The Ghost of Christmas Past
(…I’ve come to know the wishlist of my father…)
When I was first married, I lived in a small flat within a granite tenement near the centre of town. In many respects, this was ideal. We were young, had little responsibilities and behaved accordingly. Where we lived was like a city centre village, a remnant from the Victorian era, with its parks nearby and all the benefits of the city centre amenities close at hand.
It was walking distance to all the best bars and, geographically speaking, ideally placed for a curry or a kebab on the way home. The neighbourhood had shops; grocer, butcher, baker, fishmonger, home brew shop and guitar shop.
Christmas shopping was a piece of piss.
Ten minute walk to the west end shops, four hours later, hundred quid lighter, it was done.
The flat had been a typical Victorian tenement; shared outside cludgies; big copper steepie in the back lobby; coal boiler and bunkers; scrubbing board and mangle; two rooms with open fires, eight foot high ceilings and bugger all else.
If this was the typical tenement flat, why should we expect it to get anything more than a typical 1980s tenement conversion?
Front room left exactly as was but with the added attraction of having the fireplace boarded up; backroom unevenly quartered to provide a poky wee hall, a poky wee bedroom, a poky wee bathroom and the usual non-cat-swing kitchen, barely large enough to accommodate two people and a turkey.
After four years of us living there the transformation was complete. The final insult to the Victorian era; pink and grey walls complete with black ash, smoked glass and chrome.
One of the downsides though was that the building had no central heating to speak of. In fact, when we moved in, it had no heating whatsoever.
Not being endowed with great wealth, we saw fit to install a couple of electric panel heaters; the kind of thing that you can set on a timer to come on before you get in from work; the kind that give off the thermal equivalent of a puddle of cats piss. On more than one occasion, it was so cold that the ice formed on the inside of the windows and the only way to get any heat was to have a bath.
The real trouble with tenement living though, the main thing that drives most sane adults into semi-detached suburbia, is mostly that you have multiple neighbours.
This, in itself isn’t so much of a problem as their antics.
I was naïve enough to expect that there would be a degree of community spirit within the building. That we would all look out for each other and be like a big but slightly disjointed family.
Sap!
The reality was that, right up until the day we left, with only one exception, we never really knew any of our neighbours.
We were fortunate to have an elderly couple opposite (except they weren’t really a couple, more of a widowed old guy still clinging the notion that his wife had just popped out for some spam and would be back in a wee minute) and an elderly and, generally, harmless old biddie upstairs but, as time wore on and sheltered housing beckoned, all that was to change. We also had a Spanish chef who lived directly above us. He was known to come home from work and, in what I could only assume to be a fit of depression about either a lost love or a burnt paella, blast out Harry Nilsson singing Without You on a permanent loop. I guess we can now count ourselves fortunate that it predated that skirling bitch Mariah Carey. Other times, we would hear him working out on one of those trim-track rowing machine contraptions, the endless swish-swoosh coupled with his grunting, set to a Dr. Hook soundtrack, all conspired to sound like a bizarre, marathon sex session.
Upstairs on the other side, the sweet old lady, whose washday was Monday and woe betide anyone who ignored the fact, vacated the premises when its owner sold up. As a replacement we had the Ginger Medusa and her daughters the Peroxide Rottweiler and the Peroxide Doberman. Nobody had much to do with them because we all knew a single look could turn mere mortals to stone.
Washing ceased to be an issue though as they never seemed to do any.
Downstairs, across the hall from us, the old man with the ill fitting gnashers and his imaginary wife soon felt the warm hand of benevolence and succumbed to the pishy stench of a care home in the country.
The flat was sold to an agency, done up with a bit of new paint and after months of being empty, we had new neebs across the hall.
It was all quiet for the first couple of weeks but very quickly, that spiralled into a depressing cycle of Thursday afternoon, he got paid; Thursday evening, he came home shit-faced; Thursday night, she’d kick him out; Thursday midnight, he’d kick his way back in; early Friday morning he’d crank the music up full blast and kick seven bells out of her. Monday morning the door would get fixed so he could kick the shit out of it again a couple of weeks later. Rest of the time, he would shout at her, she would shout back, doors would slam, music would get cranked up and we would dread the doorbell ringing.
We came to suspect after a while that the job he claimed to have as a chef at the local nut house was nothing but a fantasy and he was in fact one of the inmates. Either that or it was one of those situations like owners and their dogs getting to look like each other, where he had been around bams for so long he turned into one.
The final straw came when, after he had smashed a six-inch hole in the shared lobby wall, presumably because the door had remained locked, he managed to get into his flat taking my wife with him.
Eviction soon followed.
Domestic trials aside, those were happy times. We generally lived by our means. Drank a lot of homebrew, took lots of baths and wore lots of layers in the winter.
We’d had a few practice runs at the roast dinner by the time Christmas came around. One spectacular disaster springs to mind when, having invited my in-laws for Sunday dinner, I went to the pub after work, leaving my wife to deal with the roast. I wasn’t exactly blootered but let’s just say that me and that chicken weren’t exactly seeing eye to eye. My less than sober attempts to carve the beast ended up with the chicken skiting across the plate, performing an intricate pirouette with a full somersault and twist before landing on the floor. The following battle to restore the trussed up bird to its place of glory alongside the tatties was one I was never going to win and in the end it looked like the neighbour’s cat had got at it.
We spent a lot of time preparing for what was our first, and when I think of it, probably only Christmas alone together. Bought a nice bit of beef (never could stand turkey); some nice wine; a dinky little Christmas pudding; even turned the heating on in October to let things warm up. I can’t recall much about what gifts were exchanged but I do remember it was the first year I had ever had a real Christmas tree. It was eight feet high, touched the ceiling and I had to use a stepladder to reach the top. We bought a whole stack of glass baubles, loaded it up and stuck it in the window.
I’ve always thought of the Christmas tree as a binary sort of thing – one of life’s classic polarisers – you’re either real tree with needles or fake plastic tree without.
I grew up in a needle free house.
This was my revenge on my childhood. This was my way of exercising my right to freedom of choice. I wanted to post handfuls of pine needles through the letterboxes of all the homes with plastic tress in their windows.
When Christmas Day came round, among the presents was a bottle of Moniack Sloe Gin. For those not familiar with Scottish wineries, Moniack Castle is a wee place up past Inverness and let me tell you, these guys know a thing or two about making gin taste good.
As the day went on, and the level of the bottle went down, dinner seemed like less and less of a reality. I’m not sure if it got burnt or even reached the oven but I can remember the two of us watching some crappy James Bond movie on a 12” TV, laughing our arses off amid the piles of wrapping paper.
Our lives were so uncomplicated then.
We could be happy with the simple wish of being together.
Now though, the wishes are not our own…
Opening the Christmas parade, Joe Pug.
Watch out for this guy; buy his album when it comes out. Hails from Chicago. Writes like Dylan crossed with Josh Ritter. Simple style. One man; one guitar. Saw him supporting Steve Earle. The rest is just the usual trawl through the archives…
Joe Pug – The Pageant, St. Louis
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mtt6nx
Steve Earle – The Pageant, St. Louis
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kfvo6e
Tom Waits – San Diego Folk Festival
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xggcac
Bob Dylan – Hartford
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ydqlet
Rockpile - Bottom Line
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qcfdoc
Wreckless Eric – Be Stiff Concert
http://www.sendspace.com/file/87u7h5
Rachel Sweet – Be Stiff Concert
http://www.sendspace.com/file/3vsg5q
Lene Lovich – Be Stiff Concert
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zmsh4j
Rachel Sweet – Cleveland Agora
http://www.sendspace.com/file/57u0dg
Steve Wickham – Dublin
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e0klk9
Lloyd Cole – Paris
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4z492k
Karine Polwart - Marlborough Town Hall
http://www.sendspace.com/file/850iia
Arab Strap – Live In Melbourne
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5xmtu6
The Ghost of Christmas Present
(…think this bus is stopping again to let a couple more freaks get on…)
Having conceded to the fact that I had to do some Christmas shopping, at least to get my own present, I had enlisted the help of those jolly nice chaps at Amazon.com. Deep inside though, I knew there was always going to be something that needed a trip into town.
Shopping can, for some people, be an enjoyable, rewarding and sometimes therapeutic experience. The catharsis of spending your hard earned bawbees on something you really want, having spent the preceding five days doing a load of stuff that someone else wants, sort of makes it all worthwhile. For many of us though, it is a strange and often frustrating experience. Maybe its just familiarity but the same old shops touting the same old wares and the same old fake jewellery stalls blocking the same old thoroughfares hold no excitement for me whatsoever. I always find shopping in another city a more pleasurable experience. Glasgow has the Buchanan Galleries; Birmingham has the Bull Ring; Manchester has Trafford Park; Dundee has the Wellgate; and Newcastle has the Metro Centre. We have the Bon Accord Centre, the Mall Trinity, and the St. Nicholas Centre. Now, as an added bonus, presumably for good behaviour and exceptional endurance, we get Union Square.
A fourth shopping mall, claiming to be just what the city has been waiting for!
Am I missing something here? Aren’t we in the midst of economic gloom?
We’ve never managed to fill all the units in the old shopping malls so what the f4ck do we need another one for? It’ll just be another place for scummy little tabbie munchers and underage mothers to hang out with their screaming weans.
Worse still, they built the place a stones throw from the harbour bars and the red light district, the seedy underworld of Stuart MacBride novels.
Even worse than that, they built it between the harbour and the fish market. Now what sort of olfactory sensation is that likely to spark?
Just the inspiration you need as you’re leafing through the Faith and Zara designs; fish guts, salt and diesel. Somehow I don’t think my wife would be too happy with a yellow sou’wester and a pair of matching 20 joule, steel toe cap wellies in her Christmas stocking.
– note to self – next time Walkers are looking for new crisp flavours…
Still, at least it’s next to the bus station and the rail station.
Handy, Really handy!
Especially when you consider that ninety percent of the people who are likely to visit the place don’t have direct access to a rail link.
I’m lucky; the railway runs past the end of my street. Shame some bastard shut the station in the 1960s. Still you can’t have everything. At least I’ve got the bus service. That runs through my particular little part of suburbia with the usual regularity and because I live in a group of streets that now resembles a triangular island surrounded by three main roads, I have three options from which to board said omnibus.
Because this also involves the merging of three routes, it also means that at one of the stops, a bus is due every ten minutes or, if you inhabit the real world, three times an hour, usually grouped together, with the other three broken down somewhere on the other side of town.
It’s funny that whenever I’m a pedestrian trying to cross the street there are buses zipping back and forth with all the frequency of the last remaining space invader; and isn’t it funny when I’m in a hurry to drop the kids off before going to work, I get stuck behind one that then stops at every stop before halting for a chat with its mate going the opposite direction.
Funny Funny! Ha Ha f4cking Ha!
Another problem with the bus service and living where I do is that the normal city bus service goes up what used to be the main shopping street.
Now maybe it’s me and maybe I’m just being a little over sensitive or perhaps even a little too forward thinking here but what the hell is the point of running a bus service up a street where there haven’t been any shops since Moses was a lad.
Yeah, OK, it might be tradition and yes, I agree, the routes have to be interconnectable to get from all the As to all the Bs but that is of no comfort to Old Maisie in her blue raincoat and polythene head-square. She doesn’t want to have to trudge an extra quarter of a mile in the cold and the rain with her throbbing bunions and dodgy hip while dragging her little tartan shopping trolley down the steps. She may well have a buss pass but she doesn’t want to take three buses to get from her front step to Woolies. No wonder old people moan so much.
Thirteen different lines and they all go up the same street. Not one of them goes to the bus station. What good is that?
Even the park and ride goes straight up the old main drag. The only moment of sanity in the whole parade is on Sundays, when the P&R goes to the new shopping centre. Just as well I’m not a church goer like Old Maisie.
So to get to where I want to go, I have to get what is called a country bus. This is the service that goes from the station, ultimately, to Inverness and back again. It runs about once every two days and is the technological equivalent of the Oregon Trail.
Anyway, here we are, mid-December, Aberdeen, pissing rain and not a parking space to be had so, being a fine young specimen of manhood and feeling fit, healthy and free from hangover, against my better judgement, I decide to take my chances with the city bus.
Aside from the lack of ‘door to door’ aspect, which I can live with, for many years now I’ve had a long running mental battle with public transport.
Back when I was a kid, in the days of double deckers and clippies; Aztec bars and blue lemonade; when we wore platform soles and Oxford bags and Bowie and Bolan were the ultimate style icons, public transport was widely used by all manner of people. It was cheap. It went exactly where you wanted it to go, it was frequent, on time and you didn’t have to worry about parking on the high street.
We even had a sitcom dedicated entirely to the realm of the bus depot.
For years I travelled by bus to secondary school. This again was cheap and the trip was largely for the benefit of school kids and commuters.
After I left school, I became one of those commuters. Even though it was only twice a week, it was something I dreaded. Six of us would make the 30 mile, Sunday evening trip up the coast, already longing for the trip back the following Friday but even then, the journey was bearable.
Then something changed.
Firstly, I passed my driving test, which meant I literally could travel door to door.
Secondly, I went on an ill-advised holiday to the Costa del Sol that departed from Newcastle airport. The ensuing bus trip was one of those that seemed to be unending.
Finally, when I was about 25, a drunk driver pulled his transit van in front of me, writing off the first decent car I owned.
The battle with the insurance company that followed was a protracted affair that left me with no car for around six months. The battle with my own nerves left me shitting myself every time I was anywhere within 50 metres of a Transit van. It was back to the good old number 19 for me. This left me with a deep-rooted resentment for public transport.
The thing about it was that, in the same way as if I was at a gig, at a football match or standing in a queue at an airport, I would always land up with some total fruit-loop next to me.
Like the DHSS, Primark and the council offices, buses are a magnet for the great unwashed. I use that term not as a metaphor.
My recent adventure to the city illustrates the point perfectly.
I leave the house at 9.15 and begin the walk to the bus stop. About a hundred metres away from my house, I take a shortcut through a hotel car park. This is a diagonal route that saves me taking two sides of a triangle and avoids the ‘young offenders’ home at the bottom of the street. I dodge a number of piles of dog shit and reach the main road where I pass two pubs outside which the pavements are littered with tabbies. There are the usual broken bottles and glasses, not to mention a couple of technicolour yawns decorating the pavement. Round the next corner, I pass a Chinese takeaway and, after a couple of hundred metres, the obligatory Chow Mein. I’m not sure if this is first or second hand and I’m not interested enough to want to find out. Another 100 metres or so and I’m at the bus stop.
At one end, the window has been tanned so I move in and turn my back to the wind.
The whole place stinks of stale pish, cigarettes and old newspapers.
I’m eventually joined by a young mother with a pushchair. Judging by her figure, which is disproportionately round in comparison to her scrawny face and neck, she’s going to have to get an extension fitted to the buggy pretty soon. I warn her against taking the wee one into the bus shelter. She scowls at me as if it was me who pished in the corner. The oversized geet scowls also, which makes his face look like a monkey’s arsehole.
An elderly couple are approaching, maybe about two hundred metres away, as the bus steams in to view. As it draws closer, the words Out Of Service become clear on the front. Why the hell is it on the road if it’s out of service is my immediate thought. Like my whole take on the offside rule, (that if you’re on the pitch you bloody well better be interfering with play, unless you are the goalkeeper) it’s a thought that I keep to myself.
Another bus comes into view, with another, a couple of cars behind. An 18 and a 21.
Both due to stop. Both intent on keeping going into town.
Eventually another 21 shows up and pulls into our stop.
Someone exits through the middle door.
As I hang back to let the elderly couple get on first, the scowl and her arse faced offspring barge past me to confront the driver.
“Eh min, fit i fckinell is iss aboot like min? Bin wiytin’ here fraboot a fckin’ oor like. Ah shouldna hivtbe staunin’ oot in is caul in ma condition, ‘is isny gidinuf me freezinmititsaff like. Three o youze jist drove past me, me wi a bairn an in ma condition ‘n’ ah. Altiye iss, if ma lad wiz here he’d fckinsortyiz oot so e wid. Ah’ll fckintell ‘im fan ‘e gits oot”
“You can’t take that on here”
I’m not sure if it’s the buggy or the sprog the driver is referring to. Maybe it’s her festering gob.
”Fit i fckinell d’ye mean like? Fit dyemean a canna tak iss oan here? Hoo the f4ck am ah mint tae get is wee shite aboot wi’oot it like? D’ye hink ahm fckin wundirwummin like? Fckinell, youze are a i same. Altiye iss…”
“Miss, you can’t take the pushchair on the bus. There is no room. Have a look. There is standing room only.”
“Fitye mean staunin room only? Ah canny staun in ma condition. Hiv ye nae een ye fckinbam? Kin ye nae see ahm riddy to fckin drap like?”
It’s at this point that the other bus pulls in and, thankfully, I leave the exchange.
The elderly couple board, flash their passes and I follow, parting with my £2.50 fare.
I do a quick scan and opt for a seat next to a window midway up the bus. Just as I get comfortable and jam my phones in my ears, the inevitable happens, I see arse face and his scowling mother stomping towards the bus.
Please drive off, please go, go, go – too late, they’re on.
She hauls arse face out of the buggy, collapses it and hurls it at the storage rack.
Please sit up stairs, go on, turn left, go on – too late.
Please don’t sit next to me or even near me, please, go just keep going, please –
Aw f4ck.
Why did she have to sit behind me?
Opposite or in front of would have been bad enough but behind? Why behind?
Who knows what manner of snotters, spittle or generalised barf I’m going to get covered in.
After a couple of minutes I get a tap on the arm.
“Eh min, yigotonyfagslike?”
“No sorry I don…”
“Ah yifcka aatsfityizasay. Geeza a fag yigrippybasturt”
“I told you I don’t…”
“Goat ony beer en? Yi must hae suhin’” she says as arse face tugs at her arm.
“tifckuryiwintinyiweeshite?”
“Oose, oose” is the gurgled reply.
As I turn away from her, she produces a plastic bottle of something red and fizzy and I’m thinking “oh shit here we go”. I hear arse face grab the bottle with delight while she’s still trying to get the cap off. I sense a mini tug of war behind me then a fshfwooshhhh. I’m waiting for the wet sticky spray on the back of my neck but it never comes.
I sneak a look at the reflected scene in the window opposite and notice that the scowl, the bump and arse features are covered in wet cola splats.
Maybe there is a God after all.
I stand and head upstairs, safe in the knowledge that in the equation (her lazy arse + her bump + cola-boy) x spiral stairs, the result is going to be peace and quite for me.
Yes, there definitely is a God. For now at least…
Weird Al Yankovic – The Essential
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jppcm3
Leonard Cohen – Live In Amsterdam
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0uzhdb
The Waterboys - Live In London
http://www.sendspace.com/file/o9onpi
REM – Lyon Tapes
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xn3lir
The Men They Couldn’t Hang - Never Born To Follow
http://www.sendspace.com/file/uvnu2y
Velvet Crush – Live in Providence
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pgzp28
10,000 Maniacs – 10km
http://www.sendspace.com/file/p0dorq
Paul Weller – Live at the Barras
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5ftcz0
Bob Dylan – Blackbushe
http://www.sendspace.com/file/l1qvuo
John Mellencamp – Check This Out
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1rmd63
Gun – Hard Rock Hell
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h7gdab
Bob Dylan – Jersey Boy
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xcyzx7
Julie Fowlis – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/chhtkb
Felice Brothers – Live (re-upped mp3s this time)
http://www.sendspace.com/file/oa0yh1
Roddy Frame – Live at the Belfast Empire
http://www.sendspace.com/file/z1s9dw
Lisa Hannigan – Live at the Troubador
http://www.sendspace.com/file/yzclae
The Ghost of Christmas Future
(…maybe this year will be better than the last)
So having spent a few Christmases shivering in our poky wee tenement, we made that long and winding, bus trip to where we are now. The full on, family Christmas! Just like all the Kerry Katatonic or Colleen Moron ads on the telly, the picture of health and happiness all rolled into one, minus of course the Iceland platters.
Over the years I have become very close to my wife’s family. It’s not that I have any issues with my own parents; it’s just that if stability had a face, it would look like my in-laws.
I’m proud of the fact that neither of us asked them for anything yet they fed us when we were hungry. Put us up when we didn’t have a roof. Supported us through a lot of personal shit.
Year after year, they did the deed and we helped where we could.
Time moved on and saw us all have kids of our own. A full family dinner now needs a 20-foot table and a squadron of the detested turkeys but still, my wife’s parents stick to the task of providing for the extended and ever growing tribe. I see them getting older and with every year, coping with the hassle and stress of it all with no less dignity but just a little less ability.
Every year we tell them to do less but they do it because they think it’s expected and every year everyone lets them get on with it because they think it’s what they want.
Every year my father in law works too hard, makes himself ill and it hurts to see him being taken for granted.
Every year my mother in law gets upset because she thinks she has failed to please everyone.
In truth, they’ve never failed. Not once. Even on the Christmas Day when we took over completely and I ended up in casualty having accidentally ripped out a fingernail, they were there to apply suitable amounts of anaesthetic and serve the dinner on my return.
Someday, it will be full circle. Someday, the youngest generation will be with their partners, freezing their bollocks off (metaphorically of course) in their first homes, putting up with annoying neighbours and laughing their faces in half at something they’d normally think was a load of shite.
Someday we, their parents, will have to take up the baton and run with it.
I guess that’s what Christmas future holds for us.
I’d like to think that we will find the whole thing a lot less stressful.
I’d like to think that the load will be evenly shared and that a bit more humility comes to bear upon us all.
I’d like to think that each year finds us better than the last.
I’d also like to think that, maybe for a change, we could let it slide – go with the flow, but the older I get, the more I see myself being shackled by the stupid ties of tradition and my misguided understanding of what other peoples expectations are.
I’m sure they too will be going along with it all because they think it’s what I want.
One day we will probably all turn into the things about our parents that annoyed us the most.
However inevitable it is, I’m not sure I’m ready for that.
Counting Crows – Warren Haynes Christmas Jam 2009
http://www.sendspace.com/file/txxpqr
Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs – Old Town Music Hall Late Show
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4qurvu
Hope Sandoval & the Warm Inventions - Queen Elizabeth Hall
http://www.sendspace.com/file/90ifjj
Laura Marling - Royal Festival Hall
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6ev8cv
Roddy Hart – Sign Language
http://www.sendspace.com/file/758jaz
King Creosote – Woodend Barn
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0pkp5b
thenewno2 – Charlotte
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jbdsxk
Biffy Clyro – Liquid Room, Edinburgh
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9pd6w7
Camera Obscura – Firlej, Wroclaw, Poland
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tni8xt
Joseph Arthur – Geneva
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9vtvr6
Blind Pilot – Great American Music Hall
http://www.sendspace.com/file/wd73s6
Hope Christmas for you is what you want it to be.
Life may not be all James Stewart and Donna Reed.
But it is a wonderful life all the same.
Glossary of terms
“Eh min, fit i fckinell is iss aboot like min?” –
I say my good man, can you please tell me what is happening
“Bin wiytin’ here fraboot a fckin’ oor like” –
I’ve been waiting here for about sixty minutes
“Ah shouldna hivtbe staunin’ oot in is caul in ma condition ‘is isny gidinuf me freezinmititsaff like” –
I don’t think it’s proper for a woman in my condition to have to stand here until my nipples are hard.
“Three o youze jist drove past me, me wi a bairn an in ma condition ‘n’ ah”
Three of your colleagues failed to halt with is a bit off considering I’m an expectant mother.
“Altiye iss, if ma lad wiz here he’d fckinsortyiz oot so e wid. Ah’ll fckintell ‘im fan ‘e gits oot” –
I will tell you this, my good man; if the father of my bastard offspring was here today he would give you a seeing to. I will make him aware of this on his release from prison.
”Fit i fckinell d’yemean like? Fit d’yemean a canna tak iss oan here? Hoo the f4ck am ah mint tae get is wee shite aboot wi’oot it like? D’ye hink ahm fckin wundirwummin like? Fckinell, youze are a’ i same. Altiye iss…”
What do you mean I cannot take this on here? What other method do you suggest I use to transport my child? Can you not see I’m lazy? You are not from here and I don’t like the look of you. I will tell you this…
“fitye mean staunin' room only? Ah canny staun in ma condition. Hiv ye nae een ye fckinbam. Kin ye nae see ahm riddy to fckin drap like….”
What do you mean standing room only? I can’t stand. Do you not have eyes you ignoramus. Can you not see that I am pregnant?
“eh min, yigotonyfagslike?”
I say, do you have a cigarette?
“ah yifcka aatsfityizasay. Geeza a fag yigrippybasturt”
A likely story. Please may I have a cigarette?
“Goat ony beer en?. Yi must hae suhin’”
In that case, do you have a beer. You must have something
“tifckuryiwintinyiweeshite?”
What do you wan’t?
Have a good one
Hooli
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
Sunday, 29 November 2009
...take care beware of soft shoe shufflers...
As I’m sure you know by now, TV doesn’t really set my fuse alight. I try to avoid the thing if at all possible. Paradoxically, put me in a situation where there is some form of tele-visual entertainment and, like fleas roond a shite, I’ll be inextricably drawn to it. Reeled in like a flapping guppy on the end of a hook.
The other day, while frittering away the odd hour, I sat down with the kids to watch the latest craze in the ‘hapless competitor pits his wits against an invincible assault course’ stakes. Takeshi’s Castle, for those who don’t know it, is like a Japanese version of ‘It’s a Knockout’ on a date with ‘Robot Wars’ where they both end up partying with ‘Jackass’ and ‘Gladiators’. If I’m not mistaken though, this a little light on the old ‘Jeux sans Frontières’ and wee bit heavy on the ‘Humilient sans Pitié’ aspect.
This is ‘Total Wipeout’ without the glitz, Jill Wagner and the two smooth dudes.
This is geek central.
This is a contest with no winners.
Instead you get a bunch of manic, bespectacled oriental misfits and Craig Charles doing his best Jonathan Pearce style commentary.
Judging by his innuendo laden script, I’m pretty sure Takeshi must be Japanese for arse bandit, with the so called imperial guard using water cannons to pierce the contestants ring.
To paraphrase the great Messrs Brookmyre & Connolly, “All good fun until someone loses an eye!”
Anyway, between the bouts of sprinting across floating stepping-stones and running across rolling logs, were the inevitable commercial breaks.
This troubled me a little more than all the double entendres about rings and spurting weapons, which, to be truthful, the kids didn’t get.
In the world of the 30 second soundbyte we appear to have moved on from the usual ads for shampoo and cosmetic life enhancement to something apparently a little more sinister.
Given that it was five in the evening, I expect the advertisers were targeting a different audience, so it came as no surprise that the odd Walt Disney ad or something, perhaps just a little bit too ‘pre Christmas’, flogging the latest Nintendo gadgetry, crept in to the scheme of things. What was surprising was the number of ads asking for sponsorship of something or other purporting to be a charitable cause.
Adopt a penguin claims the WWF. That’s the World Wildlife Fund and not the World Wrestling Federation, although that really would be amusing.
Imagine Dwayne Johnson being assailed by a pack of marauding nuns.
They’ve also got one about adopting a Polar bear.
Or there’s the one with the footage of some jungle, talking about a snow leopard that is so rare they don’t have it on film.
Another flashes up images of a sad eyed hound with the voiceover claiming how “Sam loved his owner blah blah blah”
Then, “for just five pounds a month you can give etc etc.”
Sponsor a dog – get your very own pet. No smelly carpets; no hairy furniture; no walks in the pissing rain picking up snappies full of shite.
There’s also the serious business of famine and disease in the Third World.
“Sami is eight years old. She would like to go to school and become a teacher but since her mother died, she has had to stay home and look after her father. He has had three heart attacks in the past year and can’t work. Just five pounds a week will help Sami go to school or will provide fresh water for her village blah blah blah.”
It all starts to sound like some old sad country western song.
“ Oh my granny is a cripple in Nashville....”
This is all serious stuff and I know I shouldn’t scoff but if all of us supported all of these causes we’d all be penniless, sitting in doorways wrapped in blankets begging off the pandas or the penguins as they passed by on their way to the office.
I know the world’s f4cked and the polar ice caps are retreating. I know there’s a hole in the ozone layer bigger than the collective arsehole of a thousand mammoths. I know the indigenous tribes of the rainforests are being shafted and driven out of their natural habit as the modern world destroys all in its path but, and it’s a big BUT, why the screaming f4ck does anybody think that a whole load of bizarre television ads are going to make things any better.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Call me a heartless cynic if you like, but someone is making money out of the plight of others less fortunate.
Surely all the money that is spent on advertising campaigns, glossy brochures, cuddly toys and membership packs would be better spent actually helping those who need it.
What about getting the governments concerned to take a good look in the mirror.
What about spending even a fraction of the budget that is ring fenced for the attritious defeat of so called enemies just because they so happen to be custodians of some oil rich desert.
And what about all these so called charity causes?
OK, so everyone knows about Oxfam and WWF but who the hell knows about the rest of them?
This is only a step away from Bible belt evangelism.
Gimme your cash – I’ll show you the Lord.
I’m sure I’m just being paranoid and there is a very strict vetting of the ads that the TV channels can run, just as there is strict vetting of the TV evangelical corps in the USA, but what about the papers or the internet.
We all know that the average newspaper is about 30% saturated with ads to the point where no one enters the nether region between the TV page and the sports pages and we all know what a pain in the arse the web is with the ubiquitous pop up ads. Similarly, we know all too well that a large percentage of blogs are now supported by banner ads or cover pages, and how much of a nuisance it presents.
All that nonsense about getting ripped in two weeks or losing 40 stone in a fortnight is, I’m sure, treated with the incredulity it deserves, all of which just goes to prove that if someone is flogging something that seems too good to be true, it’s probably because it is. That wonder supplement the medical profession won’t endorse is probably going to leave the girls with a big pair of sweaty bollocks that Buster Gonad would be proud of. The guys will end up with man-boobs that make Jordan look like Kate Moss.
End of the human race?
Watch this space.
Now all of this charity nonsense is fine if we are aiming at the next generation of adults and attempting to create positive attitudes towards the needy. We can understand the dichotomy; the balance between what could be done, what should be done and what must be done but, knowing how easy it is for kids to get lured by things like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, it’s easy to see that, without the benefit of ever having been skewered upon the horns of a dilemma, it is a very small step that is required to convince our offspring to part with the cash.
Our cash.
Speaking of which, what about the other latest craze in advertising.
Mizuba mobile, Envirophone or the Scottish version ‘ah’ll gie yi a can o special for your deid mobie’.
Stick your old mobile in an envelope, send it to this address and we’ll send you some money.
One participant claimed to have gotten a hundred and fifty quid.
One slight flaw in this equation though. If your average mobile costs about a hundred and fifty and most people have upgraded because their old phone is crap; if you stick your old Motorola talking brick in there, you know you’re going to get sweet FA back. It’s not even worth the postage stamp.
Then there’s good old Postal Gold.
Well there’s a gaping chasm of opportunity for the unscrupulous to sneak into if ever there was one.
Short of cash? Got some gold or silver lying around. Fear not. Stuff your swag into an envelope, stick our address on it and we’ll send you some cash.
Get outta town.
Do you think ma heid buttons up the back?
You can see where this is leading can’t you.
The perfect outlet for shifting stolen goods.
No need to stand in the pissing rain every Sunday at the local car boot sale hoping your last victim doesn’t amble past, just stick it all in an old jiffy bag, pop it in the mail. Two weeks later, Fanny’s yer auntie, big wad of notes pops through the letterbox.
Seriously, where does this stop?
Even the government have got in on the act with their cash for your f4ckt motor scheme.
Maybe the beleaguered NHS could do something similar. Send us your unused medication and we’ll send you a free ticket to a medical consultation with the GP of your choice – just make sure you’re really ill and the symptoms are glaringly f4cking obvious.
Perhaps the council could expand upon the recycling theme. Chuck all your unwanted furniture out in the street and we’ll send you a free DHSS token to the value of one free life membership to Sky+. On second thoughts, they’ve already done that one haven’t they?
Again, all jolly good fun if the motives are fair and true. Why shouldn’t we recycle and get a bit of cash back. We are in the midst of an economic and ecological crisis after all.
But just as there are unscrupulous car dealers who look like a cross between a rottweiler and a stubbly mr potato head; and just as there are unscrupulous timeshare owners who look like Grant Mitchell after he’s been tangoed into submission; there will be numerous entrepreneurial little shites, each with a proliferation of get rich quick schemes tucked up their sleeves.
This is the stuff of Esther Rantzen and ‘That’s Life’ or Nicky Campbell and ‘Watchdog’. The trouble now is that it has stepped off the back streets and the small ads and into our living rooms.
My idea for the future?
Adopt a Bank.
Never mind sending all your gold, jewellery or mobiles and getting cash.
Send the bank of your choice all your crap and save it from extinction.
In return, we promise not to lose your money and, as an added scoop, we’ll convert all your unwanted goods into cash so we can award our highest paid bakers a nice fat hefty bonus.
Now where did I put that silver chandelier I nicked from the neighbours?
Music?
…anyone who really knows me, knows why this is here, today.
My first guitar hero. I can’t believe its been eight years.
George Harrison – Beware of Abcko
http://www.sendspace.com/file/idp8fk
thenewno2 - Music Hall Of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qrv5h5
John Lennon – MSG
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pb4dyx
Paul McCartney – Electric Proms
http://www.sendspace.com/file/n6dkvz
Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs – Live at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ako703
Duke Spirit – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0l2j66
Tom Waits – Fast Women & Slow Horses
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zovkqh
The Felice Brothers – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/f41hqq
Paddy Casey – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pzqo6o
Solas – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/unhbig
Live in Toronto
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cpdtgf
Biffy Clyro – Live at Barrowlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/k5hui5
Bruce Sringsteen – Live at Max’s Kansas City
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8i4f3v
Richard Thompson - Live in Detroit
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nlfe99
Dr Feelgood – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jw3dpd
Enjoy till next time...
Hooli
The other day, while frittering away the odd hour, I sat down with the kids to watch the latest craze in the ‘hapless competitor pits his wits against an invincible assault course’ stakes. Takeshi’s Castle, for those who don’t know it, is like a Japanese version of ‘It’s a Knockout’ on a date with ‘Robot Wars’ where they both end up partying with ‘Jackass’ and ‘Gladiators’. If I’m not mistaken though, this a little light on the old ‘Jeux sans Frontières’ and wee bit heavy on the ‘Humilient sans Pitié’ aspect.
This is ‘Total Wipeout’ without the glitz, Jill Wagner and the two smooth dudes.
This is geek central.
This is a contest with no winners.
Instead you get a bunch of manic, bespectacled oriental misfits and Craig Charles doing his best Jonathan Pearce style commentary.
Judging by his innuendo laden script, I’m pretty sure Takeshi must be Japanese for arse bandit, with the so called imperial guard using water cannons to pierce the contestants ring.
To paraphrase the great Messrs Brookmyre & Connolly, “All good fun until someone loses an eye!”
Anyway, between the bouts of sprinting across floating stepping-stones and running across rolling logs, were the inevitable commercial breaks.
This troubled me a little more than all the double entendres about rings and spurting weapons, which, to be truthful, the kids didn’t get.
In the world of the 30 second soundbyte we appear to have moved on from the usual ads for shampoo and cosmetic life enhancement to something apparently a little more sinister.
Given that it was five in the evening, I expect the advertisers were targeting a different audience, so it came as no surprise that the odd Walt Disney ad or something, perhaps just a little bit too ‘pre Christmas’, flogging the latest Nintendo gadgetry, crept in to the scheme of things. What was surprising was the number of ads asking for sponsorship of something or other purporting to be a charitable cause.
Adopt a penguin claims the WWF. That’s the World Wildlife Fund and not the World Wrestling Federation, although that really would be amusing.
Imagine Dwayne Johnson being assailed by a pack of marauding nuns.
They’ve also got one about adopting a Polar bear.
Or there’s the one with the footage of some jungle, talking about a snow leopard that is so rare they don’t have it on film.
Another flashes up images of a sad eyed hound with the voiceover claiming how “Sam loved his owner blah blah blah”
Then, “for just five pounds a month you can give etc etc.”
Sponsor a dog – get your very own pet. No smelly carpets; no hairy furniture; no walks in the pissing rain picking up snappies full of shite.
There’s also the serious business of famine and disease in the Third World.
“Sami is eight years old. She would like to go to school and become a teacher but since her mother died, she has had to stay home and look after her father. He has had three heart attacks in the past year and can’t work. Just five pounds a week will help Sami go to school or will provide fresh water for her village blah blah blah.”
It all starts to sound like some old sad country western song.
“ Oh my granny is a cripple in Nashville....”
This is all serious stuff and I know I shouldn’t scoff but if all of us supported all of these causes we’d all be penniless, sitting in doorways wrapped in blankets begging off the pandas or the penguins as they passed by on their way to the office.
I know the world’s f4cked and the polar ice caps are retreating. I know there’s a hole in the ozone layer bigger than the collective arsehole of a thousand mammoths. I know the indigenous tribes of the rainforests are being shafted and driven out of their natural habit as the modern world destroys all in its path but, and it’s a big BUT, why the screaming f4ck does anybody think that a whole load of bizarre television ads are going to make things any better.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me. Call me a heartless cynic if you like, but someone is making money out of the plight of others less fortunate.
Surely all the money that is spent on advertising campaigns, glossy brochures, cuddly toys and membership packs would be better spent actually helping those who need it.
What about getting the governments concerned to take a good look in the mirror.
What about spending even a fraction of the budget that is ring fenced for the attritious defeat of so called enemies just because they so happen to be custodians of some oil rich desert.
And what about all these so called charity causes?
OK, so everyone knows about Oxfam and WWF but who the hell knows about the rest of them?
This is only a step away from Bible belt evangelism.
Gimme your cash – I’ll show you the Lord.
I’m sure I’m just being paranoid and there is a very strict vetting of the ads that the TV channels can run, just as there is strict vetting of the TV evangelical corps in the USA, but what about the papers or the internet.
We all know that the average newspaper is about 30% saturated with ads to the point where no one enters the nether region between the TV page and the sports pages and we all know what a pain in the arse the web is with the ubiquitous pop up ads. Similarly, we know all too well that a large percentage of blogs are now supported by banner ads or cover pages, and how much of a nuisance it presents.
All that nonsense about getting ripped in two weeks or losing 40 stone in a fortnight is, I’m sure, treated with the incredulity it deserves, all of which just goes to prove that if someone is flogging something that seems too good to be true, it’s probably because it is. That wonder supplement the medical profession won’t endorse is probably going to leave the girls with a big pair of sweaty bollocks that Buster Gonad would be proud of. The guys will end up with man-boobs that make Jordan look like Kate Moss.
End of the human race?
Watch this space.
Now all of this charity nonsense is fine if we are aiming at the next generation of adults and attempting to create positive attitudes towards the needy. We can understand the dichotomy; the balance between what could be done, what should be done and what must be done but, knowing how easy it is for kids to get lured by things like Facebook, Twitter and Bebo, it’s easy to see that, without the benefit of ever having been skewered upon the horns of a dilemma, it is a very small step that is required to convince our offspring to part with the cash.
Our cash.
Speaking of which, what about the other latest craze in advertising.
Mizuba mobile, Envirophone or the Scottish version ‘ah’ll gie yi a can o special for your deid mobie’.
Stick your old mobile in an envelope, send it to this address and we’ll send you some money.
One participant claimed to have gotten a hundred and fifty quid.
One slight flaw in this equation though. If your average mobile costs about a hundred and fifty and most people have upgraded because their old phone is crap; if you stick your old Motorola talking brick in there, you know you’re going to get sweet FA back. It’s not even worth the postage stamp.
Then there’s good old Postal Gold.
Well there’s a gaping chasm of opportunity for the unscrupulous to sneak into if ever there was one.
Short of cash? Got some gold or silver lying around. Fear not. Stuff your swag into an envelope, stick our address on it and we’ll send you some cash.
Get outta town.
Do you think ma heid buttons up the back?
You can see where this is leading can’t you.
The perfect outlet for shifting stolen goods.
No need to stand in the pissing rain every Sunday at the local car boot sale hoping your last victim doesn’t amble past, just stick it all in an old jiffy bag, pop it in the mail. Two weeks later, Fanny’s yer auntie, big wad of notes pops through the letterbox.
Seriously, where does this stop?
Even the government have got in on the act with their cash for your f4ckt motor scheme.
Maybe the beleaguered NHS could do something similar. Send us your unused medication and we’ll send you a free ticket to a medical consultation with the GP of your choice – just make sure you’re really ill and the symptoms are glaringly f4cking obvious.
Perhaps the council could expand upon the recycling theme. Chuck all your unwanted furniture out in the street and we’ll send you a free DHSS token to the value of one free life membership to Sky+. On second thoughts, they’ve already done that one haven’t they?
Again, all jolly good fun if the motives are fair and true. Why shouldn’t we recycle and get a bit of cash back. We are in the midst of an economic and ecological crisis after all.
But just as there are unscrupulous car dealers who look like a cross between a rottweiler and a stubbly mr potato head; and just as there are unscrupulous timeshare owners who look like Grant Mitchell after he’s been tangoed into submission; there will be numerous entrepreneurial little shites, each with a proliferation of get rich quick schemes tucked up their sleeves.
This is the stuff of Esther Rantzen and ‘That’s Life’ or Nicky Campbell and ‘Watchdog’. The trouble now is that it has stepped off the back streets and the small ads and into our living rooms.
My idea for the future?
Adopt a Bank.
Never mind sending all your gold, jewellery or mobiles and getting cash.
Send the bank of your choice all your crap and save it from extinction.
In return, we promise not to lose your money and, as an added scoop, we’ll convert all your unwanted goods into cash so we can award our highest paid bakers a nice fat hefty bonus.
Now where did I put that silver chandelier I nicked from the neighbours?
Music?
…anyone who really knows me, knows why this is here, today.
My first guitar hero. I can’t believe its been eight years.
George Harrison – Beware of Abcko
http://www.sendspace.com/file/idp8fk
thenewno2 - Music Hall Of Williamsburg, Brooklyn
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qrv5h5
John Lennon – MSG
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pb4dyx
Paul McCartney – Electric Proms
http://www.sendspace.com/file/n6dkvz
Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs – Live at the Old Town School of Folk Music.
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ako703
Duke Spirit – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0l2j66
Tom Waits – Fast Women & Slow Horses
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zovkqh
The Felice Brothers – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/f41hqq
Paddy Casey – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pzqo6o
Solas – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/unhbig
Live in Toronto
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cpdtgf
Biffy Clyro – Live at Barrowlands
http://www.sendspace.com/file/k5hui5
Bruce Sringsteen – Live at Max’s Kansas City
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8i4f3v
Richard Thompson - Live in Detroit
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nlfe99
Dr Feelgood – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/jw3dpd
Enjoy till next time...
Hooli
Monday, 16 November 2009
...all the truth in the world adds up to one big lie...
As much as I hated to admit it to myself, I was a worried man with a worried mind.
A thousand times I wondered to myself, “What did this mean”
The voice from the very heart of me made a great show of reminding me that I was only human but all the while, the taunts from inside my head grew like an avalanche, sweeping me tumbling into its crashing depths, trying to convince me of something entirely different.
Like a man with an unexplained illness or an ache that never leaves, was I condemned to suffer within the clutches of this dichotomy that, with one hand, would hold me to the wild and irrational fear that something was seriously off the slates, while with the other, would drag me grudgingly towards the reality that there was a perfectly simple explanation and that the very existence of the doubt in my mind was what was solely responsible for its perpetuity.
Was I prepared to let myself be tormented in this manner?
Was I so blind to my own reality that I couldn’t see what I was doing to myself?
I was gripping on, white knuckled, to what I called reality, with every vein in my body popping out and fit to burst. Rationality was on the run. It had escaped me and I had no way of apprehending it before its absence caused me serious harm. In my mind I had posted the APB but my body wasn’t up for the search.
That’s what this was about really.
Blind panic.
I’d stared over that particular precipice once in my life and I didn’t like the view.
I knew this was no rollercoaster ride. No PepsiMax.
From there, at least there was always an element of certainty and finality to the whole affair.
OK, maybe you came out the other side with your kegs full of shite or with your tits poking out the top of your dress but at least there was an end. You knew you could close your eyes, clench your arse cheeks or grab hold of your top and it would soon be over. You knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
This particular thrill ride offered no light and no tunnel – maybe not a bad thing since I was in no way ready to make the long floaty journey towards the big bright light. No, this was more of a wide, unending expanse of blackness, a desert of desperation, featureless, dry and stretching out before me; then it was a room, also featureless, with no windows or doors, no fixtures, no fittings, filled with oppressive, crushing white light.
If only there was a way to take some of that blackness from the desert and exchange it for some of the white light. If only there was a way to achieve balance.
I knew the answer was out there, somewhere in the ether. Was it so indistinct that my fallibility was betraying me? My instinct had never failed me before but here it was, bereft of answers at a time when it was about all I had to rely upon. I felt like I was being sucked into a swirling vortex, a tornado of lost souls reaching out to me for redemption.
What was happening to me?
Was I about to turn into one of those vegetative slobs, sitting watching second hand, second rate American drama shows while the days slipped agonisingly by me. Was I condemned to soak up days of reality TV or sit through hours and hours off meaningless football matches as they all blended into one, supping pishy lager, pretending the ball wasn’t there in an attempt to inject some interest but all the while just longing for a final whistle that has inevitably been delayed for a disproportionate length of time by the third official and his electronic placard?
Would I be forced to exist on a high fat diet of take away pizza, burgers, crisps and coke and be left to live in a single, ever decreasing room, while I got fatter and fatter, watching shockumentaries about families who disintegrate because they are all too fat to get out the front door, having to get their food delivered through the window; real life playing an extended parody of TV parodying real life?
Surely not. I only did it twice
Yes, it was a deliberate act but it only consumed an aggregate of five hours of my life.
It didn’t mean anything to me. Not really.
It was only f4cking TV.
What this really meant, in cold hard facts, was that BBC3 actually managed to cobble together the worst excesses of the past decade, squeeze them into a five hour extravaganza of shame, indulgence and downright stupidity, and come up with a spanking new pair of boots.
This was ‘The Noughties – Was That It?’
It started when I was in the other room but I was drawn by the mention of text messages, the debasement of our language, charity fatigue, celebrity babies and the nanny state.
As I’m sure you can appreciate, all subjects dear to my heart.
What followed was a top one hundred, commented upon by the usual noteworthies, and blended with equal measures of ‘Grumpy Old Men’ and the contents of my insane mind.
Despite the ironic omission of that most omnipresent staple of modern TV, the Top 100 chart show, this was enthralling stuff. I even downloaded the first part from BBC iPlayer so I could watch John Bishop over and over, dead panning about how three legged races should be banned from school sports day in case the three-legged community were offended.
This was ‘modern life is crap’ documented and there for all to see.
These were my very thoughts, on screen.
This was the lament of a hooligan, forced into an existence of conformity.
How many times did it hit the mark; how well did it portray the cynical self, mocking the stupidity that surrounds it; how well did it inwardly look at the role each of us had in playing along with the ideal, conforming to the notion that celebrity is good and that it is right to aspire to that lifestyle.
So we can all dress like Posh & Becks or Jordan & whatsisface; we can smell Britney or Avril and, although the true celebrity chip is one none of us will ever cash, the average home in the western world can have all the trappings of modern life – wireless network; flat screen TVs; laptops; games consoles; alarm clocks that wake you to subdued lighting along with the smell of croissants and latte in the morning.
The information technology overload and the way we have all instantly become open access or, potentially at least, in the public domain, has left us with a deeper set paranoia than a snake in rocking chair shop. The fact that we can’t even go for a piss without first getting a permit and a password then, weeks later, finding some kid in a mud hut on the Masai Mara has stuck it up on You Tube, makes worrying about whether or not your shades are exactly the same as the ones Beckham wore in some stupid ad, more than just a trifle meaningless.
Modern life is a security nightmare.
Everything we do is password protected.
Take the other day as an example. I got up, washed, dressed, made a coffee and set off to work. To get my bike out of the shed, I had to jiggle the barrels on a combination lock. I cycled the short distance to work where the back gate to the premises presented me with a combination keypad. Entering the code failed to release the locking mechanism. A couple of further attempts confirmed that the mechanism was indeed, f4cked. I reached through the mesh fencing of the gate with a bit of wire that just happened to be lying among the leaves and, after a couple of attempts, pulled open the handle on the far side. This, I put down to resourcefulness; the one thing that life has taught me to treasure.
Once in my office, I fired up my PC and went for another coffee. When I returned, I was faced with a network log on pane, into which I keyed my unique password which requires to be changed every month. Having safely negotiated that, I went to check my e-mails. Again, another log on pane appeared and again, I keyed in my unique alphanumeric, the one I change voluntarily every month to keep it concurrent with my network password. Then I decided to open the other programs I regularly use, each requiring a unique password; each requiring updating every 28 days. Not every month, every 28 days – spot the obvious synchronisation error.
During lunch, wishing to cancel a Direct Debit, I called my bank. Having managed to navigate behind the automated answering service, I actually got to speak to a real human being; one who was actually working in my branch.
“I’ll redirect you to our telephone banking service” he said.
Before I could do anything about it, I was talking to someone who wanted to know my bank account number, my sort code, my postcode, the first and third digits of my personal telephone banking security code, the name of my first pet and my mother’s maiden name.
I was waiting to be presented with my pornstar name.
Geezabrek. How in the name of festering f4ck am I supposed to remember that lot? I only use telephone banking about once every two years and only set it up so that I didn’t have to speak to the automated thingy.
Eventually, I give up and resolve to visit the nearest branch after work.
Once there, to ensure that I don’t come out to a Y frame minus wheels and seat, I chain up my bike and lock it with another combination padlock, this one only has three barrels so it’s got a different code to the shed lock. I get to the door of the bank and I’m presented with an automated transaction machine, hole in the wall to you and me, I punch in my Personal Identification Number and withdraw some cash.
“Might as well check my other accounts while I’m here” I think to myself. I punch in another two different Personal Identification Numbers and, satisfied with the results, head into the building to discuss my needs.
Satisfied that the local council will be getting no more of my money and flushed with my success, I nip into the local shop and buy a bottle of Coke and a packet of crisps to celebrate.
As I’m walking back, I glance up and catch sight of the CCTV camera that is studiously tracking my progress. I attempt to remove the cap from the Coke bottle but it is wound so tight that, when I eventually gather enough force to break the security seal, the bottle spins from my hand, hits the ground and explodes into a gushing fountain of pale brown froth. I manage to halt its dervish like antics with my size ten just in time to capture the last remaining 40ml before it is centrifugally ejected from its captive.
The bottle is pierced through the bottom and I know that the little bubbles issuing forth from this rupture mean the contents will be about as lively as heaven at Halloween.
I pick it up and do a quick 360 in search of a bin.
Nothing – potential hiding place for an incendiary device.
Not a bin in sight.
I’m now sticky of fingers and seriously pissed off. I can’t even toss the f4cker over the nearest hedge because I’m on candid f4cking camera and I swear to myself that if this lands up on You’ve Been Framed, I’ll personally replicate the whole scene but only after I’ve wedged the bottle between Harry Hill’s butt cheeks.
Disconsolate, I go for the crisps. I pinch both sides of the bag between forefinger and thumb and attempt to separate the two adjoining sheets of film.
“This would be a lot easier if I wasn’t stuck to the exploding Coke bottle” I think, so I lay it down and have another go. The bag flies open and splits down the side, spilling half the crisps like confetti around the, now fully drained, plastic bomb.
I unlock my bike, cycle home and lock the bike back in its resting place for the evening.
Now that I’m home I decide to check my blog comments. Another password to access Google.
Then I check to see if there are any new torrents circulating. Another three passwords.
By the time I get to bed around midnight, it's like someone is playing a cine-loop of the matrix coding inside my head. I close my eyes and all I see are random chains of numbers and letters. My brain is pulp and I'm left with the feeling that I've been raped of my anonimity.
Nothing is left with a grain of sanctity.
Even Belle du Jour has been exposed.
So now, you’re no doubt wondering what the point of all this is.
The point is that paranoia and insecurity has led us to the point where unseen forces are running our lives. We have become like those annoying little unidirectional bevel slotted screws and ratchet capped bleach bottles.
We have become tamperproof.
It’s like that Kevin Spacey line in the Usual Suspects, “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”.
The greatest trick the Safety Nazis pulled was convincing the world that it was in danger and needed to be protected from terrorists, cranks and spookheads.
Ground glass will be put in your product unless it is hermetically sealed and tested to withstand the pressure of two atmospheres. Someone could sabotage your product and inject it with poison.
If you go for a 'Forrest Gump' without entering your password and pin number a whole load of fish are suddenly going to swim up your arse and you’re gonna burst.
F4cking bollocks that’s what it is.
This great scheme, designed to prevent the bad guys from getting in, is like something out of the Dragons Den. Didn’t it dawn on anybody that if the bad guys can’t get in then how the f4ck are you or I supposed to get in.
It’s never ending.
Things have definitely changed.
The stuff that used to work doesn’t work anymore.
Everything is a lesser version of what it used to be. Everything has dumbed down to lowest common denominator. If it's shite we just chuck it out and get another one and quite happily accept that the reason it was shite was for our own safety.
The ‘no win no fee’ brigade have poisoned our minds for too long and we have collectively just bought into the whole charade.
Why can’t they just piss off and leave us alone.
Bob Dylan – Live In Frankfurt
http://www.sendspace.com/file/efwbir
TRB - Live At The Bottom Line
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7licst
Blind Pilot – We Are The Tide
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1rlw92
Prefab Sprout - Edinburgh – 25.02.1984
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nm1cq5
Tom Morello – Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pjq9u9
Icicle Works – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rbdmhb
Edwyn Collins - I’m Not Following You
http://www.sendspace.com/file/69nn66
The Waterboys - Live In London
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0b8kke
Ray Davies - Live In Trondheim
http://www.sendspace.com/file/t1byq6
Matthew Sweet - Live In Turin, NY
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6yn48f
Townes Van Zant - Paisley Park, Wellington
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pfjyt7
Warren Zevon - Solo, Rochester
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1mi9cv
White Stripes – Live in Las Vegas
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7o4aur
Enjoy...
Hooli
A thousand times I wondered to myself, “What did this mean”
The voice from the very heart of me made a great show of reminding me that I was only human but all the while, the taunts from inside my head grew like an avalanche, sweeping me tumbling into its crashing depths, trying to convince me of something entirely different.
Like a man with an unexplained illness or an ache that never leaves, was I condemned to suffer within the clutches of this dichotomy that, with one hand, would hold me to the wild and irrational fear that something was seriously off the slates, while with the other, would drag me grudgingly towards the reality that there was a perfectly simple explanation and that the very existence of the doubt in my mind was what was solely responsible for its perpetuity.
Was I prepared to let myself be tormented in this manner?
Was I so blind to my own reality that I couldn’t see what I was doing to myself?
I was gripping on, white knuckled, to what I called reality, with every vein in my body popping out and fit to burst. Rationality was on the run. It had escaped me and I had no way of apprehending it before its absence caused me serious harm. In my mind I had posted the APB but my body wasn’t up for the search.
That’s what this was about really.
Blind panic.
I’d stared over that particular precipice once in my life and I didn’t like the view.
I knew this was no rollercoaster ride. No PepsiMax.
From there, at least there was always an element of certainty and finality to the whole affair.
OK, maybe you came out the other side with your kegs full of shite or with your tits poking out the top of your dress but at least there was an end. You knew you could close your eyes, clench your arse cheeks or grab hold of your top and it would soon be over. You knew there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
This particular thrill ride offered no light and no tunnel – maybe not a bad thing since I was in no way ready to make the long floaty journey towards the big bright light. No, this was more of a wide, unending expanse of blackness, a desert of desperation, featureless, dry and stretching out before me; then it was a room, also featureless, with no windows or doors, no fixtures, no fittings, filled with oppressive, crushing white light.
If only there was a way to take some of that blackness from the desert and exchange it for some of the white light. If only there was a way to achieve balance.
I knew the answer was out there, somewhere in the ether. Was it so indistinct that my fallibility was betraying me? My instinct had never failed me before but here it was, bereft of answers at a time when it was about all I had to rely upon. I felt like I was being sucked into a swirling vortex, a tornado of lost souls reaching out to me for redemption.
What was happening to me?
Was I about to turn into one of those vegetative slobs, sitting watching second hand, second rate American drama shows while the days slipped agonisingly by me. Was I condemned to soak up days of reality TV or sit through hours and hours off meaningless football matches as they all blended into one, supping pishy lager, pretending the ball wasn’t there in an attempt to inject some interest but all the while just longing for a final whistle that has inevitably been delayed for a disproportionate length of time by the third official and his electronic placard?
Would I be forced to exist on a high fat diet of take away pizza, burgers, crisps and coke and be left to live in a single, ever decreasing room, while I got fatter and fatter, watching shockumentaries about families who disintegrate because they are all too fat to get out the front door, having to get their food delivered through the window; real life playing an extended parody of TV parodying real life?
Surely not. I only did it twice
Yes, it was a deliberate act but it only consumed an aggregate of five hours of my life.
It didn’t mean anything to me. Not really.
It was only f4cking TV.
What this really meant, in cold hard facts, was that BBC3 actually managed to cobble together the worst excesses of the past decade, squeeze them into a five hour extravaganza of shame, indulgence and downright stupidity, and come up with a spanking new pair of boots.
This was ‘The Noughties – Was That It?’
It started when I was in the other room but I was drawn by the mention of text messages, the debasement of our language, charity fatigue, celebrity babies and the nanny state.
As I’m sure you can appreciate, all subjects dear to my heart.
What followed was a top one hundred, commented upon by the usual noteworthies, and blended with equal measures of ‘Grumpy Old Men’ and the contents of my insane mind.
Despite the ironic omission of that most omnipresent staple of modern TV, the Top 100 chart show, this was enthralling stuff. I even downloaded the first part from BBC iPlayer so I could watch John Bishop over and over, dead panning about how three legged races should be banned from school sports day in case the three-legged community were offended.
This was ‘modern life is crap’ documented and there for all to see.
These were my very thoughts, on screen.
This was the lament of a hooligan, forced into an existence of conformity.
How many times did it hit the mark; how well did it portray the cynical self, mocking the stupidity that surrounds it; how well did it inwardly look at the role each of us had in playing along with the ideal, conforming to the notion that celebrity is good and that it is right to aspire to that lifestyle.
So we can all dress like Posh & Becks or Jordan & whatsisface; we can smell Britney or Avril and, although the true celebrity chip is one none of us will ever cash, the average home in the western world can have all the trappings of modern life – wireless network; flat screen TVs; laptops; games consoles; alarm clocks that wake you to subdued lighting along with the smell of croissants and latte in the morning.
The information technology overload and the way we have all instantly become open access or, potentially at least, in the public domain, has left us with a deeper set paranoia than a snake in rocking chair shop. The fact that we can’t even go for a piss without first getting a permit and a password then, weeks later, finding some kid in a mud hut on the Masai Mara has stuck it up on You Tube, makes worrying about whether or not your shades are exactly the same as the ones Beckham wore in some stupid ad, more than just a trifle meaningless.
Modern life is a security nightmare.
Everything we do is password protected.
Take the other day as an example. I got up, washed, dressed, made a coffee and set off to work. To get my bike out of the shed, I had to jiggle the barrels on a combination lock. I cycled the short distance to work where the back gate to the premises presented me with a combination keypad. Entering the code failed to release the locking mechanism. A couple of further attempts confirmed that the mechanism was indeed, f4cked. I reached through the mesh fencing of the gate with a bit of wire that just happened to be lying among the leaves and, after a couple of attempts, pulled open the handle on the far side. This, I put down to resourcefulness; the one thing that life has taught me to treasure.
Once in my office, I fired up my PC and went for another coffee. When I returned, I was faced with a network log on pane, into which I keyed my unique password which requires to be changed every month. Having safely negotiated that, I went to check my e-mails. Again, another log on pane appeared and again, I keyed in my unique alphanumeric, the one I change voluntarily every month to keep it concurrent with my network password. Then I decided to open the other programs I regularly use, each requiring a unique password; each requiring updating every 28 days. Not every month, every 28 days – spot the obvious synchronisation error.
During lunch, wishing to cancel a Direct Debit, I called my bank. Having managed to navigate behind the automated answering service, I actually got to speak to a real human being; one who was actually working in my branch.
“I’ll redirect you to our telephone banking service” he said.
Before I could do anything about it, I was talking to someone who wanted to know my bank account number, my sort code, my postcode, the first and third digits of my personal telephone banking security code, the name of my first pet and my mother’s maiden name.
I was waiting to be presented with my pornstar name.
Geezabrek. How in the name of festering f4ck am I supposed to remember that lot? I only use telephone banking about once every two years and only set it up so that I didn’t have to speak to the automated thingy.
Eventually, I give up and resolve to visit the nearest branch after work.
Once there, to ensure that I don’t come out to a Y frame minus wheels and seat, I chain up my bike and lock it with another combination padlock, this one only has three barrels so it’s got a different code to the shed lock. I get to the door of the bank and I’m presented with an automated transaction machine, hole in the wall to you and me, I punch in my Personal Identification Number and withdraw some cash.
“Might as well check my other accounts while I’m here” I think to myself. I punch in another two different Personal Identification Numbers and, satisfied with the results, head into the building to discuss my needs.
Satisfied that the local council will be getting no more of my money and flushed with my success, I nip into the local shop and buy a bottle of Coke and a packet of crisps to celebrate.
As I’m walking back, I glance up and catch sight of the CCTV camera that is studiously tracking my progress. I attempt to remove the cap from the Coke bottle but it is wound so tight that, when I eventually gather enough force to break the security seal, the bottle spins from my hand, hits the ground and explodes into a gushing fountain of pale brown froth. I manage to halt its dervish like antics with my size ten just in time to capture the last remaining 40ml before it is centrifugally ejected from its captive.
The bottle is pierced through the bottom and I know that the little bubbles issuing forth from this rupture mean the contents will be about as lively as heaven at Halloween.
I pick it up and do a quick 360 in search of a bin.
Nothing – potential hiding place for an incendiary device.
Not a bin in sight.
I’m now sticky of fingers and seriously pissed off. I can’t even toss the f4cker over the nearest hedge because I’m on candid f4cking camera and I swear to myself that if this lands up on You’ve Been Framed, I’ll personally replicate the whole scene but only after I’ve wedged the bottle between Harry Hill’s butt cheeks.
Disconsolate, I go for the crisps. I pinch both sides of the bag between forefinger and thumb and attempt to separate the two adjoining sheets of film.
“This would be a lot easier if I wasn’t stuck to the exploding Coke bottle” I think, so I lay it down and have another go. The bag flies open and splits down the side, spilling half the crisps like confetti around the, now fully drained, plastic bomb.
I unlock my bike, cycle home and lock the bike back in its resting place for the evening.
Now that I’m home I decide to check my blog comments. Another password to access Google.
Then I check to see if there are any new torrents circulating. Another three passwords.
By the time I get to bed around midnight, it's like someone is playing a cine-loop of the matrix coding inside my head. I close my eyes and all I see are random chains of numbers and letters. My brain is pulp and I'm left with the feeling that I've been raped of my anonimity.
Nothing is left with a grain of sanctity.
Even Belle du Jour has been exposed.
So now, you’re no doubt wondering what the point of all this is.
The point is that paranoia and insecurity has led us to the point where unseen forces are running our lives. We have become like those annoying little unidirectional bevel slotted screws and ratchet capped bleach bottles.
We have become tamperproof.
It’s like that Kevin Spacey line in the Usual Suspects, “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”.
The greatest trick the Safety Nazis pulled was convincing the world that it was in danger and needed to be protected from terrorists, cranks and spookheads.
Ground glass will be put in your product unless it is hermetically sealed and tested to withstand the pressure of two atmospheres. Someone could sabotage your product and inject it with poison.
If you go for a 'Forrest Gump' without entering your password and pin number a whole load of fish are suddenly going to swim up your arse and you’re gonna burst.
F4cking bollocks that’s what it is.
This great scheme, designed to prevent the bad guys from getting in, is like something out of the Dragons Den. Didn’t it dawn on anybody that if the bad guys can’t get in then how the f4ck are you or I supposed to get in.
It’s never ending.
Things have definitely changed.
The stuff that used to work doesn’t work anymore.
Everything is a lesser version of what it used to be. Everything has dumbed down to lowest common denominator. If it's shite we just chuck it out and get another one and quite happily accept that the reason it was shite was for our own safety.
The ‘no win no fee’ brigade have poisoned our minds for too long and we have collectively just bought into the whole charade.
Why can’t they just piss off and leave us alone.
Bob Dylan – Live In Frankfurt
http://www.sendspace.com/file/efwbir
TRB - Live At The Bottom Line
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7licst
Blind Pilot – We Are The Tide
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1rlw92
Prefab Sprout - Edinburgh – 25.02.1984
http://www.sendspace.com/file/nm1cq5
Tom Morello – Hardly Strictly Bluegrass
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pjq9u9
Icicle Works – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rbdmhb
Edwyn Collins - I’m Not Following You
http://www.sendspace.com/file/69nn66
The Waterboys - Live In London
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0b8kke
Ray Davies - Live In Trondheim
http://www.sendspace.com/file/t1byq6
Matthew Sweet - Live In Turin, NY
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6yn48f
Townes Van Zant - Paisley Park, Wellington
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pfjyt7
Warren Zevon - Solo, Rochester
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1mi9cv
White Stripes – Live in Las Vegas
http://www.sendspace.com/file/7o4aur
Enjoy...
Hooli
Friday, 6 November 2009
As requested
OK, so my attempt to recover the original link from RS failed so, at last, here are working links to SS
Hue and Cry - Bitter Suite / Remote
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iq4hyn
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xhc3h9
I guess when the fun police hit this the killed the RS links too.
Hue and Cry - Bitter Suite / Remote
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iq4hyn
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xhc3h9
I guess when the fun police hit this the killed the RS links too.
Monday, 2 November 2009
...living in a city of immigrants, I don't need to go travellin'...
Around this time of year, while the rest of the country is enjoying half term holidays, we grumpy Scots are just returning from what has long been known as the tattie holidays.
Back in days of yore, the 70s in my case, this was the time of year when, in order to give the teachers time sharpen their swords and fettle their broomsticks, all the schoolkids got two weeks off to go tattie howkin’ at the local farm. For your part in this gruelling spectacle, the local squire would pay you 20p a week with the added bonus of a boot up the arse on a Friday – if you were lucky.
Ah how the times have changed.
For a start, potatoes are machine harvested and child labour is most definitely frowned upon. I only have to mention household chores to be reminded of the ugly truths about slave labour, child cruelty and the minimum wage.
With our west coast adventure of this summer now consigned to the memory bank and with the kids refusing to let up about being trailed to the arse end of nowhere for a fortnight, this year, as with every other year in recent times, we dipped our collective big toe into the festering pool that is the package holiday.
I’m not quite sure how it all came to this as both my wife and I are quite independent travellers but the package holiday seems to be the thing that fulfils the obligation of giving everyone in the family something in return. It’s a bit like going to McDonalds in that none of use would put it even at the lower end of the favourites spectrum but you know what you’re getting and you know that you’re still going to be hungry afterwards.
Yes the great British package holiday, Brits abroad, scenario. It’s little wonder they tried to make a soap opera out of it.
If you’re dreaming the sort of dreams that involve scantily clad nymphs and crates of Carlsberg or maybe if you’re just plain lucky, you pay a couple of grand, get on a flight at your local airport and three hours later you land somewhere a good fifteen degrees warmer where you transfer to a spacious modern hotel set amid the backdrop of an idyllic palm fringed beach. Two weeks of sun, sea and sand later you reverse the procedure and you’re back in the pissing rain knee deep in fallen leaves.
Fully relaxed and brimming with fond memories.
If you are at the opposite end of the scale, you’ve probably been on Watchdog more times than Nicky Campbell and Lynn Faulds Wood put together and are currently licking your wounds over the loss of fifteen grand to a time share shark.
Somewhere in between is the reality.
You hand over your cash for two weeks in the sun that is preceded by a 120 mile trip to the nearest available airport during which, when you’re less than five miles from the car park, you endure a two hour siesta on the M8 as four lanes funnel in to one on the way to Ibrox. The car park and check in safely negotiated, you then have to wait around for four hours as the flight time has been changed by the tour operator and there is an added delay of two hours because your plane is still in Gatwick getting the upholstery cleaned because someone pissed their pants on the previous flight.
Finally you get on your flight and squeeze into your seat which offers as much space and functionality as a confessional booth. There is however a drunken hen night on board which, when scratched against a drunken stag night, produces just the right kind of spark designed to piss the cabin crew and the other passengers off.
Praise be to the lord for the iPod.
Fortunately, the plane takes off and lands safely, you don’t get deep vein thrombosis and the Hail Mary’s aren’t being freely administered by the cabin crew.
The equivalent of a Black Mariah pulls up to escort the warring hen and stag factions to their appropriate accommodations courtesy of the state. Sea view not included.
If you’re a bit adventurous, you’ll land, not in Majorca or Ibiza, but in Turkey whereupon you will have to hand over one crisp Bank of England tenner per person for the priviledge of a franked stamp on your passport. It does also prevent you, law breaking aside, from facing a Midnight Express type experience at the start of your holiday.
Once you get out of the airport, you get the good old transfer bus. With the night time temperature at 25°C, you’d have thought the very least the tour operator would have done was made sure the bus had air conditioning. No so. Never mind though, the driver will always be on hand to pass out plastic cups of chilled water, except when he’s driving that is, which is all the way to the resort where, if you’re very, very lucky, your hotel will be the second last stop and not the very last.
When you get to your room you then have one of those conscience shattering moments where the bell boy stands sheepishly at the door, waiting. All you have is a twenty quid note, some coppers and a wad of traveller’s cheques.
Eventually you find a pound coin that has slipped through the hole in your pocket, down your trouser leg and into your shoe.
His look of distaste says it all but that’s what he gets for not sticking in at school and turning into a moochin little bastart.
Eventually your head hits the pillow at 3am local time (that’s 5am your time).
The bar is blaring some shite that makes the birdy song sound like Beethoven’s fifth and a gaggle of drunken Geordies pour in off the street.
Next morning, you miss it. Completely! You surface at 12.30 just in time to go to the reps welcome meeting where she blabs on some irrelevant shite about boat trips here and beach parties there, all designed to get you to shed all that extra cash you brought with you.
Then there’s the reps’ party night. This is the best night out you’ll ever have! Free admission to some anonymous black and chrome UV drenched club, like a throwback from the 80s, playing drum ‘n’ bass so loud it makes your ears bleed plus, you get a free drink in every pub you can manage after that.
All for 50 Lira per person.
All just a good and legitimate excuse for the reps to get together, get totally shit faced, then pair off and shag one another without feeling guilty about it.
Ah and of course we mustn’t forget the Turkish night. (You can substitute Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or whatever other country you’re in. They all do it and the result is always the same).
...“if you don’t do anything else, there’s one thing you must do while you’re in Turkey, you must go to the Turkish night here in the hotel” she says, “25 Lira a head, eat as much as you like, barbecued kebabs, all the traditional mezes, free belly dancer, break dancing group and traditional Turkish folk dance group”
Then you get all the pep talk about strict baggage allowance and prebooked seats which you’ve heard more often than that song from Four Weddings and a Funeral, so you consign all this to the refuse tip at the rear end of your mind along with all the other shite you’ve heard throughout the year and off you go.
Now duly acclimatised to your surroundings and having found the less than amply stocked mini market, you check out the hotel pool where you are set upon by the hotel activities and entertainments rep.
This will doubtless be someone with boundless energy and a vocal delivery that suggests he was cross pollinated with a hyena then vaccinated with the old gramophone needle tipped with some of Ben Elton’s DNA – and not the funny stuff either.
“Monday night live footy, Bolton versus Coventry. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night, all the Euro action with Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea; Friday night live footy blah blah.
So in an attempt to escape the dreaded Champions league, you make sure you eat out every night.
Your quest for some gastronomic delight takes you to the beach front.
A nice romantic stroll along the prom; just the ticket for getting you ready for dinner.
You barely manage to get a hundred yards from the hotel before you’re accosted by some dude bearing a wadge of leaflets declaring 20% off or a free bottle of wine if you eat at such and such a restaurant.
If you haven’t experienced this, you’ll have to trust me on this one, but it’s no lie, all the restaurants are the same, they all offer the same discounts and the wine is pish no matter whether it’s free or costs forty lira a bottle.
Take my advice, go to the first place you come to and stick to it. That way you’ll save yourself being hassled more than once.
So you get yourself set up nicely at a table overlooking the lapping waters as they reflect a crescent moon and a splash of multi coloured neon. You survey the menu and, not wishing to dine on egg and chips, you elect to have something from the Turkish section of the menu. A simple chicken shish is just about right. When it comes it is beautifully presented on a bed of rice and accompanied by some pan fried peppers and onion. The kebab itself amounts to about four chicken breasts threaded onto a skewer and is big enough to feed the average family of four. Tastes pretty damn good too, you think.
Things are looking up.
You settle up and find you’ve fed the four of you plus had a couple of beers and cokes for the kids all for under forty quid.
Things are definitely looking up.
You amble into the night, past the numerous other door managers of the ensuing gastro-gauntlet. They all want you to eat in their establishment. Politely at first, you make your excuses about already having eaten, put on your best tweedle dum pose and flap your hand horizontally about your throat.
By the time you’ve gone through this a dozen times, the whole charade is wearing a bit thin and politeness is coming at a premium. To keep it safe you head away from the prom to a street lined with permanently open shops and a seemingly endless array of dance pubs. The try to lure you in with the usual array of cocktails, happy hours and two for one deals. The shops offer the usual holiday wares and the finest, ‘genuine’ designer clothes. Worst of all, they too have door managers. To say the patter is worse than the Barras on a late December Saturday is an understatement.
Genuine designer fakes, 3 for a tenner, cheaper than Asda. The difference between your average barrow boy and this lot is that the barrow boy has at least veered into the path of education. This becomes apparent when the shopkeeper is faced with someone who actually knows what he wants and how little he is prepared to part with for it.
What you are looking at may look like the genuine article Chuck Taylor Converse baseball boot but you know well enough that they are a careful fake. You remark to the dweeb that what you actually have on your feet right now is in fact the real deal, bought from the Converse website and that he is talking through a hole in his bunnet.
Incredulous, he pursues his prey and tries to flog as much of his wares as he can. He knows that even if he sells you one pair at a quarter of the marked price, if there is such a thing, that he has made a profit. He also knows that, unless he is facing a complete f4ckwit, there’s no way on earth he’s going to get his asking price. The fun is in the chase and in trying to shift as much crap onto the unsuspecting customer as possible.
So on it goes.
“Normally these forty pounds” he says
“Forty?” you say, “ten more like. These are only 35 quid at home for the real thing”.
“Thirty” he says “it’s the end of the season I have to sell my stock”
“You’re takin’ the piss” you say “I’ll give you ten”
“For you my friend I give you very good price. I give you my very best price of twenty five” is his retort. He’s getting rattled but he sticks to his course, pulling out more and more different colours and styles.
“Ten?” you respond
“Best price I give you two pairs for forty five”
“I don’t want two pairs. I want one pair and I’ll give you ten pounds. It’s what they’re worth plus that’s what the guy up the road is selling them for”
It’s at this stage that the tone changes slightly.
“They’re not the same! Poor quality! Different to this! If they are same, I give you these free!”
This is shaky ground because he thinks you’re bluffing but he’s rattled and desperate for a sale. You know you’re not bluffing and tell him ten is your final and only offer.
He starts to get a bit abusive so you turn and start to walk out. The floor is strewn with fake converse boots of every colour in the rainbow and the torrents of abuse are equally colourful. You wander 20 metres up the road in a fury at being insulted and buy two pairs for twenty quid.
Deal.
Although you have the moral victory under your belt, you daren’t risk walking back the way you came swinging your purchases by your side, so you amble back to your room just as the footy has finished; just in time for the bar to kick into life. It’s the f4ckin Birdy Song again, swiftly followed by all the party hits from the 80s. By the time you’ve heard half an hour’s worth of Michael Jackson, Prince, Kool & the Gang and Lipps Inc, you’re borderline psychotic. You’re wishing you’d held off on the shopping for an hour.
Eventually, sleep takes over and you enter into the Phil Connors phase of the holiday.
Sleep, Breakfast, Sun, Sand, Book, Pool, Entertainments Rep, Turkish Bath Rep, Footy, Kebab, Barter, Insults, Bar, “Let me take you to, Funky Town”. Zzzzz.
For the sake of your sanity, you’ve been wise enough to pack an impressive selection of tartan noir and enough gigs of iPod to keep you chilled for the duration.
Getting towards the end of the week and you’re reminded that you’re the only person this side of Christendom who hasn’t signed up for the 75 lira extravaganza that is the Turkish night.
“Turkish barbecue, meze, eat as much as you like, free belly dancer, free break dancer, free Turkish folk dance group”
The fact that you’ve dodged the commitment every time you’ve been asked would normally be seen as a signal but these guys are nothing if not relentless so you cave in and part with your 75 lira.
You think to yourself, fair do. It costs about 80 lira for a meal out so it’s not that bad a deal.
What you have failed to account for is that you still have to pay for all your drinks and, since it’s the last week of the season, the hotel is almost empty and the atmosphere is like a tramp’s funeral.
You head for the food and load up on aubergine, peppers and cucumber meze and, not wishing to look greedy, take one piece of chicken and a meatball topped with a spoon of rice.
Tastes ok. You finish your beer and head for seconds.
You get there to find that all that remains is the meze. What the f4ck happened to eat as much as you like.
The chef, having read the script, realises that the turnout is going to be low. He doesn’t want to shuffle loads of barbecued meat into the cat and has no comprehension of the concept ‘eating for Scotland’. Nor does he have any idea of the difference between ‘eat as much as you like’ and ‘being ripped off’.
Oh well, I’ll make sure and grab four desserts you think.
Hah.
Don’t be a complete bam.
Who said anything about desert.
So you settle back with another beer and refuse to participate with the belly dancing charade. She’s not an old boiler, you think to yourself, doesn’t have a face that looks like it’s been on the receiving end of an Andy Roddick serve, at least that’s something to be thankful for. At least she is actually dancing and hasn’t just slapped her arse and flashed off the ripples.
Then it comes, after the humiliation of some poor unsuspecting blokes, and the final dance; the sting. Traditional to the belly dance is the fact that you are expected, nay, obliged, along with all the other punters, to tuck some bills into the dancer’s bra. It’s at this stage that you’re probably wishing you could stick a pelican’s bill up her arse (and the entertainment reps arse too).
All you have is a twenty so that gets slipped inside a sequinned strap and off she goes.
You start to do a quick math and figure she nets about 200 quid. Not bad for a tip.
Then the breakdancers hit the stage. You check your wallet and realise that all you have left are more twenties.
F4ck that for a game of tiddlywinks you think and drag the family back to your room.
75 Lira for two helpings of meze, four mini-burgers and four dried up chicken breasts.
32 lira for a couple of rounds of drinks
20 lira in tips
At least you have the satisfaction of having bailed out before you were another 40 lira shy.
Then Funky Town starts up again.
Soon, Saturday comes, and you’re thinking ah well, it’s the weekend, let’s head for the beach, then you see it.
The very thing you’ve been fearing!
The evil of the satellite!
Worse than the fact that, thanks to Google, you can look down upon anywhere in the world.
There it is in big f4ckin’ white letters on the big f4ckin' black board
Live tonight X Factor Finalists Show
Live on Sunday X Factor Evictions Show
Aw surely the f4ck not.
I’m sure, like me you go on holiday to get away from all that crap.
No?
Really?
Now there’s the problem.
Supply and demand.
What the public will bear.
You look around the pool and it all drops into place.
It’s reality TV central. It’s all Courtneys and Kenzies. Chantelles and Jades.
Tattoos and piercings. Beer bellies and butt cracks.
And the parents aren’t much better.
So you trundle through it enjoying the good bits, but knowing at the end of it all, you will remain unfulfilled.
Then, in the shape of the return flight, the sucker punch comes weighing in like a wrecking ball on speed (talking of which, by the time you get to the airport at 2.30 am, amphetamines are what you’re gonna need).
You get on your flight home, armed with your duty free stash, gratified that you didn’t take up your tour reps offer of prebooked seats at a tenner a throw since you appear to be sitting next to all your family constituents. You think about it for a while then come to the conclusion that it’s an even bigger money spinner than the belly dancers bra.
Boeing 757, roughly 300 seats, £10 per person for a pre booked seat, three grand for doing absolutely sweet f4ck all.
Tommy Cook, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Four hours later, minus two hours time difference and and hour for daylight saving, you touch down in Glasgow airport to find the carpark attendant has gone awol and all that is manning his station is a half empty bottle of Irn Bru.
Ten minutes later, he returns and you realise you have been better taking your chances and talking to the bottle of Irn Bru.
Eventually, you wind your way back onto the M8 at 5am and drive through 20 miles of roadworks. Eager to avoid another three points on your driving licence, you crawl along at 40 mph, by the time you hit the 70 zone and as the white lines hypnotically shoot past you, you’re biting the heel of your hand, the inside of your cheek, your fingernails and anything else that’s available in a vigorous attempt to keep the melatonin in check. Daylight comes with a merciful blast and you finally get home after being awake for 26 hours.
You head off to bed, a frazzled mess and realise that while you’ve been away, a clan of rodents have decided to use your airing cupboard as a squat, the plants have all died and the bathroom is full of flies, presumably having hatched out of one of the aforementioned rodents that has since left this life.
You wonder why you bothered and resolve to go camping on the West Coast of Scotland next year.
As a post script, a week later you go shopping in town, just to see what it’s like to find something you want and hand over the cash without any aggro. You hear so many different accents. See so many exotic looking faces.
You think of why you go abroad in the first place, the sampling of a different culture, the different tastes and smells.
On the way home you pick up a Doner kebab and again, you wonder why you bother.
All of this is of course is partly exaggerated, partly fictional and partly said for effect but, as they say, no smoke without fire. After 5 separate holidays in Turkey, much as I love the place, I fear the writing may be on the wall.
And so the music...
Steve Earle – Live – three different gigs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5imi1o
http://www.sendspace.com/file/k9bjtq
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vlfj0e
Hothouse Flowers – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1p7laz
Josh Ritter – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u2bxzk
Jakob Dylan – Live at the Newport Folk Festival
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2hlai7
Emma Pollock – Live Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bqpm4n
Natalie Merchant Cumberland County 1999
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ewxhzu
Common Ground Opening Concert – re upped – old file seems to have died
http://www.sendspace.com/file/f6qoms
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gb4e3n
British Sea Power – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iy98pm
Pearl Jam – Bridge School 2006 – re upped – old file seems to have died
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qrl0mm
Counting Crows – Atlantic City
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h4f9jg
AA Bondy – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gy6r22
Warren Zevon – Captol Passiac NJ
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cf113h
Wilco – Vicar Street Dublin - correct link in comments
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cf113h
Steve Forbert
http://www.sendspace.com/file/62cg7u
Enjoy
Hooli
Back in days of yore, the 70s in my case, this was the time of year when, in order to give the teachers time sharpen their swords and fettle their broomsticks, all the schoolkids got two weeks off to go tattie howkin’ at the local farm. For your part in this gruelling spectacle, the local squire would pay you 20p a week with the added bonus of a boot up the arse on a Friday – if you were lucky.
Ah how the times have changed.
For a start, potatoes are machine harvested and child labour is most definitely frowned upon. I only have to mention household chores to be reminded of the ugly truths about slave labour, child cruelty and the minimum wage.
With our west coast adventure of this summer now consigned to the memory bank and with the kids refusing to let up about being trailed to the arse end of nowhere for a fortnight, this year, as with every other year in recent times, we dipped our collective big toe into the festering pool that is the package holiday.
I’m not quite sure how it all came to this as both my wife and I are quite independent travellers but the package holiday seems to be the thing that fulfils the obligation of giving everyone in the family something in return. It’s a bit like going to McDonalds in that none of use would put it even at the lower end of the favourites spectrum but you know what you’re getting and you know that you’re still going to be hungry afterwards.
Yes the great British package holiday, Brits abroad, scenario. It’s little wonder they tried to make a soap opera out of it.
If you’re dreaming the sort of dreams that involve scantily clad nymphs and crates of Carlsberg or maybe if you’re just plain lucky, you pay a couple of grand, get on a flight at your local airport and three hours later you land somewhere a good fifteen degrees warmer where you transfer to a spacious modern hotel set amid the backdrop of an idyllic palm fringed beach. Two weeks of sun, sea and sand later you reverse the procedure and you’re back in the pissing rain knee deep in fallen leaves.
Fully relaxed and brimming with fond memories.
If you are at the opposite end of the scale, you’ve probably been on Watchdog more times than Nicky Campbell and Lynn Faulds Wood put together and are currently licking your wounds over the loss of fifteen grand to a time share shark.
Somewhere in between is the reality.
You hand over your cash for two weeks in the sun that is preceded by a 120 mile trip to the nearest available airport during which, when you’re less than five miles from the car park, you endure a two hour siesta on the M8 as four lanes funnel in to one on the way to Ibrox. The car park and check in safely negotiated, you then have to wait around for four hours as the flight time has been changed by the tour operator and there is an added delay of two hours because your plane is still in Gatwick getting the upholstery cleaned because someone pissed their pants on the previous flight.
Finally you get on your flight and squeeze into your seat which offers as much space and functionality as a confessional booth. There is however a drunken hen night on board which, when scratched against a drunken stag night, produces just the right kind of spark designed to piss the cabin crew and the other passengers off.
Praise be to the lord for the iPod.
Fortunately, the plane takes off and lands safely, you don’t get deep vein thrombosis and the Hail Mary’s aren’t being freely administered by the cabin crew.
The equivalent of a Black Mariah pulls up to escort the warring hen and stag factions to their appropriate accommodations courtesy of the state. Sea view not included.
If you’re a bit adventurous, you’ll land, not in Majorca or Ibiza, but in Turkey whereupon you will have to hand over one crisp Bank of England tenner per person for the priviledge of a franked stamp on your passport. It does also prevent you, law breaking aside, from facing a Midnight Express type experience at the start of your holiday.
Once you get out of the airport, you get the good old transfer bus. With the night time temperature at 25°C, you’d have thought the very least the tour operator would have done was made sure the bus had air conditioning. No so. Never mind though, the driver will always be on hand to pass out plastic cups of chilled water, except when he’s driving that is, which is all the way to the resort where, if you’re very, very lucky, your hotel will be the second last stop and not the very last.
When you get to your room you then have one of those conscience shattering moments where the bell boy stands sheepishly at the door, waiting. All you have is a twenty quid note, some coppers and a wad of traveller’s cheques.
Eventually you find a pound coin that has slipped through the hole in your pocket, down your trouser leg and into your shoe.
His look of distaste says it all but that’s what he gets for not sticking in at school and turning into a moochin little bastart.
Eventually your head hits the pillow at 3am local time (that’s 5am your time).
The bar is blaring some shite that makes the birdy song sound like Beethoven’s fifth and a gaggle of drunken Geordies pour in off the street.
Next morning, you miss it. Completely! You surface at 12.30 just in time to go to the reps welcome meeting where she blabs on some irrelevant shite about boat trips here and beach parties there, all designed to get you to shed all that extra cash you brought with you.
Then there’s the reps’ party night. This is the best night out you’ll ever have! Free admission to some anonymous black and chrome UV drenched club, like a throwback from the 80s, playing drum ‘n’ bass so loud it makes your ears bleed plus, you get a free drink in every pub you can manage after that.
All for 50 Lira per person.
All just a good and legitimate excuse for the reps to get together, get totally shit faced, then pair off and shag one another without feeling guilty about it.
Ah and of course we mustn’t forget the Turkish night. (You can substitute Greek, Spanish, Portuguese or whatever other country you’re in. They all do it and the result is always the same).
...“if you don’t do anything else, there’s one thing you must do while you’re in Turkey, you must go to the Turkish night here in the hotel” she says, “25 Lira a head, eat as much as you like, barbecued kebabs, all the traditional mezes, free belly dancer, break dancing group and traditional Turkish folk dance group”
Then you get all the pep talk about strict baggage allowance and prebooked seats which you’ve heard more often than that song from Four Weddings and a Funeral, so you consign all this to the refuse tip at the rear end of your mind along with all the other shite you’ve heard throughout the year and off you go.
Now duly acclimatised to your surroundings and having found the less than amply stocked mini market, you check out the hotel pool where you are set upon by the hotel activities and entertainments rep.
This will doubtless be someone with boundless energy and a vocal delivery that suggests he was cross pollinated with a hyena then vaccinated with the old gramophone needle tipped with some of Ben Elton’s DNA – and not the funny stuff either.
“Monday night live footy, Bolton versus Coventry. Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night, all the Euro action with Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea; Friday night live footy blah blah.
So in an attempt to escape the dreaded Champions league, you make sure you eat out every night.
Your quest for some gastronomic delight takes you to the beach front.
A nice romantic stroll along the prom; just the ticket for getting you ready for dinner.
You barely manage to get a hundred yards from the hotel before you’re accosted by some dude bearing a wadge of leaflets declaring 20% off or a free bottle of wine if you eat at such and such a restaurant.
If you haven’t experienced this, you’ll have to trust me on this one, but it’s no lie, all the restaurants are the same, they all offer the same discounts and the wine is pish no matter whether it’s free or costs forty lira a bottle.
Take my advice, go to the first place you come to and stick to it. That way you’ll save yourself being hassled more than once.
So you get yourself set up nicely at a table overlooking the lapping waters as they reflect a crescent moon and a splash of multi coloured neon. You survey the menu and, not wishing to dine on egg and chips, you elect to have something from the Turkish section of the menu. A simple chicken shish is just about right. When it comes it is beautifully presented on a bed of rice and accompanied by some pan fried peppers and onion. The kebab itself amounts to about four chicken breasts threaded onto a skewer and is big enough to feed the average family of four. Tastes pretty damn good too, you think.
Things are looking up.
You settle up and find you’ve fed the four of you plus had a couple of beers and cokes for the kids all for under forty quid.
Things are definitely looking up.
You amble into the night, past the numerous other door managers of the ensuing gastro-gauntlet. They all want you to eat in their establishment. Politely at first, you make your excuses about already having eaten, put on your best tweedle dum pose and flap your hand horizontally about your throat.
By the time you’ve gone through this a dozen times, the whole charade is wearing a bit thin and politeness is coming at a premium. To keep it safe you head away from the prom to a street lined with permanently open shops and a seemingly endless array of dance pubs. The try to lure you in with the usual array of cocktails, happy hours and two for one deals. The shops offer the usual holiday wares and the finest, ‘genuine’ designer clothes. Worst of all, they too have door managers. To say the patter is worse than the Barras on a late December Saturday is an understatement.
Genuine designer fakes, 3 for a tenner, cheaper than Asda. The difference between your average barrow boy and this lot is that the barrow boy has at least veered into the path of education. This becomes apparent when the shopkeeper is faced with someone who actually knows what he wants and how little he is prepared to part with for it.
What you are looking at may look like the genuine article Chuck Taylor Converse baseball boot but you know well enough that they are a careful fake. You remark to the dweeb that what you actually have on your feet right now is in fact the real deal, bought from the Converse website and that he is talking through a hole in his bunnet.
Incredulous, he pursues his prey and tries to flog as much of his wares as he can. He knows that even if he sells you one pair at a quarter of the marked price, if there is such a thing, that he has made a profit. He also knows that, unless he is facing a complete f4ckwit, there’s no way on earth he’s going to get his asking price. The fun is in the chase and in trying to shift as much crap onto the unsuspecting customer as possible.
So on it goes.
“Normally these forty pounds” he says
“Forty?” you say, “ten more like. These are only 35 quid at home for the real thing”.
“Thirty” he says “it’s the end of the season I have to sell my stock”
“You’re takin’ the piss” you say “I’ll give you ten”
“For you my friend I give you very good price. I give you my very best price of twenty five” is his retort. He’s getting rattled but he sticks to his course, pulling out more and more different colours and styles.
“Ten?” you respond
“Best price I give you two pairs for forty five”
“I don’t want two pairs. I want one pair and I’ll give you ten pounds. It’s what they’re worth plus that’s what the guy up the road is selling them for”
It’s at this stage that the tone changes slightly.
“They’re not the same! Poor quality! Different to this! If they are same, I give you these free!”
This is shaky ground because he thinks you’re bluffing but he’s rattled and desperate for a sale. You know you’re not bluffing and tell him ten is your final and only offer.
He starts to get a bit abusive so you turn and start to walk out. The floor is strewn with fake converse boots of every colour in the rainbow and the torrents of abuse are equally colourful. You wander 20 metres up the road in a fury at being insulted and buy two pairs for twenty quid.
Deal.
Although you have the moral victory under your belt, you daren’t risk walking back the way you came swinging your purchases by your side, so you amble back to your room just as the footy has finished; just in time for the bar to kick into life. It’s the f4ckin Birdy Song again, swiftly followed by all the party hits from the 80s. By the time you’ve heard half an hour’s worth of Michael Jackson, Prince, Kool & the Gang and Lipps Inc, you’re borderline psychotic. You’re wishing you’d held off on the shopping for an hour.
Eventually, sleep takes over and you enter into the Phil Connors phase of the holiday.
Sleep, Breakfast, Sun, Sand, Book, Pool, Entertainments Rep, Turkish Bath Rep, Footy, Kebab, Barter, Insults, Bar, “Let me take you to, Funky Town”. Zzzzz.
For the sake of your sanity, you’ve been wise enough to pack an impressive selection of tartan noir and enough gigs of iPod to keep you chilled for the duration.
Getting towards the end of the week and you’re reminded that you’re the only person this side of Christendom who hasn’t signed up for the 75 lira extravaganza that is the Turkish night.
“Turkish barbecue, meze, eat as much as you like, free belly dancer, free break dancer, free Turkish folk dance group”
The fact that you’ve dodged the commitment every time you’ve been asked would normally be seen as a signal but these guys are nothing if not relentless so you cave in and part with your 75 lira.
You think to yourself, fair do. It costs about 80 lira for a meal out so it’s not that bad a deal.
What you have failed to account for is that you still have to pay for all your drinks and, since it’s the last week of the season, the hotel is almost empty and the atmosphere is like a tramp’s funeral.
You head for the food and load up on aubergine, peppers and cucumber meze and, not wishing to look greedy, take one piece of chicken and a meatball topped with a spoon of rice.
Tastes ok. You finish your beer and head for seconds.
You get there to find that all that remains is the meze. What the f4ck happened to eat as much as you like.
The chef, having read the script, realises that the turnout is going to be low. He doesn’t want to shuffle loads of barbecued meat into the cat and has no comprehension of the concept ‘eating for Scotland’. Nor does he have any idea of the difference between ‘eat as much as you like’ and ‘being ripped off’.
Oh well, I’ll make sure and grab four desserts you think.
Hah.
Don’t be a complete bam.
Who said anything about desert.
So you settle back with another beer and refuse to participate with the belly dancing charade. She’s not an old boiler, you think to yourself, doesn’t have a face that looks like it’s been on the receiving end of an Andy Roddick serve, at least that’s something to be thankful for. At least she is actually dancing and hasn’t just slapped her arse and flashed off the ripples.
Then it comes, after the humiliation of some poor unsuspecting blokes, and the final dance; the sting. Traditional to the belly dance is the fact that you are expected, nay, obliged, along with all the other punters, to tuck some bills into the dancer’s bra. It’s at this stage that you’re probably wishing you could stick a pelican’s bill up her arse (and the entertainment reps arse too).
All you have is a twenty so that gets slipped inside a sequinned strap and off she goes.
You start to do a quick math and figure she nets about 200 quid. Not bad for a tip.
Then the breakdancers hit the stage. You check your wallet and realise that all you have left are more twenties.
F4ck that for a game of tiddlywinks you think and drag the family back to your room.
75 Lira for two helpings of meze, four mini-burgers and four dried up chicken breasts.
32 lira for a couple of rounds of drinks
20 lira in tips
At least you have the satisfaction of having bailed out before you were another 40 lira shy.
Then Funky Town starts up again.
Soon, Saturday comes, and you’re thinking ah well, it’s the weekend, let’s head for the beach, then you see it.
The very thing you’ve been fearing!
The evil of the satellite!
Worse than the fact that, thanks to Google, you can look down upon anywhere in the world.
There it is in big f4ckin’ white letters on the big f4ckin' black board
Live tonight X Factor Finalists Show
Live on Sunday X Factor Evictions Show
Aw surely the f4ck not.
I’m sure, like me you go on holiday to get away from all that crap.
No?
Really?
Now there’s the problem.
Supply and demand.
What the public will bear.
You look around the pool and it all drops into place.
It’s reality TV central. It’s all Courtneys and Kenzies. Chantelles and Jades.
Tattoos and piercings. Beer bellies and butt cracks.
And the parents aren’t much better.
So you trundle through it enjoying the good bits, but knowing at the end of it all, you will remain unfulfilled.
Then, in the shape of the return flight, the sucker punch comes weighing in like a wrecking ball on speed (talking of which, by the time you get to the airport at 2.30 am, amphetamines are what you’re gonna need).
You get on your flight home, armed with your duty free stash, gratified that you didn’t take up your tour reps offer of prebooked seats at a tenner a throw since you appear to be sitting next to all your family constituents. You think about it for a while then come to the conclusion that it’s an even bigger money spinner than the belly dancers bra.
Boeing 757, roughly 300 seats, £10 per person for a pre booked seat, three grand for doing absolutely sweet f4ck all.
Tommy Cook, you should be ashamed of yourself.
Four hours later, minus two hours time difference and and hour for daylight saving, you touch down in Glasgow airport to find the carpark attendant has gone awol and all that is manning his station is a half empty bottle of Irn Bru.
Ten minutes later, he returns and you realise you have been better taking your chances and talking to the bottle of Irn Bru.
Eventually, you wind your way back onto the M8 at 5am and drive through 20 miles of roadworks. Eager to avoid another three points on your driving licence, you crawl along at 40 mph, by the time you hit the 70 zone and as the white lines hypnotically shoot past you, you’re biting the heel of your hand, the inside of your cheek, your fingernails and anything else that’s available in a vigorous attempt to keep the melatonin in check. Daylight comes with a merciful blast and you finally get home after being awake for 26 hours.
You head off to bed, a frazzled mess and realise that while you’ve been away, a clan of rodents have decided to use your airing cupboard as a squat, the plants have all died and the bathroom is full of flies, presumably having hatched out of one of the aforementioned rodents that has since left this life.
You wonder why you bothered and resolve to go camping on the West Coast of Scotland next year.
As a post script, a week later you go shopping in town, just to see what it’s like to find something you want and hand over the cash without any aggro. You hear so many different accents. See so many exotic looking faces.
You think of why you go abroad in the first place, the sampling of a different culture, the different tastes and smells.
On the way home you pick up a Doner kebab and again, you wonder why you bother.
All of this is of course is partly exaggerated, partly fictional and partly said for effect but, as they say, no smoke without fire. After 5 separate holidays in Turkey, much as I love the place, I fear the writing may be on the wall.
And so the music...
Steve Earle – Live – three different gigs
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5imi1o
http://www.sendspace.com/file/k9bjtq
http://www.sendspace.com/file/vlfj0e
Hothouse Flowers – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/1p7laz
Josh Ritter – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u2bxzk
Jakob Dylan – Live at the Newport Folk Festival
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2hlai7
Emma Pollock – Live Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bqpm4n
Natalie Merchant Cumberland County 1999
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ewxhzu
Common Ground Opening Concert – re upped – old file seems to have died
http://www.sendspace.com/file/f6qoms
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gb4e3n
British Sea Power – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iy98pm
Pearl Jam – Bridge School 2006 – re upped – old file seems to have died
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qrl0mm
Counting Crows – Atlantic City
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h4f9jg
AA Bondy – Live
http://www.sendspace.com/file/gy6r22
Warren Zevon – Captol Passiac NJ
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cf113h
Wilco – Vicar Street Dublin - correct link in comments
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cf113h
Steve Forbert
http://www.sendspace.com/file/62cg7u
Enjoy
Hooli
Sunday, 4 October 2009
...I can heal the sick and I can mend the lame, blind can see again it's all the same...
So the past week and a bit has seen my youngest daughter sent home from school with conspicuous complaints of dizziness, nausea and a full scale body rash; my wife sent home from work with complaints of dizziness, nausea and severe headache; and the teenager kept off school with complaints of nausea, jelly legs and severe headache.
God, I’m feeling insanely healthy right now.
Must be the snake oil.
Either that or it’s the fact that, while my wife travels via public transport looking at the sweaty oxter of the collective germ riddled scum sucker, to arrive at work where she has then to teach the same scummy beings, and the kids spend their entire day in close confines with a veritable menagerie of disease and pestilence that is their class mates; I travel by bike to a factory where germs dare not show their face, such are the evils that lie within.
All of this of course makes me a complete snob and totally smug about not being unwell. God forbid that it should happen because when I get sick it’s like I’ve been harpooned with a spear dabbed with Yellow Fever, Scarlet Fever, Dengue Fever, Cholera, Diptheria and Tourettes all rolled into one. At least that’s what I’m told.
In all seriousness, their collective ailments have of course, brought the inevitable third degree from the medical professionals and their sycophantic impostors– "if you have flu like symptoms you can’t come back to work"; "if you have any symptoms that involve sickness or sore throat you must phone NHS24"; "if you are unwell you must seek medical guidance before blah blah blah".
Everybody has had, or knows someone who has had that; everyone knows what it is that ails you; every single one of them knows exactly what the remedy is; and every person nowadays afflicted has to have some sort of classifiable disease or condition.
Parents no longer see there kids as having been afflicted by sitting too close to snotty Jimmy at school, the kid has to have something-itis or whatsit flu. They can’t just have a dose of the shits. No, they have to have a severe allergic reaction – probably down to eating a couple of kilos of Haribo jelly mix or a trough full of Golden Wonder Cheesy Wotsits.
The amount of kids who have allergies, or rather "intolerances", is alarming to say the least. Lactose intolerant. Gluten intolerant. Nut intolerance.
The parents are doing this. Pushing their insecurities and stresses upon their darling little offspring.
Their illness is probably more down to the stress of worrying about being intolerant to so many things and wondering where their next meal is going to come from.
I guess it’s all for the common good and maybe the evil pig god is visiting some divine retribution upon me for my scathing comments about swine flu, but why can’t people just get ill these days.
I’m no better than anyone else.
In fact, if my dear lady is to be believed, I am the worst kind of patient and the living embodiment of all that has led to the myth of manflu.
I have to disagree because it takes something pretty severe to keep me out of the office.
Last time was when I met with a self-inflicted bout of food poisoning at the hands of some three-day-old turkey broth.
To be fair to myself, on that occasion, I spent a whole night expelling the foulest smelling liquid I have ever come across, simultaneously from both ends.
It felt like someone had, at the same time, stuck one hand down my throat and the other up my arse, and was trying to turn me inside out from both ends.
Didn’t Roxy Music have a song about that?
Fortunately for the rest of the family, and me, this time, the nausea hasn’t blossomed into a full blown dose of the boak.
I say this because I can t deal with vomit.
I remember when the kids were babies and one of them chucked up a load of semi-digested milk in our upstairs lobby.
No great shakes, until I had to pick what couldn’t be wiped up from between the floorboards with a cocktail stick. Put me off toothpicks for a while I can tell you.
No, I simply can’t deal with puke.
I mean, I can deal with my own if needs must but, when it comes to dealing with someone else’s vomit, I’m a total f4cking loser.
My niece, who is studying medicine and as such, has to do spells in various hospitals, claims that you get used to it to the point where it’s just like making beds or sweeping the floor.
I’ll keep an open mind on that one, as I don’t think any amount of conditioning could get me used to that.
When I really think about it, even my own puke makes me sick, it’s just that, well, I’m already being sick so I can’t really be sure if it’s the fact that I’m sick anyway or if it’s my own sick that’s making me feel sick again in a sort of self perpetuating way, if you know what I mean.
No, thought not.
Any way, all this talk of sickness reminds me of a couple of months back, when a picture of myself and some old friends appeared in the local paper, I was trying to fit together all the names and faces.
It was 1979 for f4ck sake.
I could barely recognise myself let alone anyone else but three of the people in the picture are still among my closest friends. Two of them married each other and the other married another of my closest friends.
Having all been at school together and having hung out together for years, there was the inevitable "who the f4ck’s that standing at the back third from the right" or "who’s the geek in shorts with the haircut like a Gerry helmet?" but together, we managed to make all the pieces fit, ok largely, it was down to the one with the best memory, which wasn’t me, but we got there in the end.
I still remember the occasion although I can’t remember the picture being taken. Some people who should be there are absent, my girlfriend at the time for one, but I do seem to be standing worryingly close to my ex.
This brings me back to puke and one of the reasons she became my ex.
When you’re sixteen or seventeen, cleaning up your girlfriends puke isn’t really on the agenda especially after she’s hosed up a whole bottle of Martini.
Even now the smell of it still reminds me of that night.
I’ve never been great with boats either, well big boats to be precise and, to be even more precise, big boats full of puking passengers.
It’s a popular misconception in our house that I get sea sick. Not so. I get sick at the sight of other people howking their guts up.
One time, on holiday in Kos, we took a boat trip to the neighbouring volcanic island of Nysros. Beautiful morning, wind picking up a bit, waves starting to show little white bits on top. By the time we got out of the harbour the waves were ten feet high and the wind was force eight. Anyway, suffice to say everyone but the crew and about four others were giving it the big Technicolor yawn. Trouble was that, unlike the posh airlines, who dish out waxed paper bags, poor old Georghiou could only muster a roll of Snappies. How I managed to keep the contents of my stomach at a level with my epiglottis, with all those plastic bags of breakfast soup, the wretching sounds and the boat bobbing up down like a hoor’s ersehole, is beyond me.
Still, I have never been seasick – pretty dammed close on a number of occasions but never quite got my membership of diced carrots and tomato skins display team.
On which note, some sea shanties for ya...
Steve Earle & the Dukes – Copperhead Road Alternate Version
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cieba8
British Sea Power – Glasgow ABC1
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9airuo
Echo & The Bunnymen - Glastonbury
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xbeaoj
Richmond Fontaine – Luminaire
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r7ssx3
Teenage Fan Club – Glasgow Academy 2005
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kvow8c
Prefab Sprout – Town & Country Club
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e1mw3k
Elvis Costello – Live in Falkirk
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pu6czc
Pearl Jam – O2 Arena
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zhl6wx
Simple Minds – Aberdeen Capitol
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5jrmlk
Mike Peters – In Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bporn8
Solas – Trumansburg 2001
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dggxlt
Adam Duritz – Shim Sham 2001
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ali75f
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – River Sessions
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pefm9m
Pearl Jam & Neil Young – Bridge School Benefit 2006
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8c7285
The Cure - Unplugged
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ywbc4i
Trashcan Sinatras – On A B Road
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mzbct4
http://www.sendspace.com/file/n0b8ok
The Burns Unit – Glasgow ABC
http://www.sendspace.com/file/shy7ij
Dick Gaughan & Brian McNeill – Live in Germany
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4b5cun
APB – Something To Believe In
http://www.sendspace.com/file/akr4rj
Enjoy
Till next time…
Hooli
God, I’m feeling insanely healthy right now.
Must be the snake oil.
Either that or it’s the fact that, while my wife travels via public transport looking at the sweaty oxter of the collective germ riddled scum sucker, to arrive at work where she has then to teach the same scummy beings, and the kids spend their entire day in close confines with a veritable menagerie of disease and pestilence that is their class mates; I travel by bike to a factory where germs dare not show their face, such are the evils that lie within.
All of this of course makes me a complete snob and totally smug about not being unwell. God forbid that it should happen because when I get sick it’s like I’ve been harpooned with a spear dabbed with Yellow Fever, Scarlet Fever, Dengue Fever, Cholera, Diptheria and Tourettes all rolled into one. At least that’s what I’m told.
In all seriousness, their collective ailments have of course, brought the inevitable third degree from the medical professionals and their sycophantic impostors– "if you have flu like symptoms you can’t come back to work"; "if you have any symptoms that involve sickness or sore throat you must phone NHS24"; "if you are unwell you must seek medical guidance before blah blah blah".
Everybody has had, or knows someone who has had that; everyone knows what it is that ails you; every single one of them knows exactly what the remedy is; and every person nowadays afflicted has to have some sort of classifiable disease or condition.
Parents no longer see there kids as having been afflicted by sitting too close to snotty Jimmy at school, the kid has to have something-itis or whatsit flu. They can’t just have a dose of the shits. No, they have to have a severe allergic reaction – probably down to eating a couple of kilos of Haribo jelly mix or a trough full of Golden Wonder Cheesy Wotsits.
The amount of kids who have allergies, or rather "intolerances", is alarming to say the least. Lactose intolerant. Gluten intolerant. Nut intolerance.
The parents are doing this. Pushing their insecurities and stresses upon their darling little offspring.
Their illness is probably more down to the stress of worrying about being intolerant to so many things and wondering where their next meal is going to come from.
I guess it’s all for the common good and maybe the evil pig god is visiting some divine retribution upon me for my scathing comments about swine flu, but why can’t people just get ill these days.
I’m no better than anyone else.
In fact, if my dear lady is to be believed, I am the worst kind of patient and the living embodiment of all that has led to the myth of manflu.
I have to disagree because it takes something pretty severe to keep me out of the office.
Last time was when I met with a self-inflicted bout of food poisoning at the hands of some three-day-old turkey broth.
To be fair to myself, on that occasion, I spent a whole night expelling the foulest smelling liquid I have ever come across, simultaneously from both ends.
It felt like someone had, at the same time, stuck one hand down my throat and the other up my arse, and was trying to turn me inside out from both ends.
Didn’t Roxy Music have a song about that?
Fortunately for the rest of the family, and me, this time, the nausea hasn’t blossomed into a full blown dose of the boak.
I say this because I can t deal with vomit.
I remember when the kids were babies and one of them chucked up a load of semi-digested milk in our upstairs lobby.
No great shakes, until I had to pick what couldn’t be wiped up from between the floorboards with a cocktail stick. Put me off toothpicks for a while I can tell you.
No, I simply can’t deal with puke.
I mean, I can deal with my own if needs must but, when it comes to dealing with someone else’s vomit, I’m a total f4cking loser.
My niece, who is studying medicine and as such, has to do spells in various hospitals, claims that you get used to it to the point where it’s just like making beds or sweeping the floor.
I’ll keep an open mind on that one, as I don’t think any amount of conditioning could get me used to that.
When I really think about it, even my own puke makes me sick, it’s just that, well, I’m already being sick so I can’t really be sure if it’s the fact that I’m sick anyway or if it’s my own sick that’s making me feel sick again in a sort of self perpetuating way, if you know what I mean.
No, thought not.
Any way, all this talk of sickness reminds me of a couple of months back, when a picture of myself and some old friends appeared in the local paper, I was trying to fit together all the names and faces.
It was 1979 for f4ck sake.
I could barely recognise myself let alone anyone else but three of the people in the picture are still among my closest friends. Two of them married each other and the other married another of my closest friends.
Having all been at school together and having hung out together for years, there was the inevitable "who the f4ck’s that standing at the back third from the right" or "who’s the geek in shorts with the haircut like a Gerry helmet?" but together, we managed to make all the pieces fit, ok largely, it was down to the one with the best memory, which wasn’t me, but we got there in the end.
I still remember the occasion although I can’t remember the picture being taken. Some people who should be there are absent, my girlfriend at the time for one, but I do seem to be standing worryingly close to my ex.
This brings me back to puke and one of the reasons she became my ex.
When you’re sixteen or seventeen, cleaning up your girlfriends puke isn’t really on the agenda especially after she’s hosed up a whole bottle of Martini.
Even now the smell of it still reminds me of that night.
I’ve never been great with boats either, well big boats to be precise and, to be even more precise, big boats full of puking passengers.
It’s a popular misconception in our house that I get sea sick. Not so. I get sick at the sight of other people howking their guts up.
One time, on holiday in Kos, we took a boat trip to the neighbouring volcanic island of Nysros. Beautiful morning, wind picking up a bit, waves starting to show little white bits on top. By the time we got out of the harbour the waves were ten feet high and the wind was force eight. Anyway, suffice to say everyone but the crew and about four others were giving it the big Technicolor yawn. Trouble was that, unlike the posh airlines, who dish out waxed paper bags, poor old Georghiou could only muster a roll of Snappies. How I managed to keep the contents of my stomach at a level with my epiglottis, with all those plastic bags of breakfast soup, the wretching sounds and the boat bobbing up down like a hoor’s ersehole, is beyond me.
Still, I have never been seasick – pretty dammed close on a number of occasions but never quite got my membership of diced carrots and tomato skins display team.
On which note, some sea shanties for ya...
Steve Earle & the Dukes – Copperhead Road Alternate Version
http://www.sendspace.com/file/cieba8
British Sea Power – Glasgow ABC1
http://www.sendspace.com/file/9airuo
Echo & The Bunnymen - Glastonbury
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xbeaoj
Richmond Fontaine – Luminaire
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r7ssx3
Teenage Fan Club – Glasgow Academy 2005
http://www.sendspace.com/file/kvow8c
Prefab Sprout – Town & Country Club
http://www.sendspace.com/file/e1mw3k
Elvis Costello – Live in Falkirk
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pu6czc
Pearl Jam – O2 Arena
http://www.sendspace.com/file/zhl6wx
Simple Minds – Aberdeen Capitol
http://www.sendspace.com/file/5jrmlk
Mike Peters – In Session
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bporn8
Solas – Trumansburg 2001
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dggxlt
Adam Duritz – Shim Sham 2001
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ali75f
Goodbye Mr Mackenzie – River Sessions
http://www.sendspace.com/file/pefm9m
Pearl Jam & Neil Young – Bridge School Benefit 2006
http://www.sendspace.com/file/8c7285
The Cure - Unplugged
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ywbc4i
Trashcan Sinatras – On A B Road
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mzbct4
http://www.sendspace.com/file/n0b8ok
The Burns Unit – Glasgow ABC
http://www.sendspace.com/file/shy7ij
Dick Gaughan & Brian McNeill – Live in Germany
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4b5cun
APB – Something To Believe In
http://www.sendspace.com/file/akr4rj
Enjoy
Till next time…
Hooli
Saturday, 19 September 2009
...I don't like those drugs that keep you thin...
So it’s the 25th London Fashion Week.
All that buzz…
What will be the latest lines on the catwalk?
What can we expect to hit the High Street next year?
What will influence the way we dress over the forthcoming 12 months?
Who will launch the most outrageous pile of crap this side of a pair of steel wool knickers?
Who gives a f4ck?
All the fashionistas will be there, drooling over the latest Costelloe creations or the next slice of Westwood weirdness.
But what does it mean to a scruffy, denim wearing, t-shirty type like me or to my good lady, who has to wear sensible clothes to work.
Lets see…
What about the latest McCartney offerings or the New York offerings of de la Renta?
Do these come in any sizes bigger than a 6. No thought not.
Looking at some of the models, we are in scary territory here. This is not feminine.
How the hell is someone with less meat than a length of barbed wire fence, supposed to make a figure hugging dress look stylish? The whole androgyny of it makes it look like some weird teenage cross dressy type gig.
What we have here is something that is leaner and weighs less than one of my legs! Where this very notion that, to be a catwalk model, one needed to be size zero came from, is beyond me. There’s nothing attractive about it and it must be an absolute bastard getting clothes to fit a toast rack on legs.
I'm not advocating the Fat Slags look here but the female figure generally has the bust sticking out just a teensy bit further than the hip bones (normally).
Yup, these creations are all very well for Keira Knightley and the knotted string brigade but if you’re arse is anything like normal you’d be better off hiding it in one Paul Costelloe’s offerings.
Some of the latest Costelloe creations look like they’ve fallen off of Kokeshi dolls or Samurai warriors. The only thing missing was the top knot or the Kendo Nagasaki wrestling mask to complete the image. Others were so outlandishly shouldered that it would be hard to imagine what shape of being was inside – in the realm of big suits, forget David Byrne or Grace Jones, we are talking Sue Ellen Ewing meets NFL chic. As for the thing with the funny little baseball cap peaks for sleeves, why did he not go the whole hog and have Sydney Op House on one side and the SECC on the other. Some of it is just plain silly. Can you imagine it?
“I say Darling, will you pop down to Harrods and pick me up some smoked elk”
“Of course sweetie, I’ll just have to iron my Costelloe before I go out”
You’d be dead from starvation and the Elk would be extinct.
HOW THE F4CK do you iron something like that.
Me, I’m not naturally talented in the ironing department but I’ll do it if I have to.
Shirts, jeans, T-shirts – fine, but see some of that women’s stuff?
If I was a woman, and I knew that I was going to have to do the ironing, I’m f4cked if I’d be buying something that shape.
I guess though if you can afford a genuine Costelloe you can afford a maid.
Nonetheless, I can’t see there being many couturier designed dresses in Aberdeen next year.
It does make me think though, that buying clothes can be a bit of pain in the arse.
All of my family are fairly average size. Consequently, all the sizes that fit us, generally sell out first.
I went to buy a shirt the other week for a dinner I was going to.
Nothing fancy. Just something new. Just the usual Rocha John Rocha, stripy job, just like all my other shirts (so I'm told).
I prowled around my chosen High Street store and decided on the style I liked best.
I flicked through the crammed rail looking for some clue as to the size. They all either looked tiny or massive. Eventually, I sussed out the deal with the labels – they were hanging down the inside of the sleeve.
Now, will someone please tell me why in the name of suffering f4ck do they do that? Is it some kind of man hating, bitch game or what?
Eventually, I pull up all the tags looking for something that says large or 40”.
Squat! Sweet diddly f4ck all!
After replacing all the fallen shirts on the rack I managed to get hold of an assistant.
“Do you have this in a large” I asked
“No”
“What about this one”
“No”
“This one”
“No”
“Thi…”
“No”
“Do you have anything in large (apart from your vocabulary)”
“Er, No”
“What about a medium”
“No”
“Anything at all that will fit me”
And so it went...
I mean, it’s not as if I’m build like Arnie Schwartzifuckinegger or have three arms or something, I’m just plain old average.
Surely the major High Street Stores can employ a pimply student to study the demographic so that they can get a better understanding of the percentage of different sizes. At least that way they wouldn’t be stuck with twenty XXXL sumo-sized shirts and half a dozen things that look like they’ve met with the boil wash.
And more importantly maybe, just maybe they might get their arses round to ordering enough garments in MEDIUM AND F4CKING LARGE.
And some music??
Why not?
Leonard Cohen – Live in Toronto
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h7fufs
Saw Doctors - Live in Galway
http://www.sendspace.com/file/z9pv7k
Malcolm Ross – Wrong Time Wrong Place
http://www.sendspace.com/file/m6tacu
Lisa Knapp – Wild and Undaunted
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0xqev2
Jonathan Butler – Jonathan Butler
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6qo54m
Jeff Buckley - Shine
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qk8lys
Mull Historical Society – This Is Hope
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r5vmq7
Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks Test Pressing
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ny39ab
Lisa Hannigan – Live in Leeds
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xlkeit
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
http://www.sendspace.com/file/96rw4c
Bap Kennedy - The Big Picture
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h4vgfg
The Silencers – Edinburgh Castle
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0terk9
Fairground Attraction – Live in Japan
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sdkrfp
Warren Zevon – Wanted Dead Or Alive
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iboyta
Alan Rankine – She Loves Me Not
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u5349a
Iggy Pop – TV Eye
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xhereo
Cheers til next time...
Hooli
All that buzz…
What will be the latest lines on the catwalk?
What can we expect to hit the High Street next year?
What will influence the way we dress over the forthcoming 12 months?
Who will launch the most outrageous pile of crap this side of a pair of steel wool knickers?
Who gives a f4ck?
All the fashionistas will be there, drooling over the latest Costelloe creations or the next slice of Westwood weirdness.
But what does it mean to a scruffy, denim wearing, t-shirty type like me or to my good lady, who has to wear sensible clothes to work.
Lets see…
What about the latest McCartney offerings or the New York offerings of de la Renta?
Do these come in any sizes bigger than a 6. No thought not.
Looking at some of the models, we are in scary territory here. This is not feminine.
How the hell is someone with less meat than a length of barbed wire fence, supposed to make a figure hugging dress look stylish? The whole androgyny of it makes it look like some weird teenage cross dressy type gig.
What we have here is something that is leaner and weighs less than one of my legs! Where this very notion that, to be a catwalk model, one needed to be size zero came from, is beyond me. There’s nothing attractive about it and it must be an absolute bastard getting clothes to fit a toast rack on legs.
I'm not advocating the Fat Slags look here but the female figure generally has the bust sticking out just a teensy bit further than the hip bones (normally).
Yup, these creations are all very well for Keira Knightley and the knotted string brigade but if you’re arse is anything like normal you’d be better off hiding it in one Paul Costelloe’s offerings.
Some of the latest Costelloe creations look like they’ve fallen off of Kokeshi dolls or Samurai warriors. The only thing missing was the top knot or the Kendo Nagasaki wrestling mask to complete the image. Others were so outlandishly shouldered that it would be hard to imagine what shape of being was inside – in the realm of big suits, forget David Byrne or Grace Jones, we are talking Sue Ellen Ewing meets NFL chic. As for the thing with the funny little baseball cap peaks for sleeves, why did he not go the whole hog and have Sydney Op House on one side and the SECC on the other. Some of it is just plain silly. Can you imagine it?
“I say Darling, will you pop down to Harrods and pick me up some smoked elk”
“Of course sweetie, I’ll just have to iron my Costelloe before I go out”
You’d be dead from starvation and the Elk would be extinct.
HOW THE F4CK do you iron something like that.
Me, I’m not naturally talented in the ironing department but I’ll do it if I have to.
Shirts, jeans, T-shirts – fine, but see some of that women’s stuff?
If I was a woman, and I knew that I was going to have to do the ironing, I’m f4cked if I’d be buying something that shape.
I guess though if you can afford a genuine Costelloe you can afford a maid.
Nonetheless, I can’t see there being many couturier designed dresses in Aberdeen next year.
It does make me think though, that buying clothes can be a bit of pain in the arse.
All of my family are fairly average size. Consequently, all the sizes that fit us, generally sell out first.
I went to buy a shirt the other week for a dinner I was going to.
Nothing fancy. Just something new. Just the usual Rocha John Rocha, stripy job, just like all my other shirts (so I'm told).
I prowled around my chosen High Street store and decided on the style I liked best.
I flicked through the crammed rail looking for some clue as to the size. They all either looked tiny or massive. Eventually, I sussed out the deal with the labels – they were hanging down the inside of the sleeve.
Now, will someone please tell me why in the name of suffering f4ck do they do that? Is it some kind of man hating, bitch game or what?
Eventually, I pull up all the tags looking for something that says large or 40”.
Squat! Sweet diddly f4ck all!
After replacing all the fallen shirts on the rack I managed to get hold of an assistant.
“Do you have this in a large” I asked
“No”
“What about this one”
“No”
“This one”
“No”
“Thi…”
“No”
“Do you have anything in large (apart from your vocabulary)”
“Er, No”
“What about a medium”
“No”
“Anything at all that will fit me”
And so it went...
I mean, it’s not as if I’m build like Arnie Schwartzifuckinegger or have three arms or something, I’m just plain old average.
Surely the major High Street Stores can employ a pimply student to study the demographic so that they can get a better understanding of the percentage of different sizes. At least that way they wouldn’t be stuck with twenty XXXL sumo-sized shirts and half a dozen things that look like they’ve met with the boil wash.
And more importantly maybe, just maybe they might get their arses round to ordering enough garments in MEDIUM AND F4CKING LARGE.
And some music??
Why not?
Leonard Cohen – Live in Toronto
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h7fufs
Saw Doctors - Live in Galway
http://www.sendspace.com/file/z9pv7k
Malcolm Ross – Wrong Time Wrong Place
http://www.sendspace.com/file/m6tacu
Lisa Knapp – Wild and Undaunted
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0xqev2
Jonathan Butler – Jonathan Butler
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6qo54m
Jeff Buckley - Shine
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qk8lys
Mull Historical Society – This Is Hope
http://www.sendspace.com/file/r5vmq7
Bob Dylan – Blood On The Tracks Test Pressing
http://www.sendspace.com/file/ny39ab
Lisa Hannigan – Live in Leeds
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xlkeit
Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova
http://www.sendspace.com/file/96rw4c
Bap Kennedy - The Big Picture
http://www.sendspace.com/file/h4vgfg
The Silencers – Edinburgh Castle
http://www.sendspace.com/file/0terk9
Fairground Attraction – Live in Japan
http://www.sendspace.com/file/sdkrfp
Warren Zevon – Wanted Dead Or Alive
http://www.sendspace.com/file/iboyta
Alan Rankine – She Loves Me Not
http://www.sendspace.com/file/u5349a
Iggy Pop – TV Eye
http://www.sendspace.com/file/xhereo
Cheers til next time...
Hooli
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