Caveat – this article is written about being a webmaster rather than a web developer or website designer because they are all very different roles (as you’re about to find out). I would also like to add that none of these points relate directly to any one of my clients, they’re all very general and are garnered from conversations with industry peers.
Being a webmaster is just one of the ways I scratch together the living that allows me to put food in my mouth and keep a roof over my head. I also write a bit and take photos for folk, but my role as a freelance webmaster certainly dominates my working day. On the whole I love being a webmaster, but it can be frustrating when friends, family (hell, even clients) don’t understand what being a webmaster entails. There are also a LOT of kids leaving education wanting to forge a career working with the Internet, and I’m just not sure they know what they’re getting themselves into.
The purpose of this article is to try and explain what being a professional webmaster means on a day to day basis. If you’re keen to follow a career as a webmaster please don’t let me put you off, just open your eyes a little to the areas of skill you need to focus on developing.
The skills you need to be a professional webmaster.
Multilingual abilities. You’ll need to know enough to get by in at least four programming languages; one client may favour PHP, while another swears by .NET and you’re bound to find some providers who swear by Cold Fusion or pure Java. Now multiply that list of technologies by about fifty and you’ll start to get an idea of just how many languages/ technologies you’ll need to have a nodding familiarity with on a daily basis. The real rub is that you’ll need to get good at any given tech with just a few hours notice. You need to be able to learn FAST!
Artistry. Even although you may not technically be a website designer your clients will expect you to have the exact same level of artistic ability and higher level design skills. This will give you an insight into the world of real (qualified) designers when you spend hours working on a design only to have a client decide they hate it because it’s ‘a bit dull’. Of course you’ll want to know why they think it’s dull but the chances are they won’t be able to tell you; in fact they won’t be able to offer you any constructive advice at all so you’ll go away and attempt to pluck more fantastical ideas out of thin air. If you’re gifted with a client staff team who wants to get involved you may think your troubles are over, but oh, how mistaken are you… While it is undoubtedly a marvellous thing to have ‘buy in’ and ‘creative input’ from a staff team you’re still just as likely to find yourself presenting your plans to a board meeting only to have one of your faithful collaborators declare to all that they think your ideas are shit because, well, they’re ‘a bit dull’. You may think your extensive graphical experience and years of studying the way people use websites (usability) count for something in this situation – after all you can give clear logical business reasons why you’ve made the choices you have – but in reality someone will overrule any sense you’ve instilled in a design by demanding ‘more whizzy stuff’.
Disability legal rights expertise. You do know your client’s website should be written in a way that’s compliant with disability law don’t you? Yes? Good. Can you explain why to your client? No? Oh…
Server maintenance expertise. Although it may not be you actually administering the server your client’s website lives on you’d sure as hell better understand how servers work, and how clustering/ failover services affect the way databases are propagated and the effect on how your website is served to the public. Oh, and you’d better have a fundamental understanding of all the hosting types (Linux, Windows etc) because when your client’s host gives you the technical reason a server has been down for hours you’re going to have to translate that into lay language for your irate client. You see, most of the time your client will never actually speak to their host – that’s your job, and that job involves your client yelling at you about how their business is now ‘dead in the water’ and demanding to know exactly when to the nearest second normal service will resume. Of course when you speak to the host you know all too well the reason for the outage is going to be something that means a whole lot to you but nothing to your client. The host calmly tells you there’s a firewall issue at the data centre, you sigh and accept it, but when you relay the information to your client the chances are they’re going to have a near fatal heart attack/ stroke while getting so mad that their blood pressure rises so high their eyes bleed and snot fires out of their bright red nose with enough velocity to slice ice.
Marketing/ SEO. Merely overseeing the development and management of a website isn’t enough, you also have to take responsibility for getting people to actually visit the site and use it. For small clients this may translate into a responsibility for marketing their company as a whole. SEO means ‘search engine optimisation’ (but you knew that of course), and in the real world it relates to how high up in search engine results your client’s site appears when folk search relevant terms. Your client sells rubber chickens, so when any one of the billions of humans on this planet searches Google for rubber chickens their website MUST be the first results. For about ten years now all webmasters/ developers have been creating websites that perform well in search engines by writing good copy, coding properly and about a trillion other things. Over the last couple of years a growing number of business owners are becoming aware of SEO and are likely to contact you demanding you ‘SEO their shit’. Well maybe that’s not exactly what they’ll say, but instead of treating SEO as a holistic concept that (with a great deal of effort) can produce pleasing business results you will now be expected to get your client to number one no matter who their competitors are. If your client sells sandwiches from a little van you’d better be able to beat Subway (and all other fast food chains) in search engine rankings or your entire webmaster effort will be declared ‘useless’ and you can kiss your professional reputation goodbye. I’m keen to help clients with SEO but it’s really tough to explain to them that SEO is more a complete discography than it is a hit single. Authoring. When a client sends a single line email asking you to add something to their website as a news item you’ll need to be able to turn that single line into a fully fledged article. Not only will you need to be able to pad out text without it appearing that you’ve done so, you’ll also need to be able to do it to a Pulitzer/ Nobel/ Booker prize winner level. On the other side of the coin you’ll also need to be a master editor – when a business owner hands you what they consider to be their masterpiece you’d better be sure as hell you can bash it into shape without upsetting any tender artistic sensibilities. Time travel. When you’re not predicting the future you may be expected to travel back in time and correct the mistakes caused by the bad decisions your clients made; bad decisions that you spent hours advising against. You want to know the best bit about this? There’s a very good chance your client will still assume it’s your fault that things have gone belly up. And then there’s everything else...I’m aware that this article could go on forever if I were to list all the skills you need to perfect in order to be a professional webmaster so I’ll stop here and knock out a bunch of bullet points:
Content management system virtuoso (yup, you’ll need to know ALL the cms options!)
Brand manager
Photographer
Librarian
Cartographer
Diplomacy genius
Business logic/ process expert
Third party liaison
DNS manager
Security expert
Technical leader
Cellphone/ fax machine/ photocopier expert – if it’s got a plug or batteries then you’re responsible for it
Corporate culture specialist
Technology development thought leader
Psychic (you’ll need that to figure out what your client wants)
Email system expert (Exchange, Gmail, cPanel etc etc etc)
Network engineer
Affiliate manager
PR expert
Finally the most important fact to consider if you’re eyeing up a life as a freelance webmaster is that without fail 90% of your clients will expect to pay you no more than fifty quid for all these skills.
IpswichGigs.co.uk was started by me (Andrew Culture) and Henry Sutcliffe in January 2003, and switched off on July 1st 2010. Our original mission was promote (what was at the time) a woefully underrepresented alternative music scene here in Ipswich.
In January 2010 we thought long and hard about how the advent of social networking was affecting IpswichGigs.co.uk and decided that we were faced with making a tough choice about whether to carry on or not. We could celebrate the fact that the alternative music scene in Ipswich is now mainstream (and is brilliantly represented by many websites and publications) and decide we had reached our original goals, or we could build a new website to try and revitalise our users.
We decided to build a fantastic new IpswichGigs.co.uk website based on the Drupal CMS system. Despite the incredible amount of time we put into this third version of the website visitors numbers continued to dwindle and it became more of an effort to encourage people to use the site. IpswichGigs.co.uk is owned by my company Web Care Takers (well my trading name to be precise) and I invested considerable amounts of money in developing the website and promoting it both online and offline. The decision to close the site wasn’t based on money, but the money spent on hosting and developer fees has to be taken into consideration.
In March 2010 I decided to give IpswichGigs.co.uk one last hard push to see if we could revive the vibrant community website that it used to be. Three months later I started to accept the fact that FaceBook is now taking over independent small community based sites. It’s now almost impossible to attract people to a website that exists outside of the ‘closed garden’ that Facebook is.
But we’re not bitter – we have reached every one of the objectives that we set ourselves seven years ago when we launched IpswichGigs.co.uk, and we celebrate the fact that social networking has democratised the promotion of live music. We believe that the IpswichGigs.co.uk page on Facebook will be a useful resource for music lovers in this town.
I have had a great deal of help and support over the years and without a whole host of people IpswichGigs.co.uk wouldn’t have lasted as long as it has. You guys (and girls) know who you are and you know how much I appreciate you. It’s been a fun seven years, but now it’s over.
This is a short humour article written 8th August 2009 when I was experimenting with trying to sell short articles to magazines. Photos are by me and were taken in Copenhagen.
Seeing life on trains. By Andrew Culture As a rule we English folk don’t particularly like talking to each other. We’ll gladly chat away with our partners and children, as well as (sometimes reluctantly) our family. But as a rule we find chatting to complete strangers somewhat uncomfortable. We might push ourselves to the occasional, “Good morning,” when passing someone on the pavement, but this is usually only when we’re on holiday and assume that everyone we greet has enjoyed the same lazy start to the day we have. I don’t know why the English are so repressed in this way, if someone tries to strike up a conversation with us in the street it makes us feel awkward and uncomfortable, although in the case of a few of the more vocal members of the street drinking fraternity I think that’s fairly understandable.
There are of course exceptions to the rule, three immediately spring to mind. The first is my friend Graham’s dad; after twenty years as a bus driver this chap (we’ll call him Robert, because that’s what his wife and sons call him) has had the protective layer of social conditioning eroded by many years of chatting with his regular passengers on rural bus routes in Derbyshire. Robert thinks nothing of stopping to chat to workmen digging up the road or conferring on stroke techniques with someone painting their house. To his teenage sons this was a constant source of embarrassment but as adults they now deem Roberts disarming conversational courage a gift.
However, as with every silver lining there’s a cloud to be considered. For many years one of Roberts’s passengers would get on the bus each morning and offer Robert an almond from a small paper bag that he would produce from a deep pocket that also housed his fare. Being a rural route most of the passengers knew each other and this fellow would walk the isle to his seat ever day with one hand grappling seat backs for stability and the other handing out almonds from his little paper bag. Eventually being the inquisitive sort of lad he is Robert asked his regular why he always had a bag of nuts to bestow upon his travelling peers. His answer raised Robert’s eyebrows and cast his face into a squinting, head tilting opened mouthed sort of arrangement. He told Robert he couldn’t stand the taste of almonds, in fact he despised nuts in all the many forms in which the good lord gifted them to us. As with all curious minds Robert’s grey matter required answers and craved conclusions. The answer was that said passenger was a huge fan of sugared almonds but his strong dislike of the nut at the heart of the matter thrust upon him the necessity to suck each sugared almond until all traces of sugary sweetness were spent, leaving him with just a soggy nut, a nut of no use as far as he was concerned. Being something of a recycling pioneer – or perhaps being someone that listened too closely to his mothers mantra of ‘waste not, want not’ – he would dry the soggy remnant of his confectionary of choice on a window sill. When dry he gathered the almonds into a paper bag and carried them on his travels to dispense to grateful peers, all of whom were oblivious and surprisingly unquestioning on the matter of their origin. This bestowed more of a confirmation than a revelation on Robert, he had never accepted a nut of this chap, and now his repetitive reluctance was confirmed as most wise. Robert chose not to share the revelation of the source of this benefactor’s gifts with his passengers – some things man is not meant to know.
The next exception to the ‘no chatter’ rule is more of a catalyst than an exception per se: alcohol. I’m not going to discuss this in depth, but I want you to bear it in mind as we come to the third exception; unusual circumstances.
It was the other mainstay of the British rock festival that really brought people together in Victoria Park yesterday; torrential rain. It rained so hard and consistently I half expected to see someone using the huge dumpsters that shone like beacons in the dark brown mud as makeshift arks. Being a man in my thirties I was embarrassingly well prepared for such eventualities and stood smugly under a tree with a waterproof jacket on. Surrounding me were younger folk who were all soaked through to the skin, a skin somewhat bolstered in resilience by beer and cider. Then it happened – because we were huddled together suffering a common plight we started chatting. The topic was one easily chosen, a hearty genial discussion on the persistence and volume of the precipitation. There was a siege mentality developing between us, and for some reason it all seemed extremely funny. I congratulated the lad next to me for his cavalier attitude after I heard him tell a friend that as he was already soaked through to his undergarments he may as well go and frolic in the rain. Good lad. I voiced sympathy to another chap who was trying in vain to keep the plaster cast on his broken foot clear of the soup of churned mud, beer cans and cigarette buts that the ground was morphing into before our eyes.
As the reverberation of the last chord of the last band faded away we all turned and shuffled our way to the exit. As we dissolved into the beast that is several tens of thousands of people trying to get through a single gate I pondered why as a crowd we had stopped chatting to each other. I came to the conclusion that as the surrounding roads were closed and the tube stations were all clearly signposted we had nothing to complain about, everything was very well organised and we’d all be striking homeward in a matter of a few minutes. Could it really be true that as we had nothing to complain about we had nothing to talk about? Maybe it’s true that English folk only break stony silence when blighted by common inconvenience. If you had been stood with me in the queue for the toilets at that festival when someone cut the line you’d probably agree; my fellow line dwellers all became most vocal and castigated the queue jumper with unity and firmness. Faced with adversity we united. Queuing for a cubicle at a rock festival is like the dullest quest ever, for the worst possible prize. In a move that is either inspired genius or cruel folly some festivals offer men the chance to stand ankle deep in mud and urine staring into the eyes of another gentleman at a makeshift urinal. I confess I struggle somewhat to perform on such occasions; these are not the conditions nature designed my equipment to cope well with. I guess you could call it performance anxiety. The worst communal urinals I have experienced were at Reading Festival in 2008. The long metal troughs were bolted to crowd control barriers by what I can only assume were a race of giants; the ‘target area’ of each urinal was about a foot above the average lad’s ‘targeting equipment’. I will follow this line no further for fear of inspiring your imagination, but needless to say; in adversity we were bonded and chatted merrily.
By the time we were stood on the platform at Bethal Green underground station I was still pondering why we seem so reluctant to talk to strangers and was wondering how it related to public transport. A warm gust of air blew down the platform, swiftly followed the juddering squeal of our train coming to an abrupt halt. The train was packed; it was like looking at an overstocked tank of very unhappy fish. As the doors opened I spotted a space next to a girl carrying two kebabs that I optimistically thought could do with being filled by my 6’ 2” frame. I didn’t so much board the train as lean into it and become absorbed. I decided to conduct an ill-advised social experiment to assess my theory that people didn’t talk on public transport just because nobody every piped up. As the doors slid shut along the train (striking a hundred heads of a hundred socially lubricated travellers) I assessed the gentleman next to me and decided to spark up a merry conversation. “This train is so full I’ll need to something to hold onto.” I offered this as a starting point to what I felt sure was going to be an engaging and entertaining conversation. As a reply he gave me the kind of look that made me wonder if he was already planning where to hide my corpse. The train was so packed full and I was so distracted by my ponderings that I had entirely failed to consider my exact physicality in relation to my chosen mark. As a precautionary note to anyone thinking of conducting a similar social experiment, check where the crush of bodies places your hands, and if they’re pressed against the crotch of your fellow passenger don’t mention ‘holding on’ to anything in your opening speech.
Some time later as the rhythmic swaying of our homebound Intercity had rocked my companion to sleep I closed my eyes and invited sleep to take me completely. I was held back from the warm embrace of unconsciousness by the chatter of a teenage girl behind me. She was quietly and emotionally telling her patient male companion that her life was a horrid and a perfectly ghastly mess. She detailed in a somewhat repetitive fashion that nobody understood her. Her parents didn’t understand her, her classmates didn’t understand her and it became apparently the chap in the seat next to her was the only person in the world that ‘really knew her’. She lamented and harshly criticised the fact that he was so love with another (at twenty years old) that he much desired to marry this other, who was currently absent from proceedings. Her conversation took a somewhat grim and dark turn that I won’t divulge here, but I sympathised with her entirely - not because I was as clearly in love with her travelling companion as she was – but because being a teenager is a confusing and melancholy experience. I really wanted to turn in my seat and reassure her that everything would probably be fine; when you’re a teen thoughts and emotions are like the staff party at a fireworks testing facility. There are brilliant moments when great emotions shatter the sky and are entirely new an exciting to you. But there are also moments in abundance where something lights the blue touch paper only for an emotion to collapse in on itself entirely, giving up only a dark cloud to the world. As we walk further down the path of our adult lives the world becomes no less confusing, but the perspective time has earned us acts as a great leveller.
Across the isle two white haired octogenarians sat sewing fabric swatches together and discussing how their respective gardens were doing at the moment. One of these ducks had a gollywog doll hanging from her handbag; I’m hoping it was more a sign of her aged innocence than a statement of her beliefs, but you can never be sure; prejudice wears no uniform.
I decided not to wallow in any pre-judging of my own and turned my gaze to the reflection of a couple the other side of the seats in front of my inadequate leg room. The woman was beautiful and glamorous, with perfect blonde hair, deep blue clear eyes, and there in her description I shall pause for fear of making her sound like a golden retriever. Her partner was fairly rotund with a bad haircut, piggy eyes and a wet nose. Seeing them made me feel homesick for some reason. I could see the prettier half of this coupling was also listening to the talk of vegetables and sweet peas emanating from our elderly fellow passengers. She was smiling gently, as was I; there was something very heart-warming and gently safe in listening to these dears chat between themselves. Barring the troubled teen behind me they were the only source of chatter in the whole carriage.
I know the line from London Liverpool Street to Ipswich very well indeed - having travelled it for most of my adult life – but I normally take the commuter trains, which are very different to the late night journey I found myself on last night. On commuter trains nobody speaks to each other, ever. One end of the carriage could be in flames and everyone would shuffle out of the emergency exits as if it was nothing more extraordinary than the alighting at their destination. I have a friend who takes the 5am train to London a few times a week; apparently on that service talking (or making any noise at all) is a crime punishable by death. Assuming death can be struck upon a soul purely through the use of silence as a weapon, in an already silent train carriage.
The temporarily troubled teen and her patient associate alighted at Colchester and were replaced by what someone less anthropologically charitable than I would call ‘chav scum’. Their conversation was inane and low key until we were skirting the periphery of Ipswich, then the apparently sensitive subject of a missed call on the girls mobile raised its ugly and aggressive main sail. The entire carriage proceeded to learn that the gentleman in question had discovered a missed call on his female associate’s mobile phone, a missed call from her ex-boyfriend. He proceeded with a most vocal interrogation as to the whys and wherefores of aforementioned failed contact, and at first she refused to admit it had even happened. There then followed a vocal tussle for control of said phone; he was searching for evidence while she was digging deeper her denial. It then transpired that the missed call had happened while these two were in bed together; her phone was vying for her attention from her bedside handbag while her attention was somewhat distracted by the greasy haired lad now ‘enjoying’ her company. It was at this point other quiet conversations in the carriage ground to a halt, eyebrows were raised and wide eyed glances were shared amongst all present. The female half of this entertainment changed her rebuttal as her sparring partner turned up the volume on his repetitive monotone and mono-themed accusations. She ceased to deny the existence of the missed call, instead she tried (and failed) to change the discussion into one on privacy and what could and could not be considered the business and interests of her boyfriend. She concluded her piece by informing her partner that his raised voice was going to give all assembled the impression that his physical make up consisted entirely of male genitalia. Much to everyone’s surprise he heeded this warning and lowered his voice to a whisper. We were gifted blissful peace for roughly three seconds. Then with all the originality and personality of a stuck instructional record he reignited his complaint, and refused to be doused by his girl’s attempts to discuss what she felt was the heart of the matter.
I turned in my seat and informed this young man that I found his behaviour unacceptable, and registered a polite request for cessation. He invited me to seek opportunities for procreation elsewhere. I informed him that making the beast with two backs would indeed be a delightful distraction from his bellyaching but my travelling companion – whilst I consider him a close friend – is as reluctant as I to broaden his horizons with homoerotic adventure. He then made a request that I attempt coitus with myself, I asked if he could offer any advice on the mechanics of attempting such a feat, proclaiming him the most obvious and apparent expert in such endeavours.
No I didn’t. I didn’t say a silver bean to this streak of anger in the seat behind me. What I actually did was sit trying to keep my sniggering below the range of his hearing.
It was astounding that this vocal battle went on for over ten minutes; it went nowhere and offered up no conclusions. Apparently unsatisfied with the response he was getting this agitated fellow decided that no longer would he spare his vocal chords and started to yell proper. It was at this precise moment everyone in the carriage decided as one that these times could be classed as adverse enough to invoke a relaxation of the ‘don’t talk to strangers’ rule and we all started chatting to each other. The conversation was light and the topics thick with chaff but we achieved our common goal; drowning out this malevolent troglodyte.
The platform at Ipswich station was a welcome sight to all, even to the quizzical mobile phone obsessed lad who went storming down the carriage, knuckles dragging on the floor. It was as he minced off that I noticed he had a mono-brow and a shallow sloping forehead. Sometimes nature is so unkind.
Despite the fact the threat had clomped off adversity still hung in the air. As we stood to alight I turned to a fellow passenger and informed that I don’t have a television. I went on to tell all who would turn an ear to me that there was no need to indulge in the shallow world of predictable soap operas, all one needs to do to be entertained is take a train. All agreed with a chuckle.
As I walked home (pausing only to let a police car race past me, en-route to the station) I searched for a conclusion to my mental meandering on the subject of talking to strangers. I decided that we should all make more of an effort to speak to people we don’t know.
In some parts of Germany they go somewhat further than the mild ambivalence to our fellow man that we wallow in. In Germany it’s considered the height of bad manners to talk to someone you don’t know in public. When an American chain of grocery stores took over a German chain they installed a ‘welcomer’. In the American stores this welcomer is employed for the sole purpose of standing by the entrance of the superstore to welcome people as they entered. They eventually had to retire this post in Germany as too many of their ‘welcomers’ were getting a punch on the nose from outraged shoppers. From now on I think I’ll view those poor souls very differently.
I fear that if we continue this reticence when it comes to chatting idly with our fellow man then each of us will indeed become an island. Embrace your fellow man – although not literally, not a lot of strangers will be keen that – talk to people you don’t know, converse with road menders, chinwag with fellow passengers. Just talk at will, and if you’re prepared to listen you might learn something quite remarkable.
This is the first chapter of a romantic novel I have written. Samples were sent off to a handful of agents last week, and while I wait to hear back from them I thought you (my blog readers) might enjoy a taster. I may take this chapter off the blog in a few days time so don't hang around if you want to read it!
Chapter 1 If tonight has taught me anything it’s that the cosmos has a sick sense of humour. What are you trying to tell me oh great cosmos? Are you trying to tell me if I see a fellow human in need I should look away and hope someone else steps in to salve the sorrow? If I see someone being mocked should I not offer them the healing force of my fellowship? Am I right in thinking you don’t want me to lend support to those in need? Because based on tonight’s events if that’s the message you’re broadcasting then I’m not ready to receive it.
Okay, I should probably explain: Earlier tonight I went to the city with a bunch of friends on one of those super saver train deals to see a certain well known political punk band at what could charitably be described as an ‘intimate venue’. I won’t trouble you with details of every member of the party (you may already know them anyway), but it’s worth noting that the whole event was organised by one of the more smug couples I know (Victoria and Sid). It’s worth noting their hand in planning because they seem unable to invite me along to any event without carting along at least one of their single friends ‘just in case’. They’ve been pulling this trick for so long (without success in hooking me up) they’ve moved on from exclusively inviting female friends - occasionally they’ll invite an eligible man, just in case I’m curious. Why are smug couples so intent on coupling up singletons?
Tonight’s exhibit was a very loud dreadlocked Australian girl called Beth. Considering how long I’ve known aforementioned smug couple it amazes me that they no longer seem to have any idea what sort of women I’m attracted to. Mind you, I’ve been single so long I’m not sure I know myself. For a while now I’ve considered myself sort of asexual, a bit like a snail, only with (marginally) better dance moves. I may only have distant memories of dating, but I can say with some certainty that Beth isn’t my type.
Some people believe in love at first sight, so bearing in mind this fascination karma has with maintaining balance there must be such a concept as hate at first sight. Actually I can’t go that far, I believe hate is an entirely negative force that will eventually tear apart fragile humanity by its tear-sodden seams. Of course I don’t go about actually making statements like that. Not all of the time. So I can’t say I hated Beth the first time I saw her, but I certainly didn’t fall in love. It wasn’t hate at first sight; it was mild (but restrained) revulsion. No, revulsion is too strong a word; if we allow revulsion into our lives we’ll never be able to cross the force field of distain and worship in the cleansing light of understanding brotherly love. Let’s just say when we got on the train at the start of the night I fell back and found a seat away from my party.
By the time we had been rattled and screeched to our destination (courtesy of a surprisingly expensive fare on the Underground) our initial euphoria at hitting the town had waned somewhat; I dare say we were a bit jaded. We wallowed in a disgruntlement nurtured by some rather personal and intimately investigative searches carried out by the security staff at the venue. I shouldn’t complain too much; barring a recent medical at the sexual health clinic being checked for guns and knives was the nearest I’m come to sexual contact in a long time.
I’m not sure why I went to the clinic; it’s not like I’ve had the opportunity to pick up anything contagious recently. Maybe I just wanted reassurance I am still properly equipped and capable of sex ‘just in case’?
Whilst I may have enjoyed being personally violated (on some level) the edgy mood in the venue made it clear I was in a desperately small minority. There was an air of restlessness – couples clung to each other to reassure themselves the probing hands of the security staff didn’t amount to being unfaithful. A crowd at a packed gig will gladly dance with their faces glancing off the sweaty armpits of fellow audience members, but the carefree groping of a bouncer at the start of the evening is considered unacceptable.
The angry political punk band we were all there to see saw fit to have some chap armed with nothing more than an acoustic guitar (and songs about feelings) open up for them. As I’m sure you can imagine his musings missed the mark. The crowd was a constant tidal surge to and from the bar, colliding with a large number of people pushing through them in search of the fresh air of the smoking pen outside. The mood was restless and the support act was struggling to hold more than a handful of eyes, and fewer ears.
The performance took a sharp nosedive for the heartfelt minstrel when mid warble something went horribly wrong with his guitar. After a few valiant attempts to take up where the song broke down he admitted temporary defeat, and did what anyone in his position would – he frantically gestured at his guitar while making pleading faces at the nearest sound engineer. Eventually a member of the stage crew took pity and joined him on stage to resurrect his failing axe. While the roadie did everything he could to resolve the situation (unplugging the guitar and then plugging it back in again) the number of faces watching increased. Mediocrity breeds ambivalence but failure inspires fascination. A few heckles started to ring out and in desperation the singer decided to take charge of the situation and attempted to fix his guitar himself. After a few minutes of frantically pulling the jack lead out of this guitar, blowing on it, and plugging it back in the jeering from the audience became more demanding. A few half-arsed shouts of ‘get on with it’ and ‘come on then’ visibly stung the guy and he stopped and slowly surveyed the crowd. Then things got weird.
I pushed forward through the crowd to get nearer the stage. I don’t know what I thought I could do to help, but in my experience you have to be in close proximity to a disaster to fix it. Someone shouted ‘play a song faggot’ and I saw my chance to get involved. The voice in the crowed rang out again, “Play a song you ‘kin faggot.” I have no tolerance for homophobia and made my feelings known at a volume that was a little louder than I intended. The low steady voice of the singer came booming over the speakers, “What did you just say?” “Play a song you ‘kin faggot!” “No, not you; you’ve already made it clear you’re an idiot. Before tonight it was just you and your mom knew that, now everybody knows.” There was an eerie silence in the room while people looked at each other and wondered who the man with the failed guitar was addressing. “I want to know who thinks I need sticking up for? Who dared defend me?” My stomach dropped through the floor and I made a pantomime show of looking over each shoulder, hoping the anonymity of the dark crowd would hide me. “I want to know who thinks I need a self righteous guardian angel to look after me while I’m up here dying on my ass?” Then it happened: I felt someone thump into my back, spill some beer down my spine and then forcefully shove my hand up in the air. It was Beth. The attack continued from the stage, “I think you’re jealous - I’ve played in front of hard crowds all around the world, and the last thing I need when things are going wrong up here is some self righteous fuck for brains waving his little politically correct flag in the air and sticking up for me. Listen - you know nothing about me; you don’t know where I park my dick at night any better than this other moron who was yelling at me. If you dare try and belittle me by standing up for me again I’ll climb down there and remove your balls.”
I tried to back out of the crowd but with surprising strength Beth made sure I stayed exactly where I was. The angry face on stage started gesturing to the back of the room, “Phil, find the spotlight, then find this great defender of the downtrodden here near the front.” Thanks to Beth’s raised and pointing hands the blinding white of the spotlight found me soon enough; I froze rigid and awaited my fate. “I want everyone in the crowd to take a good look at this guy, drink him in, go on. Remember that face, and each time you see him tonight I want you to point and laugh.” There are times in ones life when a chant can really buoy the spirit, and then there are times like tonight. Just as the crowd’s chant of ‘point and laugh’ was reaching a crescendo the man on stage took off his guitar, threw it at the backline and stormed off. And the crowd went wild.
I turned to confront Beth and found her sat on the floor clutching her knees. She was laughing so hard it took several of her new found fans to help her to her feet. I pushed past her, past the mocking hordes and made my escape. I’m not ashamed to admit I was close to tears, in much the same way as when I was at school and a teacher mocked me for asking a stupid question in class. I didn’t get to see the main act; I spent the rest of the evening in the darkened corner of a nearby pub nursing a pint and taking deep breaths to hold back a ridiculous child like urge to burst into tears.
I met up with my friends when the show was over, and after a few well meant pats on the back and several appreciated hugs we made for the underground station. Just before we left I was relieved to see Beth wasn’t with us, but because I’m a nice guy I asked someone where she was. A finger was pointed to an alley beside the venue where Beth was exchanging cash for a small bag of god knows what with someone tall dark and gruesome. Still, it’s not my place to judge is it?
On the tube I scowled at Beth as she joined in with the enthusiastic reviews my friends were giving the band’s performance. It was a futile scowl; this woman clearly had no interest in how I was feeling after the large scale humiliation I suffered at her hands.
I turned away from Beth and noticed a woman sitting opposite me. This poor creature was looking pretty green around the gills and with each jolt of the carriage she gently burped and frowned. Sensing this may be someone that needed my support I moved across the carriage and sat down next to her, ready to offer words of comfort and wisdom. I guess I may have sat down a bit hard; she shot me a glance with wide eyes then opened up her handbag, emptied her stomach into it, then calmly closed it and elected to look the other way. A gargantuan roar of drunken laughter came thundering down the carriage and I turned to see Beth holding her knees again. She offered me her entirely unwanted appraisal of events. “You just don’t learn do you? Point and laugh, point and laugh.”
As much as she made my buttocks clench with quiet rage I have to confess I was smiling a little on the inside – it was kinda nice (albeit in a confusing, seething and maddening way) to get some attention from a woman that wasn’t based entirely on pity or concern.
This prolapse article originally appeared in Beat Motel issue #6 (October 2006).
This article about Prolapse wasn’t originally written to be an article for Beat Motel, it was in fact an email I was sending to Jason from Squad 69 that kinda got out of hand and ended up being huge, so I thought I’d reprint it here! The images are all scanned from an old newsletter I found down the back of my filing cabinet, if anyone knows the current whereabouts of this band please let me know!
I dearly love Prolapse, they were the first ‘big’ band I met as a teen that was keen to chat with us after the show and prove they were ordinary folk that liked to share their rider! Their first album ‘Pointless Walks to Dismal Places’ is one of my all time favourite albums, but their later album ‘The Italian Flag’ is in my opinion a work of pure genius, it’s very poppy but retains fantastic originality and the unusual rhythms that made me love their first album (pointless walks) so much.
There was so much about this band that made a massive impression on the 16yr old me, like each copy of their debut album having a hand painted cover made by one of the two singers. Since then I’ve always tried to write songs that owe more to rhythms than wanky guitar playing, it’s so tribal and base, perfect punk in my opinion! When you saw the band live you were never quite sure whether the fighting between the two singers (Linda and Mick) was real or just for show, there were several times a pint glass destined for Mick would whistle past our heads and smash on the floor behind us during a vaguely terrifying rendition of the album closer/ vicious but hilarious argument ‘Tina, This Is Matthew Stone’.
This was a band who (like Jesus and Mary Chain) played with such a ferocity crowds would be split in two, half the room would stand dead still, jaw open and agog at the sheer simplicity of the volumous guitar rituals they were witnessing while the other have of the room would be looking bored, checking their watches and moaning at how ‘Prolapse can’t even play properly’.
After they released their first album the band got dumped by their label Cherry Red records, in fact we saw them play in Norwich a few days after they got the news (supported by a very young and drunk Gorky’s Zygotic Mynki) and they were stunned to find out that Cherry Red had dumped ALL their active bands that week to concentrate on their back catalogue. Bassist Scottish Mick (there were two Micks) was gutted as he explained that they were overjoyed at getting signed to the same label that had put out albums by most of their heroes, including The Dead Kennedys.
Prolapse existed in an age before internet was accepted by the common man, which had one very great upside for us fans. Instead of the stagnant and septic email newsletters that we are subjected to by ands these days we used to get sent real newsletters, on paper and everything. They were written with fantastic humour and you always had to take them with a pinch of salt. One issue declared the news that singer Mick had left the band to start sniffing glue. I’m gutted that I’ve lost them all, but I have found one copy, and that’s where the images you see come from.
There was quite a buzz surrounding Prolapse when their lost their record deal with Cherry Red and it wasn’t long before interesting offers started flooding in. The first release the band put out was the utterly bizarre ‘Back Saturday EP’ in 1996. What made this release really special in an age of over polished turgid shitepop is that the label insisted that Prolapse enter the studio without any songs pre-written. Bearing in mind that ‘Back Saturday’ must have been recorded on a tiny budget the time constraints would surely have suffocated most bands, Prolapse carried it off with style. By the bands own admittance they did cheat a little and bring the ten minute long track ‘Flex’ with them to the sessions. Flex was (in their own words) ‘a proper long song, not just a wee one that’s been stretched’. Whilst the album is probably their weakest it still shows how much creativity this band had at their disposal.
Soon afterwards Prolapse released their most accessible work, an album called ‘The Italian Flag’ which propelled the band to worldwide recognition and helped secure some very tasty USA tours with the likes of Sonic Youth. Around this time sadly the newsletters stopped, although to be fair I can’t remember if they stopped or I stopped getting them as a result of moving out of my parent’s house! This was never meant to be an exhaustive history and my tea is nearly ready so I’m going to leap straight to their final album (that I know of). ‘Ghosts of Dead Airplanes’ released in 1999 contains two very strong singles that showed Prolapse still had the power to punch with pop really hard. More use was made of Linda’s vocals and this shows the band experimenting more with what was at their disposal in the studio. I wouldn’t dare say this album shows the band losing their way a bit, but there are moments in the album that seem a little lost in comparison with earlier works.
I haven’t got a clue what Prolapse are up to now, I’d like to think that they have released another couple of albums and I just haven’t found out yet. I didn’t find out about ‘Ghosts of Dead Airplanes’ until a couple of years after it had been released. I have spent hours trying to hunt the band down online but Google searches for ‘Prolapse’ bring up a lot of very wrong results, don’t even try an image search! If anyone out there does know any more than me about what they are up to now please for the love of gravy let me know!
To summarise: Prolapse probably had a stronger influence on the way I write than any other band I’ve (yet) heard. Like Dylan, Velvet Underground, and Punk showed previous generations, Prolapse showed me that ideas and creativity is always more important than how fancy your playing ability is. You’ll notice that I haven’t actually made much of an effort to describe what Prolapse sound like, this is partly due to my laziness but more importantly because I want you to discover Prolapse for yourselves with as few preconceptions as possible. Oh, and ‘Beat Motel’ zine is named after the second track on the first Prolapse album, just in case you were wondering!
Last night (around 6pm if you must know) I was enjoying the cool evening air (outside Aldgate Underground station) while waiting for a friend to arrive . Nothing unusual in that I’ll grant you. I lent back against the railings (that stop impetuous Londoners from rushing from the mouth of the tube and into oncoming traffic) idly jabbing at my cellphone with my thumb. In my periphery I spied a bulky suited object waddling toward me.
If you’ve never been to London you may not appreciate the strange sensation of concern that drapes over one when being approached by a stranger. People in London do no look at each other, let alone approach and talk. I’m sure I could walk naked through the financial district carelessly whirling my genitals before me and attract no significant attention. I’m not sure enough to have tested the theory, and nor am I inclined to take the risk. As a caveat I should tell you that my lack of nakedness in the city is not something I lament; although there’s always a chance there are others who may; as you're about to find out:
“Excuse me, do you have the time?” I looked up and was greeted by the slightly nervous visage of a gentleman for whom youth may be a distant memory, and retirement a swiftly approaching inevitability. The pedant deep within me wanted to inform this man that I did indeed ‘have’ the time, and cease all further communication until he asked me ‘what’ the time was. On this occasion my inner pedant did not have his say; the voice behind the ill-phrased question was of a Mediterranean lilt, and it is not kind to mock visitors to our fine country. While I have made it clear any interaction with fellow beings in our nation’s capital is unusual, on the rare occasions when a visitor from foreign climes (clearly unaware of the rules) makes contact it inevitable that initial greetings will be swiftly followed by a request for details of the current hour.
It is not my intention to tease you (my reader) with tales of what is usual in our city, and very soon you will find the conversation that follows far more entertaining. Enjoy this tale as it moves from the realm of the usual, to the depths of the unusual. I shall tease you no more, here for your pleasure is the exchange that took place between myself and my inquisitor after I had furnished him with the time:
“Are you Polish?” While not graced with a cut glass accent, or vocally bound by the obstacle of having a plum in ones mouth I do consider myself reasonably experienced in the use of the Queen’s English, so I replied that I was not Polish. This assumption that my ethnicity is Eastern European did not displease me in any way, in fact I was rather delighted – in a swirling metropolis racial ambiguity is no bad thing. People can make swift assumptions once they know on which rock your dear mother spat you forth. I try never to make such assumptions, but sometimes on very rare occasions the owner of origins other than your own can make a concerted effort to force these assumptions upon you.
We rejoin the conversation after I had answered that I was English, and he informed me that he was Greek. He asked me again if I was sure I wasn’t Polish; I informed him that I could only vouch for the last few generations of my lineage but yes, I was fairly sure I was English. This line of question bothered me a little – I no more chose to be English than I chose to have blue eyes.
“Are you married?” Okay, this was an odd thing for him to ask, but I guess he was also killing time outside the tube station and a friendly chat can make time spent in anonymous London a little more pleasant; so I acquiesced to his line of questioning,
“Yes, I have a wife.”
“Ah, me too, me too.” He drew up along side me as if he was about to confess to his part in some great conspiracy that would soon entangle me.
“Are you faithful to your wife?” Wow, things really were getting personal; but I found this Greek chap entertaining in a distracting sort of way. Before I could answer he registered the surprise in my face and changed tact,
“I am a doctor, I work here in the city. I very much like the English man.” Hang on; did he mean man in the ‘mankind/ humanity/ society’ sense or did he just tell me he likes men in a more intimate way? I tried to move the conversation along a new tangent; where he had failed I felt sure I would be victorious.
“So how long have you lived in England? Do your family live here with you?”
“Yes yes, my wife and two children live here,” he sighed and looked at his shoes,
“Now they live here.” There was a pause while we both watched a crowd of people spill out of the station from a newly arrived train.
“I still feel single sometimes, do you?”
“Sort of, I mean; I’m married - I’m not dead.”
“So you sometimes look at other people? Although of course you wouldn’t want your wife to find out – you wouldn’t want to hurt your marriage.” I had nothing to say, so he continued in fashion that came across as rehearsed.
“I am from Greece where things are very different to here in the UK – you are very relaxed.” By now I don’t think I was looking particularly relaxed, but I assume he meant as a nation.
“I didn’t lose my virginity till I was twenty three. They don’t let you do that in Greece, the Orthodox Church doesn’t let you have sex.” I wanted to ask him how they tried stopping people from having sex but he seemed to be gathering pace so I decided to stay silent and see where this odd conversation would take us.
“Same with homosexuals, in Greece they don’t like homosexuals, not like here in UK. It’s silly you know.” I said I didn’t.
“It’s silly because Greek man would rather go homo-sex.” I turned to face him but when he met my glance he swiftly turned away.
“Do you have homo friends?” I told him that indeed I do.
“Did you ever try homo-sex?” I answered quite truthfully that have no burden of curiosity.
“You never tried homo-sex before you were married?” I replied that no; it is not something I felt the need to experiment with.
“Of course you wouldn’t try now? Although your wife would never find out?” He met my glance and raised his eyebrows a little making clear that this was an offer more than it was a question. It was at this point I decided I would wait inside the station for my friend. I was perfectly polite and shook hands with this middle aged Greek Doctor and bid him good day. I have to confess that as I walked away and disappeared into the bowels of Aldgate Underground Station three little words popped into my head – ‘still got it!’.
If you’ve arrived on this page after finding’ Lawsie’s first Cache’ please leave a comment below!
As a kid I can remember how exciting it was finding random hidden boxes at places like Hound Tor and all over the Yorkshire moors. I loved opening the boxes and rummaging through the contents within. Then one day my sister sent me a text to tell me I can use my cellphone to do something called ‘Geocaching’.
At its most simple Geocaching is a process of finding hidden ‘things’ (caches), and transversely of hiding said caches. Find out more about Geocaching at the official website here - http://www.geocaching.com
It didn’t take me long to realise that I wanted to get involved, so after reading up on the rules I liberated an old plastic container from the kitchen and hey presto, I had made my first cache!
I placed some random bits and bobs in the box, and I’m hoping that over time people will trade with their own bits and bobs. The box is hidden in Ipswich (Suffolk, UK) and is very near somewhere I often go (so I can keep an eye on it and maintain it).
The photo shows the cache log book, a laminated explanation, a mouse ball, a skull stud, a pointy stud, a badge, a plectrum, a dice and a Jim’ll Fix It medal. I’m looking forward to seeing what it contains in the future.
In a break with tradition I’m going to talk about writing on this blog.
For the last couple of months I’ve been writing my first proper work of fiction – a romance novel. In the past I’ve always leaned toward writing non-fiction (including a whole book last year), but I was starting to feel like I was in a bit of a rut. I’ve really enjoyed writing things like ‘Youth of Goan’ and ‘A history of Junk Culture’ on a kind of instalment plan, but I wanted a new challenge.
I decided to write a romantic fiction novel because although it’s a genre that is (apparently) sneered at by literary snobs it is loved by millions around the globe (including me). Anyone who is familiar with anything I’ve written in the past will be aware that I have always favoured writing about the lighter side of life, and what’s lighter or more positive than love? Love affects everyone, sometimes whether they want it to or not. So after devouring some divine Katy Fforde and admiring an Adele Parks I planned my first novel.
At first I was daunted by the scale of the task before me, but an inspiring book called ‘Successful Novel Plotting’ helped me plan like I’ve never planned before. So here I am today; I’m about 80% of the way through the first draft of ‘Why you’re unhappy’ and having a whale of a time. I’ve found a great writing buddy in the shape of Jenny Lock and the habit we’ve formed of kicking each other up the bum (to make sure we stick with it) has been a big help.
So what have I learnt? I’ve learned that all fiction is valid no matter who writes it, what style it is or what genre. I’ve learned that the way I write long fiction is totally different to the style I use in articles, reviews, online or in emails. It’s also become clear to me that no matter what happens in my life I MUST write at least 100 words every day to stay in touch with the characters I have created. Obsession is the name of the game; I’m sure my wife and family will be relieved when I’ve finished this book so that I can start talking about something else. This book has consumed me; my characters are real and (at least in my head) the events within actually took place.
Oh, and finally (much to my surprise) I’ve figured out that I can write really early in the morning. Previously the fact that I’m such a night owl made me assume I’d be useless at being creative first thing, but I don’t think it’s been too bad. Judge for yourself, this blog post was written at 7am!
Update 1st June 2010 I have sent off sample manuscripts to a few agents, I'll keep you posted on progress (or lack of). The synopsis has changed a fair bit, you can read the latest version here - http://www.andrewlaws.com/things-im-doing/getting-it
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