The horror the horror

Never get off the boat!

Well, where was I, oh, yes, NEVER GO TO BRITAIN’S HEART OF DARKNESS (the MIDcockingLANDS). I went there for 5 days came home and have been sick ever since :( !

It was all Britain’s leading beer writers fault, he’s writing a new book about Indian pale ale (sorry for sending you to a beer blog they are really strange people aren’t they and so very intense but at least you now know what’s happing underneath all that hair!) and to avoid spending too long in the British library BLBW had the idea to take a barrel (don’t you mean actually a PIN say the hoards of hairy leather flagon wielding beerspods….)of the stuff from Burton on Trent to India by surface (sea) travel to recreate the original 18cth trip. Which is a very long winded reason for why I spent 4 days in a barge going slowly northwards from rugby.
(Sorry for the lack of original pics a pile up between a camera phone and a dodgy lap top etc.)

Messing about in Boats…
On the whole barge trips are good, once you are use to the slow pace. It’s all quiet calming. The countryside from Rugby to Burton is a pleasant mix of fields, woods and edgeland (the limits of suburbia, Brownfield sites. slag heaps etc).
The country was turning to autumn, literally one morning the leaves started to fall. Every bush was covered in blackberries, apples or sloes all very mellow and fruitful.
So we had a jolly time.
I do have few gripes/observations: you don’t really want to hear long boring lists of the cheese and beer we consumed or long evocations of the “in jokes” I re-heated over and over with some of my oldest and best friends, do you really.

Observations & Gripes
Narrow boaters are the provisional wing of the camping and caravanning club.
On the face of it full time Bargees are a friendly and jolly bunch. Except they never give an inch, I don’t know if its their old shoulders that doesn’t let stir out of the way but they will happily mow you into a hedge rather than give an inch of water.
Also they all seem to exist in a strangely Daily Mailesque mini world; Victoria Wood once said that caravanning is for “people who can’t bear to more than 10ft from their own dish cloth” but living in narrow boat is this to the very max, plus everything is painted with flowers or is on a doily.
One other strange thing was that almost every other boat we passed had a half life sized knitted Rosie and Jim dolls in the window. Now having watch r& J with my nephews I can’t see what the fuss is about yes it set on narrow boat but it’s a rubbish kid’s show, certainly not anything adults should celebrate. Except and perhaps here’s a thought, that much like pampas grass in 70’s use to signify the homes of “swingers” maybe, just maybe these dolls are code for something…..

Julian Cope tribute gardens
One of the enjoyable and fascinating things about railways and canals is that they are the backdoors of the UK. When they were built we turned our backs on them and in doing so revealed our most private quarters. We all enjoy staring out train windows at the backside of Britain but on the canals you get a longer look due to the slow speed. One of the most interesting things is that contrary to what the colour supplements etc say Britain isn’t garden design mad. If fact out of the several 100 back gardens we glided past, very few looked like they had any over all thought to them at all. Middle England seems to like random borders, scratty grass, plastic patio furniture, broken shoddy concrete steps, horrible blue slate mulch and concrete cocking garden ornaments. The latter I’ve seen in garden centres but wasn’t aware how many people like them. There are more comedy herons, owls and frogs than people in Britain. Also did I turn over two pages at once again and miss the memo about mooning or worse flashing gnomes being funny?
The other thing that was strange was that most of the gardens didn’t seem to refer to the canal at all a few had seats etc next to the water but not many seemed to want to show the canal boaters their best side unlike one imagines their front gardens.
One last thing in about 1-3 to about 1-8 gardens all along our 60 mile journey were afflicted by a strange blue plague; we noticed it first in Tamworth. This contagion comes in the form of garden trampolines; virtually every house with kids had one. This may be old news but it was astonishing how prevalent they are. On slight thing that occurred to me as we passed through Tamworth was that the only thing I know about the place other than something about pigs is that it’s the birth place of Julian Cope who had a hit with a song called …………”trampoline!” May be to celebrate the Arch Drood these are a modern form of earthwork which observed from a projected astral eyed spells “fried” in giant bright blue plastic letters.

Next time: were not to eat in the Midlands and what a 140 year pint tastes like…!

Finest work song?

Heard a new cover version of Abba’s “the day before your came “By the Real Tuesday Weld on a Word magazine cd.Go here to have a listen. It’s very good if very similar to Blancmanges 1983 version. It puts further pay (if you can do that) to the idea that the mighty Swedes where only a jolly party group. The idea of carefully laying out how ordinary a day at work can be and how it passes unnoticed would if it came from Thom Yorke or Mozza be heralded as bold and humanistic, coming from Benny and Bjorn it went unnoticed. Even though “The day before you came” follows in an age old introspective Nordic tradition.

The other reason the song stands out is that unlike most pop and especially rock it shows compassion for and knowledge of the travails of everyday office life. Pop /folk music has loads of songs about farmers, cattle wranglers, fisher men, soldiers, coal miners (and their daughters), factory workers and shop girls. Pop music has always given hope to blue collar workers. But in general the attitude of (usually white collar) rock stars is to sneer at their “trapped” former school mates.

If you looked to British rock hierarchy to see reflections on the life most of their audience lead you will look in vain, with everyone from Blur to Ray Davis, Paul Weller and the Clash being less than complimentary about 40% of the population. This would be more acceptable if most of the writers had ever done a day’s work in their life, with most of them wafting from school (then Art College) to the Wembley Arena without a p45 at any point in between. I know that rock has as one of its basic tenets “sticking it to the man” but it rarely shows compassion to any of the cogs in the machine it’s raging against. The Clash didn’t want to “open and letter bombs for you” but t’old Joe and the boys were quite happy take a few quid out of the rest of the mail room’s pay packet for a load of toss like Sandinista. I also know that 99 pence in the d tax levels in the 60’s might have pissed off newly rich rock stars (George Harrison) but ST Bono has lead the way to tax havens, so maybe they could write a song about the skills of the accountants and even god forbid lawyers.

It might however be along time before Van Morrison in particular sings the praises of anyone back in the office but maybe if he’d been nicer to the “suits” they’d have gone the extra mile for him?

The only good examples of office work songs I can think of are from the Blessed Dolly (9 to 5) and surprisingly Cat Stevens with “Mathew and sons”. Here’s the Delgado’s peel session cover of it from their excellent compilation.

Does anyone else have any suggestions?
UPDATE 13 SEPT
Thanks to everyone for your comments, hello to Bright Ambassdor.Sorry I haven't got back early I went on holiday by mistake and now have flu. As for your suggestion I think they prove rather than disprove my point, are we sure the girl in manic monday works in office? Also it's a poor state affairs if you rely on Sheena Easton for social comment I'll check out the others except tosay I don't think Mr Mc Cartney's views on sexual politics at work would pass muster today.

More Bona VT

Another good programme on the BBC4’s “Hidden lives” strand, “Andrew and Jeremy Get Married... “ about (obviously) an ageing gay couple in the run up to their civil union. It followed two older men with quite different life experiences and backgrounds, whose relationship on the outside looked quite unbalanced but seemed to work for them. One of them Jeremy came from a boho academic background (all Latin graces and Hanif Kureshi popping round on Christmas Day) the other Andrew (aren’t names revealing) a former drug addict and bus driver who came from a world of out of town council semis and cider drinking.
An altogether fascinating film. It showed the ordinariness of other peoples lives and that whether we are gay or straight we still all have to endure overcast stilted barbeques, tedious tube journeys and making small talk with our other half’s friends.
The only minor issue I have was that to tie in with wedding theme the filmmakers used a curlicue “nuptial” font for the captions, that made particularly the post credit “what happened next” card impossible to read in the time allowed, but like I say a minor quibble,

Shoe horned random cultural collision pt12

Never stop looking.....
Thought I saw Pat Kane from Hue & Cry outside a pub in Cambridge Circus the other day. Not sure what he’s doing at present this doesn’t look like a real job maybe he had an appointment with George Smiley! Anyway as I recall he and his brother were looking for Linda on "slow train to Paisley”



Well I’m not sure they looked very hard because here she is in the chiller cabinet of my local shop. It’s pleasingly retro pop (not unlike Hue and Cry!) with that old skool essential for litter bugs a detachable ring pull and a pound and half of tartrazine as well hurrah! It's from the middle east ,the pomegranate flavours interesting too!

It Goes well with gin double Hurrah!















How plain can they make it Pat!








For younger readers: this is a ring pull .








Ps This might be Linda in Arabic!

Last nights tv

Bona VT
Watched BBC4 Hidden Lives stand last night and saw the Michael Sheen Kenneth Williams bio/film play “Fantabulosa” which was excellent and quite moving. Putting aside any arguments on how you portray a solitary private man the film was engaging and thought provoking. When I lived in Holborn I lived a few houses way from where Williams was born, and the mood of that part of North London around St Pancras where he spent most of his life was captured really well. It had a nice look of 70’s and 80’s too.

No Jo(e)king
Fantabulosa was followed by an interesting repeat of an Arena film on William’s friend the playwright Joe Orton. Now here’s the thing is it just me or is Joe Orton work not funny? The film had long (5 mins plus clips of his 3-4 plays) and I didn’t laugh once not even a smile. Now I know sometimes lines that get a big laugh in the collective experience of the theatre fall flat on screen (see all of “the History Boys” film) but this seemed very thin gruel. I am prepared to take into account that the content and form were ground breaking at the time but a good joke surely should last 40 years. It seemed like the sort writing you might get in the first draft of ITV sitcom or worse 2 pints of cocking lager. On the whole I think Joe Orton life is far more interesting than his plays. (My only caveat here is I should see one of his works live before fully making up my mind)


Kimono my Plaice
Also on last night was Nigella Express. There is always a lot of talk about Nigella but you can’t doubt that she is very good at making food programmes with the minimal twaddle and gimmicks. Her basic skill (rarer than it should be) is to present tasty and attractive food you can imagine cooking yourself. She might over play the busy lifestyle angle abit (one imagines she has a cleaner) but I fear she’s on a hiding to nothing with the press being firstly a women, secondly an attractive one at that, lastly coming from a seemingly privileged background. The fact that she writes really well and is enthusiastic about what she writes about seems to count for nothing. I do however think the programmes tend to veer into the “cheesecake” side of things too much for an intelligent woman but if all food programmes were as straightforward as this we’d have a lot less to complain about.

Ps. Although opinions vary

..and the sex pistols on a&m....

Vinyl collecting: The search continues.
In his book "Achtung Schweinhund!" on war gamming Harry Pearson talks about the dream all collectors have of finding a little shop full of your dream finds and it's going for pennies (he then turns it into a nightmare as he can't find the shop after going to ATM for some cash!)
I found this excellent deleted scene from High Fidelity which is the vinyl collectors versions. enjoy!

My name is BLTP and I'm vinyl addict

I walk through Soho most evenings and often walk down Berwick St. and amongst the detritus of the veg market is the remains of the once thriving record shop hamlet. I think at least half the shops have gone. The reasons for the sad loss of the shops I’ll talk about latter, one of the last is however is "Vinyl Junkie". The name of this shop and a rather sensible article about drug addiction by Dave Rowntree from Blur* led me to wonder can you be a vinyl addict? If vinyl/or its sister affliction music addiction are serious conditions surely they would need a check list for health professionals, so they can asses the depth of sufferers problems.
So I thought I’d save the NHS a few quid and put together some questions you can use to decide if as Depeche Mode once said “you just can’t get enough…

Do you HAVE to listen to music every day?
Do you worry about how many records you buy?
Do those around you ever comment on how many record you have?
Do you know the way to San José?
Have you ever lied to your kith and kin about how much you’ve spent on a single record?
Have you lied to yourself when you’ve spent too much on a “special 7” and then find it’s not as good as you’d thought it was?
Do you ever buy records for their covers?
Did you use to know the way to Amarillo but don’t fancy it so much now it’s so popular?
Do you have any soundtrack LPs?
Do you have any sound effect LPs?
Do you go out of your way to go to record shops?
Do you go out of your way to go to record shops abroad?
Have you ever had a strange conversation with a girl in a Valencian shop who was dressed like a member of Belle and Sebastian about the group “Might Mighty”? (This may be just me)?
Is there no future in England’s Dreaming?
Can you recognise 100’s of LPs by the top 2-3 inches of the covers as you flick through a crate?
Do you ever rescue certain records if you see them in shops because you don’t want to leave them there to be thrown out or to linger on lonely and unloved in that musty corner next to the broken teasmade and the wicker donkey?
Have you bought the same record by accident more than once?
Have you the bought the same single/track in various formats?
Have you ever willingly thrown a record away EVER?
Can you walk past a charity shop without the merest flicker of regret?
Do you buy the same artist over and over in the hope that you’ll eventually get them?
Did you think the end of “High Fidelity” was a bit lame?
When you meet people and they go on about your Vinyl collection being in order and claiming that this is some how weird, and are you totally sure that they only have 12 cds, two of which are from the Daily Mail and that they are soulless spineless fools?
Would you rather spend money on music or on clothes?
Do the word “emitex” excite you?
Do you like the picture adverts for other artists on old dust sleeves almost as much as you like the picture sleeve?
Have you long ago stopped wondering who bought all the copies of that greatest war film album with the Spitfire and Peter O'Toole on the cover?
Have you got a record you’ve never played and it’s “become a bit of thing now”?


Do you keeping buying foreign records in the hope they are going to be forgotten pop gems but they usually turn out to the Belgian version of T’pau?
Do you buy 60’s children’s records pretending they are kitsch but you “kinda of like them” anyway?
Do you own an instructional record?
Is it getting mighty crowded in here?
Do you like one artist your friends/partner can’t stand but you love them so much and you hope one day to meet someone who loves them as much you do too?
Have you tried to get into jazz/folk/prog/classical/goth and failed?
Have you ever kept a record shop carrier bag because you think it’s cool?
How worried are you by how much you like look of the record labels?

Do you have one of those sprockets that let you play old singles?
Can you recognize LPs by their spines?
Can you recognise records by the pattern of grooves?
Do you find deep joy in finding things left by former owners inside sleeves?
Have you bought a new record on vinyl in preference to a cd?

If you answered yes to 30-40 of these questions you need not worry you are a balanced normal person whose love of truth and beauty makes you a better more vivid human, you’ve been and done things lesser types can only dream of, you can turn a cancer research jumble sale into a hot night in Harlem or a chilly practice room in Salford. You can sleep soundly you aren’t an addict just special.

Between15 -20: You are either 13 years old and will learn the ways of the world or just a “weekender” and need to dip more than a toe in the water. One day there isn’t’ any room for “all those old records you never play” next day the locks have been changed and you don’t have to spend Christmas in Norwich this year, so think on and get down the car boot.

Less than 15 (mainly nos): You are a hollow blank eyed drone who put your 12 cds on your Ipod and gave the originals to the bin man. You have never lived an day in your life, you cut the fat off bacon, think chocolate is “sinful”, have never read a book that didn’t confuse you, you’ve never sat on the grass at dawn because it looked “damp”, you actually think the Stones are “best band in the world”, in short you are sad addict to all that is unholy and dull in life and worse a Red hot chilly peppers fan seek some help now.

excellent dutch turntable site


*(Dave Rowntree is rapidly becoming the one from Blur you bear to hear talk about stuff other than music, yes that means you Mr Damon “ war is stupid” Albarn, and you Alex “ shut up talking about cheese and make some of the bloody stuff” James and as for Graham “whiny Essex voiced” Coxon…)