Midweek Music Memories: Smells Like Teen Spirit

So the inevitable murmurs of a Nineties revival have been in motion for a while. How far this will go (EMF box-set anyone?) we will have to see but for me, if you’re going to revisit the 90s, you start with this video. I was living in tiny village at the time in Italy, a land inhabited by horrific musical monstrosities such as man that stayed at number 1 for months with a song called ‘Lambrusco & Popcorn’, I was musically starved with the exception of occasional access to MTV Europe which salvaged me from the likes of Eros Ramazotti and my mother’s Simply Red cd and introduced me to Nirvana. It was never the same again…

 

I Went To Westfield With My Mother On A Saturday Afternoon… And We’re Still Speaking

Three words and I can guarantee your pity & sympathy: Westfield, Saturday, Afternoon. Mother was up for the weekend and probably due to both of us reading far too many magazines that preach such madness, we thought it was a good idea to embark on a mother-daughter bonding trip in one of Europe’s biggest shopping centres.

It wasn’t the greatest start that we had to queue to get off the tube platform at Shepherds Bush. I felt my shopping-phobic mother look at me pleadingly while I administered soothing phrases like “it’s fine, it’s always like this, once we get in there it really is massive, y’know”  as we tried not to freak out at the sea of glazed-eyed pre-shoppers in front of us barely saying a word to each other. It was a bit too much like a zombie movie and Simon Pegg was nowhere to be seen. I admit – I did attempt to recall from Fox’s Walking Dead graphic novels what method was best to dispose of zombies if we needed to… blowing their heads off from what I could remember and there defs aren’t any gun-shops in Westfield = yikes.

After cheating and going straight to Fire & Stone for carbs and charming/slimy waiters (probably depends on how many carbs you’ve consumed), we browsed round Debenhams and swiftly realised that most of the stuff was either spangly party wear or late-summer wear, both felt rather optimistic on this cold, grey Autumn afternoon. I’ll spare you the details of every single shop we went in, I will say that black leather boots with zips up the insides that look ‘a bit 60s’ are NOT in plentiful supply in Westfield, that a shop assistant in M&S actually sneered at my mother when she very sweetly enquired in her best quite-posh telephone voice if there was a ‘Primani’ in Westfield (there isn’t, the nearest is Marble Arch, cheap ankle boots fans) and we got a bit too furious when inhaling the piped in bread smell with no such products to be seen anywhere (pumping carb smells into the path of  vulnerable customers is MORALLY WRONG we both agreed).

Needless to say, we escaped to the M&S cafe after not too long, harped on about how overwhelming being bombarded with consumerism was then rinsed the 3 for 2 deal within an inch of it’s life in Boots and she bought one of the No 7 mascaras with the hi-tech fancy brushes that the posh actress with enormous eyes from Ashes to Ashes advertises on telly, despite being adamant she’d not seen any such campaign both in print or on the telly (she blatantly had, for the record).

Realistically, with one a borderline agoraphobic (well, she doesn’t do large amounts of people, especially when formed in a queue in front of her preventing her from paying for stuff and getting out of the shop in less than 5mins) retail-phobe that prefers to shop online (even shoes = hardcore) and the other perpetually skint so out of practice, we were not exactly in our comfort zone so did pretty well by managing not to fall out once all afternoon. I’d love to provide some powerful insight into consumerism in a time of economical crisis or even be able to spot trends/social behaviours that could be used for some genius marketing strategy but I’m afraid I got so overwhelmed with the scale of the place, the literal bombardment with branding – logos being chucked at you left, right at centre and watching hollow-eyed people around us stalk the place for bargains armed with arsenals of plastic. I guess I get more stressed out by the whole thing than I realised which is weird because the whole point is that shopping is meant to be an enjoyable experience, Westfield is designed in such a way as to make us enjoy ourselves more and therefore spend more. What happens when folk become immune to the fake bread smell (metaphorically speaking) and realise they can’t afford to buy any more Stuff? Armageddon?

Mrs ‘Arris Goes To Paris, Story Of O… keeping it eclectic.

My thoughts seemed scattered this week, fizzing around my brain like Twizzlers and never seeming to settle. I’d rather it was like this than having to wade my way through the fog of Feeling Crap but it’s bewildering at times. Noisy as well.

 My mission for expanding my cultural horizons  this week has mostly consisted of dragging my brother round the HMV dvd floor on a £5 limit (he was very patient but very tired afterwards but don’t mistake him for being long-suffering – his favourite title by far was ‘Mrs ‘Arris Goes To Paris’ = genius but alas I chose some obscure Spike Jonze epic over it, yes – je suis a tad pretentious, the former will probably be more fun) and starting to read ‘Story Of O’ on the bus then realising very quickly that it was not the wisest choice for someone with a somewhat animated facial demeanour by default to be reading on public transport. You live and you learn. I have to say, it was freaky how quickly one becomes rather blasé about all the descriptions of whipping, degradation etc. The Guardian review declared you ’peculiar’ if you don’t get hot and bothered by the first 60 pages. Hmm, I’ve not read as far as the 60th page but no really, I get it, she’s a sex slave – after you’ve read a few intricately detailed descriptions of O’s arse getting whipped by various gentlemen, you get a bit ‘yeah, and?’, I found. If you haven’t read Story Of O and have no idea what I’m going on about – go read the first few pages in Waterstones if you’re too chicken to buy it. And send me a picture of your face.

My Christmas Expanded And Yet I Survived

Well I’ve already completed two of the major blogging clichés, blogging aimlessly about procrastination and earnestly pontificating over the year that has passed, might as well go for the full three and blog about Christmas too…

For many years my family were quite little, there were only 3 of us – my mum, ,my brother and me so over the many Christmases we’ve spent together, we’d developed subconscious methods to combat the intensity of sharing a normally fairly small space with 3 pretty substantial personalities encased in 3 not exactly petite frames – basically we always had pretty chilled out Christmases.

My mother, legend that she is, has always stocked the cupboards like she has at least 5 more (rugby player sized) offspring about to turn up from somewhere and is an awesome cook so The Christmas Day Walk has always been a necessity to minimize sumo-scaled expansion of ones gut over the Christmas break. Other traditions have included myself and my brother fighting over the remote control to the point of violence then literally the next minute be in fits of giggles over whatever comedy special we’ve compromised on, my mum will make Christmas pudding because she forgets that none of us actually like it, and we still have stockings(she does ours, I do hers) despite all being far too old, really. Yes we scrapped after being under each others feet for several days but it was always sorted out within the hour and overall, as long as we all took ourselves off for a bit of space, it was all good.

This year was different. We had the intermediary last year, my mother’s partner and my brother’s partner joined our little trio and suddenly we had to behave and be considerate and things like that. Last year was a bit sensitive all round – it was new for everyone, everyone was on their best behaviour yet constantly whispered under their breath querying into significant others’ well-being. Noone really chilled out.

This year it was the same base unit of 5, chilled out considerably more but yet still well behaved from the lack of familiarity. Add to this the other side of the family, two more daughters, their partners, their mother and a baby and fear was in my belly by Christmas Eve if I’m totally honest. It was all good – you forget that with two families combined together on such occasions how much common ground (taking the p*ss out of our parents predominantly) there is. The tension evaporated for the most part and that was even before the wine was cracked open. I’m relieved to say it’s been a lovely Christmas and I was pleasantly surprised. I think it’s easy to panic when things don’t seem conventional but families are such weird and wonderful things at the best of times, sometimes you end up with the one you were born with – sometimes you create your own, sometimes you have more than one and over the course of time they change, other times you can lose touch and then later become close to some of them again. And that’s alright.