Because William Shatner

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Green suits were very VERY trendy

My influences were Lee Thompsoin from Madness and Ginsters Pies

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

 

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

To cut a long story short you look an arse

To cut a long story short you look an arse

Shockin’ down in Kent

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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

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

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.

William Elliot Whitmore

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Watch this. You’ll like this.

This fella was on Later with Jools this week. A fine, fine voice and his heart seems to be in the right place. On his website some of his influences and heroes are listed as: Shane MacGowan, Ray Charles, Hank Williams, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. There’s more than a whiff of Johnny Cash about him too.

And if you like that and get the chance, check out his album Animals in the Dark, especially the song Johnny Law. Superb lyrics.

Just a Minute

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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

Hard-boiled Eggs and Nuts

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I had to go to work yesterday. I know that sounds like no big deal, but I had to go to work yesterday. I felt like shit—I was streaming and sweating, coughing and spluttering, couldn’t taste a thing and my hearing was on the fritz. It was the start of a rotten cold and what I should have done was worked from home. I should have done that, however I couldn’t: Yesterday was “Take your daughter to school day” and so I took my eldest into the office. Glad I did in the end cos it was great fun. I’ve done it several times before and it’s always been good. My daughter enjoyed it too I think, even though this time she asked me why I couldn’t work for NME as she has a subscription and “it’d be sooooo cooooolll to work there”. There was a time when whatever I did or said or wherever I worked was “sooo coooollll” but I guess my kids have reached that age when they can make up their own minds as to what they like.

I don't want you to drink, Mr Bond, I want you to diet!

I don't want you to drink, Mr Bond, I want you to diet!

Their unconditional belief in what I say has long gone. No longer do they believe daddy’s tall tales about being James Bond in his spare time (they believed that one for a month when they were nippers) or was dating Rachel Stevens (about a week), and I’ve gone from funny, exotic, cool daddy who lives in London, to the old, fat, bald bloke up the road. Such is the life of an estranged dad of teenage girls. Clever little sods.

In an attempt to sweat-out my cold last night I filled up with a cocktail of chilli con carne and Lemsip and took myself off for an early night. Should have plumped for the hot toddies: I feel dreadful today.

Like most blokes I know, I suffer in silence.

Thumping head, red-raw throat, sore, scabby nostrils and every muscle (sic) left in my body aching like buggery (apparently). Called in sick to the boss who unsurprisingly was unecstatic. Having taken many of these calls from staff over the years you’re torn between the annoyance of being a man down, and the relief that you’ll be spared a day of being covered in snot and germs from a colleague. On the other side of the fence, no matter how ill you are, there’s always the guilt to deal with of not being in work.

Anyway, enough of this martyr talk. What’s more important is I’m bored. REALLY bored. Having no energy to do anything much more than fester, I’m stuck on the sofa looking out at cornflower-blue sky outside, inanely tapping up and down the tv channels with as much chance of finding something interesting to watch as there is of me winning the London Marathon on Sunday. Which is another thing: Sunday’s marathon is one of my favourite days in the calender. But instead of propping up the bar at The Angerstein Hotel, Greenwich on Sunday morning, watching the runners jog by, I shall doubtless be pouring mucus into a box of Kleenex while sat on my couch in front of the box. Even if I manfully struggled down to the pub, I wouldn’t be able to taste my pint, and what’s the point of that?
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We’ve been trotting down en masse to The Angerstein (known as The Loony Bin—you’ll find out why when you meet the locals) to watch the Marathon for the last twelve years-or-so. Many of us to soak up the atmosphere of one of the Capital’s great occasions with world-class athletes, huge crowds, the fun-runners and all the colours of the rainbow. Some go down merely to watch the Elite Ladies sprint past, then return home to a warm bed (you know who you are), then there are those who go simply to celebrate the opening of a pub at 8.45 on a Sunday morning. So there’s something for everyone. There was something quite liberating that first year standing in The Loony, pint in hand, next to a copper before 9 o’clock in the morning and there was nothing he could do to stop me. It’s the little things in life that count. A fourteen-hour session of drinking, eating (?) and endless, pointless Jazz one-Sunday-in-fifty-two: that’s not too much to ask for, is it?

As the years rolled by and the various members of our group came and went as they got loved-up, engaged, married, divorced, deported etc, it’s a nice feeling to have been almost ever-present (to my dying shame I missed one year due to a business trip) and still experience the thrill of that first pint 3 hours before I should, copper or no-copper. It’s a boy thing.

But I suspect this year, due to my disabilitating illness, I’ll have to endure the dulcet tones of Steve Cram, Sue Barker et al as I’m forced to watch the race on the Beeb. I wonder if they’ll sober-up Brendan Foster for the occasion? Probably not—just to rub it in.

Go on, my girl!

Go on, my girl!

I’m not the sort of bloke…

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…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 !

Masters of None

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DV490084The weather forecasters got it wrong again. They told me it’s warming up, yet all I keep seeing are photos of Policemen in balaclavas—must have been freezing at that g20 demonstration. Silvermans must be doing a roaring trade in wooly headgear for Constable Savage, poor love obviously feels the cold. They also sell duct tape for covering-up those annoying shiny lapel numbers. It’s nice to see there are some retailers who have inadvertently benefited from the financial collapse. I shall wait to purchase my cold weather gear til the bitter gales off the Thames rip around the Valley of Lost Dreams and nibble about me vitals. It’ll be sad enough watching a season involving the likes of Yeovil and Hartlepool, let along enduring a north-easterly unprotected. I’m sure that nice Bobby behind the goal will lend me his if I ask him.
It’s 1981 since we were in the 3rd tier of the english league and, to be brutally honest, it’s no more than we deserve. Playing against the best was great while it lasted but let’s get back to what we know best: pub football, where the only use of ‘wonder-goal’ is when someone wonders if we’ll ever score a goal again and the rotation-system is the one used by fans queuing for the urinals, not by the manager for the squad. There are many upsides to third division football, one of which being you’ll always get in, another is there’s plenty of room to stretch out, and if you get to the ground early enough you get a game.

A packed Valley awaits the teams

A packed Valley awaits the teams

If only the Charlton back four obeyed orders as well as the boys-in-blue did on April 1st. Someone (could it have been Daisy Boo of they Yard?) gave the ‘balaclavas on’ order, the bugle played “Tape-Up”, then came the ’99 call’ and a beautifully choreographed sortie began into the massed ranks of 3rd Battalion Swampy. I’m sure there were a lot lot of herberts there, spoiling for a punch-up in the demo that day—there usually are—I just, as yet, haven’t seen footage of a copper getting a pasting. As in all conflicts there were civilian casualties as a policeman with a truncheon and a riot shield has never been a precision weapon of war. If the end hadn’t been so tragic it’d be almost laughable that a large number of these acts of brutality were caught on CCTV — the very same ones that so many have called an invasion of privacy, and those that the Old Bill use as part of their own daily life. I’m sure there’s absolutely no connection between the Hendon Brigade trying to mask their id numbers and faces and the fact they knew that they’d be on camera. Charlton have been on tv camera for years and they’ve never been as devastating in attack as Her Majesty’s Finest were on that fateful day.
I notice that in a last ditch-effort to recover whatever credibility she has left, Jacqui Smith has released the Hillsborough disaster “secret files” ten years earlier than is necessary. Quite why they weren’t released immediately, and why the South Yorkshire Police will still have control of the documents (and not an independent inquiry) is beyond me. They’ll show that Liverpool fans were originally investigated for what happened that day, following the knee-jerk accusations of crowd trouble and football violence that spread like wildfire that day and over the following days. What they won’t show by the time any independent body gets its hands on the files is who in the SYP was to blame, what conversations and interviews took place between officers, and which were hushed-up. Will this new info allow for prosecutions for 96 deaths? Have the police really changed in 20 years since Hillsborogh (twelve of which under a supposedly socialist government) ?
Let’s hope the family of the G20 victim Ian Tomlinson won’t have to wait 20 years til they get their answers. But I wouldn’t hold my breath.