The COVID-19 Diaries. Week 4

Monday 6th

Did you see the Queen on the telly last night? They squeezed her in just before Antiques Roadshow. Anteeky being that obligatory hour of national anesthetic that signals the end of the weekend [and which is now prefaced by an advisory voiceover stating that it was filmed before current government guidelines regarding social distancing came in to place, I mean how fucking stupid do they think we are]. Anteeky, where stately home lawns are trampled to death by hordes of people desperate to see how much somebodies Beatle signatures are worth. Its the mix of knowledgable experts, English country gardens and the chance of seeing someones fifty pence car boot sale vase turn in to fifty k bit of Ming that makes it such an easy watch. As a distraction from the current shit-storm its perfect TV and a reminder of times when standing in queues closet than two meters together was normal. 

The Queen says everything’s going to be OK so we all breathe a sigh of relief and go to bed only to discover that the Prime Minister is in hospital after failing to shake off the virus symptoms he’s had for the last ten days. 

In the morning I take Mrs Fisher to work and then go for my walk. This is my first full week of non-work and it stretches out before me like a lot of space that needs filling. This is what retirement will be like only with stricter guidelines on movement. I try to remain positive and remember that I have a huge file of Chocolate Monk releases I can listen to and review.

The jogger numbers are down from yesterday and I see one heading toward me who has the courtesy to cross the road. I pass the house that has the car that hasn’t moved for years and has become less of a car and more a place to store things, its front seat having items that must be of value as they’re covered with a blanket while the back seat has a pressure cooker, this item seemingly deemed unworthy of stealing and thus blanket free. Until recently this car had a flat front tyre and then one day it was repaired and I wondered if it was finally going to move but alas no. Then I thought, maybe they do use it, as a car I mean not as storage space and when I’m not there they take all the shit out of it and drive it around, to the shops and to visit friends and go on holiday and when they come home they shove all the shit back in. Probably not.

I pass the friendly black and white cat that likes to sun itself by the side of the road and the fence thats covered in kids drawings telling people to stay safe and how we all have to look after each other and the white cat in the upstairs window and the rabbit that never moves and all the other stuff thats the same everyday. All the kids drawings have been done on A4 paper and then put inside plastic sleeves before being stapled to the fence. The stapler is there on the floor so you can put your own offerings up as are two small speakers, their wires disappearing behind the fence. 

At the bottom of Whitechapel Road someone has attached a huge white blanket to their privet hedge and in painted on blue letters it says ‘THANK YOU NHS + KEY WORKERS’. 

In a car park by the school playing fields, a police van sits with its motor idling, inside are two coppers and I feel slightly uneasy as I pass, wondering if they’re going to stop me and ask me how far away from home I am. 

At the park the squirrel comes running towards me and stops to pick up a nut that looks like an almond I threw down the other day. Or maybe there’s somebody else is feeding him. Or her. It sits on its back legs and demolishes the nut in about five seconds then skips past me to continue its search elsewhere.

In the afternoon I continue my reading of George Perec’s ‘Life A Users Manual’ but after a hundred pages I deem this kind of experimental Oulipian writing too much for my troubled mind and throw it on top of the equally half finished Franz Kafka diaries, which are equally as unsatisfying seeing as all he does his moan about how bad his suits fit him. Come on Franz, its not the end of the world mate.

Tuesday 7th

Boris is on the oxygen and I’m up the hill in shorts for the first time this year. I’ve downloaded a pedometer app to my phone and after a rapid lap of Scholes and back I discover that I’m actually walking almost three and a half miles as to what I thought was two and a half. I now have a star for my efforts.

On my way round and coming in the opposite direction is someone I haven’t seen in a long, long time. He can be spotted a mile off due to his unusual gait; a sort of bent forward, arms swinging in unison, club footed, twisted knee, neanderthal kind of walk, and at a pace that would see off all but the most ardent and fittest of walkers. Its an impressive sight, like an out of control speed skater in trainers and puffer jacket coming at you. I’m somehow comforted by the sight of him even though I know nothing about him.

No sign of the squirrel but there’s plenty of great tits attacking the the buds of a young sapling and as I exit the park there’s some roadworks going on which has me channeled into a temporary pedestrian walkway two foot wide that has a woman and a dog at the end of it talking to the workmen, so to avoid a transgression of current government guidelines on social distancing and to avoid getting tangled with her overweight dog I double back on myself. This may be where the extra milage comes from. 

Wednesday 8th

After sitting for too long at my computer last night my legs and back start to ache so I stretch out my legs and inadvertently pulled out the mains cable at the back of my computer. The screen goes black and in an instant I’ve lost two hours worth of writing. Normally this would plunge me in to a pit of howling despair and depending on how the writing was going I might abandon the release/review altogether but, but, but I’ve been getting so much out of the five Chocolate Monk releases I decide that writing it up again, while not being an absolute pleasure, wont be the Sisyphian task it usually is. Besides I’ve still got one of the five releases down on ‘paper so its not a complete re-write.

Yesterday afternoon spent in springtime sunny bliss with the front door open for the first time this year. The garden gets the sun after about one o’clock so I open up a garden chair and sit and read my book. This being Nikolaus Wachsmann’s highly praised ‘A History of the Nazi Concentration Camps’. A book thats been on the ‘to read’ pile for a couple of years, me never having got around to it perhaps daunted by the subject matter, the density of the thing or never having the nerve to take it on holiday with me, me not wanting a lovely holiday marred by the memory of Nazi atrocities. With fiction seemingly useless to me at such times and after several false starts on various books I decide that the time is now right for such things.  

This mornings walk is remembered for some kind of light headed episode I have halfway down Whitechapel Road where I find myself walking two steps in to the road. I slow up and and though I don’t have to stop it does worry me a little. The same thing happened to Mrs Fisher on Sunday morning though she had a full on dizzy black spell and had to get her bearings again.

I’m living the life of a sixteenth century peasant and not traveling more than three miles from where I live. If I wasn’t running Mrs Fisher to work and back [which from next week I probably wont be doing anyway, this due to a possibility of her working from home and a pre-booked week off at Easter that will be now be a stay at home holiday] my comings and goings would be smaller still. Turning on the news to hear of rising death tolls and lock downs while all around is sunny and quiet with nothing but the distant chatter of neighbours tending their gardens and birds twittering to break the silence, is a little weird. 

Its why some people are still ignoring government advice and taking their families to the seaside so as to take advantage of the good weather and the quiet roads ‘eee it only took us an hour to get to Scarborough and when we got there beaches were empty’. Or we could all follow the advice of the Belorussian president who seems to think that its all a load of bollocks and that playing sport, driving tractors and drinking vodka is all you need for an active healthy life. ‘Do you see any viruses floating about?’ he says to a journalist after his game of ice hockey finishes. Then there’s the church goers interviewed by CNN as they leave a late night service in Ohio, all of them saying they’re immune because they’ve been bathed in the blood of Jesus. 

Thursday 9th

Overcast and cold and if truth be told I don’t really fancy doing the walk but I go anyway. My route is now so familiar to me I’m seeing not only the same people, cats and pet rabbits on my way round but the same birds. This revelation comes to me as I pass a birch tree with a robin in it thats singing its lungs out, just like it was yesterday and in almost the identical position in the tree. 

The walk is becoming monotonous which probably explains yesterdays dizzy spell which I now put down to a form of self hypnotism, like a Gysin dream machine, brought about by walking with my head down and the floor creating some kind of repetitive pattern. Looking at houses and gardens and fields that I’ve passed a thousand times before is doing nothing for my state of mind so I decide to alter my course but only slightly, lopping off corners here, adding bits on there. So instead of walking to the top of the council estate in Scholes as if I were going to the Co-op I cut around the back of the Walkers Arms and up the last bit of Scholes Lane. This necessitates taking the blind right hander and when I get there I almost bump in to the Speed Skater and we immediately jump out of each others way apologising profusely. 

As I queue to get in to Sainsbury’s a member of staff explains to a couple at the front of the queue that they can’t go in together which seems to baffle them completely, then a car pulls up and a woman in leggings and a t-shirt [that shows her rotundness off to perfection] shows the same member of staff her phone and asks if she can jump the queue as she’s just picking something up from Argos, to which she’s told she can’t, this infuriates her no end and off she goes to find her other half whose struggling to find a parking space. Inside the store I overhear a woman ask a member of staff if they have any organic broccoli, to which a young lad replies, ‘no love, only the ordinary stuff’, the woman is clearly disappointed and cant hide it, ‘I’ll just have to come back tomorrow then’. 

Mrs Fisher now home from work for a week. Tomorrow we would have been heading to Northumberland. Our annual trip up north which we’ve been looking forward to since whenever. The little fishing village of Boulmer sits on the coast and it is quiet, virtually undisturbed by humans barring those going to the pub for meals of freshly caught fish and lobster and hundreds of wading birds whose calls are a constant soothing background. Our cottage [rented obvs] sits right on the beach with undisturbed views of the north sea and vast expanses of coastline. So we’ll just have to pretend that Cleckheaton is Boulmer and get on with it. 

Friday 10th

No loading of the car with food, wine and walking gear and a three hour drive up the A1 with a stop off at Barton Park Truck Services for sandwiches and a piss. Instead the walk which is quieter than ever at eight a.m. on a Good Friday. I’ve noticed that there isn’t as much litter these days, the gutter usually acting as a depository for drink bottles and cans jettisoned from passing cars. There are quite a few laughing gas canisters though, presumably also ejected from passing cars, or maybe by people out for a walk who like getting off their tits so as to break up the boredom?

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is out of intensive care which makes the front pages of certain tabloids.  

No sign of the squirrel.

Saturday 11th

Over the last few days I’ve been listening to 5Live Sports Extra who have been replaying in full last years Third Test between England and Australia. This being one of the most remarkable Tests involving England where after being dead and buried on day two they came back to win on the fourth mainly due to a remarkable innings from Ben Stokes. I remember this test match as much for the circumstances under which I listened to it; our cottage in Boulmer. It was a beautiful summer Sunday on an August Bank Holiday weekend and in the morning we’d walked down to Alnmouth on the coastal path. On the return leg and for some unknown reason because I’m not superstitious at all, I got it in to my head that if I got back to hear the first ball being bowled England would win. Which I did with seconds to spare, running in to the cottage and nearly tripping up over my boots in my bid to switch on the radio. I sat with my headphones on the whole day, utterly gripped as Mrs Fisher tapped away on her laptop totally unaware as to what was happening in Leeds [not that she cared of course]. I stared out through open patio doors watching the sun sparkle off the sea adrift in my own thoughts. Now I sit as home in the kitchen as a neighbour cuts paving slabs up. 

Saturday means its walk into Cleckheaton day. First stop the newsagents where there’s nobody in and while I’m picking up my papers [I’ve been buying both The Guardian and The Times thus giving us both enough reading material and puzzles to keep us going through the week] a woman walks in and goes straight up to the counter to buy some lottery tickets which, just like last week, seem to cause no end of problems with confusion over dates this time. I’m stood there a good five minutes and notice that outside there’s quite a lengthy queue developing. Whilst I’m in there I notice that there are several nine packs of toilet rolls for sale.  

Early evenings are now designated ‘Lets Play Some Records’ evenings. If there’s one thing that lockdown has taught me its that I should never underestimate the simple pleasures to be had from playing records. As a treat I let Mrs Fisher pick some and she goes for the two Tenniscoats LP’s she bought last year. As the needle hits the record we’re both dancing around the living room waving our arms about to the simple melodies, the world outside forgotten for the moment.

   

Sunday 12th

Hungover.

Witcyst and Prick Decay - Custic Witch Confectionary and in the Pols

Chocolate Monk. Choc 471

Various Artists - I Am With The Band of Gurps

Chocolate Monk. Choc 472

Fleshtone Aura - Infinite Keystroke

Chocolate Monk. Choc 473

Karen Constance - Nothing to See Hear

Chocolate Monk. Choc 474

Labas Krabas - Krabas Musique de Ultrá

Chocolate Monk. Choc 475

These five Chocolate Monk releases are the ones I’ve become more familiar with over any other Chocolate Monk releases. Every night [keep a routine is what they say on telly, it’ll stop you going bonkers], I climb the stairs and sit in front of my computer and think up words to describe the sounds I’m listening to and after putting them all on digital paper I pull the mains cord out and lose seventy-five percent of it.

Hey ho. People are dying in their thousands. This is my way of keeping sane. Now more than ever. You think I want to watch TV all day? Its either the coronavirus or Cash in the Attic. I much prefer this world. It might not make much sense to a lot of people but in here its total escape. Clamp on them headphones and let a whole new sound world take over your brain. Are we sitting comfortably?

Mention Witcyst and Prick Decay to noise people of a certain age and watch them go all weak at the knees. The very words. Like Proust’s madeleine moment they put you at an exact place and time. This being mid 90’s when the noise scene really started going through the gears and every buggers putting something out somewhere with Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers being responsible for vast amounts of it. A mad spew of noise muck, most of which sounded like it was recorded onto a dying portable cassette player by two blind people in a room full of clutter as the curtains burned down. Yes, its that good. Pure unadulterated, get it down and done, lo-fi, free noise as recorded with whatever you could get your hands on. Witcyst being a prime mover here having been making noises from his remote New Zealand outpost since the late eighties. Making noises and covering his releases with his own artwork, sending them out to like minded folks at a time when you spent many an hour queueing in post offices a lot less than two meters apart. His lathe cuts have gained mythical status and are rarer than a freshly pulled pint, he has never toured, he lives nowhere near anywhere and then he collaborated with Prick Decay in 1994 on a release that has never seen the light of day until now. 

Prick Decay were a loose collective revolving around Dylan Nyoukis and Dora Doll who at that time had yet to make the long trip down South. For anybody raised on digital these will sound ultra-rough and thats where the beauty lies. Listen to all that tape wear and dust and the passing years, where tape squish mingles with unafraid wailing acoustic guitar, where tape players had their cases removed for to make it easier to poke around in, where if it made a sound you recorded it and went with it. A wild, free time. There are noises on here that sound like mining machinery as recorded from the above ground, the unidentifiable groaning sounds of things dropping to bits, tape swill, tape punishment, pianos hit with fists and jabbing fingers, air cabin noise, the buzzing sound of things going where they shouldn’t. I’m pretty sure that the first and last track are the same but as nothing stays still for more than two seconds its hard to tell.       

  

Much to my amazement Witcyst is still going strong. I’ve just been on his LifeSpace live from New Zealand blog where everyone of his near a thousand Witcyst and related releases are all available for free download. Talk about coming at the right time.

A Buchla synthesizer holds things together through two shortish tracks by Fleshtone Aura. Those Buchla bongos going like buggery on the much better second track where its mixed with the sound of children seeing what their voices sound like in an huge, empty tunnel. Andrew No C Zuckerman, for tis he, hails from Canada and besides the Buchla throws in turntables, samples and of course tapes. I keep going back to that second track though, it has me in its grip, a series of synth sounds which Zuckerman has glued together to make a glorified whole. At times it sounds almost industrial with a foreboding beat thumping away but then there’s all this high end stuff squirting all over it and a trumpet keeps appearing, and those kids. 

Nothing to See Hear is the Karen Constance companion piece to the Dylan Nyoukis release of the same name. Maybe they should be played in unison so as to create a new whole. It’d be quite easy to set up. If all goes well I expect a black hole to open up through which I’d be transported to Brighton beach where all the pebbles become two pound coins and the rusting pier has Unky Thurst on it thraping his guitar until the virus goes away. Its a magnificent composition and one that gets better as it progresses increasing as it does the decay factor until we’re almost in Basinski territory, a gentle loop of a wheezing accordion that gives way to a glass harmonica and voices and all manner of under burble. Constance   has deft fingers, putting her sounds together with a maestros touch, altering the pace and density so that one minute you’re being subdued by a Victorian opera singer coming though a scratchy cylinder, slightly sped up and destroyed and the next the clip-clop of horses hooves before this all melts into a gloopy swamp of mushy-ness where you feel like your falling through a glycerine filled, glass walled, twenty ton holding tank. I suspect cassette tape and loop machines, the rubbing of strings and things I don’t understand. I also suspect I may have heard one of the best releases to pass through these hands this year.  

       

Labas Krabas are some kind of avant-garde mountain duo who Alan Lomax has been trying to track down. Maybe not mountain, maybe tower block, maybe shack on the edge of town and Yoko Ono’s here and she’s got a guitar with two twangy strings on it and she’s looking to jam with YOL and the Filthy Turd. They’re not here but some other dude is and they’re both wailing away and plucking egg slicers like they’re trying to get in the Hasil Adkins groove. Top track being ‘Stop Whittling On My Baby’ which has coins for percussion, a squeaky toy, reception bell and Yoko duetting with Derek Bailey. Actually its Odie Ji Ghast and Thomas Tyler doing for ‘song’ what Alfred Nobel did for the shit shifting industry. 

The various artist comp is where you need to be if any of the above sounds appealing but you’re not quite sure where to dip your toe in. Here be Cody Brant, Kenny Carstairs, Hannah Ellul, Seymour Glass, Possett, Karen C and Rust Ruus who hogs the whole thing with thirty minutes of gob boggling thoatifications that sound like you’re being eaten alive by tigers and squeaky dog toys as people make farting noises with their armpits. All the tracks are re-workings of a gig Band of Gurp played at Cafe Oto, Band of Gurp being a one off quintet containing Sharon Gal, Dylan Nyoukis, June Whitchurch, Yoni Silver and Ali Robertson. All cracking stuff and not a wasted second therein.

This weeks memorable number is: Three hundred thousand and thirty four nine hundred and seventy four thousand.

 Chocolate Monk