Valentines Pants & Red Devon Cows

What do you think about Valentine’s Day, Bjork?

It’s Valentine’s Day, and I’ve got four gigs this weekend, which means I’m allowed do the bit where I ask Bjork what she thinks about Valentines Day.

You can see it in Brighton on Friday night or in Leicester on Saturday and Sunday, it’s a pay what you want show, so you see it for free if you like. Happy Valentines Day.

Here is a wrapper from a really tasty blood orange.

Best advice I ever read in a Sunday Supplement was ‘if you find a good orange, buy a dozen’. It’s so hit and miss. These blood oranges were glorious, so do look out for these lovely wrappers if you fancy looking ecstatic as you eat.

The photos by James Ravilious remind me of growing up in Cornwall. My friends’ nans looked like this (the one on the right, without horns). Note the farmer is wearing two different floral patterns, one of them William Morris, possibly original 1880s Bri Nylon. Very Erdem. This is my Valentine’s card this year. I don’t know who it’s from.

Those cows are just beautiful. And look how happy the farmer is. Hearts.

These cards are for sale at The Towner Art Gallery in Eastbourne, amongst other places. There’s an incredible one of a 1970s bride drinking a half a beer in one of those dimpled glasses.

The card got me remembering my childhood in Cornwall. We used to call for my friend on our way to school, every morning in Illogan in the eighties.

Breakfast TV would be on, there’d be a cloth on the table, a full teapot always, in a kitchen come parlour, a room that was lived in for most of the family’s day. This gave the modest room a sense of productivity and a place of providing. I sometimes let myself remember being there. I wonder if they are being Ikea’d and Kondo’d out of existence, if they haven’t been already. Remember ‘Chuck out the chintz’ campaign by Ikea in the early nineties? We were traumatised by that in Brighton. We watched our home furnishings being thrown into a skip.

These old places are alive somewhere. In our hearts. (shoehorning in the Val Theme there, you’re welcome)

‘I love the photos of James Ravilious. The farms in 1970s Devon remind me of my childhood in Cornwall’. That’s meant to be a pot of flowers on a very deep sill.

I now have a teapot, on a trivet, with a cosy, and a cloth on.

The back room / kitchen / parlour in Illogan circa 1984 – 1987. There was a larder covered with floral fabric in one corner I think, the dad sat at the table having his toast – or maybe he’d gone to work by then. We’d stand in the doorway waiting for Debbie, and this was the view.

Here are some valentine doodles from a few years ago. We were in Driffield, at Boyes, looking at giant pants. I didn’t buy any.

Back to the Pants. (Like Back To The Future, without the stars, budget or storyline).

‘It’ll be Sunday, won’t be open’. The fact that I said it’d ALSO BE SUNDAY IN NOTTINGHAM just goes to show that this was a few years ago when our son was small, and I was so tired, I could hardly speak.

The ink blot bit says ‘Front panel’. My hair went crazy after our son was born and I referred to my hair in derogatory sections, before anyone else could.

Here are my heart shaped tins

Heart shaped tins.