Bog People

I have just bought The Bog People by P.V Glob, I read it years ago when I worked at Leeds University Library and have wanted a copy for yonks.



I first became familiar with the Bog People when studying Seamus Heaney in my undergraduate degree, who had a bit of an obsession with them, especially in his 1975 collection North. In a nut shell, bodies have been found in bogs in Northern Europe from as far back as the Iron Age, perfectly preserved due to the chemical balance of the bogs, often showing signs of torturous murders, presumed to be sacrificial.

This book by P.V. Glob is fascinating, and was groundbreaking in its publication in 1965, though has lost some of its edge over time, as views about the nature of the deaths (and in some case even the genders) of the bodies are fairly contested. Many now believe that some wounds weren't infact inflicted while they were living, but rather incurred due to the weight of the bogs above them. It's a gripping read regardless.

I bought it second hand on Amazon, unable to find a copy in any of the bloomsbury second hand book shops, and the seller included an article from the Guardian in 1998 inside of it, which was a very nice touch.

It's incredible the extent that these bodies have remained in tact (google them!), it's no wonder that when many of them were found, it was assumed that they were recently murdered people.

There's more information at this website, the site's a bit style over substance for my liking, but there are some oral histories and such on there which are quite interesting.

Also, an interesting read about Heaney's bog poems here.

And a more contemporary news piece about the bog people from the National Geographic.

Strange Fruit Seamus Heaney

Here is the girl's head like an exhumed gourd.
Oval-faced, prune-skinned, prune-stones for teeth.

They unswaddled the wet fern of her hair
And made an exhibition of its coil,
Let the air at her leathery beauty.
Pash of tallow, perishable treasure:
Her broken nose is dark as a turf clod,
Her eyeholes blank as pools in the old workings.
Diodorus Siculus confessed
His gradual ease with the likes of this:
Murdered, forgotten, nameless, terrible
Beheaded girl, outstaring axe
And beatification, outstaring
What had begun to feel like reverence.

How about I be me (and you be you)?

Happy International Women’s Day! While I’m sitting in the house waiting for a washing machine man, I thought I’d celebrate one of my very favourite women, and her triumphant new album.

Sinead’s had a bit of an inconsistent back catalogue. For me, Her first two albums were stunning (Lion and the Cobra, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got) as was her fourth, Universal Mother (a personal favourite), her other two original albums were a bit hard to stomach for me, Faith and Courage, aside from a few good tracks was a bit tired I thought, and Theology (original in the sense that they weren’t covers, but interpretations of scriptures…) was nice, but a bit melody-light. Her other three albums were cover albums- which are all brilliant, but difficult to judge against her earlier masterpieces. I think it’s patronising to say that How about I be me (and you be you)? Is a “brilliant return” simply because she hasn’t been anywhere, she’s still been consistently producing music since the late eighties, and even when it wasn’t as strong, it’s always been challenging and worthy of attention, it’s not a “return to form”, it’s just a continuation of the fascinating evolution of a singularly mind-blowing and unique artist.

That said, I do think the new album is my favourite since Universal Mother in 1994, when I first heard it I was eight or nine, and it blew me away. It was a time when it wasn’t very fashionable to be a Sinead fan, especially being raised a Catholic, because people misconstrued her infamous Saturday Night Live pope-picture-ripping as an attack on faith, when it was really a (justified) attack on the Catholic Church in relation to the child abuse scandals that only surfaced fully in the public conscience about twenty years later, proving O'Connor the oracle right. Universal Mother had vitriol and anger (Fire on Babylon, Famine, Red Football), vulnerability and quiet moments (Tiny Grief Song, A Perfect Indian, Thankyou for Hearing Me) and pure poetry (John I Love You), I was staggered by it, and as much as I had been consumed by pop music at the time, I think Sinead was my real introduction to more alternative and challenging music. While How about I be me is not as challenging and nuanced as Universal Mother, it’s polished and it’s fresh and angry and beautiful and new, whilst still sounding utterly ‘Sinead’.

The stand out tracks are Take off your shoes, which is so angry and powerful and Queen of Denmark- a John Grant cover where her straight-laced take on a very witty song sounds as petulant and indignant as anything from Lion and the Cobra: “why don’t you bore the shit out of somebody else”. Reason with me is the most beautiful song, taken from the perspective of a “junkie”, it’s very self-aware (as the whole album is), compassionate and honest. Her cover of Song for the siren is only on the deluxe edition, but is the most gorgeous version of it since This Mortal Coil's.

It’s definitely the best album of the year so far (stiff competition from Perfume Genius, Lana Del Ray and the Cranberries, this year is shaping up to be another good one). If you’re a Sinead virgin, I recommend checking out her first two albums, and this one as priorities, and perhaps the career retrospective ‘She Who Dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High Shall Abide Under the Shadow of the Almighty’ (the longest album title ever?) which is a collection of demos, covers and live versions and is much better than a generic greatest hits.

Long live Sinead, who is as beautiful as she ever was, contrary to what the self-hating women who write for the Daily Mail think. She’s a massive inspiration and I’m so pleased that the media have stopped banging on about her personal life and are focusing on how brilliant her new body of work is. I was lucky enough to get to see her last year after sixteen years of being a fan, which was the first time I heard most of the material on this album, and she was remarkable, her voice was unfaltering. Hopefully I'll get to see her again soon.

Buy it!

Rosemary's baby

I need to gush about how insanely brilliant Rosemary’s Baby by Ira Levin is. The film is definitely in my top five horror films of all time (perhaps top three), but I’ve only just got around to reading the book, thanks to @_LadyAlex’s recommendation, as it was on her reading list for uni. The premise in a nut shell is that Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse move into a new flat in the ‘Bramford’, which has a fairly murky reputation of Satanist ex-residents and high numbers of suicides and dead babies in the basement and so forth. They are taken under the wing of their next door neighbours, Minnie and Roman Castavet- an eccentric 60+ couple whose kindness becomes a bit stifling to Rosemary. Guy is an actor who is having a tough time getting his big break, and misses out on a big part to another actor, who, soon after the Woodhouses start spending time with the Castavets, becomes blind and Guy gets the role by default. Rosemary falls pregnant in a feverish dream sequence, and that’s all I’m prepared to say without ruining anything. The thing that makes this such an exemplary example of brilliant horror fiction, is how compelling the characters are, and unlike many horrors, you really care about the protagonist. Also, the character of Minnie Castavet is perhaps the most subversive “protagonist” ever, she is endlessly infuriating, but her gaudiness and sheer campness makes her an incredibly endearing character. Rosemary is such a complex character in the most accessible way possible, she's bright but extremely niave, unfalteringly trusting, and hers is eventually a story of crushing loneliness. Definitely read it, it will blow you away. In spite of the fact I knew how it ends, the build up to the climax had my heart racing. The film is so faithful to the book, it’s so phenomenal, it's hilariously funny, pretty heartbreaking, suffocatingly dark and genuinely horrifying. I can’t gush enough.

My favourite albums of 2011

Last year I was fairly underwhelmed with the music that was coming out, but thought that Robyn's album was the best.

This year, the music has been miles better, here is me top five, with a few notable runners up afterwards.

5. Lupercalia Patrick Wolf

A bit cheery compared to his earlier efforts, but still very successful, miles better than his last foray into happiness AKA the disaster that was Magic Position.





4. The Rip Tide Beirut


My only complaint about this album is that it's a bit too short, at only nine tracks. It's such a gorgeous album, best tracks are A Candle's Fire, Goshen and Santa Fe.



3. Let England Shake PJ Harvey

Never thought she'd release another album that I loved as much as White Chalk, but alas, she proved me wrong. Really pleased this got all of the credit it deserves.



2. Feel it Break Austra

I love having new bands to get excited about, and Austra is definitely my favourite new music of the year, it's pretty much my ideal type of music, female vocals, dark and maudlin electro pop. It's a stunning album, and the delux edition has a load of extras as well, including a b-side called Trip, which definitely should have made the album.



1. Biophilia Bjork

I'm sure people are bored of hearing me shiting on about how beautiful this album is, I shall direct you to my earlier gushing review of it.



The runner ups include: Collapse into Now R.E.M, EUPHORIC /// HEARTBREAK Glasvegas, 21 Adele is good if a little overrated, Born this Way Lady Gaga, Wounded Rhymes Lykke Li, In the Pit of the Stomach We Were Promised Jetpacks, Ordinary Alien Boy George, Ceremonials Florence and the Machine, and of course 50 Words for Snow Kate Bush, which I love, but it's not as good as I had hoped, I really don't like Elton John's vocals at all, and her son's singing drives me bonkers, I thought the album would be as good as disc two of Aerial, but for me the concept just falls a bit short, a colleague's review of it made me laugh: 'it's a shame a producer didn't think to say, perhaps you should stop at 35 words?' Misty is one of the stronger songs but does it really have to be 13 minutes long? I appreciate the pace, and the fact that the songs are quite spacious, but it just doesn't work for me. I thought Director's Cut was stronger. Another runner up, is Mount Wittenberg Orca Dirty Projectors, which was technically released in 2010, but came out as a physical release this year, check that out it's wonderful. The new Amy Winehouse release is alright too, obviously not a patch on her two studio albums, but it's worth having.

the stranger's child

Finally finished ploughing through Alan Hollinghurst's newest tome (although ploughing suggests it was laborious, which it was anything but). I definitely recommend it, for me it was even better than The Line of Beauty and The Folding Star.



I won't toil through the plot too closely, just read it if you're interested, but it's divided into five parts and spans from 1913 to 2008, and like his previous works, it's focussed on upper class, highly educated literary sorts, and the main theme, for me, is the evolution of a literary reputation, in this case, of Cecil Valance, a poet who dies in the first world war whose fairly second-class poetry is subsequently romanticised by his death. The principle character, whose perspective is rarely the one the reader is privy to, is Daphne Sawle, unusually a female, as Hollinghurst's previous books have been notably short on female characters and certainly female perspectives.

It's a stunning book, a much more literary read than I'm used to, I feel more intelligent and self-aware just from reading it. It's also unquestionably queer as well, less forcibly so than his last books, and with less implicit sex, but I'd say 90% of the males are either definitely gay, bisexual or sexually ambiguous. But this isn't gratuitous, the fluidity of sexuality is an important aspect of the plot.

I was lucky enough to attend a book reading by Alan Hollinghurst at the New Bloomsbury Set which was hosted by Gay's the Word bookshop. He was a great reader, very funny and quite self-effacing as well. He also signed my copy of the book too.



Anyhoo, I definitely recommend this if you want something quite heavy to get your teeth into, it's extremely rewarding and the flow of the prose, as ever, is poetic.

My favourite albums of 2010

I attempted to draw up a list of my favourite albums of 2010, but realised it had been a fairly poor year for music because I couldn’t manage a top ten, I could manage a top three. This might be my own fault, as I have spent the vast majority of the year listening to Fever Ray’s album (from 2009), which I got into a little later than everyone else.

3. ‘Tomorrow, in a year’ The Knife in collaboration with Mt. Sims and Planningtorock



An electro- opera about Charles Darwin, sounds a bit niche (and is) and is fairly hard to listen to initially but once you can start picking out the melodies it becomes easier on the ear. My favourite review of this said: “as a continuous hour and half movement that mercilessly evokes the sheer, fuckoff, awful, inhuman immensity of the natural world, it bloody well works.”

Best songs: Annie’s Box, Colouring of pigeons, The height of summer (that said the album works much better a whole rather than as individual songs).

2. ‘Swanlights’ Antony and the Johnsons



I think this is their most solid and mature album yet, bit more challenging than their last three, but a little more rewarding too. The version of Thank you for your love that he did on Jools Holland was infinitely better than the album version, musically and lyrically (he modified the lyric to say ‘I am the enemy/ the enemy of the earth,/ I don’t know how/ how to stop giving birth’), so my only complaint would be that the album version of that wasn’t - for me- the definitive version.

Best songs: The spirit was gone, Ghost, Salt Silver Oxygen, Christina’s farm.

1. ‘Body talk’ Robyn



Robyn is easily the best thing in pop right now. The trio of albums worked well as far as I’m concerned, I enjoyed the consistent output- it could have failed miserably but didn’t, because the quality of the music was always very high. It’s astounding that someone could produce so many brilliant songs in one year. This review of the lead single ‘Dancing on my own’ in the Guardian is amazing.

Best songs: Love kills, Call your girlfriend, Time machine, We dance to the beat, Indestructible, None of Dem (with Röyksopp) and Dancing on my own.

Honourable mentions: ‘Grey Oceans’ CocoRosie, ‘Memphis Blues’ Cyndi Lauper, ‘Senior’ Röyksopp, ‘Nobody’s Daughter’ Hole, ‘The Family Jewels’ Marina and the Diamonds.

Albums I'm looking forward to in 2011: Adele, R.E.M, PJ Harvey, Nelly Furtado, Hercules and Love Affair, Lady Gaga, Amy Winehouse.

Hope everyone had a good Christmas, and have a healthy and happy 2011!

bat for lashes

I went to see Bat for Lashes last night at the Leeds Met Union, which is a venue I really like (I've seen Imogen Heap and Gossip there too). They were amazing, though I really can't warm to Natasha Khan at all, she seems so arrogant and insincere. That said, she's got a beautiful voice and I loved the gig. The set was fairly short, just shy of 40 minutes or so, and was mostly the new album, with a few from Fur and Gold. I love how different the two albums sound, the first one was quite folksy, but the new one is so epic and "mystical", some of the tracks could be on the soundtrack to some really cheesy 80s fantasy film like Dark Crystal or somethin. Really oddly she didn't do Prescilla, which was quite disappointing and also very suprising. I don't think they're big enough yet to be choosing to miss out their most well known songs. The encore was Moon and Moon from the new album.

Also, Louise bought me one of their t-shirts for my birthday- which is beautiful. Sorry about the myspace-esque picture, it's purely to illustrate the delicious t-shirt. I do love a bit of swan, mauled or otherwise.





definitely check out their new album "Two Suns" if you have yet to. It's stunning, joint with PJ Harvey's "A woman a man walked by" as best of 2009 so far.

love love x

The Hours by Michael Cunningham

I read The Hours by Michael Cunningham back in November, and fell in love with it. At the time I wrote a little facebook note containing my favourite quotes, i've just reread that now and though i would duplicate them here too:

There’s a little scene where Virginia’s niece builds a little funeral bed for a dead thrush and it’s so sublime I almost wet myself.

“Virginia looks with unanticipated pleasure at this modest circlet of thorns and flowers; this wild deathbed. She would like to lie down on it herself.”

“It could be a kind of hat. It could be the missing link between millinery and death.”

“…while she, Virginia, a bird-sized Virginia, lets herself metamorphose from an angular, difficult woman into an ornament on a hat; a foolish, uncaring thing.”



about laura brown's son (pretty much sums up a mother-son relationship for me):

"He knowns. He must know. The little boy can tell she's been somewhere illicit; he can tell she's lying. He watches her constantly, spends almost every waking hour in her presence [...] He is devoted, entirely, to the observation and deciphering of her, because without her there is no world at all."

sigh :o)