Let it snow, nothing goes, it’s all woe

In the last 24 hours you’d be forgiven for thinking the world was coming to an end. British Airways cabin crews planned reworking of the twelve days of Christmas was declared illegal by the High Court. As a result it is now against the law for bleach blonde men and women wearing enough make-up to paint an elephant to complain about their working conditions and take Christmas off.

In the world of the wireless, Sir Terry Wogan will make his final breakfast show tomorrow morning ending his 17-year run creating the country’s most listened-to radio programme. As Sir Terry ended his penultimate show, sister-station FiveLive decided to try and steal some thunder by bringing Rage Against The Machine live and then being surprised when they didn’t cut the 15 F words from their song. Someone please tell the show’s producer that the clue was in the words – ‘F you I won’t do whatcha tell me’.

Simon Cowell may not get the Christmas number 1. He’s been in newspapers with a certain quiver in his lip saying that everyone’s ruining things and is out to get him – someone forgot to tell everyone that the official prize for the X-Factor was the Christmas Number 1 slot.

And now it’s snowing. Canada may get enough of the stuff in an average year to bury the Chrysler building and still get to work in time to harvest a few moose. But we’re going to get a couple of inches by the morning, with only 4 days of warnings which means we’ll be using the opening lines of W H Auden’s ‘Stop the Clocks’ as a guide on how to cope a temperature of -3.

Let’s see if I’m right…

It’s your coffee… it’s got your name on it

There’s an old joke about the war, about two families hiding-out in a bomb shelter. One of the men stands proudly, explaining to his wife,  ‘it’ll all be okay. There’s an old saying: The bomb’ll only get you if it’s got your name on it’. Whilst the other couple, Mr and Mrs Doodlebug, start quivering in the corner.

Today I braved the crowds of the big smoke (quiet literally as everyone in Cardiff today seemed to be a chain-smoker with their own personal Iron Lung at home to help them keep puffing), and started my Christmas shopping. But, to be honest, I’m a man. And that means that my attention-span for shopping lasted approximately 22 1/2 minutes before I gave up and went for coffee.

So I’m in Tarbucks Scoffee in a queue of similarly-fatigued ADD shoppers (the one with the little green logo of the L’oreal mascot who’s been dragged through a hedge backwards whilst being run over by a lawnmower). And as well as mocking the American civil war with their slogan ‘The Red Cups are coming!’, they’d come up with an ingenious idea to speed up the queue: put everybody’s name on their cup. Ingenious if you have a common name maybe, but there’s always someone like me to put a spanner in the latte equivalent of Who’s Who.

So I ask for my grande vanilla latte, and was asked for my name. ‘Joey?’ repeats the Barrista. ‘No, Dury’ I reply. ‘Joy?’ she says with greater confidence.

At this point I’m desperately trying not to point out that she’d be able to hear me if they weren’t playing some indie hip Earth Mother type singing Jingle Bells in a throaty drawl at full volume throughout the shop.

‘Ummm…’, I say annoying myself that I’m apologetically repeating my name for a third time, ‘…Dury?’.

She’s clearly had enough of this game. I note she has a name tag on so we all know her name. She turns around and starts writing my name on the cup out of my view without saying a word this time, adamant that she’s got it this time. And, should she be wrong, clearly thinks I should go straight away to Deed Poll and change my name to something more easily understood.

Luckily at this point I could take my place at the other end of the counter and recognise the man who was before me, so that I might have some chance of being reunited with my drink.

‘Grande Cap for Tom’, the other lady says with authority.’
‘It’s Tony’, the man in front of me replies.
‘No, this one’s for Tom’, she says perkily.
We all look at the predominantly female queue.
‘No’, he continues, ‘it’s my drink, and I’m Tony’.

At this point the drinks-master technician does an overly-theatrical squint at the writing on the cup, and then hands it over to Tony with a smile weaker than Tarbuck’s Daily Cup.

And then it’s time for my drink. And I’m nervous with anticipation. I’m English – If I was run over by a bus I’d be more worried about causing a scene than any injury to myself.

She looks at the cup. She pauses. She thinks. She says ‘Grande Vanilla Latte?’.

Excellent. A much better system all round I can’t help thinking.

But then I realise I’ve got to walk around Cardiff City Centre holding my Red Cup of Latte with the word ‘Jrurey’ written on the front in big marker pen kiddy-writing…

Saying Boo to a Ghost

I’m not a dog person. I don’t like mess. I hate the smell of damp. I like my biscuit-coloured carpet free of muddy paw prints. I want to be able to see out of the lower 2 feet of the windows in my house. And they make me sneeze, wheeze and fill with all manner of unhealthy bodily fluids.

But if, let’s say, I did have a dog, I’d do all the fluffy-wuffy dog-owner things you have to do. I’d coo at puppies. I’d say, ‘oh he’s just being friendly’ whilst it gnaws down to the bone on a stranger’s shin.

But I’m sure if, for one night every year, I could send it out onto the street as part of a pack to knock on everyone’s door and ask for food, I’d do that too.

I’m not being a scrooge. I like carving pumpkins. I like the colours orange and black. I’m old enough to remember childrens’ TV witch Grotbags. I like Halloween.

And as child number 378 arrives at my door demanding chocolate, wearing a santa hat as his chosen costume, all I ask is that you say ‘thank you’. Oh, and that you take the nut ones I can’t eat.

Ernie doesn’t deliver here any more

In the words of Auden:

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum,
Beat out the time til no milk will come.

Or something like that, anyway.

It was a late Autumnal evening a couple of years back, a few weeks after we’d moved to our lovely house, that we opened the front door to find a pint of milk on our doorstep. Not yet acquainted with small town life, we were bemused to say the least. Many things were left outside doors in our previous town, Cardiff, but none were edible and fresh.

A few days later, our milk deliveries started. This being (semi-) rural Gloucestershire, it’s not just any old milk delivery, this is milk from Lucy’s Dairy. Where every carton of milk has a nice picture of Lucy with one of the cows in a free-spirited and countrysidey pose.

I drive by the farm at least once a week, and I can’t help feeling a little extra contentment, knowing that just over the hedgerow the cows are working hard to make the lovely milk that make my Shreddies taste nice. I’m convinced the cows sit (or most likely stand) in their field all day watching the locals go by. In between munching the grass they probably remark on how trim Mr Jones is as he cycles passed, or give a toothless cowy smile to Mrs Backewell as she walks her labrador Charlie in her Barbour jacket.

It’s not just cows in the field, either. I’ve never seen a delivery driver, or heard a milk-float. Do you know why? I think it’s because the cows do the delivering. Milk floats only have one pedal, and a cow’s hoof could easily work it. They’d come in teams of 4 and split-up, delivering the milk bottles all over the street.

One week, we even had blank milk cartons, and a note saying ‘sorry, we ran out of labels’. They didn’t run out… the cows temporarily got distracted and the sheep ate them. That’s my theory, anyway.

But now it’s all coming to an end. And in a few days time we’ll get our last milk delivery. It’s a sign of the times, I guess, that Mr T Esco and Mrs S Ainsbury have squeezed the little (or hoofed) guy out. But come next week there’ll be a big queue of Fresians at the Job Centre. Thankfully the milk-makers are safe, but I’m not sure how much call there is for driving cows at the moment. Frankly, I’m more than a little worried that in a few weeks there’ll be gangs of cows hanging out on street corners, bored, listening to music on their phones and mooing loudly late into the night.

So, no more milk. It’s the udder truth I tell you…

Thinking between the lines

I absolutely love simple ideas, simply executed. If they can be smartly designed, well-executed, useful and slightly quirky, all the better.

For that reason, I absolutely love the idea of ‘The High Line Park’ which has just been completed and opened in New York. I just can’t see anything as simple and well-designed being opened anywhere else.

http://www.thehighline.org/

angry of dunroamin

England is inexplicably linked with housing. ‘An Englishman’s home is his castle’, for example. Parry even wanted to build Jerusalem here in England’s green and pleasant land. Although he later decided to build Milton Keynes, after a friend pointed out that the Jerusalemians were quite happy in the current Jerusalem – although there was a twinning committee setup shortly after.

French houses have shutters. Dutch houses have canals outside. American houses have picket fences. English houses have decking and an occasional gnome.

It’s difficult to get exciting about housing.

That is until a slightly eccentric man from the West Country decides to build one out of Lego. And then another man decides that it has to be knocked down.

The news today featured the sad news that James May’s full-size lego house will be knocked down unless a buyer can be found sharpish. Legoland was interested until it found out that it would cost £50k to dismantle and rebuild the house in Windsor. This is absolutely absurd, of course, because building anything in Windsor is likely to cost at least 20 times that for anyone else wanting a neighbour who keeps Corgis and cornflakes in Tupperware*.

I think I have an answer though. Just the other day I was driving into a small town in Gloucestershire that looked like it hadn’t seen a paintbrush since we had a ruling King. Almost every house was boarded up, save one with a window box and fishing gnome sitting defiantly proud halfway up the garden path. Liverpool’s the same. And Wolverhampton. In fact, come to think of it, England’s full of these regeneration projects that are put on hold because of the staying-power of some of its residents.

3 years of council meetings, the tireless work of an entire planning department, and eventually Gordon Brown reaches into his pockets for a bit of funding. And then Mrs Stimpson, who normally writes in to The Telegraph letters page as ‘angry of Dunroamin’, holds everyone to ransom as she’s not moving out until the Daffodils in her herbaceous borders have finished flowering.

So I have a plan. Forget dismantling the house. Forget national news coverage showcasing the most exciting new-build since Mr Fraser decided on single rather than UPvc double-glazed front windows in Forest Drive, Billericay. Forget the eco-argument that a dozen polar bears will be saved everytime someone builds a cul de sac out of lego rather than bricks and mortar.

Just find an ‘angry of Dunroamin’ who wants a child-friendly, 100% blunt and Teletubby-coloured house. Let her move in, and I guarantee that house will still be standing in 2012 even if it was in the middle of the planned olympic velodrome.

B’loons!

The road less travelled

So, after much agonising, I have a new car. The lovely Sarah describes at, ‘a cellist’s car’. The details of what, strictly speaking, constitutes ‘a cellist’s car’ is still being finalised for the Wikipedia entry, but suffice to say, it’s big.

Very big, in fact.

So big, if I’m honest, that you could lose half of your string quartet in the back of it, which was probably the designers’ intention. Although, he was probably thinking about children, rather than those of a violinistic and violistic tendency.

When you’re a boy, you dream about the cars you’re going to own when you grow up. You put posters on your wall. You play top trumps. Fords are replaced by Aston Martins. Astons are replaced by Lamorghinis. Lamborghinis are replaced by Ferarris.

Then you turn 17 and are presented with an Austin Metro. It may be slow, it may have an engine with all the straight line speed of an arthritic tortoise. With a limp. After a particularly heavy meal. But it’s yours, and it stands for freedom. It may only have 4 gears, but each of those gears is now an integral part of your independence. And each those gears affords you the power of around 50 horses, which is certainly a lot more than Mr Darcy had to go and visit Elizabeth.

For the next few years you study maps, not to find the most efficient route, but to find the route with the most squiggily bits. The longest straights. The most interesting journey. Until, and no scientist has yet defined this, you wake up one morning and find yourself with a career, a mosaic driveway, a double-glazed conservatory, and a need for comfort, fuel-economy, safety and anonymity. In short, you have the same box-on-wheels as everyone else.

Today I did something I haven’t done for a while, and went for a drive. Okay, technically I spend a proportion of nearly every day driving, but that’s just going from A-B in the easiest way. It’s functional. It’s necessary. It’s boring.

Today, I went for a drive. I didn’t need to. I didn’t need to go anywhere in particular. But all day as I went around the house doing the various tasks that needed my attention, I kept catching a glimpse of blue glistening outside on the drive. The new shiny keyfob sat on the table and kept catching my eye, and now the two parts of the car were conspiring against me in a metaphorical pincer-movement to make me put everything else to one side.

And do you know the worst thing? My brain kept flashing up reasons not to go out like a rolling-news ticker. It was an unnecessary use of fossil fuels and as a result of my actions two baby seals would cry uncontrollably. It was a waste of money, and the few pounds of fuel could have been spent on breadsticks and wild-rocket pesto. And then middle-age jumped out and surprised me, and I thought about the wear-and-tear and resale value.

There was nothing for it, I had to go.

We’re told that driving has become boring. That all cars are the same now. That you can’t go fast because on every straight bit of road there’s a yellow-box paparazzi, and around every bend is a member of the road safety gestapo with a laser in their hand. But for 40 minutes every twist of the road was interesting. My mind wasn’t thinking ahead to what needed to be done when I reached B. Road signs were options, like an a-la-carte menu. Even those people that were clearly out driving Miss Daisy, in their beige rovers and powder-blue toyotas with the Arthur Daley hat on the rear shelf, were interesting challenges for overtaking rather than a frustrating issue that would make me late.

It’s been a long time since I actually drove for the sake of driving, and for a brief moment I felt that independence and freedom I had at 17. And the weird thing is, I wasn’t alone. I must have passed at least a dozen retired men driving the classic cars they bought with their retirement money. I must have been passed by at least another dozen men on motorbikes with either their wives or weekend partners riding pillion. There were no lorries delivering frozen pizzas to the disciples of Kerry Katona. No vans delivering overcharging plumbers to broken pipes. No buses delivering pensioners to Bridge club. No functional journeys at all, in fact. Just lots of people driving around aimlessly reliving their teens with big smiles on their faces. I strongly advise you to try it next Sunday.

Busy, busy

Mustang Sodbury

Classic Car run in our town. Loved the blue of the Mustang.