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.

X Factor

OK, I'm sat here with the housemates watching the inevitable X Factor, chocolate mug cake in hand, and decided I should give my current lowdown:

Groups

• One Direction - not fussed. Sweet lads but I think the boy band thing (as much as Simon says they're not a boy band...) is a tad passé.
• Belle Amie - pretty, nice styling, not singers. Sorry, they're just not.

Over 28s

• Mary - absolutely adore that woman. She's the kind of woman that I reckon if you were having a crisis you could go round to her house and she'd put on a brew and give you something warming to eat. But they need to give her a new genre to sing.
• Wagner - oh no. Please, no.

Boys

• Aiden - nice unusual voice, good singer, pretty beautiful. I think they're playing up the "intensity" thing too much; he's becoming almost a caricature, which is a shame. Pretty sure he's on the autistic spectrum.
• Paije - mint lad, lovely personality. Mint voice. Makes me feel like sunshine.
• Matt - love love love him. Amazing voice, lovely bloke. Bad song choice for him last night (the Leona Lewis one). Kind of hoping he wins.

Girls

• Katie - beautiful, cool style, but she is not that bloomin' original. She's styled herself somewhere between Madonna and Lady Gaga, but people keep harking on about how original she is. I also get the feeling that singing is just a means to an end for her too, she wants to be an icon come what may, I think. Beautiful voice, but find her too annoying to really enjoy it. 
• TreyC - I find that spelling of her name quite annoying, but she's got a superb voice. It's a shame that she keeps being so overlooked. I think her personality hasn't come across that much on the show, and so much of it seems to based on that (perhaps unfairly).
• Rebecca - same as TreyC really. Fantastic voice, and she's very beautiful and sweet, but I don't feel as though we know her as much as the others.
• Cher - very quirky and distinctive voice. She's a fab singer, but I feel as though the judges don't really know what to do with her. Cheryl's so conventionally pop (and inferior in the way of talent) that I don't think she does her justice with song choice. Cher's kind of become a parody of herself. But, I think she's still mint. 

So there you have it, here endeth my judgement. As I speak Belle Amie are singing for survival against Katie. And, as much as she irritates me, I'm hoping Katie stays. It's only fair really.

so completely brilliant

Had to share this - he is a complete legend.