Rob's Rant

Dear All (if anyone ever reads this)

You won't have heard from me for quite some time. Well to tell you the truth, I've had rather a lot of time on my hands recently, which has been a bit traumatic, and it is pretty amazing the things you don't get around to doing when you have more than enough time to do them.

The days seem to slip into one, each being similar to the last only with changing cloud formations, the presence or absence of rain and the steady tick tick of a decreasing bank balance. Hopefully one of these mornings I'll be able to smarten myself up enough to have another go at the Wandsworth soup kitchen, I mean who are they to tell me no trainers? They're not trainers anyway they're Vans.

Well things are tough, but there could be some interesting news which I'll allude to at the end of this posting, in the meantime, I wanted to talk some more about our current attitude towards visiting the pub. I'm rather worried that the traditional British pub has rather succumbed to our current all or nothing mentality, no more swift halves, it's either an orange juice and home to watch the apprentice or umpteen beverages and kebabnav to guide you home.

For myself I've had many brilliant evenings which have started off which the doomed words, oh alright just the one. The next's mornings disorientated can be rather interesting, particularly the time, I dressed, showered and made it to the bus stop stop before realizing it was in fact Saturday and I could happily go back home and pull the covers over my head again.

I do worry though that the habit of going to the pub for just the one or two drinks is dying out. When I was younger I lived for a while in the countryside, where in the local people would just stop in for a quick pint either just after work, or more interestingly yet just prior to last orders.

I also once found myself living in Wanstead, then a nice area of north east London, where our local pub the Nightingale could be accessed through the back garden gate. The proximity didn't mean that we were constantly popping in and out for yet more alcohol, but me and the flatmates at least once a week would pop over at 10:30 for a swifty before retiring to bed.

Going out simply for last orders was nice, it got you out of the house, made you feel like you'd been out that night, even if it was for all of 45 minutes and meant that you could have dinner, read, perhaps watch a bit of telly prior to bombing the brain cells with a modicum of holligan juice. Cooking prior to drinking also meant a healthier diet and a substantial decrease in kitchen fires.

Last night I convinced a friend to try this out with me, and we toddled of to one of my various locals (they're all about half a mile away which  is a pain, I rather miss not having a pub at the end of the garden,) and enjoyed a smattering of conversation and beer for about an hour. Today my head is clear, yet I feel the benefit of the booze and the social interaction.

Well that's my little bit of opinion over and done with, and if I can convince anyone to go out just for last orders, it doesn't count if you've been at teh bar since half past five, then I'll have done well. So what then about me?

You can probably guess why I have more time on my hands, but hopefully this won't be for long and soon I hope these few days of glorious leisure will be a distant memory. Keep your eyes peeled for news of a new blog and a new project, or if doesn't work out me deleting this post. See you soon.

Well it's been another great week full of achievements, success, irony and sarcasm. I'm sitting here reviewing the wreckage after 3 nights out on the trot, and feeling woolier than a New Zealand shepherd, folloowing a night out at the wool drovers convention.

Anyway I'm going to do something new today, and that's not put my pants on after my trousers (thank you The Apprentice,) and that's write a blog based on a request from a friend. Wulfy and I started at our company at the same time (on exactly the same day,) and despite the fact that our ages are massively different, we got on pretty well from the start.

I would usually supply the drinks, whereas he stand around inventing new words with which to describe himself, trimmense & equisitron are two that stick in the mind, and both show his deep commitment to personal grooming. Wulfy has done deservedly well at the company, but I have always had the sneaking suspicion that it's been his hair the senior management have wanted to promote, and that Wulfy was lucky enough to be sitting under it (though I do hear rumours he takes it off at night.)

Anyway it turned out that Wulfy was a great fan of the George MacDonald Fraser 'Flashman' series of books, though at the time of making this statement I believe he's only read half the cover blurb for 'Royal Flash.' Actually his taste is pretty good, and I though what the hell it won't kill me to give these a go.

I had come across the author beforehand with his work on Richard Lester's magnificent (or trimmense) 'Three Musketeers' series of films and my favourite Bond film 'Octopussy,' notable for Louise Jordan's rather French Afghan prince, scenery chewing that probably left half the set mangled with bite marks.

Fraser didn't invent Flashman, but fleshed out the character of Flashman the school bully from 'Tom Brown's Schooldays' and follows his career after his expulsion from Rugby school for drunkeness. Backed by a then wealthy father buys a commission and is sent off to India. Rather than bore you with the details of the books, I'm going to consider the character of Flashman, a self confessed coward, liar and scoundrel who claims only three natural talents, language, horsemanship and fornication with his achievements.

Each novel appears to follow the same basic structure, Harry gets himself into a bit of a pickle over money or women (quite often both,) and ends up having to take a dangerous mission somewhere nasty in the Victorian world. Through luck, good timing and his (supposedly) cowardly actions after every major event he comes home covered in more (to his mind) undeserved glory.

The character revealed in the novels is out for himself and is vain and arrogant, but strangely reflective and always appears to have a more thorough understanding of the situation than his contemporaries or his superiors.

In my opinion one of the outstanding characterists of the novels is not just how the three dimensional Flashman stands out when compared with the cardboard cut outs with whom he has to deal with, but how his experience has made him much more perceptive and adaptable than the pillars of the establishment with whom he is thrown into contrast.

Despite his acknowledged cowardliness, he acts bravely on many occasions, and indeed it seems to me that Fraser has drawn a character who has a very real appreciation that fighting can be dangerous and often involves dying, a fate most people would I guess like to avoid. Flashman the man, is revelaed in his actions to be far more capable and brave than he himself believes him to be.

The novels themselves are great fun, full of historical detail, frenzied bonking and cock a snook at many traditional values. Despite the love that many conservatives and traditionalist hold for the novels there is no getting away from subversive nature of Flashman who gives us an absurdists view of many of Britain's 19th century military exploits.

Flashman is a rationalist moving in a world still blinkered by tradition and hierachy. A bully yes, but also strangely compassionate and someone who after each exploit seems to just want to get home to his (possibly unfaithful) wife. Fraser has a great command of English, and the only criticism I would have is that the later novels do tend to become a bit formulaic.

In these dreay times, though there is by far worse fates than curling up with one of these books and departing in company with Flashy to some exotic now long santized locale. Happy reading

I see it's been nearly two months since I updated this blog, during which time I have of course been a busy worker bee. I've also been tweating and updating my random thoughts into cyberspace through the usual routes, but now I thought it was perhaps time for something a bit longer.

Once more the inspiration for such outpourings is another movie, and another British movie to boot. The latest offering from Richard Curtis, who for a time I felt could do no wrong on the silver screen, and now I'm very much having to re-evaluate that opinion.

I think I must have seen a great proportion of Mr. Curtis's output over the years. I own the complete series of 'Blackadder.' I trolled along to the cinema to watch and enjoy 'The Tall Guy,' and 'Four Weddings and a Funeral,' emerged just as I was starting work and the first of my friends were thinking about getting married.

I of course groaned at Andie MacDowell's famously trite line 'Is it raining, I hadn't noticed,' but forgave that and the fact that we all agreed he should have gone of with Kristin Scott-Thomas on the grounds that the films was genuinely amusing and completely lacked the usual staples of British cinema up to that point, unemployed junkies living on a sink estate whom it always seemed that Mrs. Thatcher was out to get personally.

To my mind things just improved from there. 'Notting Hill,' was a feel good fantasy showing how an upper middle class everyman could score with the most famous woman in the world, and 'Bridget Jones's Diary' was a romantic hoot throughout.

Then something terrible happened, 'Love Actually,' which everyone else seemed to love, I despised, actually. The smaltzy, smug, patronizing nu-labouresque preaching about what life should be like. The trite unbelievable story lines, the trying to piece together said story lines into some sort of whole (or should I say hole, which is where they should be be placed until the sun explodes.)

I was prepared however to let that pass and looked charitably on the prospect of 'The Boat that Rocked.' Richard Curtis said that this was a homage to one of his own personal great loves, which he states is pop music, but own personally feeling is more likely to be great sackfuls of cash. Yes we get it, he liked pop, he was hardly unique in that.

Even when I was growing up, you were still being defined by the sorts of  music you liked, nowadays Duran Duran and Depeche Mode might not have the same sort of street credibility that you'd find with the Beatles or Jimi Hendrix, but music did seem to still matter in a way that perhaps is no longer the case.

The story what there is of it, is set on a pirate radio station anchored in the North Sea, and is an amalgam of all such stations, but I think mainly radios Caroline and London. The beginning of the film shows the arrival of a posh youngster, recently expelled from his public school for smoking, though what he was smoking is never really explained.

The end of the film shows the ship floundering and sinking and after the engines explode following a botched getaway from the British police. So there you have it, 'Almost Famous,' meets 'Titanic' only a genius of the towering stature of Mr. Curtis could have thought to put those two films together.

In between we have various ribald jokes, which would have seemed over the top even for a Carry On film, matched with even less character development. A picture of 1960's Britain as some sort of demi paradise, where the only snake in the garden is the conniving government, who at the time were actually Labour, but here are made without explicitly saying so as the soul stealing tories, that would make much better baddies.

During my adolesence we actually did have a pirate radio station that we listened to, and which apparently made more waves than I would have credited. Laser 558 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_558.) This had a big impact on my musical taste at a formative time, and I'm sure that 20 years earlier the pirates potrayed here would have had an even bigger impact as there was no where else to listen.

Arrgghhh. I am really angry about this film, and I don't know why. It was fairly innocuous and it passed the time. True it had less story than the instructions on a bottle of shampoo and scarcely more character development. True it held up a warped mirror to the past and see there what it wanted it to.

But plenty of movies have done that, and had worse acting and less totty to look at. I think as in 'Love Actually,' it was the smugness that got to me, seeping through everything like a leaky water bottle in your gym bag.

For a great film about great music, if you haven't already done so check out 'Almost Famous,' and if that's not to your taste try the underrated Steve Coogan vehicle '24 hour party people.' Rock on...

Dear All,

Once again I visited my local cinema complex last night to take in the supposedly delights of Slumdog Millionaire. I'm not going to write in depth about this, but I have to admit I found it to be contrived, horrific (in many places) and patronizing twaddle.

The story follows the young Jamal from the slums of Bombay, through to it's reinvention as the thrusting New Indian city of Mumbai. In between, he gets covered in shit, nearly has his eyes boiled out, see's his mother killed and has various other fun filled adventures.

Instead of character development we have a lot of 'look at that visuals,' which leave you with the wish to come out humming the scenery. There are holes in the plot wide enough to a drive a whole bus station through, but that doesn't matter if you have a Bhangra beat.

Yes he wins the Indian version of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire,' though of course he has to be tortured by police first. And he manages to get the girl, though she's been through her own trials first.

The film was almost unrelentingly nasty, and the ending might have been more upbeat, but being a pardon for a crime you didn't commit must be fairly cheery as well. And that's almost what I felt like when the silly dance number started at the end, phew I am happy that's over, let's get home and not get our eyes boiled out on the way.

There is a lot of poverty and nastiness in the world, but for those of us who don't have to live in it, something like Slumdog seems to be me to be almost like voyeurism, allowing people to say about how horrible life is, without having to lift a finger to do anything about it.

Like a number of films, I've hated, I did enjoy some of the songs, particularly MIA's Paper Planes (which you can hear for yourself here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqlY0VOFtyA.)

If you want an uplifting film about redeeming yourself whilst feeling trapped in a horrific world where things are out of your control, my I recommend 'Groundhog Day 'instead.

You can tell that winter's icy fingers are finally starting to let go, as it it's now 5:15 in the afternoon and the sky is not completely dark. It might still be cold, with the threat of more snow hanging in the air, but at last the end of the season is visible.

I of course made the best use possible of the new extended daylight hours by shutting myself away inside a cinema for a good portion of the afternoon, and enjoying Woody Allen's latest. Today was meant to be my day for culture and I'd originally intended to go to an exhibition on Babylon at the British Museum, but ultimately decided against it in the interests of laziness.

Anyway I thought that today would be a good time to redress partly my comments in my last blog about how depressed the recession is making me. It still is, but to be honest attached to even the biggest blackest cloud there still can be found the tiniest sliver of a silver lining.

I was reminded of this recently when reading an article by Giles Coren, TV food critic, star of the 'Supersize' programs and all round media type, his father Alan, was for a number of years the editor of punch and a noted TV and radio panelist. Giles graduated from university about the same time that I did, just when the last official recession was getting into full swing.

The details of his graduation are rather different, his from a prestigous Oxbridge college, mine from a more proletarian east London institution, but many of the points he rasied were the same. When I finally left those august halls of learning which I had been polluting with my presence for 3 semi productive years, the economy was having what could be termed politely a mild cardiac arrest.

It wasn't anywhere near as bad as it is now of course, but there had been a speculative boom in the 80's, which as booms do, turned to a bust just as I was making my way into the exciting world of employment. To do say that I was excited by the idea of working, was of course an understatement, I was absolutely petrified.

Having been sheltered for 3 years in an institution where I could do basically what I bloody well liked, attend lectures on a laissez faire basis and still manage to get through enough to actually graduate. I was of course terrified by the thought that I would now have to get up at around about the same time everyday, spend most of that doing what someone else told me, and be responsible for my own money.

For my years at university, the idea of getting a job was somewhat, and I hope you pardon the pun, academic. There were far fewer graduates around than their are now, and there seemed to be employment opportunites going begging.

The 80's had given us big recruitment pushes from banks, law firms, accountancy, management consultancy you name it. For the years that I was actually meangt to be studying those in the graduating classes seemed to move with ease from the world of study to the world of work.

All of this came juddering to a halt in the early part of 89, with the recession that so many had predicted for the previous year finally coming home to roost. Being skint students, myself and my friend Stephen Delo adopted a novel method of attending that years graduate recruitment fair, by sneaking in through the side door of the attached Big Pan Pizza restaurant, undoing the necessity of being part of an extremely long queue and paying the ridiculously steep registration fee.

What we found inside was rather different from the days of just a year beforehand. Yes there were a few big names still represented, but those that were had obviously not been able tocancel their stand order quickly enough.

The news was depressing, no jobs, not now, perhaps not ever. My own ideas of smoothly swanning in to a nice marketing managers job with a huge FMCG provider, were quickly scotched, not only bu more poor results, not knowing really what FMCG meant, or really knowing that much about marketing, apart from the fact it seemed glamorous.

In previous years, when firms were eager for cannon fodder, a total unsuitability for a job would not have been that great a hurdle towards getting it, when large organizations were effectively buying up graduate talent by the yard. In the lean times that we now faced, an actual interest and capability were far more important, especially as you would be basically only be taken on to replace someone who left, rather than fulfilling the vain quotas of a recruiting manager.

So what jobs were there. Well to be honest for the likes of me, damn few. There were the hardy perennials, those guys like MacDonald's who seemed to be expanding no matter what the economy was like. There were also to be honest horrible sounding jobs at factory chicken farms, the descriptions of which made you want to throw up.

Most of the glamorous, desk warrior jobs had disappeared for the timing being, demonstrating the soundly brilliant stop/start, bloody hell stop! business acument that has defined many of our top firms, graduate recruiting didn't really get going again till the mid 90's, leaving many of us feeling like a lost generation.

Was it really so bad though, well yes and no. I was forced to take a job in media sales, as that was the only field that would have me, anmd worked for a succession of big, small and shady employers through the worst of the lean times. And to be honest for most of that time I had fun.

I'm now pretty sure that I don't have what it takes to be an accountant, management consultant or banker, though I still believe I could have made a fair stab at marketing, which did sound quite interesting once I knew what it was. The worst thing that could have happened to me, I now think is that through economic overconfidence I could have secured a job for which I had no talent, but no propensity to enjoy, until forced out by the first cold winds of an economic downturn.

By that time I would have come to see myself as destined to follow that employment path and doggedly pursued it, as it became increasing difficult and pointless to follow. Giles Coren ended up working in a restaurant, starting his interest in food. My career has not been anywhere near as sparkling, but it has been varied.

For those graduating now, I know it's not nice to have to go through the uncertainty of unemployment, especially when so many are saddled with large debts. However in avoiding becoming part of a corporate sausage machine, there might be a few more laughs you can squeeze out of an extended adolesence before you have to get seriously to work.

That's enough deep thoughts for another week, and I leave you with a picture of Rebecca Hall who has popped up in both movies I've seen this month at the cinema.

Well here we are at the last stop before the end of the world, at least that what it seems like. For those of you who haven't noticed, we're going through a little economic difficulty at the moment, there's a banking crisis, a recession, a property crash...Well it's enough to make anyone weep.

To me though the unremitting tide of bad news, has actually made me very, very depressed. The sheer scale of the problem is nothing compared to people's willingness to, I have to say this wallow in it.

When a piece of news is released which is in itself so bad that it almost beggars belief, hoards of commentators, bloggers and members of the public will jump on board and tell you that, though you think things are dire now, just you wait and it'll seem even worse in the morning. And of course being British, we have to have the worst, the most humbling, self flagellating experience of all, not matter the problems in other countries, the ones here are of a proportion to send us back to the stone age.

I read all of this and of course get nervous. My own job isn't yet on the line, or even likely to be for a while, but I don't want the country to be mired in a financial Armageddon that will leave very few people unscathed.

Of course these days, everyone will tell you that they told you so, that you could see it coming with the explosion in house prices and the legions of tat making their way from the vast factories of China to the malls of the Western world. Well you do have to ask yourself what sort of world would we be living in if recession hadn't struck.

House prices so out of touch with actual income levels, that the only way for most people to be able to get on the housing ladder would be to inherit a house in the first place, an ever increasing desire for more stuff that soon you have to start building a cellar in which to keep all the useless crap, the £25 stereos, the unwatched DVDs etc.

Again it's easy to see in hindsight that the economic structure of the last decade was becoming increasingly unsustainable, but now we have the question of what will replace it? All the commentators now seem to be saying that we will be living in a more austere future, with limited credit, barely rising house prices and world dominanting Chinese laughing at us poor benighted Westerners.

Of course all the predictions from the last couple of recessions came true as well. I remember clearly during the recession of the early 80's that we were told that we would have a 'leisure society' in the future, as a result of limited employment opportunities, job sharing and the remorseless rise of technology.

Yes we are now once again facing the prospect of rising unemployment, but it's unlikely to lead to a leisure society, people now tend to work harder at their jobs than previously, clocking up far more hours. The most likely result of the current layoffs, is a rise in productivity amongst those who keep their jobs, and the elimination of many of the boom years non jobs that have beentaking up so much office space as of late.

What is much more more worrying is the degradation of the currency, we've had currency crises before hand and lived through them. It was from the effective devaluation in 1992 following Sterling's exit from the ERM that we managed to start pulling out of the early 90's relatively shallow, but somehow rather nasty recession.

Again it's not good to have a currency in free fall, but to have a situation where we can take our competitors money at advantageous rates, might in the long term be good for business.

Perhaps we're loooking at recession all wrong, it could be a great way of clearing the deadwood from the eceonomy, stopping the exponential rose of the public sector in it's tracks, creating a saner and fairer housing market whilst scaling down the worst of the imbalances that dependence on financial services had brought.

Of course that's incredibly optimistic, and in your bones it's easier to believe that the worst is going to happen, and you might as well stay in bed until turfed out of it by the Chinese and sent to work down the rice mine.

I will try and cheer myself up though by remembering one of my own axioms, nothing is as good it seems, and those people now happily (it has to be said) predicting the apocalypse are probably the very same people two years ago at dinner parties telling you that property would continue to rise for ever.

On that note, I am of course fleeing the country for the duration, and look forward to welcoming you soon to my antartic blog, the only place on the planet currently it would seem, recession free.

TTFN

Dear All,

Well the New Year has finally dawned, with all the weary inevitability of an unwelcome bank letter, and I sit here on the last Saturday of freedom before we have to start thinking of heading back to work. I had a very unmerry Christmas this year, which makes the end of the holidays seem even more unwelcome.

Before and during Christmas I was down with a sever cold that knocked me for 6 and left me feeling as drained as a week old Capri sun wrapper. Afterwards, I had my most severe attack of gout for a very long time, leaving me barely able to walk for days, oh joy!

Gout for those of you who don't know, is caused by a build up of uric acid in the joints, which creates a nice pleasant warm feeling, much as if your toe was being devoured by an angry crocodile. It is about teh most painful thing I have every experienced, and it's so far lasted for days, and is only finally starting to lift.

This has meant for me a festive season spent either slumped in front of the television or slumped on a bed spread dipping in and out of sleep whilst a whole family of woodpeckers, mistakenly attack my left foot. That's not all I've been doing of course, and soemtimes for kicks, I've tried to get a shoe on, and go for a hop to get food. This has been almost as enjoyable as walking around with a spike stuck in your foor, whilst wearing footware half the size required for the job. Yep no fun whatsoever.

The Christmas period (not necessarily Christmas itself,) has always been a favourite of mine. No one's at work, you can really relax knowing that work isn't piling up whilst your elsewhere, and you can go and enjoy nights of excess to stagger humanity, knowing that you you'll have time to recover before your expected to say or do anything remotely approaching coherence.

I did manage against the odds to attend a New Year's Eve dinner party at my friends Ian and Sue's house, a beautiful place, straight out of an Agatha Christie short story. Unfortunately I think I was about as much fun as a parking ticket, and I'm not holding my breath waiting for a repeat.

The irony is that it is now starting to get better, and will probably be even more improved by the time I get back to work. Ah well, January is meant to be depressing, that's whta it's there for, and so lets get back to the credit crunching, resolution riddled, landscape of the first month back at work.

Well it's another drizzly Sunday afternoon, when it seems like the only thing grayer than the weather outside is the news on the television. We seem currently to be in some sort of perpetual November of the soul, where everything is dank and gloomy.

I was going to write about the recession and the credit crunch today, but so many other people are currently, it's the new craze, I don't feel that I really want to compete with them. There'll be another time for doom and gloom and perhaps gloom and doom over the coming months for us to revisit that topic at length, probably once I get made redundant and have to write this blog daily as an alternative to just sitting round in my pants starving to death.

Anyway, back to the story, what story I hear you ask (metaphorically of course,) well this story of course. The other day I was sitting around with my flatmate Laura, when we started to have a near argument. I think we were both slightly hungover at the time which could have helped, and there was a certain additional spikiness to our conversation that an ill defined ache behind the eyes will give to you.

We were talking about of all things going to the cinema, and Laura said something about preferring to visit the Ritzy cinema in Brixton when I made a snide comment about how people would prefer that, as it'd make the films seem somehow edgier. Now I love Laura to bits, and partly because we do sometimes argue about thinsg like that, which is partly because Laura like my work friend Jenny is one of these people who without realizing it seem to be effortlessly stylish and dare I say it cool.

It always winds me up however as certain things are therefore deemed by this group as being automatically more worthy of respect than others. Things that are imbied with this worthiness include films with subtitles, certain elements of fringe theatre, a number of modern writers, you know the sort of thing.

For the thing to be worthy it doesn't have to be entertaining, as long as it's a tale of some marginalized membre of this or ideally a foriegn society, generally it's even better if they've been marginalized by two successive regimes, the current one and the one before the revolution, war, game show whatever.

The first to cotton onto this work's greatness will be the reviewers. In papers such as the 'Sunday Times,' you'll see that the film everybodies actually going to see let's call it 'Stormsmasher 2, this wind is personal,' will be given a one paragraph review, whilst 'The edge of tenderness' (translated from original parsi,) will have be splashed all over it's own page, with photgraphs of a number of key scenes in the film.

Hardly anyone will go and see 'Edge of tenderness,' but many will talk about how they want to experience it's heart warming depictions of torture, rape and despondency communicated through the language of subtitles. Of course if it's a Mike Leigh film you can dispence with the subtitles and just endure a jolly 2 hour patronising gripe about how horrible everybody but the working class is, and they're pretty horrible too.

Of course I'm being slightly rotten, as some of the film that have been singled out for praise in this way, recent notables include 'Persepolis' and 'Goodbye Lenin,' I've really enjoyed, but many other's I've felt are as devoid of fun as a barium enema. My problem is that nothing, whether it be a book, film, play, comic etc is naturally better than another simply because of its subject matter.

This might not be the most illuminating of observations, but sums up the way I feel. Anyway hope to have a more entertaining rant for you shortly.

Good afternoon,

 

It's another Sunday, as I sit here planning an another ramble through the blogosphere. It's been an interesting couple of weeks; what with untimely death of global capitalism (I'm sure that rumours of its demise will turn out to be rather premature.) This has been an inspiration for me and my friends at work to practice our BBC global economic catastrophe faces.

 

You know the ones, where someone either has a phone held to their ear with their mouth open in an 'O' as big as the London Eye, or alternately the ones where a guys head's in his hands in front of monitor displaying more red figures than a communist beauty pageant. Oh how we laughed as the international financial system went down the drain. This and the stresses of the working work, left me completely exhausted by Saturday, and the day of numerous activities that I had planned, went bin the bin faster than last night's takeaway. Instead I spent a day reading and watching an exceptionally varied mix of television.

 

One of the entertainments I viewed was the film, 'In Good Company,' notable for being one of the few big screen entertainments set in the fascinating world of advertizing sales. I worked in sales for many years, on a number of magazines, and I have to say it wasn't a world for the faint hearted.

 

I got into ad sales, by the simple expedient of having no other idea what I was going to do after college. Everyone else seemed to have a plan, whilst I just had debts which needed to be paid...fast. I was also a sucker for the ads placed by the recruitment consultants, which promised you a career at the sharp of publishing.

 

It turned out that working at the sharp end of publishing was as stimulating as sitting on a spike. A thrill for some now doubt, but an activity you had to approach very carefully.

 

I started at a large publishing company, where the graduate trainees were thrown into the firing line by the management with the zeal and enthusiasm shown by a first world war general ordering another suicide mission. The sharp end of publishing turned out to be phoning strangers and asking them for money in return for a microscopic classified ad in the magazine. Of course at the time if you wanted to recruit an accountant, our magazine, was one of the few places to find them. That meant that at least in this case you were asking for money in good faith that it might lead to some sort fo return.

 

Being about as mature as a retarded cabbage patch doll, I decided to jack this job in after about 6 months, as they seemed to frown on my frequent absences, hangovers and general inability to adapt to normal life after 3 years at a subsidized fun palace (university.) After this I worked in some very memorable jobs, memorable for the way the way that management would view the magazines simply as a way of making money, and others which worked. As Lord Lever said about advertizing 50% of what I sold was wasted cash.

 

Anyway back to the point of blog, the ad sales world is small and is a strange mix of those who'd sell their mother at 80% discount to make monthly target, and those who really believe that they're going to improve their client's businesses. It is an integral part of the publishing business, though regarded by most members of the editorial team as you'd regard gum on your shoe.

 

Despite the fact that ad sales, actually funds much of the content that we consume, love and enjoy, you'd be hard pushed to find someone whose life's dream was to work in it. Just think though how the world would be without it. WH Smiths, having one choice of newspaper or magazine, the BBC being the only TV channel. No 'Friends,' 'Scrubs' or any of the other major US network shows that are only made possible by the ads shown in the middle.

 

So it was refreshing to find a film set in this rather twilight world, and one which featured a Scarlett Johanssen, as easy on the eyes as a pair of tailored spectacles. The story wasn't bad either, that of a young ambitous man, thrown into a job that has was as ready for as a seal would be for roller skating, trying to muddle through with a mixture of determination and inspirational rhetoric straight from the dictionary of 'Bull.'

 

Dennis Quaid plays the wise old manager, displaced by the arrival of the young turk. Over time, the newbie  finds much to admire in Quaid's world view and begins to rethink whether his focused ambition is actually bringing him what he wants. He also has a relationship with Quaid's college age daughter.

 

The stand out moment of the film is when Malcolm McDowell turns up as the corporate raider whose purchase of the magazine as part of his corporate empire started the whole thing. In a manner reminiscent of Gordon Ghekko (or even Gordon Brown,) he gives an address full of impassioned by ultimately empty buzz talk, and is then flummoxed by a number of sensible questions from Quaid.

 

Anyway watch teh film, you might like it, and if you're interested in how ad sales works, check this out

 

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=fclYmVaORbM

 

Ciao!

Well it's been a busy time in the Rob's Rant household recently, what with finding out that the 2nd footman had been diddling the upstairs chambermaid, and the chauffeur giving notice. You really can't get the staff these days. Well enough of fiction and back to reality. Yesterday was momentous for two reasons, my first trip to IKEA for about 5 years and the first time I'd been out drinking at a social engagement on a Saturday for about 5 months.

 The trip to IKEA would demand not just a blog entry but probably a book to itself to describe, but our kitchen has been transformed. The Swedish style can opener really has made all the difference. It's sleek lines and chrome plating in sharp contrast to the general air of cruddiness that inhabits the rest of our abode. Apart from that, the other major purchases were some Swedish sweets and bargain cider, much more in tune with our general mode of living.

I've never been too keen on going out on Saturday, apart from cinema or theatre trips, even during my college years I never really liked the general crush of the once a week alcoholics that would change what should be a nice relaxing day into a strange bacchanalian celebration of all things debauched. If Friday's are like a mini Christmas once a week, then Saturday's are like a bijou New Year's, with all that implies.

When you go out as frequently as I do, I find it nice to rest old man liver for much of the weekend, allowing him to build up stamina for the trials of the week ahead, especially as Friday's can generally see partying excess at levels to stagger humanity. For all that Friday's still have a generally nicer atmosphere about them, as people look forward to two well earned days of rest, also there remains a more laid back feel, as people of all ages flock to London's bars and pubs finally free of the rigour of the workign week.

Saturday's in contrast I feel are for the young who don't know any better joined by the older ones who don't care, who seem to take to drinking with the zeal of a recent convert. The thing which gets to me is that the drinking seems to be so joyless, the act of getting wasted is enough in itself without the added benefit of the great conversations and good times that can be enhanced by the appropriate application of a social lubricant.

What great conversations I hear you ask. You know the type, you go the bar with some friends and start of by discussing the global financial situation, how to square thinking green with rights of poorer nations to develop and 6 pints in the topic has evolved to the point where feelings have reached boiling point as to who was you're favourite Muppet (either Foozie or Miss Pggy.)

These are the sort of Earthshaping discussions we should be having my friends. These and all the various top 10 and top 5 lists that blokes roll out when no ones into football. For most though, the most you'll hear one person asking another 'Stella again mate?' Whilst watching girls get so befuddled they manage to walk into toilet doors whilst wearing barely enough clothing to cover a barbie doll. The last part I don't mind so much, though for people to put so much on show they do get knarked if you look at them for too much.

I don't know, I've never been cool, and my only real chance at pulling was when I accidentally went to a convention for blind nymphomaniacs and so my dislike of Saturdays could be just the sour grapes of an old curmudgeon for anyone having a better time than he is.  So for now in order to repress these feelings I shall try and stay away from bars and clubs on a Saturday. On the plus side though my friend Jenny did have a party at a really cool bar that I now intend to visit frequently on Monday lunchtimes, Corbet Place details here (http://www.fluidstyle.co.uk/venuedetails.aspx?VenueID=19384)

And for those of us who wish to get back to the older values of a simpler weekend, well there's always Whigfield,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcmBaRAj7FU

These day's it's hard to pass by a newspaper article or a report on television without feeling doomed. If the forthcoming global depression doesn't get you, then climate change surely will. The nightmare scenario is the world's jobless waiting patiently at the soup kitchen for tidal wave to come and sweep them all away.

Over the couple of years I've experienced a lot of negative comments from my friends about my ambivalence to the arguments about global warming. To be short, I just don't buy it. It's now a new orthodoxy that you can't challenge, no matter how flimsy the evidence actually is. The world's largest producers of CO2 are still volcanoes, and no one is suggesting putting some sort of carbon cap on them, and if we took all the CO2 out of the atmosphere what would the plants eat. Nevermind.

Still my position on climate change has lead many to think that I'm the sort of person who'd rabidly support big oil, love to have the world covered with landfills, and would generally not be happier than having got back from a hard days polluting. This isn't really the case.

I first became concerned about the environment when at school. As schoolboys love, we were working on a particularly noxious experiment which went wrong (as they so often do,) producing a gas that the teacher felt would be likely to kill people just by looking at from 40 paces. With lightning speed the test tube was grabbed and placed in toxic chamber at the back of the classroom.

I was pretty relieved and at the time thought this meant that it would be taken somewhere and treated, made safe, perhaps into some sort of organic fertilizer or sent of to Mars where it could no longer do any harm. I was extremely concerned when I found out later that it was simply wafted out of a chimney high above the school, probably shortening the life of the attendant sparrows and seagulls who seemed to use the roof as an avian based pick up joint.

From that point I became rather concerned about what I saw as the twin evils of pollution and waste. I despair at our flagrant over use of oil, which quite apart from power your car, makes plastics and so many other things vital for our civilization. The amount of packaging that we use for things that will be eaten, played with and then thrown away. The despoiling of the countryside with the tips that the packaging goes into. There must be another way.

Conversely though I also appalled at rather than giving people a choice, governments now use the environment as a way of ordering people around, and environmentalism now seems to be about limiting people's freedoms rather developing solutions. Oil will eventually get scarce, but there must be other ways of powering transport, and economic reasons for developing it, as the alternative is basically to take away peoples freedom to travel.

It isn't right that we send pollution into the skies and the seas in such massive quantities, but these parts of the environmental agenda seem to have become overlooked by the all encompassing cult of global warming. The same doctrine which now seeks to condemn many of those living in the 3rd world to poverty in perpetuity.

I'm far from being an eco-warrior, but my brand of 'give a hoot, don't pollute' concern now seems to be massively out of date, with it seems only room for one topic on the agenda. Anyway that's my rant over for today. I'm going to round up some things to put in the recyling bin, hopefully they'll include some currently trendy ideas.. 

Well it's been an interesting weekend for me, I've been back to Paris on the Eurostar, which I feel is the only way to travel. London to Paris in 2 hours and 15 minutes, less time than it takes to cross London in heavy traffic.
Paris was rather as I'd left it, and me and my brother spent a relaxing couple of days experiencing the sites, enjoying the food and being rather surprised at how good Disneyland, Paris had become. I particularly recommend the 'Tower of Terror' ride. Of course it being August most of the French had actually left Paris and a rather surprising proportion of local businesses were shut.
As I'd alluded to, this wasn't my first trip to Paris. I have popped over on a number of occasions before.
The most memorable was about 4 years ago when I went there for an unforgettable New Years. Being after an authentically French experience myself and my three friends, Tim, Corinna and Lesley had booked into a top notch restaurant near the Arc de Triomphe, called Winston's. This was of course named after that great Frechman Winston Churchill.
Despite the fact that I phoned to book some weeks beforehand, we arrived to find that our reservation had been lost. The staff were extremely friendly, but they'd obviously never heard of a monsieur Kelly.
They stared and stared at the paper, but it didn't reveal anything that looked like my name. They pretended of course that they'd found it, and seated us in a very nice table close to the bar, which is of course on New Year's eve the most important thing.
We drank, and chatted and drank some more and then left the eatery to experience what we hoped would be fireworks, but turned out to be that most French of occasions, the New Year riot. As we came we noticed a large number of black clad riot police, by some barricades at the top of the Champs Elysee.
Behind the barricades was a mob composed of Paris's most disaffected, intent on the sort of good time that ends in broken bones. This of course would have been a call for most right thinking English men to beat a hasty retreat, Tim and me though had been emboldened by a large dose of the festive spirit decided instead to have a peak over barricades.
Well the result was first that one policeman teargassed me, shouting in pain I told Tim to look at what had been done to me. This meant that he too looked in the wrong direction and was of course gassed.
We did the only thing that could be done in the process, we stormed the riot police, and started the revolution of the Grande Hiver. Actually no, we got on the metro back our hotel both of us with tears streaming from our eyes. It looked like we'd had a fight of a type not so unfamiliar in Gay Paree, of coures our dates weren't impressed.
Back in the bar we repaired our broken spirits with a mixture of different spirits in what turned out to be one of the best New Year's I've ever had. This trip wasn't as exciting, but Paris does still have a special place in my heart even if it doesn't always bring a tear to my eye. I'll leave you with a photo of the street where we stayed and look forward to seeing you soon,

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.