A few words on the subject
A few words on the subject
The collected
ill-informed drivel
of
Richard Asplin
February 2010
A few words on haberdashery, signalling, digital bloody versitility and opinion
11th February
Hello children.
I am in a grumpy mood.
I wasn’t going to write anything tonight. I was going to come home and spend a thoroughly enjoyable and self-indulgent evening being grumpy. A bit of a stomp about, some angry or p’raps just adolescent tortured tunes (courtesy of the nice people at The Smiths), and an early night just to make a point to nobody but myself.
Getting grumpy for me is quite straightforward. It involves a few key events to really grind it in. Here are today‘s that I am certain you will enjoy:
a. Getting on a train home that will, due to signal problems at Clapham, be unable to stop at Vauxhall (where I bloody live) and take me whizzing past my home, all a clatter of commuters and discarded Metros (Metri? Metrum?) all the way to Water-fucking-loo. Thankfully due to all rail privatisation monies going on corporate rebranding and not on, y’know, trains, Network Rail were able to provide this. So I got home late and grumpier than I was an hour before. A good start.
b. Ideally, I’ll also lose a button from something. That brings on the gloom like billy-oh. Again, today didn’t disappoint. This morning, my 1960s black 3 button suit only had 1 remaining button (usefully, the bottom one. Mmmm, that’s a good look). So I have to keep my overcoat done up in this weather. That’s the overcoat with 1 missing button (the top one). So hooray for my grumpiness when - yes - the middle button of my overcoat popped off on a zebra crossing in Kingston. I scrabbled to retrieve it (grumpily) and tucked it with its errant brother in my inside pocket. Thus I was tramp like and furious and also - useful for the whole effect - fucking cold on the way home.
c. Oh, and for top black-mood scowliness, ideally HMV shouldn’t have the DVD I stomped off to get (grumpily) in my lunch hour as a bit of “cheer-me-up” retail therapy. Oh they had Oceans 12. Oh and they had a boxed set of Oceans 11/12 & 13, too. Oh yes. But did they have Oceans 11 on its own? No. They didn’t. Did I want to buy the boxed set? No. Clearly. As, fine fellows that you are, everyone knows the other 2 movies were pants on a brush.
Oh Julia Roberts, you’re playing a woman who looks like Julia Roberts. I may just throw up with the smirky in-joke post-modernism.
Twerps.
(Ooooh, HMV did howe’er have the spooky 1970s horror movie “MAGIC” starring Dame Anthony Hopkins about the haunted ventriloquist dummy though, so I picked that up for a fiver. Did this stroke of cinematic luck make me feel better? No, it didn’t. Which’ll show you how damned foul a mood I was in).
ASIDE: The reason for the aborted Ocean’s 11 purchase, tedious info fans, is due to an attempt to replace a whole-lotta-VHS I hummed and pondered and binned and then retrieved and then binned again in a bit of an old clear out of my Cardiff house this weekend.
I made a list of all the fusty musty old tapes I was throwing away (mostly due to greeny damp fungus visibly growing on the tape behind the plastic windows. Also due to a lack of space. And also due to a taste in movies which - surprising even me - apparently has moved on.)
Reader - until you have to hold in your hand a cold, damp and crinkly-cased copy of a movie you remember buying with eager Saturday money from Tower Records on Piccadilly in 1990 and decide - once and for all - “keep or bin”, you really don’t know . . . Well, you really don’t know what it’s like to do that.
I expect you’ve all done it with old cassette tapes of “Best of Sade” and “Brothers In Arms” and “Now That’s What I Call Music 8” at some point. Well, it’s a moving a tender moment, I trust you‘d agree.
For the record, consigned to a black bag for rats to sniff at (in both senses) were such gems as “Broken Arrow” (inane John Woo-hoo that’s exciting! Slow-mo doves! Travolta/Slater action vehicle) and City Slickers II - The Legend Of Curly’s Gold (yes, Jack Palance is BACK! Playing his twin brother! And Bruno Kirby isn’t back! As he read the script! So Jon Lovitz is back in his place! And it’s not that good!)
I plan on replacing the more quality movies I had to bin (Citizen Kane, JFK, Crocodile Dundee II), with what-are-now-about-£3-in-HMV DVDs. Hence today’s grumpy visit.
d. Anyhow, the long and longer of it (as it would now appear) is the reason I needed retail therapy (revolting phrase) in the first place is my own damned fault. Because like a small child who can’t resist teasing next-door’s dog until he gets bitten and then goes bawling in to mummy, I made the mistake at lunchtime today of seeing if there were any reviews of my last book on the internet.
Why, viewers? Why do I do such things? What good can come of it? Why am I so damned needy? I enjoyed writing it. My brother texted me to say it was “cool” when he finished it. Ain’t that enough?
Well, no. As my wife and indeed pretty much anyone who ever met my shouty, infantile and attention-craving bi-polared-person, it ain’t it would seem. So I go headlong into the nettle-bush that is public opinion, get a couple of well deserved stings and then sit petulantly under a tree with a pouty face saying I want to go home now.
To be fair - which is no fun - I did find a bad review, get all crosspatch and defensive, think “well that’s just your opinion, I bet nobody else thinks that…” and - as I deserved, find another review 2 clicks later that hated the book even more. So, c’mon, a bit of grumpiness is permitted, surely? I mean, surely?
(Ooh, that reminds me. Must get Airplane! The movie as well).
You want to know what they said, right? I mean you’re expecting me to provide links? So you can see what the fuss is about and how much of a big baby I’m being? Okay, I will.
But -
Only if we agree that I am being childish and petulant and silly and that I agree that, yes, if you’re gonna put work out there into the world then it ain’t gonna appeal to everyone. And get out of the kitchen and not stand the heat and whatnot.
Okay, okay, I agree. But only if YOU agree not to respond with “there theres” or “awwww, who’s a poor diddums? Did da nasty reviewy-wewy-man say spiteful things den? Dawww, mummy kiss it better.” After this, we’ll drop it. Nothing on the guest book please. It’ll only encourage me. I need to grow a thicker skin.
And apparently write better fucking books.
It’s just, with the Oceans 11 and the missing button and the Clapham Junction and…oh for fuck’s sake. Here they are, for all their pathetic, contemptible, public self-flagellating worth.
You’ll particularly enjoy “excruciatingly unfunny” and “badly let down in the execution by poor characters,” hopefully as much as I did. (For full effect, read while pulling buttons off an expensive vintage overcoat, standing in the snow listening to your train home being cancelled and thinking about a wasted lunch-hour).
Anyhoo, enough of that. I actually wanted to talk about Mark Kermode’s new book, Lindyhop classes and what colour food should be. All cheery things but I’ve run out of time. Forgive today’s moany tone, won’t you? It’s been one of those days.
Normal service may well resume soon.
Love, as ever dear readers, to all. (Except book bag’s Iain Wear and, naturally, The List’s Rosalie Doubal, who - as my grandmother used to politely put it - can both go fuck themselves into a trilby).
Richard x
A few words on small issues, quiffs and haunted shelving
Well I’m back.
It was touch and go after my last post, I know. I was in a frightful gloom. Haven’t quite shaken it all off. Outlook is currently grey with a chance of sunshine later on, but expected showers before Sunday night. Maybe a spot of sleet, depending on if a carrier bag handle breaks on the way back from the big shop or if my iPod doesn’t charge or any other numerous, calamitous and otherwise completely inconsequential things happen.
But either way, yes I return. Like a man stomping embarrassingly back into the room for his coat after a big that’s-it-I’m-off storm out row.
Stalkers, snipers and general nosy-parker-posies will like to know it is Saturday morning as this is being hammered out. A little too early, frankly. But I woke up and stared at the ceiling and was filled with a sense of time passing. So I got up, washed-up, started the shopping list (just the basics: breads, butter, brylcreem), researched some movie times for today’s jaunt into Brixton for some Benicio Del Fenster Wolfie-Man action later on.
It’s probably Monday where you are which means 3 things.
1. You survived the weekend. Well done.
2. You have worked very hard and with a mixture of luck and nepotism you have one of those not-real jobs where you can ease your way into the week with coffee and chat and Metro’s Guilty Pleasures page.
3. Or you haven’t worked very heard and had no luck or nepotism and are now already slogging away at full pelt at your chosen career path proper job, what with it being 9:01am and the boss being on the prowl.
A nice brief word.
You will recall last post that a couple of negative reviews got me all stompy and tantrumming and slamming and grouch-patch and generally toddler-like. Well one of you, despite me asking you NOT to, in a very firm way, popped me an epost and told me to cheer up - a breach of rules and blatant disregard for my orders. I call it refusing to do what you’re told, encouraging my bad behaviour and depriving spoilt adolescent twit-heads like me of a lesson or two about life. Some would call it caring.
Thanks to her anyway.
It didn’t cheer me up in the least, natch, as I am an insensitive fuckwit who cares nothing for anything but my only tiny universe (this, you will all already know). Howe‘er nice people deserve championing. So shove her words on your favourites for smart insights, sassy wordplay and feisty whatnot. Click HERE.
I won’t keep you long. Couple of things.
Wanted to flag up the new book by Mark Kermode. But not sure that I should.
Could it be that I happen to adore the writing, work and wit of Mr. Kermode due to - oh I don’t know - his judicious use of the killer triumvate of
1. Boxy retro suits
2. Shiny waxed sideys and quiff
3. A tendency to quote Morrissey lyrics?
Perhaps if you don’t find these 3 Horsechaps of the A-Rock-alypse marvellous you will find his memoir tiresome. Well I thought it was terrific. Laugh out loud. And not just because it’s about a rockabilly Mozzer fan who grew up in North London and daydreamed about forming a British “Stray Cats” while watching John Waters movies.
Honest. He seems like a thoroughly lovely chap and I am going to attempt to see him do a reading.
And yes, I confidently expect other Kermodettes to be nudging and pointing when I scuttle in. muttering “oh for fuck’s sake, spot the wannabe. Je-zus…” from behind their Time Out magazines.
They can all poo-off.
Kermode isn’t on my list of scary Londoners. I do have a list of scary Londoners. They fall into this strange set of people who I imagine due to addled heads, alcohol, twitchy genius and an ‘ard life of fackin’ rock n roll n shit, are unpredictable to the point of scariness. I would avoid their gaze and avoid their pubs. People who have charted on my list of scary Londoners are:
1. Ian Dury.
2. Malcom Hardee
And that’s it. Am I wrong? Something terrifying about them both. I think it’s the mixture of brains and booze. A horrible combination. Stinking of whisky but being incredibly well read and smart. And knowing how to swing a punch, no matter how stumbling and ineffectual.
Hmm. In retrospect, it’s not really much of a list. Two people. And as they are both dead, not much of a threat. Still, thought I’d share.
Actually I’ve just thought of another one. He’s not that scary, frankly. And to be fair, I can’t actually be sure he’s from London. But that’s where I have seen him. 4 times. So we’ll say he is.
In fact conjouring him up in my head, I’ll retract that. He’s not on my list of scary Londoners. He’s on a brand new list which I’m entitling “Confused Big Issue Barterers.” Here’s the list in full:
1. Steve
Steve is a polite homeless Big Issue clutching chap who wanders the carriages of the Shepperton/Waterloo train of an evening, causing commuters to hide within iPods, to hide behind the Evening Standard and to feign furious concentration on the bafflingly persistent and unfathomably tedious b/w goth musings of Nemi in Metro. Click here if you don’t know what I’m talking about.
If you DO know what NEMI is, please do NOT follow the link. It’s important we don’t artificially inflate the hits that Lise Myhre thinks her feeble art-school twattery is receiving.
Ooooh, I wonder if Lise Myhre is actually Lise Mayer and this is her new project? For those who are unaware of the American Lise Mayer, this is who she is.
Hmm, reading her wiki entry, it seems unlikely.
Anyhoo, Big Issue Steve has the same schtick every time he shuffles whiffily onto the carriage. I can’t begin to imagine the constant soul deadening grey humiliation of having to speak up on trains hour after hour, day after day, pleading for money. It can’t be anything less than horrible. Sending one surely into the understandable solace filled hug of heroine and Special Brew.
However, Steve, if you’re reading this, which you’re not, the following sales pitch which I have now heard you use on more than 4 occasions has a flaw. And I feel like a shit for bringing it up, but
a. I like you.
b. It turns out I am a shit so whaddyagonnado? Here it is:
“Sorry to bother you everybody. Don’t worry, I’m not trying to sell you a Big Issue. I‘m just asking you for a few pence each so I can get a bed for the night.”
Okay Steve. Uhm, where to begin here.
Errr, y’see you have a product. A weekly produced listings style feature interview magazine. I can see it there. In your hand.
And the idea - old fashioned that it is - is that we give you, whatever it is, two quid or something (as you can see, I’m not a regular reader. Not my fault. It’s not a great magazine and I’ve read every poem I ever want to read about pigeons already thank you). We get a good read, you get the cash. Fair exchange. But otherwise likeable Steve, if you take the magazine out of the equation, it’s just back to begging again. But begging while holding a product. A product you ask us to pay for and not get. A magazine now rightfully ours that you deny us.
Is it that he’s read this week’s issue and doesn’t think much of it? Is this a form of review show that I’ve missed? I get off at Vauxhall. After I’ve gone, do Tony Parsons, Germaine Greer and Mark Lawson get on to the train and deconstruct the arts coverage? Tell us that the cover story doesn’t work on a number of levels?
If so, I’m beginning to think that Steve needs to put his face to a new product or at least get his agent out there working on other endorsements. Because week after week, he is still clearly unhappy with the magazine as his constant phrase:
“Don’t worry…“
rather gives the impression he thinks he’s doing us a favour. I think it’s the “don’t worry” that bothers me the most. Because while he presumably hears “I’m being friendly and disarming,“ I hear:
“Don’t worry. You won’t get two quids worth of weekly produced listings style feature interview magazine for your two quid. Don’t fret! No topical articles are heading your way! I can see you were terrified. No, it’s okay. In this deal you get nothing. I keep the magazine. Phew.”
Y’know, I can’t help thinking he’d get more change from embarrassed commuters by just apologetically asking for money, old skool style. Rather than drawing continuous and obvious attention to the fact he’s refusing to keep his end of the agreed contract? Or have I completely misunderstood?
I expect so.
Finally, another on-my-way-to-work observation (this time of a less vagrant-baiting nature). Glenn Cooper.
A poster for the novels of Glenn Cooper faces me while I wait for a train in the morning. Like many posters of it’s type, it flags up the paperback release of his last book and the hardback release of his new book.
The paperback appears to be a Dan Brownesque monks and murder thriller called:
“Library Of The Dead”
He has followed up this musty tale with his new one:
“Book Of Souls”
See what he’s doing here?
I have contacted his publisher (Arrow, a subsidiary of Random House) and apparently his upcoming releases include:
Glenn Cooper’s “Chapter Headings Of Death" (Oct 2010); “Double spaced paragraphs of the Damned” (Mar 2011)
“Night Of The Living Bibliography” (Oct 2011) and “Back flap dust jacket author photograph of Horrors.”
(Release Mar 2012. Soon to be a major motion picture Directed by Ron Howard starring Max Von Sydow as Gail Rebuck and Ben Affleck & Matt Damon as Richard & Judy)
That’s it. Back to work for you. Oh look, it’s ten o’clock. Early elevenses…
Love to all
Rx
13th Feb 2010
A few words on subs, syllepsis and knockers
17th Feb 2010
Okay, so, like, what? You don’t want Viagra? Blimey there’s no pleasing some folk.
See, what appears to have happened is one of those things that technophobes use as ammunition when they peer o’er their pince nez and from within Racing Green graph-paper-checked twill shirts and twiddling Mont Blanc inkers they fwaff-fwaff-fwaff about the curses of the information age.
In short, some Spammy McSpamalots have got hold of my address book and programmed Trojan cookies or some sort of wormy whatnots to send all you lovely people advertisments for their pharmacological genital stiffeners.
Apologies for that.
My grandfather used to take a third of a Viagra a day, just to stop himself pissing on his shoes.
Bad-dum, kishhh.
How are we all? Coping marvellously I hope with whatever the heck is going on in your multifarious worlds.
Last time we spoke, I said I wouldn’t keep you long. And then kept you for page upon page of unadvertised drivel. I’ll try and keep today’s waffle to a snappy minimum.
Anyway. On to, as promised, vital and urgent breaking news:
Blue food colouring?
I remember seeing some experiment on the goggle-box when I was a kid.
(note: how soon before computers start being called the Google Box? Quite a long time, I imagine).
According to the webulator: “…While blue is one of the most popular colours it is one of the least appetizing. Blue food is rare in nature. Food researchers say that when humans searched for food, they learned to avoid toxic or spoiled objects, which were often blue, black, or purple. When food dyed blue is served to study subjects, they lose appetite…”
I remember on this TV show the hosts made the public wear blue-tinted specs and then try and tuck into a Sunday roast.
They didn’t enjoy it. It looked all a bit “off” and this effected their appetites. Blue roast potatoes. Blue carrots. See what I mean. Blue gravy? I mean, puh-leese.
I mention this in case you happen, by chance - and I am all too aware of the unlikelihood of this - you happen to be the investor, chef, manager, barista or bustling bus-boy of the brand new about-to-be-open sandwich shop that is being furbished next to Vauxhall station. Men are in there and overalls (an ugly zeugma, but I offer no apology) most mornings and evenings hammering MDF and installing Frigidaire, and it looks like it’s about to open.
It appears it’s going to be a big baguette/subway/foot-long sarnie style set up. The logo has a periscope. The banner above the door does a little play-one-words about this. The shop is called
“DEEP BLUE SUBS”
See what they did there? Subs, like the sandwich. And subs, like, y’know, aquatic vehicles.
And blue.
Like, well…like mould. Hmn.
Nice.
I’m in an odd mood these days. Don’t know what it is. Can’t shake it. I live a charmed life with nowt to ruffle my spoilt feathers. Yet gloom ascendeth. It’s probably a passing brain unbalancing that will pass. But if I’m unusually grouchy, gruff, snappy, sarky or tetchy, it’s me. Not you.
Probably.
I mean, it might be you. I’m not shouldering the whole thing, here. But it’s probably me. Ignore it.
Finally, have you ever tried holding a door open for someone at work while managing to remain within the 21st Century?
An odd query I know, but one that has irked me for no short time. I don’t know exactly what it is about door-frames, door handles, hinges, doors, knobs and indeed knockers in modern office-buildings but have they ALL been put together by the building/doctoral team of Emmett Brown, Sam Beckett and David Tennant? How is it so impossible to walk through a 21st Century office, complete with computers, water-coolers, photocopiers, mice-mattage and hole-punching devices without every door-holding gesture zapping us back, albeit temporarily, 200 years into Merrie Olde England?
Every other kind favour, helping hand or offer of assistance in the work environs is met with a cursory “cheers mate.” Or perhaps a “that’s great, thanks.” Or maybe sometimes the odd “lovely, thank you.” But door holding? Nope. The most level headed, sane and blank-faced employee suddenly metamorphoses into a buckle-shod waistcoatooned hail-fellow-well-met ale-quaffing mead botherer.
“Why, after you.”
“Why thank you sire.”
“My pleasure, squire.”
“Indeed my liege.”
(both wander away chuckling like twits).
No other bit of office ettiquette causes this, does it? One can fetch an email off the printer and hand it to someone near your pod without descending into stagey Iambic Pentwattery.
“Thy emailing ton, dear sir.”
“Why, thou ist too too kind.”
“Think nought of my actions, your Lordship.”
“The mules? Are they ready for harvest?”
“Why the villagers make merrie, sire, but I am told the stables are decked with finery. Doest thou want anything from Greggs?”
“Get us a Mars bar.”
“No probs.”
It’s the chivalry of it, I suppose. The door-holding is a remnant of Walter Raleigh Chopper and his britches o’er the puddle skit. As it’s one of the last remaining traditional acts of servitude, the act of holding a door for someone coming through it has a spectre of the past clinging to it. Personally, I’m very big on the door holding and will find myself locked in the clammy exchange of cod Shakespearian clot-fests six or seven times a day. And frankly, Mr Shankly, I’m beginning muchly to tire of it. (Or “get tired of it,” as one would normally say. Sorry, I was just holding the door for someone. They moved, swiftly from the vestibule to within the walls of the mezzanine with such haste that -
Oh for fuck’s sake, Richard. Stop it).
I ask then, dear reader, to stop. For my sake if for none other. If someone holds a door for you, smile and say “thank you.” And then keep walking.
Don’t start your thanks with
a. the word, “Why…”
b. or do a little mock bow. For fuck’s sake.
That’s it. Enjoy the rest of the week.
Love to all
Rx
And a very good day to you, where e’er you are.
I think it’s been a week or possibly more since I pestered your electrons. And boy oh boyzone, have I been busy?
No. In short, I ain’t.
A few words on a subject today. A self observation, if you will. Not that I’m turning into some bespectacled web-based Michael MacIntyre. I hope.
By the by, am I right when I say that MacIntyre is merely Peter Kay for the middle classes? Has everyone else realised this?
Both have clearly wandered about their mum’s houses, inch by painstaking inch, looking at every object, every surface, every room, and eeked out anything they think might ring true with another person.
Eg. Michael MacIntyre. “Oh look, a spice rack. I bet other people have got one like this. A few spices on it. In glass bottles. And not much else. I bet if I mentioned this to people who have a spice rack they will ROAR with recognition. Yes, Michael! (wipes tear) I too have a spice rack! (guffaw, ache of ribs). And I don’t use the spices much either. Ahhh, priceless…”
Eg. Peter Kay. “Oh look, tea drinking. I bet other people drink tea” and so on…
It’s just Peter Kay’s house is in Bolton and MacIntyre’s mum’s house is in Cheam. Surely.
Anyway. It’s not going to be that. With any luck.
Firstly, a small crises that has been brewing within my stained porcelain psyche, like a forgotten cup of PG tips on a red laminate worktop in a 1980s kitchen, causing unsightly staining and an odd smell:
I like to dance. Most folk who have spent any time with me will tell you this. Be it a flick of the hips during a ipodded Richard Hawley rockabilly number at Vauxhall station; a full-on moon walking body-popped funkadelic across-the-kitchen groove out during an airing of Michael Jackson (whatever happened to him?). Or a spin, turn and twirl over a crackly 1940s Glenn Miller ‘78 at a retro wedding.
I like to dance.
I believe it’s always been this way. In fact, evidence supports this.
There exists, gathering dust in a faded green Clarks shoe-box somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, a photo of me at my first ever disco.
A family affair, down visiting cousins in Cornwall. Cousin Jim was a DJ, of the proper
flashing-lights, whoop-whoop, c’mon, lemme hear ya, Agadoo party variety - nothing to do with XFM. The night, I remember vividly, was an intoxicating gay whirl of spotlights, sweat, plastic shoes, mysterious Cornish girls, lemonade burps, peanuts and crisps, chart hits and crowded pre-teen dance floor action.
In the photo in question, a young me - music places it at 1980 so I was a mere 9 yrs young - is frozen in an open mouthed, sweat drenched, wet fringed, steamed-up NHS specs slid down a dripping nose, fly open slightly, hands out pose, going knee-wobble crazy for This Ole House, or possibly Oh Julie (if ya luv me truly, ba-na-nanngggg!)
I like to think I was born that night.
God, this is turning into a Neil Tennant memoir.
My next brief dance recollection is doing some sort of cool, studied robotic Tick-and-Tock white-face That’s Life affair of a thing to, perhaps, New Order‘s Blue Monday, in front of Philip Anderson’s older sister, at the St. Anselm’s first & middle school leaver’s party in 1984. Me in a borrowed skinny tie and school shoes.
Memory tells me I didn’t go home with her. Yes, I know, you’re as baffled about this as I am.
Dancing then stopped, obviously. Dancing was for girls. Or perhaps gaylords. Not something you did. So the years 1985-1993 passed in a sitting down position.
The only exception obviously was the funny, elbows out chickeny thing demonstrated by Paul Heaton n Co. in The Housemartins’ “Happy Hour” video. (Imagine The Funky Gibbon, in M&S cardigans and turn-ups). That was allowed. Mainly because it wasn’t “pop” music so I hadn’t sold out and become a Brossette. Also it was ridiculous enough to do in a “funny” way, pulling a “funny” face, removing all self consciousness.
Was this true for all boys? I know that older boys were allowed to do a mock-fighting punchy stiff shouldered rude-boy “dance” to Madness. But only because they were hard and a bit scary with checkerboard trilby sta-press tassled-loafered skinheady sort of way.
My old friend Arnold, infact, never grew out of this form of self-expression. And could be seen mock-fighting in a punchy stiff shouldered rude-boy “dance” at my pal Paul’s stag night, not very long ago.
But dancing, as I know it now, was born when I and a few buddies discovered, oh-so-very-late-in-life, the mix of Club Fantastic off Regent St and “House Of Fun” in Kentish Town in the mid 1990s. Wonderful nites, spent bopping to Abba, Soft Cell, Wham, Bananarama, Duran Duran in a School Discoey way.
I went to dozens of these, and would strut my stuff with my good pal Darren, in the centre of the swirling dance floor with all sorts of semi-choreographed back-to-back moves. Despite drawing a crowd of clap-along supporters, we consistently never went home with any girls. Perhaps our moves were too intimidating? We appeared to be such snake-hipped Tony Manero lust machines, the dames of London N6 feared we might sex them to death?
What other reason for two skinny boys, back to back, in jeans and boots, hair gelled, one in a gold lame shirt and matching nail-varnish not to pull? The mystery continues.
I clubbed quite a bit when I lived in Cardiff. Slightly too old for it, wheezy and sweating in a skinny black suit, cigarette breath and a pint of Fosters splashing about in my hand. Clubs full of Ben Shermaned Cardiff boys with thick necks and rugby tattoos, Cardiff girls in little more than sequinned bikinis. Many a walk home, cold with drying sweat on a sopping shirt, a soggy buckled Marlboro light drawn from damp bent box in the jeans, head buzzing with Rio and ABC and Dancing Queen through the chill 3am morning.
So you would think that the work Christmas party last year would have been a chance to bring some flash to the floor and I would have been in my element.
It wasn’t. And I wasn’t. Ooooh no. Hence my crises.
I would tell you why, in fact I WILL tell you why, but blimey, this stroll down nostalgia lane has taken us longer than I thought, hasn‘t it? You’ve got better things to do I‘m sure.
Shall we pick this up again?
Yes, Richard. Let’s do that.
Anyhap, until then, it’s been fun for me anyway.
More soon.
Love to all
Richard x
A few words on throwin' shapes, bustin' moves and whatnot
27th February 2010
