The Ghosts Of Ballet Dancers

How many  have fallen 

from the edge of Swan lake,

to find themselves here

in a water filled grave.

Achingly anonymous

No voice, no face.

Achingly delicate,

Poise, grace.

No choreography needed

for the unwitting dance.

Propulsion by plié,

destination by chance.

Dear Mr. Cameron

This morning I received in the post a letter from yourself. More of a pamphlet. no envelope. And I assume it was from yourself, as it had your face on the front of it. It was labelled "ELECTION COMMUNICATION YORKSHIRE". In it, you discuss how you and your party have made such fantastic changes to Britain since 2010. You also discuss how "we have lost control of our own affairs" thanks to being a part of the EU. Sounds like a contradiction to me, but that's beside the point. There's something else about this letter I wanted to ask you. Here is a picture of what I received.

My partner and I are currently sharing a home with her parents, and my father-in-law received the exact same letter. I thought that my partner and her mum  received nothing. I thought that was quite bad, but the truth is actually even worse than that. My partner did receive communication from yourself Dave. A communication containing the exact same information as mine did. She didn't see it because it was tucked away inside my letter.  Here it is.

Now, you may notice that this is exactly the same info on the front. "Securing Britain's Future" plastered on the front. Tick. Same smug photo. Tick. Same three bragging statements with big ticks? Tick. Inside it's mostly the same info too. Same contradictions and self promotion. However, here it is to scale with mine.

Dave, Old Sport, that to me suggests my partner's vote might be worth that little bit less than mine doesn't it. We mustn't worry about spending to much on the women, must we, because us good old men folk with our fully functioning brains will put them to rights and tell them how to vote, won't we. But hang on, because unbelievably, this gets worse.

Look again at that second picture. There's two names on there. That's both my partners name, and her mums. The letter was addressed to them both. So not only did my father-in-law and I get larger letters but we got one each. My mother-in-law and my partner get to share. I suppose it makes sense Dave. Whilst us men folk are off shooting grouse and singing drinking songs over a flagon of ale, they'll be at home together making our tea and needing something to fill their thoughts with other than knitting and kittens won't they? I can't help but think of that old Harry Enfield sketch. "Women! Know your limits!"

Women have had the right to vote in this country since 1928 Dave. Here's a little quote about it from the official website of your own parliament-

"1928 The Equal Franchise Act is passed giving women equal voting rights with men. All women aged over 21 can now vote in elections. Fifteen million women are eligible."

That's equal, not a vote worth half that of a man's. So why are your election communications focused so at me and my gender, with a cursory glance given to my partner and her mother, an afterthought and an 'if we must'. You're an embarrassment to our gender Dave. Tax cuts mean nothing, defecit cuts means even less, if we don't have equality for all. How can I expect you to do the right thing for the country in the EU when you can't even do the right thing by half of your own population when it comes to sending them a letter?

I look forward to your response. 

Dave.

Venting.

Uneven keel is progressing,
Unite knights in protest!
Unless kinship is persevered,
United Kingdom in pieces!
Useless "knowledge" in policies,
Unfair ku-klux in propaganda,
Urging knee-jerk indecent proposal,
Unfortunate Kaiser installed? Possibly.
Underclass kids into poverty,
Unleash Kafkaesque island perception.

We're All Guilty.

HEY GUYS! LET'S TALK BREASTS!
Seen any good ones,
As you walk the streets?
Pert, juicy jubblies,
Massive, heaving tits.
Wrapped tight in Lycra,
Or under thin silk,
With nipples showing,
The areola
Visible to all.

She's done it for you,
Worn that shirt to work.
Had it on all day
So for five seconds
As she passes you
You get a nice view
To ease the boredom.
The number sixteen,
Now four minutes late.
Isn't she so kind?

And so so lucky.
To have you looking
As she eases past,
Aware of the gaze
That doesn't see her.
Krypton factor time!
What colour's her hair?
Was she in a skirt?
Or classic denim?
What does it matter?

You've got your vision
Of what god gave her
Stuck deep in your mind
To use when alone,
But not thinking about
The first pair you sucked
All those years ago,
When again you gazed
But didn't take in
Anything you saw.

The Same Mixtapes

Big Cat Diary is no more, but the blog lives. It's had a rebrand, and you can now find it at thesamemixtapes.blogspot.com! Hope to see you there soon!

Sunday Classic Cover- Vic Chesnutt

Arming oneself with an acoustic guitar and a pop song then dutifully playing its chords and singing its lyrics is one of the most overused methods of cover version creations there is. For every Elbow appearing on the Live Lounge, there's 25 of these. But every now and then, this method creates something beyond beautiful. I had intended to write about Vic Chesnutt's oddball cover of R.E.M.'s It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine), but for the first time, I'm instead writing about another of his covers which I only discovered tonight during my research. To be honest, it's knocked me sideways.

Vic Chesnutt was a long term fixture on the same vibrant Athens, Georgia scene which spawned R.E.M. Whether working on his succession of solo albums, or with his band Brute, everything he put his name to was tinged with fragility, his vocal bleak, distant, and captivating. Yet nothing was ever quite as fragile as this, a cover of Kylie Minogue's Come Into My World from the soundtrack to the movie Mitte Ende August.

On Christmas Day 2009, just months after its release, Vic Chesnutt was dead, taking his own life, an overdose of muscle relaxants successful. He had suffered years of being refused cover for medical insurance, $50,000 dollars in debt for treatment needed after a car accident at age 18 left him confined to a wheelchair and with limited use of his hands. Thanks to an American healthcare system which is thankfully finally under scrutiny, Vic Chesnutt simply could not afford to live, so he took the decision to die. It's difficult not to hear this cover as a cry for someone to look at how this system worked, how a man who worked hard, released sixteen albums in nineteen years could be treated this way.

He was always upfront and honest in his own lyric writing about his battles, but after his death, said to be his fourth suicide attempt, this song's "I've been chasing the life I'm dreaming, now I'm home" takes on a much darker subtext than anything songwriter Cathy Dennis could have imagined from the song.

Here's Vic's R.E.M. cover too. Don't expect the scattergun pop of the original. I like to think of it as a jigsaw puzzle of Michael Stipe's dream led lyrical vision.

Wednesday (Thursday) Classic Track- Girls Aloud

After the first few weeks of the Wednesday classic track showcasing a fair bit of rock, this week it's a complete change of tack. Pure POP. Girls Aloud have always been pop in every sense of the word. Accessible, chorus' dripping from the walls, and popular beyond belief, but they've always been a little underrated for the risks they took musically.

Biology, from 2005 album 'Chemistry', is on first listen just another three and a minute chart botherer  by well known songwriting team Xenomania. It's when you notice the chorus doesn't hit until two minutes into the track it's actually a little different. The song is broken down into very different, seperate sections of between thirty seconds and a minute, rather than relying on the same regular hook. There's not just one change in tempo but three, between the opening section; a stomping show tune, based on an Animals riff and the songs main bulk, then back again. The only reason what I call the chorus the chorus because it comes back at the end. Every section here could've been individually spun out into a full excellent pop tune. It slow burns, it rewards the listener, and it's the closest pop will ever get to prog.

Post-split, some members of the band have gone on to release highly underrated solo work. Everyone may be raving about the live comeback of Kate Bush right now, but they've ignored the unlikely natural successor sat under their noses. Nicola Robert's 'Cinderella's Eyes' released in 2011 shouldn't just end this decade remembered as one of the best pop albums of the teens, but the best albums period. With plenty of time now passed from Girls Aloud's commercial peak, it's time they had a good critical reappraisal.