Liner Notes

I have a new album out which goes under the snappy title of ‘Cat in the Spirit House’. The picture below will give you a rough clue as where the name came from.

Full disclosure: These are not actually new songs but are taken from the two albums I released in the 1990s. ‘Don’t stare at the celebrities’ came out to wide- spread acclaim (hang on that should read apathy) in 1995 and ‘Shopping in bed’ followed two years later. These ten cuts represent the best songs those two albums had to offer.

In the nineties I moved to journalism and worked largely with ABC News covering the first Gulf War, the Concorde crash and the Bosnian conflict among hundreds of other stories. News features quite heavily in the lyrics if you know where to look. I was still in touch with an amazing group of musicians from by recording studio days. All these years later their playing still sounds extraordinary. Thanks to one and all.

Credit for this new album should go to my old comrade in arms Simon Webb who came up with the idea and who also suggested getting Ian Tompson to re-master the chosen tracks. Ian did a wonderful job pulling off the cobwebs using all the dastardly wizardry at his disposal.

Click here to listen to the album

Love to all

Jim

Spring 2021

Credits

Voice/guitar: Jim Preen

Guitar: Les Davidson, Tim Stone

Bass: John Gordon, Jeremy Meek, Phil Manley, Richard Lee, Simon Edwards

Drums: Richard Marcangelo, Steve Dixon

Percussion: Phil Overhead

Keys: Mick Parker, Damon Butcher, Tim Bradshaw

Vibes: Roger Beaujolais

Harmonica: Mark Feltham

Tenor sax: Ray Carless, Nick Penteloe

Backing vocals: Helen Hardy, Sonia Jones, Zoe Nicholas, Susie Webb

The Kick Horns: Roddy Lorimer (tpt), Simon Clarke (bari), Tim Sanders (tenor)

Brass arranged by Simon Clarke

Songs remastered by Ian Tompson

Photograph: Judith Hurst

Design: Rob Anderson

Framed written by Leiber & Stoller

Mr Siegal written by Tom Waits

JP responsible for the rest of the malarkey

Click here to listen to the album

The year of living dismally

We’ve never lived a year like it. Just over twelve months ago the Prime Minister told us to go home and that’s pretty much what we did albeit with a slight hiatus over the summer. We’ve mostly been home, cooped up and closeted.

Life has been directly informed by whether you like your home and the people in it. We were told we were ‘all in it together’, but that ‘it’ varied wildly from those with a large house and garden surrounded by a loving family to those closeted in abusive relationships or living alone twenty stories up in a tiny apartment with no access to a garden. It’s been a series of very different journeys which have determined how tolerable or otherwise our lockdown has been.

Pernicious disease

Then of course you may have caught Covid, a most pernicious and almost incomprehensible illness. Some caught it, displayed no symptoms and are still unaware they ever had it. More than a hundred and twenty thousand got sick and never recovered. For others still hanging on after being ill for weeks or months it continues to be a long brutal battle.

And what about babies and very young children, usually the most vulnerable to disease? It seems to have had little or no impact on their young lives. How can that be? Slightly older kids may not have been physically affected by the disease, but many have been hurt badly by the psychological fall out.

Our house

Days seem to pursue a relentless course of not very much. In this house we all work or are trying to navigate ‘A’ levels. We moan when the broadband is as bad as dial-up and our super important call disintegrates into digital dust.

In the evening we watch Netflix or a BBC iPlayer boxed set. We’re currently on the wonderful French farce ‘Call my agent!’ and then settle down for the 10 o’clock BBC News, unless the news is too dreadful to watch. I’m now fully acquainted with all Sophie Raworth’s broadcast outfits and frankly Soph it’s time to go online and select a couple of new ‘fits as I gather, they are now called. (Thanks to daughter for that). I really need to get out more, but then again so do you.

If you’re a keen reader of A little London Life, you’ll know that over the summer we moved to Essex for three months while our kitchen was given a complete makeover. Builders seemed to have worked right through the pandemic.

And there in the Essex house that we rented from friends was a small upright piano. I was determined to do something during lockdown that would mark some kind of growth and started hammering out gibberish on the piano. Well, that hasn’t stopped as a lovely friend from my days at ABC News gave me a digital upright which now gets beaten into submission on a nightly basis. I’m still an astonishingly bad player but having played guitar for almost 50 years I do understand music’s basic wiring. I know what’s going on under the hood, which I’m now struggling to translate on to the keyboard. It’s a battle but I’m in it for the long haul. Sorry neighbours.

Suddenly, nothing happened

So how has it been for you? Still struggling to coming to terms with it all? Doing OK? Coming up for air?

It’s odd to try to recall what happened when almost nothing happened. The major events that typically bookmark our personal orbit round the sun were in short supply from March of last year. No holidays, no going out, no meeting with friends, no journeys, no business meetings. Social interaction reduced to a Zoom call. Work seems like a series of tasks rather than a collaborative experience.

What do I miss most? Is it gigs, theatre, art galleries, cinema, having pleasant things in my diary to look forward to? Yes, all of that but not really that either. What I really miss is just being in the presence of my fellow humans. Hugging, kissing hanging out, drinking, chatting. Life with a forward trajectory built into it. How do we know we’ve achieved anything if we keep busy but are often busy doing nothing?

Vaccination action station

It’s certainly not over yet, but the various vaccines are a beacon of hope. I remember talking with someone at the start of it all saying I thought the chance of getting a vaccine quickly was slight at best and there was a good chance there would be no vaccine at all. Science has come to our rescue, we have vaccines, there is a way out. Let’s have no mealy-mouthed anxiety. Roll up your sleeve.

As the little bumper on the BBC says: The future isn’t cancelled. See you on the other side.

Why aren’t you taking the free stuff?

I was wandering around our local park with Bucket today picking up twigs and small branches that the high winds and that old enabler gravity have brought down to earth. Just then a small girl, she must have been around five or six as she had no front teeth, fixed me with a beady, disapproving stare and said: ”We must save the planet.” I agreed but she wouldn’t have it and said I shouldn’t take branches from the trees. I said I was just picking them up from the ground for my fire pit, but she fixed me with another look that said with people like you around, the planet doesn’t stand a chance.

Fire pit

Fire pits, they’re the new thing for old people. Last night I had a Zoom call with a couple of my similarly aged mates (mid-sixties) and it turned out all three of us had been given fire pits for Christmas. Funny you don’t realise you need something until you can’t live without it. I see my dotage as bottles of whiskey shared with chums around a blazing fire in the back garden.

Anyway, back to the park and notwithstanding the five-year-old, I got a few odd stares from people as I collected up my kindling. I guess I looked like a battered old hippy harvesting firewood for my lonely grate, where I huddled round the hearth to keep warm. Now I can’t believe that in our bit of London I’m the only one to be the proud owner of a fire pit, but no one else was picking up sticks. Which begs the question: Why aren’t you picking up the free stuff?

Blackberry and apple

Last summer we had to vacate our house at the Oval and legged it to Essex where we rented a house while workmen set about building us a new kitchen. We hung our hats for a few months in South Woodford very close to Roding Valley Park. The Roding river winds through it and if it wasn’t for the North Circular and the M11 it would be a pleasant, peaceful spot. Despite the din and dirt of the traffic, Bucket and I got to love the place. There some forward-thinking planner had planted orchards of apple trees some twenty years ago. The apples ripened in September and then very quickly rotted and fell from the trees. They were cooking apples that I used to harvest along with wild blackberries that grew close by. Mrs Preen turned these into blackberry and apple crumbles and blackberry and apple jam. I never saw anyone else scrumping the apples as we used to call it. Once again: Why aren’t you picking up the free stuff?

Rhubarb

Now back at the Oval, with a wonderful new kitchen, my wife took Bucket to the secret garden. The secret garden is set in the grassy area between two 30s council blocks and was put together and maintained by the residents. There is a little pool in the middle circled by plants, shrubs and rhubarb. More than a year ago Mrs Preen discovered the rhubarb and asked if she could take some. No problem take all you want she was told. Rhubarb lies at the heart of delicious, stewed fruit, just check out the Jamie Oliver recipe. Mrs Preen went to harvest a few stems yesterday, only to find they’d all been dug up and removed as nobody wanted it.

Too posh to pick?

Are we now all too posh to pick up the free stuff? If we pick up free stuff is it only a matter of time before we’re caught scavenging through the bins? Or have we become so cut-off from the natural world that everything must now come neatly sealed in plastic? ‘Waste not, want not’ as my old mum used to say and you can be sure this battered old hippy will continue helping himself to what nature has to offer, even in the very heart of London.

Jabbed

Last Wednesday Mrs Preen and I were talking idly about when I might get a Covid vaccine. I’m 66 and in Group 5 and the general consensus was, with a bit of luck, I should get a jab around the end of February. Next morning, I turned on my phone (28^th January) and a text was waiting saying today was jab day for Jim. There were various vaccination stations on offer but a nearby community hall was offering a tempting 14.40 slot. Reader, I booked it.

I seem to be one of the first in my age group to be offered the vaccine. I wonder if I was seen as vulnerable having contracted prostate cancer a few years ago. My cancer treatment has now finished but I guess I was still seen as having ‘underlying health issues’.

At 14.30 I wandered round to the vaccination centre to find the place buzzing with anti-Covid activity.

An electronic temperature gauge was aimed at my forehead and in I went. A young man, armed with a clipboard, approached and asked me if I needed help filling out the form he was proffering. It was name, address, email address and date of birth. I said I was probably OK with that and I must have passed as I was led into the next room where a nurse was waiting, needle in hand. My vaccine of choice was the Pfizer/BioNTech model and bang, in it went. I was given a leaflet about possible side effects and, more importantly, a sticker.

I then had to wait ten minutes in another room. I guess this was to see whether I was going to faint, develop a desperate need to buy Microsoft products or fall under the spell of 5G telephone masts. Having apparently dodged those bullets I was released back into the wild. The whole thing took around 20 minutes.

The common side effects are:

pain at injection site
tiredness
headache
muscle pain
chills
joint pain
fever

I have a very small amount pain where I was jabbed, but it’s really nothing. Now I have to wait for a week or two for the vaccine to build up protection. It’s unclear when I get the second, booster dose, but it should be in about 12 weeks.

Thanks to all the NHS staff who were without exception friendly, efficient and lovely. Hope it’s your turn soon.