Rob's Rant

I want to give you a situation, you're at home and for some reason you need to hammer a nail into something. If you're like me it's because the bedroom door is having one of it's frequent bouts of contemplating divorce from the hinges that hold it none too securely to the frame.

There you are happily hammering away, feeling as big and manly as the bloke from the Diet Coke ads, when the thumb slips or the hammer doesn't hit true and suddenly the end of your hand is a new world of pain. What do you say, not crimmeny, oh dear or crikes, but yes your lips will open and one of several expletives will ring forth with all the power and energy of a hurricane strapped in a hat box.

It feels good doesn't it, just letting rip like that, a way of getting it out of your system. And that is one of the reasons I don't tend to swear much, it needs to be reserved for those special times when you really need.

Growing up, the school playground was filled with enough fuckings, bloodies and c**nts to make it seem less like an establishment for the furthering of young minds than a retirement home for sailors with Tourettes'.I didn't like swearing much, even then, when having a mouth like sewer was nearly as cool as having a games console or a new pair of drain pipes.

Since then I've met many people for whom swearing makes up a ridiculously large portion of their day to day vocabulary, and yes I still don't like it much. One because it seems to swear all the time lacks a certain amount of imagination, but also because what can you say when things are really really fucked.

When the shit hits the proverbial fan, and the bank has mysteriously made all your money disappear or you get to work and the doors locked and the MD's just been arrested for tax fraud, what can you then say to express the very strong emotions you're feeling. If swearing is part of your minute by minute lexicon, the power has been taken out of it. Like confronting your worst enemy day after day, their power over you will be somewhat diminished, you might even end up taking him out for a beer, and thinking well he's not so bad really.

Or the lucky shirt that seems to been so talismanic that it's worked for both of the dates in your life that have gone somewhere, you know it's magic qualities will be sapped if it's now enrolled for regular use.

Like everyone else, I know that there is a time and a place for swearing, however, it's one of those things that you don't when that time or place will be until you actually get there. When you do, my advice is to let rip. But don't ruin the power through overuse, reserve it for when it's needed and will make an impact.

Well I've just spent a nice weekend in Norfolk, not the usual phrase that I would string together, but there you have it, true and unusual. Firstly I had a delicious seafood lunch with my aunt at some sort of crab shack slap bang on the coast, and then spent the remainder of the time being used as a human trampoline and all round fun centre by my friend's 5 year old daughter, which have been intensely annoying if she hadn't been so charming.

Lily Bruce and I will name you, I'm sure that your only serious competition in the world domination stakes you'll face when you're older will come from another friends daughter, Emma Beattie. I shudder when I think of the challenges that you'll set humanity when you came of age, but please remember the chocolate fudge I brought you before marching me to the tower for my beheading. Emma, I'll have to send you some in the post.

Anyway that's not what I'm here to write about today, I don't know when you last went to the cinema, but being single I seem to find myself spending a lot of time in this countries various picture palaces. I've sat through 'Cloverfield,' 'Iron Man,' 'Indiana Jones,' & 'The Incredible Hulk' all in the name of enjoyment, but whatever visual treats I've signed myself up for recently have been presaged by what I can only describe as one of the most annoying adverts of all time.

I don't whether you've seen it, but it's for the BBC's yoof musik station, Radio One. You know the one that used to have that nice Simon Bates and Steve Wright on it, before they decamped to Classic FM and Radio 2 respectively. The one which was lampooned mercilessly by Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse as 'Smashy and Nicey,' in the 90's.

Well I believe partly in response to the feeling that Radio One DJ's were in touch with the contemporary world as Robert Mugabe is with the democratic process, Radio 1 made an effort to appear to be more up to date, hip and happening if you like.

Out went the older DJs and in came a more focused approach on youth music. Now I've never been trendy, in fact you could probably get closer to what was in style would be by doing exactly the opposite to me.

From the clothes I wear to the books I read round to the music I listen to, I'm usually so behind the curve that I'm could be taken for someone whose managed to sleep through the last 5 years, so I'm not one who would judge what's meant to be in, I mean I still that the Walkman's a fairly nifty idea, the iPod is obviously a great improvement, but I still haven't worked out how you get the cassettes in.

I was quite surprised to hear myself thinking then watching the latest round of self gratification from the beeb, probably paid for out of your licence fee money, that this all seemed to be a bit old hat. The advert in question is one about new music, and features such luminaries as Pete Tong, Judge Jules and Annie Nightingale, all cultural icons to be sure, but are they really at the cutting neah bleeding edge of fashion.

These days, and I'm hardly one to talk I know since Lily compared my thighs with those of Shrek, but Pete Tong is now coming to resemble the well upholstered David Brent & Judge Jules looks like he hasn't his outfit since a rave he compeered in 1993. Now my flatmate has just pointed out that you can't judge a book by it's cover, and that's true many books with the most exciting covers have turned out to be exceptionally dull, but I do feel that they could have made more of an effort for an advert which is basically showing how in touch they are.

Now you might say that John Peel looked more like a grumpy old man than the great exponent of new talent that we knew him to be, but Peel wasn't quite as associated with a particular genre of music as Tong and Jules. Anyway the good news for a man of my fast advancing years is that apparently these days you can younger for longer. The bad news though is perhaps that with file swapping, downloading and social network recommendations, the best place to find new music isn't on the old transistor radio anymore but online.

For those of you though who like me long to reminded of the good old days, when real men wore medallions because they meant it, and excess chest hair could be sold to make fine rugs, here's a quick flash back to how things were http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtZKvHmU8vg

See you soon

Hi there, it's now time for me to finish off my Venice story, unfortunately not very much else happened to me. In most of my solo travels you'll here stories of how hammered I got, how lost in  the myriad of streets and how I would wake up with a head feeling slightly larger than a basketball, and almost as good at thinking. Then vowing that I would never do that again, I'd go out the next night...and do it all again.

In Venice you couldn't really go crazy, well you could of course, there were bars and restaurants, but it was difficult to go on a journey of discovery round the various bars of the city as there being no streets, you can't just hop into a taxi when completely intoxicated and find your way home. Nope if you were going to drink it had to be close to your hotel and in St. Marks square the options were fairly limited.

Still I had good meals both nights I was there, and tried to uphold the reputation of the British abroad by spending at least as much on alcohol as I did on food. I also tried a half hearted bar crawl, though since everywhere seemed to want to shut at 10:30 this was a little limited in scope. The result was that on both nights of my trip I was in bed at 11:30, and spent the entire visit remarkably free of the hangovers that had so enlivened my other solo jaunts.

Venice is spectacular, the amount of history there is staggering, however it is the story of an empire which no longer exists. Venice became rich on trade, and flourished first as Byzantium's special trading partner and then on her own as the Queen of the Adriatic, bringing the opulent spoils of the East to the now burgeoning markets of the West.

This allowed the building of such spectacular monuments as St. Marks Basilica and the Doge's palace, both of which are of course must sees if you ever find yourself in Venice. The weather forecast for the rest of the week had been horrible, so naturally I nearly contracted sun stroke whilst walking around town again, and again, and now wish that I had signed up for a tour of the islands like I first considered, as the tour round and round the landmarks near my hotel did get slightly repetitive after a while.

I have to admit one thing I really don't like, is the spare part like feeling you get after you've checked out of your hotel but you've still got nearly 9 hours until the flight. Always in the panning stage this seems like a great idea since you thin k that this would be the best time to see all the stuff that you've left to the last minute.

If you're like me however, I sightsee at the speed of a sailor on shore leave running to the nearest house of ill repute, and so by the last day there wasn't really anything much that I hadn't seen that I wanted. This left me in the uncomfortable position of basically moving from cafe to cafe until I ran out of reading matter, which I did surprisingly quickly. Finding an English language bookshop amused me for a couple more hours, as did a notice outside Harry's bar offering American patrons 20% discount during this period of economic gloom. I did feel that they should offer similar for the British, as we were the ones stupid enough to buy these supposedly copper bottomed sub prime investments.

Later on, it turned out I'd wasted all the time I could, and so the one thing for it was to get to the airport early. It's always fun waiting at small airports with nothing to do, and I'm far too mean to buy anything as airports generally seem to just sell tat, so this was going to be a thrill.

The journey back on the water taxi was just as spectacular as the journey there, and proved a very agreeable way of spending an hour and a quarter, that would otherwise have involved sitting on suitcase. When I got to the airport, it turned out to have been a good decision to arrive slightly early, since in my genius, I'd read the times of the flights wrong and it was an hour earlier than I thought it was. C'est le vie, the flight was delayed anyway.

So to sum up. Venice, watery but rewarding, I would say though take someone else with you to this one.

The problem with writing a blog like this, is that apart from the occasional comment you really do wonder whether anybody is reading it. My parents are so internet illiterate, they used to think that e-mail was something you only got up north, so I can't even count on my mother to read this.

Still every couple of weeks or so I feel compelled to leap to the PC and belt out a few paragraphs on observations on things that have happened. The last couple of weeks however, virtually sod all has happened. Zilch, nix, nowt. No trips to the cinema, no memorable meals and strangely no risque romantic encounters.

I went to a stag party, where I had a dodgey oyster and so couldn't drink too much, and so a night of activity that should have staggered humanity, became a strangely refrained affair, where the major point of interest was that they forgot to bring my beans with the breakfast the next day. I've read a number of books, but none which made we want to go into them in to great a detail, and I've probably eaten more chocolate than is good for me.

Today though something has happened, woo hoo, there's been a major water shortage in south west London. However, shortages don't make very interesting reading. I could tell you tales about how we've had to ration trips to the loo, or how I had to wait until evening to do some washing, as you can tell from those brief sentences that this probably wouldn't make the best use of a full length blog.

However dear readers don't despair, the next few weeks look a lot more interesting things are bound to happen, and I shall look to keep you informed with them.

Well it's been two weeks since my flatmate Dina moved out. Dina is a wonderful person, quiet, kind and considerate who I didn't realise I'd miss so much until she'd actually gone. Dina's Egyptian and has embarked on a world tour before heading home, back to a life in a country that she hasn't ever really spent that much time in. Wherever you are Dina, KIT and good luck.

One thing that drew us together was out mutual love of 'Friends,' no I don't mean the people that we know, but the TV series. Whenever we were both in it was something of a ritual to sit in front of the ol' goggle box and devour the couple of episodes that E4 ration you to nightly. For nearly a year I would practice copying the clapping from the title music in front of her, usually to a rather dismissive review, but don't worry I'll get it right one day.

Strangely enough I was actually quite late getting into the series, having actually gone somewhat out of my way to avoid it. It all seemed so American and cheesy, the cast so impossibly polished and good looking that I couldn't believe that I would actually like anything about it. My then  flatmate Rob Salter made we watch an episode and I was surprised that I actually liked it, but it still didn't really hook me.

For one thing, they were meant to be poor college graduates, just starting out in life and yet their apartments looked like something that Alan Sugar would put the apprentice candidates in rather than living space from reality. Then they were always whiney, especially about sex, which they never seemed to consider that they were getting enough of, despite the fact that they seemed to be sleeping (initially at least,) with different people every couple of episodes.

I was however against my will drawn in, I even started to have my favourite (Chandler) and least favourite (Rachel) characters. I think more than anything that it was the idea that this group were meant to be my near exact contemporaries. Born in the late 60's, college in the late 80's finding yourself adrift in the early 90's. As in 'No one told you life was going to be this way.'

As the series progressed the story arcs started to reflect the changes that people go through when moving through your 20's and 30's. How your job ceases to be a joke as you get more responsibility, how your peer group does get married and start to have children and how despite it all you feel like a 15 year old going around in borrowed clothes. Or perhaps it's just me.

Of course certain things about the show remained ridiculous. Didn't they ever notice how small their social circle had become, the 6 of them, Janice, Gunther and some parents thrown in. How did Phoebe manage to survive, could anyone really be as stupid as Joey and make it the studio each day and back.

Also as time went on the characters turned more into caricatures than the more balanced youngsters of the earlier seasons. Monica became almost unhinged, Rachel so annoying that you felt happy that she and Ross were 'on a break.' Phoebe simultaneous wacky and yet strangely knowledgeable about the French language and fine wines (probably a tip o' the hat to the real Miss Kudrow who is reputedly exceedingly smart.)

The greatest mystery of course is David Schwimmers eternal youth. Just look at him in the title sequence and in the final episode...he just doesn't appear any older. The rest of them seem to have been fighting a losing battle with gravity which has somehow passed Ross completely by. Perhaps as a paleontologist he discovered the fountain of youth on one of his various expeditions, or he has incriminating photos of the Devil's grandfather, whatever, he just doesn't seem to have aged a day.

When Friend's came to end almost 4 years ago now, for me it seemed like the end of an era, almost like the true end of the 90's. Everything else had gone by then. Britpop had lost it's fizz, New Labour were looking as tired and creaky as the last lot & the dotcom bubble had burst leaving everyone with a lovely mess to clear up.

The noughties as we've been calling them still, nearly at it's end doesn't seem to have developed a defining voice. In music the closest thing that we've had is, God help us all, Amy Winehouse. Due to the diversifying audience we might not ever again get shows that are as big as Friend's was, or a band as big as Oasis were in their prime.

Of course these days I'm more likely to have things in common with those appearing on 'Grumpy old men,' rather than 6 hip Manhattan based youngsters. So unless they make a sitcom based around a load of near destitute 30 somethings moving into a semi condemned house in Wandsworth as a way of hiding from the debt collectors I doubt whether I'll feel such affinity to a fictional group again.

Anyway that's enough for this week, I've got to get back to shouting at the telly and telling children about how much better things were in the old days. I shall leave you photos of the friends as they were at their finest and a picture of my recently with some young lady who was clearly doing some voluntary work with elderly. Ta ra

Yesterday I visited the shining city on the hill, that wonderland of the present day, Festival Leisure Park, Basildon, or as it's known to the locals, Baz Vegas. Festival Leisure Park is like many of these institutions that now cover our fair land, chain restaurants nestle amongst chain bars and chain cinemas and bowling alleys.

At Baz Vegas, a lottery winner really could be said to be living the dream. He could check into the Holiday Inn, and then have a different dining experience every night, say Chilli's on Tuesday, Nandos on Wednesday, Pizza Hut Thursdays...Saving himself up for the big blow out at TGI Friday's on you guessed it, FRIDAY!
With 12 different screens at the cinema, it could be a new film for the afternoon and evening for nearly a week as well. Last night, I found myself in Screen 6 of the Empire cinema with a Pepsi you could swim in, and a bag of pop corn so large it would make quite a good survival float.

Our choice of film for the night, was 10,000 BC, the new epic from the noted schlokmeister Roland Emmerich, alumnus of such productions as Stargate, Independence Day and of course the Day After Tomorrow. I don't want to spoil this treat to much for you, so for the learning impaired amongst you who'd still be willing to shell out hard currency to go and see this nonsense I suggest you skip down to last weeks entry and read that instead.

The film opens in the dim and distant past. You can tell it's dim immediately, because there's virtually no lighting, in fact I thought that there might be something wrong with the projection. The distance is illustrated by shots of mountains, such as which they only had in the olden days.

The scene then shifts to a group of noble savages, the sort of eco-friendly primitives who seem to only exist in Hollywood movies. A child is found, the last of her people as all the rest have been carried off by four legged demons, which as any fule kno, men riding horse.

What follow is beyond preposterous. The noble savages are shown hunting mammoth, though in an ecologically friendly way, only killing one. Some primitive cultures did indeed engage in such responsible management of resources, others, notably the Easter island people who chopped down all their trees did, but there does appear to a myth these days that people in days of yore lived in harmony with the planet, for many it was just common sense, quite ofter brought about by the effects of over hunting. Anyway enough of that.

The evil four legged demons, i.e. men on horseback turn up again and in time honoured tradition cart off loads of the simple folk into slavery. The hero, i.e. the one who looks like he's on day release from a boyband must go after them as they've nicked his lady love along with half the village. He takes two other hunters with him, one who looks so similar I couldn't tell them apart and a wise old hunter, who looks so old he could be pushing 35.

The badies have escaped over the mountains, and lo and behold they must follow, despite their lack of tents or even shoes they seem to manage to cross something that looks like Everest's bigger, older brother with not even a hint of frostbite.

Over the other side of the mountain, the ice age seems to have given up the ghost and a lush jungle grown up in it's place. The jungle is not however serene, being inhabited by a terror birds, which look like deadly emus, though would probably end up tasting like chicken. Despite the terror birds being amazing killing machines, our heroes manage to survive, through the simple expedient of climbing a tree.

The badies though are out pacing them, and even have time for some rape and pillage at what appears to be an African village, where one of the natives fortunately speaks the right language perfectly. They call a council of the nine tribes or whatever and resume the chase, only to find that the badies not only can ride horses but can make pretty nifty boats as well.

The climax ends up at the badies HQ, a city run by some sort of exile from Atlantis, equipped with advanced technologies like telescopes and strangely accurate looking maps, who seems to have developed a pyramid building mania, which obviously was the fashion in the ancient world. Of course the heroes win, and bring the pyramids crashing down, before getting the girl back and heading off to their now rapidly defrosting ice age home.

This film was awful, it was strange mixture of Stargate, Apocolypto and Graham Hancock's 'Fingerprints of the Gods.' Taken together this should have been hokum of the highest order. They could even have thrown in some dinosaurs and UFOs to make it better. It wasn't that it was silly, but strangely that it wasn't silly enough. I was ready to suspend my disbelief and I wanted it all thrown in.

Hollywood, being Hollywood, I'm sure I won't have to wait too long for an even sillier movie to come along to make 10,000 BC seem like a near masterpiece. Here's hoping anyhow.

Dear All,
As I get on in life I start to worry that I might be doomed to being single. When I was younger, I was absolutely convinced that I would be hooked up by the time I turned 32, I don't know why 32, I guess it was young enough to seem like everything was still ahead of me and old enough so that I would have had time to have some fun, sow the old oats.

In the event by my 32nd birthday I'd sowed so few outs a farmer would considering bankruptcy as the only way out, and I was as single as a ready meal for one. It wasn't a case ships passing in the night, more like a lone sailor blasting his foghorn into the everlasting gloom.

I perhaps didn't try hard enough, my strategy of going out with my mates and drinking until the room wobbled, or staying at home and working my way through a library full of books wasn't perhaps the best MO for finding the love of my life. I was also struck by the absurd romantic notion that there is just the one, and that fate will conspire for you to meet with her at some point when you least expect it.

Of course it wasn't all like that, despite my best efforts I would occasionally meet somebody. At this point I would go either one of two ways, either show near complete indifference, or more usually become so completely infatuated that the poor girl would think that she was being chased round by an over exuberant doormat. This I found was not the ideal way into a girls heart.

By this point I was becoming convinced that finding my soul mate was as likely as running into the Yeti enjoying a quiet pint with Sherlock Holmes and Captain Nemo in the snug bar bar of the Leaky Cauldron. Fortunately whilst this was going on, a new method of communicating with people without ever actually having to get to know them was reaching maturity, name yes you guessed it the Internet.

My first experience of being approached by someone over the internet happened a few years ago, when having just returned from holiday I was befuddled by jet  lag, awake in the middle of the night and surfing the internet when an instant message popped up from a young lady, from just outside San Francisco. As chance would have it, she was to be in London in a few weeks time. Aha I thought this could be good.

Well it wasn't, now I'm not the most svelte chap in the world myself, in fact I know I'm overweight, but I looked like a bulimic anorexic in comparison with my date when she arrived. Not only had she eaten all the pies, she'd had most of the chips and ice cream as well. Of course this wouldn't have mattered too much if she'd had a nice personality, and had been fun to be with. She didn't, she was as pleasant as drinking a pint of garbage water, and had an opinion of herself that would have placed her with the supermodels. There's nothing wrong with being confident, even misplaced, but willful unsupported arrogance is another matter entirely.

I'm not the only person I know who's suffered a case of transcontinental stalking. A friend of mine had a similar experience with a girl from New York, only his date didn't last a few hours, it transpired that the only reason she was in London was to see him. Again the lady, wasn't quite the dream girl he'd envisaged, far from it, and she seemed to have been channeling the spirit of an uberstalker.

Despite his best efforts he had to spend 3 of the most unpleasant days of his life with her, an experience which led him briefly to consider celibacy as a new and better lifestyle choice. He has since found a girlfriend, this time from Dublin of all paces, and seems very happy. Sometimes the rough does make the smooth all the better.

For me, I've dabbled in various different dating techniques since then. I still rate speeddating, despite my tendency to think that girls will find me a charming and witty companion after nearly a bottle and a half of wine, I've even ended up with a few dates as a result. Speeddating is an interesting one, a form of interaction much more attractive which is much more popular with women than men.

In online dating as far as I'm aware, two thirds of the registered audience tends to be men. I sometimes quip that blokes seem to be happiest sitting in their bedrooms, tapping away on their PCs and ideally would like to download a girlfriend rather than going out and actually having to meet one of the three dimensional variety.

Speeddating where actually have to evaluate someone in the flesh so to speak appeals more to the feminine sensibilities, an interesting programme shown a couple of years ago showed that women do make up their minds very swiftly indeed about the man that they're talking to, almost instantaneously in fact. The man  opposite has to work very hard to change that initial reaction either positively or negatively, though it can be done.

It is however great fun, and a really good way of expanding your social life, also who knows you might actually manage to impress someone. A couple of years ago I actually organized a couple of events myself. I'd just convinced an old school friend to move down to London from Cambridge, and I pictured our life together as two bachelors on the town, swapping roles of wingman in a long and successful series of romantic encounters with delightful recovering nymphomaniacs who'd we'd talk into a relapse.

Of course it wasn't to be, he came to my first event and met a lady who will very shortly be his wife, making his appearance on the dating scene little more than a cameo. Ah well the best laid plans of mice and men, once more meant that my own chances of getting best laid floundered almost before they started.

Now as I approach another milestone birthday, I really feel like I should be doing more, but seem to be doing less. My social life seems to have contracted to a point where my workmates are almost a surrogate family, and the venue your most likely to see me outside the office is Sainsburys.

I take heart from the realization that I'm not the only one in this particular predicament, a well know supermarket chain actually considered running singles nights for a while. I don't know whether it was a success, but I bet their sales of lasagna for one skyrocketed.

Anyway I'm going to leave you now, for those that are interested I present for your pleasure a story I wrote a few years back based loosely on my own experiences speeddating, I hope you enjoy http://www.originaldating.com/SingleMingle/SM1.htm

Well another couple of weeks have truly flown past, and this year is already starting to feel like it's getting a bit long in the tooth. If anyone out there at all is actually reading this, I would be interested if anyone has managed to stick to their New Year's resolutions.

February for me very much is the month of broken dreams. Nothing rubs it into your face so much that you're single than Valentine's day, every eatery you pass on your way home clutching the sad singleton's dinner for one that you just recently purchased off a smug looking cashier (they know they're meeting someone after work,) seems to exude an agglomerated  fog of smugness from the assembled happy couples within threatening to overwhelm with it's sickly odour of self satisfaction, though as you can tell it hasn't made me bitter.

Never mind, let's talk about other things before I get myself totally bent out of shape and go onto the horror that is Mother's day. One of the questions I quite often find myself asking new acquaintances and work colleagues is what was the first single they ever bought. I'm of course hoping that their answer will reveal a humiliation fest where Joe Dulce's 'Shaddap your face,' would be stand tall as an exemplifier of good taste.

Of course many of my work colleagues these days are too young to have heard of Joe Dulce, and many of them probably will be asking even younger people in a few years what was their first download. There's also the problem that many of their answers (no doubt rehearsed,) also sound really rather cool.

It is surprising how many people for instance seem to have 'Blue Monday,' by New Order the object of their first musically based financial transaction, and I struggle to discern how 'Wham' could have been so popular when no admits to buying their records, cest la vie.

By comparison my own examples seem incredibly lame, even camp.The first record I ever purchased myself was 'Bright Eyes,' by Art Garfunkel, after he split from Paul Simon, but before he went into the catering business. This is however stretching the truth somewhat, because after I returned from Jersey on holiday with parents sometime in the early 70's, when I was extremely young (this though is not an excuse,) I badgered my Father to buy me copies of 'Tie a yello ribbon round the old oak tree,' and even better than that 'Yesterday once more,' by the Carpenters.

Of course these days, both of these have, how shall we say a bit of kitsch quality, even perhaps ironic. These factors it was true escaped me when I was four years old, when I was proud to be as middle of the road as the central reservation.

For most of my formative years, I had about as much interest in pop music as I had in say in Sanskrit. Of course in the 70's and 80's it was much harder to ignore contemporary music than it is today, it permeated the landscape in a way unthinkable since the high days of Britpop.

'Top of the pops,' was a national institution, which me and my brother would watch with my mother on our one television every Thursday night. Of course most of the groups were rubbish, and I generally felt no inclination to own any of these tunes myself, I was much more interested in wasting my pocket money on yet another accessory for my 'Action Man,' All the stuff I bought him and not even a thank you note, bastard...

All this relative indifference to pop changed almost over night in 1984, when for whatever reason I suddenly became obsessed with the stuff. I think it could have been the sheer exhilarating  abundance of the product available at that point, 'Madonna,' 'Frankie goes to Hollywood,' 'The Thompson Twins,' 'The Cure,' etc, etc were all belting out some of their best stuff at the time.

I quickly developed a record collection, and a rather surprising choice of favourite bands. I decided that I really liked the Beatles. These days this seems like an easy choice, back in the early 80's John was dead, and Paul was belting out such winners as 'Pipes of peace,' and 'The Frog Chorus.' Their earlier efforts suffered by association, and it was during this period that the 'Beatles,' were the furthest they'd ever be from being cool. They've recovered since, of course, though it has to be said purely on the strength of their back catalogue.

The other artists to make the cut were again not typical of the time, Mike Oldfield, he'd just had a smash hit with 'Moonlight Shadow,' but I was at the time convinced that most of his other new age drivel was equally worthy of attention. My last tip for the top, was Kate Bush, who's 1985 album 'Hounds of love,' completely blew me away. Fortunately I had this triumvirate all fixed up prior for leaving for college, where as I've said your preference for music was seen as one of your more important defining factors,l easily up there with hair colour.

I know I write a lot about college nostalgia, but one of the most important aspects of male bonding was arguing about we thought were obscure aspects of pop music. Of course being blokes there was always a lot of interest in the sort of bands where the lead singer was male, had more hair than your Mum and pranced about in suspiciously large amounts of leather. Again by a happy coincidence 'Whitesnake' and 'Def Leppard' were around to fill what could have be an embarrassing gap in the market.

I myself had a copy of 'Hysteria,' by Leppard on cassette that I played so much I actually wore through the tape. Of course back then you would listen to the same songs again and again. I clearly remember sitting in the room of a girl I fancied who continually played the opening two songs from a Suzanne Vega album for the entire 2 hours of our chat. I fancied her so much she could have got away with murder and I'd helped bury the body, probably why she knew she could get away this.

The period from 84-89 were definitely my own personal rock and roll years, when my personal interest was at it's highest. For good or ill, it made my taste in music, and probably explains why I'm still single.

Now here's a treat for you, an obscure Kate Bush video on You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HKtU-w6Bho. No need to watch the video, just listen to the music. If you don't like Kate, you'll probbaly want to have your laptop decontaminated afterwards, if you do knock yourself out.

Well I know that it's been quite sometime now since I last updated this blog, and what a whirlwind this year has turned out to be so far. As you may know from former blogs, I've never been to keen on New Years resolutions, which is good, since this January I think was one of the most debauched months of my life so far.
As we all know the road to good intentions is paved with hell, and despite my protestations the year started with me making a conscious effort to be more health aware. Unfortunately, it's like a diet or trying to give up smoking, the more you try to deny yourself something the more you think of it, the ultimate elephant in the room. Of course this is never more so than at the end of a stressful day, when the thought of a quick pint preys on your mind like a pack of wolves circling for the kill, if you weren't trying to cut back you'd probably just of headed straight home, ah well as my bank balance declined so my liver expanded.
The nadir probably came last Friday, when a free bar combined with the first payday of 2008 led me to consume 3 Martinis in less than an hour, and ultimately resulted with a solo performance of 'Dawn of the dead,' the next morning. Oh well, these things are sent to try us.
Yesterday, I had for me a rare experience, a day at liberty, no work, no prearranged plans, nothing, nix, nil. I decided I'd hop off to the half price ticket office in Leicester Square, where I purchased a ticket for the 4pm performance of 'The 39 steps,' which I'd heartily recommend by the way. Having three hours to kill, I decided not to do it as is my usual wont, by retiring to the pub and reading.
Solitary drinking can be very dangerous, I've found, I remember back in my younger days having waited for so long for the play to start that by the time it actually began I was so plastered the performance passed me by in such a haze I had to go through a repeat viewing later that year. This time I went off to potter through the National Gallery and partook of my first tasting of the National Portrait Gallery.
I love London, I really do, I love it that you can just step off the street into the gallery, and there in front of you is Van Gough's 'Sunflowers,' or Monet's 'Waterlillies,' some of the most famous and beloved works of art in the entire world displayed just for your pleasure and it's free. Beautiful.
The portrait gallery was far better than I thought it would be. Working through from the Tudor period to the present, the history of Britain is laid our before you, looking at these renderings of likenesses of monarchs from Henry the 7th to our present Queen, with pictures of the great and the good from their ages, it's probably as close as you'd get to stepping into their world without time travel.
I admit it, I like art. I'm no expert, I know what I like but why I like it can prove to be a bit of mystery. At school at vied with with various other worthy contenders to be my worst subject.
I was especially appalling, being one of the worst of that or any other year in actually producing the stuff. I think I might have actually been better at PE which gives you an idea of my level of skill. I took to art like a snake to archery, the snake being hampered by the lack of limbs, me being handicapped by an inability to draw a straightish line, let alone a circle which didn't look like a deflating beach ball.
Of course back then art appreciation was a dry morsel that teachers tried to force down your throat much in the same way as grammar or French, and therefore elicited the same level of enthusiasm. Of course there were trips to galleries and museums, on coaches usually taking ages to cover the short distances to London on the crowded pretrunk road era of the late 70's and early 80's. This being the time it was, everything was gritty and grainy and once or twice we saw a strike demonstration outside of Ford's massive Dagenham plant, one of many similar occasions taking place up and down the country that lent such colour to industrial Britain of the period.
Art appreciation left me cold for many years, until it was a girl who got me interested, or more properly I should say I at first pretended to be interested because she was. I have embraced many alien lifestyle modes to impress the opposite sex, my six months of vegetarianism being a case in point or my appearance in the audience at a Jesus and Mary chain concert being amongst other notable examples. I think that this was the first time someone wearing a tweed jacket and chinos had ever numbered amongst those particularly exponents of Goth's spectators, hey ho.
At first I found myself attending exhibitions purely in order to have more of her company of which I was naturally greedy for. Later though and against the odds I actually found myself enjoying them, and going independently by myself.
It was during this period that I found myself on a trip to Boston with a companion so annoying that if we hadn't separated for some periods, I probably still be on the run from the US Marshals for attempted murder that I took myself off to the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum and I encountered the works of John Singer Sargent.
Sargent is an interesting character, extremely famous when he was alive, a semi romantic figure that only that particular period seemed to be able to produce, an American born in Italy who spent most of his life in Britain and Europe. A man of ambivalent sexuality, who nonetheless painted some ravishing pictures of women (one of which is below.) Dismissed after his death as anachronism, for painting in the grand manner, his portraits to me have always seemed subtlety subversive, many of those who sat for him where the newly rich, and quite often Jewish. Portraying them in such a way as the established aristocracy did seem to cock a bit of a snook at convention.
Sargent's work will have always have a bit of a special place with me, but since then I've embraced many others from Picasso to Diego Rivera and the Pre-Raphaelites. The girl has long since gone of course, as they all tend to. I thank her for opening my eyes and leaving me with something more than credit card bills and hazy memories.