Britain’s got it…

My mind melting into a cheese-like mess from overwork this evening, I’m finding myself watching Britain’s Got Talent. Whilst I can say without certainty it proves Britain definitely has something, I’m not certain talent is the right word.

Things which Britain has include the ability to make jokes and eat biscuits whilst planes drop bombs from above. Britain has the amazing ability to make great engineering spectacles out of little more than a bit of corrugated cardboard and some sticky tape. We have the amazing ability to develop amazing poor branding for companies and events, trying to mirror espresso drinking Americana rather than sticking with weak-tea British values. We have an amazing ability to talk about the weather without ever being able to accurately predict its outcome. Britain has a knack of being able to wear without fear black sandals with brown socks below white shorts whilst on holiday. Britain has a amazing ability (a la Billy Bragg), to show it’s national pride by urinating in public fountains during major football tournaments. We’re also quite good at having an army which runs on antiquated machinery and dubious mustaches.

However, talent, using the proper bona fide definition of the word, you know, in the sense ‘to have talent’, this programme does not have. Sticking spoons on your nose, singing so far off key you’d need a compass and a pair of sensible shoes to get back to the right note, these are not things which shows the country’s talent. Perhaps the fact the whole farce presented by two Geordie’s who rose to fame, as far as I can see, because they could wear baseball caps and exclaim ‘It’s uncanny Geoff’ on cue, should have forewarned me.

It’s Londoner’s eating their McVities off of the fine china during air raids that make me proud to be British, and these ‘acts’ fall a little short of the mark….

Morris is alive and well

Sounds almost like a discarded title for a Smiths album doesn’t it?

The lovely spa town of Bath was awash with the constant ringing of bells. Not church bells ringing out to tell the world of another couple entering into wedded bliss. Not the National Conference of the Change Ringing Society (this link came up first!). Nor a bout of tinnitus.

Morris Dancers, that’s what:

Aborigines and various other races have tribal war dances. Ways of marking out territory, interacting with other tribes and a sign of strength in times of war.  Who’s giong to be scared away or impressed by stripey braces and a hankey?

Don’t get me wrong, Morris Dancing is great. Something to be done at country fetes and outside village pubs, but the centre of the city? It was like a giant dance-off. It was like watching a 1980’s-style breakdancing face-off, only with older participants drinking cider out of pewter tankards.

I had a history teacher who was a Morris Dancer at school. I was friends with his daughter who played the violin and mandolin for Dancing events. I’m sure it’s great, I really do. But I still don’t get it. When I feel the urge to attach little bells to me and jump into the air and spin spontaneously I’ll take the necessary steps with the government offices to legally change my name to ‘Tiddles’ and start eating Go-Cat.

Hadda be Playin on the Jukebox

Warning – this post has more than a passing reference to pooh. Those of a nervous disposition, seek another post.

Warning 2 – This post has a certain school boy humour to it. Something my middle-school chemistry teacher (who incidentally had far too much enthusiasm for lessons which she said involve ‘burning things’) would say ‘was humour based in the toilet’.

We’re all too familiar with Muzak. To some it’s irritating, to others it’s something which slips by as unnoticeable as a fart under the duvet during the night. There are very few who rub their hands with glee at the invention of the stuff. Sure, there’s the odd Oxbridge music scholar, who now pay their childrens’ tuition fees at the best blazer-clad schools by knocking out weekly chart ditties in faux panpipes. Then of course there’s the shop owners, who have learnt that by matching the music to their target shoppers they can improve sales.

So where does that leave the choice of musak in toilets? Whilst contemplating life on that great white ring at Heston Services on the M4 today, my musing was accompanied by something more likely to be found on the playlists of DJ Spooney. Quite frankly, it had all gone Pete Tong. I’ll guard my comments until the Oxford University Scientific research which is doubtless being conducted by some bespectacled boffin, but when was it decided bowel movements were best accompanied by music of 120 beats per minute? Did I miss that item on BBC Breakfast News? Maybe Fiona Bruce and Dermot covered it whilst I was upstairs in the littlest room without the perfect musical accompaniment.

Not the most relaxing thing then, but it did start me thinking.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the top 5 songs to accompany toilet trips:

1. The Long and Winding Road – The Beatles
2. Relax – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
3. Break on Through (to the other side) – The Doors
4. Sitting, Waiting, Wishing – Jack Johnson
5. Trickle Trickle – Manhattan Transfer

• And a late chart re-entry: Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash

Sorry everybody. I had something good for today. Witty, cutting, full of cleverness, but when I sat down that was what came out.

For something a little more intellectual, it did have me listening to ‘Hadda be playing on the jukebox’ by Rage Against the Machine (my A-level English Performance piece), based on the poem by Allen Ginsburg.

Hooligans

Where I live, which most would regard as a rural setting, there are three kinds of drivers – fast drivers, tractors and horsists. The horsists are generally marked out by a) being on a horse and b) there being a trail of horsey pooh from at least 2 bends before you encounter them. The tractors are similarly marked out by them a) being big blue or green things, and b) there being large lumps of mud laying on the road as if asteroids somehow broke through the US defence system I know from films to be manned by Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith.

There’s a new breed entering the area though. Like all ‘class’ of driver they too have clear signs to distinguish them from other motorists. Meet ’37mph man’. 37mps man generally drives a mid-sized hatchback in a fetching, but importantly non offensive, pastel shade. The kind you find on the dulux kitchen range tester card. He will possibly have a nodding Churchill dog on the parcel shelf, but without exception has a straw boater or panama hat thrown nonchalantly in the back window.

This man has an amazing ability to live life at constant 37mph. Going down a road with the national speed limit? 37mph man will be travelling at 37mph at least 2 feet from the kerb. He does not brake for corners, horsists, bikists or any other obstacles. Then you reach the 30mph zone and you expect to slow to a crawl. Not so for Mr 37mph man. Here he lives life in the fast lane, continuing at his hard-wired 37mph. So too alongside schools, over speed bumps and across roundabouts.

It’s almost as if his car has no gear box or accelerator. He opens his garage (complete with non-offensive pastel-shade door no doubt) and blammo – 37mph. Perhaps shot by a canon, or some planetary force of constant velocity.

I daresay as he sits at his solid pine breakfast table he sits alongside his aga, reading his copy of The Independent, spreading his marmalade on his toast in perfect parallel lines with his knife moving at a constant 37mph, his brain has a thought every 37 seconds, and he reads at a steady 37 words per minute.

Ladies and gentlemen, 37mph man. Grrr….

DVD A to Z

Just bought on Play.com:

Dennis Leary – Lock and Load
Lost in Translation
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

Not quite sure what that says about my state of mind at the moment…

Singalong a Hillary

I was reading this post over at the Seattle Metroblog with the strange typo at a Hillary campaign speech and started surfing her site. A bit behind the times I know, but I couldn’t help contemplating Hillary Clinton’s shortlist of songs that she’s put forward to readers of her blog in a poll to pick her official campaign song. The shortlist of 10 at the moment are:

1. Suddenly I See – KT Tunstall
2. Rock this Country – Shania Twain
3. Beautiful Day – U2
4. Get Ready – The Temptations
5. I’m a Believer – Smash Mouth
6. Are you gonna go my way? – Lenny Kravitz
7. Aint no stoppin’ us now – McFadden & Whitehead
8. Every little thing she does is magic – The Police
9. You and I – Celine Dion
10. Simply the Best – Tina Turner

There are some interesting choices. Many project a certain Godliness onto Hillary. Suddenly I See begins ‘Her face is a map of the world’ – no doubt a swipe at Dubya Gump, whose geography skills I quite frankly doubt. Rock this Country is perhaps a country homage to the lone-star state. I know they just about tolerated Ozzy Osbourne urinating on the Alamo a few decades ago, but a female president? The U2 song is obviously a good choice, not so much for its content (I personally can’t stand anything by them after the Zooropa album), but we all know Bono’s pretty much the personification of cleanliness, which afterall is right next to Godliness.

I kind of like the idea of Hillary leading the States into the 21st century with some 60’s Motown, but I doubt that’ll win. Given Bill’s notable slip-ups I can see a problem with using anything involving Temptation. ‘Then I saw her face, now I’m a believer’, is not quite a convincing message. Most of the remaining choices are just a little to feminist for my liking – Tina Turner conjures up images of Dallas-esque shoulder pads, and Celine Dion seems to suggest housewife’s favourite.

So that leaves us with Aint no stopping us now, and Lenny Kravitz. Brilliant. The former suggests world domination, and the latter produced a download-only hit in protest at the invasion of Iraq called “We Want Peace” which could be a sticking point at dinner-party conversations.

So which do you choose? I’m not quite sure, but get yourself a 5-digit US zip-code and you too could pick your favourite at HillaryClinton.com

Left tied to a lamppost

It’s a well-known proven scientific fact that the male brain is hard-wired to be shown only 20 outfits and asked what it thinks before it switches off. One score of combined dresses, skirts, shoes, necklaces and then that’s it, it downs tools and sets off in search of gadgets or coffee, whichever is nearest. And I think my brain has slightly less will-power than that.

Today’s expedition into the retail world involved dress-shopping with the lovely Sarah for an upcoming wedding invite. My brain was struggling by the time I was shown the one. ‘The one’, for the females amongst you, is the one that comes along after at least two dozen others have been discarded, and is almost always found in close proximity to the first outfit shown to the male partner.

It was a lovely dress, and I battled my brain-fade to make all the best reassuring noises. The noises were genuine and sincere, but it was hard work because at least 80% of my brain-juice was being used to try and work out how to stand in the lingerie department of a big store. It’s like being a dog left tied to a lamppost whilst its owner is in the shop, except this neighbourhood is decorated top-to-toe in ladies unspeakables. It really was a big store. With many, many changing rooms. All of which had been closed in favour of making weary men-folk, hunter gathers tired from excessive hunting without very much gathering, feel very uncomfortable by being surrounded by every bra and knicker set, frilly or otherwise. A brief eyes-up from the briefs to the newly tried-on dress and quickly back down is not a negative reaction to the outfit in question. It’s just a self-preservation thing, trying not to make eye-contact with the red, purple, lacy, satin, underwired predators who, without warning, can quickly sap all feelings of masculinity.

They do it on purpose those pesky, I note female, shop assistants. Is it a sport which makes the day go quicker?

It was a nice dress though. Hunted, but not gathered.

PS I have a new photoblog – dury.aminus3.com

Make Hay while the rain pours

Or, What I did with my weekend by Dury Loveridge, aged 28 and 1 month.

The sun certainly wasn’t shining when we arrived for our big gig at the Hay Literary Festival (rebranded ‘The Guardian Hay Festival” since our last appearence 2 years ago). We were the musical entertainment for SkyArts’ big party, with sets alternating with those by English National Ballet. The parking attendants’ dinner suits and evening attire seemed strangely at odds with their wellies, and on our arrival an organiser tried to allay our fears by reassuring us they had a tractor on stand-by in case our cars were bogged-down in the car-park.

Glastonbury goes Islington, this was a party in a tent for some of the biggest names around. Gordon Brown was on the bill at the festival that weekend, and former primeministers joined comedians and writers from around the globe at wading through the mud to get to the free booze, music and djs.

I’d love to say I mingled and chatted with ease with all the stars, but there was work to be done. Plus, you know, being authors they’re not all that easy to recognise. Rory McGrath, doing daily diaries for SkyArts was there, as was Mariella Frostrup. There was some debate over a young-looking Atrhur Smith, but no such problems recognising Major Dick Strawbridge fresh from his talk on going carbon neutral. There was a possible AA Gill sighting, Iain Banks, Sean Locke and a few others besides, but our minds were firmly on the job in hand – playing Abba hits whilst posing for the papparazzi.

It can be glam to be a musician at times…

[Update: Just to prove it’s real, a ‘punter’s’ perspective on the whole thing…]

Not such a Tufty

I’m not known for being particularly squeamish. I’m not too shocked by blood, but plasters make me weak at the knees. I’m not too scared of getting my hands dirty coding websites, but WordPress giving me blank screens and refusing to save anything for the last week or so did make me a little worried.

I’m not even scared of spiders. Well that’s sort of true. It’s true I’m not scared of our eight-legged friends, but the screaming and running away of friends and the lovely Sarah make me feel like I should be scared of them.

Therefore, when woken at 5:30am the other morning I wasn’t an immediate quivering scaredy cowering under the duvet and hiding behind Mr Tedsworth . I was woken by what sounded like a plant pot rolling around in the garden. Although annoyed at my own broken sleep, being British my mind quickly turned to ‘oh no, I’m disturbing the neighbours. Better go and shut it up’.

Bleary-eyed I stumbled to the window, waited for my eyes to gradually climatise to the brilliant sunshine I had been blissfully sleeping through, and found the plant pot was actually rolling around above my head. In the loft. In fact the plant pot was rolling in a perfectly straight line in the loft. And had clearly grown feet. Perhaps feet with tap-dancing shoes on them.

Now I was worried. Clearly a diminutive burglar, having been unable to lift the telly or dvd player downstairs, was running around stealing the empty boxes in my loft . And he was a trained tap-dancer. And very fast. With four legs. Or were there two of them? Dancing in formation?

The lovely Sarah had stirred by now, and her concern was aroused much quicker than my own. Just as it is with spiders, so too with four-legged burglars. Sarah’s fear turned my bemusement into paranoia and I found myself edging away from the scratching at the loft hatch. However, being The Man of the house I felt the need to do something decisive. So I tapped on the ceiling. Remembering how the pet gerbils of my childhood would drum rhythmically on the floor when they felt in danger I briefly considered tapping my feet on the floor, but then decided to tap on the ceiling instead. This, I thought, would make the squirrel think, ‘aha! he’s telling me it’s dangerous down there. I’d better go back to my home. I think GMTV’s starting soon’. At least it seemed like a good idea at 5.34am.

In fact it was an engenius idea. The squirrel ran away from the drumming. Sensing danger, however, it panicked and fell out of the loft and into the wooden box filling the space below the guttering at the front of the house. By 5.55am we were standing out on the street looking up at our roof listening to something inside running back and forth along the full width of our house. Then the neighbours’ lights started going on one by one. Then the screaming started. Clearly tap-dancing squirrels have a large set of lungs on them – this thing could beat Lulu or Aretha in a singing contest.

There was only one thing left to do – Run inside before anyone could tell it was our house. So decisive action was taken. Shut the door to the room with the loft hatch, and try to sleep through it. It worked. 40 minutes sleep was snatched from the jaws of squirrel robbery, and quick showers were taken to the constant drumming practice of a squirrel stuck on the other side of the wall.

Do squirrels have a Houdini gene, and can therefore escape confinement from boxes? Can they burrow through wood? Can they fall from the top of a house unscathed? How long after death do they start to smell?

Answers please.

Delays

This blog would like to apologise for the delay to your blog-reading experience. This was due to technically difficulties experienced at WordPress Central.

Rest assured, normal service will now be resumed.