We are watching BBC4's Saturday Classics season, catching up on all the stuff we missed first time round.
Last night we finished watching the production of Pride and Prejudice which got a lot of dotty women hot under the brassiere when it was first shown in the 90s. In it, Mr Darcy is truly one dark, brooding cunt.
And there was something we noticed that even the most avid Austen fan might have missed. It seems that in Austen adaptations, the heroes dress to the right whilst the villains dress to the left.
Did Jane stipulate in her will such fine details for any future theatrical productions of her work?
The short documentary on Edwyn Collins' rehabilitation from his stroke was extremely moving. It's sister programme about the Scottish music scene from the late seventies was a load of shit.
I was ready to learn about Postcard Records and Scotland's indie heritage. What we got instead was an early dismissal of indie labels by Claire Grogan and a dispiriting trawl through 80s bollocks such as Hue & Cry, Deacon Blue, The Proclaimers, Wet Wet Wet et al. They even tacked on fucking Scottish political independence and the SNP and the bloke out of Runrig, none of which has anything to do with the music scene but more to do with washed up minor pop artists trying to keep their names in the media as some sort of spokespeople for a generation of people with crap music taste.
There was no mention of The Skids, the early good Simple Minds and absolutely no mention of Jesus & Mary Chain or even Primal Scream.
How can Edith Bowman live with herself for reading the script that made Scottish music sound about as vibrant as Ireland's?
As part of my job I am responsible for making sure the switchboard is always staffed. Due to staff reductions recently I have had to call upon temps, something I hadn’t done for ten years or so. How times have changed!
In the 90s, a temporary telephonist was more often than not an Australian on a year’s stay in London. Now it seems she is more likely to be British. Not just British, but a well-spoken between-jobs British actress.
Three times in the past few weeks I’ve been telling various actresses about the play wot I wrote and I’m getting tired of it. It was, after all, 16 years ago now and it’s a bit pathetic to keep harking on about something that got one derogatory review in the Ham & High.
I think I get on well with actors though I’d like to know what they’re thinking about me. In my experience they’re always really friendly, but you never know what kind of egomaniac is lurking beneath the mask.
I’ve decided I won’t mention my silly little play to the next one I meet. I’ll just talk about them, what kind of theatre they prefer, whether they’ve been on the telly, whether they write as well as act...
We are enjoying the third episode of the BBC2 repeat of BBC3's excellent comedy, Pulling. I laugh out loud when Karl accidently gives himself a Hitler moustache. I laugh again as he is run over, lifts his arm for help and gets a smack in the mouth for being a nazi. And I laugh when he realises he has landed in dog shit, this time with recognition.
"We've seen this bit before," I say to Betty.
"This was the programme that Ian Penman recommended on his blog. He said that some BBC3 comedies aren't given the accolades they deserve because of the critics' snobbishness towards the channel. We tried to watch this episode at the time. You said it was shit, ha ha ha."
"Oh yes," I say, "I remember."
"There's a bit later where they play The Smiths when he's feeling suicidal. You thought it was too obvious."
"Oh yes," I say. "And here I am enjoying it."
"Ha ha ha."
"I did the same with the Sopranos, didn't I? I said the first episode was too slow until you started watching it. Now I think it's the best thing ever."
"And The Wire," says Betty.
"Did I?"
"You were going to give that up after 20 minutes."
"Was I?"
"Ha ha ha. And you laughed out loud at the Hitler moustache last time too. Did you forget that?"
"Ha ha ha."
N.B. The ha ha ha's in this post signify actual laughter, not cruel mockery.
"The raffle causes more problems than anything. The trouble is, as soon as one year's trip is over, Alf is on the phone asking how many people for next year's. It's what he lives for now.
You've got to feel sorry for him. He must have had a stroke - he talks out of the side of his mouth and dribbles everywhere. His jacket and shirt are covered in saliva. You don't want to brush up against him, although he does have a tendency to get a little close for comfort when coming round with the raffle tickets.
This year we had a little altercation. We missed out on the raffle tickets; we weren't in the bar, we were in the lounge. Alf's 80 year old pitbull assistant started hassling and we gave him some good tempered banter in reply. The pitbull took offence. He didn't like being spoken to like that.
We were eventually worn down and bought some tickets. We won the £6 prize but Len, the organiser of the trips, has funny turns and he tore up our winning ticket.
But good-hearted Len told Alf what he'd done. Alf came to our table and took six pound coins from his pocket and put them beside my drink. The coins were stuck together, covered in an unknown bodily fluid.
I went to the Ladies and washed the coins and my hands with soap and water. I dried them under the warm air hand dryer."
You can stick your Jon Savage up your arse. The only true account of punk is here, those times as seen by a true newpaperman, author, raconteur and Betty's favourite columnist, Bob Ogley. Bob not only lived through punk, he lived through the War, dodging doodlebugs, and through the Great Storm of 1987, dodging Sevenoaks's seven falling oaks. Here are some gems from the article...
" I imagine many people younger than me will disagree with my assessment of this noisy, heroin-addicted, sickeningly obnoxious band but I understand their desire to find an alternative sound to the poor music offered in the mid-1970s. I certainly accept their place in history as the group which launched this unforgettable new cult."
Dead right, Bob. What did we have in the mid-70s? Prog, Bob! All those dinosaurs in their mansions with their banks of keyboards. Long-haired layabouts. You couldn't tell if it was a boy or a girl until you'd pinched its arse.
"A bit of a rebel himself, McLaren made them work in his shop selling such items as T-shirts and dodgy bondage wear."
McLaren's bondage wear was always dodgy. The zips were always breaking. And many a time was the blood completely cut off from a young man's pride and joy. Older, more experienced members of our society knew where to get more reliable bondage wear. And that certainly wasn't the King's Road.
"The Pistols rapidly picked up a following of arty weirdos and disenchanted speed freaks and achieved instant fame following a TV interview in December 1976 when several times they used a four-letter word - the first people ever to say f... on telly. Instantly, they were a household name."
For "arty weirdos" read "art-school students", weirdos every one, many of whom went on to form their own so-called "punk" bands. The speed freaks had been around for years and were just glad to have some fast paced music to accompany their drug taking. The instant fame of the Pistols was gained at the expense of the career of a good, honest journalist and tv presenter. What they did to poor Bill Grundy was unforgiveable.
Yes, I'm not above telling crap jokes during the most moving piece of film on television this week. I didn't shed a tear along with Bobby Charlton but I did with David Attenborough. The Panamanian golden frog is no longer in the wild. Once upon a time you had to watch your step unless you splattered one. Now, thanks to a bastard fungus the only golden frogs left in Panama are in captivity.
Awww. Look at his little hand waving.
Goodbye-ee, Goodbye-ee, Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye-ee Tho' it's hard to part, I know, I'll be tickled to death to go, Don't cry-ee, don't sigh-ee, There's a silver lining in the sky-ee! Bon Soir, old thing! Cheerio! Chin-Chin, Nah-Poo, Toodle-oo, Goodbye-ee
Today we went to the cinema for the first time in two years, encouraged by all those good reviews for the Coen Brothers' latest, No Country For Old Men.
We go to see Coen Brothers films at the cinema. They're always worth seeing once, if no more. We haven't got any DVDs of their films and we won't be getting this one.
Don't get me wrong, it's well worth seeing. It looks good, it's got lots of tension, plenty of humour, some great performances and...
Well, that's about it really. We've seen it, it's filed to memory, somewhere.
Probably worth an Oscar or two but that's not saying a great deal in an age of shite English language films. (The previews of the forthcoming attractions at the cinema confirmed my prejudices).
We're going again in a few days to see the latest film featuring Daniel Day Lewis, There Will Be Blood. We always see films with Daniel in as he's a modern day acting giant.
Let's hope the film does him at least a modicum of justice.
The most embarrassing thing to come out of West Ham's Pardew era was not losing to a Neil Shipperley (for Christ's sake) goal in the play-off final. It was those fucking t-shirts.
I loved Bobby Moore. But those fucking t-shirts, "Moore Than Just A Football Club". What a half-arsed wanky piece of disrespectful advertising. Pardew looked a prick in his and so did anyone else who bought one.
So to tomorrow. We've had all week to remember the Busby Babes. We had our minute's silence before the England game. But tomorrow's the Manchester derby. Manchester united in remembrance. Will the City fans cry? Did the Everton fans cry when Liverpool remembered Hillsborough? Did Bradford Park Avenue fans cry on the anniversary of City's fire? Remember that horrific day?
In the week that the cunts in charge of our national game get erect penises over fucking even more with its history, we've all got to tune into Sky tomorrow, God's day of rest, to cry over something that happened before a lot of us were born. And the players are wearing a special 1950s kit with, get this, no advertising! What a mark of respect! Long, baggy shorts, v-necked shirts, big, clunky boots smeared with dubbin, a ball as hard as a coconut, half-time cigarettes and cups of tea in a steaming dressing room.
It's the no advertising on the shirts that really brings a tear to my eye, though. I hope they'll be on sale afterwards. I want to look like Gary Neville.
I meet my cousin on the train. We bump into each other about once every six months. We talk a bit about old times.
When we were young we used to go tenpin bowling together. Neither of us goes now. But he tells me the bowling game on the Wii console is pretty much as good as the real thing. You can even make your ball curl by using the right wrist action!
He does have a hobby nowadays, though. He goes clay pigeon shooting. It's great. You can spend a whole day doing it or even just a couple of hours. It's a sport of great skill and it's very social. He's tried shooting real birds but it's not as satisfying as shooting the clay sort.
Yes, I say, there must be more luck involved in shooting birds. It all depends on their flight path.
I am right. He takes my interest as enthusiasm for trying his pastime.
"Do you fancy it, Geoff?"
I can't think of anyone less suited to holding a gun and conversing with a bunch of gun toting guys than me. Except perhaps Prince Edward.
"I don't really have the time," I say.
"What do you do with your spare time then? Everybody's got something."
Sunday was the day for the annual church service to celebrate the life of Grimaldi, one of the greatest clowns of all time, if not the greatest.
Separately, clowns and church services give me the willies. Together, they'd be overwhelmingly creepy.
Seeing pictures of the service makes me wonder which songs would be suitable for funerals attended by clowns.
Maybe the following...
Tears of a Clown by Smokey Robinson for a service attended by a clown who is burying a dear one.
Cathy's Clown by the Everley Brothers for the service of a clown whose next of kin is named Cathy.
You won't find another fool like me by The New Seekers for the service of a clown who thought he was the best thing since sliced bread (or since Grimaldi). "I wanna tell ya, You won't find another clown like me babe, No you won't."
Clowntime is Over by Elvis Costello for the service of several clown colleagues who died in a tragic circus van pile up on the M1.
The vicar would wear a flower which would spurt water into the faces of the mourners as they shook hands to thank him for the service.
Talking with an actress yesterday, as you do, I discovered the identity of the actor who's going to play Rhett Butler in Trevor Nunn's forthcoming stage musical production of Gone With The Wind.
It is none other than Pop Idol failure, Darius Danesh.
Real actors, actors who have trod the boards and put the hours of pain in, are really pissed off with this. And so they should be. Apparently Hugh Jackman, a genuinely talented hard-working musical actor, was originally up for the part but something happened and Darius snuck in there.
There is a crisis in musical theatre. Do we, as a nation, allow these reality show johnny-come-latelys into an artform we've held dear for generations? Trevor Nunn is pissing on the legacy of Michael Crawford.
And I, for one, am not going to stand for it.
I refuse to buy any more tickets for musicals until this abomination is stopped dead in its tracks.
As you do, we were discussing last night the possibility of forming a kind of skiffle band using medical add-ons to a failing body as musical instruments.
So a percussionist could be playing the false teeth.
A piper could be playing the colostomy bagpipes.
Hearing aids could be used as amplifiers.
A tracheostomy tube could be used as a kind of vocoder.
An amplified (via hearing aid) pacemaker would provide the backing rhythm.
I'm bored. 2008 was going to be the year I read and wrote poetry. I'm bored with poetry, with writing it and reading it. To be honest with myself, I'm not very good at either.
2008 was going to be a fiction-free year. I'm bored with reading fiction, can't take it seriously. But what's left?
I went to the bookshop. What about an autobiography?
I bought a bestseller, Bill Bryson's childhood memoirs, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.
What a boring book! What a smug bastard! And the advertising inside for his other books! I've never seen the like!
There are thirteen pages of arse-licking reviews. And the inside back cover has pictures of all his other books just in case you hadn't been brainwashed already.
I've got three more books lined up. Simon Napier-Bell's Black Vinyl White Powder. A Drink with Shane MacGowan. And Owning Up: The Trilogy by George Melly, as recommended by Arabella.
Can anybody recommend any other entertaining non-fiction/autobiographies? You'll be performing a public service.
Taking the gauntlet from the missus (see her links for more entertaining lists), the following is my list of Ten Songs That No Grown Man Should Own. As meme's go, this is one that all bloggers should have a go at. You think you're too cool, eh?
1. Follow You, Follow Me - Genesis I could never understand the appeal of Gabriel-era Genesis. Far too clever for me. This, in 1978, was the first time they'd floated my boat. I saw them live a year or two later. They were shit.
2. Hotel California - The Eagles The Eagles' Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is the world's third best selling album after Thriller and Back In Black. Our school had one AC-DC fan. Nobody liked Jacko or The Eagles. With Hotel California, The Eagles were past their best and in their pomp. Joe Walsh was a new Eagle. I loved Joe Walsh. This single is beyond the pale. but I don't care.
3. Welcome Home - Peters & Lee My mum loved this song. I seem to remember her developing a fancy for Lennie Peters. This, and I Just Called To Say I Love You are the only two singles by blind performers she has admitted to liking over the years. I always thought Peters and Lee were an item but they were married to different people. The clue's in the name, dummy.
4. Big Seven - Judge Dread Judge Dread was a big favourite of our Ronnie Corbett-lite friend of the family. We'd sit in his living room on a Sunday afternoon, two young families, and he'd play this sexist filth. Big Seven was a more complete record than Big Six. It is more lyrically rounded and he keeps the Jamaican accent all the way through, not wandering off to South America.
5. Macarena - Los Del Rio Two creepy, pervy middle aged taxi drivers trying to get off with beautiful young women. Thinking they're in with a chance! No, Grandad. Keep your eyes on the road!
6. Private Investigations (12 inch) - Dire Straits A vinyl film noir. From the album Love Over Gold about which Wikipedia says "Due to its lengthy atmospheric instrumentals it has been cited as the band's only album that resembles progressive rock, although not quite achieving it." There's something magnificent about not quite achieving progressive rock. A beautiful failure.
7. Call On Me - Eric Prydz Pervy video with hot babes, ahem, "towelling" themselves down. Played to absolute fucking death on MTV Dance a couple of years ago. Based on Steve Winwood's Valerie, it shouldn't work but it does. Oh yes it so does!
8. Aqua Marina (Stingray Theme) - Gary Miller
Miller provided the singing voice for Troy Tempest. You really couldn't tell, Troy was that good. I was in love with the idea of Marina, a mermaid who would hold my hand and take me through the most unimaginably beautiful coral. She would hold my breath for me in a kiss.
9. The Last Waltz - Englebert Humperdinck I love the idea of "two lonely people together". I look at all the lonely people. Where do they all come from?
10. Chant No. 1 (12 inch) - Spandau Ballet Who can forget Robert Elms' poetic introduction to the Ballet's live Scala show? I hear True every day at work. It is my least favourite song of all time, that joke just isn't funny any more. But this slice of white funk still gets me up on the dancefloor.
I love films. Not "film", films. I've loved films since I was in my late teens.
"A bit late to be getting into films," you may say.
But the films I like are for adults. I couldn't sit down with a child and watch a film. One of us would get very bored very quickly.
Heath Ledger is dead, the victim, it seems, of the pressure he was under playing the Joker in the new Batman film. Yes, Batman. A 28 year old man couldn't handle the psychological consequences of portraying a character in a kids' film.
I had a Batman outfit when I was three. I would run through Bournemouth town centre, pretending I was Batman.
My Lonnie Donegan double CD is getting on my tits. It was not cheap, it was a tenner. For a tenner I expect the raised plastic bits which the CD holes fit over to be intact. As soon as I opened the case for the first time, they both crumbled. I expect this from cheap CDs, though why I'm not sure. They can't be saving that much by using crap packaging, surely. Still, at least the front of the case hasn't broken off. Yet.
Another thing that pisses me off about this compilation is the fact that it is a double rather than a single CD. Several of the songs have various versions. There are about five Midnight Specials coming down that fucking line! I don't want four studio versions and one live version of the same song. I want one definitive version. The best. That goes for anybody, except maybe the Beatles whose German versions of their classics sound like different songs. What kind of anal completist actually enjoys listening to the same song over and over?
"But Geoff, didn't you notice the bass player farting halfway through the second chorus in Midnight Special Take Three?"
No, I didn't. And I couldn't give a bollock about it.
"When they've worked all week, the match for them, it's a bit like people down south going to the theatre".
Brilliant, King Kev! You've really raised the bar. That's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time.
You can see through all this bollocks about Newcastle United fans being the best in the world, salt of the earth, community minded, proud of their history, more working class and honest and neighbourly and humorous than other fans, deserving of success more than any other team's fans in the whole wide world. Toon Army, my arse. They can't hold a fucking tune.
Donna doesn't know it yet, but when she walks through the door to her secret 50th birthday celebration they will be playing Donna by Marty Wilde. Not Donna by 10CC or Donna by Ritchie Valens, but the cover of Valens' song which is "nicer" than the original.
As part of his set, the DJ will play Hey There Lonely Girl by Eddie Holman, the first song which Donna really liked in her teens.
For my 50th birthday bash I'm hoping to walk into the room to the strains of Space (Jefrey With One F) by The Pixies. I will later have a little smooch to Bohemian Rhapsody.
Woody Guthrie, Philip Pullman and Larry Grayson may seem like strange bedfellows, but all three had/have a common obsession.
Guthrie recorded several songs about DUST. Indeed, he became known as the "Dust Bowl Troubadour".
DUST is a major theme in Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. Indeed, his novel entitled The Book Of Dust is due to be published in 2009.
Grayson's stage act included running his finger along the top of the back of a chair, searching for DUST, then exclaiming, "Oooh! Look at the muck in 'ere!"
Last weekend I spent editing all Betty's 60s and 70s compilations down to eight cracking CDs. It was time well spent.
This weekend, inspired by the latest Uncut Magazine CD of influences on Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding and Nashville Skyline, I have bought a Woody Guthrie compilation. And to complete my old music spree, I spent the remainder of my HMV voucher on a Lonnie Donegan skiffle CD.
Lonnie was feted on the first of BBC4's Pop On Trial discussion programmes. As big an influence as Elvis on British 60s bands, according to the panel of Joe Brown, CP Lee and 50s throwback Pete Wylie. Stuart Maconie chaired the discussion with his usual chummy aplomb.
On the website you can vote for your favourite track from each of the decades, though I'm not sure if you can tell them which you think is "the most important, influential and entertaining decade". Which is the premise for the series as far as I can tell. Maybe that vote comes later.
I can't decide which is my favourite song from any decade. I like several from each of the lists provided. Why can't we vote for our least favourite? Why haven't they got a shitlist? Surely a decade can be judged by its worst as well as its best.
Back to Joe Brown. Joe got away lightly when it came to a stage name. No Wilde, Fury, Eager, Pride, Power, Gentle, or Fame for Joe. He got to keep his real name. Joe said that Larry Parnes wanted to call him and his band Elmer Twitch and the Fidgets! And Joe refused!
Like the prostitute thing where you have your first pet's name followed by your first street's name, there should be something similar for one's Larry Parnes' name. I'm working on it, but for now Betty has given me and my imaginary band the moniker of Rory Fire & The Coals. I am seventeen and have smouldering good looks.
What's your Larry Parnes' name? The best one will receive a record contract with Pye Records.
It's time for one of my occasional psychosomatic illnesses. This time it's heart disease. I've been feeling a tightness in my chest, going down my left arm. Yesterday I had an ECG and a blood pressure test. I was fine. "It's not cardiac," said the nurse, softly into my ear in a crowded waiting room.
So it must be digestion related. Because I've read that angina can have similar symptoms to indigestion, it stands to reason that the reverse must be true.
Time to look at my diet, I suppose. As if I'm not always looking at my fucking diet. I have a lot of sympathy for the girl who can only eat chips. It took them years to find out she has gastro-oesophagul reflux disease and that chips are all she can comfortably digest. It goes against the rules, you see. Chips are supposed to be bad for the digestion.
Well bollocks to the rulebook. I can't eat potatoes full stop. Or "healthy" porridge. Or "healthy" omega 3 fatty fish. But I can eat hot, spicy foods and drink alcohol 'til the cows come home. That's against the rules, too.
One thing I've learned about the digestive system is that it doesn't respond to reason. We're all different. It's just that some of us are unfortunately more different than others.
This year's Corrie workout babe is Vicky Binns. Vicky plays Molly, mad staring-eyed daughter of lonely, obese, face like a punched doughnut, bottle-bottomed spectacle wearer, baker Diggory Compton. She found love with slack-jawed, overweight, face like a Yorkshire pudding, ignoramus, car mechanic Tyrone Dobbs and has lost her love handles just for him.
Last year's Corrie workout babe was Vicky Entwistle who plays wasp-chewing, face like a bag of spanners, voice like chalk scraping a blackboard, seamstress Janice Battersby.
Next year's Corrie workout babe, according to the missus, is likely to be Jennie McAlpine who plays Fizz Brown. I like Fizz and won't hear a word said against her.
The name Vicky Binns just happens to be a combination of two high street off licences, Victoria Wines and Oddbins. Molly Compton happens to be one of the least alchoholic Corrie characters. Vicky is missing an opportunity.
Back at work on Wednesday after our lovely long break and people are saying they were bored at home, desperately missing routine and a reason for getting up in the morning, glad to be back in the office.
How will they cope when it's time to retire? Are we going to have future generations of working 65 plussers, unwilling to get off the treadmill, drawing their pensions and their salaries, accumulating more and more wealth until they're unable to leave their homes?
What is this work ethic bollocks and who's the tosspot who invented it?
We dispensed with tradition last night. Tradition dictates we watch Hootenanny and shout expletives. But I just wasn't up for it last night. I couldn't bring myself to swear at Macca. Not after the year he's had.
Then they counted down from ten to one. We opened the front door to watch the fireworks as the breezy bollocked Scots Guards played Auld Lang Syne. All we could see was some badly dancing middle aged swingers in the window of the house across the road seemingly beckoning us to join them in their new year shenanigans. Well that's what it looked like in our inebriated state, so we shut the door pretty sharpish.
Most of the evening was spent watching The (100) Most Annoying People Of The Year 2007 on BBC3. I'd heard of most of them and most of them did annoy me. Three snippets of information I missed last year include...
1. The revelation that Mick Jagger used to get bees to sting him to enlarge his manhood.
2. The revelation that Bryan Ferry is an aficionado of Nazi style.
3. The revelation that former professional Christian athlete Jonathan Edwards had a crisis of faith and resigned from Songs Of Praise. I didn't know he had presented it in the first place!
My new year's resolution is to keep up with the news that matters.
I go to the bar to order a round. The CD starts again - All Day And All Of The Night. The young barman asks his co-worker if this is The Kinks. She doesn't know. He looks at me. "Yes," I say, "it is The Kinks".
"It's not You Really Got Me, is it?" he says.
"No."
"I like that one. It sounds similar. I like The Kinks."
"Me too," I say. I've always liked the Beatles and Stones but only really liked The Kinks for the past few years."
"I'm a DJ, you know. 60s, 70s and 80s. I DJ'd here on Christmas Eve. Were you here?"
"No."
"I love the 60s stuff. Specially the Beach Boys. I love the Beach Boys."
"Pet Sounds?"
"Sorry?"
"Pet Sounds. It's a Beach Boys album. God Only Knows?"
"?"
"God Only Knows. It's a song on Pet Sounds."
"I like I Get Around."
"Yeah, their earlier stuff is good, too."
My music history lesson over, I pay for the drinks. I go back to our table and continue to talk Jupitus.
The new groups are not concerned With what there is to be learned They got Burton suits, ha you think it's funny Turning rebellion into money
The song White Man In Hammersmith Palais demonstrates Joe Strummer's disappointment with black youth preferring pop reggae over roots consciousness. Joe wanted a black and white revolution, to a soundtrack of serious music. He didn't get it. The white punks were more interested in showing off their fashionable clothes.
How on earth did we lose the Hammersmith Palais? One of London's most "iconic" live music venues? Now an office/live coffee complex! Oh dear.
Phill Jupitus (him again for fuck's sake) is apoplectic with rage that it became the home of School Disco, Le Palais' reliance on the silly mainstream as opposed to the cutting edge of Jupitus music bringing about its downfall. If only it were still open, Jupitus could have performed Wake Up And Make Love With Me with the aging Blockheads. Imagine Jupitus singing "I come awake, with the gift for womankind, you're still asleep, but that gift don't seem to mind." to an audience of portly middle aged men. What a mindbogglingly revolting image!
I shocked myself by agreeing with something Robert Elms said. His parents met at the Palais at a dance. A lot of London's couples did meet there. He said School Disco was performing the same function in the 90s and noughties, though not just Elms's beloved "West Londoners". How many couples met at a Pogues or Cramps gig in the 80s? I never saw anybody copping off.
Maybe we'll see a resurgence of old fashioned dance music, inspired by Strictly Come Dancing and we'll need venues like the old Palais again, with its dance floor and its stage in the middle, not at the end. What we won't see is a new punk or a new Two Tone. The mid 70s to mid 80s have gone forever and a Mick Jones/Tony James tired punk rehash won't see us through the future. Tribute bands and original bands with over the hill surviving members do not a vibrant live scene make.
Your time is dead, Phill. Face up to it.
Geoff ("danced"* at the Hammersmith Palais in the 80s)
* no you fucking didn't, you stood still as a corpse!
Well, no, not really. I'm not getting drunk, I'm having just enough to make me fall asleep in front of the telly between midnight and 1 a.m. The same as I have at all other weekends of the year.
Each year I think I'm going to try a new drink. This year's was Gin and Dubonnet, the favourite tipple of our current monarch and her deceased mother. The problem is, when would I drink it? I'm not one for aperatifs as I don't have a sit down meal where I have to make small talk with people I have little in common with. Because that is the raison d'etre of an aperatif, isn't it?
So no new drink for me this year. Oh, apart from the port I've bought for Christmas morning, bringing back happy memories of my first alcoholic drinks, the Christmas port and lemons, no stronger than a weak shandy or snowball but nicer than both.
Our Sky+ box is taking one hell of a hammering at the moment. It's 50% free but that won't last for long, there's just so much on! I've recorded all the MR James stuff, knowing we watched most of them last year but not remembering which ones. We've just finished the BBC's entertaining new version of Oliver Twist, mourning the death of Fagin's crow at the hands of the Peelers and sniggering every time we saw the name of the actor who played Bill Sykes. Tom Hardy in a production of Dickens! English teachers all over the land will be wetting themselves.
Tomorrow we will turn the computer on and read any blogs that are active. We will toast you all with a glass of port. We will cook our salmon and steamed potatoes and carrots and green beans. We will microwave our individual Christmas puddings. We will sit down in front of Top of the Pops. We will think of all the suffering in the world, and we will remember...
I've been tagged by Glenda. Thank you, Glenda. This is the first time I've been tagged in 25 years of blogging. It's a Christmas questionnaire. So it's probably best if I do it now while you're all still around. You are still around, aren't you?
When people say "Christmas" you immediately think...
My old nan sat two feet away from the telly in front of the Queen's speech, the volume turned up to maximum.
This Week A man and a woman are watching tv. There is a break in the programme. The channel shows the trailer for The Motorcycle Diaries which is on over Christmas. The man says to the woman, "What kind of weirdo is going to watch that?"
Last Week We are looking through the Christmas terrestrial tv schedules at work. TV Quick or something similar. The others are ticking off all their favourite shows. I'm getting depressed. I say, "The only thing I can see that might be worth watching, apart from Corrie, is that." I point.
Last Christmas, I lent you my car But the very next day, you drove it away In tears, you couldn't get it in gear You were picked up by the Specials
Once spliffed out and twice high You kept your distance behind the Hyundai Tell me baby, do you recognise me? After all that gear it doesn't surprise me
(Happy Christmas!) I wrapped it up and sent it With a note saying "SMOKE LESS WEED", I meant it Now I know what a fool I've been But if you're doped up now I know you'll be doped up again
Last Christmas, I lent you my car But the very next day, you drove it away In tears, you couldn't get it in gear You were picked up by the Specials
A crowded room, friends with tired eyes I'm hiding from you and your ganja vice My God, I thought you were someone to rely on Me? I guess I was a shoulder to cry on A face on a lover, mary jane in his head Under the covers, you were smoking it in bed! Oooh Oooh Now I've found a clean love you'll never fool me again
Last Christmas, I lent you my car But the very next day, you drove it away In tears, you couldn't get it in gear You were picked up by the Specials
The Guardian were yesterday creaming their pants over the appointment of Fabio Capello as England manager. He likes Visconti and Fellini. Mozart, Bach and Ella Fitzgerald. Kandinsky, Mondrian and Klee. He appreciates fine wines, is an adventurous gourmet and visits La Scala when he can. His politics have moved over the years from socialism to rich capitalism, though he still has respect for trade unions.
A picture is painted of a man who will never be friends with John Terry. Unless Terry goes down the Tony Adams route of alcoholism, hitting rock bottom and rebuilding his life by writing poetry. This will not happen while Terry is at the top of his game and in the England team.
I am optimistic about Capello. Although he is a tv pundit in Italy, he is quoted as saying he doesn't like watching football on the box. There are too many close-ups, you cannot see what's happening all over the pitch. Capello sees the bigger picture and no one individual is more important than the team. Capello won't have his favourites. He won't play Lampard and Gerrard together in the centre in a 4-4-2 because they're supposedly the best two English central midfielders. Capello's football is built on defence. Lampard and Gerrard cannot defend to save their lives. Capello will upset some egos.
I'm looking forward to the next few years watching England. The big-headed players and the WAGS can all fuck off. No more Flash Harrys, no more prima donnas.
There's a famous quote, fuck knows where from, that men think about sex every seven seconds. It's a load of bollocks, of course. But what about women?
Girl With A High Sex Drive says, "Every seven seconds? What about the other six?"
Jesus Christ, that's scary. That's getting into Michael Douglas territory.
As far as I know, this is the first UK tv programme about blogging. Of course they concentrate on the naughty naughty naughty sex blogs written by women, with nice soft focus pictures of young thin women with small pert tits sitting bolt upright in front of their sexy laptops wearing nothing but knickers and stockings. What a load of shit!
Girl With A High Sex Drive is quoted as obtaining 100,000 readers a month after her first six months of blogging. After eighteen months it was a quarter of a million a month. By her second anniversary it was two and a half million!
This, of course, is bollocks, too.
If I counted all searches for Beverley Callard's breasts on this blog as "readers", I'd be deluding myself something rotten. I think Girl may just have had a few more rude searches than me.
They say there's a blog created every second. There are 343563677468575786789096 million blogs active on the internet at any one time. Good ones, boring ones, funny ones, excruciating ones. There's an interesting documentary or two to be made about this phenomenon.
Last night I wrote my Christmas cards. I have three married cousins I send them to. They all have children.
The three sets of kids are known to me as...
1. & Thomas 2. & Boys 3. & Family
I'm sure Thomas wants to be known as "Tom" or at least "Tommy" by now. "Boys" are growing up, too, old enough to read and wondering why this "Geoff" person doesn't know their names. "Family" are feeling even more put out as this "Geoff" twat doesn't even know how many of them there are, let alone what sex they may be.
It's too much of an effort to ask any questions. I'll just have to make notes when we receive cards from them. Get it right next year.
The current singles chart is full of Christmas songs old and, er, old. Mariah Carey's warbler All I Want For Christmas Is You is the ladies' choice to download. The Pogues are chasing Mariah's ample behind, pissed as newts. Roy Wood is dangling his luxurious split-ended hair over her barely covered tits. Band Aid are sticking plasters on her scuffed heels. Slade are taking it in manly turns to lift her off the dance floor. A be-jumpered Shakin' Stevens is tinkling sleigh bells with Andy Williams in the background.
But enough of my fantasy!
It gets me thinking. I need some more Christmas songs in my collection.
I mean, I love Phil Spector's album. By all rights it should be shooting up the charts. But I need more. If only I had the all time classic Christmas album in my collection.
I used to. White vinyl, just like snow. December 1981. A great time to be young, dumb and full of Christmas spirit.
What a great album! Cristina, Suicide, Was (Not Was), Material, James White. August Darnell (Kid Creole before he was shit). You'll all know The Waitresses' Christmas Wrapping, of course.
And then in the late eighties, I moved. I gave away my records as they weren't the future. But every Christmas from then on I've wanted my Ze album back.
So I look on Amazon, and there it is. Re-released on CD in 2004. Why didn't I see it before?
So this is my Christmas present to myself. It won't arrive 'til after the big day. But I'll play it in my head this year.
Things fall apart but they never leave my heart Good Morning Midnight: it's Christmas...
1. Elvis, The Bear Formerly Known As Mohammed, is to co-star in the new Ray Winstone vehicle, The Play School Massacre. Elvis will play Little Ted, the vicious sidekick to Winstone's East End gangster godfather, Brian "Fackin" Cant. Elvis says of the role, "It is a departure for me, a new beginning. Impersonating the Prophet was fun at the time, but looking back I think my actions were immature in the extreme. I'm just loooking forward to playing alongside some of the greatest English actors of our generation. It is a dream come true to work with Ray."
2. Knut the polar bear, who celebrated his first birthday this week at Berlin Zoo, has announced that he is in the running to appear as Iorek Byrnison in the follow up to The Golden Compass, the film based on the first of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials novels. Knut says of his ambitions, "I think I can do it. I come from a showbusiness family, so you could say it's in the blood. I'm very gentle around humans but can play rough when required. I know I've got to lose some weight but the good people at Berlin have recently put me on a diet and I should be in my optimum condition in a matter of a few months. I really see Hollywood as a possibility. There have been rumours that I will be relocating to London Zoo in the near future, but I would refute these most strongly. I've had a taste of stardom and I've liked what I've experienced, but now I'd like a bit of a challenge to go with it. I am 100% certain my future lies on screen"
Our annual local restaurant family meal occurred on Sunday. We were celebrating our mum's 76th. My sister was also celebrating the fact that, for the second year running, she won't have to spend Christmas Day in my miserable company. She's off to Whistler where there's going to be 75 metres of snow over Christmas. Or something like that. A Whistler's mother of a snowfall.
The Chinese restaurant was absolutely packed, mainly populated by friends and family of the man with the big badge which stated it was his sixtieth birthday.
"He's not sixty!" exclaimed my mum in a loud voice. "He's seventy if he's a day!"
I ate and drank too much and Monday at work was spent feeling a bit nauseous. The longer the day went on the more I realised the two weren't necessarily connected.
"There's a 24 hour sickness bug going round," I was told.
I'm very open to persuasion when it comes to illnesses. I went straight to the chemists after work. I needed some travel sickness pills to combat the discomfort.
"Hello, Geoff!" said the assistant in a very friendly manner.
I don't know her and she doesn't know me as far as I know. But ever since she started working at the chemists she's greeted me in the same way. I'm beginning to think maybe she does know me. The only place I can think she knows me from is primary school. But I can't tell her age. She might be ten years younger than me. I can't ask her if she knows me from primary school. My date of birth is on my repeat prescription. I could receive a slap in the face.
"You're almost 46, Geoff! You were doing your Eleven-Plus when I was born, you cheeky sod!"
"Well how do you know me?"
She's not over-familiar with the other customers. She must know me from primary school.
She's not the girl who gave me a Chinese burn and made me cry, is she? If she is, that's bit of a turnaround. The little bitch who dished out unwarranted punishment is now handing out stuff to make people feel better.
I'm a needy blogger. I leave comments, not only in the hope of the "LOL, I snorted cocaine all over my monitor" type response, but also in the hope that I will get comments back from that person on my own blog. What a needy bastard!
Most of us are the same. But there are some who don't go pimping their blogs to all and sundry. And some of these are bloody good, too. The following are my favourites. Think of it as Geoff's own Guardian Guide, only better than the stuff The Guide recommends...
Beyond The Implode I read, but I never comment. Betty reads but she never comments. We're a bit scared.
This is me "On The Road", one weekend in The Midlands about twelve years ago. Betty dressed me up as a hep cat. Didn't I look cool, daddio?
Those were weekends literally On The Road, mainly the M25, M1 and M6. Drives across Cannock Chase, through Alpine glades and past B&Qs. Walks in the countryside in the daytime, eating in curry houses and drinking in pubs in the evenings. Followed by a Sunday afternoon drive home, perked up by a pot of coffee at Northampton's premier service station.
Now the furthest I usually drive at weekends is to ASDA, a five minute drive away. If I feel tired, which I inevitably do in the late afternoon, I have a kip. I have less energy but I need less.
No longer a hep cat. More an old, comfortable moggie.
This week I have been listening to the wonderful Trojan box set, Reggae Sisters, a compilation of 60s and 70s songs sung by women. There's something about women's voices and reggae that is irresistible. Take Lily Allen for example. No, please, take her.
The collection includes this song by my favourite 6ft, bald, one eyed female singer of all time.
Of course there's not a great song in the history of the world that hasn't been improved by a wacky English DJ talking shite over its beginning and end, and this video proves that.
My ideal job would be going through the TOTP archive with Betty, choosing performances, mimed or not, to put on a series of compilation DVDs. There'd be a little introduction to each song before it starts, no talking over and no words in the middle of the screen to ruin the video. Until then, we'll have to make do with hilarious Steve Wright and the Beeb's eclectic selection box of classics and mediocrity.
The radio is locked on Heart. They are playing Is This Love? by Bob Marley.
GEOFF: The thing is with Heart, they don't play any reggae artists except for Bob Marley. Oh, and bloody UB40 of course.
WORK COLLEAGUE NO. 1: Is there anybody other than Bob Marley and UB40?
Scene 2
The Metro newpaper is open at a page which contains an interview with this bloke. He is pictured in close up. The headline says he had a famous dad.
WORK COLLEAGUE NO. 2: Oh, I thought that looked like him. That's Kenny Everett's son!
GEOFF: ??????????????
N.B. When we used to live in the flat, at around the time Novocaine For The Soul was out, Betty constructed a paper E with a moving mouth. We used to sing the song and move the mouth at the same time. E got left behind when we moved. We only moved two doors down and when we see the woman who now lives in our old flat we wonder whether she found E. And if she did, what she really thinks of us.
I'm enjoying this series but the "Genius" of photography?
This week Denis Lawson read the following about the great photographers...
"What they have in common is a watchful attentiveness to the world and its ways. They see things we miss or don't think about and then report back so that we have a chance to think again."
I agree with the first part of that. But as to photographers seeing things we miss or don't think about? Most of us don't walk around with a camera glued to our eye. But how many times have we thought, "I wish I had a camera on me"? What strange things do we see out of the corner of our eye? What blurry images do we see when we're not quite awake or not concentrating? But we haven't got a camera on us because we're not obsessed with photographing things. The obsessives take what any of us can see and turn it into art. If that's genius, there are an awful lot of potential geniuses, too.
*******
Kenny Everett: Licence To Laugh
More genius on Sunday evening as Kenny Everett was described as a comedy genius on ITV's portrait of the "comedian".
I've never found wacky disc jockey Kenny the least bit funny, but I was hoping to be converted by this programme. The old clips of Sid Snot, Cupid Stunt and Marcel Wave brought back waves of 70s nausea and made me feel nostalgic for those comfortable family humourists from the days before Kenny's "anarchic" brand of comedy, with its chumminess with the production staff forerunning wankers like Chris Tarrant and Chris Moyles (both paying tribute to Kenny in this show).
Watching Kenny was like gatecrashing a private party full of people in on a joke I didn't get. A very lonely experience.
Kenny's "anarchy" took him all the way to a Young Conservatives rally. The voiceover on the programme said...
"Nothing, it seemed, could undermine his position as loveable, cuddly Ken. Until an ill-judged moment of madness at a Young Conservatives rally in 1983."
KENNY: "Let's bomb Russia!"
"Kenny had overstepped the mark."
So let's get this right. Kenny had overstepped the mark by using irony, not by appearing at a Young Conservatives rally at the height of Thatcher's power.
Barry Cryer explained Ken's indiscretion. Kenny was an "apolitical animal". He was "pretty anti-Thatcher".
Ken the iconoclastic genius, taking the piss out of the Young Tories?
Nah, not interested. Not my scene. But we caught the end of Friday night's highlights programme and this geezer was getting down and dirty to some mean Appalachian Mountain Balls To The Wall Bluegrass.
I mean, there's catholic taste and there's, well, what on earth would you call this?
I've got three days holiday left which I'm taking this week. This morning we went to the hospital and were in and out of the fracture clinic in a couple of hours. Pretty good going, I thought. Betty's looking good in her new cast, choosing traditional white rather than a garish coloured one. She looks so at home in white, it makes me want to renew my marriage vows.
Back home, we went out to the shops where I bought a new teapot, a strainer to go with it, and some loose leaf tea. I've just had my first cup and I've fallen in love with tea all over again. The loose leaf stuff is so much more tasty and refreshing than those shitty weak bags. Last week I bought some ASDA Extra Special loose leaf tea bags which cost £2 for 25! And they were crap! They're supposed to be revolutionary with their nylon bags, but nobody in their right mind is going to buy them twice. Buy the real thing! Drink your tea! Get Gypsy Rosy Lee to read your grouts!
The taste takes me back to the old days when bags weren't available, when my nuclear family was all together. I've just borrowed some old pictures from my mum which take me back, too. There are some snaps of my parents in their bathing costumes on beaches when my dad thought he was Tony Curtis. Well, he was more Tony Curtis than Ian Curtis, anyway. Chubbier than Ian.
There are my parents' wedding photos, including both sets of grandparents. Didn't grandparents look old back then? And miserable.
There are some photos of my cousin Michael's wedding to Linda. They made a good-looking couple. He had something of the George Best about him. All the young women at the wedding wore short dresses and were smiling. The old women wore hats and looked miserable.
Michael never drank tea. Or coffee. He was strictly squash.
Watching the moving documentary on George Melly's last days last night, I discovered that he'd had an affair with Molly Parkin. Molly was previously (George's wife) Diana's best friend.
George, it seems, was happier with his open marriage than Diana was. It gave him free reign to shag anybody he wanted.
George and Molly are two of the few famous people I have encountered in my life. I met Molly on a playwriting course in London. George I bumped into as I alighted a train at Diss station on my way to a scriptwriting course. The courses, of course, came to nothing. But the memories of seeing these flamboyant characters close up will stick in my mind for longer than that of my brilliant writing career.
Beverly You work on the perfume counter at a department store. Your marriage is a mess. You are a very sensual woman. You need sex. Your husband doesn't give you what you need. He is a little jumped up creep who is more interested in his pathetic job than in you. You've invited the couple from over the road to this party. You fancy the husband like mad. He's a bit rough and ready, just your type. His wife's as naive as they come. You'll be able to flirt with him to your heart's content. Sod your pathetic excuse of a husband. You're going to have some fun.
Laurence You're a workaholic estate agent. You think you're cultured but you're not really. You're also a racist. According to you, the area is becoming too "cosmopolitan". You despise your wife who is sex-mad and has no interest in the finer things of life. She is a philistine and a slapper. She disgusts you. You will die in this play of a heart attack brought on by your wife, not by your job which you love.
Angela You are a naive, stupid nurse who is bullied by her husband. You are so stupid a lot of his vicious comments to you go straight over your head. You are a good woman, a public servant but you're as thick as pig shit. You can't even recognise the sexual electricity between your husband and your neighbour. You think everything in the garden will come up rosy. Stupid.
Tony Life has been one long disappointment to you. You weren't good enough to make it in professional football. You're working as a computer operator, for Christ's sake. Your wife is a mousy, stupid little sexless thing who wouldn't say boo to a goose. You're a passionate man who likes a bit of rough sex. The only way you get rough in your marriage is by dominating the little mouse. Your neighbour fancies you something rotten. She's up for it and you're not going to argue if it's there on a plate for you.
Susan You are the audience on stage. You're a nice "old middle class" woman (a divorcee whose ex-husband is an architect) trapped in an atmosphere of vulgarity and violent frustration. You're only here because you have nowhere else to go as your teenage punk daughter is holding a party at your house ("Abigail's Party"). You know about the arts. You are not racist. You don't think the neighbourhood has gone downhill. You are accepting of everybody, even at this party. But this atmosphere, and especially that horrid woman Beverly will test your patience to its limit. You are a genuinely nice person, Susan. Just like the audience. You are one of us.
My sister went to church yesterday. They tasted the body and the blood of Christ. I am on the phone to my mother.
She went with a friend from work. She goes every Sunday. Her husband never goes. Your sister will probably go again. Though not every week. It was a very emotional service. I suppose it helps people. Usually when they're getting old. You're not an atheist, are you?
You know I am.
Like your dad. Though he wasn't always one. When we were first married he used to pray every night before he went to bed.
I've always been an atheist. I could never take any of it seriously. We even used to take the mickey out of the vicar at Primary School.
Is Betty an atheist?
Yes. I couldn't live with anybody who wasn't.
You lived with us.
I mean through choice. I couldn't live with a partner who believed in that stuff.
LATER IN THE CONVERSATION...
The trouble with Sundays...there's never anything on the telly when I get up. It's either football or cartoons on all the channels. Nothing for the likes of us.
More and more bloggers are commenting on Betty's site, referring to her husband, "Geoff", as if I were an 'er indoors type of character and not an internationally renowned blogger in my own right.
That's alright, I can take it. We've both got the majority of our audiences in common and those of Betty's readers who can't see the worth in me...well, we know what they're missing, don't we?
Come on, humour me!
I've got a more needy ego than Betty, though. And my ego tells me to do more, maybe a podcast of my poems. Yes, what a prick!
Then I hear Roger McGough and his smug delivery and wonder whether I would sound even more smug, or even worse, sound like Mark Miwurdz. Penny for the guy, anyone?
So another blog it is, a poetry blog no less. I know it's not going to be popular but you'll be very welcome if you pop in from time to time. I'll attempt to post a poem a week and keep my poetry to that blog and my prose to this one.
Of course those of you who hate my poems will be relieved there'll be no more of them on here. Just pure and simple straightforward social commentary for serious minds.
You're nobody 'til somebody loves you You're nobody 'til somebody cares. (Nobody. Absolutely nobody. You are of no worth. Your life isn't worth living. You might as well go kill yourself.) You may be king, you may possess the world and its gold, (But more likely you're not well off and lacking love.) But gold won't bring you happiness when you're growing old. (Money can't buy me love? Bullshit. Llok at all the ugly rich old men with beautiful younger women. Then look at the ugly poor men with nobody. If you're ugly and you're poor you might as well go kill yourself.) The world still is the same, you never change it, As sure as the stars shine above; You're nobody 'til somebody loves you, So find yourself somebody to love.
The world still is the same, you never change it, As sure as the stars shine above; (If you're a tramp stars are all you've got to look at at night. You're damn' right, you can't do a thing about it, Dean. Whereas if you're rich and a drunk, the world's your oyster.) You're nobody 'til somebody loves you, So find yourself somebody, find yourself somebody, Find yourself somebody to love. (Go on. It's piss easy. There's really something seriously wrong with you if you can't. Just get off your arse and find somebody! Go on! You might as well kill yourself if you can't.)
Maconie's shamed me into reading The Road to Wigan Pier. I could never get on with Orwell's fiction but I thought I'd give this a try.
The first part gives us the facts and figures of northern working class life in the thirties. You can't argue with them. Orwell lives for a while in a crowded boarding house. He goes down mines.
The most revealing thing for me was not the overcrowding or the squalor or the danger of the work, but just how fit you had to be to be a miner. Not only was the work bloody hard but just to get to the coalface could involve miles of walking underground, bent double, banging your head, breathing in that lovely underground air. Just thinking about it makes me feel claustrophobic and knackered. And the miners had to do it fueled by a really basic unnourishing diet.
I'm slowly getting through the second part where Orwell gets all political. Attitudes of different classes to each other are analysed.
There is some unintentional light relief. Thank God for that because I can't read a book without there being some light relief, intentional or not.
According to Orwell, in the thirties middle class people believed that the working class were inherently dirty. They smelt, not through lack of bathing opportunities but because that's the way they were.
When Orwell was thirteen...
"I was in a train coming from a market town, and the third-class carriage was packed full of shepherds and pig-men who had been selling their beasts. Somebody produced a quart bottle of beer and passed it round; it travelled from mouth to mouth, everyone taking a swig. I cannot describe the horror I felt as that bottle worked its way towards me. If I drank from it after all those lower-class male mouths I felt certain I should vomit; on the other hand, if they offered it to me I dared not refuse for fear of offending them - you see here how squeamishness works both ways. Nowadays, thank God, I have no feelings of that kind. A working-man's body, as such, is no more repulsive to me than a millionaire's. I still don't like drinking out of a cup or bottle after another person - another man, I mean: with women I don't mind - but at least the question of class does not enter. It was rubbing shoulders with tramps that cured me of it. Tramps are not really very dirty as English people go, but they have the name for being dirty, and when you have shared a bed with a tramp and drunk tea out of the same snuff-tin, you feel that you have seen the worst and the worst has no terrors for you."
This, written in all seriousness, is hilarious. Whether it would have been so funny to a reader 70 years ago is another matter. Orwell is travelling third class because his family are lower middle class, not really that well off. Why the farm workers should want to offer him some of their beer, I don't know. The passing round of the bottle seems to me to be a bonding thing, you were part of the gang if you were offered it. The only reason they would offer it to a thirteen year old middle class boy would be to humiliate him. "Come on, lad, drink up, this'll put hairs on your chest!" They obviously didn't offer it to him, were not in the slightest bit interested in making a fool of him. He was not so central to the plot as he thought. This is Orwell's unintentional humour.
On a more serious note, Orwell's predilection for sharing tins of tea with female tramps is perhaps a clue as to how he contracted the tuberculosis which led to his early death.
Sorry about the poem. I've had yet another technologically frustrating week and felt like lashing out. It wasn't aimed at any of you.
Remember the man on the train? I'd managed to avoid him since we came back from holiday. I'd moved up to the next carriage.
So this morning I was settled down with not a care in the world.
At the first stop, the internal door opens. Someone stands by the seat next to me. They stand there for ages, taking their coat off, adjusting their clothing and bag, adjusting their ipod, their mobile phone, breathing heavily.
I know it's him. I don't need to look.
He's out of breath because he's run for the train, just about getting on in time, on a carriage that's one up from where he usually sits. He's spotted me as he's walked towards the back carriage.
"Aha," he thinks, "There's that wanker I used to annoy. Yes, I really used to annoy the hell out of him. So this is where he's sitting now. Well, if he thinks he can get away from me, he's got another thing coming. Look at the pathetic cunt, reading his book. He's thinks he's all intellectual and superior. He used to turn his face away from me, as if I was a piece of shit on his shoe. Well, I'll show him who's boss."
He sits down next to me. He begins to text. He turns his music up.
I read the same line, over and over again. I'm thinking of a way to nip this in the bud. I don't want to cause a scene. I'll have to write something on a piece of paper and hand it to him. Something like, "I moved to this carriage to avoid you." No, I can't, he'll think I think he smells. I could write, "WHY?" Yes, I could write, "WHY?" In big letters.
Phil was a blogger who breathed rare air No-one could touch him for literary flair His words they were funny, his words they were wry He made readers laugh, he made readers cry
He was part of a group called The Blogsbury Set Birds of a feather, they regularly met Stroking their egos until they all came Certain that Phil would become a big name
A publishing deal was surely in sight All of his friends knew Phil's future was bright But he got a reply saying, "Thanks, but no thanks For no-one will buy your self-satisfied wank"
Contrary to popular opinion, it wasn't just Morrissey who persuaded us to become vegetarians in the 80s. The most vocal vegetarian in pop music when I stopped eating meat was Kid Creole. He loved to lick out a coconut or two and wasn't shy about it.
Recently I have been re-evaluating our Smiths albums, as Stuart Maconie had made the staggering revelation that The Smiths were the best ever Manchester band. During Meat Is Murder, just before our chicken curry, I asked Betty if she agreed.
Of course not. We agreed on Joy Division as number one. But who was second?
Of course it had to be The Smiths.
That's if you discount, in no particular order,
The Fall
And Buzzcocks
And Magazine
And A Certain Ratio
And Durutti Column
And 10cc
And New Order
And 808 State
And The Stone Roses
And Happy Mondays
And Blue Orchids
Which makes The Smiths the 13th best band to come out of Manchester. Which proves that the number 13 is not necessarily unlucky.
Doesn't he look like he's sitting down to have a shit?
Anyway, bollocks to rugby and its fair weather friends who couldn't tell you the names of any of the London Irish or Wasps or even who the Barbarians are but who will be watching tomorrow's match with their hearts in their mouths. Was I like this in 1966 when millions of people who couldn't give a shit about football cheered on our lads in red? Of course I was, I was a four year old cynic.
Anyway, there's something much more important to look forward to.
Berlin Alexanderplatz holds a special place in my heart. It was there for me in my loveless eighties. I recorded it on the family video and watched it late at night, when my mum and sister were tucked up in their beds. According to my research, this was 1985, I was 23 years old and should have been married with a kid or two or at least living in sin with some Luther Vandross loving bird, but I was waiting for the "right one" who would appreciate my art film and eclectic music loving ways as a gift from God and not as grounds for running off with someone less "weird". Yes, I was no catch, but the films and music made my own company tolerable.
Every now and then I ask Betty if she saw Berlin Alexanderplatz. I say it was the best thing I've ever seen on tv. Each time she says she didn't see it. Each time I forget, and a couple of years later I ask her again.
There'll be no more such questions soon. Because the DVD's out next week. I hope it's as wonderful as I remember. Although I remember nothing, of course. I'll come fresh to it. With all those years of experience under my middle aged belt.
I love Fassbinder and I love his muse, Hanna Schygulla.
I love Victoria Wood. I love her sketches. I love her sitcom, dinnerladies. But if there's one thing she'll be remembered for, it's her awful songs. This one in particular.
This song is the first thing I associate with her name, before any of the great work she's produced. For this is my regular earworm.
It's sheer bloody torture. It's so long. Just when you think she's finished, there's another verse. Then another.
"Let's Do It!" "Let's Do It!"
No! Please! I don't want to! Geoffrey doesn't want to do it! Please, Victoria, no!
And the climax, the bit at the end, the bit that's with me, day in, day out. The bit I can never get out of my head.
