Sinister: trains, tippi, tools etc.

[Gordon]

Sinister, Salve!*

y'know it's taken me about a month to work out what an 'ink polaroid' is.

There hasn't been much posted in the last couple of days, so I thought I'd
chuck in this lot: three T's, two thirds of Felix Culpa and some sad
f*****s. Enjoy.

TRAINS

The bold old ‘70’s orange-coloured Strathclyde Passenger Transport electric
multiple unit rumbles out of a tunnel into Queen Street Low Level Station.
It is a damp 8.30am, and I am headed out of the city to my current job in
Dumbarton, farther down the Clyde, close to where that river transforms to
firth. Commuters disembark from the train; numerous,anonymous and weary, and
I make to board noticing, on my way, a proud brass plaque adorning and
somewhat at odds with my carriage’s smooth, modern flank. Cast in brass are
the words GLASGOW FESTIVE ORCHID. Suddenly, I am transported to China, and
the air is filled with the scent of lotus blossom. Why orchids should
suddenly make me think of China I'm not sure, but it happens nonetheless.
Images of orchids I try to conjure up, but being relatively unfamiliar with
that species I make do instead recalling those fake plastic pot plants, in
the mould of sunflowers that wear sunglasses and sway from side to side when
elvis music is played. Ten of these in the mind’s eye, rockin’ in unison,
seems suitably floral and festive. The morning’s looking up.

TIPPI

The singer songwriter Tippi pronounces her name ‘tippey’ with a hard ‘I’ as
in ‘tippex’ rather than ‘teepee’. This said I’m still going to dub her, for
these purposes, ‘the pritti weegie wigwam wumman’. She sang at Brel the
other night, and I was there, sitting at a candle-lit table in the
conservatory part of the establishment, for the most part reading the
closing chapter of Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry. (It’s about the last
day on earth of an alcoholic ex- British consul in Mexico, by the way.)
During the second of her two sets, Tippi was obscured behind several people
standing in front of me, but for the first half I had an excellent, if
gauzily short-sighted view, which was sufficient to notice that she was
bouncing around zestfully to a simply but pleasingly strummed acoustic
guitar. She has a new single coming out soon and if anyone’s interested, you
can visit http://www.tippionline.com. That sounds like an advertisement,
does it not? Well it does, but it isn’t ; )

TOOLS

Man and his tools, eh? I was struggling with my busted umbrella this
morning. It’s one of those ones with a telescopic stick, and the middle pole
had become stuck in the base pole whilst the top one had detached ‘Help!
Help! My stick is third-stuck and third-amok’ as one might appeal. Anyway, I
decided I might be able to extract the middle bit by inserting my front door
key into the cross-sectional void and wiggling it around a bit. As I was
doing this I thought ‘hey, I’m practising the ancient art of tool-making.’
See, in short, I was using the key as an extension of my fingers. A tool is,
I pondered, essentially an adaptive prosthetic; a specialised extension of
the fingers. This particular tool was smaller across-ways than a finger, so
it could get to places I couldn’t otherwise reach; it contained serrations,
which could gain purchase on elements to be manipulated, much in the manner
of a hook; and it was made of a material which in its rigidity could
transfer a significant pressure from my hand to the point of contact between
its tip and the element (s) concerned.
Like all good tools it worked, and I remain dry.

FELIX CULPA

After all the fun with the umbrella, I did a bit of work then headed to
Strawberry Fields in Glasgow to catch a band managed by a fellow
sinisterian. The band is called Felix Culpa which means 'happy fault'. It
arises from the tale of the Fall of Man: 'haha!' says God. 'It's just as
well I chucked you out of Eden!' 'eh?' says Adam et al. 'Well, you see, now
I can send bloke Jesus to go save you cos now you need saved but, more
importantly, he needs the work.'
One member of the band was in Dublin and was unwilling to shout that loudly,
so the remaining member(?s) called themselves the Projeks and did something
on their own instead. Sequencers were used as the engine behind some live
sound manipulation and a guy joined in with some spoken vocals mainly about
things burning. Jazzy soundscapes, yummm...
With part of the evening still to go, I deftly skirted the city's red light
district and over to Barfly there to stand, chainsmoking cigarillos, in
front of some impassioned guitar rock. To be honest it was all high quality
musicianship and very, very loud and so on but not really my cup of tea, so
I booked a hotel room and went to bed. I suppose I could have caught the
last train home, but did you ever camp out in the back garden as a kid?
Well, it was like that: just for fun. And breakfast in the dining room on
Saturday morning was ace, as were the bright orange walls in the bedroom,
which is a scheme of decoration I've always aspired to.

SFC
That means Sad ******'s Club. We meet in a 70's theme bar and discuss
corduroy with visual aids. This time around, these comprised a well-foxy
long dark brown skirt with a lace-up arrangement at the waist, another
skirt, some disco-tastic trousers in a maroon shade and a beige cord
necktie. I only mention the existence of this elite bunch of sadnessss
because it's a sinister spin-off, and a burgeoning rival to the Glasgow
trendies, who I believe can now count spacy stacy amongst their legion and,
soon, a guy called arik. Maybe one day we''l have a contest in Falkirk, to
see who's cooler, with Sweetie as compere.

Ok. Time up, I've got two things to go and enjoy. The first is Valvola and
DJ Spectra from Firenze's 'Venus 69' Japanese Electronic Pop Art Music
Museum CD and, to follow, eating scones with strawberry jam and clotted
cream whilst watching College Girls on Ch4. Weyhey. Yeehah. I like Sunday
evenings.

Gordon

*Or, bother and fiddlesticks, should it be 'Salve Sinister!'?


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