Month: June 2019

Tonight the Rude Mechanicals are supporting Ann Pigalle, a woman with an amazing voice, great sense of humour and amazing sex drive. Tonight we are a duo/trio, at the Dublin Castle, Camden. Thanks to all the beautiful dancing divas of last Friday, you were very much appreciated at the gig. Give yourselves a big snog ( I’ve no idea how, use your imagination).

The devil has been visiting me again in his waistcoat. He has a sweet smile and a monk’s tonsure, but he’s not fooling me!

I ask him if he’s the Devil and he smiles and tells me no, but he is the Devil’s helper.

He has gone for now, but has left behind large black insects to spy on me.

He has also left behind parsley, which seems to be his favourite greenery. As any expert on folk law will tell you, parsley is the devil’s vegetable.

Jo Fisher has made paper containing some leftover remnants of the parsley, She says she will paint a parsley worm on it. The parsley worm eats parsley and then turns into a beautiful black butterfly.

I don’t know what he wants of me, strictly speaking I don’t believe in him.

This Friday is the Rude Mechanicals midsummer gig!

Celebrating midsummer in a cavorting exuberant mayhem. I have a brand new dress, we have new songs. There will be music and masks and dancing and magic, and possibly possession, should the nature spirits wish to talk to us

Flowers and herbs were traditionally believed to hold extra magical powers during midsummer celebrations, wearing a flower crown harnesses magic and helps you have good health throughout the year.

Love can also be greatly encouraged on midsummer eve, try out one of these spells if you are after a fond caress:

1. If you roll around naked in a wheat field, your future lover will appear in your life within a year. Dew was believed to have a healing effect and rolling in it was supposed to make you beautiful and healthy. Dew was even collected in cloths and pressed into bottles for the year to come (I might try that).

2. Collect eight different types of flowers from as many meadows. When going to bed, put the bouquet underneath your pillow. You will see “the one” in your dream.

3. In the wee hours of the night, climb up somewhere high – on a hill, on top of a fell or a big rock. To a place where it is easy to hear surrounding sounds. Your future lover will come from the same direction as the first sound of the morning. If you hear music, it means an approaching wedding. If you hear a child crying, it is a sign of birth.

So, come crowned, rampant, wild and magical on Friday if you can, and if you can’t dance crowned, rampant, wild and magical wherever you may be, for this is summer and it deserves celebration!

“Lovers and madmen have such seething brains
Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend
More than cool reason ever comprehends.”

Friday 21st June 2019

373 The George Tavern, Commercial Road, London. E1 0LA

Starts 7.30, £5 on door.

Quick note to anyone who fancies coming to the gig on the Friday 21st June, it is the Friday and not a the Saturday as I originally put in the poster. It was, of course, to test you.

My dad just hypnotised me. It was very interesting. He is trying to help lessen my epilepsy. He asked me how I visualise a seizure, I said it is like being a werewolf. He told me to visualise the werewolf getting smaller and smaller till it is a little obedient puppy. I couldn’t do that. I think this may be because I feel like I am a werewolf, the werewolf is me. Like a werewolf I am wolf only part of the time, and I can not control the change. If I view myself as having an illness then I am ill, four seizures a week is not easy to cope with, but if I view myself as a werewolf then I am a beast, and although this can be embarrassing, confusing and distressing, it is also strong and ferocious and very much alive. Does anyone get cured of being a werewolf? Usually they just get killed don’t they? I wish to go down howIng and growling and clawing everything nearby, not lying in a hospital bed.

( the comparison of a seizure to being a wolf is highly inaccurate!!)

Other parts of the hypnotism involved going down into a beautiful garden and sitting on a bench feeling good about everything, then going through a door in a tree and into the corridors of my mind. These were long thin corridors with red carpet and orange lighting, all very Twin Peaks. At the end I got to a big wooden door with a golden door knob. I pushed the door open slowly and inside was a large old office with wooden panelling and a musty smell. There was a big window at the opposite end to the door letting in very bright light, and a very large old desk running from the window towards the door. Lots of people were around the desk, preparing for some kind of meeting, they are mostly suited men and the whole thing feels very official and authoritative, bureaucracy. I walk across the room to the window and look out. There is a large court yard with large white Festival tents scattered around. One of the men preparing for the meeting sees me at the window and pulls a curtain across to stop me looking out.

I look round the office instead, there is a large abstract sculpture in one corner that looks out of place in the office, it looks rather like an alien space craft. Everything here has a slight sinister feel to it.

My dad asks me how I feel in this office and whether I want to spend more time looking around. I find the office is making me feel quite uneasy so i leave it, go back through the corridors and into the garden.

So, what is my subconscious trying to tell me? Do I want to go out to play but the authority figures keep me trapped in dark intimidating offices?

Should the werewolf eat the bureaucrats?

Woof!