A laugh a minute read

A couple of times this week I have been asked the equivalent of “will you put this in your blog?” so before I begin, I thought I would just recap on the Rules for you.

1. Everything in the blog is true – for a given value of true. So incidents may be slightly embellished for artistic or narrative reasons, or perhaps things will be tied together because the story is better that way.
2. But the fact that everything in the blog happens doesn't mean that everything that happens gets in the blog. I don’t give you the boring stuff (I hope) and I don’t give you stuff that I choose not to share. My blog, my rules.
3. I don’t share things that allow others to be identified without their express prior consent. That’s called manners. (I wouldn’t tag you on Facebook without asking for the same reason.)
4. I try to keep posts manageable in length. So I often omit back story. If something absolutely needs 2,000 words of explanation, it probably doesn’t get in the blog

On with the show.

It’s being a tiring week. And I've felt that today, so have tried to take it quite easy. Still managed a decent walk and the gym, but apart from that it has been a day to lounge around, and I am sure tomorrow will be the same. I was so tired I even had an afternoon nap today, which was lovely but very unlike me.

So, given desired laziness, it is good that the second volume of Danny Baker’s autobiography came on my Kindle this week. I know that some people loathe Baker – usually because they think he is some sort of gobby know-it-all. I disagree. Well, no, I don’t, because he is. But he is someone I have a lot of time for – for some reason I am drawn to gobby know-it-alls.

‘Going Off Alarming’ is hysterically funny. Those of you who know my rare but impressive ability of getting into a giggling fit which is uncontrollable will be delighted to know that his exploits in ‘painting’ a ceiling treated my fellow passengers to an example of this between Balham and Colliers Wood today. This was I think the fifth chapter of the book, and it is all just as funny. His stories of his father in particular carry a warmth that is touching but are gut-wrenchingly funny too. And his meetings with celebs (for example Kenneth Williams and Frankie Howerd) bring through so much about all concerned.

I suspect that the third thing I share with Baker (this isn't an editing error, read the post again if you think ‘what’s he on about, third?’ is that some incidents are embellished for the purpose of the narrative. So what? This is reading for pleasure, not learning about World War II.

In the past I've played that game ‘pick x number of people alive or dead that you would invite to dinner’. 95% of me would have Baker on that list, and near the top. The other 5% just wonders whether it would be a waste, because none of the others would get a word in edge-ways.  I’d be happy just to listen.

And on the subject of list memes, I had a lot of fun this week doing the ‘Twenty albums that changed your life’ thing on Facebook. That was difficult, but gave me a great excuse to soar widely through my music collection to make choices. I doubt Joe Jackson reads this, but if you do Joe, you were so close – on another day maybe you would have got in, but maybe next time.

That’s enough – more Danny Baker awaits.

Autobiography

Easter approaches with speed, and I welcome her with open arms. Not for religious reasons, nor indeed for chocolate. Simply for the chance to have a rest.

I am pretty tired at the moment. Pretty much everyone at work has been ill, so I've been waiting for the morning when my throat was thick and my head heavy. But I think the germs have been fighting each other off until today when I have started feeling very tired and run down.

I have been reading Tracey Thorn's wonderful autobiography, which I recommend to anyone - though particularly those who liked their post-punk pop like me. She has an engaging writing style, completely without pretension, and with a matter-of-factness which is I suspect, entirely genuine.

this is the third biog I have read in the last year, ad also the third I have read in the last ten years. Andy Kershaw and Danny Baker are the other two, since you ask. All great reads, and all people I tremendously admire.

The Boy Kershaw introduced me to world music. Danny B has a love of trivia and music that humbles me in its amazing depth. In fact looking on my shelves, I think (only think because books in this house are ordered chaotically, stacked on to of each other, and one behind the other) the only other biography I can find is X-Ray, the oddly told story of musician extraordinaire and Muswell Hillbilly Raymond Douglas Davies. I'm sure I have a couple of vols of Tony Benn's diaries somewhere, and a copy of Morrissey and Marr: A severed Alliance - maybe behind some Victorian ghost stories or something.

I suspect that anyone lower down my list of heroes simply isn't someone I want to read about. They won't grow with the telling and life is too short.

I remember at my high school we had something called English Enrichment. This was an extension group in today's parlance. A rebellion by ancient and old-fashioned English teachers who believed in stuff like grammar (and whose hatred of my use of the word 'stuff' even then, I now commemorate in the title of this blog). But who also believed in setting of pupils in a school where it was anathema (I am using big words today in case they are reading this).

One of the assignments was "write your autobiography". As a painfully shy (about) 13 year old boy in a class 90% female, who felt he hadn't done anything yet in his life (with I think some justification), that one was never going to go well. I wrote a poem. And since then I have been suspicious of people who write about themselves. There is the fish-in-a-barrel joke about today's latest sleb singer nobody "writing" a book, but they are just to laugh at.

Either someone is good at what they do or they are not, I don't want to know what they had for breakfast. In that way most modern biogs are very slightly less ephemeral and very slightly more monomaniacal versions of Heat magazine. Yes a biog of say Churchill would be different, but I'd read that to understand the history better.

So, when I do have enough shelves to do it there will be a choice one for the few people I think are important enough to read about. Not the Tracey Thorn one though, cos that's on Kindle!