The Importance of Copyright

Tags

69th position, Andrew Graham-Dixon, Chlamydia, Chow Mein, copyright, Culture Show, FT, Gilbert and George, How To Spend It, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Marriage of Reason and Squalor, Spitalfields, symbolic acceleration to high value, Turner Prize

Clammie and I were sitting in the corner of Costamuchamoulah must-

seen cafe.  We know each other well enough to be rude, so I was deep

in Saturday’s FT and she was reading the Style section of some other

publication.

Hey, Clammie, I suddenly expostulated. Did you know that the Chapman

Brothers..?

As I said, we are impertinent to each other, so she cut me off

with: Who?

The Chapmans- Chapmen?-those guys called Jake and Dinos who do

joint artworks..

I thought that was Gilbert and George?

No, same kind of concept, but different people, I explained.

I think they both had connections with Spitalfields.  Anyway,

they..

Who?

The Chapmen…produced an artwork that depicted the 69th

sex position, in 2003.

Gosh!  Are there that many?! Sounds like Friday night in our house

when we  order a Chinese takeaway and I just say, ‘I’ll have a No. 69’.

Yeah, and if I’m there, I just say, ‘I’ll have what she’s having’.

We laughed like drains.  So immature!

But no one has made an artwork out of a takeaway, have they?

Clammie pondered aloud.

We could always get in first with an entry for the Turner Prize, I

suggested.  Clammie and Candia interviewed by Andrew Graham-

Dixon on The Culture Show. ‘Chow Really, Really Mean’.

No use, Clammie pointed out.  Everyone would think you were related

to him and we had been promoted through nepotism.  It’s the Dixon

surname that’s the problem.  Candia Stuart doesn’t sound as artistic

as Candia Dixon-Stuart, so I don’t think you could just ditch it!

Oh well, what about these Chapman guys?

She had looked faintly annoyed at having been interrupted in her

investigation through some glossies to determine whether antlers

were passe, or not, in current interiors, as accent pieces.

Well, the brother called Jake mentions that he wrote a novel in 2008

called ‘The Marriage of Reason and Squalor’ and they are planning on

making it into a film.

So?  The title sounds like some relationships I know of.

I told you we could be rude to each other.  Actually, my house is tidier

than hers.

They’re planning on calling it ‘Chlamydia’, after the female character,

I clarified.

Hmm, well I’ve had that name for over thirty five years, she grumbled.

But no doubt my parents didn’t have the foresight to take out a

copyright.

I hope it won’t result in any embarrassment for you, I observed.  They

might be having a go at the comfortable classes, such as ourselves.

How so?

Jake is quoted here as saying:.. our psychodramas furnish the bourgeoisie

with the sense that their world is radical and dangerous and audicious.

Say that again, Clammie requested.  Is there such a word?  Doesn’t he

mean ‘audacious’?

It’s probably a subversion of language, I reflected.  Or a deliberate

lexical sabotage on the part of the FT. They probably don’t appreciate people

who say, as Dino does, that anyone who has surplus money at the end of the

week after feeding themselves and paying for their fuel is a criminal.

No, I suppose not.  I mean the FT takes them out to lunch and then they

insult the readership of their host’s How To Spend It magazine.

She crumpled up her paper napkin and wiped her mouth with it, then

rudely grabbed the article from me and started reading it for herself.

It also says that they are-quote-‘voyeurs of their own work, not authors of

its meaning’, she informed me.  It sounds as if you are in good company,

Candia.  Surely that’s what informs your creativity!

I should hope that my behaviour is not so audicious, I laughed. But I

seriously question whether many people- even in Suttonford- have surplus

money at the end of the month nowadays.

I, for one, don’t, agreed Clammie.  Lattes have gone up so much

recently. It makes me feel radical to be sitting here.

Perhaps you have the answer in your own hands, I suggested.

What? She looked puzzled.

They say that you just need to learn a few tricks about symbolic

acceleration to high value.  Take that napkin..once the film comes out,

with your name, you could sell your authentically crumpled and/or doodled

napkin to a dealer.  Picasso and others did it, so you’d be in a tradition.

You could frame it and claim that it had exophoric reference.

So, you reckon stags’ antlers may be on the way out?

Post-Christmas, I’d say so. Think trash with attitude.   Or sell them the

rights to your name.  Should keep you in cappuccinos for life.

Audicious! she concurred.

The Phantom Cavalier

Tags

Carrie, Cavalier, Chlamydia, Clammie, Classic FM, Costamuchamullah, ghosts, Harry Potter, Haunted house, Laughing Cavalier, Madam Blavatsky, Pipesof Pan, Sonia, Suttonford

Clammie passed the well-coiffed woman she privately called Madame Blavatsky almost every morning, after she had deposited the children at school. The woman sat outside Costamuchamullah café in High Street in all weathers, because she was one of the last addicts who smoked openly in Suttonford.

Often Clammie would reckon that she was due some me-time, which usually spread itself over most of the week, so, after indulging herself with- say- an alpaca purchase from Pipes of Pan, the Andean boutique, she would pursue her own addiction, namely a caffeine fix.

So it was that one morning, Clammie came to be sitting opposite the mysterious lady who had graciously removed her shopping bag so that a tired yummy mummy could have a spare seat at her aluminium table.

Normally Clammie wouldn’t have been able to tolerate smoke wafting over, but there were no seats vacant indoors and there was a slight breeze, which was blowing the offensive miasma in someone else’s direction.

I’m sorry. I know that I’ve seen you sitting here for a number of years, but I don’t know your name.  I’m Chlamydia, she volunteered, removing her Mocha out of contamination’s reach.

Madame Blavatsky flicked the ash from the end of her cigarette, perilously close to Clammie’s cup and saucer:

Oh, my name’s Sonia and I’ve been living in Suttonford for aeons.

Clammie asked where exactly in the town she lived.

In the haunted house, darling, – the one with the resident Cavalier.  Not laughing, you understand, but rather fleeing from capture in The Battle of Suttonford. He hid in our attic.

A haunted house?  I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, countered Clammie.

Well, you should, stated Sonia firmly.  I’ve experienced many over the years and, like more corporeal members of the opposite sex, you have to talk nicely to them if you are to co-habit peaceably.  For example, I have to ignore the fact that my resident often plays my instrument.  And no, it’s definitely not a pianola.

What! The Cavalier takes liberties with your instrument?  How very-eh-cavalier.

No, darling.  Pianos weren’t invented when he was around.  He prefers to tinkle my harpsichord.  He is considerably quieter and more mannerly than your modern day Jools Holland, for example.

How do you know that he is responsible and not someone next door, listening to Classic FM?  The wattle and daub is thin and there is no cavity to speak of between the walls in High Street.

I see the keys being depressed, said Sonia with utmost conviction.  Look, I’m a clairvoyant.  Can you come round next Wednesday for afternoon tea, and I’ll prove it?  I’d read your leaves now, but I see that you are having a Mocha.

Privately Clammie thought that if Sonoa was a bit of a soothsayer she should have known the answer, but publicly she replied:

Would you be able to tell me if I will ever live in High Street?

That depends on the leaves.  We can look into that later. But perhaps you will hear the harpsichord.  Sonia laughed at Clammie’s widening eyes.  Royalist House.  Three and three quarters High Street. Don’t fail me. Three o’clock.

She blew a smoke ring around Clammie, so that she had to close her eyes to prevent them from stinging from the ectoplasm.  When she opened them, Sonia had disappeared.  There was only a smouldering butt on the table, from which emanated a curling plume .

Like the feather from a Cavalier’s hat, Carrie mused.  I think I’ve been reading too much ‘Harry Potter’.

 

 

 

All Things Lavenderial

Tags

Andy Murray, Bradley Wiggins, Chlamydia, Clydeside, coffee, Glasgow, lavender, London 2012, Michael Phelps, Novak Djokovic, Olympics, Roger Federer, Sarah Montague’, Thought for the Day, Warren Buffet

You could sit in the sun, but there was a wind. I suggested to my friend Chlamydia that we should go to an alternative venue for those all-important coffees.

There is a barn with surrounding lavender fields which sells all things lavenderial – wreaths, scrubs, oils, essential and non-essential, cake, shortbread and lilac furbelows.  Actually they stock pink, white and tufted green plants as well and someone told me that they had supplied floral spikes for the Olympic bouquets.  They probably supply some for the local Hyacinth Bouquets too.  Chlamydia, or Clammie, as she prefers to be known, caught them out, though, by asking for lavender which suited a north-facing position.  It was worthy of Gardeners’ Question Time from Sparsholt College.  Of course, she knew the answer and she also knew that it was only available on the Isle of Wight, so there!

Then I quizzed them as to whether the lavender in the shortbread was definitely of the edible variety.  I was a little nervous since they hadn’t known the answer to the north-facing question.

After a cyclist had been run over by a bus containing the media, Wiggins had lent his support to the cause of compelling cyclists to wear helmets.  Some smart arse had objected and recommended that more people should simply get on their bikes and go onto the roads and there would be safety in numbers.  I could only think of huge flocks of Canada geese, where the outriders were picked off by preying predators, yet a percentage made it through to sunnier climes, or to more wintry ones, depending on the birds in question. We are supposed to be worth more to God than the fall of a sparrow, I pondered.  I had heard that assurance on Thought for the Day.  I thought that more academics should listen in, if they weren’t too exasperated with Sarah Montague in the rest of the programme. They might learn something.

Andy eliminated Djokovic in a very short time and then actually smiled.  Roger, looking very fetching in the colours of his country’s flag, played the longest Olympic tennis semi-final ever, against a very smart Argentinian.  When Roger nipped off for a comfort break, I myself was relieved that the Argy guy did not unfurl a banner about the liberation of the Malvinas, though that was the second publicity opportunity that they had missed.

I was disappointed in Roger’s wife, however.  She was wearing a baseball cap- and I remembered what that had done to William Hague’s credibility- and she was chewing, as if she was Alex Ferguson. My granny had always told me off for chewing in public though she had come from Clydeside.  So, I shuddered to think what part of Glasgow Alex had come from.  At any rate, cud regurgitation was not a cool look and I felt it was unworthy of the consort of the glacial elegance of Federer.

At a crucial match point a baby had started yelling and I had felt that stab of maternal anxiety that can ruin a day out or an evening meal for adults.  I was glad when it was silenced- perhaps by an usher asking if it had its own ticket, or was merely related to a ball boy or girl.  Just as well it hadn’t squawked at Andy’s match, or his mum might have dealt with it very efficiently off camera- see Scottish play.

I watched the women’s ten thousand metres race and found it amusing to see the four Africans overtake the others who were visually ahead, but who were in lap arrears.  They had to avoid a big Polish(?) guy who had chucked a cannonball an amazing distance.  He had the bad manners to run across their track.  Had he tripped they would have had to hurdle over him, like negotiating some kind of beached whale.  Then it was the turn of pregnant wives and excited children to swarm over the track.  It was getting like the rush hour.

On the radio I had heard someone quoting Warren Buffet, who commented that when the tide recedes you can see those who are swimming naked. I wondered if there was a wave machine in the Olympic pool.  It would be quite interesting to flick a switch.  However, they all seemed to favour those lycra long johns – even Michael Phelps – pity.