As I've mentioned a number of times on these pages, my cousin and I grew up as virtual brother and sister throughout the 1960s and early 1970s - me with my Mum and Dad downstairs, she with her parents upstairs. These days she lives in New York, but we'll be catching up this weekend when she makes a flying visit to see her Mum in London. We're probably a bit too long in the tooth for a kickabout though.
Monday is cleaning day here at Swede Towers. Mrs S tackles all the intricate stuff - the nooks, the crannies, the out of the way crevices and sundry cobwebby corners that I would otherwise surely miss - while my own main contribution to proceedings concentrates on somewhat larger brushstrokes, or, more precisely, vacuum-cleaner strokes. Yup, every Monday, for my sins, I'm charged with hoovering each room in the whole house, from top to bottom. When delegating this particular task to me several years ago, Mrs S justified her decision using very sound logic - there aren't many ways in which I can mess it up. She knows me so well.
I invariably sing while I work, dragging the vacuum-cleaner behind me, its howling motor drowning out my own peculiar vocal howling. I can latch onto any random tune that comes to mind, but more often than not, for the past few months at least, one particular track from 'Human Performance', the fifth LP by Parquet Courts, has been my full-time hoovering earworm and it's easy to see why.
We've had a long hot day out and about in
celebration of Mrs S's birthday. I doubt we
drifted more than 20 miles from home, but
would surely have been hopelessly lost in
the unfamiliar lanes and villages were it
not for the trusty ol' satnav. With it's
help we found a little country pub and had a
rather scrummy lunch as crazy thunder storms
raged on the horizons around us - somehow we
missed them all.
We're both feeling the pace of such a sweltering,
sticky day now, but need to keep ourselves
alert in the run-up to wine o'clock! So to
help us stay upright, here's a stonking live
version of 'Stoned and Starving' by Brooklyn
band Parquet Courts, from their recent
LP 'Light Up Gold'.
