Katyboo1’s Weblog

I have fulfilled a lifelong ambition and am feeling very chuffed with myself.  I have actually turned into Jim’ll Fix It, but without the jangly jewellry and the gold tracksuits, which is probably for the best. In fact I look remarkably like me still, but me jumping about excitedly shouting: ‘I’ve turned into Jim’ll Fix It!’ while people give me weird looks.  I think I should be allowed to get excited about it though.  It’s not like these things happen every day, and it’s not like it’s going to last.  I am but a fleeting shadow of a Jim’ll as my brother used to call him.

So, let me tell you all about it.  Because that way I have to sit down instead of bounding round the room like a hyperactive kangaroo.  I hope you’re sitting comfortably because you know I’m never going to go straight down the narrative path.  As ever we will be following the twists and turns of my remarkably long winded brain.

When I was at university I used to be friends with a guy called Andy Lewis.  He was in his final year while I was in my first year.  He was a mod.  He was the moddest of mods.  He wasn’t one of those scruffy clothes wearing mods.  He was one of those sharp suited man about town mods with pin sharp creases in his trousers and shoes you could skewer a winkle on.  He used to DJ at our uni discos.  This may sound a bit lame, but we were at Lampeter Uni.  It had less than a thousand students.  About a thousand residents in the town, eleven pubs and that was about it.  There was no nightlife unless, as in Victorian times, we made it ourselves.  Consequently the Student Union hall was ‘the’ place to see and be seen, and discos were a big event. 

Andy would dj and when he wasn’t dj’ing he would dance very impressively (he was extremely good at twirling as I seem to recall).  Everyone knew him because a) he was the only Mod on campus, b) he ran the student mag and c) he was a very memorable dancer.  I believe he may have had something to do with a pirate radio station called Radio Daffodil as well.  I can’t be sure about that because naturally it was all swathed in secrecy, apart from the bits where you could hear everyone else in the room (it was done from people’s bedrooms, flats etc) having a chat, putting the kettle on and saying things like: ‘Clyde, do you want a hob nob?’

I believe he was also involved in various of our extremely bizarre campus bands as well.  The ones which spring to mind were Dim Disgo Heno (which is Welsh for ‘no disco tonight’.  All our posters had to be bilingual, so everyone knew a lot of what we called ‘poster Welsh’.  This was one of those phrases in the ‘Poster Welsh’ guidebook), The Blend Band (who were huge amongst us thousand! And had a very fantastic song called Hey Verruca!),  The Rockin’ Thunda’s, who were large and scary and looked like portly versions of Rik Mayall in The Young Ones and once did a gig for ’The Merthyr Tydfill Earthquake Disaster Fund,’ and Edmund Estefan and The Mydroilin Sound Machine.  These were probably the oddest of the bunch, consisting of a man called Edmund Simons who dressed as a bishop and a man called Robert Mighall who was known as The Scourge of All Christendom and who wore green and gold dresses with devil horns.  They had some interesting songs including: ‘lemon in a bucket’, and ‘hooked on hymns’ which was a kind of rave medley which I believe included Kum By Yah as you’ve never heard it before.  I believe that Robert is now some mover and shaker in the world of high level marketing, which amuses me greatly.  Edmund, I’m not sure about, but I suspect he’s now somewhere terrorising people in much the same lines as the Professors on History Today. (You know that blob of spit? Yes, I am aware of that item. Well, That’s your best swimming pool that is.  As I was saying about the peasant revolt of 1415…)

I used to write for the magazine, and help collate it (we had a photo copier and a lot of staplers.  It was heady stuff.  Apparently that’s how they still put together The Sunday Times) and also deliver it.  At the end of the year when he handed over the reins of power to someone else he very kindly thanked me by name for being a good and helpful girl, and I nearly wept.  It was very exciting, me being a lowly first year, albeit and unknown to many other people, also in the deadly Banana Bunch, and a member of the Jelly Baby Terrorist squad.  These were other things we used to do to keep ourselves busy when times were hard.  The banana bunch was basically me and five friends who used to write threatening messages on pieces of soft fruit and leave them outside people’s doors.  We also doctored the film soc poster for ‘A Clockwork Orange’, which was quite a coup.  The jelly baby thing was us torturing poor defenceless jelly babies in a variety of evil ways and then leaving their corpses outside people’s doors.  My particular favourite was the staged hanging with the elastic band and a drawing pin.  Mostly we did weird stuff and left it lying around for other people to find.

Anyway, then Andy graduated and went off to become famous, popping back to Lampeter every now and again to remind himself why he had left, presumably.  We didn’t keep in touch and I had no idea what he was doing.  Then quite recently I was listening to a favourite CD of mine, which is a collection of random Sixties lounge music from a DJ night that used to be big in London called Blow Up.  This cd, Blow up A Go Go has been in my collection for years.  I love it dearly and so do the kids.  So we were dancing away to Bert’s Apple Crumble, which is a very cool song, and when it finished I had to have a sit down, because I am old.  The kids kept on jiving and I read the sleeve notes.  This is the first time I’ve read the sleeve notes ever, because I am just not one of those High Fidelity type Nick Hornbyesque listy people when it comes to music.  I was reading away and suddenly read the name Andy Lewis.  Then I thought: ‘Hmmmm! This is the kind of music ‘my’ (if you will forgive the ownership) Andy Lewis liked.  I wonder if it be he?’ 

It was, dear reader, a lightbulb moment.  Anyway, it was he and I annoyed him on Facebook and he annoyed me back and we resumed our friendship and all was lovely.  He is very famous.  He hangs out with Paul Weller and Blur as was, and makes records and goes to London Fashion Week.  He’s still a mod and he’s still groovy.  I expect he still dances around very well, although I have no proof, and I expect like me that every now and again he has to have a little sit down, unlike the days of yesteryear.  I am not very famous, except for being a bit eccentric in Glenfield.  He is very nice, so this doesn’t seem to matter too much at all.  Hooray for us.

Anyway (bear with me.  We’re nearly there now).  Last week when my friend Paul came round to have tea and cakes he mentioned to me that he is going to see Paul Weller in concert on Monday and he is very, very excited because Paul Weller is his absolute god and idol and has been super shiny for Paul since he was but a wee tadpole.  I said: ‘Ohhh! My friend Andy knows him and sometimes plays in his band.’  Paul looked at me in that way kids look at you at school when you say stuff like: ‘Yeah! And, so, like. Well, because my dad is bigger than yours and he has a better car!’ as if to say: ‘Yeah! Right!’ and then he said something along the lines of how cool it would be to be acknowledged by Mr. Weller in his role as Musical God of the Western Universe, clearly thinking that this was never, ever going to happen because I was just showing off to my friend to make myself seem cool and important so that he wouldn’t beat me up and steal all my toys.

So, I e-mailed Andy and asked him if he could possibly get Paul Weller to say: ‘Hello Mum!’ to my Paul, because he would probably wee his pants with excitement and all would be well, and all manner of things would be well.  I also said that I would understand if he thought I was being a cheeky monkey, bein’ as how we haven’t seen each other since about 1994, and the best that I can offer in return is not to tell him how hard it is to stop small boys sliding over their potential wedding tackle and getting slide burn, which might ruin the idea of ever being wedded in the first place.  It’s not even a case of ‘fair exchange is no robbery’ really is it?

Anyway, Andy is an absolute star and lovely person because not only has he offered for Paul and his wife Jackie to go back stage and meet Mr. Weller after the gig, but I am allowed to go too, and I didn’t even have a front stage pass!  When I rang Paul he was so excited I thought he was going to burst my ear drum off, leaving only a shattered stump.  Apparently Jackie had to be escorted to the sofa for a lie down and they have now been worrying about what to wear since yesterday afternoon.  Paul is already planning on buying a new t-shirt it’s that serious!  My experience of gigs is that they have always been hot, sweaty and the less you wear whilst still clinging to your dignity, the better.

Anyway, Paul and Jackie are currently carving me a throne and will be carrying me through the streets of Melton Mowbray, throwing cake and jewels at me and singing hymns in my praise. It seems a bit unfair given that it was Andy who did all the work, but I have mailed him and offered him the use of the throne, although I will probably eat the cake myself.  I was talking to my cousin Tom about all this.  He said that I am truly Jim’ll. I said I wasn’t really, for the abovementioned reason.  He pointed out that Jim’ll didn’t do any of the actual work either.  He just lounged about in his big red chair, dispensing largesse when other people actually did all the work, so I am really really like Jim’ll.  I have to concur.  It feels quite good.  I must make oversized badges on strings for Paul, Mr. Weller and Jackie and probably Andy as well.  I’ll get the kids to do it at the weekend.  Thank god I put tin foil in the Ocado order.

Now I am worrying.  Paul (my Paul, not Mr. Weller) is also worrying because he doesn’t know what he’s going to say to Mr. Weller.  I too have no idea.  I’m rather hoping that I will merely get to say: ‘Hello Mr. Weller (tugging forelock and looking ‘umble), great gig, before scurrying on back to see Andy and talk about random shite like washing your John Smedley jumpers in spring water and whether he’s thinking of doing a cover of ‘Hooked on Hymns’ on his next album.  Andy is used to me talking shite.  I’m famous for it in my own little world.  Paul Weller isn’t used to me talking shite, and when I get nervous I talk even more shite than normal.  I will probably blurt out something about velour snails or regale him with the vendetta of the Doo Bobs and the lost frisbee of doom, and the poor man will shrivel up, screaming for help as I am escorted from the premises by two burly minders, both called Dave.

A friend of mine once had the great honour to sit in the box of fame at a Red Hot Chilli Peppers gig.  He was very excited about this.  He was even more excited when it turned out that he was sitting next to Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin, who was his all time Rock God Hero Extraordinaire.  He was telling me all about this with great enthusiasm and much waving of hands (presumably to indicate how tall and wide Mr. Page was.  I always think he would be quite short and a bit stumpy, although he’s clearly got very long arms and tenacious finger control).  So I said to him: ‘Great Jon.  And what did you say to Jimmy?’ At which point he looked very shame faced and quite a bit shuffly and said something in a muffled voice which I couldn’t quite hear properly.  I asked him to say it again and he looked at me and said quietly: ‘I said, ‘Hello Jimmy!’  at which point I went quiet myself and said: ‘Oh! Was that it?’ and he said, even more quietly: ‘Yes!’ and confessed that it had all gotten too much for him and he was so overwhelmed he simply didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything at all.  We vowed never to speak of it again.  You see, it pays to be prepared in these circumstances.

I don’t know anything much about music.  I know what I like, but half the time I can’t remember what it’s called, so I can’t even say: ‘Wow, I thought that bit where you played the spoons was tremendous’ in case it was in fact a harpsichord, or it was the worst bit of the show or something.  It’s all a bit Rabbit in the Headlights.  In fact the only thing I can really think that I would want to talk to Paul Weller about seriously is the fact that he went through a stage of wearing John Craven type jumpers for a while, and I was worried.  I was worried about whether he had in fact pinched them off of John, where I could picture John naked and shivering in a little ditch, soldiering on bravely with Countryfile while Weller scarpered with his knitwear. 

I can understand why one would want to go for comfy knitwear after years of being renowned as being one of the sharpest dressed men in the world of pop, but still, it’s a bit of a shock really.  I would imagine doing a couple of hours gig under blazing spotlights in a heavy knit jumper with reindeer frolicking on the front would get a bit sweaty as well.  Perhaps that’s how he manages to remain so lithe and trim.  No Slimming World for him.  None of these aquanautic silver suits where you leap about in them for hours and sweat all your fat off.  Nope, it’s three choruses of ‘Changing Man’, two encores of ‘Going Underground’ and some frenzied guitar playing in the hot lights with a thirty toggle jumper on and bob is your very slim uncle.

So, questions for Paul Weller on a postcard please.  Something to make me sound intelligent, but not too pushy and not like the totally abstract ditzhead that I really am.

My Paul sent me an e-mail to say thank you.  It’s very sweet and he’s worked all the titles of Paul Weller songs into it.  It must have taken him bloody ages.  It’s never likely to get published in an anthology, so he has given me permission to publish it here so that you can be privy to the sweat of his brow (he probably wrote it wearing a jumper) and his very real obsession with the man himself:

What can I say – you’re an “English Rose”. Whenever you find yourself in as “Strange Town” or a “Wild Wood” look for the man in a “Peacock Suit” for he will guide you out and back to “Suzie’s Room”. You will find this on “Friday Street” near the church with the “Porcelain Gods” outside. Remember now that you are “In the City” “In the Crowd”, but don’t be “Frightened” as “Time Passes” you will be at the “Foot of the Mountain” or somewhere in the “Country”.

Walking “Amongst Butterflies” can be enchanting, did you know they have “Wings of Speed”, the bees love a “Sunflower” and the birds flock here for a “Long Hot Summer”. As you stroll along you may see “The Woodcutters Son”, a bit strange really, a bit of a “Changing Man” you may say. He will lead to the river – Careful of the “Broken Stones” and the “Savages”. Stay with him though and he will find “The Holy Man” for you, there high “Above the Clouds” he will lead you “Into Tomorrow”

No more “Private Hell” and “As You lean Into the Night” remember “You’re the Best Thing”.

 Yes.  He is bonkers, but he’s a lovely man and he wouldn’t do anyone any harm!