Olympics: Part I...

Me and the Missus are discussing who will light the flame at the 2012 London Olympics.
‘Sir Steve Redgrave...’
‘Too obvious.’
‘Mo Farrah...’
‘Not famous enough outside the UK.’
‘Dame Kelly Holmes...’
‘Don’t think so.’

I start to think outside the box.
‘David Beckham...’
‘Too much of a twat.’
‘Eddy the Eagle Edwards...’
‘Wrong Olympics.’
‘Eric Bristow...’
‘Why?’
‘He could throw a lit dark into the unlit flame and light it up.’
‘No.’
‘Tony Knowles...’
Silence.

I take a different track.
‘Stephen Fry...’
‘No sporting connection.’
‘Sean Bean...’
‘Supporting Sheffield United and starring in When Saturday Comes is not a sporting connection.’
‘Muhammad Ali...’
‘He’s American.’
‘But we’re British. We have a history of stealing from other countries. It’s the British way!’
No response. Again.

‘Charles Dickens...’
‘Charles Dickens is dead.’
‘Sherlock Holmes...’
‘Fictional character and also dead.’
‘No he’s not. There’s a new series on next year.’
No response. A brief look of exasperation.

‘Dick Emery...’
‘Dead.’
‘Charlie Chaplin...’
‘Dead.’
‘Benny Hill...’
‘You’re just naming dead comedians now. Please stop.’

We decided I have no idea about who is lighting the Olympic flame. And no idea about anything else either...

Fighting Fit…

It is Saturday night and I am going out to see a night of MMA fighting. A friend’s nephew is on the bill and it’s essentially a lads’ night out that will end up in a pub or a nightclub of some description.

The plan of the Missus, however, is to spend the evening at home watching DVDs while curled up on the sofa with the cats so we are on a DVD-buying mission. She shows me her first suggestion:
‘What is it?’ I inquire.
‘It’s a horror film about a woman alone in a house who is attacked by a maniac.’
‘I’m sure we’d both see the irony if that actually happened while I was out and you were a woman alone in a house who was attacked by a maniac, but do you think it’s the sort of thing you really want to be watching while I’m out and you are a woman alone in a house?’

The Missus thinks and eventually puts it back. Instead she buys a film with Jason Statham, a man we both quite fancy, and Paul, the Simon Pegg and Nick Frost comedy about an alien. She explains:
‘I know we’ve seen it but that way I can still be reminded of you even if you’re not here.’
‘So I’m an alien?’
‘No. You’re called Paul.’
'Right.'

It was nearly affection then I realised I was sort of taking the same approach.
‘Thinking about it I’m doing a similar thing. I’m going to watch people with bad intentions meet and try to spend time damaging and injuring each other. It will be a reminder of you…’

Apparently that wasn’t funny…

Other Woman News...

The Other Woman passed her black belt grading at hapkido and was presented with her black belt at the weekend.

She's trained ridiculously hard to achieve this and she's also come back from two badly broken bones and two operations to reset them.

That's real determination. It shows real strength of character to come back from something like that.

It's also an example that inspires me to be tougher and I'm more durable and less concerned about minor aches and pains because of the example she has set me.

My Other Woman. I'm better because of her friendship. Even the sarcastic and grouchy bits of her friendship. And the many references to me being 'an idiot' bits of her friendship. My thanks.

More Music News...

It was the annual From Beer To Paternity Towers trek down the road to Guildfest this weekend and here are some thoughts.

i) Jimmy Cliff was on the bill on the main stage and about four from the top while Olly Murs was headlining the main stage. What sort of fucking world are we living in where our values are that out-of-kilter? I felt embarrassed for Jimmy Cliff, who was bloody excellent.

ii) The weather was shit awful and it was a veritable mud bath for most of the day. The only time the sun threatened to shine was when Jimmy Cliff came on stage; the time when the heavens opened and it really pissed it down was when Cher Lloyd came on stage. An unfortunate fluke of weather timing or divine justice wishing to drown any fucker who stayed around to listen to Lloyd. You decide...

iii) I very much liked the Signal Fires. They're an indie band from Woking and they're a bit Joy Division, early U2 and Editors. Apart from Jimmy Cliff, they were the best thing I saw. Bastille were also pretty decent.

iv) Nouvelle Vague are a French band. With jazz influences. They do covers and murdered Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division when I saw them. Other songs in their routine also include Blue Monday by New Order. Note to producers: a good idea on paper and two photogenic female singers does not a ground-breaking band make. Fuck off.

v) Demanding £16 for two pies with mash and gravy is daylight robbery. I don't care how good the pies were. You charged £2 for a portion of mash and £1 for a portion of gravy. You should have been wearing masks and carrying flintlock pistols you robbing fuckers.

vi) The memory of Gary Numan is much better than the reality of seeing him live now. Particularly when he suffered from a few technical hiccups and system malfunctions before and during his set. Are Friends Electric? They weren't today, Gary.

Music News...

I've realised I'm becoming a bit full of vitriol of late. I'm pretty sure this is just a natural reaction to doing all the recent theatre work I've been doing and it's my brain's way of recalibrating itself after being submerged in the topic of forgiveness and compassion for so long. But I sort of recognise that and as long the hatred is only happening in my head and quickly passing then I'm not too worried.

As part of my rebalancing therapy, though, I am letting my need to shop off the tight leash it's been on for most of this year and I have discovered a veritable gold mine of musical gems in Ben’s Collectors' Records, a second-hand music shop just off Guildford High Street. And even better it's pretty much £3 for any CD in there so it's not exactly bankrupting me either...

The shop is mainly vinyl and CD but my 20-minute fortnightly visits to this shop to leaf through the wonderfully disorganised shelves of CDs have really got me back into buying music again. I'd allowed buying music to become something of a treat when really it had always been a quite important part of my life from my teenage years onwards. 

So one recent trip saw me buy Paranoid by Black Sabbath, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road by Elton John, Scarlet And Other Stories by All About Eve, Rant In E Minor by Bill Hicks, The Singles by XYC and I'm Your Man by Leonard Cohen. And all for under £20.

The shop also has a very large collection of classical music CDs and I've located some real bargains in here too. I may have found my new favourite shop. Hurray!

Spleen Venting: Fashion...

I once went to a party with some fashion people. It was on the same day that British troops had gone into Iraq but the only topic of conversation at this party was fashion. Clothes and fashion; fashion and catwalk shows; designers and fashion; models and fashion... You get the picture.

And even though this major event had received wall-to-wall coverage in the press and the radio and the TV, fashion was all these cunts could talk about. And with their beautiful ways and their beautiful clothes, and their interest in only themselves and their stupid fucking opinions about their beautiful ways and their beautiful clothes, I quickly realised I probably didn't like fashion. Or them. At all.

Now let's be clear: liking fashion is not a crime. It clearly should be. But it's not. Elevating it to an art form and pretending it's something of global significance, however, is. And that's entirely what these vacuous shit-for-opinions arsewipes were doing. Now I don't really mind vacuous arseholes. The world's full of them. But at least some of them realise they are vacuous arseholes and make an effort not be. Sometimes... And that's pretty commendable in my book.

But after giving it some consideration I've realised that pretty much everyone I've ever met who's worked in fashion is a vacuous arsehole who doesn't know it. They think they're interesting and chic when actually they're just fucking dullards and a bit thick.

But thinking like this made me feel slightly ashamed. I'd lost my ability to empathise and I realised I was probably giving them a bad press... so I promised the next time I met one I'd try to be more compassionate and not imagine throwing them in a cage with several starved pitbulls and enjoying the bloody spectacle of:
a) them dying horribly and brutally.
b) them dying horribly and brutally and their fave clothes being ripped to shreds in the process.

So I realised I needed a coping mechanism to conjour some empathy and I figured I'd think of other people who had a bad press and try to remember that they were also somebody's son or somebody's daughter. That way I would find compassion in the most unlikely place and simply replicate that process for the fashion people.

And this week my chance to try my new coping mechanism finally came after I met a couple of new people from the fashion world.

Make no mistake, they were utter shitcakes-for-brains oxygen thieves, but instead of adopting my default position of contempt and hatred I used my coping mechanism.

Sadly the only people I could only think of who'd been the victims of such vitriol in the press were Peter Sutcliffe and Myra Hindley. And I started feeling sorry for Sutcliffe and Hindley to be compared to this pair of wankstains...

I clearly need a new strategy. Gun anyone?