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"I love a good pub chat with an old man": Hot Milk singer Han Mee's five favourite things

Boozer banter, getting stoned by the canal, and heroic siblings – here's the stuff that makes Hot Milk's gobby singer happy

"I love a good pub chat with an old man": Hot Milk singer Han Mee's five favourite things
Words:
Nick Ruskell
Photo:
Chris Bethell

Hot Milk singer/guitarist Han Mee isn't shy about saying when she doesn't like something. And it's often very funny. But, as they get ready to storm 2000trees next week, we decided to do get a look at the things she actually does love. As expected, it's quite the list...

1John Cooper Clarke

“I'm really into [poet] John Cooper Clarke at the minute. I just stick him on shuffle. I think it's because I saw him, I got taken by my partner, and I just loved it. I’m the kind of person who, if I like one thing, that's all I'll listen to for about six months. In my life, there’ll be things that I enjoy, and then I kill it to death, and then I never listen to it again. Lyrically, he's very clever, and I love everything he represents. I love what he's managed to do as a poet in the 21st century. You can go all over the world and just read his little fucking poems. That’s fucking mad. I love that stuff.”

2Margaritas

“I've tried margaritas every corner of this planet now, and even a bad one's good. I've never been to Mexico, though, which is so annoying. The best margarita I’d say is probably in Death & Co in LA, which is annoying, because I don't like saying anything in LA is good. But if I'm having a bad day, just get me a margarita, and suddenly the day's better. I make them myself, just on the rocks. I’d love to have a bar in the dressing room at festival season, have a little sign up saying ‘Free margaritas’ so all the bands can come in. That’d be mad.”

3Pub chats with old men

“I love a chat with an old man. You know when there’s an old bloke in the pub who's local and has mad opinions? You can sit and you just listen to them and be like, ‘Okay, Terry, right, okay…’ It’s good to try to understand how their brain works as well, I feel like that’s a very important thing to do. I think we need to listen to old people more, and pub chats are good for that, give them a platform for a minute. They love chatting, and don't we all love chatting?”

4Midnight canal walks

“One of my favorite things to do is go down the canal in Manchester, which is right next to where I live, have a joint and just walk around for an hour. Nobody else is down there, because they're all scared of the canal, so it becomes my canal. It's really like the back of my hand when I walk. You can walk to town from here, not that I can always be asked to do so, but you can. But there’s just something about a canal path late at night, and especially when you know it's very quiet and you just feel like it's you in the water. That's very nice. I feel like, this is my little world now, and no one else can come into it. It's peaceful, and I just end up getting everything done late at night – doing my dissertation at uni, anything like that. My mum's like that as well. She always wakes up in the night and gets up and does ironing and stuff.”

5My little sister

“She’s training to be a nurse, but she had an operation couple years ago, and it went very wrong. She was disabled, she had paralysis in her legs. Through lots of physio and stuff slowly get her legs back, and she's an absolute hero. I would have given up. Seeing her go through all of that is just astonishing. Watching her come back from all of that and manage to get back on a nursing course and nearly complete it, despite the fact that she's actually in more pain a lot of the patients, makes her one of my favorite things or people ever. She’ll tell you she's just a normal person, but she's not. Going through that as a family as well, I think it teaches you to take stock of everything extraordinary that can happen to you in life. It really grounds you. So, she's one of my favorite people for a multitude of different reasons, but selfishly, because she makes me aware of how lucky I am.”

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