Dan Dan the Lavatory Man

Posted on May 27, 2009 by The Ed

urinals

One night last week a bloke talked to me in the pub toilet. Yes, exactly, that’s what I thought. He actually tried to hold a conversation with me while I was going about my business. Yes. He did.

Most of you reading this will fully understand the distress this caused me, but in case a woman has accidentally logged in, I shall explain: Blokes don’t talk to each other in the loo. Never. Never, ever, ever. It’s just not done. I could be standing there at the urinals with my best mate to my left, my dad to my right and my long-lost brother washing his hands at the sink behind me and no words would be exchanged until we left the Gents. Protocol is to have one hand (or in my case two hands) on your willy and stare straight ahead reading the graffiti or the very amusing adverts for online poker on the wall in front of you. But whatever happens KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT, YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF AND YOUR EYES FRONT !!!

A public lavatory is a place where we men feel at our most vulnerable. We’re not the greatest communicators at the best of times, so the chances of indulging in idle persiflage fly out of the window the minute we get our winkles out. Surely, ladies, you recognise that in your man? I put it to you (if you’ll excuse the image) that if he gets his thingy out in your presence he’s unlikely to want to talk to you about last night’s footy results, or the queue at Tescos. I hear tell that, while in the Ladies, the fairer sex do indeed partake in friendly chat and banter (of what nature, I know not) and they seem to get along just fine in there. Maybe it’s a little sanctuary, free from those arseholes outside, where girl can speak to girl without being interrupted or patronised by boy? Bless her pretty little head. No such conversation does, or rather should take place in a blokes’ khazi.

So this bloke—let’s, for the sake of looking for another joke, call him Dan— so this bloke Dan spoke to me in the Gents. I have no idea what he said, I was in shock. All I know is that it wasn’t “Alright, mate?” or “Ooooooooh, that’s better”. No, it was in the form of an opening line of a conversation. I just heard noise, my brain couldn’t process the information. Virtually all of my body froze, though part of it went limp and shriveled. I zipped up, nodded politely (I’m British, after all) and left immediately and quickly, and what I had started in the urinal was left to dribble down the inside of my trouser leg as I fled.

So what was I afraid of? That the man was a homosexual? That he was about to “lend me a hand”? That he was the Barrymore of Blackheath and I’d end up emotionally and internally scarred for life? Don’t talk so much Tommy Rot! I have no leanings in that direction. I’ve always been a big hairy hetro (whatever I look like to you) and have no wish to catch the other bus. I don’t even know if this bloke IS gay. My Gaydar doesn’t work. He may just be very friendly, though a tad inappropriate. Having said that, I’ve never either been worried by or about gay men or women. I have several openly gay friends (yes, I know they all say that, but I actually do) and have never felt threatened by them or had the inkling that they were gonna goose me at any minute (their loss, actually). I like to think I view them with the same contempt as I do all my friends. It’s still your round at the bar, mate, even if you ARE a bit light on your loafers. You’re all the same in my eyes, as long as you do your bit in the office, laugh at my jokes and understand the lbw laws. It’s not as if you’re Welsh or anything.

But maybe this is all a front? Maybe, deep down, I’m scared? A long time ago I spent the night round a mate’s flat after we’d gotten a bit squiffy that evening. I was woken up in the spare room the following morning by my pal delivering a cup of tea. Having placed the cup by the bed, he left the room saying, “There you go mate” says he “I’ll just go get myself sorted, then I’ll give you a shower”
“WHAT!!!!!!”— I’d sat bolt upright in the bed, my head thumping, back in spasm, legs shaking like leaves, willy recoiling into my body. Fortunately I’d misheard him. What he’d actually said was “I’ll give you a shout”. Phew! He’s a big bloke and could have quite easily showered me against my will.

It annoys me, my reaction to these situations. I’ve always considered myself a good Socialist, with a capital ‘S’ and a liberal with a small ‘l’, inside this beer-swilling, rugby-loving, pickled-egg eating oaf, there’s a kind, sensitive, modern man screaming to get out and mince about a bit. I remember getting severe stick from my city mates when I wore a red ribbon pin badge for world AIDS day, and got accused of being either a “faggot” or a “poof-lover”. Well, what would you expect from that lot? But I’m surely above that, aren’t I? I sure am. Perhaps it was just that on the two occasions above I was taken by surprise ? Or maybe it is just what we’ve discussed: that no man feels safe with his penis al fresco? I’ve been mulling over this all week, about how stupid my immediate reaction was, and how I shall make every effort to change.

Dan was in the pub last night again (hiding behind three Mancunians). I didn’t spot him until he was standing right next next to me, when I turned to be almost nose-to-nose with him. “Hello mate, alright?” he asked.
I blushed “Yes mate…great… thanks”. I left for another pub. I have a new friend and I’m being an arse about it. What a wanker.

We Are Family

Posted on May 21, 2009 by The Ed

I may have been a bit harsh on HMQ and Phil the Greek. You can’t help who your ancestors were. Is it really the fault of William, Harry et al that they’re direct descendants (at least some of them) of Germans, or that some of their more recently departed relatives actively supported the Third Reich? No, of course it isn’t, and shame on you for thinking otherwise. We’re all accidents of birth and none of us can chose who our parents are or how much dosh they have or what privileges you get by being born into the right lineage.

Love yer boots, Os

Can Max Mosley help it if the old man was the British Fascist leader of the 30’s and 40’s? A man who wanted to be Hitler’s UK rep during the war, and PM after it? No, don’t be daft. The only thing we can pin on him is his apparent penchant for women in Nazi uniform beating the buggery out of him of a wednesday night, between Grand Prix. Who amongst us hasn’t done that? Nope, we can’t help where we come from. I can trace my lineage back to someone called Sir Richard Arundell-Bealing, Secretary to Queen Catherine of Bragaza (1601-1689). I quote from the History of Tea: “In Europe tea was sold as a medicinal drink in the 1650s. Tea drinking really took hold when Catherine of Bragaza, a Portuguese princess, married Charles II in 1662. She brought tea and served it to friends at court. The tea started being served at what was called tea gardens all over London” proof, if any were needed, that there has not only been a whiff of aristocracy in or near our family in days gone by, but that some of them could actually write (two things that haven’t been passed down the generations). So my ancestor probably took tea with the King. Pass the biscuits!

Put kettle on, Bealing, I'm gasping

Yesterday we read that a woman called Carole Tovey, 66, of Ilfracombe, is the closest living relative to Bob Marley. Apparently her great uncle, Albert Thomas Marley, who was of white British descent, settled in Jamaica in the late 19th Century. Now if Bob was anything to go by (he had 12 kids of his own) Uncle Albert may well have made himself busy between harvesting bananas. As the seeds of his loins went forth and multiplied, they sailed the seven seas, and at least one of them ended up in Devon. Who’d a thunk it? In a wonderful quote which only your mum could utter, Mrs Tovey said to The Times: “I’ve never heard his music before today. I used to like people like Neil Sedaka and the Everly Brothers. No reggae. No heavy metal”. No-one cared to ask if she had a spliff-fixation but I suspect I know the answer. My ancestor’s love of tea managed to survive the generations while all Mrs Tovey got was a tin-ear but no natty-dreads. Max Mosely retains his father’s love of a jackboot, Prince Harry has a shock of Ginger hair(!) while others receive no tell-tale signs of who their ancestors were, what their traits were, or where they came from. It’s a bugger of nature, nothing we can do, but nevertheless mystifying. Innit?

It's not linear, it's glandular

Order !!! Order!!!

Posted on May 19, 2009 by The Ed

T-Insert Wires0567350895
Esther Rantzen is considering standing as an independent candidate at the next election. Dear Christ. It seems we are to be treated a whole bunch of independent candidates standing on an anti-sleaze ticket. Indeed, Martin Bell is considering re-standing on just such a platform. Does the HOC not contain enough smug gits without subjecting us to meeja show-ponies? Why stop there? Graham Norton for the next Speaker of the House, controlling PMQs (he’s on everything else)? Carol Vorderman I’m sure would make a great MP, and could be a great help with all those tricky receipts.

I for one would pay good money to watch The Chuckle Brothers arguing across the dispatch box: “To me, to you, to me” . Whatabout very hilarious tv innocent celebrity Michael Barrymore as Chief Whip? Can’t be any more calamitous then the bunch in there at the moment. “Awight at the back?” That’d take the smile off of Gordon’s face. Mind you, if he can smile when he tells us Blears and Smith have done nothing wrong, he can smile at anything.

Where’s Guy Fawkes when you need him?

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.

Just a Minute

Posted on April 25, 2009 by The Ed

freud-clement-081

Inside the mind of Clement Freud.

On sex and the older male…
I am 82 and was indeed fitted with titanium and plastic knees six months ago. When propositioned recently by a woman to “come upstairs and make love”, I had to explain that it was one or the other.

On greyhound racing…
I had coffee with a racing manager who told me that dogs from traps one, two and six narrowly outperformed the mid-trap runners and, if I did forecasts involving the three favoured draws, I would show a slight profit over the season. As “a slight profit” was not what I had in mind, I backed a dog led up by a kennel maid with a huge bust. He came fifth. That system is a good way of showing a slight loss.

On food and wine…
Watercress does funny things to your palate – makes it very hard to appreciate good wine, does a plate of watercress salad. So, look on the bright side, if the wine you have bought is iffy, bring on watercress.

The family name…
In my youth “Freud” was not a household name in Britain. At prep school I was once called to the headmaster’s study to be beaten for talking during class, told to take off my trousers “and your pants, you stupid little boy”, lay across the man’s knee as he fondled my bum with his gnarled hand, whereafter he said: “I am not going to smack you because your grandfather would disapprove.” When people ask whether being related to a famous man is a help or a hindrance, I think of that.

Good Irish folk…
My distinguished Aunt Anna had a house on the west coast of Cork and always spoke with affection of the simple, straightforward decency of the local people. She was in Skibereen for her 70th birthday and received hundreds of telegrams of goodwill from all parts of the world where psycho-analysis rules OK. The messages were telephoned through to the postmistress, who inscribed them on greetings forms and hired a boy to deliver them hourly to the Freud house. During the afternoon she received one which read: “The rapists of Philadelphia send good wishes and best regards.” Over which my elderly maiden aunt puzzled greatly. When she called on the postmistress the next day she asked if they might send off for verification. The postmistress said that she, too, had been shocked by the words and checked them, and they had been right. Therapists is not a word in common usage around those parts.

Wills and the wife…
In October 1950 I left everything to my wife, told her so at dinner; she was too well brought up to ask questions. In fact, “everything” then was under £100, my paternal grandfather’s silk night-shirts, which my grandmother had given me as a 21st birthday present, and some extremely heavy, leather luggage nicked from a German factory that my regiment had “liberated” a week or two before VE Day. Last week, 58 years, five children and 16 grandchildren later, my first wife (we remain together, I call her “my first wife” to keep her on her toes) asked whether I had made a will. Not for a while, I admitted, and determined to do it all over again.

Life’s little pleasures…
If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don’t actually live longer; it just seems longer

I’m not the sort of bloke…

Posted on April 23, 2009 by The Ed

…who says “I told you so” but…

Google Street View case rejected
Press Association

The privacy watchdog has rejected a complaint against Google Street View.
Campaign group Privacy International argued that Street View breached the privacy of people accidentally caught on camera by Google’s photo cars.
But David Evans, the ICO’s senior data protection practice manager, compared being captured by the service to passers-by filmed on television news camera or football crowds in the background on televised matches.
It would not be in the public interest to “turn the digital clock back”, he said.

“In the same way, there is no law against anyone taking pictures of people in the street as long as the person using the camera is not harassing people,” he said.
“Google Street View does not contravene the data protection Act and, in many cases, it is not in the public interest to turn the digital clock back.
“In a world where many people Tweet, Facebook and blog, it is important to take a commonsense approach towards Street View and the relatively limited privacy intrusion it may cause.”
He said Google should routinely blur images of people’s faces and car number plates.

The company was responding “quickly” to requests from people to have particular images deleted, he said.
When the service launched, users discovered a man walking out of a sex shop and another being sick outside a pub.

Told you so !

Camera Obscura

Posted on March 31, 2009 by The Ed

An organization calling itself Privacy International have complained to the Information Commissioner (very 1984) that the new Google Street View infringes people’s privacy because some are identifiable in the photos therein. And? What’s the problem? Every day, all over the world people are innocent bystanders caught a photographer’sviewfinder. Shots of people walking to work, waiting on train stations, shopping in the high street or sitting on beaches are published online ,in newspapers and in magazines to illustrate stories from the state of the economy, the state of the weather.

Now if I could ask you all to sign this form....

It’s common practice and perfectly legal. Those people captured on film are merely part of the landscape of the image. If the good people at PI have their way photo editors would spend more time pixilating or masking-out the faces of those in the frame. The alternative, I guess, would be to have every man jack of them sign a model-release form, allowing their face to be published. Well that’s not gonna happen. It’s not an intrusion of privacy. No-one’s poking their noses into your little lives or keeping track of you. It’s a photo illustrating a scene. Don’t flatter yourself—you AIN’T the subject.

Same goes for the Google bods: they’ve come up with a gadget that let’s you, me and anyone else see almost every street in London, letting us while-away many a dull afternoon in the office, and it gives iPhone owners another chance to bore us rigid with what their new machine can do. And YES there ARE people in some of the images. Of course there are: IT”S THE CAPITAL OF ENGLAND!!!! But that’s not the point of it. And even if it was, WHO CARES???? If you happen to be seen exiting a massage parlour, sitting outside a wine bar, plying your secretary with chardonnay or spewing up on the pavement that’s just tough. Not Google’s problem. If you wanna play-away with Miss Jones or fall over elephants that’s your look-out.

You can almost see the veins in her neck

It’s perfectly acceptable and legal to take photos on a public street OF the public street and almost anything you damn well like. Ok, if you stand outside an army base, or an airport and start shnapping through the barbed wire at people or equipment, you’re liable (and probably deservedly) get your collar felt by Knacker of the Yard. For years Middle England have moaned about photographers and their long, intrusive lenses. Snappers for the redtops sit in bushes or in the back of blacked-out vans, training their lenses on some poor sod or celebrity who they deem to have been up to no good. Street View does nothing of the sort. Google used a 360 degree wide-angle. How much shorter do you want a lens to be????

My local. I must have been at the bar

So who are Privacy International and it’s supporters? It’s website states that they’re “a watchdog on surveillance and privacy invasions by governments and corporations”. Surveillance? Google aren’t putting you under surveillance, they’re just photographing the street where you live, in the same manner tourists the world over photograph Pal Mall, Las Ramblas or that quaint little village near the resort you stayed in last year in Thailand. Does this mean Flickr will be shut down too? Is this the end of your neighbour’s boring holiday-snap evenings? Wait a minute: I’m sure a Japanese family took a photo of me outside The National Gallery the other day. I WANT THEIR NAMES, FILM AND SERIAL NUMBERS.

Five will get you ten that the people who subscribe to PI’s views are also Facebook addicts and Twitter junkies (“just had pony, can’t be arsed to wash hands and now walking around with knickers around ankles, talk later”).Something really odd is happening. One hand the world wants to tell me absolutely everything about themselves and what they’re doing IN REAL TIME, show me photos of their friends, what their dog looks like, who they’ve snogged and what they looked like the last seventeen times they went to a party or a club. But take a photo of them walking down Oxford Street, carrying a H&M bag and all hell breaks loose.

Smile, you're on t'internet

It’s not CCTV, it’s not stalking you (most of these snaps were last summer anyway) it’s a bit of fun which may be of some interest to a few, lonely people. Focus your protests on something else. There’s plenty to be scared of out there—it’s just that this isn’t it. So next time you’re out-and-about, make sure you’re not with someone you shouldn’t be, and PLEASE stop picking your nose.

Oh My God, They’ve Found Tom!

Posted on March 20, 2009 by The Ed

British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, wants EU countries to up their efforts in Afghanistan. There’s a feeling by the Brits (and the Yanks) that our continental partners could lend more men to the war effort. As Miliband puts it,”Some countries are doing significant amounts but other countries have got either significant caveats on the deployment of their troops or they’ve got their troops in parts of the country where there isn’t the same level of insurgency.”
In other words, European armies don’t want to get shot at. And fair enough: not being shot at is pretty high up on my to-do-list also.

lobby6

Ever since Carry on up the Khyber, Afghanistan has been a little sod to conquer. The British Empire failed to control the Mullahs, the Soviet Army got its arse kicked, and the Yanks are having a few probs with the Taliban too (who, it turns out, were supplied arms by Tom Hanks in the first place). So what are the chances that the 3rd Copenhagen Rifles or a battalion of the Luxembourg Light Horse will fare any better? It’s a scary place, the Hindu Kush, with a soldier’s life-expectancy only slightly higher than that of a diner at Heston Blumenthal’s Dead Duck.

No. Leave it to the professionals. The US did, after all, defeat Nazism single-handedly, having captured Enigma machine and deciphered Ultra, landed virtually alone on the Normandy beaches, forced Hitler to retreat from Moscow and all without a single bit of help from anyone else. Rock Hudson chewed on a huge stogey throughout the D-Day landings, Steve McQueen was the only man on either side not to have to wear a uniform, and only William Holden understood war’s cruelty and madness. In-between shagging nurses on beaches.
sinden22
The Brits were buffoons. If you were British and managed to grab a line you either sounded like Sam Kydd or Donald Sinden (right). While GI Joes were challenging strangers with the rather cool “Thunder” to get the friendly reply “Flash”, the silly Tommies used the rather more clipped “Leicester” and “Square” (pronounced “squar”). Brits were rescued from Stalags and Bulges by the the Marines or the Airborne, were always depicted holding a cuppa or downing a brown sludgy pint though buck-teeth, and sported some of the finest moustaches seen in modern warfare. And every Man Jack of them was a complete Berk. Edward Fox deserves particular credit for this one.

Alec Guinness built bridges for the Japanese, Dirk Bogarde sent Gene Hackman’s Polish Brigade to be slaughtered at Arnhem, Gordon Jackson said “thank you” when he meant “merci” and poor old Donald Pleasance couldn’t see a bloody thing. Only Richard Todd, who stormed the Pegasus Bridge ( “Up the Ox and Bucks, Up the Ox and Bucks”) gave any help at all to Ike and co. (In fairness, the actor actually WAS in the invading forces at D-Day). Richard Burton was Welsh and is therefore excluded from this conversation. But the rest? :Useless Limey wankers.

brug1

No-one, for the whole war, ever stopped for a pee. .

So perhaps the British government’s initial reluctance to attend the 65th Anniversary of D-Day is completely understandable. Miliband is only about 12 so all the movies he would have seen on the subject would show him that the Brits were never there. (In Saving Private Ryan Ted Danson does mention Monty once, as the bloke who’s cocking up everything). I wouldn’t turn up either— if I didn’t even make the end credits.

So Mr Miliband, the next time Obama asks you or your EU pals to supply more troops for Operation Certain Death, tell him you want at least 2nd billing, more and better lines and a cut of the royalties. Dunno why they need us there in the first place. We’ll only bugger it up.

A Fish Without a Bike

Posted on March 16, 2009 by The Ed

I have a pair of blackbirds in my garden. One’s black with a bright orange beak (the male, remember that) and the other is a sort of brown, speckly colour (the female, very important). This weekend I spent many hours in the spring sunshine pottering in my garden being watched by the black one. He’s very inquisitive and stands on any one of several high vantage points watching me turn over the soil, paint a fence, down a beer etc etc. It’s nice, in a rather odd sort of way to have a relationship with him, and I’m not really sure whose garden he thinks I’m tending, mine or his. Maybe I like it cos, thus far, he’s the only bird I know who doesn’t moan at me (or maybe I just don’t understand Blackbirdese yet)

In the past I’ve been in the habit of greeting him with ” Good morning Mr Blackbird, how are you today”. Dunno why I do that. Something in the back of my mind tells me it’s good luck, or something. It follows that when I see his GLW hove into view I follow with similar: “Morning Mrs B, how are the kids? ”
Whatever the reason for this idle persiflage, I’m glad I don’t live in Brussels. Yes, you’ve guessed it: The European Parliament has banned the terms ‘Miss’ and ‘Mrs’ in case they offend female MEPs. It’s all part of their “Gender-Neutral” campaign, according to The Telegraph. Now there are many things I say which offend women (see above, and below), often as part of my loveable-rogue persona. But I really do think anyone who gets offended by being called “Mrs” shouldn’t have got married in the first place. And “Miss” is used purely as an act of politeness. I suppose we could use “Madam”, or “Woman” or “Old Bag” but surely “Miss” is merely trying to be polite, and recognises that ancient practise by women of pretending to be younger than you really are? So don’t blame us, we’re not trying to pigeon-hole you, honest.
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Gender Neutral:
Don’t let it happen to you

For what it’s worth (and these really are beyond me) officials have also ordered that ‘sportsmen’ be called ‘athletes’, ‘statesmen’ be referred to as ‘political leaders’ and even that ‘synthetic’ or ‘artificial’ be used instead of ‘man-made’. Just pass me a bottle of scotch and a Service-issue revolver, I know what to do. (I blame Harriet Harperson)

In other news, the French really are having it bad: sales are down at the “Big Eropolis” in Paris, apparently the biggest erotic fair in Europe. The turnover is down 30% on last year, according to Reuters. If the French aren’t sticking it hard to their mate’s wife (sorry, significant-and-equal-other) cos of the economic crisis, you know we really ARE in trouble. It’s practically compulsory over there. Presumably the rubber-clad mistresses (or Whip-wielding-more-confident-and-sexually-demanding-females, as they’re now known) are feeling the pinch. I suggest some extra talcum-powder.

Back in Blighty, if you did catch your partner looking through the rubber section of the Littlewoods catalogue, or he returned from his weekend ‘business trip’ in Paris covered in crème fraîche and whip-marks, you could have attended Britain’s first Divorce Fair, at a hotel in Brighton.
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Coping with divorce can be upsetting

Now I enjoy a good divorce as much as the next man, but under the pretence of ‘helping people start over’ a whole collection of services were available to those who are finding a recent separation tough.

The list of help available, according to The Times tells you all you need to know about this con-fest: “There were lawyers and psychic healers, financial consultants and shoe retailers, chocolate makers and probate solicitors.” as well as four”colour psychologists” to advise you on changing the decor at home. Hmmmm….. NOW do you wanna join my gang????

Mr and Mrs (there, I said it!) Blackbird have no need for such a gathering. They’re too busy watching me dig up worms in my vegetable patch. She looks older than him. And fatter.
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Phwoooaaarrrr!!!!!!!

The Sharp Single

All Done

Category Archives: sex