Oh Blogger Where art Thou ?

     

                                   

Where to begin ? I feel like summer vacation has been going on forever chez Double M Double U - Masters F and C Double U have been home from University since June and don't go back till October - what the .....? Miss Double U has at least 2 more weeks left till she goes back to school - will my purse strings hold I ask you, when will the laundry stop ,the pot washing [dish washer broke-down at beginning of Summer and have not had the gumption to replace it yet !],what I'm saying is ,order needs to be replaced into our lives . Love of my life , Mr Double U has to return to the office , my three wise monkeys need to get re-acquainted with their brains and I ,quite frankly need space - although I do have to share 'my space' with the most demanding , crotchety , time consuming , handsome and loving , part-human Whippet you will ever care to meet - Milo Double U - I salute you  

   

I don't know about you but there's something about this time of year that fills me with a sense of new beginnings and fresh ideas - it's nothing like the dread filled 'New Years Resolution' feeling , But is more akin to seeing things with fresh eyes after visiting great places and spending time with family and friends - I always feel energized and inspired .I can feel a new 'TO DO LIST ' coming on .            

    Remember when you were a kid and the first thing you had to do when you went back to school after Summer was to write an essay titled 'What I Did This Summer' and you'd forgotten how to hold a pen and write ,well that's how I feel right now .I want to tell you about my weekend in Newquay and my mini break in Biarritz with Miss Double U and our amazing family trip to Brooklyn and the Catskills in Upstate New York , but there's too much to tell in one Post ,so I'll go away and compose myself and tell you all about it next time , I promise .        

             

   sorry I just had to slip that one in - used to dance to this in my living room !!


                mmw                   

It's been a while ........

It's not that I've not been thinking about you Double M Double U,  I have. I've been wanting to tell you all about what I've been reading,listening to,eating,smelling,seeing,doing - all that stuff,but I've hit a glitch.I have a confession to make. Miss Double U, my 15 year old Daughter is an avid blogger, unlike me she's long in the tooth when it comes to the blogisphere world and knows her way round the internet. So, there's a few things I don't know how to do ,like down load pictures and show links to other pages - I know, sad isn't it - Miss Double U promises to show me and I've been holding back with my posts so that, with her help, I can get my ideas out there but here I am still clueless because schools out for Summer and she's "BUSY!".So i'll just have to soldier on and you'll hopefully be patient with me while I'm learning. That said , here's a couple of tunes I've had on replay recently. First up is an 'oldy' by Fleetwood Mac - "Landslide" - it gets me every time , Kleenex at the ready ! 

     Next up is the Jimmy Cliff track,"One More",from his new album "Rebirth",it's totally infectious and you can listen to the whole album on www.rollingstone.com/music/news/album-jimmy-cliff-rebirth

OK,I'm going to sound like a real fashion bitch here but......

Paloma Faith standing in the wings while Jimmy does his thing ,

WHAT THE FECK ARE YOU WEARING ?!!

Sorry!

Heard some good news today that Edwyn Collins is to release a new album "Understated" next January .He has been working with Richard  Hawley who co-wrote two of the songs with him . When asked on 6 Music what the Album was going to be like Collins replied "Northern Soul" - can't wait !

I feel much better now we've become reacquainted ,thats my listening section up to date,I think I'll give you some Summer reading lists next time.

Well I going to sashay away to this little gem from days of yore 

Till next time ...

MMW 

£££££ LOL $$$$ :c Totes Amaze hashtag WTF :L

A recent shopping trip into the West end of London with my daughter brought to mind this little film of P'Trique of 'Sh*t Fashion Girls Say ' fame. Before I let you see it I just have to stress that although my daughter does own up to displaying many P'Triquess traits-not physical ones I hasten to add-I for one do know who Tom Ford is [but have to confess,I did think LOL meant lots of love - that's all in my past now though!] 
   Before we headed back home ,we nipped into Choccywoccydoodah's [http://www.choccywoccydoodah.com  ]at 30-32 Foubert's Place , just off Carnaby Street' to replenish our energy levels-shopping can be so draining on mind, body [and wallet]. They have a tea room upstairs which serves all their cakes and sweet treats and is definitely worth a visit if you need a little sugar fix .  

Those were the days my friends

Ever since BBC4 showed the documentary 'Quadrophenia...... Can You See The Real Me '..... about the making of The Who's album and followed it with a showing of the actual movie last week , I've been reminiscing about my youth . From the age of thirteen I was a Mod and obsessed about the 60's . it's music  fashion , movies , I was hooked ! My Bible was Richard Barnes book ' Mods! ' which I studied religiously . When Quadrophenia came out in the cinemas in 79 I remember going to see it with my best friend Fitz - a fellow Modette . We were two 14 year old convent girls sneeking in to see an 18 cert movie which was being double billed with ' Scum ' that particular day ,we couldn't believe our luck ! It's no secret that I started dating Mr Doubleu 29 years ago because he got himself a Lambretta , I thought I'd died and gone to heaven on the back of that thing- fickle me ! I'm sorry but I'm going to indulge myself a whole lot more and run a couple of video clips ;

                         This scene cracks me up !

 
  Anyway , the day after my Mod fix I happened to come across one of those somewhat annoying Top Of The Pops oldies but goodies shows . I was waiting for Wimbledon to come on but thought I'd hang in there as it was showing tunes from 69 . Most were dire but they did dish this one up . Don't laugh , but back in the day I really wanted to be that girl in the song with the glamourous life who'd come from the back streets of Naples . I myself came from the back streets of Rusholme , Manchester, but I was well classy smoking my Gauloises cigerettes , or so I thought !

   O.K. Humour me one last time . In 1974 there was a song out by Terry Jacks called ' Seasons in the Sun ' and as a little girl the lyrics used to make me sad , but in a good way because I really liked the song !? I'm not going to show you that one but here's the original version 'Le Moribond '[which means the dying man] written by Belgian singer/songwriter Jacques Brel .

C'est Magnifique  non ?


             Well Pop Pickers that's all till next time ,


                          A Bientot !

                                                   mmw

Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave , Quentin Crisp

D'accord mes amis ,je suis retournee! Yes,I've been gone a while,there's been a few technical hitches,shall we say, but I'm working through them.Anyways, buckle up because there's alot to get through ,we've got some catching up to do .
  First up is my song of the moment 'Je ne vois que vous' by Benjamin Shoos and Laetitia Sadier which you can listen to here .
I love the way it transports me to Biarritz every time I hear it being played , definitely my sound of summer .

  


  Here's another tune 'Dreaming of you' by The Coral.
I'd not heard it for ages [can't believe it's over ten years since it was released] but it still has me shuffling in my seat -remember ,I don't dance ! Maybe it's just me,but I think James Skelly the lead vocalist reminds me of Eric Burdon from the Animals? 

Here are some excerpts from a movie called 'Play it as it Lays',

I apologise for the bad quality but it's a pretty rare old movie which I would love to get my hands on.I'm reading the book of the same title at the moment.It's by one of my favorite writers Joan Didion.A few years ago she brought out 'The Year of Magical Thinking ' and more recently it's sequel 'Blue Nights'. Both books are about how she coped with the deaths of first her husband,John Gregory Dunne and then shortly afterwards the loss of her daughter and only child Quintanana Roo who died at the age of 39. Yes,I know it sounds depressing, but they offer great insight into the coping mechanisms we adopt in order to survive after a personal tragedy . You Tube have some short videos of her reading from Blue Nights and I love this one in particular as I can really identify with it's sentiment .
All that 'STUFF' I've held onto for years, what for?Maybe I need to free myself from their shackles. I feel a major clear out coming on,bin bags at the ready !        
  There's a lot more to tell but I'm going to save it for my next post ,England are playing Italy and I've already missed the first half, MERDE!!


    mmw

The craic was mighty !

When I was about two I lived with my mum and her family while my dad went looking for work in Canada, with a view to us immigrating there.I stayed in the bungalow where my mum grew up,in the seaside village of Blackrock -not the posh one outside Dublin where all the rock stars live,the one in Louth,the smallest county in Ireland! Anyway,I went on to spend all my childhood summers there. Staying with my amazing grandparents, Mamma and Pop, in the bungalow whose back garden lead down to the sea.It was such a magical time for me and I always dreaded going back to inner city Manchester[we didn't move to Canada ,not enough work and too much snow]after the six weeks summer break.Blackrock was where I could roam freely with the local kids ,it's where I had my first drink,my first cigarette,my first boyfriend-it holds a big piece of my heart and I was lucky enough to be there last week end.
There's a store in the village called Danny Hughes and it's been there since I can remember ,selling buckets and spades ,toys,  anything you can think of really.A couple of years ago RTE radio made a programme about Danny and his son Connor which I think is a beautiful and funny story magically told about the relationship between a father and son.It's worth a listen ,you can google it-RTE Radio Danny and Connor Hughes.

Here's a song about Dundalk ,the main town a couple of miles away from the 'Rock'.My mum's friend wrote it years ago and I can remember her playing the 7"single and us dancing around the sitting room when I was little-she must have been homesick! It's Cheesy but I love it!  


               M.M.W

BirdDog

The other week end I watched one of my favorite old movies -'The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock- with my daughter who hadn't seen it before. She loved Tippi Hedren's beautifully styled clothes by Edith Head and the scenic shots of Northern California.I love the fact that a news story from the Santa Cruz Sentinel in 1961 was used by Hitchcock as research for the film . The story goes that the town of Capitola,a place I know well,was attacked by Kamikaze seagulls  and the streets were covered with dead birds-sounds awful! It's thought that the birds must have eaten a nerve damaging toxin that was found in the anchovies and squid that  made up their natural diet , causing them brain damage.

     That said,there's something strange happening with the birds in our local park.A fellow dog walker I know made this film about a week ago-should I be afraid ?!!






                m.m.w