Category Archives: TV

T’was Brillig

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So now that the dust has settled, now that orders in Tennants Super and Economy Toilet roll are set to go through the roof, what does it all mean ? The answer is simple: I’m shagged if I know. Gorgeous Georgie Gideon Oswald, (sorry Osborne) Our Dave and their pet Yellow Toad have decided to transform the country into a scene from to Jabberwocky, full or peasants surfs and huge piles of shit, with a 5 groat consumption charge to enter the citadel (though the Sheriff of Bonkingham decided against extending it to the west of the castle) or maybe “Oliver Twist” where former benefit claimants hold out their bowl for some more gruel to Mr Bumble (brilliantly played by Eric Pickles) who promptly tells them to “fook off”.

Personally, I’m a tad miffed that it now seems I’m to be unemployed until I’m 66, rather than 65. Oh well, you know me: mustn’t grumble. If I were French I’d be running up and down with a flare and a megaphone, knocking kepis of coppers bonces. Being British I’ll probably put the kettle on, make a nice cup of tea and see what that nice Nick Robinson has to say. It’s fair to say this former President of the Oxford University Conservative Association, ex-national chairman of the Young Conservatives, alleged Bullingdon Club member and now BBC Political Editor has done a just frankly spiffing job selling the cuts to a watching nation. And he’s hardly burst into laughter once. Well done him. When his BBC career is over he can always get himself a job on Fox News.

But however nasty Nick spins it, there’s something rotten in Denmark Hill and throughout the kingdom. The natives are revolting. Even Boris Johnson has likened the (sorry his) government’s crackdown on housing benefits for the poorest of families to ethnic cleansing. Gideon and Dave were furious. The foie gras hit the aircon but Bonkers Bonking Boris stuck to his guns. You know you’re in trouble when the Bullingdon boys start falling out. Funny, but I thought we were all in this together ? Shooting sticks and hacking jackets at twelve paces, m’lud ?

Over in Lala Land, the guvnors at The World’s Worst Airline reckon their poor passengers are getting a rotten deal. All those security checks at the airport are putting people off. Fancy asking us to take off our shoes for inspection before boarding. Whoever heard of a shoebomber ?? They’ll be asking to check our pants and printer cartridges next ! BA boss Willie Walsh also had the onion out of his handbag over the increase to Passenger Duty. “It’s unfair to our customers” was the cry. Well maybe. You could always swallow the increase, Willie.

I’d have a little more sympathy with airlines in general, and BA in particular, if their prices weren’t so high anyway, their service so shite and their guvnor such a miserable, soulless, swindling arsehole. BA have a long proud history of unfair business practice, dirty-tricks campaigns (ah! who can forget dear old Lord King?) and fisting both customers and employees whenever and however possible.

Do you get the feeling that if Willie and Louis Walsh swapped places none of us would be any the wiser? One more complete cnut on the X Factor wouldn’t notice, and think of the fun the new BA boss would have with the cabin crew during the next round of union negotiations. We’d have to throw a bucket of water over them.

Am I sounding more miserable than usual ? Well maybe. Times are tough at the moment. My regular reader in Cheltenham will realise the pictures are coming down in Railway Cuttings as the long process of making the place habitable for others begins. Calculations and ruminations over how and how much to rent out HQ will continue all week. Walls will be painted, the garden given a tidy and that suspicious-looking patch on the wall will have to be covered up. Furnished or unfurnished is just one of many questions I need to ask myself. It’d be great just to walk out and leave everything where it is. It’s gonna be a pain shipping out all the junk one collects over a few years. If I could be arsed I’d put my dvd collection on eBay. If I could be arsed. The booze collection will come with me, what’s left of it, as will the many, many unread books on the shelves.

Once the place looks vaguely decent I’ll need to decide whether to use an estate agent or go it alone. As appalling as my business acumen is, as disorganised as I am and no matter how little I know about renting out a house I can’t bring myself to deal with estate agents. I’ve not had that much luck with them in the past. I once offered to insert a FOR SALE placard into one bloke who I caught trying to drive the sign into my lawn after I’d agreed to let him sell it for me. On another occasion fisticuffs nearly broke out over a penthouse flat in Deptford. We had differed over the description of the flat he was trying to sell me. It was somewhere between “Immaculate”, as described in his literature, and a “Shit Pit” as described by me. So I’m gonna have a go on my own and see how I get on. Lots of pals who’ve been down this route are offering help and advice, so what could possibly go wrong?

So excuse the absence of my usual joie de vivre at the moment, I’ve just got a few things on my mind. Everyone has their off-days/weeks/months and this happens to be one of mine.

Mind you, compared to Ian Holloway I’m positively brimming with hilarity. You’ll know Mr Holloway is a firm favourite around here, responsible for some of the more memorable and hilarious footy quotes of recent times. But last week during the Wayne Rooney saga, things had obviously started to get on top of the normally jovial Mr Holloway.

I hope my house doesn’t toddle-off and do what it likes. I own it !! HOW WRONG IS THAT ?????

True Grit ? Not Much !

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Now that’s a proper movie trailer ! You can’t beat a good western. 40 years ago every Bank Holiday you could be sure one of the three tv stations would show The Magnificent 7 or High Noon. Alias Smith and Jones was the most popular tv show in our house (mainly cos my mum fancied Pete Duel) and The High Chaparral was high in the ratings, even though my dad reckoned it was a poor man’s Bonanza . “Saturday Morning Pictures” at the local cinema always showed Champion the Wonder Horse. It was fantastic.

As a spotty herbert growing up in south east London, me and my equally spotty mates would mosey on down to the Ponderosa, armed to the teeth with cap guns and plastic bowie knives, pretending to be Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood or even Alan Ladd (the cowboy of choice for the shorter 6 yr old). Cum Christmas time everyone asked for a cowboy outfit, long before that phrase became synonymous with Virgin Media or the FA.

But few parents shied away in buying their offspring fake Smith & Wessons, dads happily made their sons bows n arrows and no one thought for one minute that they were nurturing little Johnny into the next mass murderer or serial killer. At the time of writing I have never shot, stabbed or scalped a single person who didn’t deserve it, even though as a kid I had every weapon the local toy shop could offer, (I regularly watched Tom & Jerry too).

Kids played in the streets for hours and hours, filling the air with “piow, piow” sounds and “woo woo woo woo” noises as the cowboys chased the injuns around the houses, up the avenues and down the alleyways until our mums called us all in for our tea. If you walked down my road during any school holiday you couldn’t escape the smell of sulphur from the hundreds of cap gun shots fired that day. You’d probably find the the odd sucker-tipped arrow in your garden, next to the empty Jubbly cartons and Jamboree Bags (cowboys and injuns ate on the go).

I remember one afternoon me and my mate Alan Martin were hiding behind Mrs Baker’s garden wall, waiting to ambush some redskins who were creeping up the road, baying for white man’s blood, using the Unigate Dairies’ milk float as cover. These braves lived in the block of flats at the top of the road and we knew they’d soon be off home to watch Pinky n Perky and Mrs Baker’s garden was the perfect spot to cut them off at the pass. I checked my holster string was tight around my thigh, I pulled my neckerchief (my mum’s paisley scarf) up over my nose and mouth and checked I had a full reel of caps in my gun.

As I did so a warm feeling overcame me. Alan must have had one Jubbly too many that day cos in the excitement he decided to relieve himself down the back of my leg. The unmistakable sensation of someone else’s tepid urine saturating my jeans caused me to leap out of my hidey-hole and my cover was blown. I turned to remonstrate with my once partner, probably should have pistol-whipped him, but chose to burst into tears instead. As the woo woo woos started up and the arrows rained down on on us, Alan ran away and I stood there in a puddle of piss, not caring if the injuns scalped me, skinned me or strung me up by my nipples. I squelched home, ignoring the cries of “you’re dead, Bealing, you’re dead !”. I was steaming. Literally.

Things were never the same after that. I went off being a cowboy and took up cricket instead, though I always refused to go into bat if Alan was wicket keeping. When I eventually got to see True Grit a couple of years later I absolutely loved it. Never having been a huge fan of “Da Duke”, this was the best thing I’d ever seen him in. He was funny, he was horrible and for once wasn’t taking himself too seriously. I wanted to go out and buy myself an eye-patch, and if it wasn’t for the spector of my mate’s weak bladder I probably would have.

Westerns were changing. The old white hat/black hat world of Gary Cooper was over. Even Clint, who was slick and sleek in Rawhide, was still the goody but was now unshaven, mean and moody. I wasn’t allowed to watch most of these nasty, bloodthirsty movies, and I had to wait some time before I could find out for myself if there was indeed any spaghetti in them.

Then for years the genre (yes, I used it) went missing. They went out of favour, certainly in Hollywood, with just the odd European oddity making it to cult status. The late 70’s and 80’s were littered with cheesey cobblers like The Long Riders or Young Guns. But when Lonesome Dove came along in 1989 there was some hope that somewhere, someone was thinking along the right lines. Dances with Wolves quickly followed, then came The Unforgiven, many people’s favourite “cowboy” of all time. Things were really warming up. Wyatt Earp, Tombstone, and Ned Kelly were all thoroughly enjoyable romps and Brokeback Mountain evoked memories of the time when men were men and other men were glad of their company.

But when No Country for Old Men was released in 2007, closely followed by The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford I could have happily have died with my boots on there and then. Surely it couldn’t get any better than this ? They looked beautiful and felt good. These were adult movies like they started making in the 60’s and the 70’s before they forgot how to. We were back to Little Big Man, The Wild Bunch and A Man Called Horse. That’s worth a Yee-Harr in anyone’s language.

Now, just when I was thinking it couldn’t get any better, look what they’ve gone and done. Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn and Matt Damon as, er, Glen Campbell. I’m in heaven ! I don’t need my old mate any more – I’m nearly wetting myself with excitement, waiting for the movie to open early next year. As I should have said to Alan on that fateful, moist afternoon: “Fill Your Hands, You Son of a Bitch”.

Roll Over Beethoven

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So the match is over, the race is run. Nothing else left to do than take to the podium and soak up up the applause, pick up your medal, then face the flag, put your hand over your heart and sing your guts out to the national anthem. Simples, as they say.

If you happen to be British you don’t get to hear your national anthem much – certainly not after sporting events. The soundtrack of my youth would more likely include the East German, USSR and USA anthems than the British one. Throughout the 70s and the 80s being crap at sport was something that not only defined us as a nation but thankfully spared us and the rest of the world the torture of listening to God Save the Queen. My god it’s dull. It’s a dirge and it’s terribly, terribly, boring and tedious and dull, never mind the sentiment in the lyric: asking one bloke I don’t believe in to save a woman I don’t believe in.

The only national anthem slower, duller and less inspiring than ours is possibly “Oh (fuck it’s) Canada”. Were both tunes penned by the same guy? Fortunately the Canadians tend to be as feckless at sport as we are so the chances of listening to their anthem are equally slim. There are some terrific tunes out there, to be sung in the name of sporting excellence and patriotic pride, just GB and our colonial Canucks don’t possess one.

The Italians have a great one – “Il Canto degli Italiani“(The Song of the Italians) – even though it seems to be three songs stuck together. Watching the Italian Rugby team belt it out before an international match, tears rolling down their eyes is truly a marvellous spectacle. The French song is great too – I always well up when that woman sings “La Marseillaise”- halfway through Casablanca. Few would deny “The Star Spangled Banner” is a cracking tune, even if it’s a bit overplayed, and hearing the old Soviet song – the nattily entitled “Gosudarstvenny Gimn Rossiyskoy Federatsii” was always a thrilling experience, right up until The Pet Shop Boys butchered it.

“Advaaaaaaance Australia Fair” always reminds me of “We Plough the Fields and Scatter”, but at least it’s a happy little ditty. Brash, short and childlike – sort of sums up the whole nation really. The Germans still insist of using the same tune as was rather popular over there in the 1930s and 40s, they’ve just changed the words a bit. Uber alles, they seem happy with it, so who are we to cringe ?

So it was with some trepidation and reluctance last night that 12 half-pissed and totally knackered European golfers took to the stage to collect the Ryder Cup. The speeches over, they stood as one, faced the row of flags representing their respective countries and drew breath. The PA system burst into life with a lovely rendition of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”, from his 9th Symphony.

“What the fuck’s this?” squawked one critic with whom I was watching the coverage.
“Mozart” says I, erroneously.
“Why the fuck are they playing Mozart?” asked another couch-bound pal.
“It’s the European Anthem. This is your anthem” I informed him, correctly this time.
“Is it bollocks. Who voted for that then?”
In truth, I’m unused to arguing over either 18th century music or the voting systems of the EU, but I gave it a go.
“The European government did. Ages ago” (apparently it’s been our anthem since 1985, it’s just few realise it) “It’s a good tune, isn’t it? Better than ours”
“But it’s German !” someone pointed out in horror. Admittedly they had me there.
“Could be worse” I offered “Could be Mahler”
I was greeted with blank Homer-esque looks. I tried again. “Well there are so many different nations, they just chose one which encapsulated the continent as a whole”
“Bollocks !” came a cry from the armchair. Strange, I didn’t remember inviting Melvyn Bragg round to watch the golf.

Back on stage, our golfers were clearly having similar doubts about the music. There they stood, motionless, looking both a little bewildered at what they were listening to and what they were supposed to do. Just one – the great Miguel Angel Jimenez – seemed to be singing along. But what was he singing ? Did he know the words ? And in which language was he singing them ? Or was he just making them up, mouthing nonsense like an English Politician at a Welsh political conference ?

So I looked the lyrics up:

Joy, beautiful sparkle of the gods,
Daughter of Elysium!
We enter, fire-drunk,
Heavenly one, your shrine.
Your magic again binds
What custom has firmly parted.
All men become brothers
Where your tender wing lingers.

Personally speaking I have never entered Elysium’s daughter, fire-drunk or otherwise, but apart from that it seems pretty placid and neutral, doesn’t it ? It’s not a rabble-rouser, it’s not particularly jingoistic and unlike the original words of “God Save the Queen” it doesn’t point out that there are “Rebellious Scots to crush”, even if there are. And it’s a nice tune, so why not adopt it as our own ? Teach it in schools, rugby and football clubs the continent over. Job done.

Or rather it isn’t.

With no Ryder cup to watch any longer, I switched channels this morning to take my first glimpse at The Commonwealth Games. This has always been a bit of an oddity in the sporting calender because, as there are no Russians, Germans or Americans to lose to, we have to make do with losing to Kenyans, Australians and South Africans. It’s also one of those rare sporting competitions when Great Britain splits into its component parts of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the other lot, who compete against each other. Here again “God Save The Queen” is not appropriate as HRH is Queen (apparently) of all the competing nations, and it would be a bit boring (as if it wasn’t anyway) to have to listen to the same turgid song at each medal ceremony. So, the Jocks have chosen “Flower of Scotland”, the Northern Irish “Danny Boy” and the Welsh, well probably “Delilah” or something, but they’re not expecting to get the record out of its sleeve for a while.

England have traditionally gone for “Land of Hope and Glory“, a full-thrusting, ball-breaking sing-yer-heart out sort of number, a million miles away from “God Save…”. And so, having watched the English swimmer Fran Halsall romp home in the 50m butterfly I sat back to enjoy her picking up her medal, stood as she was between the two Strines who were both predicted to beat her. There she was, gold round her neck, as proud as punch and the band struck up. But we were not to be treated by “Land of…” but instead we got “Jerusalem”.

Now Jerusalem is a lovely old song, sung at school assemblies and on rugby terraces throughout the land. But it does have a tendency to go on a bit (remind you of anyone?). But nevertheless, we’re told that there was a national poll in which “Jerusalem”, as recorded by the The Grimethorpe Colliery Band (I’m not making any of this up) won the day by beating “Land of Hope etc” by some votes to some fewer. National poll my arse. Anyone out there asked to vote for this?

So off they went, knocking out a decent rendition of William Blake’s poem. One verse takes a good while to complete. We got both verses of it. And poor old Fran had to grin and bear it. It went on forever. At the start she look excited and a little bit teary. By the end she looked embarrassed, cramped up, bewildered and in danger of nodding off. To win her gold medal she swam one length of the pool in 26.24 seconds. The anthem took 2 minutes 25 (yes I timed it). I emailed the fragrant Clare Balding at the BBC if this was a Commonwealth Games record.

She hasn’t replied, but I suspect it is a record. For now. I’m starting a new “national” competition to vote for England’s anthem for the 2014 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow (which’ll doubtless make Delhi look like Las Vegas). Suggestions so far include “Bohemian Rhapsody” “Bat out of Hell” (extended version) and “Eskimo Nell”. My plan is to find to an anthem longer and more tedious than the 50k Walk. Morrissey albums are exempt on humanitarian grounds.

Elsewhere: The Philippines crack down on anthem abuse

Kissing Hitler (and everyone else)

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Ok, ok, so it may not have been his finest hour. But for many of us of a certain age The Persuaders was our first real glimpse of the man that was Tony Curtis. The Boston Strangler out over-acting Simon Templar. Harry Houdini out safari-suiting James Bond. Whatta guy! Only then did we start to realise what we’d been missing. So this was who our mums had been swooning over for all those years, and this was the piece of manhood for which the young ladies of Hollywood had been gagging since the late 1940s.

Women (and no doubt some men) all over the world swooned as he wielded rope and handcuffs as the Strangler and Houdini, wore next to nothing in The Vikings and Spartacus and even melted when he wore a faux Herman Goering number in The Great Race. In Some Like it Hot he gave a wonderful Cary Grant impersonation and made for a pretty decent woman. If he’d been a young actor today he’d be labeled as both a gay icon and a smouldering gift to womankind. The one about who both your girlfriend and her slightly iffy brother would go to bed and thrash themselves to within an inch of their lives. One scene in Spartacus , when Curtis sensuously bathes Laurence Olivier, had to be removed from the original released edit for fear of multiple spontaneous combustions all over the US in movie theatres.

For every classic he starred in he also made a stinker. But by the time The Persuaders came into my life it dawned on me I’d probably missed his best bits, something which couldn’t been said of a legion of Hollywood starlets. Tony liked a bird, and the birds liked him. He’d go onto marry six times, underlining his reputation of a master swordsman, but he most famously had failed to bag the one that everyone wanted- Marilyn. He’s famously quoted as describing kissing Monroe in Some Like it Hot as akin to “Kissing Hitler”. Poor sod. Presumably Janet Leigh gave better lip service to him (perhaps more of a Himmler) as they married and produced Jamie Leigh Curtis, who years later would be, incredibly, at the centre of another gossip-led sexuality debate. (Anyone who’s seen the bedroom scene in True Lies could surely be in no doubt.)

“What’s the secret to a long and happy life? Young women’s saliva!” Tony Curtis

As his movie career waned Curtis took up art, for want of a better word, but never let anything get in the way of beautiful young women and magnificent wigs (some of his syrups would have done Phil Spector proud). But we shouldn’t dwell on the last rather sad few years of this once talented and likeable man, trying vainly to relive his youth and hold back the inevitable passage of time. Nor should we feel anything but mild envy for the life he led. Making 85 as he did is testament to the fact that you really can have your cake and eat it too.

I like to think of him running up and down those oars as that one-handed viking, or wearing a frock and playing the sax for Sweet Sue and Her Society Syncopators.

And let us not forget who first stood up to defend Spartacus. I’m Spartacus! (and so is my wife).

“I wouldn’t be seen dead with a woman old enough to be my wife.” Tony Curtis

Time Gentlemen Please

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Autumn. Conkers. Squirrels. Cold snaps. Crisp mornings, chilly nights. Leaves falling off, evening closing in, windscreens frosting up. Harvest festivals, the bringing in of the sheaves. It’s a time of change. It’s the end of the season: time to pack away the pads and the bats, put the snorkel back in the loft, the Speedos (still unworn) in the bottom drawer. It’s the start of the season: out with the gumshield, buy a new tube of the liniment, dust off the woolly hat, eek out the hipflask. The ground takes a stud, the grass no longer grazes your knees, you can see your breath as you gasp for it by the corner flag.

Things to look forward to: The Ryder Cup; The Ashes Series; the first M&S Christmas advert; the smell of a hot radiator; Trick or Treat. Things to dread: Charlton in a relegation six-pointer; the new season of The Apprentice; Strictly Come Dancing; The Labour Party conference and Guy Fawkes Night (if that’s not repeating myself).

By way of a change, and in a vain attempt to redeem themselves in my eyes, The BBC weather bureau accurately predicted the end of the summer. They said the last day would be Wednesday and, sure enough Wednesday it was. It was gorgeous. As it happened three of us took to the golf course and we couldn’t have picked a more splendid day to waggle our mashie niblicks around in the open air.

My pal, Big H, is a member of the local golf club, Blackheath, and kindly invited Shaun and I to play a round with him. Blackheath is the world’s oldest golf club, which was fitting as I played it like the world’s oldest golfer. To be fair, my first half-dozen holes were decent enough for one who hadn’t picked up a club for over seven years. However, the effort of whacking a little ball around a few miles of parkland soon took it’s toll on these old bones and by the 10th I was sweating audibly, my feet were quite literally bleeding and I was screaming for my mum long before I limped up the 18th.

I have spent many a year explaining (mainly to women and Americans) how tiring and taxing on the body a game of cricket can be, but imagine the look of incredulation on The Incumbent’s face when she saw me the following day, looking as if I’d been run over my a truck. It’s an age thing, you see, and no matter that 80 year old men happily play four games of golf-a-week without so much as a stiff back, or that there are 50 year old cricketers leading their club’s averages, my body has decided to call time early on my chosen sporting careers. I’m not in the Autumn of my cricketing or golfing life, more like the New Year’s Eve party of it- somewhere between the “can I put your coat up in the bedroom” and the “Auld Lang Syne” of it.

The previous weekend I’d had to cry off the last cricket match of the season, citing knee and ankle failure. It was a depressing decision to have to make, knowing it’d be the best part of seven months before my next one. But I was in so much pain it seemed the sensible thing to do. When later the chance to play golf came along I couldn’t resist digging out my 30 year-old golf shoes (the style of which attracted much derision and mirth from my playing partners) and borrowing a set of clubs.

As nice as they are, it was more than my pals could manage to conceal their amazement at my lack-of-fitness. I dunno why: I’ve never been fit. But the rapidity of my decent into a pool of moaning sweat had them fearing for my wellbeing. Dare I play again ? Will I be asked ? If I do play, will the paramedics be on stand-by? Or do I give it up as a bad job, wait until the 2011 cricket season begins and believe that somehow my body will repair itself in time for me to take an active part ?

There have been discussions (albeit a wee bit one-sided) on trying to get fit. Swimming has been muted. Someone actually mentioned joining the gym. Someone else even suggested dance classes. I glazed over like Homer Simpson at a school play. My mate Johnny Mac (he who has just run from John O Groats to Lands End) even said to me over a pint the other night that “everyone want’s to stay fit, don’t they?” He could tell from my expression he may as well as offered me a half-pint.

So I am seriously considering giving it all up. I’ve had a decent run, after all, and maybe it’s time to stand aside and yet youth flourish ? On most summer Saturdays, by the time I strap on the knee-supports, apply the Ralgex and pop half a dozen pain-killers the game’s already started. If I can’t meander around a short-ish, flat-ish golf course without squealing like a stuck pig maybe it’s time to look for other ways to participate in sport ?

I know how to cut up a half-time orange, fill up the tea-urn or run the bath for the lads while they’re out on the field of play. If pushed, I could be the linesman or touch-judge, as long as the players don’t run too fast. At a push I’d drive the team bus. I could umpire, though don’t ask me to caddy (those golf bags are heavy). There are many, much older than me who will scoff and scorn me for being such a lardy wimp, people who keep themselves in reasonable shape and whose weekends still entail pulling on the boots or the plus-fours, polishing off their bowls or even donning singlet and trotting off for a brisk 10-mile run.

But it just sounds too much like hard work to me. Pass me that shooting stick and hand me the program. I’ll queue up for the Bovril, I’ll happily prepare the picnic basket. Let me join the 100 Club and if you’re short I’ll even mark out the pitch, put out the flags or help out behind the bar. I love the game, I adore the competition, I am never happier than when I walk onto the first tee, or take a shiny red cricket ball on my hand or (back in the days of yore) jog out onto the field and stare down my opposite number. I’d always rather lose 22-21 than win 40-nil. But now it hurts. A lot.

It hurts more than it ever did. It starts hurting sooner and it hurts for longer. Sometimes it even hurts before the match starts. So as I sit here, three days since I peeled off those painful, painful golf shoes and I’m still feeling the pain, it’s now surely time to say “time’s up” My cricket captain never reads this rubbish so I’ll have to write and tell him. I’ve announced my retirement to him before and he ignores me, but this time I mean it. Honest. Having not donned golfing troos for the best part of a decade, my pals won’t exactly mourn my passing.

I can always meet them in the bar after. I’ll be snuggled up in front of Strictly, awaiting Sports Personality of the Year. Anyone fancy a game of crib?

The Sole Man

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Bought a pair of shoes once. Doc Martens. Lovely they were. Then after five days the sole of one came away from the upper, under the arch. Less than happy, I popped them into a bag and walked up to the shop from where I bought them in pursuit of a replacement pair or at least a refund.

The shop wasn’t one of those swish, poncy, boutique affairs, full of little girls selling slingbacks to old ladies, but more of an emporium: a functional, no-frills sort of place which sold what my old man would call “working” shoes and clothes. No women were anywhere to be seen. I was one of the few therein not wearing overalls.

There was a bloke who I presumed to be the guvnor arranging a display of shoelaces as I approached the counter.
“Hello mate,” says I to Mr Shopkeeper “I bought these shoes here last week and, look, this one’s split at the seam,”
The bloke took my shoe in his hands, holding it at the heel and toe. He looked at it for a second, noticing the split down the side, then flexed it, looked at me inquisitively before returning his attention to my right size 9. He turned the shoe over, then flexed it again while studying the sole. Then he looked up at me again to deliver his verdict.

“You’ve been bending your feet”
” ‘scuse me?” I spluttered.
“You’ve been bending your feet when you walk” he repeated, without a glint of irony.
“Well how do you walk around, then?” I demanded to know. I walked round in a circle, lifting my knees as if I were wearing flippers. Demonstration over, I returned to meet the shoe expert eye-to-eye.

“You got any that can cope with a spot of foot-bending, then?” I enquired. But he was not playing my game. He again picked up my purchase and continued his flexing routine.
“I can have a go at mending it.” he offered ” I reckon a hot knife should do it.”
“Have a go with a hot knife ???” I retorted, incredulously “These are brand new, mate. They cost me 30 quid. Each !”

He clearly didn’t get it. We argued the toss over whether the fault lay with the manufacturer or some physical deformity that I had been, up to then, blissfully unaware of. I wasn’t in the mood.
“You know the phrase ‘the customer’s always right’ ? Well I’m him ! ”

I could tell he was doing me the biggest of favours when he opened the till to refund my money. I half-thought he might offer me the money back on just one, as only one shoe had split. We hurrumphed at each other as I left the establishment, £60 back in my wallet but two shoes worse off.

The shop is, amazingly, still in business and by all accounts thriving. I walk past it every now and then, remembering not to bend my feet as I do so.

.

A Short History of Just about Nothing

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I suppose it happens to each of us from time to time, and this week I started making tentative enquiries as to who or what my ancestors were. I know what triggered it:- a cable channel has been running back-to-back every one of the BBC’s many episodes of Who Do You Think You Are ?, a show where celebrities and the like are taken through a long, often tortuous journey back in time to trace their family trees.

Among the nuggets the show threw up was that Mayor Boris Johnson’s predecessors ruled most of Europe (shock), many of Stephen Fry’s family were jews butchered by the Nazis (v upsetting for him and for the viewer) and Ainsley Harriot’s great, great something or other was a white bloke running a plantation in the West Indies, raping the slave girls wherever he went (knocked a dirty great hole in Ainsley that one, poor sod).

It got me thinking, and that hasn’t happened for a while. I realised that I knew next to sod all about my family. I had known well all four of my grandparents. Both granddads were in the forces -that’s one of them, my mum’s dad Bill- at the top of this page, about to go off to the far east- and the other, Bryan, was a sailor (I have the sea in my blood and if you look carefully you can see where it gets in). But I know little or nothing of their fathers, or their fathers’ fathers. Or their fathers’ fathers’ fathers (ok, Stan don’t labour the point).

Many years ago a bloke called Nigel Bealing (an unknown to my branch of the clan) sent my father a completely unsolicited package which appeared to contain our family tree, or at least the parts he said he’d been able to plot. I’ve no idea where all those documents within that parcel ended up (probably in my dad’s loft) but the only things anyone ever remembers of their contents was a vaguely convincing coat of arms and the fact that we are, apparently, descended from Lord Marmaduke Boleyn, second cousin of Anne Boleyn, she of Henry VIII fame. Boleyn to Bealing in 500 easy years. Hmmm….

Apart from the rather uneasy feeling that there was royalty in my blood (however distant or tenuously linked), the news didn’t really impress me too much, such is the apathy of youth, and I pretty much forgot about it for years after. But as one rapidly approaching his 46th birth anniversary, with the fear of mortality kicking in, and treating myself to a week-long diet of B-listers’ family archives, I decided to my own digging. What would I find? More royalty? Murderers? Artists? Accountants ? (please god, no).

So, having more time on my hands than is decent, I searched for ancestry websites. The start of my long long journey into the past had begun, to become acquainted with all those magnificent old sods whose stories, whose lives and existences I knew nothing at all about. How exciting, I thought. Centuries of Bealings awaited me. Was Anne Boleyn the last of the line to have six fingers? Have we always had small gentetalia? Is my lineage, like Tony Hancock’s “100% Anglo Saxon with just a touch of viking?”. Could it be I’m distantly related to Ainsley Harriot?

First stop: the 1911 census. There he was: My granddad

Apart from the fact that they’d for some reason got his date of birth wrong (he was born in 1900) it was rather pleasing and eerie to see him there in black and white, or black and blue anyway. But apart from that one entry, that’s as much as I got. I don’t know his dad’s name, his DOB or anything really. I could have delved deeper but that would have meant registering and with the site and ‘buying credits’, whatever that meant. My sudden surge of enthusiasm for the past was evaporating like the morning mist on Blackheath common.

No matter. It would wait for another day. It’s taken me 45.9 years to take an interest in old Marmaduke and his descendants so another couple of months won’t do any harm, will it? I logged off and returned to my job-seeking activities. Then tonight, while wading through a whole slew of 911 programs I’d recorded over the weekend I was idly surfing the web when the ancestry bug nibbled me again.

In an act of pure self-indulgence I started Googling the family name. Christ ! There are hundreds of us. Far too many to bother with on a Sunday evening. So I clicked onto Google images to see what I could find there. Here too were many different pictures of Bealings I had no idea existed. There was a John and a Clive. I found a photo of Paul from New Zealand. There was a Crystal Bealing, a black girl from the States and Nicola Bealing, a successful artist from Cornwall. Hundreds of people all with the same silly surname. I suppose if I’d ever joined Facebook I might have found out all of this years ago. But I didn’t. And, just for the record, I won’t.

Feeling reinvigorated, and with plenty of new leads and relatives to keep me busy for the next eon, I was just about to close down my laptop when out of the corner of my eye I spotted a rather odd-looking picture. It was a page from something called Rudy’s List of Archaic Medical Terms.
 It is, as is suggested by the title, a list of of rather old an odd words which the medical profession once used. At least I hope they once used them. There, somewhere between some affliction called Bay Sore and the rather alarmingly sounding Beaver Feaver, was this:

If you’re finding that difficult to read, I shall assist. It reads: Beal – A small inflammatory tumor; a pustule. To gather matter; to swell and come to a head, as a pimple. See Boil a tumor. (Prov. Eng.) [Webster1913].

Ok, ok, very funny, I suppose, if your name happens to be Beal. But I’m not. Clearly. But underneath was a derivation, a useage.

An example from an 1853 mortality schedule from Kentucky:

I repeat: Cause of Death: Bealing in the Throat !

Can you image my disappointment? Here I was hoping to discover that I’m the rightful air to the fortunes of some long-forgotten dynasty who were once the toast of the royal courts of Europe, who owned not only all the tea in China but the cups and saucers too. Instead I find that when my forefathers filled in a mortgage application, the staff at Ye Old Abbey National were sent into fits of giggles on reading a letter from a Mr Pustule. I’d had enough again. Sod the lineage. Shut down Mac.

And I don’t want to go down the route of how one could die of “Bealing in the Throat”, I shall leave that to your dirty smutty little minds. Just move away from the computer and forget you ever read about it. Regular readers of this column should find that easy enough.

And the rest is geography.

The Lost Weekend

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7

It had to happen eventually. This morning I woke up to no phone, no tv and no internet. You can imagine my mood.

An expensive phone call on my blackberry to those chaps at Virgin Media revealed that they, like me, hadn’t a clue what the problem is.

At 50p a minute (no freephone here, of course) I waded and through and waited on several automatic message machines.

“Press 1 for a fault with your phone; if you have a problem with your TV press
2; or if you want to report a fault with your broadband press 3.”

Not being given the option of being able to press all three, I pressed ‘3’ and waited. Melinda picked up the call.

“Could you confirm your, name, account number and the first line of your address for me, please ?”

Through some stroke of luck my answer tallied with the info she had. I wasn’t actually reporting a fault using someone elses ID.

“Ok Sir, could you turn the wireless modem off, wait for 30 seconds and then turn it on again? That will reset it”

“Did that this morning, Melinda. Still doesn’t work”

“Oh. Ok Mr Bealing, I shall just check to see if there’s been a fault reported in your area.”

75p went by.

“Mr. Bealing ?”
“Yes” (who else was it gonne be?)
“There doesn’t seem to be a problem in your area so I’m going to put you through to my colleague who will be able to book an engineer for you.”

Pause for about £2.25.

Gareth (wouldn’t you know it?) picked up the phone.

“Good morning sir. Could you just confirm your, name, account number and the first line of your address for me, please ?”

Hmmm….Ok, I stood for it and spouted off my details again, and confirmed I’d already performed the turnyoffandon routine, much to Gareth’s surprise.

“There doesn’t seem to have been a problem reported in your area”

“Well I’m reporting it now” I offered.

“Ok” said Gareth, ignoring my tetchiness “the earliest we can get someone out to you is Monday, between 12 and 4pm”

“Do you not come out at weekends?” I asked, already realising the futility of the question.

“We do, but we have so many bookings this weekend that there’s no engineer near you available .”

“Perhaps there’s a fault in my area?” I wondered aloud.

Gareth paused for about 17p.

“I tell you what, Mr Bealing” I think the penny had dropped “if it turns out that a general fault in the area is reported we’ll call you and either address it here remotely or I’ll try to get someone to you this weekend.”

“Ok, you have my mobile number?”

“Er, no…?” He said, wondering why he would have that on record.

“Well how are you going to call me then ? My landline’s down.”

We parted company, Gareth and I. He with my mobile number, me with the raving hump.

So here I sit. Texting a blog on my mobile. The house is silent. No telly, not tv, no phone. No contact with the outside world, no entertainment. Might as well be in Cardiff.

Reader’s Indigestion

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According to Pink Floyd it’s the route of all evil today. Liza Minnelli said it made the world go round. Apparently it can’t buy you love, but the Pet Shop Boys wanted to make lots of it. I suppose it must by funny in a rich man’s world, but I’m unlikely experience that. I’m skint and I need a cunning plan. And I ain’t really got one.

I was thinking of writing my memoirs: A no-hold bars account of my life so far, explaining my angst over all the bad things I’ve done in my life and the lies I’ve told, justifying some, defending others, but apologizing for none. I could include a chapter explicitly detailing the sex life with my wife, and throughout the book I could pepper it with references to my closest colleague who took over from me after I left the job. I could then reveal to the world that I always thought he was an idiot, unsuitable for the job, unstable and with a violent temper. I could distance myself from all the cock-ups he made and the disasters that befell the office after I’d stood down from my post. They were, after all, nothing to do with me.

The book would be a best-seller, I’d make millions (I’d ensure it was immediately marked down as half-price in Waterstones and on Amazon, just so even more would be tempted to buy it), and I could travel the country, nay the world giving interviews to the BBC, selling extracts to TIME Magazine and the like. I might even give book-signing sessions in popular stores in big cities.

But what if some of the unenlightened electorate, a section of the great unwashed take umbrage over what I’ve done and start heckling me, or worse start throwing shoes and shit at me. I wouldn’t like that. I want to be loved. I’d have to run and hide, and that wouldn’t look very good, would it? No, perhaps I need to come up with a better plan to make my fortune.

Or perhaps I don’t need to make millions? After all, work is bound to come my way sooner or later, right? Perhaps I just need a cash-injection ? I keep seeing those loan companies advertising on the tv. They offer short-term loans for a modest interest rate. One of the adverts says they offer “typical APR 2689%”. Not sure what’s typical about 2689%, but then again I’m not very good at money. I reckon £20,000 might tie me over til I get myself square. Hopefully that wouldn’t take too long, say a year. If I borrowed it at the typical rate I need only repay £79,565.39. Hmmm…

I’m 46 next month and creeping ever-nearer to the age when I can apply for one of those “Over 50 plans” which Michael Parkinson is always flogging on telly. But life insurance is no good to me, is it? Unless I can get third party.

My complete and utter confidence in my winning the lottery is beginning to wane a little. I haven’t had a sniff of even a tenner for weeks. I dunno what’s going wrong. In the first draft of my autobiography I have blamed The Incumbent for buying the wrong tickets. It definitely isn’t my fault, and I’ll make sue the world knows it. Unless we win tomorrow night then I shall amend the draft to ensure my genius is well documented.

I sought out a dodgy bookie to see if we might work out some way of spot fixing during my next cricket match. He came along to watch the game I was playing in at the weekend. He suggested, having seen me play before, that we might run a book on which part of my body would drop off or explode at any given time during the match. We agreed that on the third ball of the fifth over my right ankle would collapse from under me, leaving me to hobble around in agony. During the 7th over I would make a disastrous attempt of fielding the ball, allowing it to run under my body to the boundary and thus giving the opposition four runs. Finally, before the 2nd ball of the 20th over I would collapse in a heap in the outfield, having gone temporarily blind, and in need of re-hydration. For this I would be handsomely rewarded.

I would have made a fortune if I’d have remembered it was my right ankle that was to give way.Everything else went to plan. Inspector Smellie of the Yard wants to see me, once I have recovered.

But there is a chink of light, a glimmer of hope. There’s a knight in shining armour on the horizon. The 7th Cavalry have arrived and they’ve brought shedloads of cash with ’em. There’s a letter on my dining table which says that Reader’s Digest are going to give me, give me £100,000. All I have to do is wait for a big orange envelope to pop through my letterbox and post back my lucky prize winning numbers. I dunno what I’ve been worried about all along. No bookies needed, no publisher required. Just good, honest, old fashioned, non-intrusive Reader’s Digest. The Milky Bars are on me. Break out the purple quilted smoking jacket and johdpurs.

How many lottery tickets can you buy with £100,000?