The Last Day Of Another Year

And here I am sitting listening to "Happy" by William Bell and overall feeling like I agree with him. A most unusual state of mind to find myself in.

2007 bought it's fair share of surprises, chief among them Jim dropping out of University. He didn't like it so I'm not gonna make the kid stick it out just for the sake of finishing it. He immediately found himself a job, he's going to continue with his degree through the OU and he is learning to fly, which is something he has always wanted to do.

Work still sucks (Hey! That's what it's for isn't it ?) although I shall be discussing moving into a new department in a couple of days which will at least relieve me of being answerable to the complete numbnuts I now find is my line "manager". So things may get different if not guaranteed to be better.

And much as I would like to sit here chatting all day, I've just been told I can leave ;-) So here's wishing you all whatever you wish yourselves for 2008 and I hope I'll be seeing you all real soon.

It's Like Losing A Sense

On Sunday I was checking out iPod dock speaker systems in a national retailers store in Brum. I slotted my iPod into an Hitachi radio alarm setup, pressed play...and nothing happened. I took my iPod out of the dock and watched in dismay as the screen melted away into blank nothingness.

All the button combinations in the world wouldn't bring it back to life. I ran across the road to the Apple shop to see if they could revive it. 2 or 3 Apple "genii" poked and prodded and plugged and pressed at it for a while and then told me "sorry mate, it's dead".

Apparently the speakers in the shop I had been in had shorted my iPod and killed it. There was nothing that could be done for it. It was an ex-iPod. And if I wanted to swap it for a new one (they don't repair iPods) then it would cost me £109.99 as mine was out of guarantee.

I had to go away and think about that.

The upshot is that all this week I have been iPod-less on my daily train commute to and from work. That trip takes about 1 hour 20 minutes door to door and being without my little black jukebox has exposed me to the horror that is other people's conversations !

My god the general public talk some drivel and I am close to standing up in the middle of a packed commuter train and screaming "WILL YOU PEOPLE PLEASE SHUT UP, YOU ARE DRIVING ME INSANE" as loud as humanly possible.

Some people appear to have a great need to vocalise every single waking thought. What's for tea, who's suffering from what ailment, which friend is wasting their time on a no good fella. I even heard one woman say to another "What's your favourite, spaghetti or pasta" !!!

I am planning to buy a new iPod at the weekend...it can't come soon enough.

Black Country BeerEx

Don't ask me what a BeerEx is (BeerExpress, BeerExcursion ?) but apparently I was on one on Saturday. And a wonderful afternoon was spent on it.

Steve had got hold of a bus, invited around 25 people to get on it and to thence tour around some of the Black Country's well know watering holes, 6 of them in all.

Me and my unquestionably better half arrived in Wolverhampton at 11.30 desperate for breakfast. If you are ever in Wolverhampton requiring breakfast I can now confidently recommend the Express Cafe opposite Spar at the bus station. Their Bacon, Egg and Sausage sandwich was a sight to see but Deb's Bacon, Egg, Sausage and Tomato triple decker was such a gargantuan feat of culinary engineering that photo's were taken.

The bus duly arrived and off we sallied to the Vine, or is it called the Bull and Bladder (Here it is). Whatever, they brew Bathams there. Jules informed us that he was determined to drink nothing but Mild all day and we agreed this was an admirable ambition and joined in his quest. So the first thing that happened at The Vine was that Mild was purchased. The second, and much more surprising thing that happened at the Vine was that I played a game of darts (possibly for the first time in around 15 years) and won!

Onwards and upwards. Back onto the bus we went and headed off toward Netherton to visit The Old Swan or as it is more commonly known, Ma Pardoes (It's here). The big stove in the middle of the bar with no guard around it would have sent a conscientious Health & Safety type into a fit. I also have to say that I've never before been excited by the thought of Vitreous Enamel but can I point you towards the bar's ceiling as a wonderful example of such, the Institute of Vitreous Enamellers fully agree. They brew their own at Ma Pardoes too and Deb was advised to try a brew called Entire by a very friendly chap at the bar. Or at least that's what we thought he was saying as he had a Black Country accent so thick we could very possibly have been having two completely different conversations.

Next on the list was the Lamp Tavern in Dudley (Here you go) where Jim was to join us. Except, he got one of those taxi drivers that didn't know where he was going ! Tell me, really, what is the point of becoming a taxi driver if you don't know where to go in your local area ? You arrive in a strange town (and frankly there are none much more strange than Wolverhampton) wanting to go to somewhere you've never been before so you jump in a cab...and then the driver admits he doesn't know where you want to go either. Anyway Jim arrived just in time to get the bus to our next port of call...
Quick note to say The Lamp was where our plan to drink Mild all day fell apart, we drank all their Mild and had to have Bitter.

...which was The Britannia. A very small and cosy place with lots of interesting "stuff" on the walls. While I was at the bar Deb shouted over that there was a back room with a TV showing the Darts, so ale was purchased and off we trundled to the back room. It soon became evident there was a problem in the back room. For those of you that have ever seen the film Blazing Saddles you will know what I mean when I refer to the campfire scene with the beans (for those of you that haven't seen Blazing Saddles think about the major side effect of eating too many baked beans...that's right, wind). This back room was small, and very full, full of men who'd been drinking Mild for quite some time now. Not having a gas mask to hand I collected up my wife and child and ran for the door, gulping down the fresh air available in the bar...phew that was a close one.

The Park Inn, Holdens brewery tap was our next destination. They had table football. I like table football...A LOT ! I think I may have been a little noisy while playing and upset one of the locals who was out for a quiet pint. Either that or he was just loooking for a row and got very confused when I apologised and offered to buy him a pint instead of offering to step outside with him.

Our intrepid travellers were then returned to their chariot (well we all got back on the bus anyway) and were transported to their final destination, The Great Western in Wolverhampton. A cracking pub tucked up against the railway lines next to the station. I'd love to tell witty tales of high jinks and much merriment there but honestly, after 7 hours of boozing all I really remember was people playing with their mobile phones and being really hungry. Thanks to Steve, Jules, Sally, Simon, Phil and everyone else...it was real, when can we do it again !

The Enemy...Grrrrrr!

From an article on Guardian.co.uk about the enemy playing a gig for inmates at Pentonville Prison:

"But by halfway through the second chorus, heads are bobbing and feet are tapping, and at the end of the hit single Away from Here, there are whoops, yells and applause.

That song was written on the shop floor of the Co-op where Clarke worked as a TV salesman, and its wantaway sentiments strike a chord."

Wantaway ??? WANTAWAY. Have you seen the lyrics to "Away From Here" ? If not I shall quote for you:

"I want to wake up in the afternoon
With daytime TV and my favourite tune
Cos it is much easier for me see
To stay at home with Richard and Judy"

Wantaway lyrics ??? Those sound like the bleatings of a lazy Chav to me. Ironic that in the same piece The Enemy are again likened to The Jam, Paul Weller and The Specials ! I can't imagine Weller EVER writing anything as negative as that.

Also ironic that in the same piece singer Tom Clarke bemoans the fact that there is no work in Coventry for his mates. What's good for the goose eh Tom ?

Favourite Album(s)

Prompted by a MySpace bulletin a friend recently posted.

He wanted me to name my favourite album. What ? Just one ? Not possible.

So in order to get this into the public domain I present the 5 albums that have had the most effect on me.

David Bowie - The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust & The Spiders From Mars
I'd love to be able to claim that as a hip 10 year old I remember seeing Bowie perform "Starman" on TOTP and persuaded my parents to get me a copy of "Ziggy..." and have been in it's thrall ever since.

The truth is I didn't really "discover" Bowie until the early 80's. But since I first heard this record I have indeed been in it's thrall.

From the opening faded in drum intro to "Five Years" introducing us to crying newsmen, soldiers, cops, priests and violent young girls at the end of the world; through the psych-out that is "Moonage Daydream" where Bowie lets Mick Ronson off the leash; into the proto-Punk of "Suffragette City", "Ohhh, wham bam thank you maam!" indeed; and ending with the doomed inevitabilty of "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide" this album presents you with everything that was good about early 70's rock (i.e it wasn't Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin), introduced a wider audience to arguably the most important solo artist of the 1970's and, even though he lifted great chunks of it from the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop, Bowie laid the foundations for what was to come towards the end of the decade.

Bruce Springsteen - Born To Run
I used to work for a professional audio/visual equipment suppliers. There, I worked with a guy called Rob who introduced me to a lot of music I'd never otherwise have heard. I got my first ever tax rebate while I was working there and said to Rob one afternoon I fancied something different to listen to and did he have anything to recommend ? "Born To Run" is what he suggested and I don't think in the ensuing 27 years I've ever thanked him for that, so, THANKS ROB !

This is music on a grand scale. The lyrics conjure up images that for an 18 year old who'd never been to America described some of it's less well known attractions vividly.

"The screen door slams, Mary's dress waves,
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays,
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely,
Hey that's me and I want you only"
Thunder Road

"Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge,
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain,
The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants,
Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane"
Jungleland

Hell you can see it right there in front of you.

The characters that inhabit these songs have become like old friends: Mary, Terri, Wendy, the Rangers and the The Magic Rat, Scooter and the Big Man, Eddie and his friend heading for a meeting across the river that's gonna solve all their problems this time while Cherry waits at home, it feels like I know them all.

Add into the mix the hardest rockin', funkiest bar band on the planet (that's the E-Street Band to you and me) and, as I said, this is music on a grand, cinematic scale.

Sex Pistols - Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols
I remember vividly the first time I heard "God Save The Queen". I was in my Nan's living room where my brother and I were using our Uncle's Phillips music centre (it had a smoked perspex lid) to play some singles we'd bought after reading about this Punk Rock stuff in the music papers (Sounds probably, I don't think we'd progressed to the NME at that point). One of the singles was the Stranglers "Peaches/Go Buddy Go" combination and the other was the Pistols "God Save the Queen".

We dropped the needle on the groove and...it felt like I was physically hurled across the room and pinned against the opposite wall for 3 minutes and 20 seconds. When it had finished I think I was in shock. It was like nothing I had ever heard before.

Did I really just hear that ?
People don't make records that sound like that.
Do they ?
They do ?

So I played it again....and again...and again...you get the picture...just to reassure myself that I had heard it right. And I think I knew then that some things were never going to seem quite the same ever again.

When they finally released "Never Mind The Bollocks..." friends of ours went to ridiculous lengths to keep the record out of sight of their parents. Thankfully we had somewhat more enlightened parents who bought the record for us. One of our mates had it in brown paper bags under his bed and we had to wait until his folks had gone out before we could go round and hear it.

But what a sound they made. I know many will disagree with me but I think the way the Pistols sounded was as, if not more, important than what they were saying. You couldn't understand most of what Johnny Rotten was singing anyway but the sound...it sounded like fear and rage and loathing and desperation and something slightly evil. "Holidays In The Sun" has to be one of the scariest sounding pieces of music I've ever heard. We didn't know what Anarchy was but we could hear in this music some of the way we felt about things.

To this day if I have a bad day at work, when I leave I play "God Save The Queen" on my iPod VERY LOUD and 3 minutes and 20 seconds later I remember that someone else feels that way too and it's OK.

The Jam - All Mod Cons
This is MY band and this is their finest moment. I'm not saying they went downhill from here but this is the point where The Jam stepped up from new wave also rans to the most important band in the UK. The point at which Paul Weller introduced himself as our generations Ray Davis (they even covered The Kinks "David Watts" for this album), a sharp interpreter of ordinary peoples lives, hopes and fears.

It's another record full of great characters. The rock star on the slide, Mr Clean, Billy Hunt, the guy and his girlfriend in trouble at the Vortex, Saturdays kids who "drink lots of beer and wait for half time results" and the tragic hero of Weller's first truly magnificent moment, "Down In The Tube Station At Midnight" (a song every bit as vivid as anything on "Born To Run" but maybe in a 22" black and white TV way rather than Springsteen's cinematic scope) waiting to get back to his wife with a curry and a bottle of plonk but having his life smashed by drunk right-wing thugs.

They even threw in 2 ballads ("English Rose" and "Fly") something unheard of in these angry young man post-77 days.

"Down In the Tube Station At Midnight" and "A Bomb In Wardour Street" describe what a scary and violent place Britain could be back then, but to temper that Weller gives us the daydreamer "Billy Hunt" and the ever hopeful "The Place I Love" where he's "making a stand against the world" in the imaginary place he goes where everything is right with the world. "In The Crowd" addresses rampant consumerism and "Mr Clean" is a sharp pointed stick jabbed at the British class system.

Then there was the artwork. Sta-prest, monkey boots, targets, scooters and that title which Weller has admitted was just an excuse to get the word Mod on an album cover.

Mod ?
What's that ?

And because of what Paul Weller gave us on this record, which was much more than just the music in the grooves, I discovered soul music and The Small Faces and 501's with 1" turn ups and Ska/Blue Beat and the thrilling sound of a Hammond B3. So there is much, much more that I owe to this band than just this record...but just the record itself would have been fine.

The Clash - London Calling
We couldn't believe it when we heard. A double album ! Isn't that what rock dinosaurs do ? But then they sold it to us for the price of a single album and when we heard it...oh man...that band were having such a good time exploring where they could go you couldn't help but get caught up in it.

"Sing Michael sing
On the roof of a 19 bus"

The Clash's previous album had been none too popular after their debut's punk rush so there was an almost "have they lost it" feeling in the air. But the title track put us right on that score and the rest of the album took us on a musical journey through rock 'n' roll, jazz, soul, reggae and a huuuge big piano ballad. All of it had great tunes, you could feel the low slung rebel guitar poses they were pulling and there were lyrics you could quote forever:

"London calling to the faraway towns, Now war is declared - and battle come down"

"I wasn't born so much as I fell out, Nobody seemed to notice me"

"What are we gonna do now?
Taking off his turban, they said, is this man a Jew?'
Cause they're working for the clampdown
They put up a poster saying we earn more than you!"

"But I believe in this and it's been tested by research, He, who fucks nuns, will later join the church"

"I've been beat up, I've been thrown out, But I'm not down, I'm not down"

I could go on and on quoting them. Needless to say if you've never heard this album you need to, NOW. And if you haven't listened to it in a while, then go do it, NOW!

My brother and I were fortunate enough to meet Joe Strummer a few months before he tragically left us. That short meeting has left an impression on me that I'll never forget and now I know why I love that man's music so much. We lost one of the greats when Joe went.

----------------

Thanks for indulging me this far x

The Libertines...

Noooooooo...not that talentless bunch of junkie no marks we see splashed across our favourite tabloid day after day.

I speak of the band I used to be in in the late '80's. You remember, made one single that didn't sell. Man I've got a houseful of the beggaring things and I can't give 'em away.

Anyway in a bizarre series of MySpace postings and phone calls this morning it appears that myself, the drummer and the guitar player will be in the same rehearsal room in darkest Wolverhampton this very evening.

Watch this space as they say...

Garry O Is A Bluenose

Just realised how long it has been since I posted anything here. That must indicate that I am a completely happy and contented bunny right now...right ?

Well of course not but then I figured you might not always want to hear me whining on.

Things I am sure that I know:

Damien Dempsey's new album "To Hell Or Barbados" is another winner. Go on, treat yourself.
The second series of "Rome" currently showing on the BBC is fantastically gory and nuts.
I love my new alarm clock.
Summer without football is very dull (Cricket and Tennis I hear you say...pah !)

That's all for now folks. Normal whinging will resume as soon as something suitable raises my ire.

xxx

A Small Victory

A couple of months ago I filled in a template letter I got from http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/ in order to try and claim back some of those nasty excessive bank charges you hear so many consumer type peeps getting very hot under the collar about currently.

Well this morning I got a letter from my bank agreeing to refund 75% of what I claimed. It feels like a small victory, me getting one over on "the man".

It will pay for the decking I want to put in my back garden so I can lay out there in the summer without a care. That made me smile today.

It's Monday...

"It's Monday,
Slither down the greasy pipe,
So far so good no one saw you..."

David Bowie "Joe The Lion"

Which is kinda how I feel about today. Every 2nd Monday here at my place of work we have to involve ourselves in a departmental conference call during which we have to report what we have been doing for the past 2 weeks and what we think we will be doing for the next 2. This call starts at 3pm and is supposed to last for an hour but generally meanders on over an hour and a half, which for someone like myself who's working day ends at 4pm is something of a drag. Especially as it usually takes me the requested 2 minutes to deliver my summary and everyone else drones on forever.

Anyway the reason for the above quoted lyric is that if you know said song by Mr Bowie you will know he delivers the first of those lines in a very resigned, bored sort of "oh god not again" manner, which is how I generally tend to feel about every 2nd Monday.

BUT...

This particular 2nd Monday the conference call has been cancelled which feels just like slithering down said greasy pipe with no one noticing...Huzzah !!! 

Consequently you find me in something of a jolly mood (suprising I know). The weekend was good, bit of DIY to finish off the decoration of our main bathroom (it feels very bourgeoise admitting to having 2 bathrooms but on a practical level it's a godsend) and I can see light at the end of the tunnel called "MP3ing all my vinyl" (I think I'm actually down to the last box of albums). Oh, and the Blues won !

That last box of albums contains my Flesh For Lulu albums, a band who I haven't listened to in a fair old while and am really looking forward to hearing again. Last night I was making a start on Bow Wow Wow's album "See Jungle! See Jungle...etcetc...blahblahblah" which is actually a whole lot better than I thought it would be. I was actually a little embarrased when I came across it yesterday but, Malcolm McLaren style manipulation aside, they were a damn good band.

Can't really think of much else to relate. If there is actually anyone out there reading this, hope to see some of you at Milo & Erica's forthcoming show's. Ta Ta for now...

Modernism Part 2...

 "Mod is just another word for young, beautiful and stupid...we've all been there"

Pete Townshend

Dedicated Follower Of Fashion (Random Annoyances Re-Visited)

I'm a Mod, I'll always be a Mod,
My coat is a Crombie, My shirt's a Ben Sherman,
The shoes on my feet were made by a German...

That comes from something that used to get shown on MTV (back in the days when the majority of MTV's programming actually centred around music !). To be honest the guy delivering it was more of a well dressed skinhead than a Mod (Crombie's and DM's were always more skinhead fashion in my world) but that little rhyme stuck in my head for some reason.

I have recently finished reading a book about Scooter Boys, as is my want in finding out more about Mod related "stuff". I have a fascination with all things Mod, and Scooter Boys, or Scooterists as some prefer to be known, developed in the UK out of the Mods fascination with that particular mode of transport. Said book was written by a fella who claimed to be (well on the back of the copy I had anyway) a graduate in Social Sciences and a sometime lecturer on the subject of youth culture. You'd think with all that academia, knowledge and experience behind him the guy would be able to SPELL !

I read a lot and you expect to find the odd spelling/grammar mistake in a book. Even your average 500 page best seller will feature 1 or maybe two. But Scooter Boys had something like 6 or 8 and it's only 150 pages or so long...and 30-40 of those are just photographs ! I suppose some blame should lie with the proof readers but hey, we're all human and it's possible to miss things. I'm sure the proof readers weren't inserting spelling errors (unless they were closet greasers...hmmmmm...never considered that before) so that leaves the blame squarely with our graduate/lecturer. None of them really stick in my mind just that I kept tutting to myself while reading as I came across another one thinking "how do you graduate from University while not being able to spell ?".

It's just another example of the wider malaise bought about by "text speak". Hell's teeth I even put punctuation in my text messages ! Have you noticed how the word "of" is slowly replacing the word "have" ? As in "he should of been here by now" instead of "he should have been here by now". I was reading something my niece had submitted as homework recently and although the teacher had quite rightly highlighted a number of spelling mistakes in good old red pen, not once had the teacher highlighted the incorrect use of "of" instead of "have" (confusing isn't it). If the teachers in schools aren't correcting kids what chance have they got ?

Ahhhh...just call me a whinging old git...

(DISCLAIMER: Any spelling mistakes found in this post are obviously the wok of the small army of retired greasers who proof read these submissions !!!)

It's My Birthday...

...today, so Happy Birthday to me !

I've been back at "work" for 3.5 days now. My god it feels like longer. Yesterday I had to slope off early before I put a foot through my monitor.

Monday I sat down to a mountain of e-mail accrued since I went off on tour (300 messages. That may not be a lot to some people but it's a mountain to me).

Tuesday I had to attend a company Strategy and Marketing meeting in a faceless conference room in a faceless hotel next to Manchester Airport. Rarely has so much management speak and corporate horseshit been contained by 4 very flimsy walls. Prior to the meeting starting one of our number was talking about the computer game Civilisation. He informed us all that "that version of Civilisation is now obsolete and you can get it for 6 quid from Woolworth's"...by the time the meeting had finished I was starting to believe him ! A whole civilisation for 6 quid !! Bargain !!!

You'll be pleased to hear that I was today sent a "Summary of Actions" from said meeting. 6 hours of waffle, maple syrup and bullshit has produced an actions list that doesn't even fill a half a side of A4 paper. Glad that was such a productive day. And the purpose of said meeting ? To decide how we should write reports to each other about what we have been doing...I give up, I really do.

Tour now over and completed reasonably successfully. Scotland was a little rocky (for those not familiar with the details I refer you to http://www.room512.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=2 and choose any of the threads that look depressing) but once we left that fair country, demeanour's improved and we finished up with 2 storming shows in London and particularly Birmingham.

Those two show's were helped beyond measure by the presence of the awesome genius that is Damien Dempsey as special guest. I think anyone that was there who has or hasn't seen Damo before would have been completely slayed by his opening song (and if you weren't then you have no soul), a new song, called "Masaai" (sp?), from his forthcoming album. A quite frankly unbelievable vocal performance on that song from the great man on both nights.

Big shout out's to Oscar, for keeping it all together; Ian, Jules, Mark & Sam, for accompanying me to various far flung hostelries; Mr Dave M from Inverness, apologies for Scotland but I think London was an improvement; Colin the bus driver for the cow hat; The Wonder Stuff for, on their day (and there are more of those than not), being an awesome live experience; Deb, for always looking out for me; James, for making me wanna laugh even when I don't feel like it.

Think of me later, sitting in the Crown, smile on my face, pint in my hand...I'll stop now...

Go Easy, Step Light-ly, Stay Free...

A Full English Please...No Tomatoes...

I know, I know...I said I was going to Blog the current tour and so far I've managed to do absolutely nothing. So here is a brief story so far from a bloody freezing cold Inverness.

Northampton What a very extravagant venue. All art Deco and staff in shirts and ties. Did it and left really

Nottingham The Rescue Rooms has had a coat of paint and a dust ! Once again all very uneventful

Manchester Rocking show with lots of old faces about.

Shrewsbury Very similar to Northampton. All very sterile.

Wrexham Where to start ? Poor ticket sales. The jockey wheel on the trailer broke. Erica not feeling well. Malc's gear went south. Bloody great show !!! The man screaming "play Golden Green again" all night got his wish.

Carlisle A venue seemingly run by the local chapter of the Hell's Angels. It was dirty, cold, dark and nasty. The PA was appallingly bad and the power tripped out during changeover. Again, a bloody great gig. Although we all could have lived without the 11pm stage time.

Aberdeen Freezing cold in the town but the gig was like a sauna it was so hot. Hard to breathe so Milo was having a hard time of it. Glad to get done and get out of there.

Aberdeen however had some stunning pubs including the Prince of Wales and the Old Blackfriars who also served us with great food all day and the beer of the tour so far, Inveralmond Ossian.

More later...honest !

Just like going on a school trip...

Much happier me today.

My copy of the Good Beer Guide is packed, I've chosen a few well placed watering holes already, all I need to do now is wash some t-shirts and and grab my tool box.

Yes my friends, the people I least expected to come through for me, came through for me and I am going on tour...YIPPEE !!!

I've no doubt this will depress the DoubleD beyond imagining but be comforted by the thought that we will miss you brother.

I may have to figure out some way of blogging the tour. Better find a guide to the nations internet cafe's then.

Playing Catchup

Crikey ! It's been nearly a month since I posted anything here. I'd like to say I've been too busy to drop by but in all honesty I've been in what my bro' would call a bit of a funk. I've been having one of those "oh the pointlessness of it all" months when the ills in the world have been bearing down on me a little to hard...well that's how it's felt anyway.

Good things that have happened this month:

• Those nearest and dearest to me all seem hale and hearty
• I've applied for a new job which has at least given me something to look forward to when the postman shows up each day (nothing yet, I'll keep you posted)
• I've been reading "Ginger Geezer - The Life Of Vivian Stanshall" (thanks Nick) which is a ripping yarn indeed

Bad things that have happened this month:

• Work. Generally. Nothing specific. Just getting out of bed feels like a waste of time Monday to Friday right now (this appears to be the major reason for my current funk).
• Discovered DD can't do the next tour (hell, I don't even know if I can yet)
• Did I mention work ?

I was listening to the Icicle Works recently and came across the lyric "Leave your dreams where they are, They last a while that way" which seemed very appropriate at the time.

I think I may have reached the end of another of those 7-8 year cycles where I just need to do something different. I certainly need to get away from my current "manager", the kind of person I have striven my whole life never to become or to be anywhere near.

Sorry for the overall depressing tone but as I said earlier, sometimes I just need a place to Vent.

Here Comes (There Goes) The Weekend

From Monday morning I work for Friday night
Collect my wages, then try to paint on the smell of soap

Thank you Mr Weller !

I know I use this place primarily to moan about stuff. So as a pleasant surprise I present my weekend (and this may take some time).

Friday

No work today...really. It was Staff Appreciation Day. Now I have to admit that my idea of being appreciated is being given an extra day off, having large bundles of easy to carry cash stuffed into my hot and sweaties and being pointed in the general direction of the nearest ale house. Alas and alack it was not to be. We were transported to Birmingham's Ackers Trust for a "team building morning". The kind of thing that generally fills me with dread. I won't go into details but the team I was in won the day and we were awarded with bottles of wine, which is always a good start.

We were then whisked off to a very nice Italian restaurant to be fed and watered. I left as soon as possible to go home, get my dancing trousers on and head to to one of my brothers fine acoustic shows in the outpost of crumbling industry and poor taste known as Wolverhampton. A fine performance, fine company, lotsa booze and a conversation involving US immigration, dysfunctinal parents and whether Marilyn Manson is entertaining or not later, we found ourselves in a very expensive taxi back home where everyone proceeded to pass out on various sofa's at around 4am. A damn good nights work if you ask me.

Saturday

No alarms, just kinda fall outta bed when it feels right. Kept the kettle primed all morning for the supply of Tea and Coffee to weary rising revellers. Everyone appeared very sprightly considering the previous evenings excesses. Then my wonderful wife cooked up a full English to die for...god bless her x

Suitably fed and watered one of our number headed off to the north for my brothers 2nd show, that night, and a Sunday of mountain biking. The rest of us were headed for the 21st Telford Beer Festival.





One of my great hopes when we moved here was that I might find myself what I call an "old man's pub". The kind of place once described by another of my eloquent friends as all "brass taps and oak" where it's possible to put "a shine on the bar with the sleeves of our coats"...oh boy did I find one o' those. The Crown Inn is a haven for Real Ale drinkers. A no smoking back room and no intrusive music playing, a proper pub to visit for the purposes of drinking ale. It has become mine and my dear lady wife's home from home on Fridays, most Saturdays, occasional Sunday lunchtimes and random Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays too. We tend to stay home Thursday as The Sopranos is on E4 at the moment.

The rest of Saturday was thus spent in The Crown sampling such wonderfully titled brews as Pot Belly Best Bitter, Sadler's Gentle Ginger, Falstaff Voyeuristic Intention and the wonderful Paddy O'Hackers Genuine Irish Stout (brewed in Lancashire !!!). Extra company was supplied by a table full of gentlemen aged between 55-65 who appeared to be chasing down each pint with a large glass of wine and who gradually became rowdier and rowdier until they just slunk off home; a woman at the next table who was most insistent that we should take her 17 year old son as our lodger; a fine looking 13 month old Staffordshire Bull Terrier who took a very keen interest in our bags of pork scratchings and at the end of the night the local chav's put in an appearnce so we could all laugh at their pathetic sense of sartorial elegance. I'm no fan of Pete Doherty but his lyric "There are fewer more distressing sights than that, Of an Englishman in a baseball cap" is one I wholeheartedly concur with.

Sunday

Nothing...absobloodylutelynothing ! Well, I walked Jules down to the station to get his train home (a 7 hour trip while trying to avoid the result of that days Grand Prix). I then walked our hyperactive dog over the nearest hill and went home for a day of doing absolutely nothing.

Another of our local hostelries delivers Sunday dinner (yes you read that correctly, this has to be the greatest business idea I have discovered since coming across the Australian drive-thru off licence). So we ordered 2 in and lounged around the house all day watching bad movies and wondering whether we could be bothered to do anything...the answer was no.

Here comes the weekend - I'm gonna do my head
Long live the weekend, the weekend is dead

Glasgow Scum

Those of you that know me are aware that I have a voracious appetite for music. I've played in bands, worked for bands and been listening to the good the bad and the downright awful for a long, long time now.

Ever since I bought my very first single (Slade's "Skweeze Me Pleeze Me" for the interested among you) I've been searching out new music. It's led me on a wonderful journey and left me with and continues to present me with incredible experiences.

You've probably all heard me bitching and whining about how so and so is the worst thing I've ever heard blahblahblah but never, and I mean NEVER, has a piece of music driven me to turn off the listening device I was currently using in order not to listen to anything at all, due to what I had just heard being too awful to take in while listening to anything else that followed it...UNTIL NOW !

Step Forward Flood aka Glasgow Scum

For those of you with either an adventurous nature or a cast iron constitution, follow the above link to said "artistes" page at Channel4 Radio, scroll to the bottom of the page and listen to the track "Hell Is Only A Word"...all I can say is..."No it's not mate, it's this piece of "music" you have visited on a poor unsuspecting world"...

Oh the horror...

Wer der Kerl im Schwarzen ist

I have an 18 year old son (believe me that swift passing of time came as something of a shock to me too !). He will be moving off to University life in a northern town in less than 2 weeks. I'm gonna miss him.

He hasn't been living with us for some 9 months now. We moved house last November to a town around 40 miles from where we were living. He was doing very well at the college he was at, he got fantastic AS level results, and wanted to stay there for his A2's. So, since last November he has been living with his Grandmother back closer to his college. It proved to be the right decision as his A2 results were every bit as fantastic as his AS's and he earned himself a place at his 1st choice University studying exactly the course he wanted.

So you'd think I'd have gotten used to him not being around every day by now. Well I haven't. But as long as he was at his Grandmothers he was only a 40 minute drive away, whether he was coming to us or we were going back to where he is. But very soon it will be more like a 2-3 hour drive away and that, to me, seems like a long way away.

I know he's going to do fantastically well at University. He's got that inner drive that I think I used to have when I was his age, but which has been beaten out of me over the years. My brother has it too, they're alike in a lot of ways.

He has been living for 18 years now on what was once Europe's largest council housing estates. When it was first built it must have seemed like paradise to the people who were moved there from old inner city neighbourhoods. My Mom says that when we first went there it was like being moved into a palace. Hot and cold running water, central heating, a bathroom and a toilet that was indoors ! But over the years it has succumbed to the same problems that seem to trouble most working class estates of its kind. Crime, vandalism, violence, a lack of respect for other people generally. One of the reasons (the main reason ?) we ended up leaving there was because of the people we were living amongst. Most of them were great and we got along well with them but just a few made it a misery for everyone else.

Our nearest neighbours you could only describe as the perfect dysfunctional chav tribe. Mom, Dad and their 4 kids, it seemed like. But the kids could boast 3 different fathers. Mother swore like a docker. The two eldest kids were both smoking before their teens and had no respect for their mother never mind her downtrodden husband. The Mother continually told me her kids were like that because of the environment they had been bought up in i.e. the same place my son had been bought up in. So go on then, explain why he isn't like that ?

He amazes me every day. He speaks French and German. After 2 weeks on holiday in Spain he was speaking enough Spanish to converse with the hotel staff. He is totally self-motivated. Never once have we had to prompt him or push him or hassle him to put in the work required to get the exam results he needed. When at 14 he found out his school wouldn't enter him for French and German courses he asked if he could study French at home with a private tutor. He did this and the school entered him for the GCSE exam. He got an A*.

I love music and will search out things that aren't in the mainstream. He has taken it further than that. We bought him a compilation CD of rock music in order to save him from the peer pressure to listen to the Spice Girls and Britney Spears. The band he latched onto fom the CD ? Rammstein, a band from the former East Germany who sing entirely in German. He persuaded me to take him to his first gig (well the first gig he asked to go to rather than the first one we had dragged him to, I think he went to his first sound check before he reached 1 year old !) to see Rammstein in Frankfurt. The show was fabulous and me and him slept on benches at Frankfurt airport to save the hotel bill. I loved every second of it.

February 2nd 2006 was a big day for him...and me. It was his 18th birthday, that's a big deal for anyone. And it was the first time he could legally stand with me at the bar and say "Dad, whaddya want". Might not seem much to some but it was to me. I told my wife when he was born, don't expect me to be much use before I can hold a sensible conversation with him about football and music . I was true to my word and I hope that now he (and she) thinks I've been OK for him (although I might possibly have bored him to death with tales of how great Trevor Francis was and he says he likes the Sex Pistols album but you never can tell).

He's grown up very fast (remember that you parents out there. One minute you're watching Thomas The Tank Engine videos and 5 minutes later your kids are leaving home). But he's grown up into someone I really, really like and who I know will do well in whatever he chooses to do. This might all sound like me blowing mine and his trumpets to you, but frankly I don't care. I'm gonna miss you when you're not around everyday mate. Love you. Dad x

Journalism ??? (update)

Today the Metro newspaper printed an apology on their letters page in relation to the insensitive and insulting article they printed on Friday.

They apologised for printing the wrong picture next to the article and for any upset this may have caused to the subject, his family and friends. This is a good thing.

However, they chose not to apologise for the insensitive and insulting headline they gave to the article, nor for repeating the derogatory term used in that headline a further 2 times in the body of the article. This is a very bad thing.

I am reliably informed that the piece was transcribed by a PA directly from court reports. So it was not even written by a proper journalist. You could probably say that about the majority of the content of the Metro...

Journalism ???

Earlier this year a man who I am proud to be able to say was my friend lost his life in a tragic accident. His funeral was one of the most difficult days I've ever experienced.

As it was a road accident there had to be an inquest, which took place yesterday. At that inquest the coroner recorded a verdict of traumatic road death.

Also at that inquest an eye witness said he saw my friend riding like a "muppet", using that word, I presume, in the derogatory sense.

The Metro newspaper today decided to run a short article about the inquest presumably because my friend was once a member of a popular beat combo. Not only was the word "muppet" used in the articles headline but in the ensuing 3 sentence article they managed to cram it in a further 2 times.

Not satisfied with that level of insensitivity The Metro newspaper accompanied the article not with a picture of my friend, as they claimed, but of another member of the popular beat combo he was a member of. I can assure you all that the gentleman pictured is very much alive.

So I ask you, in a newspaper article that ran to a 5 word headline and 3 sentences was it really neccessary to use the derogatory term "muppet" 3 times in order to describe someone I would confidently guess they have never met ? Did they not stop to think of the effect this might have on my friends family, children, friends and others who still feel his loss very keenly ? No...obviously not.

The Metro newspaper couldn't even do enough research to ensure they got a picture of the correct person printed with the article, or (and please excuse my pendantry here) to write the name of the popular beat combo of which my friend was once a member correctly, so why should we believe that anything else they write has been researched well enough to deserve any credence ?

I've never been personally affected before about what is known as tabloid "journalism" but I'm bloody angry about this. Sometimes I just feel the need to Vent, and this is as good a place as any. Rest easy Controller...