Natural behaviour: no songbirds these
The pigeons got unusually flustered over breakfast. About a dozen swept down from the rooftops around to scoff their bread on the bathroom windowsill, but then flapped off every few moments.
They used to fight over food and take flight from me, but I'm just a bit of their lives now, they stopped fussing.
"What's got into you lot?" I asked. "It's not me. Kytie's under the table, she couldn't care less about you."
It is worth talking to pigeons, because when I told them to stop crapping in certain places and annoying my neighbours they did. They obey the rules banning their rows and coming inside.
Then I got a quick glimpse of a big black creature, looked out, but it was gone. The pigeons had a special breakfast from the 'Best Baguette in Paris Award 2004' bakery downstairs. They agreed with the judges about that and were all dropping down four flights of stairs to fetch the crumbs they'd knocked off the sill on to a low roof where normally the sparrows get them.
"That's it," I thought, "it's the baguette. Greedy buggers!"
It wasn't.
 The ugly black Stuka with a wicked set of claws suddenly fell noisily down on the sill, had a long spat with the pigeons and flapped off outnumbered making a couple of loud caws.
Johnny Morris used to do croaks and the like on the Beeb's 'Animal Magic' when I was a schoolboy in shorts I hated. Were he still alive, I reckon his helpful voice-over would have been: "All right, scum. But I'll be back!"
So pigeons are that scared of crows?
All I knew of nature as a child came from long country walks with informed relatives, cutting up frogs in class and Johnny Morris (1916-1999). He was addictive. This is a good picture of the man I remember, in black and white, stolen from a 'screenonline' obit and tribute at the British Film Institute.
"In his inimitable, relaxed, avuncular style, Morris presented the series for over twenty years [1962-83], communicating his fascination for animals and investing them, through the humorous filmed inserts featuring his voice-over mimicry, with human emotions and characteristics" (John Oliver).
He told wonderful stories and did everything people find objectionable when they insist "you're not allowed to anthropomorphise" -- that big word for giving human qualities and voices to pigeons, steam locomotives and god.
Client for sex and the 'City'
I don't know about the pigeons, but I've scarcely set foot in the country for months, maybe years. I should but I like city life ... as long as I can stay on "African time" in the middle of it.
 I've not succeeded this week as well as I'd hoped, but the VoW singers make up for that when they whirl me away. Dancing in the street is dangerous in Paris and it's a while since I've risked a dance floor. Some women prefer me at their feet, but none stomping on their toes. Client comes to the rescue with a trip to their 'City'.
"Life is cruel and then you die, can't be bothered to try to survive..."
You wouldn't think that's anything to dance about, but a lot of people do because the first track, 'Radio,' begins the way a wry, clever electro-pop album plans to go on and it's contagious. The air-raid siren that opens and closes another one would do nicely for my mobile, with a bit of something else, "revenge" on somebody who got the same model, likes the same "old phone" tone and gets me thinking hers is mine.
The lyrics are straight and usually raw, but the effect very uplifting. If you'd care to meet the girls, Sarah Blackwood (the songwriter, Client B) and Kate Holmes (Client A), start with Mike McGee at 'Rockpile ("Secret Agents Go All City")':
"Sick of the prefabricated, bubblegum packaging of mainstream pop stars, the pair agreed not to fan the fires of such shallow publicity machines. Stripping themselves of their names (adopting Client A and Client B as functional, no-frills signifiers), Blackwood and Holmes donned rigid, uniform garb and relegated their photos to meager, headless shots of swaths of female bodies—a foursome of crossed legs in one promo photo, a pair of starch-shirted shoulders in another.
'We didn’t want to be regarded for what we did in the past, or for if we were men or women, or our names,' explains Blackwood, or, if we’re to play along, Client B. 'We wanted to be judged solely on our music. It was a reaction to all the airbrushed, manufactured bands that all wear the same clothes, showing as much flesh as possible.' Of course, inadvertently, the aesthetic remained fit, attentive to form, in control and, by definition, sexy on its own terms."
Inadvertently? He jests, surely. My thing about uniforms can be Paris Métro ones plus contents. If very lucky, when I head "down, down, 'Down to the Underground' (that's another neat, tight Client number), I find myself on the same train as one of the killer chicks the RATP is good at hiring for some of its ticket offices. She's something else. We kinda know each other now. One day I hung around to marvel at her comic transformation out of black leather, badges, safety pins -- a style success from shock-haired mainly blonde head to hard shoes -- into uniform, just as sexy.
 "Androgynous," Mr McGee suggests. I like that word, can hear and see what he means but there's nothing androgynous about secondary effects these two may have on someone like me.
Client are out to rouse people up but sound good laid back with eyes closed too. One song's simply about being 'In It For the Money' then comes some 'Pornography' that isn't, but they slice down to the bone with 'The Chill of October,' a busted love song.
Derek Martin is good on 'City' at 'Pitchfork'. He and McGee tell you about the fine male contributions on some songs. It may be best to take Client B solely at her word and how she sings with Client A, but Sarah, on the right, reminds me a lot of the M-girl minus the spikes. wonder if an outfit as regulated as the RATP has a rule banning bras for staff like her or it's one of her own, but that's all part of her style and her nipples probably turn into champagne corks for whoever she fancies, "functional, no-frills signifiers" at the least.
A fine Mann about town
We do stupid things. I've done one that did my week off no good and less still to the person concerned. It's not quite like this, though I feel bad about it: 'The Chill of October,' one of Client's surprises, with a unexpected gush of string orchestration and words about how things end between people is a fine candidate for one of the iMixes I'm working on sometimes. An iMix, if you don't know, is to the iTMS what others do at Amazon when they compile music collections that can take others on to new ground, sharing favourites.
 Aimee Mann, while quite a different kind of musician whose words are far more polished, is another candidate for songs about raw personal experience, the kind I'd like to listen to myself when love is tough and hurts, and there's often no better remedy than somebody who sings "Don't wallow it, but this is how it is, you're not alone."
I'm doing some odd iMixes and seemed almost alone in being convinced Aimee will be in Paris next month. The day I spotted the ad, a couple of tickets were the "must have" of the hour. Several sales agents firmly assured me Ms Mann won't be in town on July 8, but plans to take on the vast Stade de France at the end of summer.
Maybe she does, but that's way too big for me and soon I started thinking I need the picture to tell people this is definitely Aimee Mann and she'll be at La Cigale (Fr) when I say she is. Cosy. After several calls and sweeping the Net, I found somebody agreed with me, and became quite certain when the tickets fell into my letterbox a few days ago, remaking my week.
I didn't know my friend Ellie was a music writer until she told me she loves Aimee too,
"saw her in concert in 1989. I still have one of her cassettes. Great sharp, broken-edged love ballads, no?"
Yes. Exactly that, lots more. I grabbed 'The Forgotten Arm' the day it was released for the same reason as Thom Allott at Amazon in his write-up:
"Even without hearing a note, it’s a certainty that at some level the album will be excellent."
It is. Aimee Mann's latest adventure is an unusual and successful one in times when many musicians don't do "concept albums" any more, including a dose of "broken-edged love". For a review of my own, I think I'll wait to see and hear her live, along with Plan C or A.
Plan A goes up on notice boards:
"Found: Aimee Mann. Lost: You.
You like Aimee.
Like Aimee you improve with age.
With age comes experience.
I like experiences, your sense of humour, dreams, spontaneity, holes and stunning looks.
Stunning looks are in the eye of the beholder, but beware: I tend to talk the legs off the donkeys.
The donkeys and small talk are not required around Aimee Mann.
Me, a man, may be your ticket.
Your ticket comes without strings."
It's not one of my best versions, but there are many VoWs to go to see and sometimes I'm a very attentive listener. Knowing me, however, I'm likely to forget the contact details.
If I do it will have to be Plan B.
9:27:43 PM link 
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