I’m afraid it’s terminal

Biscuit-dunking, tea-drinking animal lovers with a charitable nature who thrive on Radio 4, celebrity gossip and sarcastic sitcoms lampooning the middle classes – I’m sure if we’re truly honest, all of us can find at least one likeness in the stereotypical view of ‘Britishness’.

Most of Europe would include ‘an unending obsession with harking back to the war’ into the mix too. And they’d be right too, but for all the wrong reasons. We don’t still drive around with our headlights blacked out unless we’re driving a Ford Escort with a spoiler in Essex. With the possible exception of the more barmy parts of Surrey, we don’t huddle-down of an evening in our Anderson shelters with only a copy of The Daily Mail and half-a-packet of McVitie’s digestives.

It’s that optimistic feeling of Britishness that we’re trying to hold on to. That feeling of unity. Of digging for victory. Of having Corporal Jones running around shouting about how ‘they don’t like it up them’. Edmund Hilary, Winston Churchill, they all had that ‘make the best of things’ motto which sees our SAS survive in the desert for 4 weeks with only 2 sheets of toilet paper and a lemon. The British Bulldog – it’s ugly with no purpose or use, yet it defies natural selection with it’s stiff, if crooked, upper-lip.

And this week, every aspect of British spirit went on holiday. To be fair, it was probably the only thing which did manage to get away through Terminal 5.

A shiny new terminal for the 21st century. This was Buck Rogers meets Deep Space 9 meets the business-class traveller. Well, at least that was idea. What we actually got was Malcolm from Basingstoke trying to check-in passengers armed with only an Amstrad computer, a blunt quill and a 1978 copy of the British Rail Timetable.

40 years ago we’d have had passengers grouping together to pass the luggage onto the planes. Two middle-class gents called Roger and Graham would have designed a make-shift conveyor belt on the back of the Daily Telegraph for a dozen or so lower-class chaps in flat caps to make out of a few pipe-cleaners, a pair of lady’s stockings and a paper clip.

40 years ago staff would have dug a tunnel into the terminal to get around the glitches with the computers that stopped them ‘clocking in’, with men pushing the plane down the runway in asbestos underpants to avoid unsightly staining when the jet engines finally kick-in. And what’s more, the tunnel would have been dug by someone scared of confined spaces, and the guy checking passports would be almost blind. Of course, there’d be a plucky Yank on a motorcycle prancing around, but he’d probably get runover by Flight Commander Jock Stranthorpe-Bigglesorth-Smyde who’d be piloting the plane whilst delivering a passenger’s baby and solving 10 down on The Times cryptic crossword.

The problem is, we’ve become a nation of whiners, although some would say we always were. Yes we’ve always bemoaned the weather, but normally we’d be standing waist-deep in flood water wearing our grandfather’s fishing waders delivering cauliflowers and postage stamps to the elderly whilst we’re doing it. We’d say, ‘bit nippy out’, but more to challenge each other to carry on sunbathing on a deckchair on a snowy Brighton promenade than actually chastising Mother Nature.

Maybe Britishness isn’t completely lost, maybe it’s just a transition or teenage phase.

If Boris becomes Mayor, we’ll have plenty of training before the Olympics get here to turn ourselves back into James Garner and Richard Attenborough and to starch our upper-lips. The only problem is I can’t lose the feeling that, come 2012, we’ll all be standing by the side of the road tutting quietly under our breath and blaming Gordon Brown for the fact that 25% of the runners have been run-over by bendy-busses, 25% are lost because the signs weren’t put up in time or are in Polish, 15% have been injured by tripping over potholes and slipping up on discarded kebabs and bodily fluids left by the previous night’s revellers, whilst the remaining 35% are running naked because their suitcases have been sent to Milan as Terminal 5 still isn’t working quite right…

Bit of a Bombay Shell

I like curry. I like curry a lot.

One of the things about living in a small town, is that the choice of takeaway outlets can be a little limited. I mean, we only have 8 pubs and 3 curry houses to share between a few thousand inhabitants. And as purveyors, and makers, or fine curry, there is one place of choice, and it appears we may use it a little too much:

Sarah [on phone to curry house]:

S: Hi, can I order a takeaway please?
(pause)
S: Yes, two chicken tikka masalas… one pilau rice… one boiled rice… and one plain naan.
(pause)
S: Thirty minutes? Great. My name? Sarah.
(pause)
S: … Yes I’m fine thanks… and you?…

Too much curry? Maybe…

Eggsactly as the Bible tells it

The BBC. The British Broadcasting Company. The world’s largest and, arguably, greatest public broadcaster. Today the BBC put on a fine Easter-based bit of quality programming which was only possible because, as that annoying boy scout-esque ad used to say, because of the unique way the BBC is funded.

Today, for those of you reading on Mars or more likely sometime in the mid-summer, is Easter Monday.

You can tell it’s Easter Monday by the change in surroundings. Only the garden centres are open. There’s wall-to-wall Disney films on television with multi-coloured furry animals, dinosaurs or lovable rogues (or ideally a combination of all three). All of the railways are shut whilst men in orange polish the tracks, or whatever it is they do to railway tracks, forcing everyone trying to do work to travel on the road with the fully-paid up members of the 5mph-middle-lane owners club.

Easter. The day when Jesus said all his people should give each other chocolate eggs. As I’m sure all Theologians would agree the Bible does mention a few other things, but generally it just states again and again pine trees for Christmas, and chocolate eggs for Easter – I’m sure there’s some nice pop-up editions with a nice picture or two.

And the BBC chose to enlighten us all this evening with it’s own telling of the Easter tale. As reliable as the Queen’s Speech’s place in the Christmas Day schedules, or E4 showing at least 4 episode of Friends each day, Eastenders will show something truly terrible on public holidays to make us all feel better.

Today some character called Max died, and rose again from the dead. See what they did there? Okay, so he was buried alive. He tried to call upon the great deity of mobile communications, but alas he was forsaken as the mud washed over him. Then, after a short passing of time he was unearthed and rose from the dead. There were a few moments of coughing as he emerged from unconsciousness, but within seconds he was running around, shouting and talking in that brand of Mockney accent taught to all graduates of Eastenders Comprehensive.

A brilliant idea, but I think they could do more. St George’s day is coming up, and I’d like to see Ian Beale deal a deftly blow to the dragon that terrorises the caff. They’ve missed St Patrick’s day for this year, but I’m sure next year there could be some sort of fracas at the Queen Vic, and Phil Mitchell could banish a threatening group of snakes from the square whilst Peggy screams the obligatory ‘Get out’a my pub’ that happens at least twice-weekly. Obviously they’d branch out in order to deal with as many holidays as possible, and whilst there are many orange women in the cast of ‘Enders (courtesy of the local pay-and-tan), when it comes to marking the Battle of the Boyne (a holiday in Ireland), there may be a shortage of orange men since Frank Butcher left.

So, for all those afflicted and affected by the affectations of the ‘Enders cast, here’s a nice relaxing picture to send you all back to work…

The one in which you get to interfere with a terribly poorly-sounding swan

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. Only the Queen and her immediate family can kill a swan. Until now. It may be the piece I’d most like to see sent to its own oblivion in room 101, but the Berlin Phil have done something rather clever on their website.

Go interfere with Saint-Saens’ The Swan…

http://philharmoniker.web-feedback.de

In the City

Driving around late one evening. It’s dark outside, and Stevie Wonder’s ‘Superstitious’ is playing fairly loudly:

Me: I like this music. It’s like driving through downtown Detroit.

Sarah: Yes. Except you’re in an estate car, and it’s drizzling and you’re in an English market town…

Remember to budget, Darling

As John Cleese repeats with increasing futility in that great classic Clockwise, ‘This is a historic moment’.

People of Britain, rejoice on your sofas – your garden gnomes are safe – there’s only one more weekend of binge-drinking. Only one more week to spend your Sunday mornings picking out the grease-ridden paper that once housed a drunk’s kebab, and only one more Sunday morning spent undoing the work of the drunken windscreen-wiper fairy, who every Friday and Saturday night works his magic lifting them off your windscreen.

The government had a plan. What with all those Tsar’s and working policy groups, it was inevitable one of them was going to slip through the net and actually make it out into the light of day.

And all it took was 14p. Less than a Cadbury’s finger of Fudge, and every binge-drinker across the land will be turned into a tweed-wearing pipe smoker, sitting around at home in a lounge suit discussing the works of Hemingway. As of Monday, the aisles of supermarkets will ring to the sound of people saying, ‘well, I was going to get drunk, but this extra 14p’s killing me’.

His name may make him seem gentle, but Darling has a ruthless streak. Like the slightly battle-scared school teacher, he is saying ‘You will listen. I’m going to keep raising the price of alcohol until you all stop binging and act your age’. I fear it may take a few detentions before the night-bus crew start to listen.

Whilst binge-drinking’s sorted by the weekend, we have to wait until 2010 for all this talk of climate change and global warming to be brought to an end. Yes, the little seals and dolphins will be doing little tricks off England’s coast (which, by that time, will be a basking 40 degree centigrade), squeeking ‘Darling’s saved us’. £950 road tax will bring to an immediate halt the carbon footprint of a nation. Those men in Saville Row suits will be walking into their Porsche dealers going, ‘yes, £50,000 is an excellent price… hang on… £950 road tax?!? – I’m off to buy a pushbike’.

There is a better answer to these tax tweaks – Let’s use our nation’s dark side to our advantage. Britain trades on it’s images of coal miners with sooty faces. Surely we can adapt these with sooty exhaust fumes. Let’s celebrate our our boosiness.

I propose every major town and city has a new ‘British’ theme park. When you arrive in the car park, every other space will have a 4×4 Chelsea tractor parked over the lines, taking up two spaces. You’ll be greeted at the gate by the rudest customer service in all the land. Once inside, you get visit the exhibits by following a great trail of half-eaten kebabs and discarded chewing gum, with friendly members of staff in pastel-coloured tracksuits with alcopop breath. See the crowds flock to the hourly booze fights in the main arena, with men wearing gold bling and women in clothing two sizes too small beginning every fight with, ‘No Keith. He ain’t worth it…’.

And here’s the clever bit. I think we could ask the tourists to pay £30 entry, with a free return visit included in the price. If you include the added income in hotel and hospitality revenue, that should save the rest of us having to pay higher prices at the pumps (petrol and ale) and solve us all getting a detention from the government just because a few members of the class can’t control their alcopop consumption.

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Want to track down a rock God? Put out a call on Woman’s Hour

Live fast, die young. I guess it was something the post-war generations were inevitably going to hit upon. What with the Spitfires and dealing with Jerry and all that.

Rock and roll was full of heroes and heroin. Scruffy hair, scruffy jackets and tight pants. It was almost as if they were living to excess just to shorten the number of years they’d have to spend imprisoned in the trousers their managers made them wear that were three sizes too small. Steve Tyler was technically dead for 8 minutes. Iggy Pop and Keith Richards must have some kind of internal lead-lining. They lived out all the stuff we would be too scared to do. Except climbing a tree in Fiji – Keith, most of us would do that.

The Who are my chosen gurus. They loved their music, but smashed up their tools every day, and you just don’t get that elsewhere in life. You don’t get a nice man from the gas board round to service your boiler, only for him to smash his screwdrivers into a million pieces on the floor in celebration of his work. Christopher Wren didn’t put the final ruler-drawn line to his plans for St Pauls, then set fire to his desk screaming ‘Thank you London, and goodnight!’.

So imagine my dismay when I turn on BBC One and see Adrian Chiles interviewing Roger Daltry on The One Show. Yes I know he’s a pensioner, and yes I know he has a trout farm (or something like that), but I can overlook those things if I stare back at the horizon of history. But suddenly he’s chatting to Dominic Littlewood about loft conversions and my rock-angst rage turns from red to a luke-warm yellow. Then Adrian asks him what modern bands he listens to, and Roger says he actually listens mostly to Radio 4.

Radio 4, people. Not even ‘the light programme’. Suddenly all the fast cars, the girls, the noise, the massive plinth Daltry has earned in my ‘who’s who’ of rock gods, start to f-f-fade away. I’m listening to the ‘Pinball Wizzard’, but now I know he’s informed by Humphries every morning. Instead of ‘Pictures of Lily’, I know he’ll be getting tips from Woman’s Hour. And there’ll be no ‘Substitute’ for a nice Horlicks with Book at bedtime. I bet Jim Morrisson wouldn’t be listening to The Shipping Forecast.

So the Mod generation has mellowed and fizzled out. Less gurus and life-coaches, as elder statesman to be payed due respects. I’m still not gonna start talkin ’bout my G-G-Generation though.

A leap year opposal

It’s one of the great things about living in a little town that every now and again you’re going to come across some of the quirkier characters of life. Yes sir, there’s very little Adidas and Nike tracksuited and booted Waynettas around here.

Add to this witches cauldron of toil and trouble the fact it’s February 29th, and you’re almost guaranteed something noteworthy.

So there I am in one of the little shops and a little old lady, who it transpired was called Mary, was idly chatting with the shop assistant.

Shop Assistant: So, are you going to ask anyone today?
Mary: Oh… yes.. today’s the day. When a girl can oppose to a man.

And so the conversation continued.

The thing was, I thought I’d just misheard. Or else it was a slip of Mary’s tongue. But no. She kept repeating how February the 29th was the day women could oppose to men. Sarah and I were finding it difficult to keep our composure.

Now we all know men and women are different. I believe Men have a Venus, and women are from Mars according to some of the world’s finer literary works. And all over the land today, women are opposing.

I’ll have a Latte latte-er

One of the things we do really well is the Great British ‘spread’. Every weekend between March and September, the country resounds to the sound of crunchy cucumber and cress sandwiches, garnished with ring of ready salted and a side bowl of peanuts.

Our space race may be being run by a dalek-esque thing named after an arm of our car industry which was always on strike. It may only need someone to take away our Navy’s ipods for us to lose our position ruling the waves. And we may be the laughing stock of every sport we have ever taken the time to invent, to the point where the only reason we’re hosting the Olympics is so our nation is mentioned somewhere between the opening carnival to the closing address. But at least everyone will say we did a good spread.

Unless they happen to stop at the Little Happy Cook motorway services.

Here you are presented with one of the great myths of travelling – the idea that you can make a decision and order the food you want. Actually, you can order whatever you like, but you almost certainly won’t get it.

A few weeks ago I passed through the most southerly services on the M5 three times inside a week, and not once did I get what I’d asked for. Not once. I even had a little chat with a stranger in the queue about my chosen beverage. We talked at length (by which I mean for at least 2 minutes) about what a jewel to behold a vanilla latte was. He’d never come across such a thing, and here was I selling the extra 30p syrup on behalf of ‘we-coffee-do-maketh-4-u’ Inc. The woman looked at us throughout, listening to our conversation.

But as I found out upon taking my first mouthful of my not-vanilla, not-latte, actually vaguely-cappuccino drink, she had had approximately the same comprehension of our conversation about coffee as I would listening to a langua-phone recording of a conversation about crop rotation spoken in the ancient tongues of Latvia.

The next time I was there the barista asked if I’d like chocolate sprinkles on my extra large mocha. I declined and smiled in a distinctively Bristish polite way as I explained that I was waiting for a medium vanilla latte. She turned to the chap ahead of me in the queue, apologised, and asked him the same question. He said yes, slipping in a brief sentence about how he’d ordered a regular one, but not to worry.

Come on people. If Britannia rules something, let it at least be the Great British Spread. People of Britain, your country needs you. Go forth and make traingle-cut cucumber sandwiches. And put the tea-urn on low whilst you’re there.

Standing at the edge of the world, not knowing which way to go

So last weekend was a delightful one spent in Cornwall. Obviously I prepared intensely for the trip, watching both a mid-afternoon episode of Wycliffe and Doc Martin on ITV.

The only slightly troubling event was a visit to Land’s End.

Surely the point of visiting somewhere like Land’s End,is to be able to stand and enjoy that place. Afterall, you go to Niagara to see the waterfalls, you get on the Staten Island Ferry to see the Lady with the pointy head thing and a lamp. Or am I completely out to sea on this?

Land’s End, in my mind anyway, should consist of 1) Amusing road sign, 2) Cliff, 3) Sea View, 4) Maybe, and this is more a method of getting a more aesthetically pleasing 4 things, a small coffee shop run by an elderly lady called Nora selling Kendle Mint Cake and Coffee served with a saucer.

So not Cornwall’s answer to Vegas then? We’re all agreed on that?

There were all sorts of things to divert me from actually seeing the place. A Videomaxdomebigplasmascreen thing, showcasing a daring rescue of a walker (no Kendle Mint Cake) being airlifted into an RAF SeaKing. A gift shop selling all sorts of stuff at ludicrous prices. Oh, and a Dr Who exhibition. Now, I enjoyed the exhibition when it was in Cardiff, and I enjoyed having them film outside my house, but why is it here?

Are people arriving at the Sphinx and being lured into a small display of props from The West Wing? Is there a small marquee next to Aire’s Rock selling Are you being served? stills and bumper stickers with slogans about Mrs Sloackham’s kittens?

I guess it’s all part of our i-life. This is no ordinary point of interest. This is Land’s End 2.0.

It must be – there was a chain around the Land’s End sign and a photographer charging £10 for you to have your picture taken next to the sign so you can put it on your MyFace profile.