Tomorrow belongs to the BNP

Posted on May 14, 2009 by The Ed

Pic:FreeFoto.com

How am I expected to keep up with all this? Truth is, I just can’t. Andrew MacKay and Julie Kirkbride, Elliot Morley and John Maples etc etc etc: You win. I shall revert to rants about cricket and rugby and booze and the police and shopping and gardening. Anything really other than MPs’ expense claims. You lot are much funnier than me on this anyway. The only thing that won’t be funny is that people are going to be so off-pissed with the major parties that the rascists and the loonies will gain ground at the ballot box next time round. You fraudsters and scheisters should hang your heads. And I’m sure they’ll be lots more like you along any minute.

I was once hauled up in front of the beak—a particularly nasty, petty editor— who questioned my claim for a lunch with a friend on another publication who’d helped me/us on a really big story. He’d passed me phone numbers and details without which we couldn’t keep up with the then breaking news. Partly because of his help we looked sensational when we published. I took him out one afternoon and I treated him to a curry and a pint in a local restaurant. The bill came to 70 quid, 35 of which was treating myself (I wasn’t gonna let him eat alone).
An ex-colleague once tried to claim for mileage of 40 miles for a round-trip from Canary Wharf to The Millennium Tent in Greenwich. I wondered if he’d gone via Heathrow? Claim refused. Another ex-colleague tried to put her weekly visit to the hairdressers on expenses. Her ruse was discovered and she was shown the door. I’ve been using my own camera for and at work for 6 years now as I was refused funds to claim the cost of buying it, even though my job requires one. (Guess what’s coming out the door with me when I leave?). That’s ok—it’s dead money, but I was miffed at the time. There are always swings and roundabouts in the whacky world of expenses. All trades and professions deal with this. Some we win, some we lose.
Point is, even those jolly journos who are masters of the Dark Arts of dodgy expense forms, the Shakespeares of the blank-receipt have been left open-mouthed at the scale and brazenness of the Commons’ Claims Chronicles. They’ve been out-Shakespeared and want their pound of flesh. Well they’re getting it now, by the moat-load. But if you listen very carefully you’ll hear the unmistakable sound of the BNP and UKIP Nazis marching in tight formation into Brussels and towards a council chamber near you as the undecided are conned by their rhetoric. Not so funny any more, is it?

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Peter Finch—Network

La Cage aux Fools

Posted on May 14, 2009 by The Ed

As the great Pam Ayres once might or should have said: I’m ‘aving trouble with me tits. As my regular reader will know I was very pleased earlier in the spring to see a pair of Blue Tits setting up home in my newly-nailed-up bird box in my back garden. For the next few weeks there was a flurry of feathers and a chirruping from tiny birdy beaks as mum and dad took it in turns to bring back a selection of worms, maggots and caterpillars for their young to devour.

A Future Poet Laureate?

Well, I say it was mum and dad feeding them, though you never can be too sure: I also have a pair of male Blackbirds in the garden (again, you’ve met one of them here before) who seem to have taken a real shine to each other. I’ve read all the books about competition between the males of the species and of the punch-ups which regularly occur between rivals and, true to form, these two when first sighted were fighting like bird and bird over the local bit of skirt, and I thought that was all very Bill Oddie. Trouble is, they now seem to be best of pals. BEST of pals. More power to their elbows, I say—given that they have elbows— but it’s now made me wonder if my tits are male and female or if one is, ow yu say, a bearded tit? Well you never know, do you?

Anyroadup, I digress again. So weeks of twittery-twittery action and I’m getting all excited and I’m making up names for the babies and I’m still filling the feeder with nuts and THEN. Nothing. Not a sausage. Bugger all. The twittering and the flurrying and the chirpy chirpy cheeping stopped. Last Saturday. It was all very worrying. What had happened? What had scared them away? Chief suspect immediately became, you’ve guessed it, me. I’d prepared for the Incumbent and some friends the world’s smokiest and smelliest barbeque, and had arranged the fire and the seating arrangements far too close to the bird box. THAT’S what scared them away! It was an open and shut case, apparently. My claim that they probably had a second home cut no ice whatsoever.

Yup, they look done!

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What would you do if your tits disappeared? It’d be a worry, wouldn’t it? Well I guess if you’re Gordon Brown (finer temptress) you’d kneel at the altar in the church of St Alastair of St Campbell and pray that they never come back. But I fear that although Gordon’s final hope of winning, or even competing in, next year’s election has flown the coop, his Great Tits are never gonna leave his nest. The old devils are at it again. Poor old Gordy must be livid. It’s one unmitigated disaster after another, though half of them (of course) are due to his own shoddy judgement. No point listing all the cock-ups again but it’s like watching your doddery old maths master getting waterboarded by the lower fourth, lesson after lesson, day after day, term after term. His mouth’s so full of water he can’t catch enough breath to shout “I resign”. You wanna go help him but as odious as Blears junior, Beckett minor and Under-Clarke are, a little bit of you wants to shout “Serves you right, you manky Scotch Git: You’re supposed to be a Socialist!!”.

A Great Bearded Tit

Such is Gordon’s luck that he can’t even rely on Tory boy opposite to be a traditional money-grabbing, pissed, lard-bucket. Nope, our Dave not only seems to have been a good an honest boy with taxpayers’ cash, but he seems to be showing Gordon the way home by demonstrating he has, at least, some modicum of understanding of what the rest of us are so angry about. He uses phrases like “come down on them like a ton of bricks” and “won’t stand for it”. Cameron’s gonna make sure that we never see a bill for a moat cleaner ever again (did any of us really ever think we’d ever see one in the first place?). He can smell victory and no trouser-pressed pillock is gonna ruin his party. Gordon, on the other hand, seems to have faith in his lucky Gonk, Hazel, and chums to do the decent thing and admit to their “mistakes”.

Have yer seen me motorbike, Gordon?

Mistakes? These weren’t mistakes, they were crimes against the electorate. Their favourite phrase is that they acted “within the rules”. Yes, they acted within the rules which MPs themselves drew up. what next? Centre-forwards deciding there are no off-sides? Michael Barrymore appointing all the swimming pool attendants? I think I shall write my own rules that Guinness should be £1-a-pint. What do you mean you want more money than that? I’m living within the rules. MY RULES!!!! And, while I’m at it, I think I’ll take all those biros and staplers and Post It notes from the office cupboard and sell them on ebay. If I’m caught after a few years by the Personnel Dept I shall admit my “mistake”, apologise on behalf of ALL office workers and demand a committee be formed to see if I’ve done anything wrong. I’m writing my own lbw laws too, by the way. The old ones are far too batsman-friendly.

Anyway, just like a new series of Big Brother, the tits are back in their house, but unlike a new series of Big Brother they’re back making pleasant, heart-warming noises, and are not picking on the alleged gay, black neighbours, sunning themselves outside in the garden. They came back on Monday. Don’t know where they went, maybe went to treat their holiday home for dry rot? But like having Dennis Skinner back, the house seems complete again.

The Beast is back

Rogue Traders

Posted on May 13, 2009 by The Ed

DoorbellHeader
The doorbell rang the other day. So I put my trousers on and opened the door.
“Mr Bealing?” asked the lad in an ill-fitting black suit.
“I’ve been called worse, yes”
“Marks and Spencer”
“That’s a big name for a little boy. Is it hyphenated?”
“You bought a shirt from us last month”
“Er..yes, correct”
“You haven’t told us what you thought of it. Nor of our service”
“Come again?”
“You haven’t come back to the shop to tell us how you found our service or how you liked the shirt”
“I’m sorry, you’ve lost me. You want me to do what?”
“You’re supposed to come back and tell us what your shopping experience with M&S was like”
“It was a white shirt. I wear a lot of em. For work. I went into the shop, went to the white shirt section, chose my size and went and paid for it. Didn’t try it on—it was wrapped. I knew what it was gonna be like cos I have another six at home. What do you want me to say?”
“Can you rate us?”
(I’m starting to get a little peeved now.) “What??”
“You need to come in and rate us—from one to five stars”
“You’re joking?”
“And leave a small comment”
“Ok, here’s a small comment: Fuck off”
“Sorry, sir, but you do. It’s very important for our future trade if customers know what you thought of us”
“Well ok, sonny, on the basis of this little conversation let’s go up there now cos I’m gonna write ‘A pain in the arse’ and give you a rating of minus one”
“Ah no, sir, you can’t do that.”
“But that’s how I feel right now”
“But you mustn’t put bad ratings or comments because that will reflect badly on the company”
“Ok, let’s skip it then, goodbye”

M&S Ultimate Non-Iron Pure Cotton Plain Long Sleeve Shirt (£25.00)

I went to slam the door, but his Autograph Leather Slip-on Gusset Apron Loafers (£45.00) were across the threshold.
“Owwwwww! Bloody hell sir, there’s no need for that”
“I’m sorry, but get your foot out of my door.”
“But you HAVE to rate our store, Mr Bealing, you just must”
“But you only want me to rate it if I give it a positive mark?”
“Yes, sir”
“What about an average score”
“No, that looks bad too”
“Ok, at the risk of repeating myself, Fuck Off”
“Well what about the chicken breasts and the tomatoes you bought at the weekend? I need a mark for those too”
“Sigh. And what if I don’t want to?”
“We’ll just keep coming back and asking you to til you do”
“I shall ignore the doorbell”
“Then you’ll go on the list of ‘bad shoppers’ which we post in all our stores. Now will you mark us please?”
I left my mark by kneeing him in the crotch of his Performance Stormwear™ Wool with Lycra® Single Breasted 3 Button Black Suit (£149.00) and watched him crawling about my lawn, presumably looking for a testicle, as I finally closed my door.

I may have made some of this up. None of us would stand for being hounded and bullied by shops in this way, would we? So why do we allow Ebay and Amazon get away with it?

We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

Posted on May 6, 2009 by The Ed

Captain Quint: “Japanese submarine slammed two torpedoes into our side, chief… Just delivered the bomb, the Hiroshima bomb. Eleven hundred men went into the water. Vessel went down in twelve minutes. Didn’t see the first shark for about half an hour. Tiger. Thirteen-footer. … Very first light, chief, sharks came cruising, so we formed ourselves into tight groups… you know, kind of like old squares in a battle like you see in a calendar, like the battle of Waterloo, and the idea was, shark comes to the nearest man and then you start pounding and hollering and screaming. Sometimes the shark goes, sometimes he wouldn’t go away… I don’t know how many sharks. Maybe a thousand, I don’t know how many men, they averaged six an hour.
On Thursday morning, Chief, I bumped into a friend of mine, Herbie Robinson from Cleveland. Baseball player. Boatswain’s mate. I thought he was asleep. I reached over to wake him up. Bobbed up, down in the water just like a kinda top. Upended. Well, he’d been bitten in half below the waist…Noon the fifth day…a Lockheed Ventura saw us, he swung in low… and three hours later a big fat PBY comes down, starts to pick us up…
So, eleven hundred men went into the water, three hundred and sixteen men come out and the sharks took the rest, June 29th 1945. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.”
Robert Shaw, Jaws

When the Good Ship Printjournalism was torpedoed just off the coast of Profitability thousands of journalists went into the water and huddled together in tight groups, clinging to the lifeboats of the online editions. Not too long after first light the sharks came cruising. The guys on the outside pounded and hollered and screamed and sometimes the sharks would go away…sometimes they didn’t. One by one journos were picked off and sank to a watery grave. There just wasn’t room for everyone in the lifeboats.

Steady as she goes, Number 1

Similar stories of carnage are commonplace across hundreds of professions—shops and stores are shut down while the company continues trading online with a fraction of the staff. Tens of thousands of workers in small factories, dispatch depts, counting houses, accounts offices and production lines have been let go as technical advances in web transactions and processing speeds have left many redundant. Business and Commerce have caught a cold before, but this is a pandemic.

We can’t walk around with hammers like 21st Century Luddites; We can’t uninvent the wheel or even the web—not that anyone wants to—we just need Baldrick’s Cunning Plan and the nouse to navigate the way ahead. The way we work and live is changing so fast that those of us still shooting film and playing 45s are often taken by surprise by the mp3 generation, but we can (and do) sit, watch and marvel at the little bits of the New World we manage to understand. I know how to work an ipod, for example, and I’m aware of Google (and who he plays for). If it wasn’t for Tim Berners-Lee‘s pretty smart idea you wouldn’t be reading this. The web can also be entertaining.

But there’s plenty of collateral damage in this Guerre du Gigabyte. Those once-merry stokers belowdecks on HMS Old Media are having to rethink and retrain as the ship is holed below the water line and the lifeboats are manned by a new breed of young whizz-kids and tech-heads. Some of the old seadogs are lucky enough to have been thrown an oar and asked to keep rowing— trouble is there used to be three-times the men manning the rollocks. Some are asked to row, steer and chart a course all at the same time. Shore leave gets cancelled or reduced as the Admiralty hasn’t left itself a full ship’s compliment. The few who are left keep schtum (on the whole) for fear of being tossed overboard. Many of the others already in the water were hit by the Credit Crunch Tsunami before they had a chance to get their Mae Wests on. Many a bloated and battered body of an ex-journo has been washed up on the shores of the world’s job centres.

Having spent too long in the water, survivors emerge bloated and wrinkly

Newspaper and magazine publishers invest more and more cash into their online vessels while barely pumping the bilges of their old, ailing craft. They tell us that one day soon the advertisers will change tack, buy some ads (online or in print—we don’t mind) cruise over in their big, fat PBY and fish us out of the shark-infested waters of recession, but I see no ships. Til then we’re surrounded by friends and colleagues bobbing up and down in the water, having been bitten in half below the waist by an HR missive, or a redundancy notice. Sooner or later someone will realise they can’t leave the tiller in the hands of the Unable Seamen and Very Petty Officers, the green and the graceless. But I fear by the time that it dawns on them all the old hands will be enjoying their grog in Davey Jones’ Lock-in.

Thankfully there are still some Captains willing to hand out commissions but there are not nearly enough lifejackets to go round. The Fleet has been scuppered after nearly 300 years of ruling the waves while across the journalism’s seven seas newspaper after newspaper takes a hit and goes under with all souls lost. Anyway, we delivered the bomb.

Farewell and adieu unto you Spanish ladies,
Farewell and adieu to you ladies of Spain;
For it’s we’ve received orders for to sail for old England,
But we hope very soon we shall see you again.

Winter, spring, summer or fall….

Posted on May 5, 2009 by The Ed

Van Gogh didn’t cut off his own ear. According to German art historians, he made up the story to protect his friend Paul Gauguin who cut it off with a sword during a fight.

Years ago, me and my old flatmate Mickey Flynn had a punch-up while trying to stand upright on a mattress on his bedroom floor. I was punching him on the the nose and he was smashing me round the head with a squash racket— taking turns to deliver our blows: whack, ping, whack, ping. Lots of claret about but I don’t remember any sword being involved, any more than I remember what the fight was over. I know it would have been Guinness-fueled as our off-licence didn’t sell Absynth at the time. Bloody hurt though.

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I suppose it’s the nature of friendships that sooner-or-later they involve full-blown rows. Most of us don’t reach for the Wilkinson, like Gauguin apparently did, but history is littered with mates who have fallen out: Julius Caeser and Mark Anthony; McBeth and Banquo; Mike and Bernie Winters— all friends and brothers who fell out, with varying degrees of violence.

I suppose here you’d expect me mention the jaw-dropping in-fighting within the Labour Party at the moment, with former friends and colleagues lining up to have a swing at Gordon Brown (texture like sun). Hazel Blears, Charles Clarke and David Blunkett—all chums and workmates who’ve reached for the squash racket and swung at the PM over the past few days.
Well I’m not going to mention that. Politicians, especially this lot, can never really be expected to remain loyal to anyone but themselves, and what goes around comes around—Gordon did his share of mud-slinging when his old mate Tony was dragging his feet leaving office. I have to say I did chuckle in amazement when Blunkett said Labour should avoid any more “self-inflicted” wounds. That’ll be D.Blunkett MP—the man who resigned twice over a couple of bouts of brazen naughtiness.

It doesn’t really matter, to be honest. Just a few weeks after GB‘s G20 triumph when he was set to save the world, his own little world seems to be collapsing around him in a whirlwind of bad judgement, bad luck and bad company. Half of me thinks he’ll be glad to get shot of the job and let the Party opposite pick up the pieces of the train wreck. It ain’t gonna get much better in the foreseeable future, whatever his (present) mate Darling thinks, so maybe the best thing might be to let the other mob have a go for a while, and hope they take the blame for some of it. On the other hand, dear old Gordon waited so long for his stint in the limelight he’s almost certainly reluctant to leave the stage.

Never a frown with Gordon Brown

There’s another chilling factor to consider. Blair won a landslide (Thing’s can only get better) because there was a huge part of the electorate who’d forgotten or never knew what a Labour administration was like. in 1997 the memory of Callaghan’s shambles was a distant memory to most, an entry in a history book to others. We’re about to witness something similar next year: There are people who will vote next year who would have been very, very young when Thatcher, Normo Tebbs, Aitken, Archer, Tarzan, Lawson et al had their snouts in the trough and led the single-most arrogant and wicked Government this country has ever seen. You think THIS lot are bad? Those Tories were Masters of Evil. Money grabbing, crooks who viewed the ordinary voter with staggering contempt and disdain. So when the landslide happens at the polling booths next year, which bar a miracle it surely will, we’ll be faced with one, two maybe three terms of that lot before the voters forget enough about Gordon and his feckless buffoons to vote Labour in again. That could be 15 years of Cameron. 15 years of Theresa May and Liam Fox. 15 years of George Osborne. Time to hand out the cutlasses

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Just One More Question, Sir…

Posted on May 2, 2009 by The Ed

So I’m sitting in my garden, soaking up the rays while flicking through the papers, when I’m stopped in my tracks by an advert on page 12 of The Times. Dunno why, as I’ve always felt I don’t look at adverts. As any fule no, adverts are just there to make photos smaller in papers and magazines, or to give you something to doodle on while in morning conference. In these dark days of credit crunch and the collapse of the advertising industry, I suppose we should all thank Evans for small Murphys (some more than others) and embrace whatever adverts actually make it into print, and thus keeping us in the poverty to which we’ve so readily become accustomed, but I do fluctuate between annoyance and agnosticism when I see a dirty great Halfords or Waitrose ad where a perfectly good story, or even better, a photo should be.

howard-with-tash1

Anyway, I digress. So the offending item this time is a Samsung colour half-page ad for mobile phones. An attractive young couple grapple with each other next to insets of two mobiles, underneath the legend “Ourselves. Together” whatever that means. But something struck me about those words—they felt rather familiar. So off I popped to the wonderful web world of Wikipedia. Something in the back of my pickled mind led me to believe that Sinn Féin was a translation of just that: Ourselves Together. Was this electronics giant really a front for Irish Republicanism ? Would Chelsea soon be playing their matches in shirts emblazoned with Gerry Adams’ hairy boat ? As I should have known only too well after the week at work I’ve had, the answer was no. I was wrong. But only just.

Here’s the entry:
Sinn Féin:…The name is Irish for “ourselves” or “we ourselves”,[3][4] although it is frequently mistranslated[5] as “ourselves alone”.

Now given that around 64% of what’s on Wikipedia is a load of old cobblers, I still could be right. Wikipedia is about as reliable as a Jacqui Smith expense claim or an Ant n Dec phone-poll, so perhaps my memory has served me better than I think. Maybe not.

But where did I glean this little nugget of half-truth? Well I knew all those hours on the sofa would pay off in the end: It came to me that there’s an episode of Columbo where he investigates a murder of an Oirish (you should hear the accents in the show) republican sympathiser. The episode was full of begorrahs and to be sure, to be sures and ginger-haired young men, drinking whiskey and stout, wearing aran sweaters. The do-er is an Oirish wroiter who is undone by the fact he inscribes the inside cover of a book at a signing with Together Ourselves (I thought). There, I’ve gone and ruined the ending for you now, haven’t I? No matter— as it’s the wont of the series, you always know who the killer is during the opening credits and the fun is to be had by the in-jokes liberally sprinkled through each episode: his signature whistle of knick-knack-paddy-wack; his endearing habit of ‘just one more question, sir”; his battered Peugeot and the fact that Mrs Columbo is never ever seen on screen. Often she was mentioned in dispatches but the producers occasionally had fun with us by dangling the carrot in front of us that she was about to appear— but she never did. Mrs Columbo is one of man tv spouses who remain unseen: Dad’s Army‘s, Mrs Mainwaring; Rumpole‘s She Who Must be Obeyed; Arthur Daly‘s Er Indoors; Porrige‘s Mrs Barraclough to name a few. What a lovely way to be married— to an anonymous, faceless woman who’s never around. Perhaps that’s where I went wrong?

This old man, he played one...

Peter Falk’s shambolic detective never carried a gun, didn’t even have a truncheon (night stick, y’all) and always showed his badge as identification. Remember those days? The Wire it weren’t. If it wasn’t for his willingness to identify himself, and his lack of violent tendencies Columbo could have joined the Met.
It’s a chilling thought that had Big Crosby not turned down the part when he was offered it, the famous mac might have been replaced by a straw trilby and a pipe, and each case would have revolved around a golf course. Falk, of course, eventually made the part his own (it had been played by 2 other actors in the 60’s) and he became tv’s highest-paid actor for a while. Like Grandpa Simpson and his MacGyver I’ve been addicted to the show for years and was stunned to see one on tv the other day which not only hadn’t I seen before but in which the killer was neither Patrick McGoohan nor Robert Vaughn. McGoohan and Falk were best mates and not only did the former star of The Prisoner win two Emmys for his roles, he also directed quite a few shows. I know there are those who are horrified that USTV has remade The Prisoner starring something called a Jim Caviezel as No.6 and Dame Serena McKellen as either No. 2 or a number 2, it’s not clear. Why do they insist on doing this ? I’m not great fan of the original, but some things surely are sacrosanct ? I’m sure somewhere in managerial meetings within HBO or ABC there’ll be plans to remake Ice Cold in Alex starring Hugh Jackman, or Casablanca with Cate Blanchett as Rick Blaine. If I get a whiff that they’re tee-ing up Owen Wilson to don a scruffy raincoat and play LAPD‘s favourite homicide detective in something called Columbo: the Party-on Years I shall invite you all to join me in a violent bout of civil unrest. Together. Ourselves.

l-r: Hanks, Aniston, Jackman and Ferrell

That’s what I want

Posted on May 1, 2009 by The Ed

76 million-to-1. No, not the odds of Gordon getting back in next year, nor your chances against surviving a fortnight in Cancun, but the odds on scooping the jackpot in tonight’s EuroMillions draw. On the upside if you are the sole winner you stand to gain £89 million— that’ll keep you in tamiflu and Mariachi bands for a couple of weeks. It’s about now you start hearing people say “Oh I wouldn’t want all that money” or “winning the lottery wouldn’t change me” or even “I’d carry on working at Lidl“. Well, excuse me. Give me the money and I’ll show you how it can change me. You’ll recognize me instantly as I’ll be in a purple quilted smoking jacket , jodhpurs and a monocle, queuing up at the bank every morning checking my balance (and if I drink as much as I intend to when I win, my balance won’t be as good as it should be). “I beg your pardon!” I shall yell at the top of my voice, “89,274,693 pounds, forty-nine pence? Are you George Bernard about that? Please check it again” And if I don’t like the cut of the teller’s jib I shall take my business and my money elsewhere. This will, of course, mean I won’t be spending quite as much time in the office as I’d like to but, hey, them’s the breaks.
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They tell me the interest on 89 million is about £1,524 per day. I don’t think I could drink that much so the trick would be to think of new and exciting ways to spend it. I thought I’d found a perfect solution this lunchtime when an old biddy beside me at the bar ordered a JLo. I waited with baited breath and sweaty palms to see if the pub actually did sell actresses over the bar, but sadly they don’t. Not even as Off-Sales. The landlord suggested to the old girl she might mean a J2O. How disappointing for us both. Imagine the fun you could have with Jennifer Lopez and a pickled egg? “Oh and a Kelly Brook top, please barman. Nah, I’ve gone off the Kelly McGillis—think it’s on the turn.”

I suppose with some of my winnings I could sort out the mortgages of friends and family—but who needs friends when you’ve of wads of cash ? I shall buy new ones, and the family will get it soon enough what with the kidney failure and all. But there must be a more fun, if no worthy way to get rid of it? It’s not gonna make much of a dent in Gordon’s debt, is it, so bugger that. It would be enough to run an F1 team for two years, but you’d spend half as much again on suits for court appearances. I could invest it into Charlton Ath.. oh fuck it, I’m gonna do what everyone does. Play golf, drink champers, follow the English Cricket/Rugby/Netball team around the world. Get fat and pissed watching sport, and why not? I’ve been doing that for 25 years now. See—winning the Lottery won’t change me. Arriba Arriba

We don't need no schtinkeen badgees

Quick nurse, the screens: It’s happened again

Posted on April 30, 2009 by The Ed

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I think I’ll go for a curry tonight. Not ground-breaking, Pulitzer-winning, hold-the-front-page stuff, I grant you, but I thought I’d celebrate the Gurkha’s latest victory, this time in the House of Commons. I like showing solidarity with other nations’ or peoples’ celebrations. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Back in the days of yore at The Telegraph we would religiously celebrate Beaujolais Day by getting a crate into the office. Anzac Day didn’t go unrecognized either as pallets of Fosters and XXXX would turn up to be supped through the days work. Paddy’s Day (as mentioned here earlier) was celebrated every day BUT the official one, and there was often some sub-editor or late-stop asleep at his desk having mistakenly celebrated Burns night in mid-July.
Of the five (and counting) curry houses in Blackheath three are Nepalese so there’ll be plenty of happy lads to serve my taka dahl and garlic chilli chicken this evening. Goody! I could eat a scabby horse. Before Khans restaurant changed hands the staff would serve in Gurkha regimental ties. You didn’t get many run-outs from there, I can tell you. They used to do a Chicken Gurkhali which I drunkenly and foolishly ordered one evening. “It’s what the Gurka’s eat, Sir” I was told. Ignoring their warning I tucked in. The effects were devastating, trousers ruined and the coastguard alerted.
Around the corner at the Sopna (which became Everest, now called Saffron) they used to do a Terry Waite Special, in honour of the local devil dodger/CIA stooge who spent all that time attached to that radiator in the Lebanon, and was allegedly what he ordered when he came home. If memory serves it’s a whole chicken stuffed with keema mince , topped with cheese and roasted. The dish on the menu is meant for 2-3 hungry people (give him his due, Waite is a big unit and hadn’t eaten a proper meal for 4 years) but I sat and watched a good pal of mine devour it on his own in minutes. I cannot mention his name here, but suffice to say he hadn’t eaten since the Sunday Mirror canteen had closed two hours earlier.

Four fried chickens and a coke

The third these is the Mountain View which was a Barclays Bank, then a bar —Flame (still full of Barclays Bankers)— and has all the atmosphere of Harry Ramsdens, Heathrow Airport. The fat, smiley guvnor is ok if a bit overpowering, and they do a line in the world’s sweetest cake and will sing (terribly) happy birthday to any of your party who happens to be celebrating. It doesn’t matter if it IS actually your birthday—could be your anniversary , new job or decree nisi—they’ll sing Happy Birthday anyway, it’s excruciating. I can only imagine their songs have been passed on, father-to-son by generations of political prisoners in Kathmandu to remind their successors of the terrible pain meted out on them by the ruling classes. Where they must have shoved their kukris is anyone’s guess. But the food’s good and they serve Gurka Beer (brewed in Horsham) to take your mind off the singing.
So it’s to one of the above I shall repair to this evening, in the hope that they’re still feeling particularly chipper after their commons victory and that there’ll be the odd free poppadum or dry sherry on offer. I’m still hanging out for Argentina to re-take the Malvinas—there’s a great Argentinian steakhouse in the village. But there’s no point in Turkey becoming an EU member—we don’t have a kebab house.
os010511

Because William Shatner

Posted on April 27, 2009 by The Ed

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

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.

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

Shockin’ down in Kent

Posted on April 26, 2009 by The Ed

My sad, silly old mate Dave Sapsted once wrote, “Bealing grew up in the part of Kent which everyone else calls South London”. Well he was half right—which is 50% more than he usually is. I was born in the London Borough of Bexley but went to school in Dartford, which was and still is in Kent. Not so much the Garden of England, more the Allotment. Apart from the Warbler, England fast bowler, Graham Dilley, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, I’m the only thing of note which has come out of this rather unremarkable town. If you do want to come out of it it’ll cost you 30 bob to use the Dartford Tunnel, and you wouldn’t wanna do that cos it’ll take you into Essex. For 59 quid you can hop on the Eurostar at the nearby and romantically-named Ebbsfleet Inernational Railway Station and lose yourself in Paris or Brussels. Or you can do what most Dartfordians do instead and lose yourself in Bluewater shopping centre (and if you can get out of there alive without spending 59 quid you’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din). All once-remembered links to Chaucer’s Pilgrims or Watt Tyler‘s Peasants have been washed away by that massive lump of concrete hell, sitting in a disused chalk quarry a couple of miles east. “Oh you come from Dartford? Where Bluewater is?” Yes, I do. Fuck off.

Thurrock, sir? First shithole on your right

Shunning the obvious delights of Dartford, some years ago I made my way 10 miles up the A2 to the last bastion of civilization left in SE London: Blackheath. Civilization, however, is suspended on Friday and Saturday eves as the Eltham Nazis take over the village bars and restaurants, and we now have a black maria which circles the small one-way system in almost perpetual motion, picking-up the knuckle-draggers as it goes. We do get 5 days of relative peace and calm, where you can get a pint and a curry and have a more-than-decent chance of making it home with as many limbs as you came out with. But I do hear often from friends “Oh, Blackheath! Lovely down there, isn’t it?” It’s lovely in the way that Basra is lovelier than Baghdad.

Anyway, back to Baghdad…er Dartford. I always keep half an eye on Dartford— my kids live there for starters, as does The Incumbent, and there are still a few of the lads who never made it over the wire, so I return there every-so-often. But like a favourite testicle after too long in the bath, it has shrunken and shrivelled over the years since I was a schoolboy more than 25 years ago. The streets are shorter, the shops smaller, pubs grubbier and girls uglier (present Mrs B aside, you understand). The town planners seem to have been influenced by Jackson Pollock or Magnus Pyke, the semi-deserted streets (Bluewater sucks the life out of the town on weekends) are the domain of small herds of herberts in hoods, grazing on MaccyDs in forests of triffid traffic signs. It’s an all-too familiar story if you know towns like Barnet, Orpington, St Albans or any of a number dotted around the M25 corridor.

Locals point the best way out of town

As a young man I used to ply my medium-pacers for Wilmington CC, a village team just up the road. Wilmington was a leafy little dingly-dell, away from the bustle of the Dartford ‘metrolopis’, with a couple of proper boozers, a local park with a decent cricket square (complete with licensed pavilion), a couple of schools and lots of tree-lined lanes where on a clear night you could witness fleets of Escort Mark I’s bouncing up and down to the rhythm of young couples at it. Nowadays those same lanes are the natural habitat for middle-aged men taking themselves on long, lonely strolls in the hope of meeting other middle-aged men on long, lonely strolls in the hope that they can have some fun together.

If you go down on someone in the woods today...

If you go down in the woods today, you

Wilmington made a news-item this week. Not for it’s cottage industry, nor for the cricket team’s tight match vrs local rivals Swanley but because of the antics of the headmistress of the local school. At Wilmington Enterprise College the head mistress, Belinda Langley-Bliss (I kid you not) sent 61 pupils home from lessons in one day. Go back and read that again. IN ONE DAY.
Now what, you may well ask, happened on that day? A mass riot? Did the upper-sixth set fire to the science block? Were the school leopard and the caretaker’s water cannon set loose on a noisy session of the Chess Club ? Nope. apparently 46 were sent home for wearing trainers or ‘extreme fashions’ and a further 15 for not having the correct equipment. Sounds like a Daily Mail report, doesn’t it? Sadly this story is true. According to the PA report: “Pupils were also required to arrive at college each day with a pencil case containing a calculator, two pens, two pencils, a planner, a ruler, eraser and notebook to prevent time being wasted in lessons.” The Incumbent tell me that one of her friend’s son was sent home for not having a pencil sharpener. Yup.
You know what I’d do? instead of sending the kids away, I’d get the parents IN. Pin them down and ask them why little Jordan or Wayne have turned up without the required uniform? See if you can help in an installment-plan for a pencil sharpener. Failing that, baseball bats and bricks usually do the trick. Tell you what you DON’T do is give the kids the day off. How many kids do you know would think that a punishment? I’d have turned up with no trousers if I thought I’d have been sent away again (tried that at The Telegraph once—didn’t work). In an ever-depressed economy, where your average school-leaver’s chances of getting a job are dwindling away, why not help parents kit-out the kids in an acceptable manner, with what kit and clothing is readily affordable to non-working families? And if it’s just the case of little Johnny cocking-a-snoop at the school rules and dress like he’s going clubbing, then scare the bejeezus out of him. A bollocking from the old man usually focussed my mind. Ms Langley-Bliss has taken the option of filling up the street corners and KFCs of her local town with teenagers who think they’ve won the lottery. Others will be sitting at home in bits on the sofa because they forgot to take a pencil to school, waiting for dad to come home and rip into them. Is that how to encourage decent 14 year olds? Dartford is depressing enough. It doesn’t need arse-head strategies like this, Miss Bliss.

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