Occasionally within my ponderings here, I refer to a place called The Lace Shop. This was my two-day-a-week workplace for a year or so, several years ago, until I was suddenly given the ‘I’m going to have to let you go’ phonecall because the boss’s daughter wanted my job. I wasn’t actually that upset. Clearing out the images folders on my computer has presented me with some long-forgotten pictorial reminders that it was not a healthy place to spend any time:

This is the view of the front shop area. In the centre is a selection of polyester embroidered tablecloths and table runners. [Before working here I was actually unaware of the existence of table runners, and I still don't really understand what they're for.] All around the edges are very alarming porcelain dolls, teddy bears whose purpose is to adorn wedding cakes, and other such abominations. Particularly horrible are embroidered cushions with slogans on such as ‘If friends were flowers, I’d pick you’ – which I personally think is rather ominous and passive-aggressive, but a lot of annoying women would come in, read them out loud and say, ‘Ooh-isn’t-that-lovely’. Always in the same tone of voice.

This is the ‘Rear Showroom’. It did not, as its name suggests, contain any rears on display, which I suppose is either disappointing or fortunate depending on one’s viewpoint and the quality of the available rears. However, it did have yet more, even nastier dolls, some embroidered cushions, damask tablecloths and some lace pictures, mostly religious scenes. The latter were certainly a contender for Worst Thing in the Shop – I’m still undecided.

Some more dolls, including Henry VIII and some of his wives. A woman once came in and asked whether the shop sold any dolls of Princess Diana. I said that it didn’t. She was very put out. She stomped back through the door muttering, ‘Well, you’ve got Henry the Eighth… it’s not that unreasonable.’ She may have been a bit offended because I didn’t do a very good job of Not Finding Her Request At All Amusing.

This is the handmade lace. I was supposed to somehow insinuate that this was made in Nottingham, England, on the orders of The Boss. When it arrived in its packets, it smelt distinctly of patchouli and spices, and had Indian writing on the labels. So, er, yes, definitely made in Nottingham. I do not think. In the mirror you can see me taking the photograph, wearing the obligatory hideous maroon tabard.

After working in this place for a while I gradually became aware that actually the vast majority of the stock in this shop – mainly sold to tourists as ‘English souvenirs’ arrived in boxes that stated quite firmly that although the souvenirs themselves might have the name of the town I live in printed on them, they were made in China. The Boss told me that if the customers asked where anything was made, I was to claim ignorance.

This made me feel rather disgusted, both with myself for going along with it, and for the shop’s owners for enforcing this fabrication. American tourists who said, ‘I hope it isn’t made in China’ left the shop with ‘local’ souvenirs that had been shipped halfway across the world to be sold here.

It seems ridiculous that a town which used to be a centre of creation – it used to make railway engines, chocolate and various other things – now mainly trades in tourism relating to its history, while manufacture declines and “local” souvenirs are made on another continent. Of course this isn’t solely the fault of this town itself, and I don’t feel qualified to go into the complex national and global causes and effects which surround the issue. However, during the quiet, customer-free and boss-free periods while I was working in the shop, I wrote a song inspired by this. After my job there was transferred to the daughter of The Boss I was very tempted to post a CD recording of it through the shop door, but since it would be difficult to have it performed and recorded by Abba – the only music ever played in the shop when I wasn’t around – I don’t think it would have been listened to. It’s called ‘Tourist Trail’ and hasn’t been recorded in the studio yet, but here’s a live video from a Pillowfish gig earlier this year:

Pillowfish – Tourist Trail from Pillowfish on Vimeo.

The midi pedalboard arrived this morning! Here are the contents of the box in which it arrived, accompanied by my foot:

I was a little confused by the box of catfood that came with it (despite having become used to strange things arriving with what I order: I bought a necklace from Etsy recently which was sent in an envelope with some lavender, a teabag and a typewriter key) but it turned out to be surrounding a midi cable and power supply.

Having got it plugged into my (very reluctant) computer (I don’t think the soundcard likes mornings) and running on an organ plugin, I experimented with footwear. Bare feet was a bit uncomfortable, shoes or even tiny thin slippers made it hard to feel where the notes were (it felt a bit like playing the piano with gloves on) but socks, or in this case a pair of cotton/cashmere blend tights (described on the packet, for some reason, as ‘Nordic’) were just about right. I’m sure this isn’t correct, and that genuine organ players have special Organ Playing Shoes rather than Nordic Tights, but that seems to be what works for me.

I have spent a large portion of today playing tunes on the viola while attempting bass lines with my feet. It is really fun.

Doing a Pillowfish gig online tonight at 9pm UK time – come and see it at http://www.pillowfish.co.uk/live_video_ustream.html….

These were received while busking:

Man putting in 50p: “I’d put in a quid if you’d play something decent.” [What?! What?! The mind boggles...]

Woman walking past while we were playing some fast jigs: “Thank you. It’s very calming.” [So how was she feeling before? Crikey...]

Middle aged, portly man with glasses and a beard: “Now, you can very obviously play the violin. That’s good. Now, don’t you think that instrument [pointing to Tom's bouzouki] – now, it’s exactly a lute, is it?… but anyway, it would make a very good continuo if you were to play some Corelli or Vivaldi…”

And so we are brought to two more of our Categories of People Encountered While Busking. The last example actually falls into both at once, and the first falls into one of them.

The first category is: People Who Are Slightly Offended That You Have The Ability to Play an Instrument But Are Not Using It to Play The Exact Genre of Music That They Like.

I mean, how dare we? How dare we spend years learning to play an instrument and not develop a) the psychic ability to determine when somebody wants us to play ‘Wonderful Tonight’ [probably what the first man wanted, by the look of him...] or Vivaldi, and b) a universal knowledge of and ability to play all music ever written? It’s shameful, really. I don’t know how we sleep at night. I do, however, live in hope that someone from this category suggests to us that although what we’re playing in very nice, what they’d really like to hear is a little Stockhausen.

Category 2, for today, is “Experts”.

These are almost invariably slightly portly, bespectacled, bearded, middle aged men, who for some reason are desperate to communicate to us that they know a bit about music too. This desire for recognition generally indicates that actually they don’t know very much about it at all, they just want to – a true academic such as a music lecturer would be more likely to just watch and smile from a distance, and if they were to talk to us it would probably be some kind of sparse compliment such as, ‘Very nice.’ But these chaps who want to appear scholarly insist on telling us all sorts of information about what we’re playing, because apparently they know much more about it than we do. And the problem is that frequently they don’t and it makes it all rather difficult because my natural urge is to contradict them and it’s very difficult to find that happy medium between the inane ’smile and nod’ approach and coming right out and saying, ‘Look. You have gaps in your knowledge. You obviosuly do not know more about my instrument than I do so stop asking me about it and then contradicting everything I say; English tunes are not certified ‘Gaelic’ and why are you asking what that last tune was called just so you can say, ‘No it wasn’t actually, it was this other thing’?” You see it’s tricky. Usually I aim for the ’smile and be ever so subtly sarcastic’ approach, but it really uses up a lot of brainspace which I’d rather use for being able to remember what the notes are etc.

I suspect most of them play the recorder expressionlessly while wobbling their heads, because of some misguided notion that that’s the authentic way to do it.

And here ends today’s rant.