See question 3
Seems that recently all I’ve been doing is Earworms and techie show off posts! I thought it was about time I actually did one of my own and seeing as no-one else has bagsied EOTWQ, I thought I’d start there. I’ve got a couple of Spanish music ones in the pipeline (a demo put together by a few lads Mrs Maki works with and a more heartfelt Flamenco one but I’m finding it hard to get them just right).
So anyway, here we go:
When I was a nipper my parents had a jack russel. I got into the habit of sitting down on the floor and tugging its ears. My mum was forever telling me not to do it. “He’ll bite you, you know” She would warn me. Did I take any notice? ‘Course not. Anyway one day he retaliated and I lost a very small part of the end of my nose!
1. Have you ever willfully ignored a warning only to find out the hard way that you should have paid heed?
My parents spent a fortune on French classes for me. I wasn’t very good at it and wasn’t very interested either. When I was ten we went on holiday to Brittany and I remember being sent (against my will) to buy the bread one morning. I somehow managed to make the lady in the shop understand me and returned triumphant to the campsite with a couple of baguettes. That episode is no doubt the catalyst that led to my interest in languages and very indirectly, to my living outside the UK.
2. When was the first time you said something in a foreign language and were understood by the person you were speaking to?
I had a teddy bear when I was a baby. I’m now 48 and I still have it.
3. What treasured possession, if any, do you still have from your early childhood?
In my early twenties I lived in Tarragona on the Mediterranean coast. These were wild times. On the way home one night and severely under the influence, I might add, I managed to fall 40 feet off a railway bridge! I escaped with a broken wrist and a few (deep) grazes.
4. What has been your closest shave and / or luckiest escape?
Straight in with this one.
5. What musical event are you most looking forward to or hoping for this year?
The only one here that I can easily handle is #4 but to do so would take all day. Suffice to say that to the north of LA on highway 5 you go through the mountains, the road is a fairly straightforward freeway that rises to about 4000ft. Three times since about 1962 I’ve had almost fatal accidents there, one hair-raising in the extreme, one I could have sold to Hitchcock and the last, if I’d glanced away for an instant I’d have been a goner! In each case steep mountain downgrades with the typical ‘sheer 300ft drop off to the side’.
I’ve only ever had one auto related collision in my life, it was not dangerous but it was expensive for the other drivers insurance.
For #3 I still have my childhood silver spoon and that’s come in handy a few times.
REally wonderful questions, Maki. But thinkers…I’ll be back!
1. I was told to be more athletic since I was a teenager but never fancied it that much, I was very happy with simple sprinting. I’m sure I’ll feel the effects in the years to come.
2. I’ve been realising recently that I don’t remember not being being able to speak English, otherwise no examples come to mind, but it reminds me of an Australian student in my Portuguese school in Sao Paulo who wouldn’t say a word in Portuguese apart from yes, no and hello. One night on a class outing, he had one singular drink, and I couldn’t get him to stop speaking Portuguese and revert back to English.
3. A lot of stuff is still around somewhere, but I don’t live with it.
4. A bus streaming down a big road outside my school in Paris, while I was standing on the edge of the pavement, with my back to traffic. Luckily a friend noticed just in time and pulled me.
5. Definitely Robyn at the Roundhouse in early March!
Definitely thinker questions!
1) Well, i’m pretty bloody minded even for an American, so i don’t take to warnings very well. I think the warnings i willfully ignored that had the most unfortunate outcomes came from my own intuition, rather than from another person. And yet i got experiences i wouldn’t have had otherwise, and i’m not dead yet, so who’s to say good or bad.
I used to have homework sets in grad classes where each problem would require 4-5 pages of equations to get to the answer. Taking a wrong turn would result in many wasted hours of work and would end up far away from the correct path to the answer. I don’t know how many times at 3 am the night before it was due i’d know i was taking the wrong fork in the road, but i couldn’t stop myself because i wanted to see where the math would take me.
2) I can’t remember the first time, because we were required to choose a language to learn at a fairly young age. Languages are very difficult for me, even expressing myself in English, let alone another one. I can manage a little because i’ve worked in so many restaurants, so i pick up a bit here and there, falling well short of any fluency.
But still i can think of 2 instances where i had fun with language. I worked at a Mexican restaurant in NYC, and summertime is slow with a lot of downtime. One night one of the guys wanted to learn better English, so he asked me to teach him the words for animals. I got to learn them in Spanish too, we got everyone else in on it, and it was a lovely way to kill a few hours.
Another night in the same restaurant, it turned out that a few of us on knew rudimentary French, so we killed a few hours composing crap French poetry, and made it a recurring contest on slow nights.
5) Getting as many Rolling Stones songs as possible, especially from Exile on Main Street, onto the A-list.
1 I don’t think anybody actually told me not to run away from home and shack up with a married man when I was 18, instead of going to university as I was supposed to, but if they’d known I was going to do it they certainly would’ve.
2 I’m good at languages so I expect it was in French or Spanish class when I was 14 or so (we didn’t start languages at my school till then). But more exciting was when I found on that beach in Pontevedra, as previously described, that Ernesto could understand me – and just as well too, since he didn’t speak any English. (Although of course you can do a lot without words in these situations.)
3 My younger daughter has my teddy, but I still have many of my books, including the Observer’s Book of Birds and the Collins Pocket Guide to Wild Flowers, both of which were a vital part of my early life as a solitary and nature-loving child.
4 Think I’ve posted about this before – when I was about 10 I tried to swim out to a diving platform from the beach at Littlestone in Kent. Well, I say I tried – I succeeded, but when I got there I was too exhausted to climb up on it, and it was an awful moment when I realised I’d have to swim all the way back. I’m still here though.
5 Hoping for – Tom Petty’s European tour. But as he’s not going to do one, I’ll have to make do with Richard Thompson next Tuesday at Celtic Connections. He’s going to perform his new album, which I don’t like.
2b Fun with language – that would be the time I inveigled myself into Gene Pitney’s dressing room at some North London cinema by pretending to be the president of his French fanclub. I did speak quite a lot of French to him, as well as English with a very strong French accent, because I thought it would sound more authentic. He was very VERY nice (and I also met Pete Quaife of the Kinks – who’s recently died – because he happened to be there at the time). Luckily neither of them spoke French themselves.
I took my friend Lesley with me for moral support, but told her she was to pretend she didn’t speak any English. It was my idea and I wanted to do all the talking myself. In return for her silence I promised to give her the Rolling Stones’ autographs – she liked the Stones more than I did. I’m a bit sorry I did that, now.
1. Have you ever willfully ignored a warning only to find out the hard way that you should have paid heed?
Far too many times to mention. My life is littered with bad decisions.
2. When was the first time you said something in a foreign language and were understood by the person you were speaking to?
When I was about 12, on a school trip to France. I went into a shop and bought a cake. It was one of those Religeuse eclairs, so called because they are supposed to look like fat nuns.
3. What treasured possession, if any, do you still have from your early childhood?
I don’t have anything left from my childhood except memories, but if I could have any possessions back, I think it would be my Britain’s Farm Animals, which I loved when I was small.
4. What has been your closest shave and / or luckiest escape?
I was in a car once that pulled out into the path of a lorry. Luckily, the driver was able to accelerate out of its way, but it was a terrifying moment. I thought we were going to die.
5. What musical event are you most looking forward to or hoping for this year?
The same thing as every year – a King Crimson UK tour. My dream tour would be a reunion of the Fripp/Cross/Bruford/Wetton/Muir band but that won’t happen, ever.
1. Nothing much comes to mind, as I’m in the anally retentive camp that reads instructions, listens to warnings and thinks everything through before acting. That’s not to say that I haven’t ignored warnings, esp. as regards the sorts of things I should be writing, but so far there haven’t been any really serious consequences that I know of.
2. School trip to Boulogne, when I was 11 or so, when I successfully bought an ice cream.
3. Potter the Otter, my favourite stuffed toy, who now sits on top of a bookcase to keep out of the way of the cats.
4. Started overtaking a lorry on a main road in Fife – very good visibility, so I could see that there was plenty of time to get past – and then the engine started to hiccup and lose power as the oncoming traffic got closer…
5. Finding time and energy to get back to doing some guitar practice occasionally.
1. Have you ever willfully ignored a warning only to find out the hard way that you should have paid heed?
“You are not an angry horse” – see answer to q4 for explanation.
2. When was the first time you said something in a foreign language and were understood by the person you were speaking to?
Perhaps only the international language of lurrrve!
3. What treasured possession, if any, do you still have from your early childhood?
Most of my stuff has ended up in the clutches of my offspring. It’s nice to have it around the place. My cuddly ewok however still shares the bed with me, I even take him on holiday.
4. What has been your closest shave and / or luckiest escape?
Reading Festival 2001, vodka + anti-depressants + ecstasy + ketamine = OD & total body shut-down. Thank goodness for the paramedics. Woke up the next day, Sid Vicious t-shirt covered in vomit, track marks in arm. Felt a bit ropey, wandered out of the medical tent, watched Run DMC in the sunshine and perked right back up.
5. What musical event are you most looking forward to or hoping for this year?
Ride reunion. Never gonna happen.
1) Many times, but I forget all the names..(joke)
2) Przepraszam comes to mind. It means ‘excuse me’ in Polish. Came in very hand moving around Warsaw on public transport at all hours of the day, I can tell you.
3) Slides. Photos taken during my first 7 years. Without this collection, there would be no other pics of the great events of that time (first day at school, first party, holidays etc. Nothing could replace those.
4) I once crawled behind the sofa (as a little dot) with a pair of steel scissors and cut clean through the electrical flex of the christmas tree lights, which were on at the time! Flash! Bang! Wallop! What a picture! Can you imagine if it was your three year old? Dont know how I escaped that one..
5) Bob Dylan, Chronicles Vols 2 and 3. No question!
Looks like your music wish may come true: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/19/bob-dylan-six-book-deal
I know! Isn’t it excellent?
1. I’m sure I have willfully ignored several warnings, but I’ve probably heeded several, too. So it all evens up doesn’t it?
2. My first successful use of a foreign tongue was probably buying an ice-cream in Italy when I was 10/11, on holiday with Italian-speaking family friends. But the weirdest was when I was in Spain on holiday with a French family (a very lucky exchange deal when I was 13). I went to get a drink in the beach bar and ended up explaining to the waitress in French that I was there on an exchange holiday. After a few sentences I realised she was English.
3. I retain three incomplete and rather battered boxes of Bayko, which I loved playing with as a kid. A precursor to Lego (yes, it’s that old!), you make buildings by sticking metal rods into bakelite ‘floors’ and then slotting in bricks between the rods. Not so good for making spaceships or people but great for pavilions, piers and pagodas.
4. No actual physical close-shaves but several opportunities for disaster: on a Garuda plane to Bali with only half a seat-belt; rolling down motorways on cruise-control, gently dropping off to sleep; on an overcrowded boat off Mumbai with people scrambling to disembark; in the front of a taxi in Alexandria wondering if there really is a gap to get through before that tram hits us…
5. To commemorate 15 years since Jerry Garcia’s death, BBC4 belatedly dedicates (I’ll even permit the use of ‘deadicates’ in the publicity guff) an entire evening to the Grateful Dead, in which there are lots of interviews with band and crew, plenty of unseen footage and hordes of musicians falling over themselves to confess how much they secretly love the band and admire the way they wilfully ignored warnings all their professional lives.
Well, Chris, BBC4 is currently running a series called Legends on Fridays (tomorrow – Thin Lizzy), and if Jerry Garcia isn’t a legend I’d like to know who is.
I’m not holding my breath, tfd, the Beeb has managed to ignore him quite well so far. They commissioned an Arena programme before Jerry died called The Grateful And The Dead, which looked at some of the grants the Dead’s charity, the Rex Foundation, gave to UK avant-garde composers (a Phil Lesh hobby-horse) but not even the film-maker still has a copy of that!
1. No. I was always a Very Good Girl.
2. Pass. But I DO remember the first time I ever understood anything ‘proper’ in foreign, which was hearing a German radio announcement about a new Pope having been elected.
3. My hair.
4. I am a Mother, I do NOT live dangerously! Also, I’d be more likely to curl up and go to sleep under the influence rather than leaping off any kind of edifice.
5 The RR Social we ALL manage to attend, what else?! (Includes guest appearances by FamilyofWebcore, Maddy & the Go-Go Gurus, The In-and-Outlaws, TheBoyWonder, Mitch & the Rockers, Sourpus and the Blab Happy Allstars, and Magic’s Brighton Beach Boys. Sorry, Carole, Robert Fripp’s washing his hair that night.)
1. Isaac pulls Steenbeck-the-dog’s ears all the time! I try to explain that this puts him face to face with her big fangs, but he’s okay with that.
I think I have to answer this one as a mother…I’m an anxious person in some ways, and I’m always worried that I’ll pass that on to the boys(yes, I’m anxious about being too anxious). I try not to constantly say, “be careful,” “that’s not safe.” I remember when Malcolm was little he was climbing on a table, and I said to myself, “Don’t tell him to be careful, let him play,” seconds later he fell off. Sigh. I suppose there’s some balance to be achieved…
2. I suppose in French class. Although I remember once, as a young teenager, I went with my family to Florence. My mother and I were speaking French (very badly) for some reason, and then we realized the family behind us WAS French. I was mortified!
3. I have a penguin (stuffed toy) I bought at a toy store in Highgate Village when we lived there. I used to bring it everywhere I went, well into adulthood. I’m shocked to realize that I don’t know where it is at the moment. When did that happen?
4. I suppose the plane ride from Hawaii back home I’ve talked about before – we lost an engine, I thought we were all dying, I was 15, I’ve never been comfortable flying since.
5. I don’t really know! I have a hard time keeping track of everything, so it’s usually half a year later before I realize my favorite band has released an album, let alone that they’re touring and playing a show in my back yard.
1. Have you ever willfully ignored a warning only to find out the hard way that you should have paid heed?
I’m sure I have ignored warnings lots of times, but I can’t actually remember them. Obviously there wasn’t much pain involved.
2. When was the first time you said something in a foreign language and were understood by the person you were speaking to?
I was on a school holiday in Saarland, Germany. I must have been 14 or so. I’d done maybe a year of after-school German (all I was destined to do), and I walked up to a street seller who was demonstrating his fuzzy worm worm toys and asked him, “Wie viel kostet es?”. He told me how much it cost – in English. Obviously my accent was rubbish.
3. What treasured possession, if any, do you still have from your early childhood?
I still have my clockwork musical teddy bear. I was nearly one when I was given him (he was a ‘first Christmas’ present). He plays the tune of The Teddy Bear’s Picnic, and he’s still wearing the waistcoat I made him when I was a teenager. (Dunno what happened to the tank-top-that-should-have-been-a-jumper that he was wearing before that. It remains the only thing I have ever knitted, and I didn’t do the sleeves.)
I’ve still got the fuzzy worm toy, too.
4. What has been your closest shave and / or luckiest escape?
I’m not the sort to live dangerously. The only thing that comes to mind was when I cycled into a wasp, which predictably stung me. I reacted – an hour or so later – with an anaphalptic shock (it was the second time I’d ever been stung, so I didn’t know I was allergic to wasp stings). It took a while to realise what was happening, but when I got to a doctor, he gave me a piriton tablet and said, “If you were going to die, you would have done by now”.
5. What musical event are you most looking forward to or hoping for this year?
The release of the much-delayed Julianne Regan/Wayne Hussey collaboration album.
1. Usually.
2. At the Eiffel Tower. Asked for “pomme frites s’il vous plais” in best pidgeon French only to be told “You want salt & vinegar with that, mate?”. Gave up on languages after that, though my American is coming along.
3. Can’t think of anything.
4. Shoeteen’s 1st solo fender bender.
5. On-U 30. New Pop Group stuff.
shoey – can you fetch a couple of albums out of the shared dropbox i did for you – my e-mail is broke so can’t send anything at the moment… cheers.
Sure thing. Cheers!
1. The list would be very long indeed but I’ll go with what was a universal caution given out to kids in our valley. Don’t go in the mines. It related directly to #4.
2. Probabaly at one of the regular Mexican dances. At the time nearly all of the local Mexican kids spoke english but sometimes there would be relatives from south of the border. So – quieres bailar? was probably the first time outside of my one summer class of spanish.
3.Very – little I think a few baseball cards might be it.
4. Mining was the reason Nevada became a state and the hills & mountains surrounding my valley were full of abandoned mines. Some were just ‘glory holes’ only dug out a small distance. Others were quite extensive & a natural draw for kids. After equiping ourselves at the army surplus store many days were spent exploring. One of the big ones north of town ran a couple hundred yards into the hill before branching out from a large central space Each of these branches had smaller branch offs. After exploring a whole series of these to the right we had worked back to the main & ventured down the center tunnel. As we approached a branch my flashlight was running out of power (no energizers back then) The group pressed on to the right but i wanted to go down the left & started down using kitchen matches. I realized I was gonna need a few to get back but thought I had seen the end of the branch & felt ahead in the dark. The air suddenly felt colder & stopping I let a match to see & found myself on the edge of an open shaft. Scared the bejesus out of me & I edged back in the dark. On a later trip in the same mine we found our flashlights wouldn’t penetrate to the bottom and a pebble took to one thousand 8 to return a sound. Not the only close call of mine but still the most vivid. All these mines have since been filled in after too many accidents.
5. B.B. King will be here next month & though I’ve seen him probably 20 times I wouldn’t mind another.
better do some answers my paperwork is failing.
1. Have you ever willfully ignored a warning only to find out the hard way that you should have paid heed?
how would you find out otherwise.
2. When was the first time you said something in a foreign language and were understood by the person you were speaking to?
French day trip 13 or 14 years old – (got all the boys in the class porn playing cards, cheap flick knives and instant lung cancer ciggies) everyone then panicked coming through customs on the coach – but I’d worked out the teachers were bringing too much duty free through.. so just to hide them and blame the religious education teacher if anything was found… luckily the knives broke pretty quickly… for some reason I’d learnt how to ask for them in French on a trip to Switzerland a few years earlier.. weird.
3. What treasured possession, if any, do you still have from your early childhood?
still have my first football programs from matches I was taken to.. and zane is playing with toy cars that my dad gave to me that he had as a kid.. we don’t throw anything out… mend it.. pass it on.. is our mantra. (my nan knitted me some slob socks and a jumper for xmas when I was six – she wasn’t very good at sizes – I saved them and grew into them when I was a student.. all in all, they survived 30 years)
4. What has been your closest shave and / or luckiest escape?
from the ages of 7 to 33 I pretty much had a relaxed attitude to risk – at seven I walked across a wet scaffold pole 100ft up a castle turret- since then : been shot at – spiked – not going down the b-mac road! – I’m a pacifist, so would step between people beating the shit out of each other, to stop fights – had iron bars smashed across my back – lent off cliff tops to see if strong winds will hold my weight – had interesting driving experiences – plane nightmares – and boat ‘mild’ panics – (too many stories) .. and then my son was born and the comment always is “BE CAREFUL”
5. What musical event are you most looking forward to or hoping for this year?
the next.
1. Last trip to sweden
MrsPanther: “Better hold the bottom of that bag, looks like it might break”
Me: “Hmm….yeah……maybe”
Two minutes later the bag broke and a load of newly purchased antique crockery smashes on the floor. I was in the doghouse for days!
2. Similar to above. Buying bangers on a school trip to France.
3. Can’t think of anything….I used to have a signed photo of Rolf Harris that I thought I would keep forever, don’t know where it is now..
4. Lots of stupid teenage shenanigans involving drink/drugs heights/water!
5. Would love to go to the 1st ATP Japan, Godspeed …and Boris are playing, but don’t think the budget will stretch after buying the house.
Looking forward to the new Bright Eyes album though and the Pulp reunion should be interesting…
Is there anything to hear from the new Bright Eyes yet? When’s it out?
http://saddle-creek.com/home.html
‘shell games’ track – free download for e-mail swap.
cheers Shane, saved me the trouble!
It’s a great track and has made me pretty excited for the new album!
Should be out mid to end of Feb…..I think!
that’s ok panther – I promised I’d not get another B.E as I have about 10 – but the song sounds good and some of the packages look very tempting.
fanks guys. i think i had already heard this. it’s quite 80s fm rock isn’t it?
1) Yes. Sore point. Won’t talk about it.
2) I’m rotten at languages but I always learn the word for “please” and just say it at random. It seems to work.
3) Sooty. He is a puppet and the same age as me. He is not Sooty as you know him. He is white not yellow. It is not certain that he is meant to be a bear. Nevertheless, he is Sooty and he will never leave me.
4) I got knocked down by a car once. I was 14. Running for a bus. Mercifully the car was going slow round a well known blind spot. The driver have me a lift home. I shouldn’t have got in but I was in shock. My parents were in more shock when we arrived. Only bruised ribs but could have been much worse. I did actually fly through the air or at least that’s how it seemed at the time.
5) Either Mary Coughlan or Eddie Reader forming a band with Jah Wobble, Nitin Sawhney and Richard Thompson. Mind you, I looked forward to that last year.