the best thing

So I've been listening to an album by Port Isaac's Fisherman's Friends fairly solidly for the last week -- I'm still not tired of it. I love sea shanties. I really love them.

I understand that they might not be everyone's cup of tea, but I think they're bloomin marvellous. Wikipedia defines a sea shanty as follows:

A shanty (also spelled "chantey," "chanty") is a type of work song that was once commonly sung to accompany labour on board large merchant sailing vessels

Basically, they were songs sung by men who spent months at a time on the sea in huge old ships -- crashing through the waves, hauling the anchor and climbing the rigging. Tempting as it is to romanticise the kind of life they might have led, in reality it must have been an exhilarating, gut-wrenching, back-breaking, rollicking, superstition-ridden, stinking and intensely communal way of life.

Yet despite all this, the songs they sang -- passed down over hundreds of years through oral tradition and memory -- speak so candidly of love, loneliness, brotherhood, insobriety, women, work, and hope. I love their simplicity and honesty, and there's something about a group of male voices (often with little or no instrumental accompaniment) that I find irresistible.

As well as all that, I have some very very fond memories of sea shanty weekends in Whitby with my Granny. These weekends were held annually (I'm not sure if they happen still -- I hope they do) and drew dozens of sea shanty groups into the various pubs and taverns of the town for many many performances over the weekend -- some less formal than others.

My Granny and I went together for several years (starting, I think, when I was about 6) and they were very formative experiences for me. I remember the delicious sense of naughtiness as she would take me into a pub full of beer, smoke and old grey-bearded sea dogs to listen to the sea shanties. I'd sit there, utterly enthralled at the bare brazen singing, raw and somehow deeply important.

Whitby, North Yorkshire

The audience sat around me on rickety wooden stools and threadbare armchairs would be roused and join in the exuberant music. Surrounded by the tapping of feet, banging of tables and clapping of hands, I was desperate to learn the words so that I could join in. It's amazing how quickly you can pick them up. Other songs would be more melancholy -- singing of longing after months on the sea -- and the singing would become a general hum hanging over the room, acapella and tipping over some invisible boundary into the profoundly spiritual. I would hold my breath as I saw grown men cry and the atmosphere became electric.

After nights of shanties fit to burst, my Granny and I would wind our way in the dark back to the cottage we were staying in, stopping off at a fish and chip shop for a cone of chips on the way back. Even now, listening to shanties brings a distinct taste of hot vinegary chips to my tongue.

hum

So, I was on the train today (on my way to a Tweet Meet, as it happens - oh yes, a conference about Twitter. I love my job), and it reminded me of something I've been thinking about for a little while.

It first occurred to me when I blithely downloaded an album from iTunes the other day (the How To Train Your Dragon soundtrack actually...). This is fast becoming a bit of a habit, but the truth is I much prefer going to music shops and buying the physical CD (you know, IRL). I've always been a bit of an advocate of supporting record shops and not giving in to the undeniable convenience of downloading music, but recently - with a real and distinct lack of spare time on my hands - I've fallen for iTunes' charms.

I think part of the reason I was initially (and still am, to be honest) concerned about the proliferation of downloadable music, is its instant availability. And while this is obviously one of its great advantages, it also inevitably means that we start taking music more for granted. Going to a record shop, browsing the aisles, feeling the CD case in your hand, is a lot more of an experience than the 30 seconds it takes to locate and download something from iTunes.

Back to the train journey this afternoon. The carriage was humming with electronic music. A chino-clad girl sat across from me - iPod on, earphones in - looked completely unmoved by the music she was listening to. I'm guilty of this too - I listen to the same music over and over and, like anything else, I guess you do sort of become used to it. Whatever the reason, few could deny that music has become far more the background noise to our lives than the event and luxury it used to be.

But then I started thinking about it another way. Take food as an alternative example - anything other than what could be grown in Britain was once a precious commodity, available only at great expense and taking months to travel the hundreds of miles required to sell it in our shops. Now, thanks to the changes to the way the world works, we have access to different types of food from pretty much anywhere accessible to man. Sure, these foods have become less of a novelty, but think of all the enriching experiences and tastes we would have missed out on if we'd refused to change the old way of doing things, or to embrace new ways of living.

Now, I know I'm not saying anything new here. It's just something I've been thinking about - how we adapt to the advances made in the way we live our lives, and how we continue to value the things that really matter. Also, the How To Train Your Dragon soundtrack is amazing. Go download it buy the CD.

pep

So, I'm really rather excited for three reasons.

1. Last week I availed myself of one of these. This has revolutionised my coffee-consumption. Coffee-making now feels like more of an event - crack out the ol' percolator and away we go.
2. Seriously considering the future and what I want to do after uni has led me to the possibility of a job so exciting that I'm still trying to convince myself that it's within my reach. So I'm sat here giving my CV a wash and scrub-up and pondering thoughts for a cover letter. More on this when there's more to tell.
3. Purchased the soundtrack to this film that I went to see a week or so ago (twice, actually). Well worth a watch/listen:

Marilyn

Listen to this as you read, it'll convey the mood.

So, this is what I was listening to as I was walking down the street today. Or, rather, what I was listening to as I did my best Tyra-esque hips-swinging foot-stomping model walk down the road. It was, may I say, sublime.

Or that's what I thought. It happened to be quite a windy day today and I was wearing a dress, which meant that I had more than a slight Marilyn Monroe situation going on and had to keep hold of it to maintain any scrap of dignity. Given my generally jubilant mood I was grinning away and sashaying my way down the street without a care in the world - I giggled coquettishly as I struggled to keep my dress in place and my hair was windswept and sexy.

Or that's what I thought. I happened to catch a look at myself in an office window as I swept by. What looked - in my head - like a fresh young thing flirting with life, looking chic and waltzing her way to work, actually resembled some deranged and bedraggled dowager clutching at her petticoats and chortling madly at some imagined lover and leering wildly at passing traffic.

Of course, then I imagined how I'd blog about this tonight, so then I got the giggles even more and ended up literally cackling my way down the street to the utter bewilderment of the surrounding businessmen. Women with children were actually backing away from me.

Other than that, nothing much else to report. Bon Jovi tomorrow morning I think.

my life currently

The probability of me being able to get to sleep any time in the next few hours is fairly low to be honest, so blogging is what I shall do.

Summarise my life over the last couple of days? Well, I've been dipping in and out of feeling pretty low, to relatively OK, to gritty and tragic again. An inordinate amount of time has been spent on Facebook (and trying not to be on Facebook), poetry has been read, Christmas tree has been decorated, and yet I have moped about, wished for things that can't be, and felt sorry for myself far more than I probably should.

I should really have been working on my two essays that are due in after the Christmas holidays - I did get a little bit of work done on one of them - but haven't really been able to concentrate much. Pathetic, I know.

A good thing that has come out of the past couple of days, however, is my acquisition of the soundtrack to the aforementioned Somers Town. Both the film and its soundtrack I literally cannot recommend enough. The music is only available by download (you can find the right site through the film's own website), but so so worth it. Just so lovely.

So, while I was inevitably moping about and debating whether to get out of bed this morning, I turned the album on and lay there grinning inanely. Trust me, it's fab.

As for this evening, I watched this film (for the millionth time) with my Mum with a bowl of soup and a hefty tub of Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough ice cream. And that was lovely too.

Now? Well, I will try (and inevitably fail) not to linger around pointlessly on Facebook, and try instead to read my book, listen to my new album, and try to get a grip.