“Dance with me,” asks Mrs Bryer, plaintively, and after several hours dodging the issue I realise I’ve got nowhere to go. Except a detour to the wedding reception bar for the half-a-dozen whiskies which will provide the injection of courage I’ll need before I can take to the floor. Sandra loves to dance and I don’t. I’m sure she wishes her old man could dance properly, but in the absence of the requisite skills, if only he could dance without mucking about, or at least might try it sober for once. But, you see, he can’t.
I have to get pretty well blasted before I can even consider getting up and doing the mashed potato, and then, well, then I’ve got some truly great moves to show off because now that we’re up and the booze is racing through our veins, we might as well give it loads, mightn’t we? The irony is that if I were to get up early in the proceedings, with a clear head, and just do that understated shuffle where it looks like I’m stamping out a brush fire and trying on a succession of jackets, I’d draw much less attention to myself.
Once, at a friend’s wedding, his father (who was a bus driver) passed on the advice of a West Indian colleague. Which was as simple as it gets. Relax. That’s all. Once you can relax your body it all comes naturally. And I got it, I really did. For about 2 months I could really move, I was in the groove, watch me now, I said. But one day, this new-found gift just went away as swiftly as it had arrived, the muse was gone, Terpsichore fled my form as if I was not worthy. I recall Saturday Night Fever was at the pictures and I hated the music and the film (although to this day I’ve never actually seen it) so maybe that had something to do with it. So relaxation was a sensation I never felt again when beneath the mirrored ball and caught in the glare of the disco lights, it was more like stiff-backed, leaden-footed, every-man-must-do-his-duty stuff, complete with fixed grin and icy stare.
Sandra likes a bit of the remake of Come Dancing which is on television most of the time, she likes it so much that she also watches the daily updates. Which are actually superior to the full-blown, fly-blown affair with Brucie and Blondie, hosted as they are by the barmy and beautiful Claudia Winkelman. During the week, Claudia and guests preview Saturday’s up-coming clod-hop during which they say things like, “Sergei and Tracey from How Big Are My Tits? Will be dancing to this…” Then they play a snatch of Superstition or Good Golly Miss Molly, you know, the proper versions by Stevie Wonder and Little Richard, and they say how great it’s going to be. “What a great track that is,” says Nasty Craig as he does his quite frankly embarrassing and over-egged sofa-bound-frug, when we all know that, come Saturday, these great songs (and the crap ones) will be performed by the house band – I can’t remember their name, or if they’ve even got one, but this is what I call them: an awful, a truly awful, weedy, clunky, Not-At-My-Wedding, bunch of the duffest of the tune-shy duff.
Back in the last century I nearly got punched when my Mick Jagger impersonation (for which I can only spend the rest of my life apologising) upset some bloke and, as you can never be too sure when these situations might arise I’m going to avoid dance hall misery by getting my friend Mike the copper to show me the Bermondsey two-step, which is not so much a dance move as a martial art unique to South East London.
However, disco horror is but an insignificant pimple on a gnat's arse when compared to the looming, leering, nightmare they call karaoke.
Friday, 26 November 2010
Friday, 19 November 2010
It's The Best Bit...
“It’s the best bit” – that’s what they used to say, your parents. Well, my parents at least, and my wife’s. “What are you leaving that for?” they’d say, “it’s the best bit.”
What’s the best bit? Apparently it’s the slippery, sloppy wrap of fat on the chop, which is a gagging-horror-show for us Jack Spratt types. Or it’s the skin on the fish. What better way to round off the last of those delicious soft flakes of fresh cod or haddock than with a barely digestible mouthful of bitter, tough and scaly fish skin. Fish skin, from which – lest we forget – our ancestors used to fashion condoms. Still hungry?
“Eat up, it’s the best bit.” Give it a rest pop. My wife, Sandra’s take on this is that what they really meant was, “Eat up, it’ll fill you up.” But this wasn’t intended to ensure that there was more ice cream for the rest of the family, as that was too rare a treat, because times, you see, were tough. Roast on Sunday, cold on Monday, hash on Tuesday, mince on Wednesday, it goes something like that. I know it was only in the Sixties when I used to watch my mother feed the last, sorry remains of Sunday’s joint through the hand mincer in preparation for a pie which was less a shepherd’s a more a production of Farmer Gristle.
When the joint had finally been sucked dry and stripped of its last scraps of flesh, the bones were boiled up for soup. Sometimes a bony chunk of a cheap cut of lamb was added to the broth. Standing proud from the bowl like a cadaverous shipwreck, the old man would pick it up at the last and gnaw away at every sliver, while encouraging us all to do the same as the soup dripped down his chin. You know, when I tell younger relatives about this sort of thing it’s sometimes hard for me to believe that I was part of what seems now like a historical novel.
You know that meal you used to have as a kid that you really, really liked? God, wouldn’t it be nice to have that again? What about this weekend? One word of advice: Don’t. It won’t be any good. Worse than that, it will be rotten and you’ll rue the day. Have something else. Anything. Or nothing at all. Why am I so sure? Recently, Sandra had a yearning for the oxtail stew of her youth, the one her nan used to cook, so we bought an oxtail from the butcher. Not an attractive item. If you had to picture something that spent its time hanging round an arse, this would be pretty close to perfect. You have to spend A Very Long Time cutting up the oxtail, then it stews for about 3 weeks in water and other stuff, then you have to fish it out and strip the hot meat from the scalding bony bits and there are an awful lot of bony bits and not much meat and it’s painful, smelly and difficult work. Then, you put it all back in the pot and boil it for another 3 weeks and then what happens is that at last it’s ready, but the person who really wanted it suddenly changes her mind because the whole house now stinks like, and I quote, “My nan’s old kitchen.”
Nor does it get any better. Revisiting teenage treats or the things I used to eat when I got my first flat is simply not worth it. All of that tinned produce. Ravioli, spaghetti in sauce-a-la-nasty, Heinz salad in a tin (yes, that’s tinned salad) or those boil-in-the-can “steak” pies and puddings which no doubt contain similar ingredients to those described by my father-in-law, Rex, as going into sausages – lips and arseholes. If you do choose to take your stomach back on a hike through time, then be prepared for almost certain crushing disappointment and associated retching and heaving.
Some things, you see, just didn’t stack up in the first place and now that we’re older and, some say, wiser we can see they’re not worthy of a return visit. Now, if only Spandau Ballet had heeded this warning the planet (and me in particular) wouldn’t have had to suffer the horror of their return.
What’s the best bit? Apparently it’s the slippery, sloppy wrap of fat on the chop, which is a gagging-horror-show for us Jack Spratt types. Or it’s the skin on the fish. What better way to round off the last of those delicious soft flakes of fresh cod or haddock than with a barely digestible mouthful of bitter, tough and scaly fish skin. Fish skin, from which – lest we forget – our ancestors used to fashion condoms. Still hungry?
“Eat up, it’s the best bit.” Give it a rest pop. My wife, Sandra’s take on this is that what they really meant was, “Eat up, it’ll fill you up.” But this wasn’t intended to ensure that there was more ice cream for the rest of the family, as that was too rare a treat, because times, you see, were tough. Roast on Sunday, cold on Monday, hash on Tuesday, mince on Wednesday, it goes something like that. I know it was only in the Sixties when I used to watch my mother feed the last, sorry remains of Sunday’s joint through the hand mincer in preparation for a pie which was less a shepherd’s a more a production of Farmer Gristle.
When the joint had finally been sucked dry and stripped of its last scraps of flesh, the bones were boiled up for soup. Sometimes a bony chunk of a cheap cut of lamb was added to the broth. Standing proud from the bowl like a cadaverous shipwreck, the old man would pick it up at the last and gnaw away at every sliver, while encouraging us all to do the same as the soup dripped down his chin. You know, when I tell younger relatives about this sort of thing it’s sometimes hard for me to believe that I was part of what seems now like a historical novel.
You know that meal you used to have as a kid that you really, really liked? God, wouldn’t it be nice to have that again? What about this weekend? One word of advice: Don’t. It won’t be any good. Worse than that, it will be rotten and you’ll rue the day. Have something else. Anything. Or nothing at all. Why am I so sure? Recently, Sandra had a yearning for the oxtail stew of her youth, the one her nan used to cook, so we bought an oxtail from the butcher. Not an attractive item. If you had to picture something that spent its time hanging round an arse, this would be pretty close to perfect. You have to spend A Very Long Time cutting up the oxtail, then it stews for about 3 weeks in water and other stuff, then you have to fish it out and strip the hot meat from the scalding bony bits and there are an awful lot of bony bits and not much meat and it’s painful, smelly and difficult work. Then, you put it all back in the pot and boil it for another 3 weeks and then what happens is that at last it’s ready, but the person who really wanted it suddenly changes her mind because the whole house now stinks like, and I quote, “My nan’s old kitchen.”
Nor does it get any better. Revisiting teenage treats or the things I used to eat when I got my first flat is simply not worth it. All of that tinned produce. Ravioli, spaghetti in sauce-a-la-nasty, Heinz salad in a tin (yes, that’s tinned salad) or those boil-in-the-can “steak” pies and puddings which no doubt contain similar ingredients to those described by my father-in-law, Rex, as going into sausages – lips and arseholes. If you do choose to take your stomach back on a hike through time, then be prepared for almost certain crushing disappointment and associated retching and heaving.
Some things, you see, just didn’t stack up in the first place and now that we’re older and, some say, wiser we can see they’re not worthy of a return visit. Now, if only Spandau Ballet had heeded this warning the planet (and me in particular) wouldn’t have had to suffer the horror of their return.
Thursday, 11 November 2010
Venus & Mars
Men are from Mars and women are from, no, not Venus, that book was inaccurate. Women are from Alpha Centauri or possibly the Crab Nebula – the tattered remains of a star which was seen to explode in the year 1054 – a supernova which is either 2000, 4000, 6000, or perhaps 7000 light years away. You can see there’s some confusion over the mileage. So much so that one tormented soul on an internet forum poses the question about distance and then adds the conditional entreaty: Please give me a straight answer.
Anyway, distance doesn’t matter, the point is that the gulf between men and women is so vast as to make one wonder how we ever got together in the first place, well, apart from the obvious. So, the base urges explain how we got together, but what keeps us there, patiently putting up with each other year after year without going ever so quietly nuts?
Sandra and I both love The Beatles, she likes The Stones and The Who, but not as much as I do. Occasionally we meet somewhere in between the opposite poles of grimy old blues rock and the power ballad. We went to Jimmy Page and Robert Plant gig at Wembley Arena some years ago, on their final tour, I think. The last performer Sandra had seen at this venue had been Whitney Houston. My last had been, well, Page and Plant on their previous tour, the one with the Moroccan orchestra and the hurdy-gurdy player. Tonight, however, was to be a simple 4-piece band. Sandra’s fear of kidnap by the Hell’s Angels who had annexed most of what the vultures who run this frightful concrete dump comically refer to as “bars”, was matched only by her wide-eyed look of alarm during the opening number. Until she realised that what she could feel in her chest was not a cardiac arrest, but a rhythm section.
She likes all of those American cop-on-a-loop and TV-lawyer-wallpaper shows. Law and Order, CSI, Without a Trace, Special Victims Unit. Shows where middle-aged blokes are seemingly responsible for all of the ills of society. We used to get the blame as teenagers too, and it’s like the blame’s moved along with us as we’ve aged. It’s so unfair. I like QI and Jon Stewart and not much else apart from reruns of Frasier. She likes skiing, but we’ve never been together as I can’t abide the cold and can’t see the point.
Lately, every time The Stones’ She’s A Rainbow comes on the iPod, I have an overwhelming urge to pass on the interesting fact that Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones arranged the strings. But I have resisted. Because I can picture the look that will be tossed in my direction. A look which says, “And you think I’d be interested in this because…?” Total incomprehension.
We have some friends who we see a couple of times a year, Malcolm and Helen. Malcolm and I will be almost bursting with anticipation and excitement as the dinner date approaches, mainly because one or other of us will think he’s got a great new story about Ike Turner or Phil Spector or Arthur Lee that he reckons will be new to the other. Once Helen remarked: “What are you two on about now? All of these stories you swap, just because you’ve read them in some book by someone who wasn’t even there. Probably never happened anyway.”
Some book? SOME BOOK? No, no, no. We’re talking about White Bicycles by Joe Boyd, it’s not some book. It’s one of THE books. Cue blank looks in stereo from the female contingent at the table.
But what do women talk about? Sometimes I overhear bits of it, while Malcolm and I talk of the Ajax side of the 70’s and the invention of total football, or what a pity it was that Mick Taylor left The Stones. They talk about families and relationships, death, health, happiness and fear, about life and its trials. But I bet they don’t know the story about the bass line on The Beatles’ I Will.
Anyway, distance doesn’t matter, the point is that the gulf between men and women is so vast as to make one wonder how we ever got together in the first place, well, apart from the obvious. So, the base urges explain how we got together, but what keeps us there, patiently putting up with each other year after year without going ever so quietly nuts?
Sandra and I both love The Beatles, she likes The Stones and The Who, but not as much as I do. Occasionally we meet somewhere in between the opposite poles of grimy old blues rock and the power ballad. We went to Jimmy Page and Robert Plant gig at Wembley Arena some years ago, on their final tour, I think. The last performer Sandra had seen at this venue had been Whitney Houston. My last had been, well, Page and Plant on their previous tour, the one with the Moroccan orchestra and the hurdy-gurdy player. Tonight, however, was to be a simple 4-piece band. Sandra’s fear of kidnap by the Hell’s Angels who had annexed most of what the vultures who run this frightful concrete dump comically refer to as “bars”, was matched only by her wide-eyed look of alarm during the opening number. Until she realised that what she could feel in her chest was not a cardiac arrest, but a rhythm section.
She likes all of those American cop-on-a-loop and TV-lawyer-wallpaper shows. Law and Order, CSI, Without a Trace, Special Victims Unit. Shows where middle-aged blokes are seemingly responsible for all of the ills of society. We used to get the blame as teenagers too, and it’s like the blame’s moved along with us as we’ve aged. It’s so unfair. I like QI and Jon Stewart and not much else apart from reruns of Frasier. She likes skiing, but we’ve never been together as I can’t abide the cold and can’t see the point.
Lately, every time The Stones’ She’s A Rainbow comes on the iPod, I have an overwhelming urge to pass on the interesting fact that Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones arranged the strings. But I have resisted. Because I can picture the look that will be tossed in my direction. A look which says, “And you think I’d be interested in this because…?” Total incomprehension.
We have some friends who we see a couple of times a year, Malcolm and Helen. Malcolm and I will be almost bursting with anticipation and excitement as the dinner date approaches, mainly because one or other of us will think he’s got a great new story about Ike Turner or Phil Spector or Arthur Lee that he reckons will be new to the other. Once Helen remarked: “What are you two on about now? All of these stories you swap, just because you’ve read them in some book by someone who wasn’t even there. Probably never happened anyway.”
Some book? SOME BOOK? No, no, no. We’re talking about White Bicycles by Joe Boyd, it’s not some book. It’s one of THE books. Cue blank looks in stereo from the female contingent at the table.
But what do women talk about? Sometimes I overhear bits of it, while Malcolm and I talk of the Ajax side of the 70’s and the invention of total football, or what a pity it was that Mick Taylor left The Stones. They talk about families and relationships, death, health, happiness and fear, about life and its trials. But I bet they don’t know the story about the bass line on The Beatles’ I Will.
Thursday, 4 November 2010
Is It Spelt "Wreath", My Lord?
Perhaps it’s the suspicion that everyone involved in putting together this daily exercise in presenting dumbed-down news for dummies first learned their presenting skills as children, watching Blue Peter or Ask the Family, but they haven’t matured, moved on, or indeed improved any in the intervening years, and come across like anxious teens practising their news-quacking schtick in front of the bedroom mirror.
Or maybe it’s the way in which the non-speaking half of the presenting duo adopts a facial expression which they obviously deem as being appropriate for the current story. For example, while their colleague introduces an item about, say, air-traffic control being a stressful occupation in which the practitioners hold the lives of thousands in their hands, the one whose turn it is to play mute will aim a wide-eyed slow nod or two at the viewer, as if to say, “It’s true children, it’s true”.
Yes, welcome to BBC Breakfast News. Where the presenters are so uncomfortable in front of the camera that one questions their career choice and fears for their health, as they fidget and fret their way through the programme. Or they’re so damned-smirking-and-slippery-pleased-with-themselves that an act of self-love on the breakfast sofa is surely edging ever closer.
There was a piece a while back in which they were staging a barbecue in spurious support and weary linkage to a business story. Every time the event was mentioned during the painful build-up the male presenter would shout, rather desperately, “Get some beer in for me”. Now, I don’t know what it’s like around Broadcasting House, but the only people I see drinking alcohol at 7AM are generally squatting in shop doorways and shouting at me for not having any spare change. A word of advice for the presenter: Please don’t try to connect with the ‘ordinary bloke’ by acting like the BBC’s woefully wide-of-the-mark idea of one.
I’m sure they’re all wired directly into the autocue, and wait eagerly for the day when someone tears off their face-mask to reveal the chips and cables gathered beneath. With their stilted banter and default settings of thanking each other very much indeed and wishing each other and us a very good morning every 10 minutes or so, and a very good morning to you, these are Straight-Outta-Stepford puppets and the idea of spending any length of time with these shiny, vacuous, gelled-up robots is enough to make the idea of booze in the early morning a dangerously attractive one.
I’ve tried Sky, but with their heavy emphasis on celebs, sex, football and sensationalism, they always seem to be teetering on the edge of rebranding themselves as the TV version of The Sun, at any minute about to hand over to topless presenters. Well, I suppose it might not be so bad, as long as Eamonn Holmes is declared exempt from the new dress code.
So, first thing in the morning, I’ll generally stick to the radio, but CNN’s OK. I know it looks as if they’re sitting in a bunker somewhere under the Nevada desert – even though they’re probably in Hackney – but it’s slick and professional and it does a decent job of reporting relatively gimmick-free news to grown-ups. The sports coverage, in trying to be all things to all people, is rubbish though.
There was a time in many countries when CNN was the only English language station on hotel TV’s and, for that reason at least, I still like it. Because when I watch it there’s always a part of me that feels like I’m on holiday.
Or maybe it’s the way in which the non-speaking half of the presenting duo adopts a facial expression which they obviously deem as being appropriate for the current story. For example, while their colleague introduces an item about, say, air-traffic control being a stressful occupation in which the practitioners hold the lives of thousands in their hands, the one whose turn it is to play mute will aim a wide-eyed slow nod or two at the viewer, as if to say, “It’s true children, it’s true”.
Yes, welcome to BBC Breakfast News. Where the presenters are so uncomfortable in front of the camera that one questions their career choice and fears for their health, as they fidget and fret their way through the programme. Or they’re so damned-smirking-and-slippery-pleased-with-themselves that an act of self-love on the breakfast sofa is surely edging ever closer.
There was a piece a while back in which they were staging a barbecue in spurious support and weary linkage to a business story. Every time the event was mentioned during the painful build-up the male presenter would shout, rather desperately, “Get some beer in for me”. Now, I don’t know what it’s like around Broadcasting House, but the only people I see drinking alcohol at 7AM are generally squatting in shop doorways and shouting at me for not having any spare change. A word of advice for the presenter: Please don’t try to connect with the ‘ordinary bloke’ by acting like the BBC’s woefully wide-of-the-mark idea of one.
I’m sure they’re all wired directly into the autocue, and wait eagerly for the day when someone tears off their face-mask to reveal the chips and cables gathered beneath. With their stilted banter and default settings of thanking each other very much indeed and wishing each other and us a very good morning every 10 minutes or so, and a very good morning to you, these are Straight-Outta-Stepford puppets and the idea of spending any length of time with these shiny, vacuous, gelled-up robots is enough to make the idea of booze in the early morning a dangerously attractive one.
I’ve tried Sky, but with their heavy emphasis on celebs, sex, football and sensationalism, they always seem to be teetering on the edge of rebranding themselves as the TV version of The Sun, at any minute about to hand over to topless presenters. Well, I suppose it might not be so bad, as long as Eamonn Holmes is declared exempt from the new dress code.
So, first thing in the morning, I’ll generally stick to the radio, but CNN’s OK. I know it looks as if they’re sitting in a bunker somewhere under the Nevada desert – even though they’re probably in Hackney – but it’s slick and professional and it does a decent job of reporting relatively gimmick-free news to grown-ups. The sports coverage, in trying to be all things to all people, is rubbish though.
There was a time in many countries when CNN was the only English language station on hotel TV’s and, for that reason at least, I still like it. Because when I watch it there’s always a part of me that feels like I’m on holiday.
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