Author Archives: Graham Catt

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About Graham Catt

Graham Catt is a South Australian poet and writer of short stories. Sometimes he takes photos.

Corduroy & Cabbage 2 – The Boardies

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For a few short years in the mid 70s the skateboard made a spectacular comeback among the kids of Ingle Farm. Overnight, it seemed, every second kid on the street was out on the footpath or in the road on a skateboard. It didn’t take me long to join them. Of course, in the Catt tradition, I had to ‘make-do’ with little more than a roller skate nailed to a piece of wood. No one laughed at me openly, but I imagined my friends giggling behind my back.

Still, I was out there with the rest of them, crowding the ramp in the local supermarket carpark, or hurtling up and down the many alleyways that linked the streets of our neighbourhood. We held impromptu competitions, performed acrobatics, raced each other the length of the carpark, until the security guards or police chased us away. My skateboard wasn’t the most agile and certainly didn’t look very cool, but it was light and fast, and I was able to keep up with best ‘boards in the street.

There were three main gangs in our district – the skinheads, the surfies and the rockers. Of those, it was the rockers who seemed the most threatening, with their check-flannel shirts and ripple-soled shoes. They hung out at a takeaway chicken shop on the main road, or gathered in the local shopping mall on a Thursday night when the shops opened late.

At the height of the skateboarding craze we decided to add a fourth gang to the equation – the boardies.

We imagined ourselves some kind of urban surfers, our long hair flowing in the breeze as we sped along on our ‘boards. There was talk of a gang t-shirt, a logo or emblem. I bought a necklace with a skateboard shaped pendant. We talked about fighting, and thought it would be cool to invent a new martial art combining kung-fu and the skateboard.

But despite our best efforts to create a ‘buzz’ about the new gang, the boardies failed to develop any kind of mystique or ‘cred’ among the local teenagers. At school one afternoon I turned conversation to gangs. Everyone reeled off the usual list – the skinheads, the surfies and the rockers. ‘What about the boardies?’ I asked, safe in the knowledge that no one present knew of my involvement in the fledgling gang. ‘I hear they’re pretty tough!’

‘The boardies! Isn’t that just Robbo and a few dickheads from around your way?’ replied Scott with a snort.

I shrugged and remained silent, turning a dark shade of scarlet. Maybe the world wasn’t quite ready for the boardies.

In any event, by the end of the summer, the skateboarding fad had passed, and everyone was moving onto better things – BMX bikes, video games etc. My own skateboarding career ended when I hit a piece of gravel at full speed. My skateboard stopped, but I kept moving, and ended up sliding for a couple of metres on my face. My front teeth were smashed, one of them ground down to a stub. I stumbled home to horrified parents with a mangled face and blood-soaked t-shirt.

Corduroy & Cabbage 1 – Caught Out

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Although I haven’t always hated sport, it’s never been a pastime to which I have been naturally drawn. My early Primary School teacher, Mrs Jolly, was so convinced that I would end up a scientist that she allowed me to miss out on Phys Ed class so that I could sit in the classroom and read about primates or geology. And I can recall my mother berating me for not wanting to join my father kick a soccer ball around in the park. I liked dinosaurs and space ships. Sport just didn’t interest me.

But later on in Primary School things changed. I found myself in a group that hung around the sports equipment Store Room. During lunch and recess breaks, it was our responsibility to ensure that equipment was borrowed and returned according to School Policy. It was a position of tremendous power. All of the boys in this group were athletically inclined and played sport whenever possible. I joined them in games of cricket during summer, and football or soccer in winter.

I never excelled in these games, but I also wasn’t totally hopeless. I had good reflexes. I could move quickly and catch or kick a ball without too much difficulty. My problem was not physical – it was psychological. What I lacked was a competitive nature. If there was a fight over the ball, an argument about rules, or any sort of disagreement, I would just back down or walk away. I was not the sort of person to start cheering if we were winning, or cursing if we lost. I didn’t care enough.

Eventually, I decided that cricket was the sport for me. It did not involve much, if any, physical contact. It seemed relaxed and civilized. My best friend at the time, Kevin, had reached a similar conclusion so, for a couple of summers, we took our cricket very seriously. We practiced all day every day, regardless of the heat, and sometimes continued well into the evening. Some nights we would still be trying to bat and bowl in near darkness. There were no cricket nets in our neighbourhood, so we practiced on the concrete cricket pitch in the middle of a nearby school oval. There was only the two of us – a bowler and a batsman – no wicketkeeper. If the batsman were to miss the ball it would continue hurtling away behind them, eventually trickling to a stop near the far edge of the oval. We took turns fetching the ball. On a bad day we would spend the whole time running after the ball.

I was similarly keen to practice on my own, and spent hours hitting a tennis ball against the side of our house. At one point I decided I was going to be the new Jeff Thomson and would bowl an actual cricket ball at a strip of brickwork near the back door. If I missed the brickwork the ball would thunder into the door, to the horror of my mother, who would be working in the kitchen on the other side. By the end of that summer, there was a sizeable dent in the door and the wall was dotted with red marks.

My cricket phase culminated in the joining of a local team. Neither Kevin nor I were good enough to make the top league, but we just scraped into a ‘B’ team, a motley collection of nerds and misfits not deemed worthy of the ‘real’ team. I should have realized that things were not going to turn out well when I ended up in hospital after the first practise. I was sent to field at mid-on, and found myself facing the afternoon sun. I didn’t see the ball. Apparently, I didn’t even move my arms to shield myself. One minute I was standing, the next I was on the ground. Both of my eyes swelled up so badly that I could barely open them. When I got home later that evening my mother, convinced I would never see again, burst into tears.

After a couple of weeks, I went back to practise, and played my first game a few weeks after that. I didn’t get to bowl. I fielded at fine leg or third man. And I batted at 10 or 11. Then, the following week, someone else took my place and I watched from the boundary. This continued for most of the season. I played a couple of games, took two off, played another one, and so on. I think my highest score was about 16. Kevin did not fare much better, but at least the rest of the team knew his name. I was just this anonymous skinny kid that turned up to every practice but never got to do anything.

Once again, I don’t think my poor performance really had anything to do with ability. Given a decent chance and I probably would have done well. But the opportunity for me to bat or bowl came along so rarely that I invariably ‘froze’ and either bowled badly or got out immediately. And while cricket was not a contact sport, and did not require overt physical aggression, it did require an aggressive nature of sorts – a sense of competitiveness. The loudest kids got to bat first and bowled all game long. It didn’t matter that they were not all that good. If they were ‘pushy’ they got their way.

Kevin and I dropped out of the team after that one season, and I eventually gave up my dreams of becoming the new Jeff Thomson. My mother might have been disappointed, but I’m sure she didn’t miss the sound of the cricket ball smashing against the kitchen door.

David Mortimer – Guest Poet

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This month I am very pleased to feature poems and images from David Mortimer’s second collection, Red in the Morning, which was published late last year by Bookends Books.

Red in the Morning is a collection of 99 poems grouped month-by-month, along with 15 original works by photographer Josie Mortimer, the poet’s sister. The poems reproduced here are: firstly, the title poem; secondly, a tribute to Robert Johnson, the American blues singer from the 1930s; and thirdly, a poem written at the time of the Australian waterfront dispute in 1998 – brought to mind as we face even more threatening industrial times in 2006.

RED IN THE MORNING

The red-in-morning-sailor’s-warning thing
Lights your back, your skin, our whole room
In the slow strobe of an emergency ward

Quieter than thought, than thought can even be thinked
Everything is water-colour linked
Water-colour warned
Warned in its waters

Against embarkation, dies illa
A day when setting out is dangerous, beset

At the beginning, before the start
For any with eyes open
We are given the universal colour of threat
The bard weather-wise
The words curt

THE JOY OF PRECISION: ROBERT JOHNSON

Singer song wrought voice guitar supreme
Beyond mastery of craft aware, intent
That no thing shall be other than it is
By any thickness, settled in, called same
And each from each the soul/strings/self laid bare
As this this this this this
Shall own themselves, repeat only themselves, prepare
Only the deepest, freshest, truest, wildest named and struck
Resonance of meaning all through meaning’s
Straightest dance, sweetest play, signally astringent, precipitous
Aching entertainment’s inward mirth
Of impossibly precise sheer joy


THE FACTS

Find a forum
Bounce around until
You find a forum, don’t be still
You’ve got to keep moving, as the blues kill
Anything that stands too long
In one place, once
Without sanctuary
Or grace

The hail
Flying sharp
And many-sided will
Razor any fabric any length to lace
Unsinew strength and punch a pattern; spill
The heart of any goodness down the salt of any hill

Unless
You find the space
That grounds and shelters
There in time to trace, expand
And mount a case, expound the virtue
And the vice; and hope to cut down inlets
Close down angles that must face the coming
Snarl for access of that whirling hound
Whose muscled hackles rise in turning
Bare computation of a corkscrew’s chance to
Radiating hatred out of meat-dead eyes
The wave of cruelty/ too-much-knowledge/ violent haste
Lays waste, gnaws inward
Likes the blood to race
And yet taste
Chill












Red in the Morning (ISBN 1 876725 63 X; RRP $22.95; published November 2005) is available in good book shops, published by Bookends Books (bookends@chariot.net.au) and distributed through Wakefield Press (http://www.wakefieldpress.com.au/), where Mortimer’s previous collection Fine Rain Straight Down is also available, along with collections by Elaine Barker and Tess Driver, in Friendly Street New Poets Eight (Wakefield Press 2003).

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Fade to Red – a Review

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For me, one of the musical highlights of 2005 was getting to see Tori Amos in concert. I was especially thrilled to be sitting so close to the stage. I was, in fact, so close that I could have thrown my underpants right onto her keyboard, had I felt the urge. Thankfully, there were no such ugly scenes and the evening ended with an unsoiled Tori and lots of very happy fans.

A new dvd collection, ‘Fade To Red’, will bring back memories of that evening for some people. It is a 2 disc compilation of most (but, not all) of Tori’s promotional videos, from her earliest singles, to songs from her last lp ‘The Beekeeper’. A collection of this sort can make for dull viewing, but for the most part, this is a visually rich affair, from the dream-like images accompanying ‘Caught A Lite Sneeze’ to the snake-dancing and rat worship of ‘God’.

Unfortunately, the collection also highlights the drabness of some of her more recent work. Videos for ‘Sweet The Sting’ and ‘Sleeps With Butterflies’ from ‘The Beekeeper’ are among the more uninteresting. Like the music itself, they really lack the spark and inventiveness of earlier work.

For me, the highlights are the videos from the ‘Little Earthquakes’ period, particularly ‘Crucify’ and ‘Winter’. Tori looks so fresh-faced and vibrant, with her flaming red hair and scarlet lips. She even manages to make playing the piano look sexy.

The real treat for fans is the Tori Amos commentary. It’s as idiosyncratic as might be expected. We learn about Tori’s obsession with Ann Boleyn, her experiences with e-culture and what is feels like to wander through a forest blind-folded. It is also refreshing to hear her admit that she has ‘no idea’ what the video for ‘Tallula’ is about, rather than attempt some pseudo-psychoanalytical deconstruction of the work (which features Tori in a plastic box, a couple of scientists and a tightrope walker).

Other extras include two ‘bonus’ videos and a short ‘behind-the-scenes’ feature of the making of the film clip for ‘A Sorta Fairytale’. This video actually features some of the ugliest imagery I’ve seen in a pop video. (Tori’s head has been grafted onto a leg. The singing head rides a skateboard, falls into the gutter, then hops to the beach, where it meets Adrien Brody’s head (which is attached to an arm). The heads kiss and live happily ever after. Creepy!)

This is an essential purchase for fans. The uninitiated will probably wonder what all this fuss is about.

Poetry Matters

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It’s shaping up as a busy month in Adelaide for book launches.

Rob Scott and Bookends Books continue their support of the local poetry scene with the launch of Gail Walker’s long overdue debut collection, Blue Woman. Gail is well known in the Adelaide poetry scene as a writer of succinct, often dark poems about love and life. I will be featuring some of Gail’s poetry on this web log next month. In the meantime, a sample of her work is available to read at the Friendly Street website.

Blue Woman will be launched by Jude Aquilina and Graham Rowlands at the SA Writers’ Centre on Friday 21st April 2006. Celebrations begin at 6.30pm. All are welcome.

One of the sadder events of last year was the death of local poet, Ray Stuart.

Ray was about to launch his second poetry collection, High Mountainous Country, No Reliable Information, when he passed away suddenly last September. Ray’s family are now looking to launch the collection on 25th April (Anzac Day) 2006 at 2pm. Once again, the venue is the SA Writers’ Centre, and the ‘launcher’ is Jude Aquilina.

High Mountainous Country is a collection of poetry drawn from Ray’s experiences as a serviceman in Papua New Guinea in the 1960s. Complementing Ray’s poems are photographs by Teunis Ritman. For more information about Ray and his work visit www.raystuart.bigpondhosting.com

Support South Australian poetry and attend both launches.

Ringleader of the Tormentors – a Review

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Morrissey has built on the success of ‘comeback’ album ‘You are the Quarry’ with his strongest, most assured, set of songs since ‘Vauxhall and I’. Recorded in Rome with legendary producer, Tony Visconti, ‘Ringleader of the Tormentors’ is full of passion and drama, and features a rich blend of sounds, including a children’s choir and strings arranged by Ennio Morricone.

The album opens with ‘I Will See You In Far Off Places’, with its rumbling electronic rhythms, Arabic motif, and vague lyrics about the afterlife, but it’s the second track, ‘Dear God Please Help Me’, where the record really hits its stride.

There are explosive kegs
Between my legs
Dear God, please help me

– Morrissey implores over delicate piano accompaniment. And later, over a shimmer of strings –

The heart feels free

Indeed, the album is littered with comments that point to a happier, contented (if not perfect) life.

Another highlight, the closing track, ‘At Last I Am Born’, sees the artist declare –

I once was a mess of guilt because of the flesh
It’s remarkable what you can learn
Once you are born, born, born

‘To Me You Are A Work Of Art’ and ‘Life Is A Pigsty’ are other tracks hinting at the possibility of love, albeit in a world otherwise bereft of goodness.

The latter song is a seven-minute epic that starts moodily, a throbbing bass over sounds of rain, and ends with clattering drums and splintered guitar, over which Morrissey intones –

Can you stop this pain?
Even now in the final hour of my life
I’m falling in love again

‘To Me To Are A Work Of Art’ offers a similar view of the importance of love in an otherwise bleak existence.

I see the world
It makes me puke
But then I look at you and know
That somewhere there’s a someone who can soothe me

Amid these more dramatic moments there are some fabulously catchy pop songs – the first single, ‘You Have Killed Me’, with its references to Italian film directors, ‘In The Future When All’s Well’ and ‘The Father Who Must Be Killed’, with its menacing verse and singalong chorus.

For me, the only misstep is ‘On The Streets I Ran’, a rather pedestrian rocker amid a set of gems.

Apart from this one track, the album exudes a confidence missing from Morrissey’s music for many years. Where ‘Quarry’ was tentative, ‘Ringleader’ is assured. And his voice has never sounded stronger. The vocal in ‘I’ll Never Be Anybody’s Hero Now’, for example, might even induce ‘I Know It’s Over’ flashbacks.

The reasons behind this newfound confidence might be numerous – a new writing partner (five of the songs were co-written with new boy, Jesse Tobias), Rome, Tony Visconti, a generally adoring press, the success of ‘You Are The Quarry’ and subsequent tours.

Or maybe it is just love.

Inside Man – a Review

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Inside Man is a caper movie – the ‘perfect’ crime, a battle of wits between criminals and police, and surprising plot twists. But with Spike Lee directing, it is anything but a straightforward caper movie. In the hands of another director the movie might have remained standard action fare, but Lee is interested in dialogue, character and the small details.

The movie opens with the criminal mastermind, Dalton Russell (Clive Owen), addressing the camera from within what we believe is a prison cell. He tells us that he has committed the perfect crime. We then flashback to the crime itself, following Dalton’s group as they hold up the bank, take hostages, and put their plan into operation.

Keith Frazier (Denzel Washington) and partner, Bill Mitchell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) are the detectives assigned to oversee negotiations with the criminals, along with uniformed police captain, Darius (Willem Dafoe). As the negotiations progress they learn that things are not as they seem.

Enter bank boss, Arthur Case (Christopher Plummer), who has something in the bank he wants to remain secret, and Madeline White (Jodie Foster), the power-broker he hires to protect his interests. We soon learn that Russell is no simple bank robber, and that there is more at stake than a pile of cash.

To reveal much more would spoil the fun, suffice to say that you will probably leave the movie scratching your head and wondering why and how certain things happened. It’s that kind of movie. I would have liked a bit more information about Russell’s background and motivation, while Madeline White’s role is hazy at best.

Clive Owen is well cast as the cool, arrogant criminal, and Washington cruises in his role as the imperfect police detective, but Dafoe is wasted, and Jodie Foster’s role is surprisingly undemanding.

There are sprinklings of Spike Lee’s humour and politics – a racially charged conversation between Frazier and a street cop, the Sikh accused of being an Arab terrorist, the glimpse of Grand Theft Auto style videogame violence. And you can’t help but wonder if the treatment of the hostages by the police is a comment on post-911 America.

There are also a few clichéd moments – the banter between Frazier and Russell, the final confrontation between the cops and the bank chief. And the undercooked romantic scenes between Frazier and his lover add nothing (apart from some very corny references to ‘Big Willy and the twins’).

Inside Man will probably not be remembered as a great Spike Lee movie, but it is an engrossing and entertaining take on the genre that will keep you involved until the final credits.

The Problem with Plumbers (and other Tradesmen)

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There’s nothing particularly pleasant about the process of moving house. Especially if you actually have to sell the house you are living in first. We have been meaning to move out of our current house for at least two years. I just couldn’t motivate myself to organize tradesmen, visit hardware stores, paint walls and ceilings, and do all the other things necessary to get the house ready to sell. In the end I just went to a real estate agent and said ‘sell my house’. He put me onto all the ‘right people’ and in the space of a few weeks, we had tradesmen painting the guttering, installing new light fittings, erecting pergolas, fitting carpet and so on. More work was done on our house in three weeks than has been done in ten years.

With all this activity going on, I realised that one of the main reasons it has taken me so long to get all of this organized is my extreme awkwardness with tradesmen. I just can’t seem to relax, or even behave normally, when a stranger is working in or around the house. For example, we had some people working on the garden. It was quite hot outside, and the two gardeners has been shoveling bark chips and gravel for hours. I was inside, supposedly working on a writing project. But I just couldn’t sit still. I felt guilty. In the end, I began cleaning. And I couldn’t just clean quietly; I had to make lots of noise so that the guys outside would hear that I wasn’t just lying around. I couldn’t bear the thought of them saying to themselves: ‘Lazy bastard. We’re out here sweatin’ and he’s takin’ it easy.’

I even turned off the air conditioning just to let them know that I wasn’t much more comfortable than them.

Then there’s the issue of actually interacting with them. I know they are meant to be working, but I find it impossible to just ignore them and let them get on with their job. I feel compelled to make small talk with them. Ask them things about their job, talk about sport or the weather. The things I have found myself talking about are just ludicrous.

The alternative is the tradesman who seeks you out for conversation. Only recently, one of the plumbers I had working on my house thought nothing of spouting racist nonsense within two minutes of meeting me. What can be done with such people! There’s no point in arguing with them, particularly when such people are dealing with necessities like water or electricity. I’d hate to confront a plumber about his apparent racism, only to find that he’d subsequently connected my outgoing sewage pipe to the incoming bathwater tap. So I just grinned like an idiot, not agreeing, but not challenging his stupid comments.

Finally, there’s the food and drink situation. What exactly is the etiquette here? Are you expected to feed someone who’s been painting your house all day? Do you offer beer? Hot food? Sandwiches?

I recently offered a bricklayer some cake. He took the cake, but I’m sure he was laughing at me behind my back. (‘Cakebaking, doughpoking pansy!’) At least I didn’t offer him fairy bread!

Thankfully, all that anxiety and awkwardness is now over. All the work is complete and it’s just a matter of finding someone to buy our neat, clean and sparklingly tidy house. I’m just hoping that the plumbing holds out until we’re gone.

One Minute Music Reviews

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A selection of the most interesting new albums to come my way so far this year.

Arctic Monkeys – ‘Whatever You Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not’

Yes, they have been massively over-hyped, and, yes, they are just a glorified pub-punk band, but the Arctic Monkeys also write clever, catchy pop songs about urban life as teenagers in 00s England. Their sound isn’t particularly interesting or original, but they’re still well worth a listen. (3/5)

Belle & Sebastian – ‘The Life Pursuit’

Soul, funk, glam and much more adorn the latest offering from Scottish music ensemble Belle & Sebastian. It’s a celebration of 70s pop and superior songwriting. For full review click here. (4/5)

Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan – ‘Ballad of the Broken Seas’

Former Belle & Sebastian vocalist/cellist, Isobel Campbell and Screaming Trees frontman, Mark Lanegan, (the most unusual musical pairing since Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue) combine to produce a collection of haunting tunes about love, loneliness and despair. An overwhelming success. (4/5)

Cat Power – ‘The Greatest’

Chan Marshall relocates to Memphis and records the best album of her career. Veteran soul backing musicians provide a richness and polish to her songs sometimes missing from previous outings. Highlights include ‘The Greatest’, ‘Love & Communication’, ‘Living Proof’ and ‘Lived In Bars’. (4/5)

The Concretes – ‘In Colour’

Despite luke-warm reviews in the UK and US this second album is not much different to the band’s critically lauded earlier material. A little more polished perhaps, but tracks like ‘On Their Radio’, ‘Sunbeams’ and ‘Chosen One’ retain all the charm that made them so appealing in the first place. (3/5)

The Flaming Lips – ‘At War With The Mystics’

Not really the protest album that we’d been expecting, but a fine collection of songs all the same. ‘Mystics’ bristles with the kind of invention and wonder we’ve come to expect from the Flaming Lips. For full review click here. (4/5)

Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins – ‘Rabbit Furcoat’

Rilo Kiley singer, Jenny Lewis, and friends record an album of gospel, country and folk tinged songs, including, most unusually, a version of the Travelling Wilbury’s ‘Handle with Care’, which features guest vocalists Conor Oberst and Death Cab’s Ben Gibbard. The seeds of an indie-supergroup? (3.5/5)

Secret Machines – ‘Ten Silver Drops’

Often described by critics as ‘Pink Floyd-prog meets Krautrock’ this New York-based trio deserve better. Yes, their songs are long and their sound is big, but at heart these are (mostly) just great pop songs. Highlights include ‘Lightning Blue Eyes’, ‘Daddy’s in the Doldrums’ and ‘I Hate Pretending’. (3.5/5)

Stereolab – ‘Fab Four Suture’

As much as I love Stereolab it’s getting really difficult to tell one of their albums from the next. This latest release is no better or worse than ‘Sound-Dust’ or ‘Margerine Eclipse’. Standout tracks include ‘Vodiak’, ‘Sunny Rainphase’ and ‘Kybernetcika Babicka’ but beyond that it’s ‘business as usual’. (3/5)

The Strokes – ‘First Impressions of Earth’

After the unfair critical mauling of ‘Room on Fire’ The Strokes return with an overly self-conscious attempt to overcome the stigma of ‘Is This It?’ It’s a (mostly) disappointing and patchy affair. For full review click here. (2.5/5)

Yeah Yeah Yeahs – ‘Show Your Bones’

The much-anticipated follow up to their debut album ‘Fever To Tell’ sees the band expanding their sound palette to include synthesizers, programmed beats and piano, while both Karen O’s vocals and Nick Zinner’s guitars are more restrained and reflective. Depending on your taste, this is either a good thing or a bad thing. I, for one, think this an excellent album. (3.5/5)

Lost in Music

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I’ve been a slow convert to the idea of the personal music player. During the 80s and 90s I owned a series of cheap Walkmans, but I tended to use them sparingly, on long bus trips and similar. I guess I just didn’t like having to haul around a swag of messy, easily-damaged tapes. The sound quality was never great and either the tapes or the Walkman were always breaking. It just wasn’t worth the effort.

I was pleased to discover that the latest CD Walkmans played MP3 files. The average cd holds up to 170 MP3s, which means about 10 hours of music. I could fit all of the Cocteau Twins’ albums on one cd. With just two or three cds I could be kept happy for a couple of days. Of course, the downside was the size and shape of the compact disc. It just doesn’t fit easily into the average pocket.

The real revolution came about with the advent of the MP3 player. After scraping together enough money I bought a 60gb iPod, nearly enough to house my entire cd collection. There was not only room for the Cocteau Twins’ studio albums, there was room for all of their singles, eps, live releases, rarities and bootlegs, and much, much more. And all of this fit into something about the size of a cigarette box. The wonder of technology!

All of a sudden the iPod became indispensable. I took it to work, the supermarket, in the car, on walks, plane trips, and even to bed. I put together elaborate playlists to accompany me on my travels. I had a ‘shopping mix’, an ‘exercise mix’ and a ‘commuter mix’. And it wasn’t just the music I was carrying around, it was the memories associated with that music. I would be sitting on the bus on the way into work and ‘More Songs About Buildings And Food’ by Talking Heads might come on. Suddenly I was transported to my last year at High School. Or a song from The Cure’s ‘Seventeen Seconds’ or ‘Faith’ would start, and it was 1981 and I’m walking home from my friend’s house in Ingle Farm. It’s the middle of winter and Robert Smith’s wail seems to capture the desolation of the wet, empty streets perfectly.

I liked the way that the personal music player disengaged me from some aspects of reality. The trip to the supermarket no longer involved listening to the shop’s muzak, the screeching radio or other shopper’s conversations; it was now soundtracked by Depeche Mode, Sleater-Kinney or Primal Scream. The lunch-hour walk to the post-office was now enlivened by the latest Doves or Belle And Sebastian lp.

A friend of mine has said that they couldn’t listen to an iPod or other personal music player. Apart from the discomfit of the earplugs, they like hearing the sounds of suburbia: traffic, machinery, birds, people, the wind. Frankly, I don’t miss them. I only worry about the car I won’t hear when I stumble into the road, my senses focused elsewhere, lost in music.