So what am I concluding from all this? That ‘The Fourth Wall’ is necessary at certain stages of fame? Well, yes and no. For as Price and Andre have proven, if you break it down too much, the public will start to eat you and your career alive. You give away too little you can still die in an accident like any other human being can, $500 million in debt, just like Michael Jackson has. As I have said before, as much as you want to be in control of your life, there is an overbearing factor that you cannot guide it safely through all the trouble, all of the time. Things happen at different times for absolutely no reason, we have all just witnessed one of the biggest examples of that in our lifetime just last week. It is only with hindsight that we can hope to attach meaning and wish for the best for ourselves and our closest friends and family. And what remains of this year, our careers or our lives, all I can wish us all is for the best that we can achieve, within our means. The end.

So what else is new? Well, we all struggle to keep up with the constant bombardment of information spewed in our faces by The Internet, some more so than others. I think my headspace for records, artist names and labels is reaching capacity. I will either have to jettison some old ones or give up with new ones. A couple of new names coming through that have caught my ear this week are Funkineven 1953 and Leftside Wobble. Funkineven is Stevie J, a face around London towns funkier haunts for many a year. His debut ‘You’ will be forthcoming on Eglo and has been given away free around the net for y’all to support. I wholeheartedly suggest you find it, it is fresh and deep truly inspiring stuff. The other discovery came to me on Soundcloud, a more re-edit type of affair, but definitely class and worth digging out if you can. These edits will be very useful for all the upcoming summer sets in Croatia, but more on that next week.  Another big summer record will be ‘One-step’ by Souleance, whom I was lucky enough to catch spinning before Shuya Okino at Goin’ Downstairs at Life last week. There was a great family vibe in there, lots of older crew and a nice middle aged Wednesday night feel to it all. I left fairly early but it was going off big style on the dance floor when I said my goodbyes around 12.30am! But props and big thanks must go out to all that were involved and attended Deviation at the other Wednesday session right at the start of the month. It was such a great night, and we all carried on until the early morn, letting slip some of our old school memories mixed in with the uber new school business. Big up Benji B, Judah, Santi, Alex Nut, Fatimah, Amelia and all the crew that make it happen. I am going away on the day of the next one so I am not sure who it will be yet. I am positive It will be another great session though.

So that is all for this week, people. I haven’t got many stories or thoughts about life of any interest at the moment, so there is no point forcing them out. I feel quite happy at the time of writing this, which kind of means that life just kind of flows over me, as opposed to me being in a very different mindset where everything is just annoying. If you can support your local Domu, please do come and say hello. And make it soon. Love to you all, bye bye!

First of all thanks to all those that came to Deviation on Wednesday and Candela in Cardiff on Saturday.  Needless to say I was amazing and everyone said so. And if you didn’t say it or think it, you are an A-hole. That’s right, an A-hole.  So stick that in your pipe and smoke it. Or in your A-hole.

Here is our first baby hedgehog.

http://spacebass.wordpress.com/

No wait, that is a link to the Spacebass blog, I just did them a free mix. Spacebass are a London DJ collective dedicated to bringing the world’s of Disco, Boogie and you closer together. More power to them, eh sister?

This weeks gigs are listed here and here. It’s all about Herbal in London on Friday with the Aerosoul crew for their compilation launch party, then Northern Comfort with the man Illium Sphere in Hulme, South Manchester. Weed ‘em and reap.

Here is our second baby hedgehog picture. Ahhhhh.

http://rcpt.yousendit.com/697861968/bcb11e55a6ad91b010accbf5a3e9bc2f

No wait, that’s a link to one of the tracks from my Springbreak 12”, out next week on Tru Thoughts. This is the instrumental of my remix of ‘Tickles’ which came out on Sun-Tzu Sound a while back, the vocal of which is also on the forthcoming One Offs, Remixes and B-sides CD.  It’s a ‘Yousendit’ link, so only for the first 100 downloaders and for one week only. I will have some news on the launch party next week, so leep it kocked.

Right, so do I have any amusing anecdotes? No.  If you are bored and have a strange sense of humour look up anything by Adult Swim’s Tim and Eric. Those of you that are American or have cable may have caught some  already, Season 4 was aired from January. I just discovered that one half of the duo Eric Wareheim also directed the Flying Lotus ‘Parisian Goldfish’ video which may have amused you a while ago. Happy hunting!

Here is our third and final baby hedgehog picture. Enjoy!

So then, news. And something special, for you. Yes, you! But first, news.

NEWS:

Sorry, no news this week.

Apart from:

DOMU AT DEVIATION WITH ALEX NUT AND BENJI B, WEDNESDAY 3rd JUNE AT GRAMAPHONE, LONDON. Facebook link here.

DOMU AT CANDELA in CARDIFF, SATURDAY 6th JUNE. THAT’S IN WALES, YEAH!

Facebook event link here.

Follow me on twitter here. I HATE YOU!

Facebook Fanpage here. ARGH!!!!!

So that’s all the news. Thanks to all I saw out and about at The Bedroom Bar with OK-Ma, Souled and Broadcite crew last Sunday, and also Andy Bird and lots of crazy drunken hooligans at The Horse and Groom. I got quite drunk and had to be escorted away from people at 2.30 am before I started to pull my pants down and sing songs about trains. Hope to see some of you out and about soon, remember to wear Billy Lotion in this incredible warm patch, especially on your private part.

HERE IS SOMETHING FREE! IT’S MUSIC!

BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE BYE.

NEWS!

Life is a stage, and us actors upon it, we all know that. Some act more than others, the longer and deeper the act, the harder it becomes to ever stop. In many ways this post represents part of my act, giving a voice and attitude to the character of Domu that evolves over the weeks, months and years I continue to update it and you continue to read it. But something bothers me in the alternative music scene, I worry it is losing it’s foot on the ground, it’s connection with reality that makes it different to commercial and popular music. Whilst we all need fantasies and escapism in our art, Pop culture is overly rife with it, albeit at varying degrees of sacharine sweetness for it’s public to digest. It is a complex personal judgement, how much of the fake, commercial world that exists all around you can you tolerate and accept as unavoidable, and how much of what you used to hold true starts to die as you unavoidably ‘grow up’. The music I have always loved has always felt very earthy and real, a raw expressionism accompanied by a very British humility. Music by talented people that aren’t braggarts, boasters (not the biscuits, I love them), show-offs and know-it-all’s. This has always been my mantra, even from my early days at Reinforced, keep your feet on the ground, or else they are six feet under. But that was ten years ago. The modern artist or performer at any level now depends on seeming to be ‘other worldly’ to their fans, projecting that they have an unobtainable quality or talent that will perpetually keep them elevated above the ultra low modern standard for ‘normal’ existence. And this attitude is everywhere, from the newest graffiti artist or dancer, to the hippest sculptor or DJ, all the while ‘keeping it real’, until it is deemed they no longer need to remain attractive to that certain demographic.

I liken this modern phenomena to the theatrical and televisual concept of ‘The Fourth Wall’. It is an imaginary, invisible barrier between the performer and the audience, simply applied to the notion that a theatre set would usually have three walls, and you are watching through the one they couldn’t put in, otherwise you would just be listening to some people mumbling in a room you can’t see (a bit like 24 hour Big Brother coverage in night vision mode). It is often referred to as ‘breaking the fourth wall’ when an actor speaks directly to the audience, either as themselves or as the character, creating awareness that they are in a play and are complicit in the fact the whole thing isn’t real. Of course in the real world, people are famous just because they can maintain fame, you may initially forget how they got a leg up, but if they persist at playing the game with the media, with a manager and agent you can stay in the general idiot public’s cattle-like gaze for many years. You may have absolutely no talent, they may loathe every inch of your being, but you can sell your entire life to the highest bidder if you have the contacts, inclination and lack of morals. And all of this is only possible if they maintain a strong public persona, very different to their own, and become this thing people can only dream of becoming. Why would they want to know about if you were just like them? You must elevate yourself to this god-like state and keep the pretense up at all times, no matter the cost. On the face of it, these celebrities have broken down the fourth wall, you can see into their lives, through documentaries, magazines, Facebook and Twitter. ‘On the toilet, it’s great but a bit smelly!’, a wonderfully down to earth Tweet from some bum faced self obsessed moron. But it is a dumbed-down and sanitized version of themselves, carefully branded and marketed at plebs like us, to trick us into believing they have respect for their fans and buying public, but wouldn’t dream of actually talking to us as they would expect to be spoken to. So this is the celebrity obsessed ‘real’ world we live in. But does underground music need the same dynamic? How do we give thanks and respect to those who have made it through to the big ’small time’ (or small ‘big time’), those who have given effort and years of hard work, bought joy to those with a thirst for the alternative. And what are these artists goals? Money? Fame? Surely they would just make easier music to understand if that were the case?

My point is this - good, classic Pop music is the hardest thing in the world to master. When I was 21 I thought I could do it if I wanted to, I know what the idiots lap up and I could certainly churn one out if I was sufficiently bored one day. I now realize that is not the case, the luck, contacts, equipment, time and belief in a song to get it anywhere near that point is nigh on impossible to attain. I make this music because it is all I can make. It is what I listen to, and therefore what comes out. And lots and lot and lots of people can do it, some of them better, some not. Big deal. So now I am going to break down my ‘Fourth Wall’ forever, and disregard any luck, talent or hard work I have ever put in to make me feel any better or different to you. I refuse to accept this need for ego boosting is what keeps me in this business, and I refuse to let it seep into the music scene I hold dear to being apart from all that. Although I am a nerd, obsessed with Star Wars, Transformers and all the other crap I consumed as a child, I still live in the real world. 90% of my clothes come from TK MAX. I bought a T-shirt from Next the other day, a Stormtrooper one with the face made from sequins. I have just started to think about private pensions. We are getting some new carpet in our bedroom this week. Does that make me cool? Of course not. But I can’t be bothered to pretend anymore. If you ever see me fronting or acting like I am part of something bigger than it actually is, slap me, please. This whole thing and lots of people within it need a reality check. But know deep inside I now have absolutely no desire to live like those people who sell their lives to continually pretend they are better than anyone else, nor shout louder and louder for attention as the swamp of electronic music gets thicker and deeper every day. I don’t say this so you will think of me as an ‘everyman’ or use it as a tactic to be liked, nor do I want assurance of what I am good at. I know exactly how good I am, and have a firm grasp on it. I am as good as my last record, or my last set. That’s it. One of the things I hated about Drum and Bass when I lost all hope for it was that the major players constantly eluded to the fact they knew exactly how the whole thing was going and was precisely in their control. Non-sense. These brands and identities are much bigger than the sum of their parts, and therefore impossible for any number of taste-makers to guide. The quality control of the producers and DJ paired with the tolerance of the public is all that guides any scene at any given time. Anyone who pretends otherwise is kidding themselves and all of us.

So in summary, underground music needs to exist to be a real alternative to the mainstream. It is still escapism on all levels, it is fantasy, but it’s intentions need to be pure. It needs to retain it’s self respect, to provide honesty and experimentalism, not be dominated by bright colours and shiny things to make it appealing, or by people trying to package it and sell it on at a profit to the masses. That has proven on many occasions to be impossible. The general public will choose at random the best bits to cross over on any sizeable scale, even after the selection of someone important at a label, Myspace or PR company deems them risk worthy. The problem is now there is so much of it, it gets harder to be heard, with dwindling promotional budgets, the decline of vinyl, shops and magazines and the ease of creating things like this. The only window you have to sell out of is the same as thousands and thousands of others, a huge line of virtual market stalls next to one  another, all selling practically the same thing, and most of the time, only to each other. A stable economy? I think not. Will quality prevail? Probably not. Will the humble be heard? Definitely not. The respect I have earned won’t get my kids through college, I know that. All I can hope is that it gets me enough work to keep my mortgage paid and food on the table. Anything else is a bonus.

So after last weeks lazy moan about getting old, I had a chance to get out there and feel alive again, chucking music at groups of largely unsuspecting punters with little or no idea whom I was or why I was there. I believe I may have set some kind of new world record for playing the most consecutive boat parties on consecutive days in different cities. I have currently set the bar at an impressive three. Yes, for reasons too convoluted to explain here, mainly due to some last minute relocations, I ended up playing on stationary boat clubs in Strasbourg, Stockholm and Helsingborg, the former being on the French/German borders and the latter both in Sweden. The whole journey is now a slight haze, feeling like one long day of boarding planes, trains and boats at varying stages of intoxication and exhaustion. A particular low must surely be getting straight on the bus to Baden Baden airport at 07:30 am after one hours rest from the first party, to be blissfully serenaded by a driver who I could tell took sadistic pleasure in playing the radio really loud to make the 45 minute journey as hellish as possible, bar sticking sandpaper to the armrests and firing stickle bricks at your exposed genitalia. I will never enjoy Billy Joel’s ‘We Didn’t Start The Fire’ again, the painful memories of feeling my head warping inside itself from the lips outward far too vivid to ever fully redeem any merit it ever had. I had decided to do a tiny bit of dressing up, something I enjoy on occasion when touring, although something I am keen to not make a gimmick and usually reserve for trips out of the country, on the most part because most people won’t see me again for another year or so and repeatedly remind me of what a complete tool I acted. The theme for Strasbourg was Steve Zissou, the Bill Murray character in Wes Anderson’s ‘The Life Aquatic’, a kind of homage/parody of a Jacques Cousteau type character going through a variety life crisis. I already had a baby blue Penguin polo top and was informed that one of the other guys playing had a red woolly bobble hat, so all I needed to complete the look were some kind of baby blue trousers. We lucked out at a little retro clothes store, where upon I spent 5 euros each on some Alan Partridge style 70’s tennis shorts and some highly flammable nylon tracksuit bottoms. I looked an absolute tit. The strange thing is nobody really commented on my outfit, and I kind of forgot halfway through the evening too. Some English girls thanked me for bringing a bit of soul, funk and beats to their lives, but not one of them asked why I was wearing tiny shorts of an evening and a silly hat that made me look a little bit like Benny from Crossroads played by Bob Fossil. So again proof that turning up to these cities with little or no expectation from the majority of the punters is conducive to little or no judgement on their behalf, merely the opportunity to coax them into dancing to some music they haven’t heard before by playing a few they may have. Other notable highlights included seeing Daniel Salvio play live in Stockholm, performing a great MPC/FX live show with some tremendously fresh electronic music, the man himself dressed as a Nordic re-imagining of an 80’s LL Cool J, if you can imagine what that would look like. Another startling treat was the moment a girl coolly wandered into a space on the dance floor and proceeded to express the most outlandish Scandinavian expressionist dance I have ever seen, complete with ballet kicks, jumps and pseudo ‘Vogue’ arm movements. She was dressed like she had just wandered in from a video of the falling of the Berlin Wall, and reminded me of a female version of ‘Live-Aid’ era Freddie Mercury, but with nicer breasts, and no moustache. Anyway she entertained me for ages, trying to watch her in a manner that didn’t seem too pervy or overtly sexual, occasionally pulling a bemused or shocked face at her extravagance to prove thusly to anyone who noticed me staring for what seemed like an inappropriate amount of time.

So it was fun, Thanks to Lars in Stockholm who will be releasing an EP of mine very soon on Swedish Brandy called ‘This Is House’ in the ‘Domu Discothèque’ style. Helsingborg was lovely, big up to Niq, Henrik, Daniel and Fredrik for the few hours I enjoyed there, it seemed beautiful and I look forward to going back and spending a bit more time there. I think the smaller town will always be more appealing to me, the city a place reserved for going in, doing my business and getting the hell out. I didn’t get a lot of sleep this weekend, nor did I play to as large amounts of people as either I nor the promoters had hoped, but I felt genuine connection to all the people and all the music I played, from the Funky House Seiji had recommended to me to my occasional end of set classic ‘Wonder wall’ as performed by Paul Anka. Today I start the writing of my rock soul project, tentatively pitched as ‘Lucy Pearl meets The Noisettes Via ESG’, an explanation for those of you that speak in music media bollocks. I want to start making some Drum and Bass again and have some ideas for new stuff to write about. So it’s ironic that all this inspiration should come after the low evident in last weeks post. Hold on that isn’t irony, that’s life. As my friend Robin told me in a text relating to his interpretation on it, ‘the night is always darkest before dawn’, and ain’t that the truth. Even in Sweden.

So anyway that’s me laid bare. I didn’t mean to insult anyone who enjoys the types of music I mentioned. I accept I am dealing badly with the way it is all going, from 90’s revival fashion to the popularity of dubstep.  I am struggling to know where I fit in, and what the hell I am doing with my life, that’s what that post was all about really, a kind of misguided cry for help from someone amazingly confused with their professional life and the business he is in. This isn’t a back pedal under the weight of public pressure, merely a second thought on an irrational piece of writing that could go on to cause offence to some and make me sound incredibly bitter and jealous. Even if it is something swimming around in my mind, there is no point drawing in so much energy from others and turning it into pointless debate over things neither I nor they have any possible control. I hope this clears my conscience because I couldn’t sleep. Some may think it took balls to write down all that crap in my head, others may think I was simply whinging about nothing. But at the moment I try to make a living from music and it does stress me out, and as such I do get negative about it all. I guess in retrospect this blog isn’t the place to air it.

Thank you again for your time. If anything I will try to regain an air of humility above all this, and remain focused on the fact that this is all a load of non-sense.

Deepdown Music Present Domu
Thursday April 9th 2009
DSU Durham, Dunelm House, New Elvet, Durham
9- Very Late.
£10 advance tickets only.
info: elbucko100@hotmail.com- 07979 472460- 07878482096

Back with my boys in the North-East who bought you the Parmo story last year, it’s a pre-Bank Holiday smash up! Gonna be loads of House, Disco and Soul, covered in breadcrumbs and served with chips. And cheese.

Next up is:

Should be a good one! More pre Bank Holiday bangers, this time more on the Broken/Fusion tip with Bruce Q in Room 2. Expect Brum Jazz dancers and pill heads wandering into the wrong room.

Anyone in Basel or the surrounding French/German/Suisse areas can catch me on Living Room FM. It is a unique experience, doing a live set and radio interview over dinner whilst a bar and restaurant fills up around you. Anyway, I am there on 16th April, not sure if you can listen in live or listen again, just thought I should mention it, as it will be a few hours mix of what I am into at the moment.

The next day I am spinning in Brighton with the Tru Thoughts massive at their night at Audio on the Marine Parade. Zero DB’s Chris Vogado will be there, as well as Natural Self and MC Mystro playing live, so expect a wide range of experimental dance music, this time covered in pebbles and rocks, as Brighton doesn’t have sand. Have a shoofty at it here. It may be worth remembering on my stag night, which was in Brighton, I stood outside Audio dressed as a Mexican telling all the punters they were fu*king idiots. That wasn’t all I did. I had some chips too. Anyway, let’s hope they don’t hold a grudge.

Hopefully this little spell of gigs can help go towards paying for some carpet for my stairs and landing, which I have just been decorating. Oh and some Easter eggs. Don’t forget to nail an Easter Bunny to a cross to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Cadbury! Love ya, byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

http://soundcloud.com/domu

I have just put up my remix for the forthcoming KPM remix album, which has just been approved by the label, and there is loads of other stuff to check from me and a plethora of like-minded producers from around the world. Enjoy!

Also you may be interested in a sneak peak at the final artwork for my “One-offs, remixes and B-sides” compilation forthcoming on Tru Thoughts this summer. I will be getting test presses of the Spring break 12” soon so fingers crossed for all that!

There’s a world outside your window”, so sang Simon Le Bon in the 80’s charity hit ‘Band Aid’. And he wasn’t wrong. As my body slowly withers away to a pathetic, feeble frame of tiny limbs supporting a huge wobbly head and belly, I can’t help but wonder if I had refrained a tad from being slightly obsessed with my computer for at least an hour every day and gone outside for a walk things might have been a little different. For instance, I wouldn’t have developed my awful habit of flicking between my bookmarks constantly for any changes through the day, like a prison guard anxiously double-checking the monitors for potential breakouts. I have spoken before about the troubles of believing your own hype and what ‘they’ are saying about you on the message boards and forums, and there is nothing like a huge dose of reality smacking you round the face to put all that nonsense into perspective.

I am acutely aware that this blog is now one year old. Woo hoo! Wait a second whilst I put on this party hat and I take this party blower out of the Hoover nozzle (it was doing impressions the popular singer Duffy last night). Ok then, Happy Birthday! But wait, what is there to celebrate? Surely the fact you have no Miami story this year means you didn’t go to Miami? Yes it does. And are you bothered? No, of course not. Why should I be when I can have imaginary conversations with myself on a blog read by about 13 people? No, the way I stay not bothered is to look out of my window. It’s much safer than actually going outside, you don’t have to converse with anyone or interact with plants/vehicles/the elderly or who or whatever else you may encounter from time to time. It is a simple voyeuristic pleasure to occasionally peep into the world of other things, with no ill intention or perversion, to see what they get up to whilst blissfully unaware that you are watching. Plus going to Miami clearly doesn’t do my physical or mental health any good; I usually come back skint, sleep deprived and stinking of 5 kinds of Rum.

Fortunately for me, I live in a house with a garden. My studio window looks out onto an old school, which is now used for community projects, but before all that is my little garden. Unfortunately for me, my next-door neighbour has anywhere between 15 and 20 cats. Now I won’t go into the myriad of problems she creates for us, or the possible reasoning behind them, but suffice to say there are lots of cats climbing a wild and unkempt tree in her garden. I do find it incredibly therapeutic to glance up and see the little multi-coloured collection of cats dozing in the light spring sunlight or lazily batting around a leaf. Yes sometimes they fight, decapitate mice or occasionally rape each other, but that’s fine, I will pretend I didn’t hear or see it, go and make a cup of tea and hope it’s all over when I return. Most of the time my cat, which we inherited a few years ago, fights gallantly for his territory in complicated battles of staring and posturing we simple humans could barely understand after many years of careful study. But nonetheless for me it is a little distraction from the little screen for a few minutes, and a reminder that there is more to life than the things that come at me on this ever bewildering form of communication we call ‘The Internet’ . Thanks to Suisse Tony for suggesting I get a bigger screen, but I am not sure that this will be any help in fighting my increasing feeling of a need to escape my life of escapism.

Maybe I am getting broody watching these little things out of my window? Perhaps now is the time to look towards fatherhood as a way of filling this need for love and attention from an ever-dwindling pool of underground music lovers? I’m sure with a little baby around I won’t care half as much what is going on in the world of ‘Wonky’, ‘Cosmic’ and ‘Dub Step’. I am beginning to understand why some men in their forties and fifties who have been around the scene for years talk to me the way they do, always trying to prove they have done it all before and have still got ‘crazy game’. The insecurity never leaves you, the reminder is always there, you are getting older and slipping further and further away from the minds of those 21 year olds, who are having fun, getting drunk and making love, just like they depict it on Skins. So don’t fight it, accept whom you are, growing old gracefully and if you can’t have a child, have a pet.

I have learned a lot about people over the last few years. I do not find as many people who perfectly meet my requirements as an exact match for long lasting friendship, nor do I tolerate those too far from it’s remit for too long. My rose tinted spectacles have grown misty, possibly from the dust of a thousand crushed youthful ideals, or more than likely from loose fag-ash blowing in my face from a passing vagrant.  There were times when everyone in your life shared the same dreams and visions, the hope for a brighter day and a better tomorrow. We wrote songs about it in the 90’s and early 2000’s, we were hazily optimistic about the future, as only we could be after the long years of Tory depression. But now is a fractious time, a time of split opinions and a lack of clear direction, both musically and politically. At this age we are all at different stages of giving up, some fighting harder than others to stay in the game, some long gone but just won’t admit it. I find it increasingly hard to know or care where I fit in anymore, if anywhere. And what are we fighting for? An ideal? That we can all choose what we want in life, we won’t answer to ‘the man’ and live this pre-packed TV dinner commercial excuse for a life? Who knows?

But I do know one thing for certain. We all played on ‘Wall Bars’ at lower and middle school. Unless you went to a school that forbode physical education or you were a gypsy and didn’t go to school at all, we all, on occasion, were allowed to pull out the two giant squares of wood from the wall in the school gymnasium and climb over them. More often than not you would attach a bench to them, climb through some bits, under or over the others. The benches could connect the two frames, form a ramp up one side and a slide down the other. These were the wall bars, a weekly treat as you entered your difficult teenage years. But what of the elusive Apperatus? The three ropes and ladder on the other side? The springboards and trampettes would occasionally appear, the only regular users being members of ‘Gym Club’, but surely the most feared and mythical of all the sports hall creatures must have been ‘The Horse’. Our ‘Horse’ was made up of three tiers of decreasingly sized wooden trusses, reaching it’s pyramid like apex on the top piece, a velvet covered sponge like bed, looking a bit like a massive blackboard rubber, only twice as dusty. It looked like it was built in the 30’s, and possibly housed men absconding national service through the war, and laterlly teachers accused of touching up 11 year old girls. I try to imagine how the teachers were instructed to let us use ‘The Apperatus’, and why so frugally? We should have been allowed to climb over everything, use everything, at all times constantly throughout each lesson in those rooms with the magical equipment. 

Of course I know why we weren’t. It would have been a logistical nightmare to watch 30 screaming kids go mental on what it is essentially a license to print lawsuits against school’s health and safety policies. But we will never know when and how they chose the times to let us go on, much as we will never know why we spent most of our school year in our vest and pants at the age of 5. To be honest not much as changed for me as I sit here writing this, in what is essentially my vest and pants. And in my 25 years of learning, all I can honestly say that I have learnt is that people are funny old things. We all take comfort in nostalgia, of a simpler time, and there is nothing wrong with sharing those memories to ease the pain of getting old. And if you can do it the right way, hopefully you won’t be walking around dressed as yourself fifteen years ago, but will be at ease at what you have become, what you will be in the future and what you now must do. All we can hope to do in the interim is to find a little common ground to save us all from tearing each others ears off with chopsticks, because you like football and I like University Challenge, or you like Dub-step and I like Cosmic Disco. Because let’s face it, in a few years most of you will like neither, as you end your persuit of fashion and the changing of times, at which point you finally decide to hope off the bus marked ‘Now’, and walk the rest of the way.

So now onto you, dear reader, I request some input back. Did your school have antiquated wall bars and apperatus? How often did you use it? Are any of you P.E teachers now, and if so are you taught special ‘Apperatus’ lessons on how and when to let the children go on it? Did anyone NOT have any wall bars? Did anyone climb any higher than about 3 feet on a rope? Did you make it all the way across an upturned bench, as a kind of primitive practice for the high beam? Answers to me here please. Oh and I suppose I should add something musical. Here is a link to a short film about Big Daddy Kane I came across. Enjoy!