Why I am not taking the lack of cycle safety lying down.

Going a little away from my usual topic (jazz) for a post.

Last week someone I am very fond of and have a lot of respect for in my life, in response to the recent spate of cyclist deaths, tried to tell me to stop cycling in London.

I said No. Very calmly and very clearly.

No. I will not stop.

I asked the person if they knew the statistics for pedestrians/ drivers killed in accidents in the capital this year. I admitted that I don't have them to hand either (though I could probably lay my hands on them pretty quickly). Every single death on the roads is a tragedy (I know that first hand because I've lived through the aftermath of losing a good friend in a hit and run). I patiently explained that I am exceptionally lucky to live in a place where the main route I take every day takes me largely along traffic calmed residential streets and cycle paths. I do have to cross some major trunk roads but I do so carefully and at junctions with traffic lights. I obey the rules of the road. I wear a high vis jacket, a helmet and I have lights. When the person complained about cyclists going through red lights I countered that there were a percentage of idiots in all groups of road users.

But I think this was the wrong response. I focused on reassuring the person of my own personal safety and lack of idiocy.

I think it was the wrong response because I failed to mention that I absolutely WILL NOT get off the road that I have paid to be on (I'll explain that in a minute). Because if I do that, and all the other cyclists do that - the polluting, corporate, oil industry dominated, motor vehicle culture will win, by default, unchallenged. And that, I firmly believe, would not be an acceptable state of affairs.

In part I cycle because it's convenient, cheap and a frankly joyful experience to be out and about in the fresh air seeing London's many and beautiful trees and buildings changing with the seasons. I also cycle because it is, for me, a moral choice, a little piece of daily activism. It is low pollution, low emissions - a small thing I can incorporate into the daily practice of being an imperfectly responsible human. It doesn't cause too much noise pollution unless I happen to be singing on my bike (I do, I'm sorry). It takes less stuff to make a bike than a car. It frees up a seat on the bus for someone who isn't as physically able as I am. It keeps me fit and keeps me away from the inevitable lurgies I pick up when getting the tube regularly (it was mumps last time). I hope that if I continue it will reduce the burden I place on health services as I age. I want to live in a London that puts people at its heart - a London that is a nice place to walk and cycle around. I want that, selfishly, for me. I want it, altruistically, for you. If you want to, I want you to feel safe cycling in the glory of the mornings, evenings and middays.

There are some inevitable arguments that are often thrown at cyclists.

But what about....

All those cyclists who go through red lights?
Uhm...I'm going to approach this a different way. You might not like it. Have you seen the way pedestrians behave at pelican crossings? If not - hie thee to Ludgate Circus, or the junction between Tavistock Place and Southampton row, the truly evil junction by King's Cross - and watch. Every day I see far more pedestrians going through red lights - frequently without looking in all the directions traffic might be coming from than I do cyclists. Which isn't to say cyclists don't do it - but I would suggest that cyclists tendency to run red lights is largely a logical follow on from our very widespread practice as pedestrians rather than from the callous devil may care disregard for others to which it is commonly ascribed. I'm not condoning running red lights. Walking trumps cycling in the carbon emissions & vulnerability stakes and going through red lights is both risky and wrong. I'm just pointing out a different view of why some people might do it and think it's OK.

Safety on the roads relies on ALL road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorists) putting safety and common decency before the illusory convenience of a few saved seconds. There are more restrictions, more responsibility placed on motor vehicles because a ton+ of metal going at 20+ mph does more damage than 100 kg or so of cyclist + bike going at 0-20 mph or a 70 kg or so pedestrian going at 0 - 5 mph. Not that physics absolves ANYONE of their responsibility not to be a dickhead on the roads.

Road tax?
There is no such thing. Churchill abolished it in 1928. There is Vehicle Excise Duty which is a tax on emissions. Even if VED were hypothecated (it's not - it is a form of general taxation) it would contribute only a third of the costs of building and maintaining the roads. The rest is met from general and local taxation. Since I pay Income Tax via PAYE, I pay council tax and I pay VAT, insurance tax and on occasion alcohol duty - I HAVE BLOODY WELL PAID TO BE ON THE ROADS. I do feel entitled to use them not only as a sometimes bus passenger and as a consumer of goods/services delivered by motor vehicles but also, if I want, as a cyclist. It's not illegal. Since the emissions (a little methane aside) are pretty low and the wear and tear on the tarmac is (bike+me < 100 kg) low I'm not sure quite why people think I should contribute more than I already do or exactly what their argument is that I shouldn't be safe.

All those cyclists who cycle wearing black and with no lights wearing headphones?
A certain percentage of road users of all types are idiots. I try hard not to be one of those cyclists. You should try hard not to be one of those road users too.

As I said above, I lost a dear friend on the roads. He was a pedestrian crossing the road. He was also the kind of friend who was a top bloke, a mostly ethical, caring, immensely creative, ordinary and extraordinary, somewhat faulty human. I still miss him. Four weeks before his death I was knocked off my bike and my leg was so badly bruised it took six months before I could walk properly. None of that put me off cycling. I am far more scared of driving than I am of cycling. The last time I got behind the wheel I was a shaking mess by the end of a very short journey. Why? In a car I am far more likely to damage or kill someone else. The person most likely to be injured if I have a bike accident is me.

Safety on the roads relies on ALL road users (pedestrians, cyclists and motorists) putting safety and common decency before the illusory convenience of a few saved seconds. It also relies on governments building roads that are fit not only for the purpose of whizzing around - but also fit for the purpose of keeping ALL road users safe. I do not take the matter of cycle safety lying down. Which is precisely why - at 5:30 pm today I plan to be lying down, my trusty metal steed, besdie me, playing dead outside TFL's HQ on Blackfriars road.

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As an aside, given that this week has seen the International Day Against Violence Against Women, I wish I'd asked the person this. There have been 13 tragic cyclist deaths on London's roads this year. Every week 2 UK women are killed by a male partner or ex partner. Every single one of those deaths is also a tragedy. Would anyone extend the logic of telling me to stop cycling to telling me to not get a boyfriend? Or would you assume that I am perfectly capable of making a character judgement about a potential mate or that this couldn't, for some magic reason, happen to me. That "not all men are like that" (not all cyclists, not all drivers are, either, incidentally). Personally I find road safety judgments much easier to make than character judgments.

London Jazz Festival Update #1

So far London Jazz Festival is turning out to be both a bit of a healing, joyful experience for me. Admittedly in an I keep finding tears welling in my eyes at gigs kind of a way. Spiritually educational, if you will. 

Friday 15th November. 

Hugh Masekela & Larry Willis + Zena Edwards. 
Royal Festival Hall. 7.30 pm

Zena Edwards.

Sometimes an artist says something that is exactly what you need to hear. Asks the questions you need asking.

Settle down.

Why do you need to apologise for who you are?

Hugh Masekela & Larry Willis

Iê! Viva meu Mestre

A set filled with joy. Wise elders with still young souls. Jazz is a magnificent tree with deep roots. The jazz of the day, of the now of the present, is the branches and the leaves. There are regular cycles of budding ideas, shades of green, ripe harvests, spectacular autumn hues, rest and renewal. The cycles are different for each artist making the tree at once deciduous and evergreen. The leaves turn light into energy but the roots are equally alive in the now, delivering water and nutrients from the fertile soil of the past and the compost of many cycles of leaves.

We forget sometimes, I think, that roots are living things too. 

Hugh Maskelea also passed on some sage advice from Louis Armstrong.

"If I can sing, anyone can!". 

True that.

Saturday 16th November.
Phronesis
Cockpit Theatre. 7:30 pm.

Iê! Vamos jogar, camará

Phronesis are the London leaves du jour. Deservedly so. Following a pretty relentless 2013 touring schedule, including gigs played in pitch blackness, they are - to use a technical term we used to use in Samba Reggae - TAF (Tight.As.Fuck.). Before I've thought they sounded like three disparate voices that somehow created a sound that worked even though I couldn't work out why or quite how it worked. Though work it did. The Phronesis sound is coalescing. Like a stew with a counter-intuitive combination of ingredients that's been cooked for a long time - the flavours combining to become something deliciously rich and strange. As always the beauty was burnished by the manifest evidence of mutuality, respect and collaboration. 

Judging by reports from Cheltenham where a drum fell off stage and Saturday Night when a cymbal went for a burton the gremlins have been at Anton Eger's kit again. Hopefully the good LJF vibes have exorcised them. Or perhaps it is a side effect of the trio's immense kinetic energy. 

Comparisons with wild horses are not exaggerated. 

Sunday 17th November.

ACS (Geri Allen, Terri-Lynne Carrington and Esperanza Spalding)
Barbican Hall. 4 pm.

Iê! Sabe tocar.

Wow! 

Three fabulous women. On stage. Playing instrumental jazz. You don't see that very often. Nuff said.

Esperanza Spalding is a staggeringly good musician. If there were any justice in the world Spalding's genuine talent would command the kind of attention that Cyrus, Allen et al are currently getting, and without the need for manufactured scandal. A monster bassist with the voice of a lark. She may well be a one or two in a billion talent that comes along in each generation. 

Which is not to say either Geri Allen or Terri-Lynne Carrington aren't also wonderful musicians. But Spalding is, I hope, a legend in the making. 

And this is still the beginning... 

ACS's playing of Allen's "Unconditional Love" was spectacular and I suspect will turn out to be my highlight of the festival. It was all I could do not to gape open mouthed as Spalding's voice took flight over her rumbling bass in a wonderful piece of writing filled with light and shade. 

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A further note on Phil Johnson's recent rehash of the old tired Jazz Is Dead Chestnut - each of these three very different gigs was sold out. The audiences were noticeably diverse in terms of age and ethnicity. Jazz is manifestly ALIIIIIIIVE! and I would strongly suggest that Mr Johnson writes something a little more original about the genre.  

Oh, god, Uhm...I'm sorry....epic fail resulting in epic gig update

I have utterly failed. I haven't written a thing about live jazz since July.. And it's not like we're talking about one or two gigs...

I take out my diary. Yes, I have an actual  physical paper diary. What of it? I do not own a smart phone, see. Though I do now have a phone with a proper menu system, a reasonable vocabulary, and an actual diary function. No more texts about St Pancakes station. 

So flicking through my diary....

August was a deserted wasteland of no gigs.  

September.

Sunday 1st. Green Note Jazz Jam. Oh hell. I can't remember who played. I think it involved Liam Noble. I do remember that there was a female drummer who played in the Jam. 

Tuesday 3 September. Sons of Kemet at the Vortex

I love Sons of Kemet. I love that the Vortext tried to do the music justice by taking all the tables out so people could, potentially, dance. Of course people, mostly, didn't dance. I did a bit. So did a big chap with some ace bad dad dance moves. Well I say that - but there's no right or wrong, good or bad, to people's dancing at gigs. Everybody else pretty much just stood, like at an Indie gig, and maybe shuffled a bit. Oh jazz audiences you are so bloody staid. You stand there nodding knowledgeably when the music is inviting you to jump into its open arms and dance with it. How I wanted to accept that invitation yet the staidness stifled me making me too self conscious. This stuff is the shit. Just let go. 

Friday 13th September. 

Oddarang. King's Place Festival.

These pieces, from their new album In Cinema were commissioned to accompany films. The films inside my head were pretty good too. I think my mind plagiarised one of them from a sequence in Emir Kusturica's film The Time of the Gypsies where there is a guy, in a car, and there is a red piece of fabric fluttering out the window of the car as it goes under sodium lit underpasses. 

Slowly Rolling Camera. King's Place Festival.

One of those bands I want to like more than I actually do. I kept getting distracted because I could hear the click track the band hand on various kinds of feeds in their ears. I never really realised before that people did this...had a click track as a feed like that on stage. 

Saturday 14th September.

Rob Newman. King's Place Festival.

Yes, I know, comedy not jazz. I still like Rob Newman. The teenager in me always will. Yes! It's all going to be alright! You see that, that's you that is. 

Sunday 15th September

Jason Rebello. King's Place Festival.

I enjoyed it a lot. I remember something about Mr Rebello saying he had a dream that told him to play the insides of the piano. So he played the insides of the piano. 

Thursday 26th September

Roland Perrin & Rachel Sutton. St Mary Magdalene, Munster Square

Unusual venue for a jazz gig being a barn of a victorian Catholic church in the middle of a council estate square. There was a lovely solo piano piece that was filigree and heartfelt. 

October

Friday 4th October.
Tori Freestone Trio and somebody else. Con Cellar.

I love Tori Freestones compositions. Just wish she'd play them "out" to the audience a bit more - rather than turning away - or drifting off the mic as in previous gigs. The second band had a trombone player. I like the sound of the trombone. It's warm. I could probably actually live next door to a trombonist and not go insane. 

Wednesday 16th  October. 

Empirical + Beyounes Quartet. Purcell Room. 
The best gigs are the one's with pictures. The one's where I close my eyes and let my mind drift in response to the music. There was a red ribbon/ banner/ flag. Fluttering and snapping in a strong breeze. Against a background of blue sky and grass. Then we were bowling along dappled country lanes in a 1920s open topped car with the ladies holding onto their Cloche hats. 

Sometimes it seems to me that a female instrumentalists best chance of getting on stage in a jazz-labelled gig at a major London venue is to be a classical/ crossover string player rather than an actual composing, improvising, jazz musician. Not just this gig...but Alex Wilson at King's Place a couple of years back, Neil Cowley and the Mount Molehill strings, Dave Stapleton's Flight, Avishai Cohen with strings at the Barbican this year. Over and over again the only time you see anywhere near even ratio of male:female musicians seems to be when there's strings involved. It's not the musicians' faults. It's a systemic problem with deep roots in education and general gender stereotypes. But because of it Jazz is missing out on a wealth of talent and new ideas. 

November

Friday 1st November.

Joe Wright's Nightjar & Freddie Gavita. Con Cellar. 

Nightjar were fantastic. I loved the texture of Alice Zawadski's vocals and the subtle but unintrusive sax-electronics. One song had me mentally flying over London, from Parliament Hill - swooping down to land in the middle of a traffic free Tottenham court road bathed in syrupy autumn sunlight. Another, I believe a setting of a Ted Hughes poem, had me picturing a tiny white bungalow, trying to huddle out of the wind between the hills and the sea. A single lighted window with the silhouette of a cat looking out. 

Thursday 7th November. 

Acrobat. Lume @100 Crows Rising. 

I enjoyed the music but may have been too tired/ distracted to form any lasting mental pictures from it that I could tell you about. I spent some time wracking my brain for the name of the pub before successive refurbishments. I know I came here after a clown army intervention in the police station round the corner. And for a Hangover lounge thing. And at least once to dance to Two Tone/ Northern Soul/ Ska. I remember once not knowing what I wanted to drink and the barman suggested Morgan's Spiced and lemonade. The toilets now look as I imagine such facilities looked in posh 19th centuary hotels. I can recommend the hot chocolate though. I think it probably used to be the Salmon & Compass. 

I will be going to six gigs in London Jazz Festival. My new not-smart (what is the proper opposite there? scruffy? trad?) has a note function - so hopefully there is some chance I'll be able to jot down my impressions as I go along. 

Striding along flopping in armchairs.

I have been learning a song, Body and Soul, in an ol' fashioned stride piano arrangement. This involves playing the root (bottom note) of the chord in the lower bass registers of the piano with the left hand. Then jumping the hand up and playing rest of the chord in the tenor register. Your basic - ooompah - style of playing. Not unlike the left hand of may ragtime pieces. But then at some point you have to improvise with your right hand over this. Which isn't very easy even at a nice slow Ballad tempo. 

After a great deal of practice - a lot of it with my eyes closed - I can now do this fairly well on this song. In my last piano lesson my teacher was trying to get me to make this sound better. So we were talking about making the hand "flop" into the keys. Like the feeling of "flopping" into an armchair. 

As is its wont - my imagination has taken this idea and run with it. 

First of all I had a very clear picture of the type of chair. Green leather. Old but still quite firm. One of those one's with the circular covered buttons in the upholstery. In fact if you do a google image search for green leather chair you get this - which is pretty much exactly what I was imagining.

And I was imagining how it would feel, physically, to just flump down in this thing.

Or should that be phlump?

Around the chair my mind's eye constructed a room. The lounge of a Manhattan loft apartment. Lined with books of all sorts. A green leather sofa in the same vein as the chair. Those green glass and bronze reading lamps you get in an old fashioned library. A baby grand of course.

Then a grey tabby cat appeared and started padding around. And flopping down on the rugs. As cats are won't to do.

As I write this the cat is doing that washing it's inside of the hind legs (arse) yoga thing with one leg in the air.

She's just stopped mid wash and given me The Look. You know? Stoopid human

Put your tongue away, kitten. You're not fooling anyone.

This morning my mind's eye started picturing each note I played as having a tiny green armchair on it. With a tiny person phlumping down into it. Whole teams of them. There was a man in a beige v neck pullover. A woman with glasses, her brown hair in a bun, sensible shoes and a grey slight A-line skirt. I think they may all have been characters from a 1930s/40s period movie. It was all quite retro.

Initially I struggled with the song. Not only is the stride thing technically difficult but. Oh the words. The words. It's one of those unrequited love songs. Where the singer is bemoaning how the beloved doesn't even realise they exist. Now I've been in unrequited love. Many times. Often embarrassingly and painfully so. I'm an expert. And one thing I've come to realise is that this type of unrequited love (there are other types) is something you do to yourself. So accusing the object of affection of anything is a tad unfair. The whole Ballad speed thing is a strugle for me too. I find it really hard not to race away. As if my default inner pace is galloping along too fast for the song and I almost have to slow my heart beat down like hibernating creatures do.

But that mental picture of the room helps. Instead of thinking of the words I am picturing the image of that Manhattan loft room and playing that. This helped me fall in love with the melody. And then with the chord sequence. Which is an absolute delight to improvise over over even just using simple things like the chord notes to make a melody. Or playing the chords and moving them up and down the piano in their different inversions.

And I think that's a thing. With every song you have to find something, no matter how small, to fall a little bit in love with. And the great thing about that is the song, not being human, but being a song, will pretty much always reciprocate.

You want to sit on my lap pusskit? I don't really have much time.

Oh, alright then. Just a few minutes

Enough

I'm not sure it's possible to do enough piano practice.

Well. It might be possible to do too much of one thing and end up with tendonitis/RSI. 

I don't think there's much risk of me managing that. 

I do not mean this in a self critical way. I am not talking about the subconscious waggy fingered voice chiding oneself for not doing enough.

I have lists of things that I want to practice that I don't always manage to fit in (without diluting whatever else I'm working on). Like improvising round the three most common blues sequences in all the keys. Learning to comp and solo on some tunes that horn players commonly like to play so that I can go to jams and sit in. Doing every song I already know in all the keys. Doing every song I already know as if playing with bass and drums instead of the solo piano treatment. 

Weekdays my alarm goes off at 6 am so that I make sure I can do an hour every day before I go to work. Frequently if I'm 'in' of an evening I will also do more then. I am a time thief - pinching 40 minutes here while the rice is cooking or the washing machine is running to work on something. Using up the 10 empty minutes before I have to leave the house to go somewhere.

I don't see practice as "work". To me - practice is part of playing and playing part of practice. 

Practice is a particularly focussed, task orientated type of playing - the ultimate goal of which is to get better. I love and am fascinated by my body-mind's capacity to do new things. Going from not being able to do something to being able to do something is a thing of joy. I get deeply lost in doing exercises round a chord sequence or looping a independent handed groove or a tricky three bars of this or that. I love the process - the slow phasing in and out of a new musical skill until it solidifies and clicks. Like a baby learning to smile or clap - but over and over again. 

And playing is part of practice. When I play I am practising many things. Playing a tune through without stopping. Taking solos. Practising enjoying the simple pleasure of playing.

I set alarms on my phone to tell me when to stop. If I did't I'd get to where I have to go much less frequently.

And of course sometimes I don't use every minute that I could be practising. Sometimes I get home from work and fanny about too much on the internet. Or I watch repeats of The Great British Bake Off because my head is weary of the world and needs to rest. 

In my dream lottery winners life (I don't play) I'd do this all day every day.

There will always be things I could work on. Squeezing it in I have to make choices between practising different things - since I can't do it all. 

I could always find more time.

I can never do enough.

I am an addict.

Match & Fuse Festival - The Vortex 25/07/2013

Match & Fuse Mini-Fest. £15 for two of my favourite groups and two international bands I've never heard of. How could I refuse?

Yeah. OK. I like jazz. It was a 5 minute bike ride away. You're right. I didn't. 

Mopti

Caps, beards and lumberjack shirts. Norwegian band Mopti started out with a dark hypnotic groove then overlaid it with declamatory sax/trumpet lines and guitar burps/beeps. Immediately I was in my own private space movie complete with evil Space Emporer and valiant heroes. There was also some intriguing bass playing with both hands being used to slide up and down the fingerboard. Never seen that before. 

Laura Jurd Quartet

I really like Jurd's compositions. I like the mix of crazy jumbled noise and beautiful lyrical melody lines. It spills over into the improvising to create the impression someone talking to you, in a hard-boppish, good conversation, kind of a way. An echo of Lee Morgan, perhaps.

Achtuum

Despite the vaguely germanic name these guys are in fact French. Very French. I have no idea what bunch of heinous stereotypes exist in my head to make me think that of course the French go in for break-neck semi-fractured be-boppish stuff. I shall smack my own wrists for it. It probably has something to do with early exposure to Jean-luc Goddard films. The synchronicity between sax and trumpet required to achieve this effect was actually jaw dropping. It contained within it the luminous and humane seriousness of a dialogue between clowns. I'm not being disparaging. Once, long ago, I was in the clown army - fighting the forces of capitalism and injustice with no more than a red nose, a bunch of love and a basket full of blessed stupidity. 

Kairos Quartet

First up - hats well and truly off to Corrie Dick who drummed with them on one afternoon rehearsal. I will write about the new album Everything We Hold soon. I promise. I am off work this next week. It's lovely. Go buy it. After the excitements of Achtuum and as a portion of the audience rushed off before their tfl carriages turned to pumpkins - it was gorgeous to slip into the warm waters of the familiar.

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Some gripes

I'm sorry. But as a music lover people continue to do things at gigs that mar the whole process. 

. 

Sadly I spent some of the evening wishing for the Gig Bat (TM) as the persons at the table next to me insisted on chatting through sets, waving of arms, and ultimatley spilling of wine prior to disappearing before Karios 4tet made it to the stage. I know this is a social space, I know it's fun...but also out of respect for the musicians and those who came to listen to all of the music...STFU. 

There also seemed to be annoying number of people intent on documenting everything in a way that meant I was constantly having to shift out the way to accommodate photographers and videographers. The way I see it, the audience are what make a gig - live music, jazz in particular, is by it's very nature ephemeral - that's the whole point. So please feel free to document away - but be discrete have a little more respect for the chumps in the audience who have paid to be there. We, the music loving audience, keep the entire caravan on the road because we want to be there listening to and sharing in what musicians have to say. The clown in me assures you that things do still happen even if they're not captured and distributed via the internet. The untweetable bits are often the best.

Gig Update June - July #1

Oh. Crap.

I am over a month behind with my gig writing up.

I blame combining a full time job with 6 am starts to accommodate not enough piano practice. By the middle of most jazz gigs I'm warmly muzzily tired (especially if I add a glass of red into the mix). I enjoy it immensely - but I don't always remember much.

Kairos 4tet, Saturday 8th June, King's Place
As desired I bought a copy of the new album Everything We Hold - which probably deserves a separate post of it's own if I ever get round to it. It's a lovely thing, get hold of it yourself. Or go and see them live - plenty of opportunities in the UK this summer. I did gently raise an eyebrow to hear that despite an entire suite of tunes dedicated to the occupy movement the bonus track was only available digitally via a corporate, legally tax avoiding, behemoth. I'm fairly certain, however, that I'm conflating two issues here.

Jazz in the Round, Monday 24th June, Cockpit Theatre
I went primarily to hear Cath Roberts Quadraceratops - a band who I've now seen twice and who left me with a big grin on my face both times. If you need cheering up - I recommend checking them out. Then Alan Wilkinson who did some extraordinary free jazz type solo sax stuff that induced a rather dyspeptic expression in most of the audience. Interesting. Then there was Mathew Hallsall doing floaty electronicy things with trumpet and ensemble - like being wrapped in a squooshy musical duvet. Though that may have been the tiredness again.

George Crowley Quintet, Reuben Flower Octet, 5th July, Con Cellar
I had a really nice time and the music was excellent but at this distance I'm afraid I don't remember anything specific that would make for an interesting blog.

Rachel Sutton Band with special guest John Etheridge, 7th July, Pizza Express
I must declare a bias here - the pianist is my piano teacher - so the band and singing were obviously excellent. Venue - could do better by single gig goers - a rather sour sounding booker when I phoned up to buy one ticket and said I would not be joining anyone else. The person who showed me to my table seemed to be a bit grumpy too. My seat was, un-suprisingly given my "on my tod" status - right behind a massive pillar where I couldn't see the band. Fortunately the waiters seemed to have a better grasp of how customer service works.

Briefly considered writing updated lyrics to "I'm a Woman" possibly involving wimmens doing Particle Physics or holding High Office rather than washing socks. I wish to take nothing away from the song as it is - a rousing testament to the damned hard (unpaid) work women have always done. But the idea of a second interchangeable version where the protagonist is good at inorganic chemistry, raising children, being the C.E.O of an FTS100 company or jazz drumming because she is a W-O-M-A-N amuses me. In the interests of fairness, in this day and age, there are obviously also men who can wash socks and stretch meagre incomes mightily.