If Music Be The Food

I was woken up this morning by my youngest boy strumming the fret-board of my acoustic guitar and loudly intoning his ABC (he only got as far as G which musically is rather apt). I'm ashamed to say there isn't much of a story behind that guitar.

It hasn't accompanied me on the road in my teens as a I travelled across America on a Dylan-esque pilgrimage of self discovery. It wasn't used as a shield to fend off piss filled beer bottles as I belted out anti-establishment tunes in some punk dive in East London. It has never been strapped to my back like a samurai sword as I rode my hog to some Hell's Angel's meet out in the back of nowhere.

I bought it in Birmingham, brought it home to Leamington Spa and that's pretty much about it.

In my teens me and my best mate, Dave, decided we were going to learn to play the guitar. Just like that we were going to acquire the skill, form a band, make world changing music and overnight improve our chances of getting laid more regularly. Or, in my case, just getting laid.

Such optimism.

I was a complete failure. My excuse has always been that I was more into my writing than anything else and it is not possible to truly commit yourself to more than one discipline; music was always going to take second place. The truth is I was just lazy. I was unrealistic. I didn't put in the time so therefore didn't get anything out of it other than 3 clumsy chords and blistered fingers. Because I wasn't instantly and instinctively playing like a rock axe-man I got demoralized and invested less and less of my time and effort. I would rather dream the dream than live it.

Dave faired slightly better. At the time I just thought he had more natural ability (he could sing pretty well too where my efforts were, at best, suited to comedy) but I can see now that that dismissal was an insult to Dave. He put in more effort, more time. He worked harder. He stuck with it despite the blisters and pushed on until his fingertips hardened. He learnt to play songs. He learnt to play and sing at the same time. For a while his guitar became an extension of himself.

And yet ultimately we both failed to do anything with the dream. We didn't join a band. We didn't even think to form our own. I bought a cheap 4 track recording device and, sure, we laid down a few tracks but mostly we messed around, ad libbed and felt we were unsung (unsinging) comedy heroes. Ultimately we did nothing with that dream too.

We both got older. Settled down. Had kids. Got sucked into the rat race. Our guitars were put down, lay still and attracted dust. In fact I have no idea if Dave even still has his guitar. I'm not sure why I even kept mine. Certainly not as a permanent accusation; I've long reconciled myself to the fact that I am not a rock god. I think mostly I keep it as a memento to those wild, crazy days of my youth when I dared to dream an impossible dream.

I'm glad I've kept it. I'm glad my boys have passive access to a musical instrument - even if they never pick it up and ask to learn how to play it properly. If nothing else it will save them wasting money buying their own when they hit their teens. And there is a slim chance - a very slim chance - that maybe, just maybe, they will find a virtuoso talent lying dormant within their genes and then that train ticket to Birmingham all those years ago will finally have been money well spent.

Are Yow Larfing At Moi Bruvva?

It's rare that Birmingham - capital of the UK Midlands - gets to feature in any kind of television drama. Most of the time film crews avail themselves of the city because it is undoubtedly cheaper to film there than the nation's capital and then represent it as actually being London. The BBC's Hustle is a case in point. Most of the exterior city shots were filmed in Birmingham but sold to the world as being London.

So it's rather satisfying to see Birmingham featuring in a BBC costume drama and being sold as itself. Noisy, grimy, rough, tough and with that unmistakable Midland's twang that I grew up with. Not that Leamington Spa has much of an accent. Compared to the true son of Birmingham, the Leamingtonian accent is rather poesh and nice (as opposed to "push" and "noice").

Peaky Blinders kicked off last week and is the fictionalized account of the Shelby's, a gang of Birmingham crims who held sway in the city just after the finish of the first World War. I daresay the writer's have taken numerous liberties but I am not in a position to point out any factual inaccuracies as yet; I'll leave that to the numerous "Brum" academics who'll not be shy in voicing their complaints as and when any Birmingham based misinformation hits the slagheap.

Knowing parts of Birmingham well and others not at all I can at least say that there is a clever mix of real location and CGI that brings 1920's Birmingham to life; not to mention heavy use of the canal yard at The Black Country Museum. The accents, for those of is the know, sometimes veer from the true Birmingham "yam", but on the whole hold true. The actor with the toughest accent to crack is Sam Neil as Chief Inspector Campbell who has nailed his oracular flag to the mast of the Reverend Ian Paisley. Sometimes it jars but the script is cracking enough that you overlook the occasional dip into Walt Disney Oirish.

The star of the show is Cillian Murphy as Thomas Shelby (or Tommoi as he is referred to in our house), the leader of the Shelbys. The Peaky Blinders were so named for the razorblades they concealed in the peaks of their cloth caps that were then transformed into slashing weapons in a fight... but in truth Cillian Murphy could cut a man wide open with his cheekbones alone. He's a powerful presence on the screen and exudes an air of calm, urbane, gentlemanly violence that is somehow the more brutal for being measured and calculated. Helen McCrory too is a strong backbone to the rest of the cast and manages to slum her vowels into Birmingham's street talk with aplomb.

The show has everything; horses and bet rigging, stolen army munitions, pub fights, gypsy warfare, blood, sex, cheekbones and exortations not to "larf at moi bruvva." And best of all it is bigging up Birmingham.

The city up the road from me has a history that is just as magnificent and nasty as the one to the south.

Only our accent is better.

If yow can't get a rowm at the Premi-air Inn then jus' yow tyoon in to the Beebeeceee of a Thursdaaay and it's like yow is proppa in the Bullrinnng. Jus' down't look at us funnoi. Cos we down't loik it.

If The Cap Fits...

So having taken the kids to Cadbury World and finding myself channelling a couple of comedy legends (a weird hybrid of Jim Carrey and Eric Morecambe) I thought it would be simply hilarious to pull a face on one of the rides that you simply have to go on while you're there.

No. You really do have to go on them. There is no way to get from one part of the factory to the other except by bizarre toyland tram-car through the disturbing dimensional rift that is Chuckleville.

Being an old hand at Cadbury World I knew there was a camera positioned halfway through the route that takes candid snaps of interlopers as they crawl their way through the alien landscape of chocolate bean land that you then feel morally obliged to buy and hide away in the loft (kidding yourself that this is the only copy and the good people of Cadbury World burn all the negatives).

Wouldn't it be a jolly jape, I thought, if I was gurning like a good 'un at the moment the flash went off and oh how we'd laugh when it came time to pick up the photos?

It having been a number of years since I last played the Comedy Club I was missing the uplifting shot in the arm that is reactive laughter so I thought, what the hell, I'd go for it. It might even cheer up some of the Cadbury staff who looked like they'd been injecting chocolate like a cheap form of botox.

We went on the Chockie Bean public transport system. The camera flash went off. The picture was taken. And we went to collect our photo.

To quote a Danielle Dax album: "Comatose Non-Reaction".

Nothing. Na-da. Not a titter.

"Hmm," I thought to myself, "Either the good staff at Cadbury World are one paracetamol away from suicide or I'm losing me touch."

I'd pulled my best blimmy and put my glasses on upside down and everything. That should have had them rolling in the aisles.

Instead there was not a dickie-bird.

When I got the photo back I could see why.

There was utterly no effing difference in my appearance from when I look "normal" to when I was pulling the face that Jim Carrey would have paid good money to be born with.

I looked exactly the same.

I'm not quite sure what that says about me but I have no doubt at all you'll all be queuing up to tell me.

Nasal Bungee

I have never in my life waited tables or worked in a cafe.

Not even as a Saturday job.

It’s not that I ever thought such a job was too beneath me. Honestly. The truth was I was just too shy to contemplate having to deal with people on such an intimate level. I.E. Actually speaking to them and bringing them food items which they will then ingest in front of me. Add to this dealing with money and till receipts and the odd complaint about cold sausage meat and, as a late teen / early twenty something, it was just a career move that I felt myself far too inadequate to contemplate.

So I stuck to office cleaning and the odd spot of lawn mowing for old ladies. No. There is no euphemism there. Don’t even think it.

But I often wonder about people who do wait tables. I marvel at their self-confidence and stamina. I often wonder if, had someone pushed me into working in a cafe, it would have done my confidence some good and hardened me up to the hard knocks of the work place sooner rather than later. Who knows where I might have ended up as a consequence?

One waitress I will always remember worked in a proper greasy spoon in Birmingham back in the Eighties. Not a cafe. A caff. Me and my mate, Dave, used to head over on the train every Saturday to visit the guitar shops and the record shops of ‘Brum’. We were both new to full time employment – Dave at the Post Office and me at British Telecom – and, both of us living at home, we had assets so liquid we could piss them up the wall as often and as wantonly as we liked without a care in the world.

One Saturday we decided we were in the mood for a proper fry-up. A proper heart-attack-on-a-plate, long-distance-lorry-driver kind of fry-up. The kind running in so much grease and oil you think David Walliams may have wrung out his swimming trunks all over your plate (‘cos they cover his body in goose fat to insulate him against the cold water – just in case you were wondering what I was referring to).

We found a likely cafe. I can’t remember what it was called but I do recall it was near a butcher’s shop that sported the unlikely name of Big City Meat. That amused our young adult minds no end, I can tell you.

I ordered egg and chips – that hardy British nutritional standby – and I can’t for the life of me remember what Dave ordered. But I can tell you now that it wasn’t a salad. That place did not sell anything green. Though as you will discover it may have offered something for free...

We didn’t take much notice of the waitress at first. Other than she punctuated every word she spoke with a sniff. She was rather gaunt looking and was wearing an apron that was far too big for her and looked like it had been nicked from her granny. Dave and I were far too interested in the acoustic guitar I’d just bought to give her the benefit of a quick male-interest once over and so let her be.

When she brought our food over, however, it was a different matter. She held the plates up so high we had no choice but to look up into her face. To peer upwards into the glistening twin-cavities of her nose. And therein at the same time we both spied the biggest, wettest bogey ever produced hanging by the most precarious of threads, waiting to drop its gagging payload onto our plates.

We both tensed nervously as the plates were lowered down to the table top and she bent her head forwards a little. She may have whispered “bon appétit” but I very much doubt it; she was from Birmingham after all. It was probably something like “get yer chops around that”. And then she disappeared back into the kitchen with a dismissive sniff.

But was it an empty sniff – a sniff that luxuriated in a sudden vacuum? Or a sniff that reconnected and re-housed something warm, wet and personal?

We will never know but I can tell you now, no two plates of greasy fried food were ever so furiously and so dedicatedly examined for unasked for greens.

I have never relished greasy food since that day and cannot abide “snotty” eggs. They have to be easy-over and nicely firm, not an ounce of runny stuff upon them. Overly gooey eggs make me want to retch.

I don’t know if working in a cafe ever improved that girl’s lot in life or did her any good. Whether her bravery over my cowardice meant she was fast-tracked to some dream job years later and now she’s rubbing shoulders with Alan the Lord Sugar and running her own business while I‘m here... er... where I am.

I think of her often and wonder who, out of the two of us, had it the worst that day; who the best.

Her memory stays with me always. Hanging there by a moist thread.

Never quite letting go.

Black Country Gold

Warwick University would have been too obvious - it's literally just down the road from me (well, a bus ride away), plus I graduated from there myself a mere handful of years ago. The connection would have been too blatant. Too strong. I can see that. She didn't want to give the game away. Flag things up to the media about her true intentions.

So Birmingham was the next logical choice. Close geographically but not too close. The connection is less obvious. She's a canny lass, that Dr Alice. Plainly keeping things close. Playing things sharp.

And I can dig that. I don't, after all, relish the thought of having the press crowding themselves onto my doorstep. Well, not until I find an agent for my novel anyway.

So Dr Alice Roberts has accepted the position of Birmingham University's first Professor of Public Engagement in Science. You can hear what the superlative TV scientist has to say about the appointment here:



You can, I am sure, read between the lines. This isn't about science or even bringing science to the masses. It's not about the grandeur of Birmingham University or even picking up "Birmingum's loveloi ax-sent".

It's about me. About moving closer to me.

You can tell this from everything she doesn't say. The way she doesn't mention that Birmingham is just a simple train journey away from me here in Leamington Spa. That I can be there for coffee and an iced bun in under 45 minutes (unless, of course, I catch a Virgin train in which case I'm looking at about 5 hours provided there isn't a leaf on the track). But you can read it all in her eyes... The barely suppressed excitement at our close proximity. We are like two planets coming into alignment. It's been written in the stars. Even Dr Professor Brian Cox mentioned our coming together in his Stargazing Live programmes for the BBC this week. Don't worry if you missed all the references. You would have had to have been a real science head to have picked them up.

A real science head like me.

See, Professor of Public Engagement in Science is just a dead giveaway. It is a personal clarion call to me. Une Lettre d'amour addressed to yours truly. I can handle a petre dish. I can caress a test tube. I can get a bunsen burner to glow white hot with just a casual flick of my fingers.

I can do science, me, in every sense.

If I'm not around to blog much next week it's because I have taken the fast train to Birmingham.

I am going to be engaging in science. Deeply, madly, truly. I have the goggles and everything.

Dr Alice, I'll meet you in the university cafeteria (or as they say in Birmingham: the caff). You bring your white coat and I'll bring my pipette.

P.S. Note to Stephen Hawking: don't you be getting any funny ideas, matey - I know how to deactivate the disabled chair lifts.

Tossing My Bionic Caber

I’m a cheapskate.

No, really. I am.

I drink water at work so I don’t have to contribute to the tea kitty. Not only that, I buy a 1ltr bottle of water from the local newsagent, drink it, and then hijack the water cooler in the staffroom (paid for by one of the other operators who share my work’s building) and refill it from there every day after.

I tell you this as a precursor to the main subject of my post.

Because yesterday, it occurred to me that it was time for me to buy a new bottle of water. Not so much for the water but for the bottle. Because mine was starting to look green around the rim. Not only that, despite emptying it out and refilling it, I noticed that there was precipitate in it.

Small furry occurrences of matter that hung in suspension around the mid-point of the bottle.

So I decided that my immune system had been exercised enough and trotted off to acquire a new bottle of aqua vitae (narrowly avoiding Cap’n Jack Sparrow in the queue at the newsagents).

I settled on a bottle of Highland Spring.

I took it back to the office whereupon I was so bored by my surroundings that I distracted myself by reading the label on the bottle.

“Drawn from Organic Land”.

That is what it said under the product’s name. It’s obviously a major selling point, this organic land.

But what exactly is it?

See, I figured that all land is organic by default. Or is this a subtle way of telling me that Highland Spring Ltd haven’t just collected up the run-off from a landfill site to the northwest of Birmingham and bottled up the resulting sump?

What is non-organic land? Concrete? Plastic? Bacofoil? The main arena at the NEC? Are there whole fields comprised of polyester and Kevlar that I have missed on my many travels around this (not so green and pleasant) land?

Do these places feature natural springs whose water might be confused with that drawn from real, mud and soil, land? You know; old school terra firma, made the old fashioned way by nature and the slow laws of geology?

Because, given a choice, I’d quite like to try some “bionic water” (my phrase and, yes, I am going to copyright it) drawn from non-organic land. It’s the type of thing that could well turn somebody into Spiderman or Swamp Thing provided it contained the right amount of genetically modified contaminates and unintentional ingredient X’s.

And that would be pretty cool, you must admit.

I could wreak havoc on the masses, not to mention the misses in my office. I’d have an excuse never to come into work again. I could become a crime fighter or even a master criminal. I could be on the telly every night.

Aqua vitae indeed.

It would also be a far more permanent and exciting way of alleviating my terminal boredom than by reading the label on a sodding water bottle.

One Man Can Make A Difference

You gotta love Scott Cooke.

If you've been brought up on a diet of superheroes and vigilantes; if you've ever wanted to have a spidey-sense that actually tingles when criminal trouble is near then you've got to take your hat off to the guy in the picture above.

Because he's living the dream. He's seized the day. He built it and is waiting for them to come. Scott is a bona fide vigilante.

And he has a proper superhero's outfit and everything. And just check that mean hombre "don't mess with me, purp" moustache motif. Yup, Scott Cooke is the man. He has it going down.

The people of Birmingham (UK) can rest easier in their beds at night. 'Cos Scott Cooke, aka The Statesman, is on the case. He's on the prowl.

He patrols the mean streets of 'Brum' just looking for lowlife scum to perform a citizen's arrest upon. According to news reports (here and here) Scott, a former Territorial Army soldier (hey, anyone remember Mike from Spaced?) spurns utility belts and web slingers and Iron Man techno-costumes in favour of a more down to earth crime fighting arsenal.

We're talking notepad and pen. We're talking torch (probably one of those Maglite things). We're talking a first aid kit choc-full of Elastoplasts and those weird thin bandagey things that no-one knows how to apply properly. And we're talking mobile phone for when, you know, Scott has whupped some mean spotty criminal ass and needs to call in the boys in blue to help cart off the bruised and bloodied hoods to the state penitentiary. Job done for another night. Rest easy citizens.

Of course, some people - some unpublic spirited people - take the pee and claim that as an effective crime deterrent, Scott falls a little short of the mark. A few cynics have tweaked and misinterpreted the crime stats and pointed out that Scott failed to stop "99 crimes in his own neighbourhood in the last month alone".

I think this is unfair. Let's look at this from a wider perspective. The police were also on duty during this time and they too failed to stop 99 crimes taking place in that very same neighbourhood. Shame on them. Meanwhile, there may have been a 100th crime that Scott did stop. That Union Jack jumper may have been the only thing between a wheelie bin being upturned in the road and rubbish all over the highway.

Yeah. It's easy to mock. Easy to snigger. But at least Scott is doing something. He's putting his time and money where his mouth is. He's out there. He's out there for us. For you and me, man. Well, you and me if we happen to live in Nuthurst Road, West Heath. But hey - if you want to live in a safer neighbourhood, maybe you should think about moving? Cut Scott some slack here; make it easier for him.

As for me. Well, I'm thinking of joining him. Not joining him in Birmingham 'cos getting back to Leamington Spa from New Street station is a real nightmare at the moment. But joining him in spirit.

I am going to patrol the mean streets of Leamington Spa. I'm going to get all vigilanted up. I'm going to call myself The MP For Justice. Though the local bad boys may call me The MP For Medieval Retribution On Our Asses. 'Cos I'm plannin' on getting all Biblical on the wrong doers and the ne'erdowells. I got me a torch. I got me a Victorinox penknife / bottle opener thingy (though I may have to leave this at home as apparently it's illegal to carry one on the street). I've got me a bottle of still spring water which can double as a rehydration device and a quick and easy way to wash grazed knees clean. And I have my wife's Kindle (well, once I've wrestled it out of her hands) ready for those quiet times when, through no fault of my own, I happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time (i.e. the crime is happening elsewhere) and it gets a bit slow and I have time on my hands and get a bit bored. Oh and I may knock off at 9.30 'cos I like to be in bed by 10. Don't get snidey about this; just remember I'm not actually getting paid to do this. It's purely voluntary. Think yourself lucky that I'm willing to give up some of my free time to ensure your safety in the first place.

I just need someone to design a costume for me. Maybe some kind of pinstripe motif? Though I want a cape as well. And a utility belt that can hold a thermos flask. And, in a break from superhero tradition, I want to wear my pants on the inside of my trousers.

'Cos, you know, I don't want people laughing at me or anything.

Be safe, people, be safe.

The Hack And The Knack

A week to go until my summer hols and with typical good timing my nose is streaming and I’ve developed a hacking cough. I sound like General Grievous only with a slightly annoying Midlands twang. Now there’s a movie – “me an’ the lads ‘ave all been trayned actuall-aye in the ways of the Jed-aye...”

It ain’t nice and it ain’t pretty.

And it’s put me in a bad mood.

See, I should be at home putting my feet up, being waited on and reading a good book. But because I’m on holiday next week I kind of feel honour bound to drag my bones into work this week. Otherwise it just looks like I’m taking the pee and caning an extra week’s holiday out of my employers. Cos that’s what they’ll think, oh believe me, they will.

So I’m at work with my hacking cough and my streaming nose and am exhibiting a major case of the grumps and feel like I want to kill someone. Nothing bad has happened, you understand – nothing huge – but I’m being plagued by lots of petty gripes. A veritable hailstorm of trivial complaints.

Now let me tell you, a thousand wasps are far more life threatening than one solitary rhino. Or something like that.

The main cause of consternation in my peers is this: a lock has broken on a door. Not just any old door but the door to the main Art Store. And if that door won’t close properly it means we can’t alarm the building at close of business... so technically we’ve got a huge effing hole punched into our security measures and (more worryingly ) our insurance policies. So yes it’s a bit of a problem. But the door will close if you have the knack. The knack shouldn’t be necessary I admit – the door should just close and the lock engage all on its own – but that’s not how it is right now. You need to wiggle the handle a bit, tease the lock with the key. Caress the mechanism. Show a bit of love. Then the door will close and lock as good as gold.

I’ve told people this. You need to employ the knack until the locksmith arrives. There’s nothing to be done until then. Either use the knack or don’t use the knack. But don’t bother me with it. I need peace and quiet and space enough to cough up my lungs in a manner that befits my station in life.

i.e. All over my kennel.

Bloody dogsbody, me. Bah.

The X Fix

Very disappointing news from my friend, “Wilson”, who went along to the NEC in Birmingham to audition for The X Factor on Monday.

From what he’s reports he and the vast number of applicants were barely given a decent bite at the showbiz cherry.

After waiting nearly three hours for his slot Wilson was shoved into a tiny room no bigger than a portaloo where a very bored researcher sat on a chair composing a text message on his mobile phone. The researcher didn’t even look up or acknowledge Wilson’s presence. Luckily Wilson was prepared for this rudeness after hearing the accounts of his fellow X Factor hopefuls who’d auditioned before him... and it seems this ignorance and disrespect was generously ladled out to all applicants no matter what their standard. I suppose we ought to be thankful for this half hearted attempt at equality.

Wilson refused to sing until the guy looked up and made eye contact. Apparently the guy looked shocked that Wilson could actually sing properly but as soon as the piece was over he promptly waved his hand in dismissal and said, “Sorry, not this time.”

End of audition.

From what Wilson has learned this was par for the course for all of the applicants. All rather callous and offensive I’m sure you’ll agree.

Now before people start casting aspersions of “hard cheese” Wilson has made it clear to me that there were some amazing singers among the applicants – really terrific – but they were all treated in the same bored, offhand manner. The general consensus among applicants on the day was that a very definite pre-selection process was taking place in line with some sort of hidden agenda. Selection was taking place according to a rigid quota system based on who knows what kind of demographic. Your singing voice was not the deciding factor.

Anyway, Wilson is heartily cheesed off with the whole affair and I can certainly understand his chagrin. All that effort for nothing.

But, I personally think that just having the guts to go for the audition in the first place is quite an achievement and something to be proud of. I certainly couldn’t have done it. And it’s certainly a valuable experience too – albeit a rather crappy one.

Last time I spoke to Wilson he’d received offers from local bands to join them for jamming sessions and various people wanted CDs of his stuff. All promising opportunities, I’m sure you’ll agree, which I hope he’ll seize with both hands.

Who needs Simon Cowell and the approval of his ilk anyway?

X Factor? X Factoff!

X Factoid

A good friend of mine, who shall henceforth be known only as Mr D to protect his oddly-valued anonymity, is auditioning for The X Factor on Monday 30th April. Brave man.

The auditions take place at the NEC in Birmingham and Mr D is already as nervous as all hell. Not that hell ever struck me as being nervous in itself but never mind... however he has a fine voice and like me, has reached that juncture in life where it’s a case of: "If I don’t do it now I never will". As an old school friend of mine once told me: it’s better to regret something you have done rather than something you haven’t.

I tried telling that to the police after ram-raiding a local Ann Summers outlet a few years back but inexplicably it cut me very little slack...

Joking aside, I hope you’ll all join with me in wishing him well as he braves the censure of the likes of Dermot O’Leary and Patrick Kielty et al. Go get ‘em with your hot, syrupy vocals my good man!

For those of you that are interested Mr D’s vocal talents can be sampled at singsnap.com under the beguiling nom de plume of "Wilson".

Good luck for Monday matey!