Cocktails and Records

Back home after another annoying day at work, I’m alone and consoling myself with a copy of 70s K-Tel compilation Mindbender (key tunes: ‘When will I see you again?’ by Prince Charles’ favourite band The Three Degrees, ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ by Carl Douglas and the ever-morbid  ‘Santa Never Made it into Darwin’ by Bill and Boyd) when I’m reminded of the innovation to end all innovations right there on the back of the LP cover.

Yes folks, it’s the K-Tel Record Selector.

The Record Selector isn’t just a cheap looking contraption that holds 24 of your precious LPs in a flimsy piece of plastic. It is ‘the modern method of storing and selecting your favourite music’. You simply ‘place your albums in the Record Selector, move the first one forward and the others follow automatically. When the Selector reaches the album you wish to play, you simply remove it and return the rest to their starting positions’. It’s got ‘finger touch starting’! It is the future!!

I’ve never had the privilege of experiencing the wondrous K-Tel Record Selector for myself (beyond the record player, my family’s embracing of music technology was sadly limited to ‘the shelf’) but perhaps you did? Or was it just an Australian thing? I do hope not.

One of the ‘seminal’ moments of my youth was the day that my mother allowed me and a friend to go to the local cinema by ourselves to see ‘latest sensation’ Kevin Bacon in Footloose. It was 1984. I was 9. God, it was exciting.

I don’t remember thinking that it was exactly the best film ever, but I could certainly relate to Footloose. For one thing, it was set in a country town like mine with wide open spaces and horrible adults, and secondly (and even more like where I grew up) the likes of Foreigner, Johnny Cougar and Bonnie Tyler seemed be on perpetually in the background. And what a story – the town was trying to ban music and dancing! An outrage! How I hoped that the lovely Kevin would make them all see sense.

Flash forward 26 years and I’ve just recently watched Footloose for only the second time in my life. It seems less 1984, more 1955 now. Teen pic clichés abound and the whole truck/playing chicken scene is clearly ripped off Rebel without a Cause. The idea of a local preacher banning music and dancing from any town on the grounds that they encourage sin is faintly ludicrous. I wonder now how Footloose ever got made and whether anyone over the age of 9 actually took it seriously. The story was clearly out-of-date in 1984.

But what’s this! This morning I discover that some studio nonk has decided to remake the film with Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell. If there is one thing worse than foolishly re-visiting your own childhood film memories, then it’s someone else mucking about with them. Obviously like the re-make of The Karate Kid I’ll be avoiding the film like the plague, but still the very idea hurts. What next? A re-make of bloody Flashdance?

Has it really been that long since I last wrote?

My, how time flies when you’re not having fun. Since I last logged into these pages, I’ve been shocked to the core by two serious family illnesses, descended to hell and back at work, enjoyed a lovely holiday in Scotland, completely missed my third blogging birthday and accumulated 152 spam emails.

But really, I just haven’t felt like writing. Or even communicating with anyone for that matter. I’ve got an inbox of unanswered emails (sorry, if it includes yours), a list of people I really should contact and stuff to sort out for an upcoming trip to Australia. But have I felt like dealing with any of this? No, of course not – I’ve had other things to worry about.

Not the least that in the aftermath of my life’s recent woes, I’ve felt my own personality slightly slipping away from me. I haven’t been listening to much music, I haven’t been out much, but perhaps even more distressingly I haven’t been able to formulate even vague opinions about anything, I’ve just been ‘going with the flow’.

It all came to a head last week when I found myself at English National Opera watching the jarringly modernist opera The Makropulos Case and reading The Spectator. I’d come across both randomly and in the spirit of the month had just shrugged my shoulders and thought ‘why not?’.  But now, with the light of sudden self-awareness dawning on me all I could ask myself was ‘what has happened? I’ve just paid to see something by a composer I don’t like and now I’m sitting here reading  a conservative weekly.’

Still, I shrugged. It’s good to try new things sometimes.

Then it happened. Filling time in the foyer, I was reading an article by Melanie Phillips about how true liberal values are being eroded by anti-Western, secular ideologies such as feminism, multiculturalism and environmentalism and how the country is now run by the thought police, when I ran into a particular music obsessed acquaintance and professional snob who I usually actively try to avoid. ‘Isn’t this opera fantastic?’ she gushed ‘I love Janacek. It really is proper music, so much better than that… populist stuff they keep putting on by Puccini and Mozart.’

I stared blankly at her and made some noncommittal sounds before explaining that I needed to visit the Ladies quite urgently. Because inside, a familiar feeling was emerging. I was incensed, absolutely incensed. Fucking Melanie Phillips, the whinging cow, so oppressed by the thought police that she manages to get on Question Time all the sodding time. And I wish the bloody thought police would get you too, you patronising music snob, because liking music with an actual tune is just so lame and low-brow isn’t it… 

So I slung my copy of the The Spectator in the bin and went home and listened to ABBA. And yes, I feel better now thank you.

A story in this week’s episode of the radio programme/podcast This American Life tackles that age old conundrum: Which superpower would you prefer – the power of flight or the power of invisibility?

The reporter behind the story, John Hodgman, seems to have spent a not inconsiderable amount of time examining this very question. He’s researched the issue over many years and has now compiled a vital analysis of people’s responses.

His findings reveal that most people know instantly which superpower they would choose, almost as though they have been pondering it all their lives. This rings true with me. As soon as he mentioned the options I knew that I wanted to fly.

He then goes on to point out that absolutely no one actually wants to use their superpower for fighting crime and saving people from collapsing buildings as superheroes are supposed to. No, mostly they want to use them to spy on ex’s and work colleagues, perve at other people, nick stuff and get to pub quickly. Exactly. I want to fly because I want to feel the cool wind rushing through my hair, enjoy the view below me and never have to encounter mustard and banana loving commuters ever again.

So what about you – flying or invisibility? And what are you going to use it for?*

*Analysis of people’s decisions also suggests that choice of superpower says a lot about your personality. Allegedly. But lets not go there. Just because I dream of the power of flight doesn’t mean that I’ve got some kind of guileless, show off, hero complex alright.

Some time ago I developed an unnatural interest in those vacuous celebrities of the 1920s known as the Bright Young People. I watched documentaries about professionally posh prats like Brian Howard and Nancy Mitford, poured over their portraits by Cecil Beaton, read Evelyn Waugh’s mirth-making Vile Bodies again and revelled in the salacious details of Circus Parties* and Bath and Bottle Parties** in DJ Taylor’s book, Bright Young People.

All that remained was to see Terence Rattigan’s ‘lost’ play about the period called After the Dance.

Happily it’s now showing at the National Theatre.

So I took myself along to see it.

After the Dance is very good (and not just because it stars the lovely Benedict Cumberbatch). A sharp, witty look at inter-generational conflict, it also examines what happens when people try to hang on to their youth for too long. It’s not pretty.

But the most impressive / horrific (I can’t quite make up my mind) thing about it is the drinking. The play starts with most of the main characters being hung-over and continues with them enjoying post-breakfast drinks, pre-lunch drinks, afternoon drinks and well, any-other-time drinks. They are never away from the drinks cabinet and the cocktail shaker. This is the kind of lifestyle you can only maintain if you have a butler named Williams, shamelessly use the words ‘drinky-poo’ and your sole occupation is drunkenly dictating a pointless biography of ‘King Bomba of Naples’ to the hired help at 5am in the morning. Still, I’m kind of jealous.

The sad practicalities of life demand that I limit myself to a tiresomely small number of cocktails each week. I’m pleased to say, however, that I have managed to locate a new favourite recently. It is called the ‘Fiesta’. They probably didn’t drink it in the 20s but hey, its the closest I’ll get to Bright Young Person style exuberance these days.

Fiesta
- dash lime juice
- dash grenadine
- 3/4 oz Noilly Prat
- 3/4 oz Calvados
- 3/4 oz white rum

Stir over ice cubes and strain into chilled cocktail glasses.

* Come dressed as a trapeze artist or lion tamer
** at St George’s Swimming Baths, Buckingham Palace Road. Guests were required to wear at Bathing Suit and bring a towel and a Bottle. It was simply divine.

You may remember that some months ago I encountered a big fan of the humble banana on a train journey. Well, yesterday I had the (mis)fortune to meet his evil twin.

Again, I had innocently boarded the tube and settled in for a quiet journey in the company of a book. There was only one other person in the carriage. He was sitting diagonally opposite me with a plastic supermarket carrier bag on his lap and a bread knife in his hand.

Needless to say, my interest was piqued.

My fellow tube traveller reached into his bag and casually pulled out a slice of loose white bread and a jar of Colman’s English Mustard. Evenly, thickly and smoothly, he carefully spread the mustard across the bread before proceeding to eat this mustardy morsel in a couple of happy bites.

Not being a huge fan of mustard myself, I struggled to stay immersed in my book. I desperately tried to ignore him as he smacked his lips and reached into the bag for another slice. But try as I might, my nose wrinkled and my stomach clenched as he smothered an even thicker layer of mustard onto this next piece of bread.

As the carriage filled though, fortunately so did his belly. After two more slices of mustard bread and a quick lick of the mustardy knife, he put the remains of the Colman’s jar back into the carrier bag, got off the train, and left me in mustard-free peace.

So this really begs two questions:

1. Is the solo mustard sandwich a frequent occurrence that I just haven’t met until now?
2. Why do these things happen to me?

A scammer attempted to scam me today. It was quite amusing.

He called the office this morning and attempted to convince me that the free listing our organisation had been enjoying in something called City Map which was now sadly coming to an end. To confirm that we didn’t want to continue with this generous offer in a ‘well known’ publication I’ve never actually heard of, I just had to sign and fax back a form that he was sending over right now.

So the fax duly arrives. It is a poorly laid out sheet of A4 utilising three different font types in eight (count them!) sizes and contains a proof of ‘our ad’. Our logo is wrong and our company information incorrect in both content and spelling.

The fax includes some humorous instructions like ‘The advertising will materialise after the placing of the order’ and other contractual information which is clearly made up. It also includes some crafty clauses indicating that if you sign this form you’re not actually cancelling the free listing that you’re not aware that you have, but ordering £1,697 of display advertising which you can’t cancel for two years instead.

But, small print aside, who would fall for this scam? This is people working in marketing and communications that they are targeting – vacuous people like me who judge things entirely by how many font sizes and spelling mistakes there are. Such a poorly executed scam deserves to fail. Put some effort in scammers!!!

A funny thing happened to me on the way home this evening… something that I’ve only ever seen happen ‘abroad’.

You see, a woman rushed up to me at my local suburban train station tonight as I was approaching the escalators. She explained in a peculiar mixture of frantic embarrassment that she had too much luggage to take by herself, that she was kind of scared she might fall down the escalator and could I help her until her husband arrived. So I took a suitcase and a bag, and once at the foot of the escalator, I assisted her in stacking a somewhat formidable pile of luggage while we waited for her husband to come down with their baby. I then pointed them in the direction of central London, they thanked me and we went off our separate ways.

The odd thing was that this all happened in French.

As much as I’ve cringed at some of my fellow English speaking natives shameless usage  of the  ‘loud and slow’ dialect in other countries, I don’t think anyone has ever just randomly started speaking to me in another language whilst in the UK or Australia.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. I don’t know whether I’m more surprised that I could communicate with her (especially considering my poor relationship with my French classes over the past year) or the fact that she just assumed that everyone at the station spoke French and wasn’t in the faintest bit taken aback that I did. Perhaps some people think higher of the foreign language speaking skills of this country than we do. Either that, or fear of the escalator conquers all.

I couldn’t get to sleep the other night. Even Mondo’s trusty old method of counting down an A-Z of some boring topic like ‘indie bands from 1991′ wasn’t working. I just remained frustratingly wide awake. So I went to the book shelves to see what I could find to soothe my sleepless misery and my hand seemed to be drawn to a book I haven’t read since 1986: Mary Norton’s The Borrowers.

And boy, it was good.

It’s odd re-reading a dimly remembered book from your childhood. Of course I remembered the vague outline of the plot, but the details were long lost so the story was relatively fresh. I probably enjoyed reading it as much as I did when I was 11.

However, it didn’t feel the same. I seem to remember that once upon a time I became absolutely immersed in a book, I couldn’t put it down, I lived in there with the characters and wanted it to go on and on and on.

I spent hours reading. I read before school, I read in the car and I read under the bed clothes at night. I read my way through the shelves of both my school library and the local library. I read everything from the classics like What Katy Did and Anne of Green Gables, to every fad series going, from the Bobbsey Twins and Nancy Drew to Sweet Valley High and Choose Your Own Adventure. I read my Grandma’s girls’ boarding school books from the 40s and the 70s/80s teen equivalents by Judy Blume and Cynthia Voigt. I read trash fantasy series by David Eddings and distressing sci-fi by Kurt Vonnegut. I just read. All the time.

But not any more. I rarely read any fiction these days. I’m not sure why. It’s not that I couldn’t make the time if I wanted to. I think it might be that a precarious combination of cynicism, a long neglected imagination, the stress of everyday life and a seriously limited attention span means that I just can’t sit there and be properly lost in anything any more. It’s not the same as when I was 13 and pathetic as it may seem, I’m kind of sad about that.

‘Good girl’ said the dentist ‘I can see you’ve been looking after your teeth – even if you haven’t seen me for two whole years.’

‘Yes’ I think, silently stewing as she scrapes away at my teeth like a chisel-wielding maniac, ‘they have invented toothbrushes now, you know.’

How can these people be so patronising? Do they actually think that making me feel like a ten year old will get me to make regular visits? Or is it the power of having someone trapped in the chair beneath them, the threateningly bright lights and the sucky thing?

Yes, I’ve been to the dentist this morning.* It wasn’t unpleasant, just annoying. From the quite frankly bizarre selection of magazines (Attitude, The World of Interiors and Lancashire Life**) when you arrive to the ‘And you’ll be making your appointment for six months time?’ breeziness of the receptionist when you leave, the whole experience just irritates.

I think that it is, like with my old friend the optician, the expectation that you should troop off to see them and their ilk at regular intervals (even if you have absolutely no need to) and that they don’t hesitate in reminding you of this fact. Oh, it’s for your health and all that, but who has regular visits to the doctor just for the hell of it?

So I want to get to the bottom of this once and for all. Does anyone actually go to the dentist and/or hygienist every six months? Is this number plucked from the air in the hope that you might go at least once a year? It is just opportunistic scaremongering isn’t it? Or am I being cynical as usual.

* at this point I’d like to reassure you that I have done more interesting things than go to the dentist during my recent blogging absence. Really.  
** no, I haven’t moved to Lancashire.