I don’t need knowledge, cos I’ve got fortune and fame

Perhaps it’s a world filled with grande skinny double shot vanilla lattes or a world inspired by technology, but we certainly seem to like everything to be instantaneous these days. Anyone who shops online knows that they choose a store that delivers by next day courier over one that use standard post. Okay, some may argue that there’s an added benefit to not using a service where staff are unlikely to either steal the contents or jump on them like porcelain at a greek wedding, but the fastest route will always win. If you live within the M25 you can even order your book on Amazon before 5 and receive it the same evening.

Yet there’s still a great satisfaction to the wait. I’ve recently treated myself to a nice, shiny-black Sony camera. I could have bought it at any time, but decided to earn it. Just like as a child I’d save up my pocket money by putting it to one side and watching it grow, I set aside certain units of work that were worth varying amounts to reach my goal. At one point I even had one of those thermometer-type thingies you see outside churches at the back of my mind to keep me focusing on the task. And then, one Sunday morning, I arrived at the shop clutching my money and pointing at my chosen toy to the shop assistant.

But in today’s world everything has to come quickly and easily. Turn on the TV and you’ll be greeted by adverts for loans so easily obtained you can apply whilst simultaneously chatting to your spouse and to the operator about the weather in between squash with Mr Jones at number 42 and dinner with the Smythes at number 12. If that sound’s a little bit too wordy, you can change the channel and be greeted with a multitude of ways to fall of rickety ladders or trip over paper-weights at work to get that new conservatory now.

But then it’s not just monetary gain that has to come quickly. If you’ve got a hard luck story or strange hair you can get yourself onto Britain’s got (not so much) Talent, bypassing years of working the clubs and perfecting your skills. You can go on game shows to prove you can beat sports celebrities and avoid years of working your way up through the ranks. Or you can avoid all those screen tests by vomiting outside nightclubs in front of tabloid photographers on a weekly basis and be front page news on Heat until you’re given a chat show on Channel 6.

The contestants on The Apprentice aren’t actually going to be ‘apprentices’. They’re going to go into middle-management with a healthy salary or, if they’re really lucky, be fired and described as ‘zany’ or some other colourful and unusual looking word and end up a celebrity. Sir Alan’s looking to recreate himself, but it’s a far cry from working your way up from being a tailor, then a civil servant just so you can save £100 to buy a van and start your own sales business.

And what, exactly, will all these fast-track wannabes bring to the world? Something as great as the television? The telephone? A toaster which doesn’t just burn toast?

And will they really be proud of their accomplishments, or will they barely hold any value when they’re mopping the floors of their local supermarket six months later?

I’ve just recently found out that one of my neighbours is James Dyson. He first visited the 50-bedroomed 500 acre estate in which he now resides as a child and casually remarked that one day it would be his, something which must have stayed with him as he studied art and then furniture building before starting in engineering. He once remarked that he enjoyed running as a child as he ‘learned determination from it’, and that certainly must have been the case as he worked tirelessly on his inventions. And I daresay as he handed over the £20 million to pay for it, he got a great deal more satisfaction knowing his hard work had been worthwhile than someone who’d just won a recording contract by singing a short ditty to a record producer who got lucky, a sometime actress and sacked newspaper editor on the fast slide to success.

In England’s green, pleasant and noisy land

Nostalgia can be a great thing, particularly when it’s your own. Harking back to a time when a finger of Fudge really was a treat rather than a thing of evil which might bring a visit from the TV diet-doctor police. A time when a bicycle was a passport to freedom and independence instead of a necessary tool to stop the inevitable onset of age.

Children see things very simply. Ask a child to draw a portrait and they’ll concentrate on the necessities: two legs, two arms and a smiley face. Ask a child to draw a house and you’ll get a square box with a triangular roof, four windows and a door. Ask them to draw a countryside scene and you’ll get a couple of hills, a hedgerow, a gate and maybe a tree or two.

Whilst many of these images gain details over the years, for most people that image of the countryside doesn’t change much. Constable added a cart and stream, and Yeats adds a lake or two, but those hills, hedgerows and trees are still there. We all like to think we can climb a hill somewhere and sit in peaceful solitude at the top with a Thermos of weak coffee. English literature is littered with examples, but sadly the real England is a little more polluted. Not with the physical, but something much more audible. So I’ve written a user’s guide.

The first thing you’ll notice when entering the countryside if the constant chatter of birdsong. Whilst this may appeal to Bill Oddie, gifted as he is to spot a warbling chaffinch from a soprano robin in just 2 seconds, to the untrained ear most of this ornithological treat sounds much more like a car alarm. Or rather a carpark full of paranoid cars with one finger constantly hovering on the panic button and another on a klaxon. Or worse still that Nokia ringtone.

Once you’ve got passed the squeaky gate, you’ll notice the rollings hills are awash with man’s woolly friends. Ask someone to describe what sheep ‘do’, and they’ll be pretty much stumped. In this kind of situation I find myself asking ‘what would Sandy Toksvig do as her mime on ‘What’s my line‘?’ and I could only imagine them munching grass. Except, as anyone who regularly spends time in the countryside will tell you, they seem to be constantly taking some kind of class register. Seriously. There’ll be a menacing bleat, not a cute baa, every 4 seconds from alternating corners of the field. This will then set the cows off mooing and poohing and the birds will sing louder to drown them out.

And all this is before humans get involved. Inevitably farmer Giles will be tearing around on a tractor kitted-out with an engine large enough to run an ocean liner. Ramblers, stomping around in steel-soled boots worthy of any Eastern European army, earn their name filling the landscape with meaningless chatter about garden centres and Mrs Jones’ athlete’s foot, and every person over 40 rides a bicycle which hasn’t seen a drop of oil since Mr Beeching did such a good job of modernising the railways.

Get yourself far above sea-level and you’ll find your ears being bombarded with the trappings of life in a small village. Some part of the locale will have a fete complete with a megaphone powerful enough to send messages to the Hubble telescope giving important messages about found children and lost keys, and as dusk settles you’ll be treated to the local bell-ringers practicing some strange off-key off-tempo creation.

The Campaign for the Protection of Rural England is campaigning tirelessly for the protection of “Its tranquillity – from the remotest, highest hilltop to a woodland walk next to a big town”, but how do you protect something that doesn’t really exist? This great village green preservation society, led by Sir Bill of Bryson is littered with gently undulating sentences about open fells to patchwork copses, but the problem is if the locals from the country houses have been out, it’ll more likely to be a patchwork of corpses – pheasants, rabbits and, one can hope, ramblers most probably.

And that’s just the problem. Nostalgia is great, but it’s only great because we don’t pretend things are still the same. My house has one door and two windows on the front, but my image also has an electricity meter and some weeds intruding from nextdoor’s garden. My portrait still has its legs and arms, but I’d spend a long time agonising over the size of the waistline and the cut of the trousers. And that finger of Fudge has a calorie count, an instruction to only consume as part of a balanced diet and a warning for nut allergists.

Maybe it’s time to admit the countryside’s noisy, muddy and full of moo-pooh so we can all start to enjoy it again.

Let’s see how far we’ve come

‘What do people wear to a gig?’. It’s not necessarily a common question, but it’s one that I’ve been hearing a lot lately from an excited Sarah. You see, we were building up to seeing Matchbox Twenty in what was to be Sarah’s first ‘proper’ gig. You know, with a band and all that.

At first it seemed like such a nonsensical question. I mean, people are still people, and people wear clothes. That is unless they’re part of some Northern European holiday club. Or are a female fully-paid-up member  of the ‘people watched by Heat’ club, and they’re on holiday and have an album or novel to publicise.

Then I started to worry.

I have an impressive cv of ‘have-seens’, and would have at one time counted myself as a frequent gig-goer. I mean, I’ve seen Greenday, Pink Floyd, the Foo Fighters, Soundgarden, the Smashing Pumkins, Cliff Richard, Dr Hook… Hang on, I’ve gone a bit off-course there. Where was I? Ah yes, um, Paul Weller, Jools Holland, Neil Young and Pearl Jam.

But that was a little while ago, and what if things are different? Suddenly I had an image of arriving at a gig looking like Dr Greg House and all ‘the kids’ thinking I was in IT or worse… advertising.

Then it dawned on me. I’m old. To quote Friends, ‘So what if I’m 29 and just want a nice cup of coffee and to sit on a comfy chair?’.

So there was some agonising. And then some more agonising. To be honest I can’t remember the last time I wore a T-shirt to do anything other than go cycling or decorate. I’ve never been a fan of denim. That doesn’t leave much of the gig-goer’s wardrobe at my disposal. And eventually a flashback to my teen years became the compromise with a black t-shirt under a black shirt.

And as MB20 walked onstage to the God-like echoes of Jonny Cash I realised something – everyone was 30 or so, and dressed similarly. That’s the thing when you see a band who were around a the height of grunge – their fanbase was also around at the height of grunge. And as the lights went down and the stage lit-up with the image of an astronaut followed by a charismatic Rob Thomas I realised I was amongst 1,000 people all looking slightly uncomfortable in their t-shirt and shirt combos.

Keeping people in the picture

A few evenings of silence. A pause for photos.

Like this one:

I tried to get to ‘The North’, but it was closed

A few days ago I had to head North to Cheshire for a wedding, and it was quite definitely closed.

For a start there’s the great wall of the M6 which, as well as providing a barrier which would put the ancient Chinese into a envious frenzy, provides the perfect deterrent for invading southerners. To get North of Birmingham these days you’d be far better of mounting an elephant-mounted expedition of Hannibal proportions. Every day people queue patiently on the twisting moat of tar that is the M6 in a line worthy of an Alton Towers ride on a blistering August day and never actually get there. Those aren’t cows in the fields, they’re weary travellers hunched over trying to use their bush-tucker skills to drink the moisture from grass.

What’s more if you stop at Knutsford services you may notice that it appears a Saga tour has just come in for a pitstop, but these people were actually in their twenties when they set off North from home 50 years ago. Today they use all their wits to survive on Hobnobs and Ritazza coffee.

If you do, by some miracle get there, Cheshire isn’t so much the home of a grinning feline friend so much as the shiny-toothed gormless footballer these days, framed by the window of a mock-tudor 4×4.

The thing is I can almost see why they have them. It’s purely so they can distance themselves from the driver behind as they sit in a grid-locked road. People in Cheshire don’t have long driveways as a status symbol, it’s just that it’s the only bit of road North of Birmingham where you’d have half a chance of getting into third gear. What’s more, they don’t have large gardens because they hark back to some age of aristocracy, but because they can’t actually travel anywhere so they need something to look at.

And then, aided only by a support helicopter and a team of trusty sherpas, I arrived at Alderley Edge. At school chucking-out time and things got worse. As women off-roaded across pavements and grassed areas, using their National Trust car stickers as a permit to park absolutely anywhere, the little darlings came running out from school. In almost any other urban area, a boy in a black and yellow blazer and coordinating yellow holdall would be beaten by his peers like a misbehaving Gordon Ramsey pancake, but here it’s chic. And everybody looks the same. Like ticky-tac houses.

And as I sat in a 2 mile queue with only a dozen cars in it, I came found myself becoming increasingly frustrated. Southerners have long moved on from mocking northerners for their flat-caps and love of pigeons, but it’s hard to shake off the image of an industrial past when it takes as long to get from London to Manchester as it did by a horse-drawn carriage even when it was held up by Dick Turpin…

A post of mice and men

[approximately 1:43am BST]

S: What was that?
D: *Hmmmfff*… *snore* … *snore* zzzzzz
S: [a little louder] Huh?
D: [after a long intake of breath] Hmmmm? Go… to… slee… *snore*

[The next day, approximately 1:44am BST]

S: What was that?
D: *Hmmmfff*… *snore* … *snore* zzzzzz
s: [Shakes D vigorously] There’s something up there

It’s amazing at times how quickly the human body can bring itself online. I mean, Bill Gates has earnt a handsome penny from machines which take anything up to 5 minutes to go from being a lump of plastic to a state of alert readiness for human input. I mean, that’s not to say God hasn’t earnt a certain amount of kudos and respect or anything. But I guess the amoebas need a bit of a ‘big-up’ if you’re an atheist.

So here I am, at an hour reserved purely for those with a need for a shipping forecast, ready to take on the world. And it appears this is going to be a useful attribute, seeing as how there appears to be some kind of dinosaur running around above my head. Or perhaps a tap-dancing hippopotamus. Yes, twin tap-dancing hippopotamii.

I am of course over-exaggerating the size of the problem. In reality it’s just a small troupe of animals putting on an off-broadway outing of Riverdance in our loft. There’s clearly a whiskered Michael Flatley at work up their, but quite why they’ve chosen to wear clogs and build a set using pneumatic drills has yet to become clear. I’m blaming some thick-rimmed spectacle wearing New Yorker director mous with aspirations to be the next Tarentino.

At 1:44 I am ready to take to the loft with a bat-belt style armoury of a hammer and slipper, but by 1:47 I’m unfolding the sofa bed and sleeping downstairs.

I want to be an animal person, but sadly it’s in pretty much the same was I want to be an astronaut – it’s a nice idea, but unless around 99% of the world’s population all enter some kind of internet-allergy related coma it’s unlikely to get far up my to-do list.

I remember as a child being in awe of my grandad holding a blackbird in his hands trying to help with a broken wing and I’ve had plenty of pets, but sadly I’m better at interacting with them in a culinary rather than the ‘wild’ setting. That’s animals in general, you understand, not some bunny-boiling pet type thing.

That’s not to say I don’t have respect for our animal brothers – I’ve just handed over the deeds to the upstairs of my house to them.

I did put my head into the loft the next day, but I couldn’t help feeling I had become the mouse, poking my head through a small hole checking for foes.

So I need to come to some kind of understanding with our newfound lodgers. I’m a rational man, and I have the advantage of having seen both Stuart Little and it’s sequel. I’m prepared to offer regular cheese portions in exchange for the adoption of some kind of curfew or change from a nocturnal to a daytime existence. I know you’re just trying to ‘work up a stake’ but, you know, ‘best laid plans’ and all that…

So if you happen to be reading my blog during a break from those intensive rehearsals of celtic Riverdancing Milton Mouse, please let me if we have a deal… just wait until after sunrise tonight and we’ll have an understanding, yes?

You wanna be where everybody knows your name

Ah, memories of Ted Danson. I can almost feel myself wondering into that little bar in Boston… Cheers!

I’m old. It’s funny how you only ever feel old when it’s your birthday. Or when you use a yo-yo in public. Or try a skateboard. I mean, here I am sitting with my feet on a coffee table, with a documentary on China on back-lighting the glow of the laptop screen showing these words. All I need is a glass of Baileys (at which point, coincidentally, Sarah offers a glass of wine!).

Actually, I shouldn’t see this as my being old, more my last chance to prove I’m young before reaching one of those milestone birthdays. I fully expect the next 365 days to involve buying lots of itunes tracks from my teens, and at least one attempt at doing some ridiculous sport-type things intended for people half my age inevitably leading to the breaking of minor limbs or appendages.

I already regressed 20 years or so on my birthday by going into Hamleys. I clearly remember Hamleys from my early childhood, and was disappointed to find that everything nowadays is smaller. The tables didn;t tower over me, and I wouldn’t have needed full-on climbing intruction and at least one base-camp stopover to reach the toys placed on higher shelves.

Also, whilst I remember clearly the fire-engine and remote control car I was bought on my last visit, I didn’t remember all the people employed purely to play with the toys. I certainly didn’t remember them trying so hard to look excited by the jumping puppy-toy they have to turn up and play with 9-5 seven days a week. I also don’t remember questioning the Health and Safety implications as I ducked the flying helicopter toys with all the worry of Mr and Mrs Doodlebug after first hearing the expression ‘you’ll be fine so long as the bomb doesn’t your name on it’.

Innocent times, eh? When all your worldly worth was measured in your Ninja Turtle sticker swapsies pile, and you wanted the full array of colours of those little rubber sucker things that pinged up from the floor threatening to blind you in one eye on the way up, and the other as it returned to Earth with all the precision of a Moldovan space mission.

And, just like the middle-management who insist on buying special number plates for their grey saloons, everything had your name on it.

I was in Starbucks the other day, and after ordering my vanilla latte, I was asked for my name. I assumed that this was induction into some kind of Starbucks hall of fame. Some secret club which would see me being given the red cups all year round, and would whisk me straight through airport security at any UK terminal. But no, 2 minutes later received a paper cup with ‘van, l’ on it, and in big crayola-type letters ‘Durry’.

Then something stranger happened – I found myself walking through Bath’s Georgian streets holding my cup in a near-claw-like manner trying to hide my name. Was this through fear of some cup-snatch identity thief who would later be seen on Crimewatch carrying a bag with ‘Swag id’s’ written on it? Was it the worry that somebody may walk passed me saying, ‘ooh, I must try the new Starbucks Durry beverage’? Or was I just a little shy of my own name?

Perhaps I’m not all that old. I mean, I’ve had the same name for 29 years or so now and yet, every now and again, I get a little self-conscious of my name in exactly the same way I did the day I realised nobody else had my name…

‘Tell those Wombles in government…’

After a week of stern news, it was nice to see some more uplifting stories this weekend.

First, there’s the latest Flashmob event to hit Liverpool street. In line with the latest stage of the rickrolling phenomena, 500 people descended on the station and began to sing Rick Astley’s ‘Never gonna give you up’. Brilliant.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/7343833.stm

Then there was a party political broadcast on behalf of the Wimbledon common party, led by Uncle Bulgaria. You know, he can remember the times when British childrens’ tv wasn’t so far behind?

Well, here’s a great Wombles of Central Park done on behalf of PACT, complete with Uncle Bulgaria (aka Bernard Cribbins) asking us to ask ‘wombles in government’ to get their act together!

http://pact.magiclantern.co.uk/BadAssWombles.mov

Brilliant!

Glorified version of a pellet gun*

Another week, another strong news story. Bulletins have been full of footage of the training of the Chinese Olympic running team. They really mean business. They must do – they’ve been travelling around the world running right next to the olympic torch. These guys really take the concept of psyching-out the competition to a new level. They’ve so far been training in London, Paris, San Francisco and Beunos Aires, and I daresay they’ll be going other places too.

It’s an odd concept, but everything has to be protected these days. Whereas people used to drive cars with razor sharp steering wheels and no seatbelts, today you would be cocooned in enough airbags to build your own bouncy castle the second you hit a squirrel.

The strange thing is, surely there’s something wrong when you have to protect the worldwide symbol of peace?

Then in the land of the free this week, Florida made sure everything was safer still by passing a law allowing people to take guns to work.

Up until now, people only had the right to bear arms anywhere they liked right up until the point they arrived at their employer’s car park. Of course, there were guidelines and rules to protect everyone – the weapons had to be kept in a locked glove compartment. As we all now, this is enough to stop all the bad stuff happening. Afterall, JFK would still be here if his shooter had thought, ‘well I’m focussed, but… oh… I left the gun in the glove compartment… now I’m having second thoughts… I think I’ll go home and have a cup to tea’.

As Reuters points out, ‘Publix Supermarkets and Disney World are amongst the employers who now forbid workers to have guns in their cars whilst on the job’. Brilliant. I feel safe. I can now wander the Fantasia exhibition safe in the knowledge that out back there are a hundred cars with guns safely locked away in them. Hey, I feel safe. Almost constitutionally safe.

It’s all down to the American Constitution NRA, which solely ensure we can all sleep safe have to wonder which of the people walking passed us is carrying a concealed weapon. Of course, it’s ok if someone carries a concealed weapon – they’ll have a permit.

Of course, pro-gun groups always say it’s all in the Second Amendment. That takes its cue from the ealier British Bill of Rights which includes a right to bear arms. The only thing is, these days we have cars, we have public transport, we have more stressful lives, we have more colleagues, muggers, wedding toastmasters and Simon Cowell – these are all things which make it more likely that someone will lose their temper. And in Britain we’ve realised this and banned guns.

Still, I know the next time in The States, I’ll feel extra safe knowing that, should I get mugged, there’ll be a full-scale re-enactment of The Somme just to make sure I’m safe.

* A tribute to Sir Eddie of Vedder, Pearl Jam’s ‘Glorious G’ – Google the words if you don’t know.

The seven-point guide to tv property developing

Like a rash of blotchy spots on the bald head of a man allergic to pigeons who, all of a sudden, finds himself with several of the feathered critters on his shiny head, you can’t have helped noticing the bedazzling array of property development shows on TV. From excessively frumpy ‘mummy’s gals’ to ex-Marine housewives-favourites, and every shade of Beeny and camp Scotsmen in between, everyone in TV land wants us to make money from bricks and mortar. So here’s my one-stop guide to get ahead in the world of TV property developing:

1. When being interviewed, always stand awkwardly with your hands away from your body like you have 2 hamsters under your armpits. This will ensure you take up that extra bit of screen space, and create a ‘fly-on-the-wall’ ‘warts and all’ style of filming.
2. When appearing with your partner you must always be at least 50cm away from them at all times – even if holding hands. This is clearly what all money-driven property-types are like.
3. Dress to stereotype. The man must always be wearing an old polo shirt and faded jeans, whilst the woman must have a recently topped-up fake tan, a simple but designer summer dress and pearl necklace – you are made of money and need to show it.
4. Completely ignore the advice of your given expert. Yes, they may have made millions of pounds from this kind of stuff, yes you may have asked for their advice, but remember – you know best. If you think pink walls and green carpets will sell your house, go for it! Remember: if it goes wrong the producers will never show it and no one will ever know.
5. Set yourself a restrictive budget. Nothing ever goes wrong, and that hole in the roof will always make an interesting selling feature. Seriously – engineers are worry-worts – they expect the worst – and builders are really angels who work for free.
6. Remember: Image is everything. Not in terms of the interior – people like the 5 year-old DFS look, so don’t worry if all you have to furnish your ultra-swankey 22nd century bachelor-pad is a faded Laura Ashley flower-print sofa with a small baby-vomit stain on the left arm and a dog-chewed cushion. Just make sure your hair is constantly cut so that you look exactly the same every time the film crew visit over the 12 month project.
7. Finally, and this is the big one, make it seem like money means nothing. After months of arguing with the expert you will be told how much you’ve made, and you need to make it seem like it’s just pocket money. If you were expecting 80k and they say you’ve made 150k, just say ‘that’s nice’, or ‘that’s not too bad’. If they only say 72k, remark that ‘that’s not really very much for 4 months of just sitting on my backside and watching Eastern Europe’s finest bashing bricks together’. Remember the golden rule: you’ve got to make it seem like you’re just gambling thousands on property developing for a laugh – you don’t need the money.

All in all, I think I’ve got most of it covered – though I’m sure I’m missing one or two rules there. One final thing – if you are visited by a male/female duo, just say ‘no’ if they mention trampoline shots or drinks in the hot tub…