r A t.

r A t.

Banksy said: 'imagine a world where graffiti wasn't illegal… where standing at a bus stop was never boring… where the street was like a party that everyone was invited to.'

Think of the colours, the freedom, the entertainment. Think of the justice of it. And think of the architects weeping.

There's a whole book in here, I think. But, if I tried to write it, I would use ten times the wordage with none of the succinct wit and wisdom, or eloquently profound and playful illustration of Wall and Peace. ..See? Just look at that sentence.

It's a book that I think Caroline should have on her Important Urban Design Texts shelf at work, next to Jane Jacobs and Fifty amusing skylines (25th edition).

But the fact that Banky's subversive, stenciled rats speak so cleverly has everything to do with context. ..And the fact that my primary adjective there was 'clever' rather than 'funny' or 'bloody-spot-on-mate' makes it obvious I'm a middle class bloke who got the book for Christmas and has subsequently joined the revolution by idly reading it in the bath and thinking it was marvelous, darling. Plus, I used the word 'context'.

But it is about context. Without the mindless street clutter of signage, Banksy's rats would have nowhere to play. Without the boundaries, we have no way to be naughty.

What fun is football on a tiny stretch of grass in a suburban cul-de-sac without the gloriously sanguine No Ball Games sign rooted quietly in one corner? No fun either way for me, but I'm not getting my own point. Or what about Mark and Lard - they were at their funniest when on Radio 1 daytime, precisely because they hated the playlist.

The designer makes effective pieces of visual communication by setting up fields to work in. Invisible grids to break out of and create dynamism. Ah, grids. Don't get me started on grids. The grid is your friend, subversive graphic designer.

Now, the problem with packaging Bansky into a book is that it becomes a bit of a commodity and something to be consumed in the bath, rather than lived with as a piece of the human environment, challenging the human story. But I don't care, because it's brilliant, inspiring stuff. And the fact that my new copy now has slightly damp, wrinkled corners seems to make it slightly better to me.

But this is all something to do with Christmas.

As Banksy also said, when you are the outcast, the thrown-away and the useless of society, the rat is your rolemodel.

What is art, or design, if it communicates nothing? If it speaks for no-one? Yet the very structures we need to speak up and challenge are often the things we need to hang our message off; the very fabric of our environment the canvas of our communication.

That's why, while we're all rightfully trying to use Yuletide as the time to be with whatever family we can pull together around us, and take time off, and think about what matters, I'll also be trying to remember the little baby at the centre of the Christmas story, Jesus.

Now that quaint manger painting, beautifully rendered, covers a brutal, ugly back street reality that is the genius beginning of a real inspiration.

At least to us subversive rats.


Happy Christmas day.
xx

Perky.

Perky.

Q: What do you do when you're thirty-eight and recovering from a rookie's night out with friends? (Don't ask. I'm well aware what the First Step is...)

A: Bay window sequence dance in your underpants to Sebastien Tellier's Divine.

I did the cocktail shaker, the train, the hand jive, the head swoop, the thumbing-a-ride - everything. In the pants. In the window. Tom Cruise style. ..Except, come to think of it, undoubtedly camper.

If there's a better way to feel better about just about anything, I know it not. Doesn't so much do away with the throbbing head and the wobbly tummy as hide them behind a sparkly costume.

Nice. It's been on five times in a row.






..I know.



..I really AM a silly sod.

> 'PLAY' <

Momo Chrimbo.

Momo Chrimbo.

Well, so here we are. December 17 and I've put on some CD called Christmas Crooners, all on my own in a fairly jolly, sunny studio. It's Christmas, and there's not much more I can get done in the next day and a half now.

Though, of course, there's loads to get done.

Anyway, hard to care now - because Christmas has come a little early to Momo. I've finally managed to get four new, mastered mixes up on the re-upholstered Momo:tempo website. At last. At long, bloomin' last, I have something that people can point their iPods at.

Yes, Disfunkshun is out there. Check it out at http://www.momotempo.co.uk

It's alluding to the imminent finish of the whole album, I'm alarmed to say. But more of that in January. Let's not spoil the festive calm with deadlines and productivity.

Time for brandy and a mince pie.





(..Sh**t! Is that the freakin' time?)

Made off.

Made off.

Oh come on.

Come on.

..Mr MADOFF?

At a time of gigantic economic meltdown, a world-revered investment banker has taken unexpected extra billions from the banks through spectacularly simple swindling... and his name is Bernard MADOFF?

What is this, Dickens?

How bad is it all gonna get?

"Roit, mista Neerly-Madoff, heavens to goodness, the Peelers are roit on me tail to meet out some timely come-uppance. But only in fair response to some very hundreds of tiresome, tightly-type-set pages of detailed human reality and suffering, so it is. I so wish I'd thought abaaht the human condition sooner, so I do, and chosen to value me nearest and dearest over the fleeting fancies and phantom charms of the devil's jingle in me purse. Run, sir."

Well, you need a bit of Dickens at Christmas, after all.

Scenes from my life.

Scenes from my life.

1: The typical Momo working week:
Flight of the concordes does the French daydream.

2: The typical Momo weekend:
Top Gear drives the Ferrari Daytona around the Riviera.



>sigh<



..I've been almost fourteen hours at this ruddy Mac.

Forward and back.

Forward and back.

The moon was a striking crescent, low in the sky with a single evening star, as I popped out in the car earlier. Looked almost like a special effect, painted behind the silhouetted December chimney pots and roof lines. For yes, it is now the first day of advent - even if the dusky heavens looked more like an Islamic postcard.

Nearly Christmas.

So where did the year go?

Yesterday wasn't the bright, fresh start to the holiday season that today managed all day. It was a day to stay inside with the lights on again - gloomy and wet and windy. But, as I said chirpily to Jules while we head-downed through the chilly sleet of Petty France the other day, I'm still loving the autumn and winter vibe. Don't know why; it seems to fortify somehow.

Yesterday wasn't really a day to be cheerful, though. Yesterday was Dad's birthday.

He would have been 75. And he would have had a fit at what we'd done to his bedroom by the time dawn broke.

Caroline has made it her mission for him and for Mum - while she enjoys the festive snows of Colorado for a couple of weeks - to sort through his spectacularly time-filled room of memorabilia. Mike and Emma even gave over a whole Saturday to helping us strip walls and cart furniture away across town. It was a kind of fab day working together; Mikey hadn't been back to the flat in quite a while. We fed them too much afterwards to say thankyou.

But the weather, the memories, the date. I should have been some shade of maroon blue this weekend. But I don't really deal with stuff in that formal, respectful way. I mean, do I? With all that's going on as the year ends, I know there's plenty to weight the heart a little. And it is. I miss him. And probably only a bit as much as I'm going to.

But what can you do? If I didn't get on with the creative at hand, I might grind to a halt. Which I'm not sure I can do.

So I thought of Dad and I wondered where the year had gone and I thanked him for leaving the room in such an indecipherably dense state back at the flat. And I pulled on my headphones as the rain lashed against the studio windows and spent the day trying not to fall asleep in order to finish the loud, brass-heavy, entirely inappropriate electro madness of the tunes I'm trying to get mastered - figuring that yesterday was precisely the day for pushing on and trying to get things done and trying to prepare for new things.

And prepare for a big fat, jolly Christmas, surrounded by loved ones for as many days as I can get away with it. It was Dad's favourite, kitsch, colourful, loved-up time of year.

And I figured he'd be pretty pleased that I was too distracted with making music to wallow in loss or dwell on his unhappy birthday last year. That's what I figured. You don't sit still and remember Brian - you get on and do practical stuff, or you grin and whistle.

Which is what I continued to figure as I drove to the little studio out in the New Forest tonight, under the last new moon before Christmas listening to Metrophilia - a distinctly whistly, wistful tune - to drop off the final mixes.