Category Archives: Hats

Because William Shatner

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Whoever said “nostalgia ain’t what it used to be” was living in the past. Nostalgia, dear friend, is where the big bucks are. Everywhere you look there’s a movie or a tv show set in the recent past as that mythical beast, the Baby Boomer and his offspring, relive their youth. The new Star Trek movie is filmed in that stark, 60’s style of the original series. Ashes to Ashes— the follow-up to Life on Mars—is a tv show in which, from where I sit, the idea is how many Austin Princess‘s they can prang in any given episode (I don’t watch this load of old tosh, of course, but I’ve seen the trailers).

Last night the Beeb aired the story of George Best‘s relationship with his mum, and hers with a bottle of Sherry. The attention to detail was perfect, from the grubby state of the Belfast boozers, the thick wooly Man Utd shirts Georgie Boy wore, to the depth of the gusset on his dad’s trousers—could have got the whole team bus in there. Turns out that Mrs Best enjoyed a sharp single-or-three long before her son was lapping champers out of beauty queens’ navels. Who’d have thunk it?

George on the physio's bench. Hard tackle, presumably

George on the physio's bench. Hard tackle, presumably

At the weekend I watched the movie The Baader-Meinhof Complex: a rip-roaring romp of the 70’s left-wing German terrorist cell and their attempts to blow up the Fatherland, grow ridiculous facial hair and shag each other senseless. If you like your period drama with a lot of blood, guts and sideburns, this is the film for you, thoroughly recommend it.

 

On stage Mamma Mia, Jersey Boys and Grease are packing them in up West, and I’m sure I read the Pete Townshend‘s giving Quadrophenia the theatrical treatment for the first time. He probably had to do a hell of a lot of internet research for that one.

Green suits were very VERY trendy

My influences were Lee Thompsoin from Madness and Ginsters Pies

Music fans also have plenty of old stuff to feed on: I’ve been watching Madness comeback concerts for nearly 20 years, me and thousands of balding, bloating clones, that is. Next month I’m going along to Brixton next month to see the Specials on tour, and I suspect the crowd will be of the same stamp: 40-something blokes reliving their past. The good news is Terry Hall now looks older than I’ll ever, ever be. I wonder if these bands care about the age of their followers? Are they looking for a new audience or content to take the money from the old fan-base? (Chas Smash looks as if he’s eaten a few dozen stragglers from Madstock). I keep force-feeding my daughters my old music (in scenes reminiscent of the IPCRESS File), but I fear they’ll be listening to McFlea and Justin Timberland the minute my back and ipod are turned.

 

Spandau Ballet announced they were reforming and to embark on a world tour, Duran Duran‘s attempts at similar last year kinda got off to a bad start when Le Bon forgot the words to “Hungry Like a Wolf” (I bet Chas Smash knows them) causing the bassist to throw a hissy fit and storm off stage.
I would include Chas n Dave and Status Quo in this list, but as you know, dear reader, they’ve never gone away and their careers go from strength-to-strength.
So it’s official: The past is here to stay and all the while us old fatties chuck money at them there will always be 70’s and 80’s band lining up to reform and tour again (though Mel and Kim are gonna struggle). So dust off your staypress, box jacket and winklepickers, dig out those legwarmers and bore another hole in that boogie-belt; slip into that cable-knit and wear that titfer at a jaunty angle: we’re gonna work til’ we’re muscle-bound in this ghost town and there ain’t no stopping us now cos we’re the wild boys. Or something like that.

To cut a long story short you look an arse

To cut a long story short you look an arse

This Sporting Life

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Spring has sprung,
Da grass has riz,
I wonder where da boidies is?
Da little boids is on da wing,
Ain’t that absoid,
Da little wings is on da boid.

There’s something different about this morning. It maybe that, for the first time this year, I’m able to sit in my garden with a cup of tea without the fear of losing several digits to frostbite. It may be that the new European Champions at Rugby Union are Ireland. (4th place. FOURTH!! How d’ya like THEM leeks?). It may even be that the blue tits in my garden (no, nothing to do with the cold weather) seems to at last be taking an interest in one of the several bird boxes I nailed up over the winter months.

But no, there’s a spring in my step this morning because yesterday IT arrived, just as he promised it would. It came in the post yesterday morning (well, lunchtime—my postie likes his lie-ins nowadays) and was accompanied by a piece of paper on which he’d written “Drool Away”. “He” is my long-time pal Andrew, and “it” is my ticket for the first day of the Lords Test Match against the Australians this July. YES.

I can hear monocles flying out all over Tunbridge Wells, teacups smashing in the Garrick, and a million expletives uttered under a million breaths as a large proportion of the population come to terms with the fact that the tickets are out only a lucky few will get them.

I’ve been going to the Thursday of the Lords test with Andrew for nigh on 20 years now. Through thin and thin we’ve supported England as country after country have turned up at HQ with the press predicting they’ll be over-awed by playing at the Holy of Holys, only to teach the home side a lesson in, well, pretty much everything. I think we speak about six words to each other when we’re there, and we certainly never talk during overs. It’s heaven.

Hook THAT one, yer bastard!

Hook THAT one, yer bastard!

Supporting English cricket is not for the faint-hearted or the easily-disappointed (being a Charlton Athletic fan, you’d think I’d suffered enough unpleasantness), but addict and Addick as I am, I just can’t help myself. Imagine the thrill of seeing 2 out of the first 3 Aussie batsmen get clattered on the head when they were last here. It was hilarious beyond words. We stuck it to ’em alright. So they decided to return the compliment and rout us when it was their turn to bowl.

 

It happens with an almost predictable regularity but nothing can dampen the goose-bumped optimism for my team’s chances as I pass though the gates and enter the Great Place, awaiting those flanneled fools in their Green Baggies to skip down the pavilion steps. Anyone who’s been on the Nou Camp, the Augusta National, the Oval Office or the Taj Mahal must surely recognize that feeling. (In the Taj Mahal I always order the Doipaza and the Taka Dal, very tasty, and remember, they stop serving at 11.30 sharp). Twickenham is always a bit of a disappointment—it has to be the coldest , soul-less ground on earth, and oddly The Millennium Stadium, Cardiff knocks it into a cocked hat (have I mentioned that the Welsh came in 4th?).

So now the long build-up to that great day begins: There’s the Lions Squad to be announced (PLEASE DON’T TAKE THAT POWDERED PONCE HENSON), Charlton’s Oozalum season will come to it’s inevitable conclusion, and the drone of millionaires parading round an F1 track will soon be interrupting my Sunday lunchtime pint. But I have my ticket for Lords and that means cricket’s back in town, and the world seems a better place for it.

Now where did I put my lucky jockstrap?

A terrifying site for any Ozzie batsman

A terrifying site for any Ozzie batsman

Michael, They Have Taken You Away

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I fancy a quiet drink tonight. No, seriously I do. Well to be precise: I fancy a series of quiet drinks. But will I achieve my goal? Will I feck! Cos it’s time to wish one and all a Happy Guinness Marketing Campaign Day— the day second only to New Year’s Eve for the influx of wankers in the bars of London. You can guarantee an otherwise civilized watering hole will be full of the Amateur Brigade who have suddenly decided they can drink 3 pints of stout, and know all the words to the Field’s of Athenry, then collapse in a heap of black, drainpipe jeans and green foam hats, before you have the chance to swing a massive Dick Barton their way.
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What men want: A nice quiet pub and
obedient bar staff. Photo: Jude Davis

Oh God! I hate Paddy’s Night. Not that I have anything against the Irish, far from it— they are fine people and I’ve spent many, many happy days over there, in pubs, on rugby fields, then in pubs again, (I even had my Stag weekend in Cork). A great, great country so it is. So are the people. But it’s the affect their Patron Saint seems to have on us over here that almost makes me want to give up the black stuff (almost). He may have rid Ireland of snakes, but I wish he’d rid my pub of arseholes.

In past years I have reverted to lager so that I’m not associated with the baying mob (not that I’m agin lager either). I just refuse to take part in this night of shite, made possible only by the marketing men in Dublin. Arse!
I grant you, “If One Guinness is Good for You, Think what Toucan do” was a touch of genius, but passing out green top hats and t-shirts as a bribe to drink stout is a poor imitation of a smart marketing campaign which only students and ad-sales teams fall for.

I don’t celebrate St George’s Day. I don’t celebrate St Andrew’s Day. I stay indoors during that Welsh one. I raise the odd glass on Dec 25th for Happy Birthday Jesus Day, but that’s it. The rest is just steady, year-long quiet tippling IN MODERATION (that’s the key). So who are YOU to invade my privacy and MY boozer just cos you might get a free inflatable pint? Bugger off and use your Slug and Lettuces for such malarky. I shall raise a glass to the lads in green when they trample all over the Welsh on Saturday at Cardiff. Until then, like Josef Fritzl, I shall keep my head buried in a good book.
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Sláinte!

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Saturday Titfers

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Unknown Football ground photographed somewhere or other, circa dunno. Probably not the Valley.

Unknown Football ground photographed somewhere or other, circa dunno. Probably not the Valley.

In a quiet side street of the charming hamlet of Charlton, (as in ‘Charlton Athletic Nil’), South East London once stood a little pub called The Valley, named after the local football team’s home ground. A pretty unremarkable little boozer, which my brother and I used to go in for “just the one” at lunchtime on match days (we were supporters, you understand, not players. The players were in the boozer across the road).  It was suitably scruffy, unknown to traveling opposition supporters, and mercifully free of the formica and stainless steel decor favoured by the Slug and Pianos, the All Bar Funs and the Trout n Tillbox pub chains so popular with the roof of today.

But the feature of this pub which will stay with me forever was an old photograph on the wall. Or to be precise, a photo so large it stretched across two walls, floor-to-ceiling, in the main bar. It showed life as it was 60 years ago, a life sadly no longer with us. The photo at the top of this page , similar to the one in the pub,  will give you an idea of what I mean.

Pictured was the old, massive, main terrace at Charlton’s ground, presumably photographed just post-war. Several things struck you when you looked at the picture: That they used to sell-out home games; Some of the supporters were smiling; No-one was kicking seven shades out of anyone else; and everyone in the photo was male. But there was something else: of the nigh-on 20,000 people in the photo everyone, and I mean EVERYONE was wearing a hat. Be it a trilby, a flat cap, or whatever, EVERYONE wore a hat. Question: when the time came to throw your hat in the air in celebration of Charlton scoring a goal (quiet at the back!) how did you get your own hat back? It must have been carnage.

Charlton beating Liverpool 3-0 (yes, honestly). Not a dry hat in the house.

Charlton beating Liverpool 3-0 (yes, honestly) December 1959. The home goalie, Willie Duff, dives to clear some smudges from the photograph. Not a dry hat in the house.

I have a particularly big swede and I suspect I would have often walked home with someone else’s cap, 3 sizes too small perched, at a jaunty angle, on the top of my head, while some other poor little sod wore my one, having to walk four yards before the hat moved.

In 1953 Charlton beat Middlesbrough 8-1 which presumably meant that some of those present changed hats 8 times during the match. I wonder if after twenty minutes you ended up with a real corker of a titfer you just buggered off home and sod the result? Were you refused entry to the ground if you were hatless? What if your chapeau was a birthday present but the bloke standing 7 yards away caught it during the melee after a late equalizer? My mum would have gone Garrity if I returned home without it.

Sad I know, but it’s something that’s always bothered me.
The pub’s not there now. Demolished for yuppie flats, A Costa Coffee bar or somesuch. Gone the same way as epidemic hat-wearing, a thousand proper boozers around the country, and home goals at The Valley.