Wednesday, April 29, 2009

People Smote Latest













Not a good week to be struck by anything in the Evening Standard.

However, if I may make a couple of suggestions, I believe that the struggling local paper could make a few amendments and sell shed-loads more.

IE: picture one, just remove the last word of the sentence. Much more interesting.

As for picture two; add the words "-seeking missile".

There you go; increased circulation, more entertainment, and let's face it, no-ones goes to the Standard for the truth.

Sunday, April 26, 2009

Shoebox Visits: Enfield

Not many shops like this anymore.

Well not since that nutter shot someone and dumped the body in the canal strapped to a moped with fishing tackle.

No one needs that kind of press.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Satisfaction: Go Girls!

Dogs in Pubs Special

My local as a lad, The Red Lion, was a mid-seventies shit-hole in the era before anybody thought that pubs should be anything more than a place that men could meet and get drunk.

It was rough as arseholes, but the only fight I ever saw there was between a couple of dogs that took exception to each other and overturned the old boys table by the cigarette machine.

That was back in the days when old men, dogs and cigarettes were welcome in our pubs.

About fifteen years ago, on leaving a Weatherspoons, a chatted to a couple sat outside in the cold with their collie. They explained that the dog was unwelcome in the bar and had to endure the weather as a result. I assumed that this was just indicative of Weatherspoons corporate sprawl in its mission to destroy the English pub.

It was therefore a bitter disappointment to see that the no-dogs policy won, as bars became anodyne and child-centered and the rest of us had to sit at home unwanted with our cheap supermarket tinnies.

However, my local now, which was poorly run until a year ago, is undergoing a rennaisance, not just in employing staff who actually know how to serve, but in being indiscriminate as to who they allow in.

There were four dogs in tonight. The big wolf dog, who is a regular; a large headed sweetheart of a Lab cross who was love on legs; a rather non pit-bull variant poorly supervised by some slag with low-self esteem, and finally, with a large group of lesbians on a denim-themed night out, a big grey aging Lurcher with the longest snout I've ever seen.

The best part was when the Lurcher joined it's lesbian friends in the restaurant section. No one objected, and the sky didn't fall in, so a little bit of England managed to sprout like a lily through asphalt.

Dogs in pubs NOW! Woof Woof!

Friday, April 24, 2009

Ireland In The News

BBC presents run of the mill rampant bull in supermarket story

Step On Etc.

The best electric guitar that I ever owned was an Epiphone Les Paul Junior double-cut in cherry which I bought in 1996 from a now extinct music store in Muswell Hill.

It was confined space, which despite its comforting intimacy, raised a problem as I inspected the guitar. As I began to run through my limited guitar store repetoire I found myself competing with a chap who was nervously trying out a trombone over by the door. Whenever I started, he started. When I stopped, he stopped. Basically, he wanted me to mask the cacophony that he was generating. This meant that I had no idea what the guitar sounded like, unless I was planning to play in a band alongside a novice trombone player.

That was only thirteen years ago, yet that kind of shop, where you could buy electric guitars alongside trombones seems something from a distant past.

I mention this on the news of the death of Johnny Roadhouse who equipped an entire generation of Mancunian musicians. His shop window was once described as resembling the contents of a dredged canal.

Great days.

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Put It Away!

Some years back, in a previous home in North London, I lived down the road from a Greek family, the son of which owned a BMW.

You knew that he owned a BMW because he spent most evenings cleaning and polishing it, or carrying out "essential maintenance". It was always parked conspicuously, yet unwisely, directly outside of his parents' house, despite its vulnerability to insane speed that other motorists would exhibit in careering blindly over the adjacent railway bridge.

And just in case anyone missed the point that this young lad owned a BMW, he would spend the rest of his time sitting on the wall outside of his house with his mates, talking about the BMW that he owned, the one that was just there in front of them.

I was given the impression that, to this young man there was little point in owning a BMW if no-one knew about the fact.

(I assume this is why young men now wear their Calvin Klein underpants on the outside. There is no point in paying the premium for underpants if no-one apart from your mum knows about it).

I mention this because purely to remark about an incident in my street this morning.

It's a quiet street with a settled older community, where families have lived there long enough to have raised children and seen them leave.

This is not true though in one particular household, where the son, a man in his forties, still lives at home with his elderly mother. However, this man may still be living with his mother, but he owns a Jaguar. Yes a Jaguar. It's raven black and has a soft-top.

This is a rather outstanding car for our street, as it's probably the only vehicle without a dent in it!

Anyway, despite his age, this chap feels compelled to manifest all the same compulsions of my earlier neighbour, particularly when it comes to the carwash preoccupation. Again, one assumes that this vehicle, rather than a successful career, or a lasting child-rearing marriage, represents the apogee of his life-achievement.

Whatever; I'm past caring since this morning's "display" when I witnessed a step too far. I had set out for work and was just getting into my stride when, on passing the said Jaguar car, I saw the owner emerge from his mother's house dress only in a towel. Yes, a towel, draped around his waste, partly obscured by the pendulous beergut that rested upon it. He didn't even have slippers, it was like he stepped out of the bath, barely covered his modesty and then just walked out into the street, like he was living in Liverpool or something.

He then padded over to his Jaguar, opened the boot (trunk), removed a suit and a white shirt, shut the boot and padded back into the house.

a) He was practically naked.

b) He is using a shiny Jaguar as a wardrobe.

c) He lives in my street.

We're having enough trouble with maintaining our inflated house prices as it is with the recession, without this white-trash floor-show turning up on Google Street View!

I feel cheapened and unclean.

Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Chemical Warfare Latest

I'm very sceptical about the way the authorities tend to group the copycat would-be activists with real terrorists, just to bump up the numbers to back claims about the size of the ongoing threat.

Let's face it, you're always going to get the unhinged loners with mental illness issues attracted to the appeal of the ultimate outsider status that comes with radical causes.

However, when Gloucester resident Sahnoun Daifallah set out to take on the world, I suspect that he was hoping for a better sobriquet than Urine Spray Man.

"Oh my God: what's that smell?"

"Look: it's Urine Spray Man!"

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Röyksopp

And it is to the Royal Festival Hall to wade amongst gay men for the appearance of Röyksopp with Fever Ray.


Thirty years ago a pal and I contemplated the problem of playing electronic music live, in that the equipment alone rendered one static.

The Human League bridged the gap some of the way with a slide show, but they still seemed rooted.

Well, in 2009 having enormous amounts of digital computer driven technology is certainly an advantage, but Torbjorn seemed to have it nailed, simply by wearing a stovepipe hat.

Why didn't we think of that?

Actually, I spent most of the evening comparing everything to the state of affairs in the seventies. My partner drew the conclusion that I was talking like a man who had just come out of prison after a long sentence.

Röyksopp were good fun incidently.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Macabre Easter Offer

Not sure of the efficacy of this window display in the local undertakers.

Possibly some comment on the Christian/Pagan Death/Birth dialectic.

Or just a bad idea from someone unable to imagine what this actually looks like.

Maybe they could sell urns that contain smarties?

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Cat Cash













When we were kids, we lived in a household that could only afford to have the TV Times and Radio Times once a year, with my mother spending out for the Christmas editions as a seasonal treat. Even then, she would spread the cost over two weeks by buying one first with the other to follow just as the holiday got under weigh.

Inevitably, she would react vehemently to the habitual defacing of these prized listings, as my brothers and I would set about them with ballpoints, adorning Hughie Green with a fine curly moustache, or enhancing Pat Pheonix with glasses and blacked-out teeth, or just writing the word "GIT" on Reginald Bousenquet's forehead.

My mother, no fan of anyone on a TV that she never had the time to watch, still felt that there was some act of disrespect in the defacing of these hard-working professionals who had obviously made sacrifices to get where they were.

However, it was a practice that we loved, and never quite grew out of.

By the time of the first 1974 election, I'd developed the habit onto a grander scale. Armed with stolen marker pens, with my pals Chris J and Malcolm L, I helped to decorate a giant poster of Prime Minister Edward Heath, turning him into Alice Cooper (a popular singing artiste of the day).

Imagine my joy, passing our work on the bus the following day, and hearing a child cry out "Look mummy! Look at that man!" and the mothers response, a disapproving "Someone's up to no good!"

In fact, I don't have access to the psephological data from that election, but I'm convinced that it was that very poster that accounted for Heath's defeat that year!

Anyway, to my point.

I was pleased to discover this alteration to the currency recently. It is part of a dying art and is to be heartily applauded.

Hoorah!

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

What Seems To Be The Trouble?

I was at the doctor's this evening, (none of your business, since you ask) sat in the waiting room amongst the poor of North London, when the intercom sounded and a GPs voice announce the name of the next patient.

The PA continued to buzz and click, before we heard voices being broadcast. The voices were that of the doctor and his patient, as the practitioner questioned the unwitting celebrity about his condition.

Those listening in the waiting room giggled amongst themselves as we heard about the embarrassing circumstances, and it became a little bit disconcerting as to just how much of the revelation we would become party to.

Mercifully, the conversation was interrupted by the sound of another intercom buzzing, followed by a click, the doctor's voice saying "Yes?" and the receptionist's reply of "your intercom is still on!!"

There was one further audible "clunk" and radio silence was resumed, accompanied by a roar of laughter from the assembled throng, a guffaw which was almost certainly heard by culprit and victim.

Imagine my caution, therefore, on being called in as the same doctor's next appointment.

"And what seems to be the problem?"

"Mumble, mumble" (points to anus, and raises eyebrows in a man of the world fashion)

Oh No Matron!

Monday, April 06, 2009

Thursday, April 02, 2009

The Damned United

The Damned United is a good film, and not really about football. Most people would understand its focus upon relationships and the notion that Brian Clough was consumed by a need to outdo Don Revie. It's a story about hubris.

What stops it being a GREAT film in the mould of Frost/Nixon is the miscasting.

Timothy Spall is good, but it's a missed opportunity to present (much taller and dapper) Peter Taylor as the motor behind Clough's ambition.

The greatest crime, however, is the failure to cast anyone forceful enough to play Johnny Giles and Billy Bremner. They're portrayed as some sort of shambolic double-act, rather than the driven and single-minded individuals that subvert Clough's ambition in the book.

Basic the decision to portray all the players as a bunch of unathletic slobs in cheap wigs undermines the integrity of the film, which is all the same well recommended.

Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Remember Clip Art?

































Well, it's still around, at least within the training material for a project management course I've been undergoing.

I'm afraid that these two examples may manifest more about the originator's troubled childhood than we need to know in a vocational programme.