Category: People

They don’t like it up ’em, Mr Mainwaring

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

2017 was always going to be designated as a ‘milestone birthday year’, albeit not in the way that other birthdays had happened. Quite a long time ago, I remember going out for drinks on my 21st, drinking and smoking my way into a terrific hangover, and thinking that life was unable to get much better than this (I was completely wrong). When I was thirty, I sent out invitations to celebrate, or commiserate, passing into middle age, and we had a huge party, reforming the bands we’d been in a few years before, in the realisation that we were all headed for some sort of rock & roll decline (which we were). Another party for my fortieth, but this time with a more expensive suit, and a further band reunion, but, worryingly, sitting down to play. And then, a few years ago, 50, which, unnervingly, is least clear of all, lost in a haze of extreme running, ice baths and ill advised tequila competitions with kids who were young enough to be my children. Which, of course, they were.

Being 55 was different, but notable in its own special way. Firstly, there were a series of letters reminding me that years ago, I’d suggested that May 2017 would be an excellent time to retire, and I would save every last penny I had to make that happen. I kept my promise on the savings front, but unfortunately others in my life didn’t*, and I found myself woefully short of the sunset retiree lifestyle that Michael Aspel and Gloria Hunniford seem to witter on about, given half a chance.

Then came more letters, the first one the day after my birthday, inviting me to take out insurance for my declining years (with free Parker pen, but only if I reply now!), then offering holidays, to be taken with other over-55’s, probably so we could have long chats about Brexit and the youth of today. A horrible prospect indeed, a bit like an 18-30 holiday but with less energy, less tolerance, and less wet T-shirt competitions (I’d hope).

And then, the letter I’d been looking forward to least. Because, at 55, you get put on a special health screening list. The first letter is fairly innocuous, welcoming you to the world of the NHS, and giving you assurance that early screening of bowel cancer is a fabulous way of getting old gracefully. Or, I suppose, at all. The letter is beautifully put together, with soft words around screening and images and prevention, and makes very little reference to the main point of the exercise, which is to put a smallish camera up your backside, with a longer lead than you might imagine possible.

So what you do is fill in the form, because you figure that you do really really really want to know if you have the other c-word in your life. And you put the appointment in your diary and try not to think for a few weeks, and, largely, you don’t. And then, a couple of weeks before you need to start remembering about the appointment that you’re trying not to remember, a parcel arrives.

I still love getting parcels, especially unexpected ones. A few years ago, I got a book posted to me about great naval battles of the Second World War. Inside, it said ‘To Kevin’. Nothing else, and no clue who’d sent it, other than a Manchester postmark. It remains one of the most brilliant moments of my life. Last week I got a parcel from my parents, just as unexpected, which had two packets of smoked mackerel in it. Not as weird as it sounds, but just as delightful. So when this parcel arrived, I pounced on it like Michael Fallon at a Young Conservatives rally.

I tore the parcel open, and (you might be ahead of me here) was disappointed to see nothing about great naval battles and no sign of smoked mackerel. Instead, there was a tube, a plastic container full of clear fluid, and a set of instructions on how to use your enema.

I’ve never had an enema before, but my wife, a woman with the patience and black sense of humour shared by many in the nursing profession, told me that there was nothing to worry about. In fact (and I should have smelt a rat here), she offered to help administer the enema, to make sure that it was ‘working properly’.

When the diary date finally arrived, I knocked off work a bit early, got home and reread the enema instructions for about the 50th time, and Mrs E kindly suggested that she could help with what she charmingly called the ‘introduction’. For a while, I wasn’t absolutely sure what she meant, and then suddenly I very much was. There was a definite imbalance on the enthusiasm of the two of us taking part. I don’t think she actually shouted out ‘Geronimo’, as she ‘introduced’, but she might as well have done.

If you’ve had one of these enemas, you’ll be fairly aware of what happens next. Not very much for the first 10 minutes and then, fairly suddenly, something that feels like a small volcano in your lower intestine. Fortunately in our house there are only a couple of dozen buttock-clenching strides between the sofa and the toilet, where I realised the true sensation of what I understand is called an evacuation. When, as Lionel Ritchie once said, there was ‘nothing left to give’, it was time to go to the hospital. In a plan that was either macho, naive or stupid, I’d planned to cycle there, but agreed with Mrs E that it might be, after all, worth taking her up on her offer of a lift.

Mrs E dropped me off at the hospital, arranged to pick me up at some vague point in the future, and I distinctly heard her cackling away to herself as she drove off. Found my way to the gastro ward without asking for directions (always a win), and opened the door to the waiting room. My appointment was for 18:15, and I suppose I expected a small room with 3-4 people awaiting their evening appointment with a sigmoidoscope. Much to my surprise, the door opened to a really large waiting room, with maybe 50 chairs, and almost each one occupied. I sat down at one of the chairs, and looked around. I noticed that everyone else was looking around surreptitiously as well; I wasn’t really sure why until it suddenly struck me – I’d not been in this situation since I was about 15.

Just to be clear, no-one shoved a camera up my backside when I was 15, but that was probably the last time that I’d walked into a room of people of exactly the same age. And then, like now, everyone was looking round, while trying not to catch anyone else’s eye, to see, well, how the last 40 years had gone for everyone else. Slightly different thoughts to the ones when I was 15, perhaps a bit more ‘looks like he had a good Christmas’, and a bit less ‘crikey, where did he get those shoes/trousers/haircut?’, and some new thoughts too, like ‘I wonder why he brought his wife along, particularly if she’s going to look so bloody miserable’, and ‘ there’s an odd place for a tattoo’. And we were probably all having these thoughts as the receptionist kindly matched called out names to match faces. I seemed to get called about 10 minutes after checking in, which did make me wonder how I’d jumped the queue. Maybe this was just somewhere that a selection of 55 year old men go on Wednesday evenings for their own entertainment. Perhaps some of them had enjoyed the process so much in the past that they’d turn up hoping for a cancellation.

Then you’re shown into a small room and asked to undress, put one gown on backwards, another one on forwards, and keep your shoes and socks on, and put your clothes in the shopping basket provided. You emerge from the little room, carrying your basket, and sit down next to the other men who have just been through the same process. Now, I’m not sure if there’s a supermarket scene in ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’, but if there is, we were reenacting it, sitting there with gowns and modesty barely intact, still wearing unlaced boots and socks, and each clutching on to a shopping basket. It’s not a look I’ll be planning to replicate, but it’s definitely one to remember for a while.

Another call, and this time into a room with a proper door, and serious equipment and people inside. There were four of them, and I was introduced to each one in turn. One was going to make me feel comfortable from the front, the next was to keep an eye on things from the back, the lead role was to be taken by a kindly soul who would be wielding the camera, leaving Steve in the corner who was going to be doing the ‘impressive stuff with the computer’. Well, they all looked very relaxed about the whole situation, especially Steve, who had an especially comfortable looking office chair. I asked if they normally heard or told jokes during this sort of procedure. They didn’t, but would be very happy to hear any material from me. I said I’d not really prepared anything specifically for this event, so I told them a bit about the enema and how it reminded me of a John Cooper Clarke line:

‘Like a recently disinfected shithouse
You’re clean round the bend’

Steve pitched in with his favourite joke, which wasn’t necessarily a gag as you or I might know it, but ended with some sort of a punchline from Dad’s Army’s Corporal Jones ; ‘They don’t like it up ‘em’.

With all parties sufficiently relaxed, a nervy silence crept into the room, only to be broken by the lead role:

‘What you’re going to feel next is my finger’

Which I did.

If you’re lucky enough to have the over-55 invite still to turn up in your post, rest assured, because the rest of the exercise is relatively pain free. In common with teenage sex, watching Norwich City at home and the final couple of Clash albums, the excitement of anticipation isn’t really matched by the following reality. There’s a bit of discomfort; a really disconcerting video stream in front of you showing your healthy pink insides and a phenomenal feeling that you’re going to poo yourself in front of four people. There were a few encouraging ‘please relax’ shoves from behind, and a few calming words from the front, telling me that all would be well, and admiring my resting pulse. ‘Are you a runner?’ said the voice in front, and, naturally enough, the next few minutes passed by in a very convivial fashion, with me talking about my favourite subject to a captive audience.

And in no time at all ‘All clear’ was announced, with everyone in the room aware of the double meaning. I started to move off the table, and was met with firm holds on three sides.

‘We’ll just give that a bit of a wipe’

And I think I would have last heard those words, in that context, about 50 years ago.

Sometimes I guess we all feel a bit nostalgic for the days when we didn’t have to bother about self-dignity. I guess that might be something else to look forward to as we get old.

 

 

* In no particular order, the others in my life who stopped me from retiring were : Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage, and Fred Goodwin, along with the hilariously well-rewarded 2007-8 Risk Committee of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

A short guide to blasphemy

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

It seems a long time ago, but I guess it was when my parents were about the age I am now, that they spent a fair bit of time trying out new stuff. One of their adventures was into the world of antiques and furniture restoration, which is where our story of blasphemy begins, in a very very roundabout way.

They were pretty good at what they did, which was mainly old chairs – my Dad had enough patience to painstakingly strip away layers from the wooden bits, and my Mum learnt how to weave the canework onto the seats. She got so good that she started advertising her services in the local paper, and was quite taken aback when the responses to ‘Caning by Annette’ seemed to be after, well, a specialism that she couldn’t offer.

To get a ready supply old furniture, they started to visit auction houses, and would return with all manner of knackered wooden chairs, plus anything else that took their fancy. And, unfortunately for one of their three offspring, one week, what they fancied was a painting called ‘The Watercart’.

‘The Watercart’ is a painting that pretty much defies description – you really need to witness it for yourself to understand just how awful it is. It manages to combine all of the saccharine aspects of Constable’s early work with the brushwork of a deranged Broadmoor patient. It’s about 2 feet wide, meaning that it would stand out on any wall, and is complemented by an ugly frame that is probably worth slightly more than the painting itself. Around 50p, at last estimate.

I think they realised their mistake fairly early on, and my sister, who recently described their marriage as ’60 years of bickering and jokes’, was particularly vociferous in her criticism. We could tell that matters were not going to end well when my Mum starting blaming my Dad for buying the painting in the first place, then, slightly more quietly, my Dad would suggest it was all her fault. Matters went from bad to worse, and the painting was removed from public view, and then my Mum came up with her ingenious scheme to use the situation to punish her own children.

I was probably about 30 when The Watercart entered my life, and I think I’d hoped by then that parental punishments might have become a thing of the past. Just goes to show that you should never underestimate your parents; a lesson that I’m very keen on passing on to my own kids.

Basically, the punishment would go like this:

  • Child offends parent in some way (possibly not turning up for a party, buying a paper owned by Rupert Murdoch, mentioning that gardening is essentially a boring activity etc)
  • Parent consults with other parent for some time, usually out of earshot
  • Declaration is made that the child is to be punished by receiving ‘The Watercart’ in parent’s will

It is an unwritten rule that the painting will need to be displayed prominently when it is passed on, to make it a real and constant punishment, and I like to think that it will be used extensively to penalise future generations. I am very much hoping that neither I nor any of my children (rules have recently been amended to allow the punishment to skip a generation direct to a least-favoured grandchild) will be in the firing line.

Most recently the will has been pointed at my sister, for some imagined slight, possibly letting slip that the taste of this year’s chutney wasn’t quite as good as the year before. However, it may now be heading in the direction of my brother, who I believe was the force behind an official letter from Buckingham Palace congratulating my parents on their 60 years of marriage. My father, who has been a die-hard republican all of his life, is a little perturbed that HM has been writing to him and my mum personally, and would probably see any individual responsible as deserving a bit of a Watercart discussion.

There’s a reason for telling you all of this, and it’s really as a warning to my own family that I may well be about repoint The Watercart in my own general direction. Because this blog is about swearing, and my Mum’s views on swearing are very traditional. She will not approve.

One of the first times I can remember my Mum getting cross with me was when I was about eight, in the garden, I dropped something on my foot and exclaimed ‘Bloody Hell’. She went absolutely bananas, not just because I’d cursed in front of her, but also in front of my grandmother, who was actually looking on with what I thought was quiet approval.

In those days, ‘Bloody Hell’ was pretty serious stuff. On a one to ten scale, it was probably only a five or six, at about the same level as ‘’Cor Blimey’, but it was as far as any right thinking child would go. Just below would be ‘Flipping Heck’ or ‘Flaming Hell’. Just above was ‘Bastard’, ‘Bugger’ and ‘Shit’, and  beyond that were the words that you knew, but would never use, except perhaps to look up in dictionaries or to whisper to yourself at night, just to understand what they sounded like.   

Remember I’m talking about the late 1960’s here, this was a fair while before the Sex Pistols upset Bill Grundy, and across the land people kicked in the front of their TV sets after Steve Jones used the F word (#9 on our 1-10 list). Next morning, my paper round took much longer than usual, as, wide-eyed, I read and re-read the headlines:

pistols
Well, this was forty years ago, and the world seems to have relaxed a bit around the whole blasphemy malarkey. I would struggle these days to upset anyone, even my mother, by saying ‘bloody hell’ while, for example, hammering my own thumb. But at number 9 & 10 on our profanity index, there’s still an opportunity to offend.

Unless you’ve spent the last five months working on a building site which, as it happens, I have.

And on a building site, there’s a whole different way of talking, where F&C words are just thrown about like confetti, and, as a result, they don’t really mean anything. It’s a bit like wearing your winter coat in September, when you know it’s going to get colder; there’s nowhere really to go. Where you do need the equivalent of another layer of clothing in November, the F&C gets repeated and repeated, and used in innovative ways, just to get the point across.

To illustrate how it works, to avoid any undue distress, and to allow this blog to creep through some security filters, let’s carry on with a bit of word substitution. For the F word, we need a word that works as a noun, a verb and an exclamation, and describes something fairly old and knackered, with sexual overtones. So we’re going to use the word Stringfellow. For the C word, we need to substitute a word that means something deeply unpleasant and incredibly distasteful. So we’re going to use the word Trump.

As an example, when I got to work last Monday morning, these are the words that greeted me:

‘Morning, you old trump, you look completely stringfellowed.’

Hopefully you get the gist. To illustrate how to use our words on site, the Emu will now be submitting the following definition to the Oxford English Dictionary (Stringfellowing Builder’s Edition)

 

Stringfellow

vulgar slang

Origin – early 16th/20th century: of Germanic/Northern English origin

Verb

Vulgar slang

verb: stringfellow; 3rd person present: stringfellows; past tense: stringfellowed; past participle: stringfellowed; gerund or present participle: stringfellowing

  1. have sexual intercourse with (someone) or (of two people) have sexual intercourse.
  2. damage or ruin (something).

Examples:

  • That digger is totally stringfellowed since Fred’s been driving it.
  • <insert name of supplier> have been stringfellowing us about since Christmas

noun

noun: fuck; plural noun: fucks

  1. an act of sexual intercourse;a sexual partner of a specified ability.

Example:

  • I hope you’re a better stringfellow than a bricklayer, mate, cos otherwise you’re no stringfellowing use to no one.

exclamation

exclamation: stringfellow

  1. used alone or as a noun or verb in various phrases to express annoyance, contempt, or impatience.

Example:

  • Stringfellow! Stringfellow! Stringfellow! Who put that stringfellowing scaffold pole there? It just stringfellowed me in the stringfellowing head!

 

Trump

Noun

Vulgar slang

Origin: Middle English/Scottish/American/Lunar

noun

vulgar slang

noun: trump; plural noun: trumps

  1. a woman’s genitals.
  2. an unpleasant or stupid person.

Examples:

  • He’s a total stringfellowing trump. I mean, I’m a trump, you’re a trump, but he’s a complete trump.
  • That mortar’s as dry as a nun’s trump

For extra emphasis, trump can be used as a verb, for example:

  • He’s as nutty as a trumping fruitcake

If you want further examples, just give me a call. I’ll put you on speakerphone and just carry on about my business.

And mother, if you’ve read this far, I’m really really sorry. I’m putting a hook in the wall this evening.

Now We Are Three

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Well, we’ve been here before.

Four years ago, we saw #1 off to Uni, and it broke our hearts, not in a clingy or mawkish way but because we knew we’d miss him being such a big part of our lives all the time. Then, two years ago, #2 went off 200 miles in the opposite direction, and another little piece of our heart dropped away. #2 had eased our emotional passage by taking a few months off to explore the drug cartels of South America, which he might have felt would soften the blow of living in the more cosmopolitan parts of Bristol. He was right, up to a point; he told me the day before he left for year three that his new flat was next door to a brothel that smelt mysteriously of gravy, and it didn’t seem to bother him in the least, so I guess we’ve all come to terms with managing without each other. And we now have a huge stock (geddit?) of broth-el jokes to while away the winter evenings.

And now it’s time for number three.

I don’t even know where to start telling you about him. One day he’s going to get married, and there will be a queue of people at the wedding trying to grab the microphone and tell the story about the time when Felix said this, tried that, travelled there, made up that song, told that joke, forgot the really important thing and remembered the stupid one, and so on. And we probably ought to leave most of those stories for now, but just as a taster, in case you’re thinking about whether to RSVP to his wedding invite in 2028:

  • This is the boy who, age 3, almost drowned, jumping into a swimming pool to retrieve his toy polar bear. I asked him about this recently and he said he had a very clear memory of jumping in, and realising before he hit the water that he’d no idea how to swim.
  • This is the boy who would wander about so aimlessly (he once went walkabout with a friend when we were walking in the country, and got returned to us by a guy holding a shotgun, whose shoot he’d interrupted) that we started dressing him in a bright red duffle coat so we could spot him in the crowd. He spent most of years 4-8 looking like a still from Schindler’s List.
  • This is the boy who saw a friend walking past the house, and knocked on the window in his bedroom so enthusiastically that he put his arm through the glass, cutting a artery in the process, and spent the rest of the day in A&E, having generously decorated the bathroom red beforehand. All of this was on Mother’s day, which we will celebrate forever more at Emu Towers by watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
  • This is the boy, who, on a school cycling trip to Holland, managed, within 24 hours, to badly damage his bike within the first mile using only a lunch box and a bungee, get stuck up a tree, and burn his armpits with some dodgy deodorant.
  • This is the boy who can learn every song lyric on a single listen, and who can then sing it back, pitch perfect. Who can gatecrash his father’s gig and belt out the songs far better than his old man. Who can steal the show in front of pretty much any size audience, even if he does choose musical theatre as his preferred medium (I’ve still to come to terms with that).
  • This is the boy whose life was pulled apart when some toerag stole his facebook id, and posted really abusive messages to all of his friends. And because we all assumed that said toerag was one of his ‘friends’, he was the boy who walked to school on his own for the next year, who stopped going out in the evening, who changed schools so that he could distance himself from the scene of the crime, who made a whole new bunch of friends who he knew he could trust, and who did so with far more maturity that we could have ever expected.
  • This is the boy who took £20 into town to buy some stationary for school, got £18 change, and, on the way back gave it all to a homeless man who needed it more than he did.

He’s just a lovely, smart, funny, awkward, charming, beautiful kid. Obviously he’s our kid, so he’s lovelier, smarter, funnier and more awkward, charming and beautiful than any other child that’s ever been born, so it’s always going to be hard work to say goodbye. But we’re old hands at this now, we give him a note that tells him how much we love him, say goodbye and touch his face for the last time before Christmas, then step away before anyone sees any actual tears.

 

Then, like all the other parents dropping their kids off this weekend, we spend the journey home talking about all the things that make them special, and all the differences that there’ll be now that there’s an extra bed in the house, less noise to contend with, and a weekly shop that actually lasts past Tuesday.

 

And in a few days time we’ll see him on a screen on Skype and we’ll talk about little things until the screen freezes and you know it’s not going to come back but you still have the image of his face and you just put your hand out to touch the glass. And, several hundred miles away you know he’s probably doing the same thing.

 

In our case, we trundle home to two lively dogs, and a 15 year old who is extremely nervous about being repurposed as an only child, with all the direct parenting that that entails. We haven’t had a three person family for twenty odd years now, but I’m sure we can remember how to do it. Well, at least until Christmas.

 

 

The (Hi-viz) Cloak of Invisibility

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, I found myself working in an office with a go-getter of a manager, the sort of person who had a clear plan of how his life needed to work out in order for him to feel successful. It was so well planned, in fact, that he actually had a piece of paper that personal development coaches would drool over: degree from first class university, management trainee role, directorship role by age 30, partnership/owner of agency by 35, etc etc. It was so ambitious, that I think by the time he was 50 he was planning to be leader of the free world. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn’t got there yet (I just checked on Linkedin), but then again I don’t think he’s hit 50 yet either, so who knows.

I mention this because in the context of such an organised plan for life, the rest of us might have a bit more of a haphazard approach to where we end up spending our working time. I can’t remember, for example, the last time I ever looked at a job, and applied for it, thinking it would help me along a particular axis of achievement. What’s happened in my life so far has been a process of take on a job, do it for a while, and just as I’m getting bored, or incompetent, or both, someone kindly comes along and offers me something more interesting.

Which is what happened about a year ago. After spending most of my working days in a corporate office environment, it was time for a break, and I left, with no particular plans for the future. Pretty much as the door was closing behind me, I got a call from my (soon to be ex) boss, who was thinking about writing an autobiography, and was after some assistance with fact checking, editing, proofing and all the sorts of things that you need to do in order to get a book published. Which, incidentally, neither of us had a clue about. Seventy shades of fun ensued, getting familiar with all manner of new ways of working, getting a reader ticket to the British Library, spending hours looking through microfiche in dusty basements, speaking to incredibly bright and interesting people who thought little of talking to me between celebrity cookery shoots and the lost archives of PG Wodehouse, and finally holding a finished product in my hot and sweaty hand. Hot and sweaty, largely because I collected it directly off the press, which was a thirty mile cycle ride away.

Then, only a few hours after the hangover of the launch party had cleared, I got a phone call – a friend of a friend was running a construction project, and needed a bit of assistance organising stuff, making sure documentation hung together, and generally to keep him on the straight and narrow. (This, incidentally, is a more detailed job description than anything I’ve received since taking the job on. The benchmark for my continued employment is in line with the only two questions actually asked at my interview – ‘Are you reasonably organised?’ – ‘Yes’ and ‘Are you going to wind everyone up because you’re a complete arsehole?’ – ‘No’). So I said yes, on the condition that at any point (possibly when yes and no above got reversed), we could shake hands, I could walk off the site without having my lunchbox filled with mortar, and go back to wearing a suit and going to meetings for a living.

Anyway, the first couple of weeks went pretty well, so did the first couple of months and before I know it, I’m actually really enjoying myself, learning a ton of new stuff, meeting completely brilliant people, and being part of something that builds something really tangible, that people will enjoy living and working in. And there are bucketloads of lessons to be learnt in both directions between the people who put buildings in the air and people who (say) run projects in corporate environments. There’s stuff about governance, control, project management, people management, partners and suppliers that’s just itching to be written down…but that’s for a future blog. Because this one is about something really specific about working on a building site, that hit me in the face within hours of starting.

When you work on a site, you’re issued with, according to your health and safety rules, personal protective equipment, or PPE. This means you are supposed to wear, at all times, steel toecap boots, a high visibility vest, and a hard hat, plus all sorts of other exciting stuff like ear defenders, gloves, goggles, masks and harnesses, depending on the work you’re supposed to be carrying out, or if you’re headed for the Thursday Fetish night at the Loft (handily positioned just round the corner from our site).

And because you put this stuff on in the morning, if you leave the site, to get some milk or get some plans printed, or top up the unnerving amount of loo roll that seems to be being used up on a daily basis, you keep it on. So as you’re wandering along a street, humming gently to yourself, saying hello to someone you vaguely know, smiling benignly at young parents with difficult toddlers, holding the door open for somebody coming out of a shop, and…. Nothing. Absolutely nothing happens.  You wear boots and a high viz jacket, and the world will summarily ignore you. The security experts of the world call this ‘hiding in clear site’, and apparently it’s all the rage if you want to bypass checks at festivals, nick equipment from offices or get up to any other sort of activity where no-one will look at you. Which is all very well, but a bit odd when you’re not used to it happening.

A couple of weeks after I started on the site, I was buying a coffee from the cafe nearby, actually in the process of handing over the money and getting my change, when a woman pushed right in front of me and ordered a ‘skinny soy latte to go and could you please hurry as I’ve got a terribly important meeting’. I genuinely had to reach around her to get my change; I can’t believe she didn’t see me there, but clearly I didn’t matter in the great skinny soy latte scheme of things. A few days later, I had to go to a meeting, and was wearing a suit – I went to the same cafe, got the same coffee, had a similar pleasant chat, and turned to see an orderly queue formed behind me.

A month or so later, I was walking into town, and saw a friend I’d not seen for about a year. We were walking towards each other, I threw my arms out, and this is what happened:

  • she saw a bloke in a high viz jacket heading towards her with his arms outstretched
  • she noticeably flinched, and swerved slightly to her left to avoid contact
  • noticing that this hadn’t deterred the bloke, she forced herself to look up at his face
  • thankfully she recognised bloke and swerved back into position

And I think that’s pretty much what happens all the time. People see the high viz jacket (it is, after all, doing a fairly good job in drawing the eye). As soon as they do, there’s a negative reaction that, at best, might be ‘this person doesn’t matter to me’. So they look straight past, possibly scanning the horizon for stuff that does actually matter.

All of which is a bit of a shame. Hiding in clear sight may be quite the thing for today’s modern criminal, but it’s very disappointing when it interferes with the morning coffee run.

Next time – why everything you’ve ever learnt about project management is wrong. Or something like that.

I’m just popping out to get coffee.

If you see me, don’t forget to wave.

Like that’s going to happen.

 

 

 

 

Adventures on Two Wheels – Lille to Paris – Part 5

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

We had a couple of refreshing cold drinks in the big square in Châlons-en-Champagne, grabbed something to eat, wandered back to the hotel, without the need for the detailed map, and slept the sleep of Kings. After each eating our body-weight in breakfast the next morning, we started pedaling off in the general direction of Crépy-en-Valois, which would allow us to drop down into Paris the next day.

On paper, this was a pretty straightforward East to West jaunt of about 90 miles, and luckily, Mrs Google Maps agreed. We had a dream of a start, beautiful weather, light tailwind and a great route next to a canal, weaving in and out of Sunday cyclists. Naturally enough, Mrs Google Maps only really allowed us to enjoy this for a couple of miles, before insisting that we cut across the map without actually using a road. Perhaps knowing that she was on her last chance, Mrs GM played an absolute blinder, luring us along a perfectly reasonable track until it was too late to turn back, then shoving us up a one in four hill made entirely of flints the size of your fist.

‘What better place for our first puncture’, I thought to myself, just after CB#2 announced that he’d punctured, and just before Bean told us that we had another 3km of this before we were likely to see any tarmac again.

CB#2 has many of the physical features of the Incredible Hulk, and pretty much the same sense of social grace. One of the reasons he’s such good value on these trips is because he can fix most things without the need for any tools. His fist operates as a reasonable lump hammer, and he can tighten most nuts without a spanner, not to mention whip off a tyre and tube without anything as fiddly as a lever. So at least his tyre was fixed fairly quickly. I was expecting a bit more rage when his rear rack snapped off after some more stupid off road riding, but he was quite relaxed, almost philosophical. Strapping up the remaining rack (to take home for repairs or parts, apparently), he decanted some of his luggage into our panniers, leaving him with a fairly heavy bag and no form of support. CB#1 told me that his money was on CB#2 strapping it to his back, and I half expected to see him  gripping it between his teeth, but he took the option of strapping it on top of his handlebar bag, making his bike completely unstable. It didn’t seem to stop him descending at a ridiculous pace, and his bodged luggage arrangement lasted all the way to Paris, so we survived. Which is more than could be said for his luggage rack, which he removed a little while along the route because it was ‘beginning to annoy’ him. To be fair, if I thought I was beginning to annoy CB#2, then I’d probably hide in a ditch in France until he’d gone away as well.

The jettisoning of CB#2’s rack took place just after we’d got to the bottom of the unmade road. Speaking politely, the way up had been what the mountain bikers would call a ‘technical ascent’ which means that you’re lucky if you don’t fall off, and it was followed by a technical descent, which meant that you’re both lucky and surprised if you don’t fall off. When we finally hit some tarmac a bit further down the route, it was like cycling into a mirage, and we vowed, not for the first or last time on this trip, to never be dragged away from the road again.

A few uneventful, if murderously hot miles later, we rolled into Crepy-en-Valois, a town almost famous for its extensive array of industrial zones, which unfortunately was where I’d booked our hotel for the night. There being very little either moving or shaking on an industrial estate of a Sunday evening, we ventured into town, ending up at le bar de l’Europe, where I was despatched, as head of communications, to order four beers. This I duly did, opting for the ‘standard’ option. Three beers later, we had not only established that Troll ‘standard’ lager is a thirst quenching 7%, but we’d also established a generous entente cordiale with our fellow drinkers, most notably an Algerian man called Muss, who told us that the new French president was a moron, and that Trump was a puppet to money and oil. Or at least, that’s what I think he was saying, we were both beginning to slur a bit. We both made valiant efforts to involve the non-English and non French speaking parts of the bar together, and managed to find a game which I’d recommend to anyone in a similar predicament. Basically, all you have to do, is remember the French (or English) that you were taught when you were at school, and try to have a conversation in both languages. It doesn’t need to make sense, and works better when you’ve had a couple of refreshing Trolls and work really hard on your accent. The sort of snippet you might have heard as you were walking past the bar de l’Europe might have been:

Drunk French Person: “The sky is blue”

Drunk English Person ‘Ici le Professeur”

DFP: “I have forgotten my umbrella”

DEP “Jean-Paul lance le ballon”

Then Muss bought us all another beer, and things went a little downhill. I have vague memories of steering my bike at a reasonable pace down a one way street, eating pizza and then following a mystery route back to the industrial estate, but it’s all a bit cloudy.

The next morning, we had the sort of breakfast that you’d expect from a dodgy hotel in the middle of an industrial estate on a Monday morning, and got away as soon as we could. At a relatively sober part of the evening before, Muss had insisted that we find the Canal d’Orque and go along that into Paris, and we’d agreed to do just that. And, given that a promise made is a promise kept, we tried our best to find the canal, and to our surprise, Mrs GM actually helped us to do so without dragging us across seven shades of off-road hell.

All of which was pretty good, although by the time we got to Paris Gare de Nord we’d had the sort of city riding experience that we all hate, so it was a relief to get to the station without being knocked about by cars, vans, trucks or pedestrians. Got the bikes on the train, got back to London, and back home in time for all the family to coo over my injuries in a curious style. My youngest son took a number of detailed photographs, and I asked him why – he said that he just needed to show some people. Mrs E made a trip to the 24 hour chemist, and stocked up on dressings for the week, thereby showing a care for her husband that he didn’t really deserve, given that he’d selfishly buzzed off without her for for five days.

I’m writing this last part about 3 weeks after we actually got back, and we’re a week into the Tour de France, where they have faster crashes than ours on a daily basis, and often just get up, change their bike and get treated by the team car while they’re riding back to the peleton…..

t.co/utVt8L03Dd

Which is a bit frustrating, as one of the injuries that I got, on my hip, is still steadfastly refusing to heal. Unfortunately, given its position, the only way I can let it get any air to dry out is by walking around the house in an outfit not a million miles from a Borat mankini. So if you’re planning to pop round any time in the next few days, please make sure you phone first.

troll

Adventures on two wheels – Lille to Paris – part three

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

We attempted an early exit from La Louviere; largely as we were keen to avoid any untoward geriatric female attention, although I assured the team that at 7 in morning, anyone we met would at least be fairly sober. As we grabbed a quick breakfast in the hotel, however, there was a surprising amount of activity, the pinball machine was rattling away in a fog of cigarette smoke, and everyone in the bar seemed to be nursing the first beer of the day. No sign of Very Mary though, which was a relief to CB#1.

We escaped, and started heading South, following directions from our trusty google maps service. Unfortunately GM had more tricks up her sleeve today (Bean by now had started referring to GM as ‘she’ because of the satnav voice, and was beginning to have something of a tempestuous relationship with her), and we ended up being directed to a grass track, which took us past the awesomeness of the Strépy-Thieu boat-lift and then onto a mud track that was impossible to ride.

ascenceur_strepy

After the customary swear-fest, we dragged the bikes through the mud and forest and found a road, which we managed to stay on as far as Chimay. I only knew Chimay through the beer, which has a fearsome reputation (it varies between 7% and 9% alcohol content), and is brewed by Trappist monks. I think if I was employed for any length of time in producing and tasting this beer, I’d probably lose the power of rational speech, so it probably works quite well all round.

We didn’t see much of Chimay other than to have a fairly civilised lunch, as we just wanted to get this one out of the way. Bean and I were both feeling a bit fragile, and although we were both ok to ride, I had a horrible shooting pain in my left arm every time we hit any sort of a bump. So imagine my delight when we hit a section of cobbles that lasted for 3 miles. ‘You’ll always get cobbles in Belgium’, said CB#2, helpfully.

If you know you’re cycling and your geography, you’ll know that we were fairly close to the Paris-Roubaix route – this is a bike race, charmingly known as the ‘Hell of the North’, which has been run every year since 1896. It’s known as one of cycling’s toughest races, the course is 260km and normally has over 50km of cobbles. I was whining about 5km of cobbles, but the Paris to Roubaix riders are doing ten times that, and they’re racing at 25mph plus, in groups, often with the cobbles wet (the race is in April), making it even more perilous.

So complaining about the cobbles seemed a bit churlish, As did complaining about the whole pain thing. We were in Southern Belgium by now, just above the Ardennes, and quite a few times we’d get to the top of a climb, look to our side, and see hundreds and hundreds of war graves. These weren’t the big American and Allied cemeteries that are more in the North of the country and closer to Ardennes, they were more the local ones for French and Belgian soldiers whose bodies were repatriated – but the numbers were still pretty astonishing, especially for such a rural area. CB#1 reckoned that any one of those soldiers would have loved to be doing what we were doing, which was both a charming and a grounding thought, so with that in mind, we carried on pedaling and I ignored the small hammer banging the nail into my elbow every time we hit a bump.

About 80 miles all told, and we ended up in Charleville-Mézières, birthplace of the poet Arthur Rimbaud, and home to a Soviet themed hotel and, as far as we could make out, no pharmacies. On the plus side, a skip and a jump from our gulag was the Place Ducale, which struck us as an excellent place to visit, drink a Rimbaud themed beer, eat mussels and be treated to a free concert from a Belgian heavy rock band. Four things there, very much in descending order of enjoyment.

We kept going South, the next day, rolling into the champagne region, and towards Châlons-en-Champagne. Bean was just on the point of divorcing Mrs Google Maps by now, so we pretty much did the opposite of everything she suggested, and stayed on the roads.   Rolling was the right word for our travel – if you’d taken a knife through the route we took South, and looked at the cross section it would have looked like a corrugated roof. This made for fairly easy, if slightly monotonous cycling, and we decided to fox Mrs GM by taking a main road for the last 20 miles. Cyclng in the gutter of a main road is a challenge anywhere, it’s worse with crosswinds, and much worse with cars and lorries that seem to see you as a target rather than a fellow traveller. On the stretch we took, it was pretty busy, but we were mostly given a reasonable amount of space, and only got buzzed once (predictably by a hot-hatch full of yoofs) – it would have been a far worse experience in the UK.

Anyway, we got to Châlons-en-Champagne without incident, and then went out again, dutifully following directions to our hotel, which was not only in a different part of town, but also in a different part of the space-time continuum…

 

 

Adventures on two wheels – Lille to Paris – part two

~ kevinrevell ~ 1 Comment

I didn’t see the bump on the path; it was where the tarmac changed to concrete slab, and I would probably have gone over a similar bump a thousand times without any problems.

However, this time, my front wheel had a pretty severe reaction, and popped up violently into the air, probably helped by all the weight on the back wheel. It shot up so sharply that it threw the handlebars out of my hands, and by the time I’d managed to grab them back, the wheel had twisted to one side, and the bike, and me, went over. As the handlebars whizzed up again, I caught sight of my watch, which I remember was reading a very healthy 22 mph. I was fairly pleased with this, but as you can imagine, I had very little chance to congratulate myself before I hit the ground. In fairly rapid succession, I landed on head, hip, elbow, fist and shoulder, and came to rest quite a bit further down the road. I’d seen everything happen in slow-mo, as you do, and as I slid to a halt, I was looking behind me. Rather worryingly, I could see Bean’s front wheel bearing down on me, so I decided I’d be better off with my eyes closed. I waited for the next crash, which, surprisingly, wasn’t with my face.

Bean, with alert reactions that would have been impressive for someone a third of his age, had managed to swerve to avoid me completely. However, he didn’t have a great deal of time to celebrate, as his front wheel then hit a water bottle that had been thrown out of my bike, and he went over as well.

All was quiet, and thankfully, the Chuckle Brothers, who had been cycling a few yards behind, managed to avoid the carnage, and took a victim each.  I don’t remember a massive amount about the next few minutes, other than checking that I could still move everything,  managing to stand up, and noticing quite a bit of blood spilling out of the back of my elbow. With CB#1 taking charge, we used a water bottle to clean up, and some alcohol to clean the wound, which reminded me what pain could really be like. Steristrips were improvised from CB#2’s tape – I’m not sure if these came from a first aid kit or a tool kit, and I didn’t really care. CB#2 had a couple of bandages and dressings which we used to patch up the bits that were bleeding most.

We didn’t have much option but to get pedaling, in the hope that La Louviere would boast some sort of state of the art walk in medical centre with on-site pharmacy and, ideally, a 24 hour on call cycle mechanic. As the next twenty miles dragged by, I’d got it into my head that, at the very least, the hotel would have some sort of first aid kit, and as we rolled gently into town, I’d already rehearsed all of my lines for the conversation with reception.

Unfortunately, those lines never really got used – the hotel that we checked in to had a receptionist who was not really that interested in taking in guests, never mind giving any sort of medical help, although she did look up the nearest pharmacy that would be open. Unfortunately this was 5 miles away, and by the time we got there it would have been shut. I asked if there was somewhere nearer , and got a very impressive gallic shrug.

Fortunately, help was at hand, in the form of Mary. Let’s call her Very Mary for the sake of this narrative. She was very old, and wore a dress that would have suited her better when she was very young. She was very ebullient, and was attached to a very small dog. And she was very, very drunk. Mary had heard the conversation about the chemist, and offered to help. Asking someone to gardez her chien, she set off on foot to find a chemist, which I thought was quite courageous, but then realised she’d just popped round the corner, to see if knocking loudly on the local chemist’s door might persuade them to adjust their opening hours. She returned a few minutes later, and said ‘merde’ a few times while executing today’s second perfect gallic shrug.

We decided to have a beer, partly in the hope that it might deaden the pain a bit. As chief communications officer, I was dispatched to order the beer, so back into the hotel I went, where behind me, my left arm started to cause quite a commotion. Unfortunately, the makeshift bandage had failed to stem the bleeding, and I was merrily chucking blood out all over the barroom floor. This stirred Very Mary into both temper and action, and shouting ‘merde’ again a few more times, she shot out of the bar, around the corner to the chemist, to see if banging more loudly on the door would be more effective. Apparently it wasn’t, and she returned, crestfallen, a few minutes later, inexplicably carrying half a dozen eggs. We had a further conversation, involving more merde/shrugging, and Very Mary concluded that this was simply not how visitors to Belgium should be feeling. She then announced that she was going to go home, and raced (in a fairly uncoordinated style), out of the bar, leaving behind her dog, her eggs, and a faint smell of Pernod.

We decided to wait for Very Mary, although there really wasn’t any clue as to when, or whether, she would return. But one beer and 30 minutes later, she appeared again, with a large paper bag, which turned out to contain a variety of gauzes, pads and bandages. As it turned out, this was exactly what we needed, and I don’t think we could have been more grateful. We bought Mary a beer to say thanks, and unfortunately she seemed to interpret this as a bit of a come-on, also encouraged by us telling her that it was CB#1’s birthday. CB#1 is very much the eye-candy of the four of us (although he doesn’t have much in the way of competition) and it all started to get a bit uncomfortable, as we had a number of lines from anniversary songs, followed by the sort of ‘Grrrr’ animal noises that you might hear in an Austin Powers film, and finally some whispered exchanges between Very Mary and her friend, who, like many of the people we were beginning to meet, seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. If you can imagine someone with the face of Freddie Starr, the skin colour of Dale Winton, the body of HM the Queen, and the dress sense of Madonna c1990, you’ll get a general idea of what Very Mary’s friend looked like.

All this was getting a bit intimidating, so I explained in French to Very Mary and her friend that I needed to take a shower. Their bloodshot eyes seem to light up for a moment as they nudged each other, and I had to explain that this was in order to sort out my wounds, and not an open invitation. Then I explained my plans in English to CB#1, who immediately responded that there was no way that he was being left in the bar with those two. Fortunately, I don’t think Very Mary was paying attention, otherwise she might have taken offence.

I hope this doesn’t come across as ungrateful. I’m incredibly thankful that a complete stranger in a strange town took pity on a wounded idiot. And I do wonder, had that been Belgian cyclists wandering into an English hotel, whether they’d have had anything, or anyone, like this as a rescue.

Bean and myself shared out gauzes and bandages between us and got patched up. We even managed to get something to eat. Not a very auspicious start to five days of relaxed cycling, and we were full of trepidation for the miles ahead. As it turned out, we were right to be concerned…

Steady on, Now’s Your Chance!

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

I met my friend P in town a few weeks ago. We talked backwards and forwards, as you do, and before long got on to the subject, as middle aged men are prone to do, of football.

‘I’m fed up with it all’, said Pete.

‘Ranieri being sacked just says it all – it’s not sport any more. I’m not going to bother watching any more.’

Me and P’s wife nodded sagely – this was, after all, the man who had sat at the Barclay End of Carrow Road week on week for as long as I’ve known him.

While I do get where he’s coming from, I think he should give it another chance. Because, in this very amateur fan’s opinion, there’s still a few opportunities to get a bit out of sport, and, oddly, you could do worse than renewing your season ticket for the Canaries next season.

For those of you not from round these parts, it’s worth having a bit of a reprise of Norwich City’s fortunes over the last few years. Never really able to play the confident lead at the top end of football’s premier leagues, Norwich have tended to be pretty confident when they’re in Division One (which, if you’re really not from round here, is effectively division two), and fairly well under the cosh when they’re in the premier league (which is, of course, division one). The see-sawing at Carrow Road over the years has meant that they hold the fairly dubious record of being the club most often relegated from the premier league.

You’d kind of expect there to be a Duke of York ‘when they were up, they were up’ element to supporting the Canaries, but in reality, it’s not quite like that. When they were up, there was a bit of a feeling of doom about the place, as a succession of very well paid opposition journeymen, masquerading as team players, would hike up the A11, generally take the mickey out of our woeful defence for 90 minutes, and then, Louis Vuitton washbags in hand, whizz back for a cheeky night out at China White’s, or wherever it is that someone on £50k a week can relax of an evening. On the plus side, I could cycle to a premiership game from my house, and watch some of the best sides in Europe ply their trade, and still be home in time to listen to ‘Canary Call’, cup of tea in one hand, top part of my head in the other.

If you’ve never listened to Canary Call, I can’t recommend it highly enough. On one side of the conversation there is a Radio Norfolk presenter, who redefines the word hapless, teamed with an Special Guest who has been watching the game, possibly with the same tea/hand/head/hand positioning as I mentioned earlier. At the other end of the conversation will be a caller with an accent so strong that it’s been passed down through the generations from the medieval burghers of Swaffham, or Watton, or Sheringham, without any change whatsoever. Very hard to reproduce here, but I’ll try to give you a sense of the sort of call that you might well hear:

Hapless Presenter: “Well, on line three[1] we have Arthur, from Swaffham, and I believe Arthur has some thoughts on City’s back four this season?”

Arthur from Swaffham: “Ahh burt hare bor, hev you now bin hairin may?”

(slight pause for translation)

HP: “Yes, we can hear you Arthur, go ahead”

AfS: “Well bor, that hent roight and oil say tha tyor fess and wun gret nod won wud. Tha back forrrr, I min well I hint nev sin thar sor farssin an fussin since tha wally Roeder cim dan an fule us awl.”

HP: “Strong words, Arthur, strong words…”

Keen listeners will note that Arthur from Swaffham (or his equivalent) will call and make this point on any given occasion – I have heard similar calls on the back of both heavy defeats and heroic victories, and such is the way of the Canary Caller.

Meanwhile, the Canary Call Special Guest will hope against hope that they’ll not be brought into such a lively debate, in the knowledge that sentence starters like ‘The manager can only do so much with the hand he’s dealt, but…’ and ‘I don’t normally criticise the ref, but’ will get him through an even more agonising 90 minutes than the one they’ve just watched.

The CCSG will fall into one of two camps – they’ll either be a fans’ favourite (in which case the acid test will be whether they can correctly pronounce the caller’s town of origin – Wymondham, Corpusty, Costessey callers can keep them on their toes), or a desperate last minute guest brought in through some odd connection with the club, like being second cousin of last year’s kit man, or physio, or goalkeeper (of course, round these parts, many people can tick all three boxes, tee hee).

Sometimes, with a fan’s favourite, the call will drift suddenly away from this week’s glorious victory/embarrassing defeat/turgid draw into a weird world where a caller will phone in to demand that the CCSG recalls the time that they met: ‘I bumped into you in 1993 in the Ten Bells, you were a proper gent, and I’ve never forgotten that’. I heard a call last year where Brenda from Norwich[2] called Rob Newman,[3]  purely to mention that she’d always been a keen admirer of his thighs. In many phone-ins it’s hard to close the call down, but this was a work of beauty, as Brenda’s voice, just gently, breathlessly, drifted away, and you could just imagine the two men in the studio, unsure of the next step, while all of us listeners just listened to the dead time in wonder.

And there’s something quite attractive to me as a football fan to be amongst this sort of slightly surreal cynicism. If, after a home game, I find myself up the city[4] and I don’t know the score, I’ll try to work out from the expression of the fans which way the game has gone. I have never, ever been able to tell. And against that backdrop, you have a club that consistently punches above its weight in characters. Right from the top, where the blessed Delia will attend each home game in her trademark scarf, appearing occasionally in front of a camera at half time to deny her accusers of being drunk in charge of a football club, then, in the second half, give a little regal hand up to the Barclay End, who, bored with the football, are chorusing ‘Delia, Delia give us a wave’. It’s not a million miles from Noel Coward in ‘The Italian Job’. Ed Balls is still hanging around in the boardroom, and Stephen Fry was recently appointed, then unappointed as a Director, presumably as he found out it was about the only thing in life that he wasn’t really good at. I can’t think of a business with such a set of directors who are as, well, eclectic, as the ones at Carrow Road.

On the pitch, there are, actual and real personalities, who have largely escaped the new boss’s recent decide to cull the squad in order to pay the bills next year. Wes Hoolihan is an Irish midfielder who must be fed up with every journalistic description of him being ‘diminutive’. But I can really imagine when he was a kid, just being really, really good at football, deciding to do it for a living, and the fact that he only really just exceeded jump-jockey height not really bothering him. At the other end of the scale, Mitchell Dijks is a 6’ 4” left back, who is incredibly fast, particularly once he’s worked up a bit of a gallop. Because he’s so big, any normal sized opponent coming in to tackle him just spins off like a spanner being thrown into a threshing machine. Referees aren’t really used to this sort of scenario, and most of the time he seems to get away with the fact that his flailing limbs are sending other players flying, sometimes, quite some distance. The Murphy twins (Jacob and Joshua, which has made for a challenge on both the replica and real kit front) are 22, both pretty quick on their feet, and, on their day, both capable of what MotD punters would call ‘something special’. They’ve been with the youth team at Norwich since they were about 3 years old, carefully protected until they’ve been deemed ready to play with the big boys. They’re also reasonably interchangeable and will never both start the game, so, apart from anything else, this allows for a bit of sibling rivalry where Jacob, for example, will score a fabulous strike from about 30 yards out, and Joshua, warming up on the sideline, will reluctantly applaud, in the knowledge that he’s not going on in this game and probably not going to start the next.

There’s more, and the point of this is not to go through the whole of the team, more to give a bit of a flavour as to why they’re actually, win or lose, quite entertaining to watch, because there’s a bit of character on display.

And as long as the characters keep playing, as long as the non-playing staff continue to amuse, and as long as all the supporters continue to fork out to watch each game with a sort of suppressed passion that displays itself as complete indifference, and as long as I can enjoy Canary Call for all the wrong reasons….I’ll keep going.

OTBC! As they say round these parts.

 

[1] ‘Line three’ is stretching it a bit. This is Radio Norfolk, where you’re doing well to have a single phone line functioning. During a very brief spell that I spent aiding and abetting at Radio Norfolk, we’d have regular phone ins, and it took me ages to figure out why my friend Vince would say ‘the lines are really hot at the moment, so if you don’t get through, do keep trying’, while, the other side of a glass partition, the temp that he’d brought in to man the phones would just shrug her shoulders at us until, eventually, a light would come on to signal a call. Which was often a wrong number. Happy times.

[2] Not her real name

[3] Or his, possibly

[4] People in Norwich do not go ‘in to’ places, they go ‘up’ them at all times. They also go ‘Up Asda’, for example rather than ‘to’. I think it makes it more of an event….

 

Acceptable wisdom

~ kevinrevell ~ Leave a comment

Apologies for the slight delay in missives from Emu Towers, there has been a stellar amount of stuff going on. One day, I must write it up…

And one of those things has been happening many miles away from home, and has necessitated a solo drive across country lasting the sharp end of seven hours. I don’t like driving at the best of times, and I’m reasonably happy, in a very non alpha-male way, to admit that I’m not very good at it. I find it very easy to be distracted or go to sleep on any form of transport, and unfortunately that seems to extend to when I’m in charge of the vehicle. Frankly, the only reason I don’t go to sleep when I’m riding my bike is because I need to keep pedalling. God knows what I’d get up to if I ever got on one of those electric things.

Anyway, ahead of such an onerous journey, I dose myself up with half a gallon of coffee, pack some bananas, set the satnav, and wave goodbye to my loved ones, who are a bit too ready with the ‘please let us know when you get there’ messages. After all, they’ve all been traumatised by journeys when I’ve gallantly taken the wheel, for example, when we had to drive for about ten hours from Norwich to the Loire Valley, and I started the driving, only to pull into a layby outside Thetford, claiming ‘extreme fatigue’. If you’re unaware of that particular geography, Thetford is about 30 miles from Norwich.

Nonetheless, off I set, and had on the passenger seat the hidden weapon in my staying awake plan, ie a phone full of podcasts. I love a podcast, me. I love comedy stuff, business stuff, drama stuff, and really anything that I can get my hands on, so all the way from the A11 to the A38 I was entertained, and, more importantly, kept awake, by The Bugle, This American Life, Crime In Sports, Witness, Danny Baker, S-Town, Freakonomics and Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, all of which I heartily recommend.

And it was on Tell Me Something I Don’t Know, a show dedicated to telling people stuff they don’t know (funnily enough) that I heard something that I didn’t know. And it started with the question ‘Why do American drivers drive on the right, and drivers in Britain drive on the left?’ Other than the smart-arse answer of ‘If they didn’t then they’d crash horribly’, the real answer was brilliant and, given I tend to believe most things I hear on that programme, reasonably believable.

When roads started to be organised in Britain, apparently, it was a time of pedestrians and horses, and, when you passed a fellow pedestrian or horse rider on the road, it was important to show that you presented no threat. Given that most people were/are right handed, if your right hand didn’t have a sword or a dagger in it, then it was a fairly safe bet that you’d pass by with a cheery hello. Or possibly ‘Hail, Good Fellow’ if you were in the home counties. Incidentally, this is probably the same reason that a handshake is with the right hand, in that it would be hard(ish) to shake hands and simultaneously stab your new acquaintance with your dodgy hand.

When roads were introduced in the States, a few decades later, times had moved on, and most of the travelling was done by carriage, and, apparently, what you really need to speed your carriage along is a whip, which, naturally would be held in the right hand. And in order to be nearer the centre of the road but still allow passage, and enthusiastic use of the whip, the driver would sit to the left of the horse.

So there you are. One great nation drives on the left to avoid the more obvious opportunities of being stabbed, and the other drives on the right in order to continue a tradition of animal cruelty. So much has changed in our cultures, no?

The point of telling this story was to demonstrate, that, as times change, so do the standards, or accepted wisdom that we all follow. And in my little car, pootling along London’s bustling North Orbital, at a healthy 15 mph, I wondered if we should apply that sort of thinking a bit more in other parts of our lives.

Take elections, for example. The keen eyed of you will have noticed that we seem to be living in a time of frequent elections and electioneering, with each event being described as critical to our future, and, when the result goes the wrong way, catastrophic for the world at large.

Notwithstanding results, I wonder whether we should be taking a bit of a gander at how this electioneering process takes place – we have a system in place in the UK that seems roughly in line with practices of the 19th century at best, and I can’t help feeling we could be, well, driving on the other side of the road if we moved on a bit. Here are three ideas that I reckon would be worth thinking about:

1, Licence MPs.

If you’re employing a doctor, a dentist, a teacher, a lawyer or any other profession, you’d check their professional credentials. When you got them to the point of employment, you’d offer them a job subject to some sort of due diligence – credit checks, acceptable references etc. In my old corporate world, you’d also run regular vetting during the course of their employment, and sling them out if they went awry. To the best of my knowledge, which I accept may be flawed, there are no such checks in place for MPs, and the selection approach is actually not a million miles away from that of the 1700’s. Really, pretty much anyone can stand as a member of parliament and, if they have some sort of backing of their party, stand as a candidate and become a key part of the decision making process running the country. I know that the line of sight from ‘I’d quite like to be an MP’ to ‘I am currently minister for defence’ isn’t quite as clear as that, but I’d really like to know that the person that I’m voting for is actually qualified in the same way as the pilot that takes me up in a plane, or the doctor who looks in my mouth or the mechanic who fixes the brakes on my car. My last but one MP, who I’m pretty sure had no relevant qualification or experience, campaigned on zero tuition fees, got into parliament, abstained on that particular crucial vote, and went on to be about as effective as an MP as a damp piece of lettuce. In fact, I think of him whenever I see a damp piece of lettuce, although sometimes I need to pour quite a bit more more water on to get a really good comparison.

2. Licence voters

After the Brexit vote, there was quite a lot of noise made about getting what you deserve by giving a vote to people who didn’t understand the issue they were voting on. So, just in the same way that we licence MP’s, we should licence voters. Now, I know that many people have given up a lot for each and every person to have a democratic vote, but I think that was assuming that people would use their vote responsibly. And they don’t. People use their votes to follow a load of nonsense that is now being charmed with the title ‘fake news’ and, importantly, don’t seem to be particularly well informed on different sides of the argument. How about a process where each voter had to acknowledge that they’d understood what they were actually voting for? The point is that while times have moved on apace in many other places, the political system has left the voter stranded with a load of nonsense and attention grabbing misinformation, so they end up voting on the wrong issue anyway. If you don’t believe me, ask a pro-Brexit voter whether their vote was influenced more by immigration than economic sustainability. Maybe there should be some sort of hustings in advance of any election vote, where you actually got to choose between different policies, presented in a clear and differentiated fashion. Maybe we should grab some ideas from those comparison websites that actually put different products next to each other and describe the difference, without needing any biased ad campaigns…

3. Impose a media moratorium

…which brings me on to the media. In the 70’s and 80’s, I remember debate about how influential and biased the media was, and why this was A Very Bad Thing. Since when, very little seems to have stopped the slide. Nowadays, people are far more likely to believe information about (say) conservative policy from reading ill informed tweets about Theresa May, Facebook opinion about immigration and Sky News about, well, just about anything, than they are from some sort of balanced assessment. Many other parts of our world have moved on from this – again, if you look at how we recruit into organisations, the push for anonymity in CV’s to suppress bias over applicants names is a good example. So why not do something similar ahead of an election. Just for 24 hours even, allow nothing to influence the voter except information on policy. Might be a bit boring, but done right could help us all appreciate the value of this fabulous thing that we call democracy.

I think it’s unlikely that these changes will ever take place – if they do, they’re unlikely to happen any time soon in the UK or the US. Which is a shame, as I really can’t help feeling that we’re all driving on the wrong side of the road.

Ever seen an Alien? No, me neither.

~ kevinrevell ~ 2 Comments

Mrs E, by her own admission, is something of an obsessive, particularly where music is concerned. When we first met, she was well into her Talking Heads phase, and, this being 1987, was suitably impressed by my life-size ‘True Stories’ poster that my friend Kevin B had kindly liberated for me from HMV. From there she went to an unparalleled devotion to Natalie Merchant and 10,000 Maniacs, and from there onto what I consider to be a slightly unhealthy obsession with Stuart Murdoch and the twee/tweed Belle & Sebastian.

But before any of that, and weaving a course in amongst it, there was Bowie. Always Bowie, and everything he ever did, with the possible exception of Tin Machine, to which she gave a sensibly wide berth. Before we met, she’d made a pilgrimage to Schöneberg in Berlin, where he’d stayed when he was recording Low, Heroes and Lodger, crossing Checkpoint Charlie to get there. Rather disappointingly, she reported it as reminding her very much of Catford.

When Bowie died, around this time last year, she was understandably devastated. Honestly, when I shuffle off this mortal c., I’d be happy with half the amount of tears and hand-wringing that defined Emu Towers in the weeks after he died. In that time, the stereo pumped out a fairly rigid playlist that was basically the Blackstar album, with anything else interrupted by ‘I’m not really in the mood for this’ or ‘This is nonsense’.

There were a few crumbs of comfort. Listening to Bowie, Bowie, Bowie wasn’t actually that much of a hardship, even though it was pretty much every day of 2016. And Christmas present buying had never been so easy.

Present #1 – ‘The Complete David Bowie” – a completely brilliant book by Nicholas Pegg that charts Bowie’s every song, recording session, gig and very possibly each evening meal from 1958 to 2016.

Present #2 – Two tickets to see ‘Lazarus’, in London’s glittering West End (cf a temporary theatre outside King’s Cross station). If you’re not familiar with Lazarus, it’s a stage show that sort of completes Bowie’s creative career, insofar as it was the very last thing that he worked on – and he got to see it too, in production off Broadway in his last public appearance, a month before he died. It’s the continuation of the story of Thomas Jerome Newton, the anti-hero alien from ‘The Man Who Fell To Earth’ – Bowie’s best (and some would say only decent) film appearance. Because it’s Bowie, it borders into performance art, and because it’s Bowie, there are reinterpretations of his songs, and some new stuff. And (bonus), it stars Michael C Hall, star of the wonderful Dexter series, who is the subject of a minor crush from Mrs E.

Partly as a result of #1 and #2, Mrs E was the happiest of bunnies all over Christmas, and much of our relaxation time in the evenings since has been spent preparing the ground for present #2, listening to the cast recording, tutting quietly over #1 (which she’s reading like a novel, rather than an encyclopaedia), and watching back to back episodes of Dexter. The book runs to 794 pages, and there are eight seasons of Dexter, so this is a pretty big undertaking, for anyone but the most hardened of Bowie fans. And her husband.

When I bought the tickets, it was already a sell-out, but I hunted around and got, at no small expense, two tickets (seats 17 & 18) in row Z, about two thirds of the way back from the stage. When she’d calmed down from opening the tickets, Mrs E did further research on the theatre layout, pronounced the tickets ‘excellent’ but then went onto Amazon and bought a pair of military-grade binoculars, ‘just to be on the safe side’.

The great day came, and we mooched around London, with Mrs E getting steadily more and more excited, and got to the theatre an hour and a quarter before show time. Because you never know when they might call an emergency tube strike, after all.

A cheeky snifter before the show, and we took our places, looking down onto the stage, which already had Michael C Hall on it, laying on his back, playing dead before the first scene.

“Excellent”, pronounced Mrs E, adjusting her binoculars, and checking MCH out for freckles.

The stage was set up with the band set back and up, with a big screen in the centre of the stage. I’ve taken the liberty of sketching it for your edification:
alien-5
With about ten minutes to show time, Seat W 17 was occupied by a large bloke wearing a parka coat with the hood up. Eventually the hood came down, but left a bit of a static halo around his head.

Before I’d adjusted my neck to compensate for the next two hours, the occupant of Seat X 18 arrived. To my surprise, he was sporting a magnificent Afro cut, the sort of thing that you might have seen on Jermaine Jackson, around 1978. Unfortunately there was no equivalent to the ‘removing the parka hood’ option for X 18, but with a readjustment of the neck, I could still just about see Michael C Hall’s feet.

A real bonus, however, was that seats Y 17 and 18, immediately in front me, were empty, and, as the houselights went down, I happily remembered the ticket instructions about no latecomers being admitted.

Unfortunately, someone in the theatre hadn’t read their own rules, because, just as MCH’s feet start moving out of view, some hushed excuses were whispered, and I was presented with the backs of what appears to be two Canadian lumberjacks, just in from felling redwoods, or working out at the gym, or possibly back from the steroid shop. I’m generalising terribly, but these guys were huge, with bull necks, checked shirts and hipster beards, so big that they could barely sit down without being on each other’s laps. As a result, my view suddenly became really quite limited. I’ve taken the liberty of sketching it:
alien-4

Unfortunately, my view stayed pretty much like that for the rest of the show, so I can report very little about MCH’s acting skills, particularly as an awful lot of the play seemed to involve lying down on the stage. There were a few exceptions. At one point, a load of colourful clothes are thrown into the air, and they sailed into view for me just above the first Canadian prop forward’s buzz cut. I felt a bit like a midget watching the hats go into the air on VE Day.

And during ‘Absolute Beginners’, MCH manages to hold his negligee-clad fellow singer up, like a gymnast, flat against the big screen, legs and arms spread out like a star. This was delightfully framed by two bushy beards, but slightly spoiled by the singer’s open mouth and posture looking a bit too much like an inflatable sex toy, which I’m sure wasn’t the look they were going for.

By far the best part of the show however, was in ‘All the Young Dudes’, in which I managed to get an almost unimpeded view of the stage for over a minute and a half. ‘All The Young Dudes’ obviously has a place deep in the heart of your average Shoreditch/Canadian gym-bunny/lumberjack hipster type, as it was the cue for the occupants of Y 17 and 18 to engage in some really enthusiastic necking. No apologies for that rather dated phrase, which you might have last seen on a swimming pool poster, prohibiting necking, petting, smoking and bombing, because Y 17 & 18 were, delightfully for all parties in row Z, neck to neck, kissing and nibbling all through the second and third verse. (Incidentally, I’m going to form a company called Necking, Petting, Smoking and Bombing. It’s going to replace Sue, Grabbit and Run as my ideal Solicitor’s firm. Any lawyers wanting to join my startup, form an orderly queue.)

Anyway, at about the time in the song that Ian Hunter would have cried “I Wanna Hear Ya”, they separated necks, resumed their positions, and, I’m embarrassed to say, both heard me loudly sigh with disappointment.

So, all in all, I may be the wrong person to review this show. There was plenty of reinterpretation being flung about, as you’d expect from anything that Bowie had a hand in, and they stayed more or less true to the lyrics of the songs, which, because no-one really understands them, didn’t really help with the overall narrative.

But the musicianship was great, and a few moments (Life on Mars, being sung by the astonishing Sophie Anne Caruso; Valentine’s Day, sung by Michael Esper, and MCH’s Absolute Beginners for example), were sublime.

And Mrs E wouldn’t have missed it for the world. She’s an addict, after all, and she needed to know that she’d seen it. And she had the distinct advantage of sitting behind a very small and very old man wearing an anorak and a flat cap. (Him, not her, you understand. She’d taken her anorak off by then, tee hee). And she really enjoyed the whole thing, which kind of made her Christmas present worthwhile.

I asked her about what she thought of Michael C Hall on the way home.

“He must have got really tired”, she said, “he was on stage for pretty much the whole show”.

“Was he?” I asked.