ROISIN Mc(lOSKlY
Some exciting events have happened around me stroke to me stroke involving me recently; exciting not just in the outward actualised detail of their realisation, exciting not simply because they were unusual or highly of note, exciting because they caused that thought about them in me.
Recently I took three Harry Ramsden's fish suppers through customs to Budapest. People bring back nougat or Toblerones and take shortbread and tea-cake from Scotland to those who live abroad and are in
need of Tunnocks. So T 0
this was just a hot
gift. As they went N [K] A L D
through the See Through X-Ray machine I could see them pass slowly by on the monitor and was able to check for bones in advance.
The yesterday before last, I was typing an electric-mail to a friend. I was typing him telling him what I had been up to and I noticed that a young Asian woman next to me was looking at my screen reading what I was saying. For a second I lived in a zone, delaying a turn of the head just long enough to then not have done it. I began to think about what I was writing. I began to think about how I was not too upset because it was only like having a chat in a cafe and other people hearing.
Did she wish to have a letter to write?
Then I started to type: ' . . . there is a young woman, Patrick, reading what I am typing and it is making me think about what I am writing . . . ’ Out of the corner of my periphery I saw her stiffen up suddenly and swivel swiftly away from me. She spoke in rushtones to her friend and when she turned back to me I turned and we both did a massive smile.
Then I typed: ‘Now she has seen it and she got embarrassed . . . ‘ She read this too. It was actually one seminal moment for me. I thought the internet was all a dead, rubbery, lonely thing where you can never be sure where the someone is, and so it is half-talk, half- future stale chat that sits for a few days
in the e-fridge losing its flavour.
This reminded me that humans live in an environment and communicate
with what they have
available. Yeh.
I had used the global highway to commune in an understanding so sharp with a person on the next stool.
I bought a copy of Charlton Heston Presents: The Bible. There are photos of Charlton without any of his guns, wearing a very expensive wig, still oblivious to the homo-eroticism inherent in Ben Hur that had to be hidden from him by Gore Vidal and the other script writers, reading from a v. old bible, as big as an atlas, by candle light, and in the Garden Of Gethsemane.
l have gone through a box of 50 pens in the last four months. Some didn't work too well, some I have lost, some I have given away, some I remember leaving in my car, so essentially they all still exist and are out there in possession of their mass, distributed
N E throughout the
E world. I have one
left, and I breathe V E R the hot throat-
vitalise the felt with my moisture. I want it to last.
I bought a fish supper in the Wirral by Liverpool and started eating it, then I got on a train and finished it in Wigan. l was eating my tri-county meal when a man came up to me and said, 'I don't mean to be rude, but where did you get your fish supper?’ I said, ‘l’m afraid I bought it in another town.’ It reminded me of my Bi-Centennial Lasagne. I cooked one in the twentieth century and went up north and ate it in the twenty-first.
I managed to do something I have been trying to do for about six years:
You have a tea-bag and a tea-cup in the same hand. You throw the cup up so it does a somersault. Before you catch it you throw the tea-bag up in the air, you then catch the cup and then catch the tea-bag in the cup. l-Iey Tesco.
gE W H El breath into the lid
8 and attempt to re-
SEMl-CRYPTIC CROSSWORD i 2
ACROSS clues
1 Warm indwdual export from school ‘4) 2 Ben wants to feel 2, Did the e- and look this id» vesdropper feel any
for my screen? (All
DOWN clues l A tenth of the ink bOx capacity 14,
t)»: (' l: j . l. . \l\. "l \/ "(>1 . 35:)?! i‘:
SUSMSNV
Famespotting Steve 'Sole' Middleton
Who he? A familiar name to the half of Glasgow clubland devoted to house :n its pure, undiluted Yank disco format, Middleton has gained a solid reputation as both an ace disc jockey and head honcho of one of the many respected West Coast house labels
What's he been up to? Mr Middleton is, to be frank, something of a workaholic, and a list of past achievements could fill half the magaZine Suffice to say his weekly flagship club night, Buddasole continues to go from strength to strength, drawrng a crowd whose hedonism is matched only by a seriously clued-up attitude to mUSIC. Soleutions, a Saturday night residency at brand new venue Q Club, looks set looks set to do a similarly roaring trade It is the Solemusic imprint he runs that has really put Middleton on the map, however; it manages to punt out a tonne of Vinyl each month without ever compromising on quality
What about future ‘Sole' activities? Funnin enough, theres Phuturesole, a one-off party at Alaska on Thursday 8 June With guest Reiner Trubi, intended to promote a compilation disc of the same name, and part of a mini-IOur taking in Leeds, Manchester and Paris Other prominent up- coining releases on Solemusic include an LP from Home Cookin', the eagerly-awaited label sampler So/evrsxons l//, and SoleRevrsrons, a selection of remixes As if that wasn’t enough, Middleton and partner in crime Ross Campbell are set to release an EP fill their Guiro guise, before casually Jetting off to New York to help out with the production of an album from recent Signing Cooly's Hotbox
That must be it then... Not Quite, as Buddasole is set to hold some sOuped-up special nights over the summer including an appearance from hiphop/house crossover master, DJ Spinna
Elizabeth LeCompte on The Wooster Group, see page 20.