an artist, you’re a layer in the American Idol cheesecake.

Jordin:

Fighter: Picking a song by an artist who can outsing and outperform you any day of the week isn’t the best way to show you’re a “fighter”. It’s more like you’re pogoing through the jungles of Vietnam and Christina Aguilera’s the Vietcong.
Broken Wings: I’ve never seen a performance of this on American Idol that wasn’t pageanty slop, and this was no different.
This Is My Now: At least she did her fake, shrieky best on it and on that laughably pathetic basis alone, she deserves to win American Idol.

Verdict: Blake threw in the towel, Jordin wins by default, and Michelle wishes she’d stayed in the karaoke pub drinking instead of coming home to watch this dreck.

Oh and let’s not forget the final insult to injury for us poor viewers: a performance from Penishead Daughtry, still proving with his eyeliner and his posing that he’s only about as edgy as the average ten year old girl.

Best part of the night? Finding out that Paula broke her nose because she tripped over her dog. I believe the “tripped” part, less so the “dog” part. Unless “dog” is slang in LA for “sack of crack”.

ATP 2007: Road-tripping

I explained before why I never managed to attend All Tomorrow’s Parties when I lived in England, despite it being my dream festival. But several years on, I’ve brainwashed Alec into liking cacophonous clangy music, Jeremy (long-time music benefactor – see last bit of this post) now lives in London, and Russ finally has more disposable income and better taste in music :P which meant we had a lovely little group for our Butlins chalet. After a seven-year wait, I was finally on my way to ATP!

Our road trip to Minehead was quite enjoyable. I fiddled round with Russ’s iPod to make a playlist for the car journey, asking thought-provoking questions such as “So which is better, the normal version of Mariah’s Breakdown or the Mo Thugs Remix?” and sharing unarguable truths such as “An iPod with only 1 Roxette song is an iPod not worth speaking of.”

Alec and Russ had fun too:-

#1 (Russ mentioned that he sometimes accidentally deleted entire albums from his iPod.)
Me: Just goes to show how much iTunes sucks!
Alec: No, it only goes to show how much Russ sucks!

#2
Russ: I don’t know why, but the last few people I’ve fancied have all been Irish or of Irish descent.
Alec: Wow Russ, I didn’t know I’d made such a significant impression on you.
Russ: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA…oh sorry, think I laughed a bit too loud there.

We intended to cook our own food over the weekend so stopped off in ASDA to stock up, where Russ and Alec (our cooks) proceeded to load our cart with about three times the amount of food I’d have thought we needed. I ventured the timid suggestion that we could maybe use dried herb mixes instead of forking much more out for fresh herbs. They looked at me in silent derisory disbelief. We got the fresh herbs.

Continuing on our way, ten minutes away from Butlins the playlist I’d programmed hours before turned out to have been perfectly timed – the song itself started on the car speakers. Yay.

After checking in and a quick spag bol dinner where the boys served me, unsurprisingly, three times more food than I could eat, we rushed off to see The Dirty Three (the curators) do the first big gig of the festival.

Sexiest American Idol Weeks Evar

I really intended to start writing an All Tomorrow’s Parties blog entry tonight, but then I watched my tape of Bon Jovi week on American Idol (I missed it two weeks ago because we were travelling) and there was no place left for experimental/alternative/indie music in my heart.

Because seriously, folks, in 6 seasons of American Idol weekly themes, this was my week. Bon Jovi may be namby-pamby pretty-boy hair-rock has-beens but I embrace all of that and feel no shame for loving them as much as I do. I know every song the contestants sang backwards and forwards (Chris R, how dare you forget the line “I’ve seen a million faces and I’ve ROCKED THEM ALL!”) and the only reason I haven’t made all my karaoke companions sick of Bon Jovi already is that they’re just too damn tough to sing. (Metallica is way easier.)

Phil: Never cared much about him before but he did a great job with Blaze of Glory. For me, it was his best performance of the season and Simon was too harsh. Bye, Phil. I used to sing this song into my comb in front of the mirror too, but you sang it much better.

Jordin: Total trainwreck but at least she did really go for it during the performance, and she immediately acknowledged it was terrible once it was done. It did require just that little more suck to elevate it to sucktasticness (see: Kevin Covais’s Crocodile Rock) though.

LaKisha: It took me a while to get to her actual performance because I rewatched the bit where Jon Bon Jovi explains to her how This Ain’t A Love Song is the biggest love song there is about a million times. (See between 1.07-1.37 for the sweetness.) And then she nailed it and Simon kissed her. I was really sad when LaKisha went home last week, but now I’ve seen this? No bitch who gets lucky with Jon Bon Jovi and Simon Cowell on the same night deserves my sympathy.

Blake: Anyone who’s seen enough beatboxing will know that any decent beatboxer could have arranged the song like that and any good beatboxer could have done something even better, but to do that on American freaking Idol on a night where 2 out of 6 are going to be eliminated took mighty massive balls. Of course, he probably also did it because he knew his singing alone wouldn’t be strong enough to carry off a Bon Jovi song, but nonetheless I certainly can’t accuse him of playing it safe with his solution.

Chris R: I don’t think it is a good idea to demonstrate rock cred by singing like an actual goat, but perhaps Satan might beg to differ. I wouldn’t have let this guy through his first audition and I’m glad he’s finally gone.

Melinda: Okay, I’m officially in love with Melinda again. She was beginning to worry me by being too predictably good every week – always good but good in the same way – but this time she put loads of energy into working the stage and the guitarist, the vocals were smokin’ and her “Rock on!” attempts were adorable. More Jon loveliness at the start too. I wanted to coat them both in sugar and eat them all up.

And this week, Elliott will be on the results show! This time last year I thought I might never hear him sing again so YAY ELLIOTT! I assume he’ll be doing his new single rather than rehash anything he sang previously on the show, so I felt there was no harm revisiting some of those old performances tonight for old time’s sake, except for the harm involved in it now being 2.11 AM.

Festivals and Father Ted

In usual fashion I’m popping in far too late to say hello, I’m on holiday, and it’s been lovely so far. We went to All Tomorrow’s Parties over the weekend and are now in Ireland with Alec’s family. Today we drove past the Father Ted house, then got onto a very small propeller plane and flew to the Father Ted islands. There have been plenty of sheep, also some lambs. I am very happy.