English Rose Kitchen

… long live music

Over the weekend Stephen Webster agreed to manage us.  Yesterday Gary and I had a brief meeting with him and told him that the reason we wanted him as our manager was precisely that he isn’t in the music industry. The music industry, unless you happen to be Radiohead, is pretty much dead and everyone’s scrabbling around looking for new ways to make a living out of this thing called music. We were briefly involved with a major manager within the industry. It didn’t lead anywhere, but as Stephen said, “Band signs to mainstream music manager” isn’t news. “Band to be managed by rock ‘n’ roll jeweller” is.

A few years back when P2P first became the new way to get your music, Davo (our one time roadie and full time Good Guy¹) asked me what I thought of Napster². I replied that while I was an obvious nett loser on the deal (to wit - I’ll sell less records), I thought it was for the best on balance, because it meant that bands might actually have to learn to put on a performance again and that the few decades during which musicians could amass a quantity of money completely out of proportion to any work that they’d put in would be seen as a blip on the musical map.

The true answer to the question, of course, lies somewhere between that and the status quo (sic). Artists continue to benefit from sales, but to a lesser degree and I maintain that the need to play live again to earn your keep has been beneficial overall³.

¹Davo still crews a bit as far as I know, largely for Manic Street Preachers and The Verve, but he is a brilliant musician in his own right with his band Johnny Boy. Here he is at the last Carbon Casino playing with James Dean Bradfield (and Pete Wiley as I recall, out of shot).

²Personally I download from P2P type networks either to check that the record I’m about to buy is the one I think it is, or because I can’t be bothered to trawl through all my vinyl.

³I met a Russian pop star once who tol me that it’s always been the case that in Russia they made no money on records, but only released them to draw people to gigs.

No really.
… I just checked my Adsense account and it seems I’ve accrued a whopping $22.85 since starting this blog. Which just goes to prove that we don’t do it for the money.

What on Earth have you been doing?
So it’s been a while huh? Well there’s been precious little movement on the kitchen front because most of June was spent working on the band. Turns out that our crazy modern sound is more popular with the kidz than we knew and it’s all starting to move. The highlight of the month was when we played at Jewellery designer Stephen Webster’s party in the wonderful old East End music hall Wilton Hall. The party was entirely based around our song “Pick a Pocket” (soon to leak out as a single) with its Dickensian theme. You can hear a rough, unmastered version of it on our myspace page.

Sounds great! What did you play?
We played a six song set, starting with three of our own. Gary Kemp joined us for the fourth song, a rocking cover of Spandau Ballet’s To Cut A Long Story Short (well - it wasn’t a cover as far as he was concerned of course!), then Mick came on for the 5th and 6th songs,  one of ours (can’t for the life of me remember what it was right now) followed be the obligatory Should I Stay or Should I Go. It was only during the rehearsal the day before that I realised I’d never played it before in my life. The closest I’d come was when Mick and I sampled it for the song The Globe in 1991. Mick started to tell me the chords, but I pointed out that he didn’t really need to because you could probably go up to anyone in the street and they’d be able to play it.

As it turned out it sounded fantastic and Mick declared it the best rendition since he left The Clash.

It’s amazing how you can live somewhere for years pondering over a problem and then one day the bleedin’ obvious hits you in the face. Yesterday we realised that the new fridge was never going to fit through the door between the living room and kitchen, at least, not without taking the doors off and struggling (which is wha we did).

The problem we’ve been facing is that despite the fact that our kitchen/dining area is pretty big, there’s not a lot of usable wall space because of the positioning of doors, radiators and a cute wooden supporting structure that’s used to divide the space into three pokey little rooms. when we realised there would be a problem moving the fridge into the kitchen we thought “Why not swap the kitchen and lounge?!”. What is now the lounge has far more usable wall space and would allow for a centre island and still have room for a dining area at the end where the stage is¹.

¹Don’t get excited, it’s only about 6 inches high and 8 feet across and the only performance that has ever taken place there was about seven years ago by a Norwegian poet friend of mine, Øystein Wingaard Wolf. We call him Ø for short.

It was with great regret yesterday that we said our final goodbyes to our beloved Smeg FAB28. We had one false start when the original winner of the auction unavoidably had to pull out through no fault of their own, but we were at least happy when the next highest bidder accepted it and turned out to be a lovely couple who’ve been married six weeks and moved into their new house a week ago to the day. We made them promise it was going to a good home and delivered it ourselves. It looks good there and we are tempted to go back an wave at it from time to time.

Bye Bye Smeg. It hasn’t always been easy living with you, what with your temperamental innards and your freezer door that broke, twice, but ultimately it’s been a rewarding relationship and we’re very sad to have to let you go.

When we got back home we realised that the Electrolux American Style Sherman Tank of a Fridge Freezer won’t fit through the door from the living room (where it currently resides) to the kitchen without taking its doors off first and even then we’re not quite sure. That said, our old (so sad to use that term already!) Smeg didn’t actually fit in the intended space in its new kitchen either

Bladders full to bursting we set off on the 15 or so miles to meet Mr Poole, or “Michael” as I’ll call him. 20 or so minutes later our satnav directed us towards some concrete bollards that cut his road in two and another 10 minutes later we arrived at Michael’s house.

The stark contrast between his welcome and the reception we’d received in Brockenhurst threw us momentarily. He took is through to his kitchen and we saw, for the first time, some restored and installed units.

In fact he had installed runs top and bottom along both sides and one end of his kitchen before getting completely carried away and using some of the units he’d intended to sell on along two walls of his dining area. Ray and I thought that that part was probably overkill, lending itself to the effect of standing in a show room, but that’s just a taste thing and you’d be hard pressed to fault Michael’s skill and enthusiasm.

He was full of useful advice and told us the processes he’d used to restore the units. I was planning to document them, but before I had a chance he posted a comment to say how here: Restoring English Rose Kitchen Units, Michael’s way .

In his garage was another restoration project of his, a beautiful 1937 Ford Club Coupé. Michael is sort of like Al. Only - er …

Michael’s Ford Club Coupé

He took us to a lock up garage he has about 15 minutes away to pick up the units. A double sink atop four base units, two full size wall units and  two half size units, plus a larder, a couple of end shelves and, as every self respecting seller on of English Rose kitchens has, a surpising amount of unidentifiable bits. We unscrewed the bottom run into two lots of two units and he knowledgeably guided us round them. He explained that some parts, particularly the backs, are steel rather than aluminium, which is good to know and now I understand why those are the parts that get rusty.

Mercedes Sprinter splitter vans are huge, but when configured for a band, there’s very little space inside for other stuff. We managed though and Michael thoughtfully provided carboard, a piece of underlay and some rope to help lash it all together.

We did plan to drive the lot of it back to my parents’ garage that night, but that would have meant clanging large pieces of metal around at about midnight in what is a very quiet area. That’s not a good look, so we drove it home (I did the best parallel parking job of my life in the thing!) and waited till the next day. Luckily Ed was on hand to help lift the fridge down from the van and then later to just inside our French doors, where it will remain till the Smeg sells (it’s coming up tomorrow and is currently an absolute bargain at £75).

Yesterday was the big run to pick up the American Style Fridge Freezer from slighty-angry-woman in Brockenhust and English Rose Kitchen units lot 3 from Mr Poole in Poole. Brockenhurst is in the depths of the beautiful New Forest down near the South Coast and conveniently only about 20 miles from Poole.

I got to Tiger Tours and picked up the van around 2pm. There was a problem with the van that they were gong to give me, so they gave me another, which was not one of their own, but rather funky nontheless.

We made it down to Brockenhurst for about 5:15pm. One of the wonderful things about running around the country acquiring bits and pieces is that you get to meet so many different people and get a 20 minute snapshot of their lives. Most of the people we meet in this way are incredibly warm and friendly and it can be a very rewarding experience.

Not so on this occasion. We were greeted by slightly-angry-woman’s slightly-interesting-husband, who showed us the fridge. To be honest out of the two of them the fridge had more personality, although their eBay description of it as being in “Excellent condition” turned out to be far fetched at best. Actually it’s only a side that you won’t see when it’s installed that has some scratches and dents so we didn’t make the fuss that we probably should.

It took the three of us, with the assistance of a slightly-interesting-neighbour, to lift the beast into the cargo compartment where we wedged it at an angle to stop it rattling about. We were desparate to empty our bladders, but as soon as the fridge was in the van I think it’s fair to say that they couldn’t get rid of us fast enough.

The nicest thing about that experience was the appearance of a family of wild ponies¹ outside their house, which unfortunately had wandered off by the time I got my phone out to take a picture, so here are a couple of pictures of what they would have looked like. Believe me, they’re more interesting than the sellers of the fridge².

¹ The New Forest in Hampshire near the souh coast is famous for a) being quite beautiful and b) being home to some 3,000 wild ponies
² Interestingly, when I first posted this article, several the Google ads that it displayed were to do with marriage guidance counselling and divorce lawyers. Maybe Google really does have special insight into all of our lives!

We knew this day would have to come, but we’re gutted nonetheless. Because we’re moving in our American fridge/freezer, we regrettably have to part with our beloved cream SMEG FAB28 retro style fridge. The irony couldn’t be clearer - we’re selling a beautiful fridge that looks like it comes from the 50s just as we’re installing a kitchen that really does come from the 50s!

Smegs look great and must be about the hardest wearing fridges around, on the outside at least. It has not so much as a single tiny scratch on it. It’s well documented that parts of Smeg interiors need replacing from time to time and ours is no different. It’s on eBay now at http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180244270294 and you can read more about it at http://www.englishrosekitchen.co.uk/index.php/for-sale/ .

As we collect bits and pieces for the kitchen I’ve been taking photos on my phone and they’re slowly appearing in the articles. I was browsing through them when I came across these two. In brief, Ray and I had just left Inn on the Green near Portobello where Rotten Hill Gang had been playing with Mick’s band Carbon Silicon. At the start of this year, Carbon Silicon hosted a run of seven fantastic nights there called Carbon Casino. These shots are just after the last one. We were walking along Portobello Road on the way to a friend’s house for a nightcap when we were pounced on by three paparazzi.

Now I don’t pretend for one minute that they had any interest in me or Ray, or even really in Gaz Mayall, the dapper looking fellow on the left. Just a hunch, but I suspect they might have thought there would be more mileage in a late night bleary eyed shot of Sienna Miller and Rhys Ifans.

I decided it would be nice to see what it looks like from the victims’ angle so I took a shot myself. The next day the same scene from the view of one of the scumbags appeared in the Daily Mail or somesuch quality rag. The nice thing is that it’s taken at exactly the same moment. Look at the position of Sienna’s arm and hand in both shots and, a little bit harder to see, Ray’s right arm and legs. Oh - and the geek in the background with a camera phone to his eye.

As the weazels danced around in front of us like three crazed leprachauns, Rhys called out to them “Right lads, you’ve got thirty seconds or this beer goes over you”. He counted down from about 10 and did indeed give the pieces of human waste probably the closest thing they’d had to a shower all day.

For whatever reason we fancied a Timothy Taylor this evening and repaired once again to the North Pole. I ran into a neighbour who used to make documentaries for the BBC. On seeing what I was drinking he said ”Whose favourite beer is that?”. I gave him the answer and he told me that he’d once interviewed the TT directors, who said that since Madge’s chance comment they couldn’t make enough of the stuff.

Then Ed Harcourt came in full of beans (he usually is) because he’d just found out that he’d got the soundtrack to the Donny Darko sequel. He was so happy that he paid for the next two rounds of Timothy Taylor and the evening went downhill from there.

I’ve lined up a van for Monday with a company whose website I look after, Tiger Tours. The plan is to go down and pick up the fridge first, then the kitchen units. Mr Poole says he’s fine all day long. Slightly-angry-woman (with the fridge/freezer) has turned into slightly-angrier-woman because I can’t pick up the American style fridge/freezer at the weekend. This is proof of Al’s theory that English Rose Kitchen fans are of a certain type and the rest of the world are of a certain other type.

Then Martin (nice chap) at Tiger Tours called to say that there’s a problem with the van that I’m hiring (a transit type thing), so would I mind taking a Splitter van instead? Tiger Tours specialise in hiring to bands (we’ve used them ourselves). This thing is a 9 seater behemoth with another few feet of storage at the back. The whole thing is 6.5m or 21′4″ long. I guess the fridge/freezer will go in the storage bit (which serves it right) and the kitchen units can be split between the storage and the seats. It’ll probably have DVD players and broadband and all sorts of stuff that’s complete overkill for the task, but Martin said they’ll give it to me for the price of the van I was going to get.