If you wore it the first time around are you too old the second time?
Do these glasses look familiar to you? On seeing them, on a rare day out shopping with my husband last week, I was transported back to 1992!
I knew that the 90’s were back in fashion as I read Grazia and they have featured pages of Rhianna in her neon outfits and the Grunge revival. They also published this handy list of Top 90’s style icons to emulate. However when we walked into Urban Outfitters and were greeted with racks of tie-dye t-shirts, neon-rimmed wayfarer sunglasses and Fresh Prince of Bel Air t-shirts, my heart leapt with retro joy. Just a glimpse of the sunglasses that I last saw piled up in baskets outside shops in Newquay priced at £1.99 transported me back to being 13 years old and on holiday with my parents. My friend Sarah lost a pair in the sea on a school trip to Brittany and was most distraught. At last she can replace them!
House of Fraser’s men’s department is carrying many different styles of Bermuda shorts and a new Dr Martens store and Vans store have opened up in the Bullring. Just imagine – a whole store dedicated to Dr Martens! They even had tiny baby versions and some that are laced up with ribbons – almost a ballet shoe/ Doc Marten hybrid. I found myself in Office buying a pair of black, strappy, block heels telling the shop assistant how my friend Paula used to have a pair. A pair which caused her to fall down some steps and break her foot. I bought them anyway.
For the full 90’s effect of course you need brown lipstick and Levi’s 501s for women and a floppy curtain fringe for men. It wouldn’t hurt to throw in a gallon of hairspray and an armful of friendship bracelets. Urban Outfitters are doing a great range of loose ethnic print dresses: www.urbanoutfitters.co.uk. Crushed velvet and tie dye are definitely the order of the day and if you can carry it off then I urge you to go for it and create the full on Angela Chase/ Courtney Love effect.
It wasn’t until recently that I realised what 90’s style looked like – I guess being part of it made it seem how normal people should dress. But watching an episode of My So Called Life or Friends reveals the era in its full glory, as vividly and distinctly as would the 60’s mini-skirt, 70’s bell-bottom jean or 80’s shoulder pad. Which garments truly sum up the 90’s? Here is my own personal list:
10. Shiny cycling shorts
9. Denim dungarees
8. Tie dye
7. Vans
6. Floral skirts
5. Love beads/ friendship bracelets
4. Nike Air Jordans
3. Flannel shirts
2. Combat boots/ Dr Martens
1. Crushed velvet body suits/ skirts or dresses.
Birmingham Book Festival 2012
I’ve just spent a week volunteering for the Birmingham Book Festival 2012. I signed up in early summer, not really knowing what to expect and I turned up on Monday night to the Bay Leaf Cafe in the Custard Factory, Birmingham to lend a hand with ‘The New Lybia’ Its writers and bloggers.
It’s been a while since I went down to the Custard Factory, the last time was an all-nighter featuring 2Many Dj’s so that has got to be at least five years ago. Nowadays I am well past going to all-nighters so it felt pretty cool being there in what seems to be a kind of village for art, vintage shops and the more creative types in Birmingham.
My involvement wasn’t too strenuous – I stood at the doorway of the function area of the restaurant and greeted people and looked at their tickets – and I took photos. Three Lybian writers spoke about their work and read some excerpts of their stories, which have all been included in Banipal 40, a literary magazine. All three were inspirational – Giuma Bukleb having spent ten years in prison for simply being a writer under Gaddafi’s regime, Mohamed Mesratie being very young and Ghazi Gheblawi for not only being a surgeon but also having time to blog and write short stories.
Later in the week I again acted as a door person for the ‘address from the pulpit’ by Jackie Kay in Birmingham Cathedral. In beautiful surroundings Jackie read from her short stories and told us about her life in a sweet and entertaining way often giggling at the very funny events that have happened to her.
Finally I helped prepare the room for an evening of European Literature at the Ikon Gallery featuring writers from Hungary, Bulgaria and Sweden.
In return for donating about 15 hours of my time I was able to hear writers from across the world speak about their work, listen to some new stories I hadn’t heard before and visit some of the venues in Birmingham that I have walked past so often and never ventured inside. I also got free tickets to see Caitlin Moran and Stuart Maconie put the world to rights on socialism, feminism and music in the new world.
It was an inspiring week, giving me lots of ideas for new books to read and time to think about how and why writers find inspiration. It felt good to be helping a festival take place which has been going for 14 years in Birmingham and seems to be growing all the time. The hardest part was trying not to buy a book at every single event I attended!
Five good locations for meeting up with friends and children
A review of Burford Garden Company on the food blog Crumbs , got me thinking about the new ways in which we socialise with our friends now most of us have kids. Nights at the pub are planned months in advance in order to arrange baby sitters or we split into girls’ nights and boys’ nights leaving the other half to mind the roost. Often it’s easier to get together as families during the daytime.
Getting together so the kids can get a good run around and we can have a nice cuppa and a chat needs a bit of thought putting into to it. If it doesn’t have a play area, coffee shop, and baby change facilities with double buggy friendly door, it’s not on the list. Being really picky I also need some sort of child proof gate that my toddlers can’t escape through and it needs to be fairly quiet so I can’t lose them in the crowds or face potential dramas when they have to queue for the swing.
Sitting in a garden centre with friends you previously got drunk and went on the pull with can be a little odd at first but it’s actually fun and the coffee always makes up for it. Sometimes I will look across the coffee cups, gateaux and high chairs at my mate and think I’ve seen you sprawled across a beach at midnight in Teneriefe, and here we are amongst the hanging baskets. But it’s quite comforting to have made that journey with good friends. This is my top five list of places to spend time with your best friends and your children, keeping everyone happy.
1) Soft play
If you can avoid the warehouse-style windowless hell holes soft play centres can be quite pleasant. Look carefully and you find there are some play-barns springing up with natural daylight and home-made cakes on offer. Try Pigg’s Play Barn in Shropshire if you’re local (see my earlier blog post).
2) Garden centres
Ticking all of the above requirements plus offering fresh air and a bit of vitamin D if you wander around the flowers and shed displays. Many often have a pet section where you can look at rabbits, birds and fish, which my children love.
3) Farms
Cute baby animals available to stroke, play barns, nature trails, sandpits with diggers and bouncy castles – farms are not what they used to be. Throw in a shop with some locally sourced cheese and beer and some duck racing and it’s bordering on a theme park. Hatton Farm Village near Warwick is well worth a visit for children under 8.
4) National Trust properties
Family membership to the National Trust used to be the sort of thing retired people bought each other for Christmas. Now it offers seriously good value and inspiration for young families looking to fill up weekends. Many properties now have excellent facilities for children – play areas, toy shops and family friendly cafes. You can also gain some new knowledge about local heritage whilst you’re there.
5) Children’s birthday parties
Obviously you can’t just arrange a party so you can see your friends – you need to have an actual birthday to celebrate. However, you can invite your friends along to your child’s event as it goes that your friend’s children are your children’s friends even if they hardly ever see them. Then you have the added bonus of your best mates’ company whilst giving your child the best birthday ever.
Babies in the office
BBC2 Documentary Babies in the Office
When making the decision to start a family, childcare is one of the major factors affecting when to do it and how many children you have. For some it’s a case of roping in the family to help, whilst others are left counting the cost of nursery or childminders. Staff at London Taxi firm Addison Lee have a third option – they can bring their babies into work with them.
BBC Documentary Babies in the Office, shown on BBC2 this week, followed the trial period of this unusual idea instigated by the Head of HR who was hoping to start a family herself. Participants experienced ups and downs with one pulling out after just one day. Others persevered and even excelled in their work, despite having a baby by their side needing feeding, changing and entertaining.
I am currently out of work as I have three pre-school children meaning childcare costs would leave us worse off as a family. Being forced to make a choice between going out into the world and building a career or staying at home to take care of the children has been difficult. With many in the media depicting women as ‘choosing’ to be a stay at home mum or a career woman, it was refreshing to see it acknowledged that women of a childbearing age have as much right to a career as men and are a valuable commodity that shouldn’t be wasted. It was pointed out that by allowing a woman to bring her child to work for less than twelve months companies can gain a loyal employee for over ten years – and cut out the costs of recruiting new staff when women leave.
Some of the mums on this programme felt unhappy with staying at home too. They wanted to be out there earning and doing their best for the family. Being able to bring their young babies in meant they could spend lots of time with them whilst also earning a living without losing most of it in childcare.
I loved the overall sentiment of the idea that women who have babies are still valued in the workplace and seeing some of them in action was inspiring. But I could not imagine it working with any of mine. Between 6 months and 12 months, which I think is the age this scheme is really aimed at, they were rolling, sitting up and shouting. My twin boys went through a phase of having five poos a day and really fought having their meals. There is no way they would have been contented sitting on my lap at a computer or in a bouncer next to me. When they began to crawl there was no stopping them and in an office with trailing wires and cups of tea constantly on the go I would have worried myself sick about accidents.
No, I don’t think the office is a place for children no matter how much childcare costs or how well staff can perform whilst caring for their babies’ needs.
The real answer is more affordable, quality state childcare and until this happens more and more women will be dropping out at the point in their career when they have the most to offer.
A family day out in Shropshire – Apley Farm Shop and Pigg’s Play Barn
After a week of Bank Holidays and my eldest child off pre-school, we’ve been pretty busy. It’s always difficult to come up with ideas for how to entertain the kids at the weekend, but especially so when I’ve been doing it for seven days already. Our kids are very young – three and one year old twins, so our options are limited as the babies can run riot and don’t know about things like safety! Also everything has to be planned around meals and naps, to avoid meltdowns.
Inspiration struck me this morning as a friend had mentioned Apley Farm Shop to me a while ago. She told me there was a soft play area there called ‘Pigg’s Barn’. Now, the words ‘soft play’ strike fear into my heart and fill with me with dread as I think of often tatty warehouses, filled with worn wipe clean foam shapes. Rampaging seven year olds, and too many nooks and crannies for tiny one year olds to go missing in. Some of these places are four levels high and the thought of my babies making their way up there without me, only to be trampled on by marauding school children is too much to bear. You also have to be pretty agile as you find yourself cramming down twisty slides made for people no taller than 4 foot. I once found myself rescuing my two year old whilst eight months pregnant with my twins from a tower at soft play – bad times.
Apley Farm is on the A442 between Telford and Bridgnorth, situated in stunning countryside. It’s a cluster of barns, situated around a courtyard featuring a farm shop, a ‘creamery’ (cafe), a toy shop and the play barn. Piggs Barn is not like any soft play I have visited before. It’s the ‘Cath Kidson’ of soft play. As the door opens you are greeted with the scent of coffee brewing and freshly baked cakes. It is clean and bright with natural light, situated in a beautiful barn conversion. Sofas and tables are laid out around the play area so parents can try to ‘relax’ whilst their offspring run around. There’s a separate section for young babies with tiny slides and soft building blocks, whilst the bigger section has lots of things to climb through and two large slides. My babies were happy in both sections and managed to climb up to one of the big slides all by themselves (bless!).
When you have finished playing you can take the kids for a walk on the nature trail and try and spot the birds and animals on a list you can pick up in the shop. The trail was bordered with wild flowers this morning so it was very beautiful indeed. Now, for the parents, the shop itself is full of fabulous cheeses, bread, condiments and meat. Beer and cider from local breweries is available and I picked up three bottles of bitter for £6 – a perfect present for Fathers’ Day next week.
The barn costs £3 for under 2s and £4.50 for over 2s, so it’s more expensive than other soft play centres. But it was worth it as it’s a treat for parents too. We’ll definitely be returning.
NME top 100 nineties tracks
Being pretty much stuck in the nineties cuturaly I was extremely excited to see that NME magazine have compiled a list of their favourite 100 songs of that decade.
Quickly skimming throughthe 100 best tracks of the nineties, I was pleased to see many of my favourites in there, even if a lot of them were in the 91-100 section. Overall it’s a pretty balanced list with more examples of rap such as Dr Dre, Wu Tang Clan and Missy Elliot than I would have expected. There’s even a Madonna tune and Brandy & Monica, a tiny bit of trip hop and a smidgen of techno.
Being an indie and rock fan myself my top 100 would include everyone NME have selected. They’ve picked out Metallica’s Enter Sandman (88 ) and a couple of Nirvana traks (Lithium 52 and Smells Like Teen Spirit 2 ). There’s your usual Blur, Charlatans, Stone Roses – every band that stood out in the 90s.
However the top ten contains some surprises – for a start no, Oasis aren’t number one! It’s Pulp’s Common People. Only Paranoid Android by Radiohead was released after 1995, and Suede’s Stay Together is at number three, which I think is a fairly obscure one to pick.
I completely agree with the inclusion of McAlmont & Butler’s Yes – a triumphant break up song which includes some rousing strings and the falsetto voice of David McAlmont. Beastie Boys’ Sabotage and Daft Punk’s Da Funk are also genius inclusions and less predictable than the others.
Screaming omissions from the list are Everything But the Girl’s Missing (you couldn’t leave the building without hearing that in 1995) and Sugarcubes Hit. Where are the Chillies? In fact there are so many more – what about Chumbawumba Tubthumping, some Terrorvision or Levellers? And being really ridiculous, why include Madonna’s Vogue but not Ray of Light? Where is Lenny Kravitz? Ok, there’s only space for 100 songs but still….I’m not a massive fan but I would have thought that Paul Weller would have appeared higher up than number 98 especially when he was so influential over the 90s scene. And, as I am currently sat here watching My So Called Life and they are dancing to Haddaway’s What is love, what would have been wrong with throwing in a few dance tunes for amusement? D:Ream’s Things can only get better; some Baby D? What about Clock? We all danced to them at our college and university parties, just admit it.
For me the top ten should have been as follows:
10 Leftfield and Lydon – Open Up
9 Rage Against the Machine – Killing in the Name
8 Boo Radleys – Lazarus
7 Beastie Boys – Sabotage
6 Ash – Girl from Mars
5 Oasis – Live Forever
4 Everything but the Girl – Missing
3 Smashing Pumpkins – 1979
2 James – Laid
1 McAlmont & Butler – Yes
Despite the things they’ve left out I still love this list and am seriously considering printing it out and laminating it.
Record Store Day 2012
Front page of NME 21/0402012
Happy Record Store Day! It’s the day when the nation celebrates what’s left of its network of independent record retailers. Taking place on Saturday 21 April, there’s lots to get involved with if there is a shop in your area. Participating stores will be hosting live music events and selling limited vinyl editions of reocrdings by groups such as The Arctic Monkeys, The Subways and Graham Coxon. This week’s edition of NME is dedicated to the event and lists all the shops taking part and what’s going on.
Over the past twenty years the independent record store has all but disappeared from our high streets. In fact there are are hardly any high street music retailers with only HMV remaining as the major store in many shopping centres.
In the Midlands you have to travel to Malvern or Cheltenham to join in the event. It’s pretty shocking to see that there is nowhere in Birmingham included in the promotion.
The decline happened bit by bit with the growth of shopping malls and huge corporations like Virgin, HMV and Our Price gradually stepping in and being able to offer better prices than the smaller shops. Tax- doging online setups such as Amazon and Play took much of their business away, and don’t forget the supermarkets such as Tesco and Sainsbury’s selling albums like Pearl Jam’s Ten amongst the baby food for £5 a go.
Illegal downloading chipped away a little bit more, finally Apple stepped in with ITunes, and suddenly you didn’t need to even leave the house to find your latest favourite band.
Stourbridge had an independent record store called Stourbridge Records in a little street behind the Sixth Form college and I remember going in there to buy some limited edition Red Hot Chili Peppers and Blind Melon 12″ picture disks. Sadly I don’t even know when it closed. Picture disks were a bit silly and when would you even look at them anyway; mine are stashed on a shelf with all our other records. But it did appeal to my sense of excitement about new releases and they looked very pretty. I also remember popping into Magpie Records in Halesowen and picking up new releases on my way home from school. I guess someone’s first download from ITunes just won’t have that same kind of special memory and there won’t be any old shops that they’ll walk past now converted into Charity shops or just boarded up that will pull on the heartstrings and remind them of a song they once loved.
I was never the kind of person who saved up all my lunch money for new singles or that hung around thumbing through the albums on a Saturday afternoon but I do have a sense of nostalgia about how music was available in the past and I think young people now will miss out on the geeky thrill of having a little collection of plastic disks. Even the loss of the album art and all the sleeve notes means being a music fan is very different now. Where will they pick up all the little stories behind the song lyrics or find out who the artist wants to acknowledge for inspiring their work…oh yes, Twitter or Facebook. But reading the notes was a bit like finding hidden treasure – lots of artists didn’t bother writing much so you were always pleasantly surprised when they did.
Another bonus of the record shop was that as a teenage girl you knew they were sort of cool and perhaps you might find cool people in there. Nipping in just on the off chance you might see someone you fancy in there looking at the Oasis album was part of a Saturday trip into town. You could also find posters advertising good club nights and gigs. I know that’s all done on-line now everything seems so scheduled nowadays doesn’t it? A nice illuminous orange or yellow poster with black marker pen was the perfect way of finding out about things to do on your nights out.
Having said all this, like most people, I don’t have time to seek out independent shops and if I hear something on the radio I like I will almost certainly download it from ITunes. It’s up to the students and people with a bit of time one their hands to keep the remaining record shops we have open. Perhaps I’ll try a bit harder to support the cause and if I see one I’ll go in and buy something just for old time’s sake.
10 most memorable album purchases
1. Blur Park Life
Purchased from Woolworths on cassette in my lunch break from college, this is one of my favourite albums of all time. From hyper chant along tunes like Girls and Boys to melancholy This is a Low, there is a song on here for every teenage mood. I played this during a hot summer vacation, filled with long days in the park with my friend Lucy and four hour shifts at my job in Next. I’d broken up with my boyfriend so I spent a lot of time sulking in my bedroom. Everytime I hear the horns on the introduction to ‘Badhead’ I can feel the heart ache all over again.
2. The Monkees – Greatest Hits
Another cassette picked up at Woolworths, this time I must have been inspired to buy it by hearing Vic Reeves’ cover of I’m a Believer and being reminded of the wonderful Monkees! It revived all my happy memories of school holidays watching repeats before going out to play with my friends. The tunes still sounded good and stood up against all the indie music I was listening to at the time especially ‘pleasant Valley Sunday’ and ‘Last Train to Clarksville’.
3. MC Hammer – U Can’t Touch This
My parents joined a music club and got some free CDs, so I was allowed to choose three for myself. I chose INXS Kick, Dirty Dancing and MC Hammer. That tells you a lot about my taste in music at the time, though I wouldn’t mind listening to any of them even now! I first heard U Can’t Touch This on the Radio One chart show and remember getting very excited when I heard it again at my friend’s house. We thought it was the best song we’d ever heard – we hadn’t been exposed to anything considered rap music as we only listened to the charts and watched Top of The Pops so were on a diet of Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Now I’m not saying MC Hammer is good rap music, but he’s a fair introduction, and how can anyone resist that dance?
4. St Etienne – You need a Mess of Help to Stand Alone
I finally got my own CD player for Christmas and one of the first CDs I bought to play on it was this one. I’d heard the Cola Boy track ‘Seven Ways to Love’ on the radio and realised it was the same group. ‘Join Our Club’, was a whimsical pretty song, with happy lyrics and a bit that goes ‘ba ba ba ba ba bada daaa daaaaa’, very nice to sing along to. ‘People get Real and ‘Who do you think you are’ were dreamy electronic beat filled tunes and Duke Duvet had a Spanish Guitar riff going through it, making it a summery album perfect for shimmying along to or just feeling really sunshiny!
5. Aha – Hunting High and Low
My mum and dad bought me this one on vinyl, I think I asked for it for Christmas after seeing the competition on Blue Peter where you could win an appearance in the A-ha video for ‘Take on Me’ (the one with pencil drawings). Considered a boy band by some, A-ha are actually cited as an influence by many ‘serious’ musicians including Chris Martin of Coldplay. Their synth filled melodies and dramatic choruses are Eighties to the core, perfect for shrieking along to with your girl friends.
6. Faith No More – From Out of Nowhere
This album signalled a very definite change in my music tastes and in turn the rest of my life. Until this point I’d been very much a pop music fan, reading Smash Hits regularly and taping the chart show every Sunday. I couldn’t tell you who introduced me to Faith No More, I just remember one minute going to a New Kids on the Block concert and the next watching the Word in my friend’s bedroom, gazing up at a poster of Mike Patton. Perhaps it was seeing the ‘Epic’ video constantly played on MTV. Mike Patton’s booming, whining, almost operatic voice coupled with his deep doom laden rapping, and the delicate piano against heavy guitars exploded into my teenage conciousness.
Faith No More were the gateway to other Metal and Rock bands and I was the perfect age to embrace the Grunge movement. I was 16 in 1992, the same year that Nivarna’s Nevermind reached number one and Pearl Jam’s Ten was one of the highest selling albums.
7.New Kids on the Block – Step by Step
I absolutely loved New Kids on the Block and after hearing the single ‘Step by Step’ on Radio One I rushed out to get this as soon as possible. I bought it on vinyl and spent hours playing it in my bedroom savouring every song. The silliness of ‘Tonight’ and the knee trembling ‘Baby I believe in You’ won my heart and those of thousands of teenage girls. This album also saw the New Kids branch out into dance/ rap music with ‘Games’ and ‘Call it what you want’ featuring the genius collaboration with C n C Music Factory. Fabulous!
8. James – Laid
‘This bed is on fire with passion and love. The neighbours complain about the noise from above. Be she only comes when she’s on top. My therapist says not to see you no more, you’re like a disease without any cure, she says I’m so obsessed that I’m becoming a bore, on nooooooooo aah you think you’re so pretty eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee’.
I challenge anyone not to sing along to that. This album is best listened to on your own with a copy of Wuthering Heights. The melancholy yet soaring tracks lend themselves to the heartwrenching emotion of Heathcliff and Cathy, and songs like ‘Out to get you’ and ‘One of the three’ were perfect background music for ploughing through this A-Level set text (in 1993).
9. Florence and the Machine – Ceremonials
It’s been 27 years since I owned my first album, and whilst being loyal to my favourites I have always tried to listen to new music and not get too stuck in my ways. As you’ll see in my final choice of memorable albums I am slowly becoming more nostalgic and less adventurous with what I’ll listen to. Florence and the Machine remind me that I do like some new music and liking the first album Lungs wasn’t just because it was massively hyped – it was actually good and I actually enjoyed it. I find her uplifting and individual. I love the huge multi-layered sound of many instruments. I also love the bizarre lyrics of ‘If only for the night’, where a ghost tells her to concentrate.
10. Beyonce
One of my most recent purchases, this one signalled another change in direction in my music tastes. I’ve always tried to listen and enjoy a variety of genres, and keep up with new releases so I don’t get boring. However, on playing this one, I realised that I might not like much new music anymore and I’d much rather stick to what I know I like. I couldn’t be bothered getting past the singles, and I think I have played this one once and put it away again.
Things to do when your child wakes up at 5.30 am
5.30 am. There’s not much going on is there? For most of the year, it’s still dark. The streets are empty, the shops are closed and even the milkman hasn’t been yet. However, to a one year old, it’s time to get up and start the day. When you hear that cry, and roll over to check the time, your heart sinks as you realise that it’s too early for breakfast and the rest of the household are soundly asleep so you need to keep quiet.
Here are a few, quiet ideas for making the time pass whilst your little one happily potters about with their toys, and you look forward to breakfast (about 7 am for most civilised people).
Make real coffee
Get your cafetiere or stove coffee pot out and use up some of that ground Italian coffee you spent £4 in Sainsbury’s on before it goes stale. No need for instant when you’ve got an hour to kill! The extra boost you’ll get from the caffeine will save you from drooping eyes too.
Dusting
The quietest form of housework and usually quite time consuming as you need to move lots of nick nacks around. You can shift photographs and vases to one side and dust the unreached corners of your bookshelves and sideboards whilst your baby plays at your feet. Or, if they’re already mobile give them a cloth so they can join in (or pretend).
Watch the sunrise
If you’ve got a East facing window why not position yourself to greet the sun and get in touch with your spiritual side. Admire the wonder of the new day, something you might not have seen except when returning home from wild nights out in your youth.
Gardening
Perhaps save this one for summer mornings. Pull on your wellies and bring a picnic mat and a few toys out. Your baby can happily potter around whilst you do some gentle deadheading or weeding. No mowing the lawn.
Catch up on correspondence
With most of your spare time taken by looking after your child or tidying the house keeping in touch with your friends can be difficult. Early morning Facebooking or emailing can be useful. Or why not write a letter? Give your baby a crayon and some paper and let them sit by you whilst you write to your aunty in Australia or your university friend in America.
Sort out toy baskets
This can double up as a game for your child, whilst satisfying your neat and tidy side. Mega blocs often sneak into your box of happyland figures. Plastic bread rolls and wooden eggs languishing in the baby toy basket. Half an hour spent rummaging through and putting the toys in their right places is very satisfying and is a bit like playing. However be prepared for all the sorted items to be in the wrong place in less than an hour.
Go through and alphabetise your CD collection
If you’re feeling particularly organised you could pull out a pile of your CDs, dust them off and look at them for probably the first time in years. Rearrange them into alphabetical order according to artist – you might rediscover things that you have forgotten you owned, and seeing them again you’ll want to listen to them again. Get your offspring into your old favourites too! Or put them off for the rest of their lives.
Catch up on Sky +
I have hours of Don’t tell the Bride episodes stacked up, and am always at least two weeks’ behind Graham Norton. Before your baby starts understanding too much, you could catch up with your favourite programmes on in the background whilst playing with them. This has to stop as they start to speak as you don’t want unexpected words to come out in front of guests.
Build towers
OK, so this is expecting you to actually interact before daylight! But it’s an easy game and quite fun piling up the bricks only for your baby to knock them down again. Best of all it doesn’t involve much thought.
Listen to early morning radio shows (on a low volume).
Discover future DJs by tuning into shows that go out before breakfast. Usually quite gentle in tone and pretty relaxed at least it feels like there’s someone else awake out there!
Of course, all this depends on your baby waking up happy and in a compliant mood. Your new activities need to fit around bottles, nappy changes, breakfast and of course watching out for tumbles, fishing random objects out of their mouths and cuddles. Hmmm, maybe it’s not so difficult to fill that time after all.
Davy Jones
Last week Monkees lead singer Davy Jones passed away at the relatively early age of 66. He was a hero to many young fans throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s as the two series of The Monkees were run and re-run.
For me, the happy sunshine filled show with Davy Jones, Mickey Dolenz, Peter Tork and Michael Nesmith was a special part of my childhood. I watched it every morning in the school holidays before going out to play with my friends over the road and the crazy adventures of the four teenagers would make me laugh and daydream about my own adventures that lay ahead for me as I got older. Ultimately the show was about music and their songs were some of the first I really enjoyed.
Each episode involved some kind of escapade where the band tried to get their big break on the music scene. Davy Jones would always fall in love with a beautiful girl and his huge brown eyes would melt the lucky one’s heart before moving onto the next love interest in the following episode. Clothes were brash and hippyish and colours were orange, yellow and bright blue, always evoking hot summers on the beaches of California. The sense of humour was slapstick and silly appealing to children and teenagers everywhere.
TV producers in America were keen to find a group to appeal to the youth market following the success of Beatles films ‘Help’ and ‘Hard Days Night’. Despite The Beatles being ‘The Beatles’ it’s The Monkees that caught the imagination of children of the decades following It didn’t really occur to me that these programmes were made before I was born and the characters in it were old enough to be my fathers. They had an appeal that didn’t wear off with time and I think the programmes aged better than the Beatles films which looked about 100 years old to me!
I remember buying the Monkees greatest hits on cassette in Woolworths and playing it constantly in my room. Songs such as ‘Last Train to Clarksville’, ‘Stepping stone’ and ‘I’m a believer’ stood the test of time and sounded good alongside the Blur and Oasis I was listening to at the time. Especially when The Wonderstuff and Vic Reeves covered I’m a Believer, meaning we got to hear it played out and about in indie clubs. ‘Daydream Believer’ was our favourite choice on the Kareoke at college parties, getting us all up and dancing on the sofas.
Like most fans, I grew out of them and hadn’t thought about the group that much until last week. Just hearing those songs again and seeing Davy Jones face brought back the happy sunshine filled memories of school holiday mornings and nights dancing away with my friends. Sadness for the loss of Davy Jones was felt by many people of my generation, and rock radio station Kerrang put some Monkees on their playlist recognising the influence this once ridiculed band had on many modern musicians and people who just love music.
I’m going to download some Monkees albums, buy the two series on DVD and remember to watch them when I’m having a bad day.
whensevenoclockcomes 