See, Emily plays - the Fender Telecaster

Why does the Fender Telecaster give me so much pleasure? I mean, I know there are better guitars. (*)
There are those who claim that it's just a posh banjo. (Actually there aren't, I made that up.)
OK, but like the banjo, the Tele plunks and plonks a lot: it's to do with the single coil pick ups. I'm told.
And like the banjo, its aficionados all wear beards, plaid shirts and sandals.
No, i made that up as well.
Sid Smith once said to me that it didn't matter what i plugged my Tele into, it still sounded like my Tele. Always polite, Sid didn't mention that it also sounded like everybody else's Tele. Only not so good.

I guess that's true ... plunk plonk, clonk.
One of the lovely thing things about a Fender Telecaster is that it's dead simple. Just stop and go, really.
Stratocasters have wiberly woberly controls - five positions to choose from. And then some knobs and a whammy bar thing. What's that about?
And Gibson Les Pauls, well, look what happened to Paul Kossoff. He's dead. And I'm not prepared to change my name, anyway.
My bank manager (yep) was telling me the other day that her pal bought a £4,000 Les Paul called the Jimmy Page.
Which is weird because, as legend goes, Jimmy played a Fender Tele on Led Zep's famous first LP. (It's kak, btw.) And Jimmy isn't called Paul. Or Les.
So, of all the famous Tele players, who's my fave?
Well, the chap from Booker T and the MGs who did all those minute masterpieces for Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, et al is really good. He played In the Midnight Hour one way ... and then backwards for Dock of the Bay. And he's not dead.
But no, not him.
Oh there's an endless list. Keith Richard? Oh crumbs, no, he's a rare beast. A dull Tele player.
No, my top of the pops has to be Syd Barrett. Oh bliss.
All those lovely noises, rattles and trips.
The lovely Syd is another example of that, when it comes to the Fender Telecaster, the less you do, the better it gets.
And, as Sid Smith said to me, no matter what you do, it still sounds like a Tele.

(*)This article first appeared in my head. Only it was better.

Why do we get up?

It's tough being a human. You get born, you die; it rains on your holiday, cats puke and the plants need watering.

So, after a couple of million years, you'd think we'd have given up and just bought a caravan, or something.

But no, we keep on keeping on, rubbing the sticks together and having haircuts.

Surprisingly, while there have been umpteen attempts to lend sweetness and explanation to the experience of existence - God, mammon, the Fender Telecaster, for example - there have been surprisingly few attempts to explain our basic human behaviour, which we might typify with the question, Why do we get up? (*)

In truth, for many years I tended toward the simple get-out answer, Because we can't find the off switch.

But of late i've puzzled further, consulted widely and stood in the queue at Marks and Spencer. And as a result i am now prepared to make an attempt to move the debate forward.

I am indeed prepared to submit that there are, in fact, three unique human dispositions UHDs.

These powerful forces may be likened to the fundamental forces of physics which acting together, shape our universe. They are of course, gravity, the strong nuclear force, electromagnetism and err... the hunt for spangles.

Anyway, there are three, much clearer forces at work which underpin all human behaviour:-

• Self-pity ... known as the dark force and which may yet prove to be the unifying force long-sort by philosophers and Sunday magazine editors.
• Self-delusion ... unique in the whole universe to the human experience, it has, for example, the capacity to generate a billion twitters and blogs every day. So strong indeed it is thought that self-delusion created IKEA within the first few seconds of the human condition.
• Bad taste ... considered for many years to be a simple by-product of existence, but bad taste is now understood to be one of three pillars of all human motivation and experience. Without it (and it's twin, self-delusion) we would have long ago run out of excuses for all those tile shops, the continued production of German pop music ... and tinned spaghetti hoops.

Now i recognise there may be some among us who would prefer the more comfortable, traditional answers to the Why do we get out of bed? question ...

• we need a new mattress
• my partner farts
• the cat puked

... honestly, i know, i've tried out those answers. But believe me, in the end they are unsatisfactory, hollow ... self-delusional.

Be brave. Open your mind. NO ! More than that, open your Yellow Pages and see the truth for yourself. Really, only my new three UHDs can explain all those kitchen show rooms, tile shops and the continued success of IKEA.

Oh crumbs (self pity) back to my banjo practice (bad taste, self delusion). Be of good cheer.

(*) OK. All those aged 12 -19years are excluded. They are aliens, never get out of bed and therefore lie outside the scope of all human explanation.

Childhood #1

I only ever wrote one poem...

What a lot of red cars there are in the yard
The teachers are coming!
The teachers are coming!

What a lot of red cars all shiny and bright
That come in the morning
And go home at night.

...I was soundly ignored.

The pressure in my chest ...

BBC something or other has been running early 1970s tapes of American ancients; James Taylor, Crosby/Nash, Neil Young et al.

And Joni Mitchell.

Crumbs she is so good. A stunning body of work, headed by Blue - which is what she played chiefly on this show; recorded just before the record was released, I think. She sings 'My old man' and says it's not yet finished.

I'm really sorry she seems to have been fed up with things in recent years. Her achievement is huge. Of course, lots of records have the capicity to move us, inform our lives and to be cherished. Heavens, J Martyn just popped his clog.

But Blue is one of a very few records which maintains its capacity to delight, surprise and connect deeply on every occasion. Maybe the McGarrigle's first record does the same. But there are two McGarrigles! And frankly they don't have anything like the same body of work in depth. Joni M has done it dozens of times.

Blue is ... transcendental or something, the kind of event which justifies the whole planet...

ZOG: "And what did you achieve, Earth?"
EARTH: "Well, from time to time we thought that we ought to behave better toward each other ... and we gave the universe Joni Mitchell."

With one bound

A lovely evening.
Fish, rice and peas for supper with the boys; then the 'original' Superman comics, with Alexander doing all the voices.

"THE MAN OF TOMORROW" leaps giant chasms in a race against time and the raging torrents. Al, of course, has plans already to collect every Superman comic ever published - and wants to order them from Amazon in the morning. I suspect he knows my account details.

Meanwhile, Sammy opens his own Amazon package and is delighted with the new Pigeon story, in which , "The pigeon finds a hot dog."
Sammy loves these stories - especially the bits where the pigeon shouts out in frustration,
"PLEASE LET ME DRIVE THE BUS" etc. and this 5year-old clearly identifies with his feathered anti-hero. He is now as fearless at reading as he is at crimefighting, bug splatting and Darth Vader battling.

Both boys are cute readers - and demonstrate hilarious vocal skills as well as a rather worrying capacity to typecast and stereotype their pals from the CMYK world. "Vee 'av vays of eating wo yoh-gutte, Thoopermann."
I'm under some pressure as the family's over-actor.

Jade Goody

I really don't care a fig about Carol Thatcher. She's just another Prince Phillip act-a-like who has run into one of those all-too-few, 'gets what she deserves' situations.

In brief, a bad egg masquerading as a good egg.

Same applies to Jonathan Ross, who let's be honest, is dull and well past his sell-by date.

Chuck Jeremy Clarkson into the same pot. Oh, and also that tosser who writes just about everything in the Sunday Times. Who cares if he didn't like his lunch?

But I am upset about Jade Goody.

She was on some TV programme, was taught to scream in pain for the viewers - and now seems to be dying for the benefit of some newspaper editor and his circulation figures.

I'm fortunate. Mostly these people don't impact on my world. I don't see them, don't know them and usually, don't care. I live on a different island.

For the most part these people are professionals who take their chances and take the money. If at some stage they get caught in bed with Frank Bough or John Major, well that probably gets turned into cash and paid into their pension fund.

That's not Jade Goody.

Certainly no role model. God forbid. But this woman will not be paying much into her pension fund. And even less will she have the opportunity to enjoy the fruits of her fame and notoriety.

Are there any of us who don't believe that her illness is a direct result of her last few years? Of being turned over, laughed at and buggered by 'the editors' into whose clutches she fell. OK, leapt.

She is no innocent and the racism parallel with Carol Thatcher is not lost on me. But the Jade Goody story fills me with terror, with horror.

For, on a day that cervical cancer vaccine became available for all teenage girls in the UK, it seems that women like Jade Goody still can expect no protection from the media men.

Higher education

Happiness is big business nowadays but at Chipping steam fair you can get a degree in it. So i'm going to get a little engine too, when i grow up.