I am featured in Time Out this week, Page 32 for those of my friends who like to browse in newsagents. I would scan it in to feature here, but I don’t have a scanner. Add that to the Inside Out and Enfield Advertiser features and I’m building up a bit of a clippings backlog for the day I finally procur such a device.
Anyway, it’s as part of a themed issue on London’s New Scenes. The heading for my section is ‘Freak Or Unique’.
Ms S from the magazine, who organised the piece, tells me she’s mortified about this description, saying this was her editor’s heading, not hers, and that she fought against it. She’d wanted ‘London’s Coolest Subcultures’, but he clearly thought ‘Freak Or Unique?’ was better.
I don’t mind; it’s more eye-catching, I suppose. And I’d certainly never call myself cool. Though while I admit myself and the person in the next photo, a Kash Point & Anti-Social regular called Molaroid, appear freakish enough to many, perhaps it’s a bit unfair on the others in the feature, Olly Hodgson and the Stitch And Bitch knitting club ladies. They’re wearing jeans and trainers and look entirely un-freakish. Maybe they’re more ‘unique’ than ‘freak’.
I suspect the editors in question were trying to find a more interesting way of saying ‘London Scenes: Other’, after the preceding features on women’s boxing, performance poetry and so on.
But of course, filing me under simply ‘Other’ is closer to the mark than anything else. I’ve always felt ‘Other’ in most settings.
