No Grit

It’s official.

There is a lack of grit in the UK.

It’s all over the news. Local authorities in the Midlands are already completely out of it.

Salt reserves are also dangerously low in at least 8 far flung counties.

So there you have it folks. Clear and undeniable indications that the country has gone to the dogs. Standards have fallen. The Dunkirk Spirit is no more – oooh it’s much to cold and wet, I’m staying right here, girlfriend...

The UK has lost its grit and we’re running low on that hardiest of stand-bys: the salt of the earth.

All that’s left are the whingers, the ne’er-do-wells and the people-with-the-best-of-intentions-but-no-motivation-to-see-it-through.

The nation has been broken by a little bit of snow.

Back when I were a kid in a land that smelled and sounded like a Hovis advert we didn’t let a little bit of the white stuff hold us back, oh no lad. I’ve already reminisced in a previous post how, a mere 25 years ago, even in half metre drifts of snow, people still battled into work and kids still battled into school with no real expectation of scamming a day off.

In fact the only time my school closed in bad weather was when the boilers broke.

Fair enough. Can’t argue with that.

But when the boilers were working the school was able to function as normal and people made an effort to get in despite the snowy conditions – to carry on as normal, to keep the wheels of industry turning. To not be defeated by a little bit of weather.

True grit, folks. True grit.

Not so now alas.

Now, the slightest flurry of the most fairy-like of snow flakes will see people inhale sharply through their teeth, shake their heads in mock sorrow and exasperation and unravel the control leads to their PlayStation / Xbox in preparation for a couple of days at home, “snowed in”, while the country grinds to a comical halt once more (though it’s funny how we expect the gritting crews to still get out there and do their job, isn’t it?).

Yes, we’re all snowed in. We can’t possibly risk our lives getting into work or getting into school. Not in all this snow and ice. Might catch pneumonia. Or frostbite somewhere nasty. Or, like, just really painful chilblains.

Which is why the town yesterday was full of people of all ages, all playing out in the snow, all dressed in their best protective winter gear. Everywhere you looked there were snowball fights, sledging, snowmen and preposterously appendaged snow-women... and people dressed up quite comfortably like Sir Ranulph Fiennes. It was a real winter wonderland blah blah blah.

It seems to me then that the snow doesn’t really stop us doing anything very much at all if we actually set our minds to it... Just the stuff we don’t like doing... like, for example, going to work for a living.

Except this isn’t down to the snow, folks.

This is down to the lax and lazy attitude that has infected this country from the last generation downward. Suddenly it’s ok to be lazy, ok to take the easy way out. People who battle into work regardless of the conditions are seen as idiots and foolish. Why bother? Hard work and dedication are plainly rubbishy attributes for any man or woman these days and you’d best ditch them bloody quick if you want to fit in with the new laid-back modern world.

Just put your feet up. Relax. What’s an education and a work ethic at the end of the day? Look – daytime telly! How often do you get a chance to watch that? Go on. Treat yourself. Nobody else is bothering to turn in today. You’ll be the only nerd in the office if you go. Good lad. Stick the kettle on. The kids’ll enjoy a day off. It’ll teach them a valuable lesson. Or something.

“True grit? Ha! Not much.”

Underclass

Back in the days when I was healthy - before a seasonal virus transformed my previously sparkly-clean lungs into two mildewed tea-bags (i.e. about 5 days ago) - Karen and I enjoyed a rare treat: a night out at the cinema whilst our friendly neighbourhood babysitter did exactly what it said she'd do on her tin.

Nothing too weighty or worthy for us. Oh no. It had been a hard week and we fancied something "light" and "fantastic". We also both fancied some cinematic eye candy. Kate Beckinsale for me and Michael Sheen for Karen. "Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans" then, seemed a rather apposite choice.

The first 2 Underworld films are universally judged as "frustrating". The cinematography is excellent. The casting is good. The use of technology within the age old tale of Vampire vs Werewolf was smart and intelligent. The scripts weren't half bad. And yet...

And yet they both fell short of the mark. And fell short in ways that were extremely annoying to the viewer.

"They could have been so much more..." "They almost made a great vampire movie..." Etc.

The first film was great right up to the final battle sequence with the long awaited vampire / werewolf hybrid. The effects men caused the film to fall down at the last hurdle. The resultant monster was clumsy looking and visually risible.

The second film... well. The second film had a storyline which should have resulted in the death penalty being given to the script writers immediately. It was lazy. No other word for it and a complete waste of the talents of both Kate Beckinsale and Bill Nighy. Gah. Let down again!

So I wasn't expecting a great deal from the third Underworld film...

Except it did feature the startling Michael Sheen reprising his role once more as Lucian the Lycan / human hybrid. Now Sheen, I have to say, had been faultless in his earlier Underworld performances but the role of Lucian was given too little screen time for his character and Sheen's acting skills to impinge much onto the consciousness of the general viewer. He was given far too little to do.

Not so in "Rise Of The Lycans". He carries the entire film. In fact he doesn't just carry the film as hoof it straight out of the chasm of disappointment and into the starry stratosphere of "total film satisfaction".

Mr Sheen (shines all things clean) is already building up a humungous career for himself in Hollywood and I suspect his rise will be (unlike the Lycans) meteoric. On our tellies in the UK he's been fabulous as Nero. A revelation as Kenneth Williams. And at the cinema, if the critics are to be believed, he's totally masterful as Frost in the current Frost/Nixon film.

He's going to be big.

"Rise Of The Lycans" is the best of the Underworld films by far. Sheen brings depth, poignancy, believability, empathy - his full and formidable acting range in fact - to his role as Lucian. Plus (according to Karen) he looks damned hot in leather. He's also surprisingly believable in the brutal fight sequences. It's bizarre to see such a sensitive character actor suddenly tranformed into an action / romantic hero. And yet he accomplishes it all effortlessly and, most importantly, without losing any of his sensitivity. The man has my respect. He has finally brought something much needed to the Underworld franchise: a sense of emotional relevance.

Bill Nighy reprises his role as Viktor and is just joyous to watch as always - totally convincing as the grand vampire patriarch and the bird-blue eyes are a nice touch. He somehow manages to be cold, cruel, callous, delicously English and yet always "warm uncle Bill Nighy" all at the same time.

And as for Kate Beckinsale... well, there is no effing Kate Beckinsale. Apart from a brief appearance at the very end that is - no more than a blinking cameo!

Cue curses and sundry howls of frustration!

I've been robbed!

I've been done!

I've been remiss and probably should have read the film synopsis more closely and realized that this was a prequel not a sequel to the Underworld series! Doh!

So instead of Kate we were served up Rhona Mitra as Viktor's sensually lipped vampire daughter, Sonja, and Lucian's illicit love interest. Yes, she's eye candy. Yes, she's good. But she's just not Kate Beckinsale in tight black leather no matter which way you cut it, so I was a mite grumpy and a little bit sulky for the first third of the film to say the least.

And yet it still managed to completely win me over.

Now from me, folks, that's a recommendation...

The Week Dragon

I don’t know about everybody else but the conveyor belt of life has become something of a relentless monster of late. A dragon that rears its ugly head every Monday morning and roars its unending demands at me in tones that demand my immediate obeisance.

House chores, work chores, personal chores... all spewed forth in a stinging fountain of flame and brimstone and interlaced with little charcoal briquettes of “washing up”, “hoovering the house”, “fixing that shelf” and “cleaning the bathroom”... all those little jobs that get continuously put off because the big ones are taking up so much time and energy... so much so that the little ones eventually require an entire day in themselves to be faced up to because they have stacked up into a pyre that would vaporize Joan of Arc’s asbestos knickers in a single second.

Surely life isn’t meant to be like this? We human beings shouldn’t be waking up every morning heart and body heavy with a hundred foot long list of things that must be done before one can rest one’s weary head again the coming night?

Where is the sun lounger beside the unnaturally blue swimming pool? Where is the perfect sun – neither too hot nor too cold – that cooks me pleasantly without turning my body into a dripping Beef Wellington of sweat? Where is the pina colada, newly frosted in my hand and dripping with fresh pineapple slices?

This isn’t the life I envisioned for myself back when I was a kid. Not that life now is in anyway bad... there’s just too much of it trying to be lived in too short a space of time. Or too little of it trying to encompass too many things. I’m really not sure which.

I know Karen feels the same. By the end of each day we’re both shattered. Exhausted. It’s hard to find the time or energy to do enjoyable things let alone the leftover chores that seem to append themselves to the end of each day.

Back when I was a kid I imagined adult life to be a brilliant smorgasboard of constant spontaneity and adventure. Why shouldn’t you just do anything? I mean who is there to stop you and tell you that you can’t do it? Another adult? Pah! They’ve no right to be in charge of you when you’re an adult yourself!

And in a way that was all perfectly correct and fundamentally astute. But my childish self didn’t take into account the one adult who will always tell you not only that you can’t do that but also tell you why you can’t do that.

Yourself.

The poor you that through habit and conditioning loses its innate ability to cut itself free of the twin chains of “must” and “have to” and soar up unfettered into the boundless blue sky of possibility and freedom... and instead becomes a rather stern and ineffably anal task master who won’t let you off the hook even when your brain is rattling around inside your skull like a walnut with terminal fatigue.

Poo. Sometimes growing up really sucks.

So is it the livelong week that I’m fighting? Or lance in hand, horse rearing up on its hindlegs like Champion The Wonder Horse, am I going to remove the dragon’s battle-mask only to find, like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back, that it is only myself that I have been duelling?

Already I can hear the roar of the Monday beast approaching... I need the answers fast, folks. I’m getting battle weary.

Proper Winters And Erin Gray

So is this a proper winter?

There’s been considerable debate in our house.

Well. Karen mentioned once that the temperatures this year have actually hit freezing a few times rather than just being “a bit chilly” and I grunted in reply that they still haven’t approximated anywhere near the arctic winters that I remember from my childhood.

But thinking about it I can only really recall one particularly arctic winter from the 18 or so that constituted my pre-adult life...

*(adopts West Country pirate-like accent for no good reason whatsoever)* Aar, it were the winter of ’82 and us young uns had to be carried through the mile high snow drifts like new born lambs in the arms of the bare-chested, ruddy nippled menfolk lest our poor shoeless feet should freeze solid like the last packet of rissoles at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland...

I think 1982 sticks in my mind because it was my very first year at Secondary school (the “big school”) and I had to tramp a mile or so there and back on foot which back then seemed akin to some poor African child walking 15 miles to fetch water from a bore hole and slay a gazelle or three on route, skin it and bring it home pre-butchered and ready for the village cooking pot.

Really I had no idea I was even born.

But the winter that year was genuinely very bad. A proper winter in every sense of the word. Snow that was several feet deep and lasted for weeks. Icy winds that froze ponds, streams, canals and rivers solid. Loads of days off school because either the boilers broke down or not enough staff / pupils made it into school to make a normal school day viable. And so bleak and grey outside that it seemed as if the sun had fizzled out completely like Jim Davidson’s telly career.

Going outside was frequently not an option that winter. I can recall in particular having to work hard to bend my parent’s arms to allow me to go for my usual Saturday morning walk to the papershop (we call them newsagents now) on a morning when the overnight snowfall had been extraordinarily heavy. Not going out that day was not an option for me. You see, every Saturday during this period I would religiously go to the papershop in the morning and hand over my hard saved cash – a piddling amount by today’s standards – to purchase a couple of packets of Buck Roger’s In The 25th Century sticker album stickers. I was very close to completing the album but the one sticker that I was most desperate to have and hadn’t yet acquired was the portrait of Colonel Wilma Deering that was to go on the very first page alongside Buck Rogers himself. My 12 year old self was very much taken with Colonel Wilma Deering – played by Erin Gray – and watching re-runs now it seems clear to me I must have had a thing about rather austere looking women with steely blue eyes and a slightly cold manner... though I will say she did look bloody fine in those tight jumpsuit things that they constantly crow-barred her into.

Crow-barred? I do hope not. I’d like to think that perhaps they oiled her up instead in order to facilitate her body’s smooth entry into that 1980’s smooth warm white Lycra... ahem. Oh yes. Where was I?

Well, this particular Saturday I finally got that much sought after sticker and it was fabulous. It was worth battling through snow drifts that were so high they swamped my wellies. It was worth enduring the biting cold that ate through my finger gloves like Kerry Katona eating her way through the last rissole at the bottom of the meat freezer at Iceland. It was worth the whole God damned ice blasted winter.

I still have the sticker album and no, it isn’t complete. I think once I got Wilma my incentive to buy the packets of stickers each week suffered a loss of impetus. I’d got what I wanted: Erin Gray in a tight blue futuristic zipper top smiling sardonically to camera. What a girl. Hard as steel but gorgeous enough to make the coldest of winter snows melt.

Which of course they did. Eventually. Leaving the world a rather grey, limp and drab place in its absence.

*sigh*

Now that folks was a proper winter.

Will Be Done

I find myself in a weird position this week (no jokes about reading the Karma Sutra upside down again please). My aunt’s estate (the aunt who died back in September) is, I think, finally being sorted out on Friday. Certainly my mother has received a call from the solicitor to pay them a visit on this day to get things “finalised”.

Without going into personal and, frankly, uncomfortable detail the basic facts are these: the estate looks like being divided up between me and my two sisters as neither my mother nor my grandfather want a single penny of the money.

I feel rather ambivalent about the forthcoming “jackpot”.

On the one hand I won’t deny that the money – any amount really – would be a huge boost to Karen and me and could see us airlifted quite spectacularly out of the foaming waters of dire straits (as opposed to the foolish guitar licks of Dire Straits). It could see our debts cleared, the mortgage possibly lopped down to a more manageable size... maybe even a few improvements around the homestead and a holiday somewhere inland in the summer.

I have no idea of the amount coming our way and to be honest I haven’t felt comfortable enough to enquire... and yet, secretly, furtively, speculation has been running rife in the daydreamy part of my brain. I can’t help it.

If £££ I could do this and this and that. If... if... if...

I guess it’s only human nature and, after all, why not be grateful and just enjoy the breaks that life throws your way? Life isn’t routinely so generous... make the most of the opportunities, I say.

But it also feels distasteful. And disrespectful to my aunt’s memory. As if somehow she has been reduced down to some moderately impressive figure on the green screen of an ATM. Was this all she was good for? All this money and what good did it do her? Suddenly the £££ symbolizes a wasted life and opportunity after opportunity shunned out of fear and ignorance.

Maybe I’m just being oversensitive? It seems wrong somehow to benefit from death and yet, looking at it philosophically, somebody almost always benefits. That’s as much a part of life as... well, death, really.

Why, this time, shouldn’t it be and mine who find the golden ticket? When I think how hard Karen and I work and yet how little progress we seem to make financially... I think we bloody deserve it.

Ho hum.

I guess all I’m trying to do is convince myself that it’s ok to be pleased about what’s coming...

Post Rally

I was presented with an amazing document this morning. One of those documents that makes your head actually hurt with amazement and gives rise to the possibility that sheer disbelief could actually be fatal.

I can’t say too much about this document as – now that my blog has been “outed” (without my permission) at my place of work – I find that I’m officially bound to so many draconian security policies and secrecy clauses that your average Spook would get a hard-on just feeding the relevant files into the paper shredder.

Suffice it to say this document was a full and unexpurgated description of how to address an envelope properly. To make it efficient and cost effective and to ensure that it is indeed essential to the running of the corporate business machine because if it is none of these things it should not be allowed to infect the pristine arteries of the UK postal system which, as we all know, is the lifeblood of all business...

And it had a diagram – a graphic of such austere and precise geometry that it resembled Hitler’s plans to invade Poland – which showed the reader (should he be in any doubt) of the exact right way to lay out an envelope. I wish I could show it to you but I dare not lest the long knives come for me by night and present me with a well cratered wall and a blindfold.

The place for the stamp was clearly marked (the Royal Mail indicia zone). The place for the address was similarly indicated. The place for the company logo or as it shall henceforth be known “the indicia zone” was also carefully demarked (in battleship grey).

But there was more. Each zone was officiously stamped with a blood red letter of the alphabet which rather ingeniously married up with the same in an information key below the diagram which further expounded on the machine-like genius that underpinned this whole postal blitzkrieg.

But best of all the bare and empty no-man’s zone between all these other zones was also clearly illuminated. Illuminated no less by vicious cross hatching that practically goose-stepped across the page and brooked no protest or defiance. Achtung! Zis ist ver you shall not go, Englisher pig-dog! Ve require your utter und total surrender!

Even now I am desperately trying to furnish myself with a ruler, a set-square, a protractor, an octant and a micrometer in order that I may, from this day forth, correctly align any future envelope furniture in a manner most befitting of this New World Order.

That noise, dear reader, is the sound of my highly polished jackboots snapping together.

Next week I look forward to a missive from my Kommandant that will clearly prescribe the correct procedure for applying paperclips to multi-page documents and which precise setting to use on the corporate A4 hole-punch. My desk shall be tidy und laid out according to laser plumb line. Und my post-it notes shall be applied with an attention to detail und accuracy heretofore only usually located in the heady discipline of precision engineering.

Guten tag meine freunde! Ze new Europe has arrived.

400

What a momentous day this is. Ripe with glory and grandeur!

Forget Barrack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States of America.

Forget the news that this is the first Official day of the UK recession.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is my 400th blog post.

Yes. That’s right. 400!

Since this blog’s inception in late 2006 I have continuously and without mercy produced 400 blog posts of varying length and dubious quality, luxuriously peppered them with photographs slyly half-inched from the World Wide Web, and thrown them to you, the blog reading masses, as if they were high class crumbs from my overflowing banqueting table.

Such food for though has passed before your poor fatigued eyes! Subjects such as Nigella Lawson, politics, television, celebrity culture, music, Keeley Hawes, parenthood, Lego, work and even how to wash up a tea mug have all been righteously laid before you like the tenets of a new religion.

And how you have gorged yourselves, you lucky people!

No, no, please don’t bow or scrape, there really is no need.

But it has not all been bouquets and banners! Oh no! There were some – you know who you are – who thought this blog would never amount to anything. Thought it would die, bawling and howling in its infancy, a shrivelled negatively potentialled hybrid of overweening ambition and undergrasping ability. You thought I’d get bored within the first 6 months. You thought I’d get sidetracked by the flash-bang-wallop of hardcore internet porn and the gaudy lure of online Poker. You thought I’d be discovered by the Head of Writing at the BBC who would snap me up like the last green triangle in a tin of Quality Street and beg me, dry-humping my leg as the tears roll down his face, to co-write the next series of Doctor Who and officiate over the next batch of period dramas primed to emerge from the pen of Andrew Davies.... no, no, Steve, you must give up this blog writing malarkey immediately, Hollywood beckons for one such as you, don’t cast your pearls before swine, your seed onto barren ground (you must leave the internet porn alone)... you must step up to the plate, dear boy, scripts must be written, book deals signed, an e-book autobiography with Flash and interactive content must be penned (keyboarded)...

But I said “nay!” And lo I sayeth “nay!” again.

I am going nowhere. This blog shall not be moved. This blog shall stayeth forever. Yay e’en unto perpetuity and the electronic eternity (server functionality excepted). Have no fear that I shall desert you, dear reader. I shall turn my back on all offers of wealth, stardom, critical acclaim and cheap easy sex with breast heavy celebrities who present property shows on Channel 4. I shall keep the Bloggertropolis standard held aloft and rippling in the breeze and my mind purely on the blogging tasks at hand for now and for ever more.

No need to thank me. This is simply what I do. Be confident and assured. Rest easy, dear reader.

I am going nowhere.

Absolutely. Effing. Nowhere.

Whiner Diner

Apologies to my international readers (oh what a thrill to be able to say that) who won’t have seen the relevant programme but I’m greatly enjoying “Big Chef Takes On Little Chef” at the moment.

I don’t usually go overboard on cooking / food TV shows (unless they feature Nigella Lawson’s oscillating bosom as she hand whisks a soufflé) but this particular outing has reeled me in hook, line and sinker.

For those of you that don’t know, celebrity chef of international renown, Heston Blumenthal, has been engaged by the big boss of Little Chef to revitalize the company’s ailing fortunes by souping up (ahem) the old hackneyed menu and injecting a bit of dynamism into their geriatric “business model”.

Hmm.

Apparently, in its heyday, Little Chef was a motorway restaurant of world class reputation.

??!

Yes. I was surprised by this revelation too as, even in my childhood, Little Chef was only ever viewed as a toilet stop of the very last resort on long motorway journeys rather than as a place in which the human body could be effectively nourished – and, to be honest, you had to be faced with some pretty scummy hedgerows and embankments to prefer the dubious environs of the Little Chef latrine to spraying the contents of your bladder over the passing wildlife.

But I digress. The Little Chef boss – a man both improbably vacant and impossibly conniving whose name I have deliberately forgotten (let’s just call him David Brent) – has drafted in Heston to “blue sky think” his company back onto the fast track to fame, fortune and Michelin starred glory. Mr Brent – let’s not think of him as a company director, more of a chilled food entertainer – wants pizzazz; he wants culinary extravaganza, he wants the wild, the wacky and the wonderful. He wants some of the “out there” experimentation that has put Heston’s own restaurant – The Fat Duck – onto the global map. And he wants it all for under £10 a head in a greasy motorway restaurant who’s kitchen equipment doesn’t extend beyond a griddle and a microwave and staff who have no idea how to operate a saucepan (“where’s the effing button to turn it on?”).

Mr Brent’s utopian vision of culinary excellence ran into one or two fundamental obstacles right from the start.

1) The “out there” experimentation at The Fat Duck costs punters approximately £250 a head (to quote an unabashed Heston) which is a little out of the price range of the average Little Chef punter...

2) Heston did what Mr Brent should have done, i.e. some real actual market research which quickly confirmed what was bleeding obvious to everybody from day one: Little Chef customers don’t want to be chowing down on snail porridge or beef hotpot with oysters floating around in it. They want the legendary Olympic Breakfast. They want ice cream that’s cheap and cheerful. They want fish fingers and chips that look like fish fingers and chips. And they want baked beans with everything.

Heston, to his credit, realized immediately that his normal fare would never be acceptable in the kind of establishment that Little Chef epitomizes and reined in his humungously large creative flare to come up with stuff that was far more suitable and appropriate, i.e. ideas that stood a chance of actually being implemented by the socially lobotomized staff on the front line.

Good ingredients, fresh and nutritious, cooked well and served fast. Shazam!

The basics of any successful restaurant business surely?

Mr Brent didn’t seem to get it though. He was disappointed with Heston’s ideas. In fact he rather insultingly told him that “any celebrity chef could have come up with such a menu”. Cheeky get.

I won’t go on. Suffice to say that it is surprisingly addictive viewing: Heston trying to maintain his integrity in the face of political manoeuvring behind closed doors (and frequently off-camera) and soldiering on in the slow-dawning knowledge that the Little Chef upper echelons are merely using him as a marketing ploy without any real commitment to re-branding their product. And Mr Brent’s constant media speak and blue sky malapropisms.

The show highlights where the problem lies with most ailing businesses these days. Forget the Credit Crunch, the fault lies in the fact that they are invariably run by sad little egotists who are accountable to nobody but their own shareholders and who are obstinately out of touch with what their customers really want.

It’s no wonder that so many of them are going to the dogs.

And I have to say, the hedgerows of the M40 are looking better by the minute...

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.

The Staycation

Staycation.

I've been hearing this word a lot in the media recently and I suspect it's an occurrence that will only increase in volume as the chipperly named "Credit Crunch" continues to bite.

Basically people can no longer afford holidays abroad anymore. Even more basically people can no longer afford holidays in their own country anymore.

Bognor... Blackpool... Lyme Regis... Centre Parcs... Butlins...

All too damned pricey in this current climate, mate, and that's even before you've counted the cost of getting there, meals, ice creams every day for the kids, the odd spot of bungee jumping, the "penny" arcade, watching Roy Chubby Brown harrumphing his dead horse of an act across an unwashed, ply wood stage...

Much cheaper to stay at home. And more convenient. The kids can have the PlayStation: they're happy. Mum and dad can have a lie-in without the fear of having to mug up on the artefacts in the Museum / London Dungeon / Art Gallery that inevitably constitutes the compulsory "cultural" part of the holiday: they're happy. And the car doesn't break down on the hard shoulderless stretch of the M40: the AA are happy.

Nobody is really missing out on anything.

I must admit, Karen and I abandoned plans for a week away last August and instead pottered around the house, visited friends and tried to spend as little money as possible whilst extracting the most amount of fun from our time off together. I have to say I really enjoyed it.

Not that I've hated my holiday times in Wales, or Italy, or... er, the hundreds of other places that I've been to. But sometimes - let's be honest - holidays can be exhausting. How many of us have come back from a holiday so tired that strictly speaking we could do with another week off just to rest and recover?

So why not just have the week's rest? Why not have a week at home doing something that you rarely get a chance to do in life: enjoy being at home (without being "off sick")?

You could save more than just a few pennies. You could save your energy, cut down on stress and improve your health.

Now I realize I'm probably not doing my bit for the economy by discouraging people to spend their money and I'll be the first to admit I'm flicking my V's at the current batch of gormless Thomson's adverts that are doing the rounds on TV ("...go on, book a holiday with us, you're money is safe, honestly, we're not going to go bust...") but, much as I enjoy foreign travel (and I do), a staycation is just right up my street.

Quite literally.

The Cock Tree

This newest of Leamington landmarks appeared, proud and ready erect, sometime in the run-up to Christmas.

One morning the tree was inoffensively asexual and passive and the next it was unmistakably male and “up for it”.

The worst thing about this most unimaginative bit of graffito is that it lies (stands?) smack bang in the middle of my route home from work and is absolutely unavoidable unless I take a detour of several hundred miles (a bit of an exaggeration) in order to avoid the accusing stare of it’s malicious helmet.

When you are on foot after an exhausting day at work such a detour is, quite frankly, unpalatable and so I inevitably run the gamut of the helmet and find myself tutting at it every single time.

Lord knows I’ve tried to see the funny side. I mean graffiti can be entertaining. Even educational when it’s produced by someone with a brain cell that can rub its shoulder up against another one.

Maybe there is some hidden pagan quality about this site that I am in complete ignorance of? Maybe it is a site of extraordinary virility like The Long Man of Wilmington? Scores of barren women come to this tree by night, drop their camisoles and sit praying meditatively for a patient and cold buttocked half hour on its gnarled and horny roots (steady!) in the hope that the old gods of the forest will make their wombs fruitful and overflowingly productive?

Maybe this graffito is an emblem of an all male secret society that I have patently not been invited to join that celebrates the leaping vitality of the male member in various (inevitably) homo-erotic rites that would, to quote Morrissey, make Caligula blush? They meet by night, swigging bottles of Diamond White and cans of Special Brew, and there by the light of the full moon they sing carousing songs of maleness, pledge allegiance to Old One Eye and prove their devotion to the cause by dropping their hoodies to reveal their... er... hoodies...

Sadly I suspect not.

Sadly I suspect the real story is that a rival gang from one of Leamington’s neighbouring towns – Warwick or Kenilworth perhaps – decided to make a foray into enemy territory late one night and tarnish the reputation of us resident Leamingtonians by implying, pictorially, that we are all great big nobs. Let’s face it, it could even be the handiwork of a disenchanted and disenfranchised local boy who, tired with his lot, tired with the fact that his own town refuses to see his celebrity potential and burgeoning star quality decided to hurl his overlooked artistry into the cold, uncaring faces of all those who lived and worked around him before hurling himself, aerosol can in hand, onto the train tracks at the back of Flavel’s factory, there to be squished under the locomotive wheels of the 9.25 to Dorridge.

This penis could be his final testament. His last will and willy to the world.

Oh who am I kidding?

It’s just no-good, scruffy, bored kids isn’t it? They’ve disfigured what was a very beautiful tree just for the sheer hell of it and I have to look at the damned thing every time I go home from here to sodding eternity and there is nothing that can be done about it – no cleaning agents that can remove it without damaging the tree, no way of eradicating the graffiti short of felling it’s living host. Curse them. Curse them and their amoral can of plebeian aerosol paint!

They’re great big cocks the lot of them.

The Shit Sandwich

The shit sandwich is a day where nothing goes right.

Actually that isn’t enough for a shit sandwich. It’s a day when everything that can go wrong does go wrong. And all the things that can go wrong delight in their wrongness at exactly the same time.

You get a deluge of wrongness.

If you’re feeling ill and have slept badly the night before that’s even better because then the shit sandwich becomes a club shit sandwich.

Extra big filling. With mayo. Ooh great. Just for me? How kind.

The club shit sandwich also has vicious peppercorns in it that lodge painfully between your teeth and gums like explosive grit. You carry the taste around with you all day. So much so that everything else you experience on that day also begins to taste like shit. It’s like the shit sandwich is spreading or... even worse... breeding.

And shit sandwich begat shit sandwich and its name was 12th January 2009...

The last thing you want to be doing when chowing down on a shit sandwich is gnashing your teeth but alas the Biblical allusions demand that this is done. So you gnash. And gnash. And it’s shit.

And it’s all yours.

Because people will share your lunch, your politics, your office stapler, your darkest secrets but nobody – nobody at all – will willingly share a shit sandwich with you. If you’re packing a shit sandwich you’re eating alone. It’s got your name all over it. Just your name. Just you.

Yes sirree. Sure looks good but if you don’t mind I’ll just stick with this here ham and lettuce... mm mm!

And you can’t blame them. You can’t blame them at all. Everybody gets a shit sandwich every now and then. It’s the way of the world. When it’s your turn to get a shit sandwich it isn’t a cup that can be passed on to someone else.

It’s bequeathed to you by life itself. You’ve just got to grit your teeth and make your way through it. Neck it down right to the last few flaky crumbs of the crust and hope that tomorrow it finds itself in someone else’s lunch box.

Because a shit sandwich isn’t like lightning. There’s no law that says it can’t strike in the same place twice...

There is after all such a thing as a double-decker shit sandwich...

*Sigh*

Pray for me, people. Pray for me.

I’m really not sure I have the stomach for it.

Happy New Year (Slight Return)

Not sure why this has stuck in my memory.

I guess being back at work for a week is a milestone of sorts and makes you look back at the Christmas interlude with fondness and see it as a thing entire to itself. An ideal and an idyll. A little island of warm safety in the midst of a cold sea. A mnemonic antidote to the cruel, cold, credit crunch period that is now lying ahead of us naked and war-like, without the consolation of Christmas to offset its callous advance.

Despite my natural curmudgeonliness Christmas was good. Despite Tom being ill on Christmas Eve... Despite Ben having an asthma attack on New Year’s Eve and having to be taken to the local hospital in the neighbour’s car as ours refused to start... And despite Tom getting an eye infection on New Year’s Day that made his left eye swell up like a golf ball...

Yes despite all this Christmas was good. Cool pressies. Decent TV. Lego. A fab array of new DVD’s to choose from. Fantastic food. Quality family time. And a 10 day break from work.

But what sticks in my mind most of all is a lone walk I made to Sainsbury’s on New Year’s Day to pick up a prescription for Ben. Sainsbury’s wouldn’t necessarily have been my destination of choice except that it was New Year’s Day and they were the only place open.

Nothing momentous happened. I didn’t experience an epiphany or see coloured lights in the sky or get invited to a party by a semi naked Keeley Hawes.

The last of the daylight was leaving the sky. There was a grey blue fog over the outskirts of Leamington and yet the sky above was clear enough to see the pale start of a few early stars. I took a shortcut over some wasteland in the middle of The Shires industrial estate. There was very little traffic. I was surrounded on all sides by the strangely quiet behemoths of warehouses and out of town distribution centres. All their lights off. The car parks empty. Their thin miles of wire fencing locked tight and secure.

All industry shutdown for the day. Everybody at home. Or disappeared completely. It was easy walking through that blue darkness to imagine myself the only person left in the world.

All of this will I give to you; just bow down and worship me...

And then into Sainsbury’s. A pleasantly muted shopping experience. Just a few hardcore purchasers searching out a few post Christmas bargains. Half empty aisles. The ghost of Christmas humming carols to itself over the tannoys. Cut price chocolates. Half price toys. I had a punt. Got New Year’s Day pressies for the kids and for Karen while I was there. Got something for myself too. Why not? Start the year with a treat.

Checked out. Paid for my goods. The world seemed normal and yet not normal. Quietened. It was nice. I found myself half wishing it could always be like this. The panic and fury gone from people. The rush and the haste eradicated.

And then back home across the wasteland. Getting annoyed every time the headlights of a passing car illumined the road and the hedgerows ahead of me as they spoiled the illusion that I was the last man left on the planet. An oddly reassuring fantasy as I knew that it just wasn’t true and there was a loving family and a warn fire waiting for me at the end of my journey.

And that was it really.

Writing it all down above I feel like I should have been moving the piece towards some sort of earth shattering denouement, shaping it, moulding it with some final revelation in mind. But there just wasn’t one.

There wasn’t one.

And I’m still not sure why it has stuck in my memory... but I’m very happy that it’s there.

I’ll carry it with me for a little while longer.

To Grit Or Not To Grit?

Back in the good old days when men wore cloth caps, drank real ale by the cartload and went to bed in hobnailed slippers icy roads and footpaths were rarely the source of major moral dilemmas. They were certainly not problematic enough to put you off your woodbines.

I mean the solution is simple, in’t it? Yer just sling a bit o’grit or salt down and tell people to walk proper careful like... It’s bloody winter what do you expect?

And should passersby still go arse over tit in the slippy conditions well... it’s only a laugh in’t it? That’s just the way life is. And if you end up in th’ospital wi’ a broken ankle or two we’ll drink ter yer good ‘ealth in pub later... no ‘arm done, like.

All sounds very sensible and civilized to me.

But alas, the good old days are no more and instead we find ourselves mired neck-deep in the modern age of political correctness and litigious opportunism.

You see gritting the pathways these days is a can of worms or a hot potato that few are brave enough to handle and in dear old Leam (from which I hail) such moral dilemmas cause many a frilly knicker to be entwisted.

In the modern age it seems one (and by one I mean an individual or a corporation) can be successfully sued if one decides to grit an icy pavement but a passer-by still falls over upon it and splinters a rib or three on a frozen dog poo... whereas if you do nothing at all and they fall headlong into a storm drain and break their neck they can’t touch you for a single penny. You are not responsible.

Crazy but true.

And I have it on good authority that this bizarre state of affairs is just as applicable to home gritting / salting. If you grit your pathway and your friendly neighbourhood postman cracks open his knackers in a spectacular pratfall that sees a recorded delivery parcel inserted somewhere tight and moist he can sue your ass to kingdom come. But if you leave the pathway as nature intended and he still anally ingests your brown paper wrapped package from Holland well it’s just tough titty cos he can’t touch you for a rusty farthing.

As true as I’m sitting here at the foot of our stairs.

Now, am I the only person in this country to think that such a selfish, mealy mouthed, spiritually impoverished outlook is a national disgrace? Indeed, is it a national disgrace or is such jobsworthy (mis)conduct just a local (in)delicacy confined to the ice-covered streets of Leamington Spa?

Surely as a nation we are better than this? Surely to do something is always better than doing nothing? Don’t we have a responsibility to each other as well as to ourselves? Isn’t there such a thing as a communal duty of care?

Do we really want to see Mrs Scoggins from number 73 cracking her spine in half performing an ice skating move worthy of Torvill and Dean in their heyday as she takes a walk to the local post office to buy a second class stamp?

Ladies and gentlemen, your thoughts please.

Go To Hell

ITV do bad sci-fi.

This wasn't always the case. I have very fond memories of Sapphire & Steel as a kid but I'll be the first to admit that my powers of discernment were a little erratic when I was 10 years old (I also rated Chorlton & The Wheelies among my favourite shows).

But in later years ITV has consistently failed to produce / buy-in a decent sci-fi show. God knows they've tried. For example, in recent years we've had the God-awful Primeval. That show tried so hard to attain the level of "sci-fi cool" it was too painful to watch.

And now - broadcasting for the first time last night - we have Demons.

I'm sad to say that it suffers from the same malaise as Primeval. Stilted, amateurish scripts, transparent plotlines, sketchy characterization and a too heavy reliance on CGI effects and rubber latex (as in face make-up rather than anything kinky in the bedroom - alas).

It's a pity. It has some winning ingredients: Philip Glenister; that sexy doc girlie from Survivors (Zoe Tapper). And, er, that's about it.

But really that should be enough. Glenister is just cool per se. He holds the screen like a Hadron Collider magnet. And Tapper just oozes a rampant snoggability that promises to set the screen alight.

So why doesn't it work?

It doesn't work because the writer's at ITV are plainly clueless in the art of using an asset to its full potential. They lumber Glenister with a "rilly stoopid" American accent. Glenister is a fine actor but he ain't no Chicago street punk. And for some reason they've decided that Tapper's character should be blind - which means most of her dark, smouldering looks are directed at various inanimate objects such as vases, pillars and Ikea bookcases. What an effing waste!

But worse still is the sad, creatively bankrupt adherence to a sci-fi formula that ITV have yet to realize doesn't work: young pretty boy in the male lead and young pretty girl as his counterpart (and "will-they-won't-they" love interest). The trouble with pretty young-things (especially when they're virtually unknown) is that it is damned hard to care a gold-plated fart about them. I spent much of the show hoping they'd both get dragged down to Hell and demoned up like Pinhead from Hellraiser.

Alas it was not to be.

The entire episode felt like it was a first draft (or an idea from one of those annoyingly funny Orange cinema adverts)... It was clumsy. It was cynical. It just doesn't work.

The BBC are far more subtle in their approach to sci-fi drama. Whatever misgivings one may have about Doctor Who or Torchwood I have to admit that they're casting has been consistently good and they're not afraid to cast against type and allow actors to surprise us with their range. ITV, however, consistently play it safe and what we get is a wishy-washy, story-by-numbers, spooky horror story that is kid friendly but hopelessly mediocre if you're an adult.

And as for the demons... geez, they're not scary at all. They're grotesque, yes, but in a comical Carnivalesque sense. There's no sense of unholiness or otherworldliness about them. I like my demons to be genuinely unsettling - think Clive Barker or Aleister Crowley. Not people daubed in weird latex and plastic that appears to have been transported through time from the 1970's.

Which brings me back to Sapphire & Steel.

Was it really any good? Or have ITV always sucked at sci-fi?

Roominations

Completely off topic this (in that this post is going to make scanty reference to it being the first day of 2009 and all that "New Year Resolution" kind of jazz)...

Whilst sitting monged in front of the telly during this festive holiday I recall hearing some news that both filled me with despair and inspiration. Well, inspiration of sorts.

Apparently Davina McCall has been quoted as saying that she believes that Big Brother can "run and run and run". I.e. Forever. For perpetuity. Until the End Of Time.

Naturally, being the presenter of the UK version of the show this is more than likely Davina's most fervent wish but my first reaction was "Oh God, is this nation never going to grow up and move away from reality TV smut and tawdriness? Are we forever going to be obsessed with the psychological ingrowing toenails of dysfunctional people who plainly do not know any better?"

Reality TV is the dark stain on the modern psyche. Some people are honest and just admit that they love it. Other people - people like me - profess to hate, loathe and despise it and yet eventually get sucked in. Even if only for a little bit.

It's impossible to ignore. The media goes wild for it. It's on the news, in the papers and, most insidious of all, in the workplace.

With a new series of Celebrity Big Brother about to hit the small screen I just know that the sole topic of conversation at work for the next month or so will be the luridly ridiculous shenanigans of the new series of CBB.

And although I'll resist at first eventually I will succumb and plunge into the whole tawdry circus because I will want to have an opinion.

And that, folks, is how it gets the likes of you and me.

Because suddenly we care. We care even though in three month's time we know that we won't care at all.

So I've come to the startling conclusion that Davina (God bless her) is right. Big Brother will run and run. We'll never be free of it. It's become as essential a component of modern living as the mobile phone. It's the norm. Like Christmas in fact. They'll soon start publishing the broadcast dates of future BB series on retail calendars that we can buy in the shops. There'll be Bank Holidays planned around it.

So if we're going to be stuck with it I've decided to throw my hat into the ring and offer some BB themed suggestions to any programme producers out there who might be reading this post this morning and are willing to take a punt or two in terms of hard ready cash to see them "realized" on TV.

1) I'd like to see a politician special. Just politicians. From all parties. But rather than having them cut off from the outside world I'd like them to be hardwired / bluetoothed to the outside world. I'd like them to continue working. I'd like them to continue working in an environment so transparent that not only can their opposing party counterparts see what they get up to but so can we. Now that would be a social experiment worth conducting surely?
Too dry? Too heavy? Try this...

2) How about all the presenters of CBeebies doing a CBB (CBeebiesCBB?) special? Chris Jarvis, Pui Fan Lee, Andy Day, Sidney Sloane all locked into the house with Mr Tumble for 3 agonizing months... Think of it. They're so pure and seemingly innocent when they're singing songs on Kid's Telly and putting their teddies to bed in the CBeebies studio every evening... but what and who will get put to bed after they've been holed up in the CBB house together for months on end? Will Pui wear her Tellytubbies costume and drive Mr Tumble wild with desire? (Eh oh?!) Will Chris Jarvis wear her cast-offs and fess up about his exact location on the nation's communal gaydar? Can they all really be that cheerful and chipper all of the time? We need to know!
Hmm. Too sleazy, perhaps? Too sick?

OK. A final punt then:

3) We dig up all of the long dead comedians and great entertainers of yesteryear - Eric Morecambe, Leonard Rossiter, Kenneth Williams, Frankie Howard, et al - and place their corrupting cadavers (or little urns - geddit?) in front of the cameras for 3 months and watch a show that will undoubtedly prove to be far more entertaining and edifying than the sad batch of Z list celeb wannabes that Channel 4 has currently got lined up for the new series of CBB this year.

I'm done.

I rest my case.

Oh and did I mention...? Happy New Year to you all!

Personable Hygiene

Nice moment with Tom yesterday.

I had him sitting snugly on my lap while he happily munched his way through a chocolate coin or three.

Now any parent will know that a toddler + chocolate = C³ (Complete Chocolate Chaos). In layman's terms this means an end result that can be likened to an explosion in a chocolate factory. Willy Wonka hit by Jihadi terrorists. Cadbury's merging with Chernobyl. That kind of thing.

So being a wise boy-scout-like father I had a secret weapon stashed behind me: the wet wipe.

The wet wipe is surely the greatest invention of the Twentieth Century (after man-flu). Soft, moist and damned hard to perforate, their uses are multifarious and manifold but let's not go into all that right now.

Seeing that Tom was wearing the equivalent of chocolate gloves I reached sagely for my wet wipe with the speed of a sharpshooter...

Only to find that his hands were suddenly clean and spotless.

I was gobsmacked.

Smart kid. Maybe he'd learnt the art of licking his own fingers - thus cleaning himself and gaining maximum chocolate consumption pleasure?

Hey. I've produced a genius!

And then I saw my trousers...

Like I said. Genius.

Although he didn't say it I'm sure his eyes were mouthing the words: thanks for being there, dad.

*Sigh* No problem, son. No Problem.

The Ghost Of Christmas Post

You may (those of you who have not indulged too much in the warm liquid pleasures of mulled wine) recall that before Christmas I was performing a mull of a different sort - no, not Kintyre - but musing on the chances of Tom being ill over Christmas due to the effects of his second MMR vaccination.

Well, true to form Tom became very grouchy over Christmas Eve and steadily worsened as the evening drew on. Nothing too serious I'm relieved to say but it did mean Karen and I were extremely lucky if we managed 3 hours sleep that night... which made for a very blurry eyed, barely human Christmas day the morning after.

I must admit I was a zombie for much of the day and seemed to spend much of it trying to distract Tom with all the new toys that he wasn't at all in the mood to enjoy. Ho hum. Despite that though it was a good day. I suspect that when I look back on it the stress and worry over Tom will magically disappear and instead all will be basked in a tinsel glow of chicken cooked in goose fat and marvellous giftage of the superlative sort. Selective memory is a grand thing.

Thankfully Tom's reaction only lasted 24 hours and after a good night's sleep for us all on the 25th Boxing Day dawned bright and sunny and it felt like Christmas had finally arrived - a day late but no matter. Tom had a few presents left unwrapped and piled into them with gusto. That's the spirit!

The rest of managed a good haul too. Ben received a Nintendo DS - and has virtually had his nose pushed into it's shiny smooth screen since unwrapping it 2 days ago. The silence is a real novelty.

I showered my wife (steady, boys!) with gifts a-plenty including a fabulous peredot necklace, choice DVDs and books to entertain, educate and delight.

And as for yours truly... well... Some of you may recall a post from earlier this year. Namely this one.

Yup. You guessed it. I got it.

The term "happy bunny" springs to mind.

My wife is simply the best. And I'll fight any man, woman or reindeer who says otherwise.

God I love Christmas!

Turn Back Your Christmas Siege Engines

God knows I’ve never encouraged an “open door” ethos at the best of times but there is something about Christmas which makes me want to bolt and triple lock the front door with even more fervour than I do on the other 364 days of the year.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not being curmudgeonly just for the heaven of it – it’s just that there is something about Christmas which makes me want to “shut up shop” socially and just hibernate with my loved ones in the back of the cave... a nice roaring fire on the go, presents around the tree and good food all around. Peace and goodwill to everyone else undoubtedly and very generously... but preferably over there away from me and mine and no I don’t want to come out wassailing or drop in on people for a Christmas drink or (even worse) be dropped in on by guests that I have to crowbar out of the front door several hours later several hundred mince pies the poorer.

Am I being unreasonable? Inhumane? Has the spirit of Christmas turned white at the sight of my soul and fled across the county border in search of a host more warm and receptive?

Possibly. But I believe I am motivated by the best of reasons. A desire to savour my family in a fashion unadulterated by even the most feather light of touches from the outside world.

I mean, I have to deal with the world for every other day of the year and the world has to deal with me. Isn’t a break for us both at Christmas the ideal Christmas gift?

And it’s not like I’m wishing anyone ill. Sure, there are a few people who deserve to have their Christmas puddings laced with semtex and their Christmas stockings lined with poison tipped barbed wire but... not at Christmas, eh? Tis the season to be jolly. Peace and goodwill to all men, etc. Plenty of time in the New Year for pre-emptive strikes.

For now I just want to listen to the sounds of little hands ripping wrapping paper and the “Wows” and cries of “Oh I’ve always wanted this” as my wife opens her new frying pan and matching non-stick oven gloves (only joking, dear) and know that my defensive walls and moat aren’t being misconstrued by the other members of my species with whom I share this wonderful planet.

Cos I love you all. I really do.

And so what can I add but - God bless you all and hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!

And please don’t step on the front lawn. It’s mined.

When Heroes Grow Old

Heroes Unmasked was of double interest to me last night as not only did it preview the season finale of Heroes (due for UK broadcast next week) but also focused on Wendy and Lisa, the delicious duo who long ago were musical compadres of Prince and now score all of the incidental and theme music for Heroes.

I’ve long been a fan – from the early Revolution days, through Purple Rain and Prince’s purple patches and finally during their last incarnation as independent pop duo “Wendy & Lisa”. If I’m honest I still play their solo (duo?) albums on my MP3 player but then I’ve always been an eighties head at heart anyway.

But enough about my confused biology...

As the narrator introduced the theme for the night’s analysis they kindly cut to a clip of Wendy and Lisa grooving their funk-thang on TOTP – early nineties by my reckoning – all gorgeously teased hair, cheekbones, curvy hips and tight bouncing tops... how they enticed the eye even as they pleasured the ear... my excitement was mounting.

And then we were presented with the lovely ladies as they are today.

I feel down-right mean for saying this but they looked old.

I mean they looked “old” – not just older. Maybe it was the appalling light in their studio but they didn’t appear to have aged well.

I apologise. I don’t know why. I just feel the need to. For making such an uncharitable observation. I feel I’m being somehow mean spirited and disloyal. And I’m being grossly unfair. Their heyday was 20 years ago for God’s sake – what did I expect? I ought to be proud that they’ve spurned the cosmetic surgery route and have decided to stay au naturale. To stay real. They always were “real women” – it was part of the attraction.

And – let’s be honest – I’m no spring chicken myself. More like a leathery turkey. Old age is already digging its gnarled claws into my once plump and youthful flesh. I’m getting white hair all over the place these days (but enough about my bizarre biology)... Minor cuts are taking longer to heal... I’m grinding my teeth when I sleep... I go all sentimental when I hear Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas”...

It’s surely a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

And despite the wrinkles, despite the jowls, Wendy and Lisa have still got it for me. The old (no pun intended) spark is still there. So we wouldn’t go out partying anymore – what does it matter? So Wendy wouldn’t tease my bod with her quirky guitar licks – so what? There’s nothing wrong with a nice frappuccino in a quiet, downtown coffee house. And bowls, so I’ve been led to believe, is a fabulous sport. Hell, I may even enjoy a bus tour to an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical...!

Sigh. So it’s come to this: Wendy and Lisa have mutated in my mind from teen-hood fantasy girlfriends into imaginary aunties...

*Shrugs*

But if that’s how the cookies crumble, I guess I’ve just got to embrace it and move with the times... (now where did I put my pension book?)

MMR

People’s attitudes to vaccinations never fail to amaze me.

Tom went for his second MMR jab yesterday and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t overtaken with feelings of trepidation and anxiety for most of the day. Although the benefits hugely outweigh the risk this is nevertheless my own flesh and blood I’m talking about – not a faceless statistic – and the fears, no matter how small, become magnified by emotion.

The nurse told us that he could become “grouchy” over the next 72 hours (give him Calpol), he may develop a measles rash in 5 days time (give him Calpol) and in ten days time he may develop a rubella rash (great, just in time for Christmas – give him Calpol). Or he may have no reaction at all.

Hmm. On the whole it’s not a great prospect for the Christmas holidays but so much better than the alternative.

I had measles when I was 7 and it knocked me off my feet – quite literally – for 3 weeks. I couldn’t stand up unaided. I spent 7 days unconscious. It’s a truly horrible disease and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone let alone my 14 month old son. If I can beef up his resistance to such a nasty disease I’ll do it and very gladly.

But weirdly one of Karen’s friends is dead set against giving her kids any kind of immunization and has already said that she’d prefer her son to catch the actual measles disease and develop immunity the “natural way”. She thinks that, if properly managed, measles is easy to cope with and easy to nurse.

Karen and I were, if we’re honest, horrified.

People seem to forget or just be in pure ignorance of the fact that measles is a killer. They seem to be unaware of just how much infant mortality rates have dropped in the West because of immunization programmes over the last 100 years. Our kids enjoy the luxury – and it is a luxury – of good health and a relatively disease free existence because of organized inoculations. Fact. Without them I dread to think how may of our kids wouldn’t make it all the way to adulthood.

I realize there’s been lots of bad press and misinformation regarding the MMR jab but, really, the right information is all around and easy to come across if you look for it. It’s not difficult to make an informed decision.

But there’s the rub. This person thinks they are making an informed decision. And at the end of the day the decision is hers to make. I must add that this person is a fantastic mother – very forward thinking and not at all locked into an idea of mediaeval parenthood – but her stance regarding vaccination puzzles and troubles me.

If you have a choice between giving your kid a mild, carefully controlled dose of a disease to build up their immune system or giving them the full-blown, potentially fatal version of the disease to do the same isn’t it logical and far saner to go for the mild version? The end result is identical if all goes well but the two journeys could be vastly different.

You also, of course, run the risk of infecting other children by letting them develop the full blown version of measles – a factor that is completely eliminated with the jab. Another plus in its favour.

So surely there’s no real decision to make?

Sometimes it’s right that science interferes with and combats nature. The glamour of being a Luddite must surely fade when you’ve got a priest standing above you reading the last rites...

Double Acts

Two workmen engaged on a job will get it completed in half the time, right?

Wrong.

I know this for a fact because, in my normal line of duty, I have had copious experience of dealing with both the lone contractor and the contractor who brings his mate along to help.

The lone contractor is your friend. Fact. He’s on his own, he wants to get the job done as quickly as possible and get out of your hair with the minimum of fuss and mess. Which is exactly what you want too. Perfect. I feel an inordinate sense of relief when a lone contractor turns up.

Not so when “the comedy duo” turn up.

You see a workman and a workman’s mate will always see themselves as a comedy double act. A Bit Of Fry And Laurie. Baddiel and Skinner. Morecombe and Wise if they’re both of the older generation. Never French and Saunders for some reason – but maybe that’s a gender thing.

And they will see it as their sole purpose in life to entertain you and whoever is hanging around in the office for the duration of their visit. The job will take twice as long to complete because they will inevitably distract each other. They can’t help it.

The main workman will be the guy actually doing the job while his mate will merely sit nearby, pass the occasional adjustable spanner and be the fall-guy for all the comedy gold that his partner is endlessly spouting.

And they’ll have a pre-prepared script. Little stock phrases that they’ll wheel out for the benefit of those who are in ear-shot. I guarantee that their performance will include some if not all of the following:

“See what I have to put up with?”

“You should see him on a bad day.”

“You can’t get the staff these days.

“It keeps him out of trouble / off the streets.”

“Feel this if you don’t believe me.”

“Swings and roundabouts, mate, swings and roundabouts.”

“His mother dropped him on his head as a baby.”

“I could do it but I can’t guarantee it’ll be a permanent fix.”

“I won’t bore you with all the technical details.”

“You don’t have to be mad to do this job [pause for a single heartbeat] but you do.”

They’ll also employ a fine selection of sharp intakes of breath that range dramatically in length, pitch and sibilance and thus allow you to gauge the cost of the repair accordingly.

Their banter is invariably worse (i.e. more intense and infinitely louder) if women with breasts are in the vicinity. A little cleavage will see their body posture attempt to emulate that of freshly waxed 1970’s muscle men whilst paradoxically deepening the amount of darkly furry bum crack that they have on show. They will also lie about in strangely contorted positions as they attempt to reach the necessary bit of pipe work / electrical conduit and allow their beer guts to roll around on the carpet like separate legless animals made out of tripe. This is naturally a vastly effective mating display and inevitably has the heavily breasted ladies of the office positively drooling into their Tipp-ex. Or possibly gagging. One of the two.

They will also trick you into making them a free cup of tea by employing a gag straight out of On The Buses or some other down-at-heel British comedy film of yore.

“What’s the name of that little thing that you put golf balls on?”

“A tee?”

“Ooh lovely, milk and two sugars in mine, please.”

Doh. How can I possibly defend myself against such forceful rapier like wit?

It strikes me that life must be fine indeed for the workman with a workman’s mate. You swan around all day thinking you’re Ronnie Barker. Curvy office ladies adore you. You get to handle the odd spanner or three and you sup all the free tea you can slosh into your voluminous belly. And you get paid vast amounts of money for taking 2 hours to do a 10 minute job.

Fantastic.

Hmm. I need to get me a beer gut and a comedy partner all of my very own...

TV In A Coma (I Know, I Know It’s Serious)

As any cable subscriber will tell you television reception can be, at times, akin to a half shaken Etch A Sketch – a frozen mosaic of tiny squares with accompanying aural effects that sound remarkably close to Colonel Bogey being played under water by an asthmatic tuba lover.

Not so much oompah oompah as plain old bah.

This doesn’t happen often (t’otherwise nobody would pay for a cable service, would they?) but round where I live one sudden shock of cold weather is enough to make Virgin Media’s cable technology huddle up in a foetal position and refuse to play technological ball.

I’m sure Mr Branson would blame other adverse catalysts such as high tech mismatches of information packets and misdirected routings of fibre optic data but between you and me: it’s the cold. A bit of frost and News 24 resembles a kid’s finger painting. I’m so glad I invested in a widescreen TV.

Such a denial of service occurred on Sunday. No kid’s telly. No Dave. No UKLiving. No Catchup TV. Nothing.

Things looked glum for all of ten minutes.

And then we rediscovered the various and multifarious delights of (a) silence (b) music and (c) books.

It was amazing. Without the TV cracking its whip the day opened up into vast pastures of possibility. Suddenly time itself seemed to expand and cast off the shackles of enforced half hour slots of no-brainer entertainment. The day was pregnant with opportunity.

It made me realize how television – for all it can be a marvellous educational aid – also prevents you from thinking ‘outside the box’ (if you’ll pardon the pun). As soon as it is switched on the day seems to be mapped out and segmented according to what the various TV channels are broadcasting. You totally forget the many other home comforts that are available to enhance your living experience.

For most of Sunday we enjoyed a little quiet island of TV-less bliss.

Thanks to the efforts of the Virgin Media engineers the TV returned to life at the end of the day all mended and functioning normally... but, I have to say, looking a little bit nervous. A little bit insecure around the edges.

You see, we hadn’t missed it. We’d coped. We’d realized we could survive without it.

There was a New World Order.

The seeds of a comfortable rebellion have been sown...

Hello I’m A Recorded Message

We’ve all received these calls.

They usually ring at the weekend, mostly at meal times or when you are feeling stressed (how do they know?), trying to juggle preparing a meal for the kids, finalizing household paperwork and doing the hoovering – and I have never yet stayed on the line long enough to hear what they are actually offering me or what I have supposedly “won”.

Even before you hear the voice you can tell that it’s a recorded message. I’m not sure what it is – a slight buzz of white noise, a breeze of tinny static, the complete absence of real 3D background atmosphere... and then that first formal “hello” pierces the unreal silence. Devoid of all emotion – no warmth, no enthusiasm – all the personality of a 1980’s chess computer.

You just know that the poor sap paid to record the message was forced to do so in a darkened room. Cut off from all human contact, not even a copy of Heat magazine to keep him company and remind him that he was part of the human race, he forgot that he was flesh and blood, that he had a heart. And he was forced to say the words over and over again until he was word perfect. Over and over again until the words lost their meaning and became abstract sounds. A series of yowls and glottal stops. Dark noise.

Which is why I find such calls not just annoying but also deeply insulting.

They can’t even be bothered to pay for a real human being to talk to me – to interact with me. To sit there politely while I tell them to eff off because I don’t want to change my mobile phone or buy some central heating or even install new conservatory windows into my home. Instead they let a faceless, soulless computer that has vampirically absorbed a man’s voice do the talking.

Now I don’t as a rule make a habit out of talking to machines. Well. That’s not strictly true. I do sometimes talk to my computer and very occasionally I’m even polite but, given a choice, if I have to talk to someone or something I wouldn’t choose a machine that is incapable of registering a vocal response.

You see, you can’t even tell these recorded messages to sod off with any degree of satisfaction because the machine is so beyond caring it won’t even shrug, it won’t flush brightly with embarrassment – it won’t feel hurt or ashamed at having to do such a crappy, utterly pointless job – a job that can only provoke loathing and hatred in its target recipients.

All you can do is put the phone down. You don’t even slam it. There’s no point. There’s no one there to feel the heat of your anger. You’re denied that one essential outlet.

How dare they!

At least have the decency to face the music! At least have the courage to take the verbal assault that has been aroused.

I know, I know. There are lists you can join, opt-out databases that will remove your phone number from any possibility of junk / spam infiltration but it’s a fag and why the hell should I?

One last thing: what kind of business man even thinks that cold calling people with a recorded message is going to be a successful marketing campaign anyway? I don’t know of one person that listens for longer than 3 seconds. There’s always that fear in the back of your mind that the call is a scam and you are being charged £150 a second just to listen to some nasally goon bluster his way through a shoddy, independent radio station sales script.

They cannot possibly make a single sale or a single penny.

What is the point?

If such a business man is out there reading this then the old adage definitely holds true:

Don’t call me. I’ll call you...

“Hello. This is a recorded message. You are most definitely being charged for this call.“

Christmas Hare

I’ve been caught napping yet again.

Like something out of one of Aesop’s legendary fables I commenced Christmas Shopping in late October with the speed of the Hare: off from the blocks at 90 mph, kicking up enough dust and tinsel to give the elf’s in Santa’s workshop chronic asthma and with a cast iron certainty that this year I would win the race well ahead of the pack for sure.

But you know how it goes.

Online shopping is so easy. One morning of pulverizing the plastic and it’s practically all done. Got the wife sorted. Got the kids mostly sorted. Just a few items leftover that you actually have to go outside and proper shop for.

But there’s plenty of time. Christmas is months away. I’m tired now. I’ll just take a quick nap underneath this tree and then I’ll be off again in no time. Relax. That tape is as good as breasted.

And then you wake up and Christmas is just 19 days away. Mere weeks. And all the Tortoises who have been plodding away slowly but constantly are now well ahead of you. They’ve already bought and written all their Christmas cards. They’ve already got their wrapping paper bought and their presents already wrapped. They’ve already posted all their stuff well ahead of the rush for the post boxes and the last Christmas delivery slots. They’ve already cleared the shelves of all the good stuff before you even set foot inside the store.

So now the panic is setting in. Every year I do this – end up playing Christmas chicken and doing everything at the last minute – and always swear that next year I’ll be more organized and get it all finished well ahead of time.

Yeah right. And maybe next year I’ll get this sheep’s clothing to fit me as well...

But For The Grace

I’ve been suffering from bear-with-a-sore-head syndrome for the last few weeks.

Not without cause I hasten to add: illness (still got a dodgy tummy), essays due in at Uni, the mad pre-Christmas rush to get loose ends tied up at work, my novel’s ground to a temporary standstill as other priorities take over, Tom has had a permanent head cold since starting at nursery which often leads to broken sleep for all of us, money worries, Christmas stress...

I believe the phrase is “at low ebb”.

But there are times when I am reminded of how damned lucky I am. My best mate’s youngest son is constantly in and out of hospital – some kind of chromosome defect has left him with poor eyesight, poor hearing, an inability to retain his balance and a host of other problems. He’s going to be in and out of hospital for the rest of his life I suspect. He’s only 5 and has already had it tougher than most.

Then there was the news item on TV this morning. Something like 10% of children in the UK are now thought to be subject to some kind of abuse – most of it carried out at home by family members.

I looked at Tom, sitting in his feeding chair, munching on a Malted Milk biscuit as yet another green line of snot wormed its way down to his biscuit encrusted top lip and I gave him a big hug. I got a “yum” back but this was probably a comment on the biscuit rather than the hug.

Life ain’t so bad.

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.