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Jackie Leven · Archive date
WOR JACKIE’S GANNIN HAME LIKE
Sunday morning in October – a lovely sunny day, sitting on the lavvie reading football reports – how Aston Villa beat Chelsea, with a bonus picture of John Terry at his most petulant – sheer bliss.....
Then a walk with the terriers down to the quay – dragonflies zooming around, kingfishers, fisherman happy catching nothing, just nodding off in the unexpected warmth if you get out of the delicious play of small winds – a sit on the bench talking to village alco-mystic Kevin about when he worked in the Ford factory at Southampton – how they could go to the roof to sunbathe in hot weather ‘as long as you didn’t take your shoes off – if you did and were caught, well, then you got the sack’. Books, good books, could be written about the bizarre, unfathomable rules of factory work. I remember working at Metal Box factory in Carlisle at the end of the Sixties – I got the sack for not getting my hair cut, because, apparently, my long hair could get caught in the immense presses and I’d be sucked in and flattened to death. I pointed out that my job at no time took me onto the factory floor where this could happen, but it made no difference – it COULD happen – as they say of small risk in the armed forces – ‘it’s unlikely but not impossible’....
By the time you read this I may be on a tour of Scotland plus South Shields in Geordieland. This is the Scottish ‘Homecoming Year’ and I’m surprised to notice just how much this notion has captured my imagination. The first show in particular, at The Acoustic Music Club at the Polish Club, Kirkcaldy, Fife (box office – 01592 635645), has great appeal for me. I grew up with Polish and Ukrainian people and their working clubs were where I did my first real drinking (apart from drinking whisky from eight years old onwards). I haven’t played Kirkcaldy since my show a few years back with Ian Rankin, and I’ve got a day off the day after, so I’ll be Haunting The Ruins Of My Once Great Empire i.e. strolling up and down the high street and sitting in the walled coves at Ravenscraig.
I’ve told my old school pal Prime Minister Gordon Brown, also from Kirkcaldy that he’s on the guest list if he’s in town ( I covet his wife) but maybe I’ll see him the day before anyway when I attend the House Of Commons as a guest of Ralph McTell, where Ralph is to be honoured by the all party Folk Committee for being a performer of genius and one of the loveliest people on this or any other planet. It says on the invite ‘refreshments will be provided’ – I wonder what that means?
If you’re coming to a show, I’ll be singing new songs from my next studio album GOTHIC ROAD, and songs of Fife, like Jim O Windygates and Linseed Oil.
A while back I was unable to go to the preview of new works of art by an old friend called Michele Noach. Michele was a healing collaborator of mine at The CORE Trust, and is also singer Robyn Hitchcock’s moll. Her show was called ONE MOUSE, ONE DOLLAR, NO REFUND, and the following is her simply fabulous biography, word for word, from the invitation – hope to see you on the road:
THE ARTIST
‘Michele Noach was born in Sydney, Australia and lived in Holland and the US before her family settled in London in the last hours of the 1960s. Her interest in code-breaking led to her becoming a cryptic crossword compiler and to qualify in British Sign Language. Her first solo exhibition NIGHT TRICK ACID at the Almeida Theatre in 1993 was followed by BALCONY BUG, BOUDOIR SCRIMSHAW, A GAL CAN DWEAM, THE HORROR BUNNIES VS THE CUTE-O-MATICS, VICTORIAN FLY SYNDROME, and SALON VERTIGO and she exhibits internationally.
Her 2005 show NO-ACH’S ARC-TIC reflected her expedition with Cape Farewell (a science and art-based climate change organisation), where she sailed as far north as it is possible to do on a 1910 Dutch schooner. This, and a second voyage in 2008 to Greenland, have left their polar mark: she is currently working on 3D interpretations of seismic profiles taken on the latest expedition, and also archiving with lenticulars the disappearing Norwegian glaciers.
Michele is involved in a long-term collaboration with the Eden Project nurseries and this November she exhibited her installation THE GLASSHOUSE MEN in the greenhouses of THE LOST GARDENS OF HELIGAN.
She lives in West London with Robyn the man and Molecule the cat.’