The Long Kiss Hello

The last time Kate Bush performed a live concert was 1979. I was too young to go and anyway, record buying and gig going were something totally beyond my boyhood consciousness at the time. A few years later when I’d finally 'got my groove on' the chances of Kate Bush ever performing a live gig again were about as likely as Labour freeing the country from the interminable yolk of Maggie Thatcher. And then, subsequent to that event, as likely as Rolf Harris being imprisoned for sex crimes. 

I’d accepted that it was just never going to happen. Never. I would never (for)ever get to see her live. I accepted it with the same life-weary recognition that I would also never marry any of Charlie’s Angels, never be a crime-fighting superhero or be in any way, shape or form, cool and one of the in-crowd. Sometimes you don’t make your bed, you just accept you need to lie in the one that life has given you.

And then suddenly life presents you with a brand new bed - a four poster with satin sheets, vibrating pillows and gold thread in the tassels. In short, life throws you a miracle.

Earlier this year Kate Bush announced a series of live shows (my quest to acquire tickets is well documented elsewhere). For a Kate Bush fan such a happening is a life changer, a dream maker and a soul lifter of extraordinary proportions. Those tickets were the most desirable entities in the entire universe. I was damned lucky to get 2 of them – even if it meant paying through the nose for hospitality tickets. But really, as a fan, I would have done anything to guarantee my presence at one of her gigs. Eaten broken glass. Voted Conservative. Accepted the new U2 album on whatever device the-powers-that-be cared to hijack it onto.

It’s interesting to note here that rehearsals for the shows had been going on for 18 months… the whole thing must have been one of the best kept secrets in the music world for at least a year. God, but Kate Bush is a canny lady.

Last Saturday, after much waiting, after much imagining and speculation, Karen and I finally attended Before The Dawn at the Hammersmith Eventim (Apollo). Neither of us had been to a gig for at least a decade. Neither of us had been anywhere major without the kids for probably about the same length of time. In fact, being without the kids for a night was a source of considerable and most perplexing anxiety and I won’t bore you with our efforts to secure 2 ultra-trustworthy babysitters (who, as it happens, did amazing jobs to keep our boys happy and safe while mummy and daddy partied the night away). But before the gig we did end up (almost subconsciously) sitting in a park near a kiddie’s playground, almost as if we couldn’t quite function out in the real world without the shouts and calls of youngsters surrounding us.

Having obtained hospitality tickets, our first port of call was St. Mark’s Church, across the road from the Eventim where, at 5.30pm, we had a champagne reception and luxury hamper awaiting our arrival. Although for me this was a by-product of acquiring tickets it proved to be rather special in itself and it was nice to be amongst 200 other guests who were all feeling the specialness of the occasion as we were. It was also nice to have early access to a good selection of the official merchandise without having to fight our way through rampaging throngs eager to buy extra programmes that they could sell later on eBay. I must admit I stretched my credit card as far as it would go and bought a gig t-shirt, hoody, poster, keyring, a Hounds of Love mug and a Rescue Tin which had been compiled to compliment the first part of Kate’s set – a performance of The Ninth Wave (the concept piece from her Hounds Of Love album). It was expensive but I figured this was a once in a lifetime opportunity and I didn’t want to leave with regrets or that feeling of “I should have done this and I should have done that…”

The food was superb but I confess I was much too excited to eat properly and, seriously, I would have been happy with a bag of chips – I was just glad to be there. The couple next to us had come all the way from Norway and the people we sat next to in the theatre itself sounded distinctly Australian. A reminder that out trek from Leamington Spa was but a small hop compared to the journeys that some of the other attendees had undertaken.

It was lovely to be able to eat and then wander back across the road to the Eventim in our own good time, enter through the VIP entrance without queuing and find out seats without having to panic about anything. In fact the whole trip had flowed smoothly – a good journey down and we even managed to get parked a mere 50 yards from the theatre entrance. It made us realise that we should and indeed ought to do this kind of thing far more often.

And the gig itself?

Amazing. Truly amazing. I'm having trouble holding back the hyperbole. I couldn’t quite believe I was actually there. In fact I spent the first half of the show trying to reign my thoughts in and focus on being present in the moment. The show was as full and as mind-blowing as all the reports had led us to believe. Best of all, Kate’s voice soared. My worry had been that after weeks of performing it would be showing signs of strain by the time my gig came around but I needn’t have worried. Kate seemed to combine power and delicacy in equal measure and for me that was the main triumph of the night. Her voice is incredible and has lost none of its potency.

Of course, she could have sung dressed in a bin bag and the audience would have lapped it up but it was lovely to be present at an event that was so worth the 30 year wait, that was everything a fan could have ever dreamt of. I won’t go through the set list as that will be available elsewhere online but highlights for me were Running Up That Hill, King Of The Mountain and, of course, the entire Ninth Wave movement. The sets were incredible and Kate managed to weave theatre, film and song into one cohesive, emotionally-full whole. Working the plaintive peep-peep of the lifebelt distress signal into And Dream Of Sheep was inspired and really worked (also reminding me of the click-click of the rifle used so effectively in Army Dreamers). It was wonderful to see The Ninth Wave performed so satisfyingly – I’ve spent years of my life letting my mind wander when listening to it; trying to imagine it turned into a visual spectacle. So gratifying that Kate’s own interpretation was not a disappointment but instead added even more depth and meaning. For me Watching You Without Me and Hello Earth are still the central masterpieces to this entire movement.

The second half of the show was based around the second half of the Ariel album and though quieter and calmer than The Ninth Wave was nevertheless not without its shockwaves – the puppet boy killing the gull, tree trunks dropping down from on high and smashing through Kate’s piano – but the overriding sense of joy that these tracks evoke was what stayed most in my mind. A definite highlight for me was the pulsing throb of the opening of Prologue which is so perfectly redolent of the whirring of bird’s wings in flight. The biggest highlight of the night though was the encore. Just Kate alone at the piano performing Among Angels without any other accompaniment and reminding everybody that as great as all the stage effects and stage direction were, the most perfect, unassailably wondrous thing of all is Kate and her voice and her piano composition. Among Angels is such a delicate stirring piece it really didn’t need anything else at all. For anyone doubting if Kate Bush still had it, they had their resounding answer. A rousing rendition of Cloudbusting finished off the night and was surmounted by Kate yet again thanking us all for being such a brilliant audience (as she had done throughout the evening), thanking us for coming and just thanking us all for being. So many thank you’s from the one person in the theatre who everybody else there wanted to thank with all their hearts. No, Kate, thank you!

It was an uplifting, euphoric evening. I was glad to be even the smallest, tiniest part of it. Number one item on the very top of my secret bucket list totally ticked off.

Easy Rider

I like to think of myself as a cultured, educated kind of guy. I know my Munch from my Munchies; my Socrates from my sock drawer. I can string a few words together and sound vaguely articulate.

But this is all a lie.

I am at heart a popularist. A pop person. A middle of the road, representational, non-abstract, can-you-see-what-it-is-yet, the-medium-is-not-the-message, does-what-it-says-on-the-tin kind of guy. I like paintings to look like something real. Music to have a tune. Lyrics to tell a story. And movies...

I like movies, even if they do nothing else, to just entertain.

And this gets me into trouble. Because my frustration threshold with movies is pretty high. I can take a whole heap of cheesy dialogue and improbable plot devices and still have a great time at the cinema. Because, at the end of day, I just want to be shown a good time.

The movie doesn’t have to be intelligent. The experience doesn’t have to be meaningful. The story doesn’t have to be worthy. In fact I’d much rather it wasn’t.

If movies were women I’d be up for a one night stand with the town bike.

I don’t want a relationship; something that will stay with me forever; something that will change me. I don’t want a trophy girl, or a rich girl or a high maintenance girl. Quick, cheap and nasty is fine. Behind the pub, up against the bins, no small talk. In and out, both our bells ring, ding-a-ding-ding. Never going to see you again... not unless you’re out on DVD for a reasonable price anyway.

That’s entertainment.

Which isn’t to say I don’t get pulled into worthy movies. To classics. Of course I do. I enjoy a steak as much as the next man. All I’m saying is, most of the time, when I go out to the movies, I’m happy with a hamburger.

It means I can forgive films like Immortals, Sherlock Holmes and Clash Of The Titans. I’m aware that other bloggers can’t. Bloggers with more taste and higher standards than me.

I’m a movie scumbag and I admit it.

I look at film posters for movies like Black Swan and Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and I can feel my guts cramp in boredom. I’m sure these are great movies. Well written. Pieces of incredible movie art. They’d enlighten me. Cause me to question my own linear, one-track existence.

But they make me want to shit bullets.

I want pizzazz. I want spectacle. I want escapism.

I don’t want misery and the dreariness of the human condition thrust into my face while I thrust handfuls of Mars Planets into my face.

I ain’t looking for nothing but a good time. I’m just an easy rider, baby. I’m out for a laugh and nothing more. Don’t get all heavy on me.

And if that makes me shallow and superficial, well, I can stay at home and self harm to Joy Division records with the best of them. I have as many depths and facets as everybody else. I really do.

I just leave them behind me when I climb into a cinema seat.

So I’m just saying... if you read this blog and you’re expecting choice movies reviews that are considered and sophisticated and erudite you’re going to be (or, more likely, have been) massively disappointed.

As long as a movie can stick it’s tongue down my ear and frottage me up, I’m perfectly happy.

So you Culture Show fans might want to get your movie reviews somewhere else...

Now shut up please – the Pearl & Dean presentation is about to begin.

Frost Cocks

Leamington Spa is well known for its artistic connections. Sir Terry Frost was a local lad. As were Whitehouse and Baker and I even suspect that Rolf Harris has - on occasion - driven through the place whup-whup-whupping his wobble board as he passed through Leamington's Georgian streets on his way to pick up some poster paints from WHSmiths and a moustache trimmer from Boots.

So I should not have been surprised by the great collection of street art that I happened across whilst walking into town Saturday morning.

Nature had supplied an entire street's worth of ready made canvasses: a whole string of frosted windscreens lining the pavement.

Our anonymous artist plainly could not resist. Foregoing the traditional implements of paint brush and chisel, our Banksy-in-the-making set to work with his fingertips. I can only imagine the chillblains he suffered as he produced this transient oeuvre in honour of erect manhood. Car after car was burdened with a giant spurting cock complete with two balls like a pair of Russian cosmonaut helmets. Each cock followed the exact same design and proportions. A production line of phallic perfection. Each fat todger was clearly circumcised but whether this was a moral statement on the advantages of such a medical / religious procedure or just a way of ensuring that the viewer correctly identified these objects of mass insemination as cocks and not images of the Space Shuttle blasting off from Cape Canaveral is anybody's guess.

This artist - and I'd lay money on the fact he was male - clearly loves his own cock and wished to stamp its brooding authority upon another object already closely associated with male virility, the motorcar. Suddenly the street was full of cock-cars. The motor engine and the engine of procreation had become one.

The artist was egalitarian in his choice of motor. He didn't just go for high end sports cars; frequently he skewered the humble family car or a beat-up second-hand ringer of dubious provenance with his throbbing man tool. Plainly, when it comes to metaphorically shagging cars, this guy has no other requirements than a windscreen and four wheels. Speed and colour is not important. If it's parked by the roadside, engine coolling than it's fair game. Flash-bang-whallop! Your Porsche has been porked by the Phantom Penis Painter.

But such virility could not last. Nature performed an inevitable irony even as I considered heading home for my camera just so I could capture this carnival of cockdom for the enjoyment of you all. As the sun climbed higher each penis melted away as if faced with the prospect of having to dry hump a naked Des Lynam. The cars were returned to their virgin state once more.

Perhaps this was the artist's intention? To comment on the brief glory of the heat of male appetite?

Or perhaps it was just a bunch of drunk students with too much alcohol in their systems and too much time on their hands and a total lack of respect for other people's property?

*cue sound of record being scratched by a hastily removed needle*

No. No. Scrub that. Don't spoil it for me. In the back of my mind I can still hear the voice of Rolf Harris grumbling in counterpoint to the early morning birdsong, asking a red-faced milkman, "Can you see what it is yet?"

The World Is Yours

So you wake up one day and everybody has disappeared. You’re not sure why or how. Some kind of holocaust; some kind of mass alien body snatching event; you’ve slept through a global pandemic and to quote Red Dwarf (and assure you of my geek credentials), everybody’s dead, Dave, everybody’s dead.

You are the last human alive.

The world is yours.

What do you do?

I’m not talking about securing food and fuel supplies, amassing a stock of pornography or weeping for your loved ones.

I’m talking about... in your spare time.

You know, when the initial panic is over and you’ve accepted you’re the only one left: what are you going to do to amuse yourself?

Being of unsound mind I frequently mull this question over. And the answer I frequently come up with is going into my work place and smashing it up in an orgy of cathartic violence. Of course, this may be because I usually pose this question to myself whilst I am actually at work and the destruction of my work place is therefore (quite naturally) in the forefront of my mind.

I should point out at this point that I work in an art gallery and therefore my wanton acts of destruction will be targeted against works of art and museum artifacts. The very stuff I have been charged with having to look after and preserve.

I’m well aware that such an act of vandalism might be seen by some as a typically sad indictment of humanity itself. Here I am, the last representative of my species, and rather than safeguarding all the higher ideals of mankind represented in the gallery’s collection, I instead display the primal violence that has so plagued mankind throughout the centuries.

I resort to petty violence. I resort to destruction for the hell of it. It doesn’t even serve any purpose except to make me feel better.

The dominant species that comes after us will one day find and excavate the gallery and wonder how us Homo Sapiens ever dragged ourselves out of the slime.

I know all this. But still I would quite happily come into the building and take a poker to the Papperitz, an axe to the Archipenko and a chair leg to the Chirico. I would take great pleasure in pissing through the holes in the post modernist sculpture.

Perhaps all this is merely a desire to cock-a-snoop at those that currently have power over me? Not my boss personally. The Man. This society that sees most of us bartering the valuable hours of our lives for the wherewithal to survive and do all the things that we’d like to do in the pisspoor amounts of time we have left to us once The Man has taken his cut.

Or perhaps I am just petty and annihilistic and have a secret desire to be naughty just for being naughty’s sake?

Who knows?

What would you do if you found yourself alone in the world? Go on; put me to shame with your accounts of erecting monuments to humankind, nurturing future species and resurrecting mankind with a turkey baster and a few ingredients from the IVF clinic at your local hospital.

Go on, I dare you.

Logging Off

I don’t know your name. Or your address. But believe me I wish that I did.

I don’t know what your problem is but I’m guessing it is gastro related. Certainly it is a very personal beef.

I’m trying to divine your mindset. Figure out what makes you tick.

Perhaps you are homeless and have no access to basic facilities? The dark corner at the back of my place of work has, perhaps, special significance for you? The place where you had your first kiss / shag / spliff / al fresco bowel movement? Who knows? But something keeps drawing you back to the same spot night after night no matter how vigilant we are about shovelling your hefty calling cards into the river (note to the RSPCA: sorry about the dead swans).

Maybe you see yourself as a street artist? The Human Pencil perhaps? And each night your return to the same spot to try and achieve the impossible: sign your name with your own excrement? But I’m guessing you run out of lead before you get to the second letter. Bet you wish you’d been christened something short and pithy like Bob or Joe. I bet your real name is Alexander Gregorin Blenkinsop III and you curse your mother each time you squat down and try to work up a sharp point. Your prune intake must be phenomenal.

But at the end of the day, Mr Blenkinsop or whatever your real name is, I don’t really care. I don’t care about your background, your upbringing, your dietary requirements... I just want you to stop shitting up the side of my work building.

Get yourself a life. Get yourself a toilet. Get yourself a butt plug.

Just get yourself something.

And stop dumping all of your shit on me.

Power To The People

Like most towns and cities the world over Leamington Spa has its fair share of graffiti. 90% of it is Shaz proclaiming her undying love for Baz Daz Gaz or some New Yoik wannabe gang member deciding to spray his half-witted little tag on the backdoor of a pub or a park bench and inevitably stuffing it up so that it looks like someone has vomited up the innards of a black felt tip pen.

But a glorious 10% of Leamo’s graffiti is political and witty and sometimes even just downright entertaining (I’ve written about three past instances of Leamington graffiti here, here and here).

With the election coming up and the Tory’s poster campaign reaching overdrive (we seem to get a new range of posters here every few days – as quick as us locals can deface them in fact) there has been plenty of fodder for the graffiti artists to make hay with. All I can say is the local arts and crafts shop must have made an absolute killing on aerosols and thick black highlighter pens over the last fortnight or so.

Anyway, although it was not my intention to get all party political and partisan but to stay unbiased and righteously impartial it does seem that the posters of one party in particular have come in for the majority of the Banksy-esque drubbing:

Heaven forbid that this should influence you in any way in your deliberations at the polling stations tomorrow... but it is comforting to know that satire and derision are alive and well in this little backwater of Warwickshire.

*Sigh* It almost takes me back to the bad old days of Maggie Thatcher. Ahem. Ahem. ;-)

I’m A Model And I’m Looking Good

Sometimes, when money is short, you find yourself willing to undertake things – paid work – that you would not normally have ever entertained. You find a sudden flexibility in your pride and your prudishness. A willingness to consider options that normally you would have laughed at. Even scoffed at.

Today, at lunchtime, I became a male model.

In exchange for £10 I allowed a local artist to do whatever she wanted with me for a whole hour. I allowed her to pore over my blushing form, to caress my trembling curves with graphite, to render me intimately in tone and texture upon the naked page.

I wore my leopard-skin Y-fronts especially.

And I am glad to say they were not needed. No people, scrub those unwholesome visions of my rude deflowerment from your eyes. There was nothing at all seedy about the transaction.

I was not required to present my male virility nude, naked or otherwise disrobed. It was merely portrait modelling. Head and shoulders. My clavicles upwards. Not even as far down as my man-boobs (very tight and pert thank you for asking).

And to be honest it was a very pleasant hour indeed.

I shan’t name the artist as that would be unfair but she’s a local Asian lady, well into her eighties, with a passion for painting and drawing. A number of my friends model for her and for £10 an hour and a sandwich it’s the easiest work you’re ever likely to get. To be honest the homemade lunch would have been payment enough. The £10 per session is a lovely bonus and means I can buy myself the odd treat. It’s almost like getting pocket money. Add into that mix fascinating conversation, genuine kindness and a wonderful sense of humour and it’s a damn good way to spend a lunch time.

I shall be going back next week and for as many weeks as the benevolent Mrs X is willing to entertain my visage beneath her immaculately décored roof.

I’d be an idiot not to.

After all, only fools and horses...

George Davis Is Innocent

The above appeared, clumsily spray painted on the wall of a dilapidated pub building in Leamington, a couple of months before Christmas.

At first, being ignorant of gangster lore, I assumed it referred to a local lad; some poor yob out misspending his youth who had found himself on the wrong side of a policeman’s taser. Before he could protest that he had just gone up that there alley for a quick Jimmy Riddle he’d found himself banged up for burglary with 500 other spurious offenses to be taken into consideration and escorted to a prison cell by a couple of uniformed officers who were slapping each other’s backs for singlehandedly improving Leamington’s clean-up rate over night.

His siblings, his mates, even his 85 year old granny with her dodgy hip and rheumatoid arthritis had taken to the streets of Leamo armed with cheap aerosol’s to protest his innocence on every wall, pavement and fence they could find.

Who was George Davis? That was the question that was rattling around my mind every time I walked past this enticing bit of graffiti. Who was he? What had he not done that he had been accused of doing?

In the end I Googled him. And lo and behold George Davis wasn’t a local lad done wrong by the local constabulary at all but a London mobster who was dodgily convicted for The London Electricity Board Robbery in 1975. He was released a couple of years later as a result of a campaign by supporters who protested his innocence before being later re-imprisoned for armed robberies that he did actually commit. So not so innocent after all.

Which must have been a bit of a kick in the teeth for Roger Daltry and Sham 69 who via T-shirt wearing and song-writing had come out in George’s defence. Stick to rock opera’s, Rog, your wrists are too subtle to divine the true realities of a man’s innocence.

So back to the graffiti of 2010. George Davis Is Innocent? Plainly the graffiti artist hadn’t done his research properly. I’m eagerly awaiting an addendum to the said piece of graffiti that starts with the words “Well, actually, ahem, the thing is...”

Or perhaps this is the first instance of “retro graffiti”. A celebration of famous graffiti from times gone by? Is the wall at the back of Tesco’s car-park going to shimmer with the words “The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing” sometime in the not too distant future? Or shall I get ahead of the game myself and paint the side of my house with the legend: “Is there intelligent life on earth? Yes, but I'm only visiting”?

Hmm.

Answers painted on a brick wall at the usual address please...

Hart For Art’s Sake

I’ve only got to think of Tony Hart and I hear the tones of a lovingly polished xylophone reverberating smokily within my mind. Similarly I’m also presented with the mental image of a rather debonair, slightly effeminate uncle type figure smiling above a well turned cravat, waving a chisel shaped marker pen around nonchalantly in the air. That same marker pen would then be directed, both carelessly and lovingly, around a humongous sheet of coloured paper, conjuring out of nowhere the fabulous outline of a ballet dancing elephant in swimming trunks.

Forget Paul Daniels and The Great Soprendo – this was magic for me as a kid.

Tony Hart had a quality that few kid’s presenters these days even know exists. Johnny Ball had it. Even, dare I say it, Keith Chegwin had it. A genuine enthusiasm for the TV task in hand – for having fun – for engaging with children and extracting as much positivity from them as possible. There was never anything patronizing about Tony Hart. His “Gallery” was just as likely to feature a finger-painting by a kid with ADHD as a work of genuine art by a child genius.

There was never any pressure with Tony, either. Art was fun, to be enjoyed. Just give it a go. It doesn’t matter if you mess it up. Each week he’d roll out ideas for creating art work out of the most basic of household detritus. Yogurt pots, newspaper, plastic bottles – all the things that any kid could lay their hands on without much effort. Art wasn’t an elitist activity. It was for everybody.

I can recall my A level art teacher being rather scathing of Tony’s credentials one lesson – his contempt no doubt had it roots in the way Tony had attempted to popularize art and make it accessible for the masses. This wouldn’t do at all. Art was for the brave, for the special, for the tortured and for the worthy.

Not for kids with bottle top glasses and snotty noses.

Sod that.

Tony died over the weekend. 83 years old. Not a bad innings as it goes. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it today has responded with genuine sadness. It really is like losing a favourite uncle. When I think of Tony Hart I think of Morph (in the pic above), that defiantly hackneyed cravat, glorious summer holidays and that all too brief very childish belief that I could do absolutely anything at all – provided, of course, it required the use of a sheet of a A4 paper and a Stabilo Boss marker pen.

Thank you, Tony. You were a true gent.

Words Or Music?

I’m not sure where this post has come from but whilst pottering around the house over the weekend I had a sudden flashback to a Manic Street Preachers' gig I attended about a decade ago. Back when I was cool ‘n’ hip ‘n’ energized enough to actually go out in the evening and pay to watch live music being performed.

I was at the bar soaking up the pre-gig atmosphere, feeling a bit like I was too old (already) to be patronizing this kind of gig-going malarkey when my annoyance with my fellow gig-goers reached an all time high.

Now, you don’t need to know much about the Manic Street Preachers – just that that one of their songs (Design For Life) featured the refrain “We don’t talk about love / We only want to get drunk”.

It’s a painful, sorrowful protestation of working class chauvinism – an expression of the tragedy of men whose emotions have been stunted by class ethics and their upbringing. It’s a truly sad song.

And this synopsis is pretty evident from the lyrics, I think.

And yet.

And yet there were a little gang of meatheads at the bar – tanked up on cheap cider served in plastic tumblers – who were swaying arm-in-arm football terrace style singing the above lyrics like it was a glorious celebration.

“We don’t talk about love / We only want to get drunk!”

The sneer on my face held back an avalanche of bile. I didn’t order a drink. I turned around and left them to it. It spoiled the night for me. And the song. I can’t listen to it now without being reminded of the utter stupidity of those buffoons at the bar. So stupid that they couldn’t even see that they were the ones the tragedy of the song was addressing.

But maybe my problem is one of snobbery? I love words – poetry, lyrics, prose. I’m happy to analyse and mull it all over; make connections, be inspired. For me the words are easily as important – if not more important sometimes – than the music. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good tune, a beautiful melody. But I like it to mean something. I like the lyrics to speak to me, to connect with me.

Not everybody is like that. For some people the lyrics to a song are just a handy way to commit the tune to memory; a way to get a handle on the song’s internal timing so that it can be sung along to. A bit of nut and boltery. A few la-la-la’s strung together to augment the chord changes of the guitars or the synths. The last thing they want to do is to have to think about the issues the song might be exploring. To feel challenged and have their consciences prodded.

I guess everybody is different and I need to accept that. I need to stifle the grimaces when some idiot misinterprets, or worse, dismisses the lyrics of songs that I love. As long as my life is enriched why should I care about theirs? It’s not my responsibility.

But what about you? Do you like the lyrics to be pregnant with meaning or are you happy just be-bopping yourself into oblivion on the disco floor?

Confess. I promise not to judge.

Jolly

Everybody who’s anybody in the office has disappeared to London today on a work jolly to see various exhibitions in the big city.

Which means anybody who’s nobody has been left to hold the fort for the day.

Guess where I am?

Yes. Major Moody here at your service, armed to the teeth with clipboard and biro and prepared to defend Pippin Fort to the last drop of Tipp-Ex.

I never get invited on jollies. And it’s not like I’m uninterested in art or history – (the boss has gone to see the Hadrian exhibition). I guess such trips out are reserved solely for the upper middle-management (ooh bitchy) and the museum curators. Building Supervisors are not meant to be interested in arty, philosophical, historical concepts and objet d’art. Maybe if it was a conference on loo brushes I’d be allowed the price of the train ticket and an expenses paid lunch thrown in to boot?

But that makes me sound bitter and twisted and honestly I’m not. Because with the rest of ‘em out it leaves very few of us here at base and we can pretty much do what the hell we like for the day.

While the cat’s away, etc.

Hmm. You know, I feel a coffee break coming on. Followed by brunch.

Jollies? I just love ‘em.

They really work for me...