A few words on the subject
A few words on the subject
The collected
ill-informed drivel
of
Richard Asplin
January 2010
A few words on seasonal whatnot
1st Jan 2010
A belated Merry Christmas, a late but not quite as late Happy New Year and a slightly inappropriately early Happy Easter to all of you out there. How the devil are you all? I hope you had a sufficiently festive holiday season full of tinsel and treats and tea.

Right now, where I am, it’s Friday the 1st of January 2010 and I’m sat at the keyboard under the twinkle of fairy lights with a mug of PG in a PG Wodehouse mug. It’s 6.30pm. Radio 6 is playing, Steve Lamacq – whoever the cock he is – has just announced that The Primitives are reforming for some gigs this year. What excellent news. Remember them? One of a cluster of rather excellent guitar bands with female vocalists and grumpy leather-jacketed guitarists that delighted our lives in the mid to late 80s with their “jangly” hits. I’m thinking also of Voice Of The Beehive. And to a lesser extent The Sundays. But not in any way Transvision Vamp, who can piss off. Wendy James? No no no.

Am just back from seeing the movie Sherlock Holmes. My review follows.

Sherlock Holmes. 2009 Dir. Shane Ritchie. Starring Jude Law, Robert Downey Junior.
Oh I don’t know. What are you asking me for. I mean, it was all right. Some thrills, but not that thrilling. Some spills, but not too much on the carpet. I’m – it now turns out – a complete sucker for any movie that ends with a rooftop landmark climax. Fills me with wriggling glee. I don’t know why. Explains why I’m a fan of North by Northwest (atop Mount Rushmore); the 39 Steps (Big Ben); King Kong (Empire State Building); Q The Winged Serpent (The Chrysler Building) and now can add Sherlock Holmes’s scaffolding-atop-Tower-Bridge to this list. So, screenwriters out there, if you’re wondering how to pep up your movie, have your cast wrestle atop Nelson’s Column or leap from pod to pod of The London Eye.
Anyhap, production values just about worth the price of admission (music especially, likewise costumes and the whole olde-worlde Victoriana London Towne). Plus it has Mark Strong who I last saw in – I think “The Long Firm” – and was marvellous. Ritchie wrestled free from his restraints and bindings while no one was looking and bunged in some slo-mo then fast-mo then slo-mo again sweaty fist fights, as he likes to do when left alone with an editing doo-hickey, and the plot frankly was an extended episode of Jonathan Creek. Y’know, I have now decided I’m not a fan of detective stories which profess to present a smugly clever “tah-dahhh!” reveal of the criminal at the end, but haven’t given you anywhere near enough clues to have been able to figure this out yourself. Marple? Poirot? I’m looking at you. Columbo? You’re free to go.

I had a splendid Christmas, thank you for asking. A quiet one at home with my darling wife and friend Jen. I cooked a turkey, using the recipe young Delia Smith scribbled over the webulator. Turned out all turkey-ish and turksome. Also roasts in goose fat. Yum. Mincely pies and cheesey biscs and Doctor Who (still not a fan) and The Royale Family (has become a tedious pastiche of itself).

Thoroughly spoilt, gift wise, and now have to set aside January to watch the plethora of boxed-sets that have become something of a yuletide staple. I have “Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip” I’m working through at the moment which is both hit and miss, but with Sorkin at le helm, even the misses are smirkly. My wife is steadily grinding her way through the dying discs of the “nu” Battlestar Galactica. Have watched a few from across the room. Blimey, they’re spectacular, in a space-battlesy way, but lor, too much big hair, sweaty combat grunts, bickering about politics and saying “frack” instead of the more effective “fuck” for my liking.

My wife has the boxed set of “The Forsythe Saga” to work through next. I’m going to leave her to it I think. Too much starch. Will wait ‘til she’s done with those every evening, then get up in the night and watch a couple of Mayall & Edmonson’s “Bottoms”. Ahhh, 3 series to get through. That’s a lot of pans in the face and a lot of goolies to be scrunched.

Did you do anything for New Year?

Sorry, short interlude. What year actually is it? The radio is now playing Shep Pettibone’s remix of West End Girls. Shep Pettibone? Blimey. What next? Jellybean Bonitez introducing The Reynolds Girls?

Sorry. Where were we. Yes, New Year. I stayed in, frowned through Ricky Gervais’s character-arc dodging role in “Ghost Town” and was then cheered up at 12.05am by De Niro and Grodin in Midnight Run. What a way to see in the year. This was only made possible due to – yes count ‘em – reaching day 40 of my alcohol dodging wagon-riding phase. Had my only real twinge of “oh gowarrrrn, one ain;t gonna kill you” when the wine was being poured during Christmas dinner, I will admit readers. And it wouldn’t have done me any harm, I’m sure. But hell, that’s what Amy Winehouse said about that packet of Wine Gums she had after the Brits in 2004 and look what happened there.

All the papers are full of predictions for the coming year/decade so I shall join the ink-spilling twerps of medialand and bore you with my thoughts on what 2010 may give us in the worlds of fashion, music, media, politics and topiary later this week, keyboard time permitting. The new novel is getting some attention (no new notes extract to share here, for those who care for such. Have realised they only really make sense to me. Will let you see bits of next draft). Aiming for a first draft completed by, oooooh, let’s say March 31st 2010.

Day 215 of non smoking. VG, as Bridget Jones used to say back when Helen Fielding’s particular brand of self-obsessed singleton twerpery was king. God, seems like a lifetime ago. (Her adventure spy novel really took off didn’t it. Was I the only person who read it?*)  

As a warning. There may be something vaguely musical to click on quite soon as have bought a new digital music toy thing. Like I needed another hobby. Tch. God bless Bi-p disorder. I know I know. It won’t last, don’t worry. Will no doubt end up next to my screenplay on the “what happened to that project?” pile. Christ, I annoy myself sometimes.

Anyhap, have kept you long enough. Have a splendid 2010 munchkins. Squeak to you soon.

Love to all
Rx

*well. Started it.

A few words on the coming 12 months
3rd Jan 2010
Hello again drivel fans. Well I imagine you’re back at work. I don’t spend too long imagining it, obviously. I don’t want to freak you out. I’m not sat here, eyes shut tight, mouth hanging slightly open, saliva dangling from my lower lip, picturing you sat at your desk, a slightly creepy smile slithering across my chops as my one free hand finds its way to a excitable nipple. That would be revolting. I’m not doing that.

Any more.

It’s Sunday morning where I am now and I have an entire day ahead of me to drink tea and try and think of valid reasons not to go to Sainsbury for the “big shop”. I imagine you do this, when the big shop day is looming. Go to the fridge, or to that dusty shelf in your kitchen where tins and dried goods are kept and try and work out if you can stretch what you have into 5 edible meals so you can go shopping next week.

“Well, if we have pesto and pasta and sardines on Monday…and Tuesday. And we have, uhm, flour and Branston pickle on Wednesday… then we can use up the, er, Oxo and Crunchy Nut Cornflakes in a sort of cassarole thing on Thursday. And I’m thinking  a Ritz cracker wrapped in a tea towel soaked in Olive Oil for Friday, as an uhm, treat.”

No, it’s no good. J Sainsbury is calling. And I think it’s my turn to go. My wife and I don’t shop together, y’see. We’ve tried it. But our styles are simply too polarised. She’s a list, written in the same order as the aisles, in, round, out, cab home, done, kind of a girl.

Me? Oh well it’s too far away not to turn in to sort of a day out. So I start with the magaziney bit. Then do the new CDs and DVDs. Maybe picking up a misjudged “straight to video” movie for 3 of your Earth pounds. (Yes readers, my last shopping trip got me “SHADE,” a 2004 direct to DVD con-trick movie starring Sylvester Stallone, Melanie Griffith, Jamie Foxx and Gabriel Byrne. Terrible, but in a cool card-sharpy twisty Mamety sort of way).

Then I wander to the toys section to see if there is any new Superman merch’. Up into the men’s clothes bit to hunt out discount white-shirt 3-packs for work…

As you can see, bloody maddening if you’re somebody else.

I warned you t’other day that, as is fitting such cultural commentators, satirists, pundits, struggling novelists with paperbacks to promote and twits of all orders, some sort of prediction-fest of the coming months seems to be demanded. So, taking all the main topics, here - for the absolute nothing they’re worth - are my thoughts about the coming 12 months. If any of the below actually transpires, then
a. don’t say you weren’t warned.
b. feel free to refer to me as “Nostrodamus for the iPod Generation”
c. worry.

POLITICS
Oh come on. Is it so terribly defeatist to say that I believe James Cameron, or whatever his name is, will be the new Prime Minister. Even after the critical drubbing his eco party political broadcast “AVATAR” got, he’s a shoe-in, surely? And an expensive shoe at that, I expect. Church’s half-brogue. Size 11 I’m imagining. It’s not what I want, but then what I want isn’t really very likely. Which is for Neil Kinnock and Tony Benn to come back, kick the doors of the House open, like they were p’raps Dempsey & Makepeace and bring the Labour party back to something that Billy Bragg would recognise. Anyway, Cameron Diaz will win, and New Labour have Iraq and Duck Moats to thank for that.

FASHION
Hmn, trickier one this. I am confident however of the following:
1. Some sort of new women’s shoe contraption (part shoe, part flip flop / part shoe, part dress / part shoe, part III, The Revenge Of The Sith) will rear it’s head. Someone wearing them in Milan will fall over, everyone will laugh and then they’ll become the must-have item in Top Shop this summer.
2. That page in the Guardian magazine where they claim to have a style for all ages will continue to only look good on the 19 year old size 6 model and the two grannies will continue to look fucking ridiculous.
3. No new men’s ideas will arrive. A they have failed to arrive since 1953. Ooh, jeans and t-shirts. Ties and suits. With this complete lack of thought, you are spoiling us.
3. The 90s will make a comeback. Which means…what? I mean I was there and I don’t remember. I was indoors reading Martin Amis and practising “Hello City” on the guitar that decade. Oh yes, it was grunge, wasn’t it. And acid house. So plaid hoodies, by Marc Jacobs, for £750 would seem destined to clog up the supplements.
4. I’ll continue to champion Edwin as a clothing label. Japanese rockabilly wear, available from Interstate on Endell Street. Man, their jeans are lovely.

MONEY
The novelty of the recession will wear off. The idea of being poor and unemployed and in debt and pension-less in a value-less house will get thoroughly boring by February. We’ve had it tough, now - like Jedward and Susan Boyle and the Rubik’s snake - we want something else. So Noel Edmonds will go on Saturday night telly and announce the recession is over if we want it to be. (Audience cheer). Who’s in charge? Us, or the fat cat money men? (Audience cheer and wave pointy foam hands). Wasn’t economics meant to help us? Not make us miserable? (Audience wave Union jacks). Is this lie-down-and-take-whatever-the-chancellor-says attitude what got us through the Blitz? (Audience wave rattles and blow whistles). Noel looks straight to camera with his stern face: “We can do this Britain. Things are only broken if we believe they are. From tomorrow, I want you to tell everyone you meet that the recession is over. Tell them your house has gone back up in value by £50,000. Go to your bank and demand - yes DEMAND - a loan. Book a holiday. Start a business. We can do it, Britain!”
(Audience sings “Land Of Hope & Glory”).
Either that or we’ll still be fucked.

SCIENCE
Eggheads will, as is traditional, blow astonishing amounts of cash on tech that ultimately ends up being dismantled, ignored or permanently turned off. I’m looking at you, London Transport. Am I the only person who remembers the excitement of the push-button door revolution? On the Jubilee and Central and Bakerloo lines? Say goodbye to the wintery gusts as tube train doors will now only open if the button is pushed! Stay warm on the January commutes. Marvellous!
Now? Screw it, just open them all. A trillion dollars worth of advancement now just there to bewilder tourists.
Tch.
Meanwhile, boffins will fail to create for the somethingth year running, anything exciting that we all would have imagined existed in 2010 back when 2010 seemed a futuristic space-suit sort of time. I don’t blame them, they have cancer and heart disease and famine and ice-caps to worry about. However, don’t hold you breath for any of the following as, yet again, we ain’t getting them: hover-boards; a colony on the moon; flying cars; jet-packs; meals in a small capsule; silvery all-in-one suits; hologram televisions; teleporting machines; memory implants of foreign holidays; robot butlers; printer errors that are easy to fix.

SPORT
I will continue not to give a flying arse about any team game. My theory that all team games were invented to give dullards who don’t read, watch movies, do anything vaguely creative or have any passable ideas of their own something to talk about will be reinforced in pubs and office staff-rooms all over the UK. The World Cup will take over every TV channel, ad break, product, radio station, pop song and torso and will be won by a country that isn’t this one and will bore intelligent people to tears. (see also, The Winter Olympics, Formula 1 and cricket).

ARTS
1. The one guarantee we can all make is that nobody “tipped to be big” in 2010 by a newspaper will amount to anything. So any pop group made up of pouty skinny-jeaned teens who got over excited about being mentioned in The Guide in December can arse off back to art school.
2. Somebody very famous but too young to die, will die due to “pain-killers.” Who are these people and why are they in so much pain? I mean, I get a headache and pop a nurofen once in a while. How bad are these people’s headaches? Jeez.
3. There will be a breakout indie movie hit with the word Sunshine or Smiley or Happy in the title.
4. A very big rock group will release an over-produced seminal album that isn’t as good as their old stuff.
5. Every movie that breaks the $200m box-office mark will be a sequel.
6. Something controversial will happen in the art world to do with taste or boundaries or children and a fuss will be made instead of just sending the artist to bed for being “tired and showing off.”

FOOD
No new food groups will be created. No new animals, herbs or vegetables will be discovered. Nor will a new method of heating be invented. However this will not stop 358,000 new cookbooks, celebrity chefs or TV cooking shows happening. Nor will it stop Masterchef co-host Gregg Wallace agreeing with everything Turode says and saying he’d “happily stick his face in” whatever chocolate dessert is put in front of him.

That’s yer lot. We’ll see how I did in December.

Until next time,
Love to all

Rx
A few words on lifts, tributes, condiments and slush
Hello there team,
hoping you’re well and not dead from hypothermia.

Young Michael Stipe, of REM once sang “shall we talk about the weather, shall we talk about the government,” in a marvellous song from - I think - their 1988 album GREEN. Well it’s been 22 years (Holy McCrap) since he asked. And boy oh boy zone, has there been a lot of politics since then.
Like, uhmmm…
Oh, six - count ‘em - SIX leaders of the Conservative party for a start. I know.
Can you name them? The six since 1988? I’ll give you a clue. 1st is Margaret “Maggie” Thatch’ “Thatcher” (milk “snatcher”) and the 6th is “Diddy” Dave Lee Cameron - The Tory Cornflake as nobody calls him. There were 4 betwixt. You’ve got until the end of this column to get ‘em.

And there’s been a great deal of weather, too. So let’s talk about that shall we Stipey.
Michael? Wh-where are you? Are you there?

Oh, that’s you in the corner. I see. Thanks.

It’s been snowing, I notice. Nice isn’t it. To look at, I mean. Nice to look at. Out of the window. All orangey flakes in the street lamp light. All Dickensy. Being out in it the next morning among the wet-glass of black ice, freezing slush and cancelled trains, it’s a pain in the arse, frankly. Although, plus side, you can be late for work. It’s expected and written off. So an extra 5 mins under the duvet is a little morning treat before venturing to the cold bathroom barefoot floor.

I am enjoying, howe’er, the panicky Channel 4 news coverage of the fact we appear to have run out of salt. Run out of salt? Salt? Of all the climate problems that Roland Emmerich could dramatise in a world-in-peril epic cinemascope manner, why has this predicament not been blockbuster? No salt? Fuck the lack of bumble-bees, we’re running out of condiments, people. Can anyone think of a good tag-line?
I’m going with “The Grit Will Hit The Fan.” Or possibly “The Seasoning Of The Witch.” Maybe “Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Flakes.”

You’re a bright bunch. Any better suggestions, sling them in the guest book.

Oh, and gotta love the gigging REM tribute band “Are We Them.” Am I the only one who gets a wriggling punny thrill from a well-crafted tribute band moniker? Other faves of mine:
Fan Halen
Pink Fraud
The Cheatles (so much better than The Bootleg Beatles, don’t you think?)
Oasish (also a respectful nod to the brain behind “Oasisn’t“)

Got any more? I’ll have those too. Oooh, it’s all gone interactive. Press the red button now.

Talking of button pressing, it turns out that I found out 2 interesting things about Lifts this week.
Hmn.
Perhaps I was being a little hasty with the adjective “interesting” there. Plus only one is a fact. The other is a rather childish joke.
Well, let’s push on and get these two unrelated and frankly not that interesting Elevator-based nuggets out of my head and into cyber land.

1. OTIS, the manufacturers of lifts, escalators and related equipment, are based in the south east England. To be more precise, Reading. Yes. Otis. Reading. I know.

2. There is another rival lift/elevator installation and modernisation outfit based in the south east, dealing specifically with London. They’re called Marvin and the CEO is gay. No, just kidding. They’re called PDERS and they‘re based in Bermondsey. I saw one of their vans out the other day. A bright white van with two men (one would presume engineers) in the front. So my question goes: how much teasing goes on at the school gates when one of these guys pulls up in his van straight from work to pick up his son. A van. Two men. PDERS on the side. It’s a wonder the damn thing hasn’t been torched by the Daily Mail.

I promised (threatened? Ed.) to infect you with a small musical project I’ve been tinkering with. Still fiddling with my first track and the project name needs to be whittled down from a list of 457 possible titles. Feel free not to suggest: “The Crash Test Housemartins“ and “The Comedicly Divine Naked Ladies” or indeed “The Beautiful South London,” thanks for asking.

Look out for it. Am eager for feedback, living as I do in something of self-made cocoon. It’s for my own amusement only, really, however if you like it, then the campaign to get it to Xmas no.1 2010 starts here.

It’s easy to live in a self-made cocoon, by the way. Just never send an email, answer an email, pick up the phone, respond to a text, interact with facebook questions or requests and rarely leave the house. Medication for mild mental-instability also helps.

Anyhap, I’ve got some comments on pornography for next time, so that should be fun.People say to me "Richard, don;t go there." But I own land there.

Until then, those Tory leaders in full. Thought / hoped I’d forgotten hadn’t you.
Well I hadn’t forgotten. I remembered. Much in the same way you remembered
John Major and William Hague. But forgot, I’m guessing, Iain Duncan Smith and (blimey) Michael Howard.

Enjoy the snow, blizzard fans

Love to all
Rx
7th January 2010
Hello all, how’s yer year panning out so far?

It’s already, according to my internal clock, about the 11th January. Yes, a thirty-sixth of the year has flown by already. And what have you done, eh? Eh? Precisely. Complained about the weather; been irritated to the point of fork-in-the-eye distraction by Channel 4’s round the clock trailers for “Glee”, their latest overpriced US import and died a slow, small, grey death every time you’ve registered the Barbie-Pink garish jazz-handed neon of the latest posters for GREASE – The Musical in London’s glittering West End.

Oh Grease. Are you really still “the word” as you claimed all those innocent sunny summers ago? I’m not so sure that you are. (Of course Jesus also made claims to being The Word, back in ooooh 33AD or so. As did, granted a little later, another Christian, this time called Terry. And Mark Lamarr and of course Hufty. I forget why I’m mentioning this).

I guess I have slight bias on this whole subject of GREASE as a few key moments – both highs and lows - of my formative years have taken place – as it were - on the Rydell High campus:

1. I had a very nasty cough when I was about 9. One of those rattly phlegmy eww-there’s-something-in-my-throat coughs, which kept me off school. (Flobbing up onto some coloured cartridge paper and sticking it on the nature table might be oh-so-very YBA these days, but in 1981 t’was frowned upon). My father was doing some decorating for a neighbour so I had to tag along with him for the day. For reasons passing understanding, the neighbour’s youngest lad was also off school so we chummed up and killed a happy afternoon in the family lounge listening to his parents’ records. An otherwise sunny memory ruined by my recollection of getting all over excited. running to the hall to get my vinyl “leather effect” navy blue jacket (with red and white shoulder stripes), flipping up the collar and miming along to “Greased Lightening” while standing on his couch. With phlegm. Nice.

2. I once fell head over heels – resulting in a horrid genital crush (in both senses) – for a young girl who’s name escapes me. I thought I would take her out for the day and be all extravagant and kooky and terrific in a way that would absolutely definitely make her think I was great and result in some form of mutual nudity. (Although, if I recall, it was more her nudity I was interested in, than my own). So I got dressed up in my best bowling shirt and took her for a leafy London park picnic. I made a 1950s rock n roll compilation tape and brought along a little tape player to give the whole afternoon a sun-bleached bleachers and brylcreem sort of vibe. And then topped the day off with – oh you shouldn’t have! - 2 surprise tickets for Grease – The Musical at The Dominion Theatre.
Upshot was, we met, we ate, we listened to C60 toons, we saw the show, we watched less repressed and more working-class types dance in the aisles to “We Go Together…” and “Beauty School Drop Out”, we went for a late coffee, I asked her if we might be more than friends, she said no, she went home and so did I.
Sigh. An excellent day. (repeat 52 times to fade as an accurate picture of my adolescence).

3. I used to work as a private guitar tutor. One a week I would drag myself and my guitar around to suburban houses in Harrow and spend 45mins forcing children’s fragile fingers to form B minor and F# against their will. In order to make this punishment less gruelling, I would always allow the “kidz” to choose which toons they wanted to learn. (An ideal way of encouraging guitar practise, parents. I remember hungrily pouring over “Hotel California” for 5 hours a day when I was a young ‘un and not really giving an arse about Michael Rowing A Boat Ashore, alleluias or otherwise). Anyhap, this young student was at that age when young people are obsessed with the movie Grease. So, if you can conjure a more awkward image than a 22 year old man trying to explain what a “real pussy wagon” is to a pre-pubescent girl, still in her school uniform, then don’t.

Anyhow. All this summer lovin’ and hopeless devotion is all wella-wella-welland good, I don’t hear you ask, but why am I still banging on about it? Well dear reader, ‘tis because – as I say - on my way to work I have to travel by train and therefore in the last 3 months I have been faced with two contrasting posters for the current West End run.

Now, the pretty young popstrels they’ve dolled up with ponytails and bobby sox to play Sandy in these shows, I can’t recall. Blonde, doe eyed interchangeable Italia Conti produce the lot of ‘em.

The role of Danny, however? Oh sweet Jesus.

You’ll recall John Travolta’s performance in the movie? Surely the very definition of cool. Rough, edgy, sarcastic, hip, ripped and rude. A parent’s nightmare and a schoolgirl’s wet dream.
Well in the last 3 months we’ve had the Brando-esque sexual magnetism and edgy Elvis rebellion of
Ray Quinn – the vampiric scouser Swingalong, Munster-a-like Pop Idol reject. About as dangerous as a fuzzy felt cloud.
Noel Sullivan – the skinny baby-faced housewife’s favourite twit-next door from the never grammatical “Hear’Say.” He’s all black t-shirt and jeans on the poster, swooning over Sandy in her hotpants. The pose however resembles a 12 year old stage-hand who’s taken a tumble after a particularly frightening rerun of Button Moon. Twerp.

The current campaign claims it’s still “the one that you want.”
It isn’t, thanks all the same.

Not until they get Craig McLaughlin back, anyway.

Love to all

Richard x
A few words on Here'Sey
11th January 2010
A few words on this is Spinal Trap
20th January 2010
Hello kiddiwinkies
A terribly Thursday to you, if you’re joining us – as it were – live. Otherhap, hope whatever alternate day it is you’re reading this is excellent if you’ve taken your own sweet time getting your ass o’er here, shiftless oaf that you are.

What a week it has been, what a rare mood I’m in. Why it’s almost like being in Loughborough (as nobody has ever sung until now).

Firstly, as threatened, be aware. Due to an oddly lengthy bi-polar mania spike, your author is due to launch a half-assed musical project upon the world in a week or so. MP3s for your enjoyment will be downloadable.

Second and thirdly, I did a strangely extemporaneous thing at the weekend. Utterly out of character. Unless my character is developing now I’m 37 years old. Blimey, I hope not.

There I was, sat in a fine curry house with a group of chums, being boisterous and cheery and waiter-joshing and happy-birthday singing in precisely the way that makes other restaurant diners grit teeth and get all het up. We weren’t from public school, don’t work in the City and nobody was discussing snow-boarding holidays, but it was still pretty punchable for all that, I imagine.

Anyhap, there I was, nicking the last of the popadum remains and scooping the last greeny mint stuff onto a shard-like splinter of Esterhauzian jaggedness, when a dining companion opposite lowered their naan and asked - “are you busy tomorrow morning?”

Now, as all polite and British folk know, this is spectacularly offside conversational gambit. The “are you busy..?” or the “what are you doing..?” For who amongst us has not been caught out on this one in the past? When a response of “erm, I’m not doing anything,” is presented, the criminal mastermind can spring their trap: “Great, coz I need help moving house.”
Or ...
“splendid, I’m having people round to help me paint my living room.”
Or
“Wonderful! Everyone’s coming round to see our new baby.”
And there I am, trapped. Having admitted to no other plans, there is now no polite way of sneagling out of whatever hellish event is on the horizon.
Acutely aware of this, I personally make a point of always putting my request up front, “eg: If you’re free tomorrow, I’m having people around to clean my toilet?” – thus giving my conversational sparring partner the ability to concoct an excuse: “Awww, would love to, but I’m staying in and skinning my hare.”

That’s all by the Weybridge. Fact is, I was free on Sunday morning and the invite was to make up a badminton 4 in Old Street at 9.30am.

Now under regular circumstances, this would be a no.
Not because I have any issue with badminton, or indeed with the fine folk behind the invite. It’s just, I never accept offers of things to do with so little notice. I don’t know why. It seems awfully devil-may-care and fly-by-night, not to say indulgent, to just do something on a whim, like I was Pete Docherty or Ray Mears.

Am I alone in this? If you’re at home on Saturday, with absolutely nothing to do all afternoon and feeling pretty bored, do you accept impromptu offers of evenings out? I mean, just like that? I fear I’m an old stick in the pants in that, if I think I’ve got an evening or weekend of idleness, then that’s what I have to do. It’s never any reflection on the inviter or the event. You could phone me up and say you’ve got the last ticket for a reformed Smiths, with a reincarnated Bill Hicks as support, then late drinks at a Jazz den that’s giving away Jeff Goldblum’s vintage Superman memorabilia and I’d say “errr, I’ll leave it actually. I was going to eat cheese while standing over the sink and watch a Harry Hill re-run.”

But for some reason, I embraced the offer. Not the most fascinating anecdote, if it hadn’t come on not the 24hour coattails of another impulseful acceptance of an offer to attend a Lindyhop dance-class on Tuesday. Again, normally an event that’d take 6 weeks of planning, pondering and consideration. However I heartily agreed.

So Sunday I played badminton for the first time since my old school pal Paul and I knocked a shuttley cock about for summer hol larks, say, wot, 20 years ago? It was much sweaty fun, despite me not warming up properly and now being laid up pensioner-like with extraoooordinary lower back pain and achey calves.

Not to mention tender buttocks, for reasons passing understanding.

Such bodily weariness and nurofen-craving soreness that I was unable to remain on our squashy couch to complete a watching of “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” on Sunday night Channel Five and had to scuttle to bed, mincing and wincing like C-3P0 after an anal violation, to groan and shift in bed with nowt but two Sudafed and a Morrissey encyclopedia. (Nearly finished! Am on the W’s.)

Such battle scars and war wounds tried to stop me attending the London Swing Society Beginners Lindyhop class on Tuesday night, but no. Groove was in my heart, as Dee-Wallace didn’t say, and I don’t own a pair of two-tone correspondence shoues for nothing. My dance partner and I turfed up and stood in crowded rows in a draughty hall off Kingsway, WC1 and stepped our way through the basics.

Blimey. It’s not easy is it. I mean, not for the bloke anyway. It appears the gal in the sketch has to merely stand looking pretty with a hair fascinator, red lipstick and Bovril stockings, while the chappie has to remember all the moves and either push away or pull towards or twist around or spin about his lifeless partner. They call it “leading.” Tch, I call it plain old pre-war chauvansim.

Still, like all pre-war chauvinism, it was much fun.

Will be back again next week, spine permitting.

In the meantime, my dancepartner has launched a shiny new blog which I thoroughly am in the business of recommending, if only for the marvellous and inspirational use of the word "woolinery." Enjoy its charms HERE.

Love to all
Rx
A few words on bathroom etiquette
21st January 2010
Hello gang. Wotcha, how are ya. Awright? Eh? Eh? Awright?

Friday, in-it! Friday. Wheyyy. Friday! Dress down and pubs and whey-heyyy.
Asking everyone what their plans for their weekends are. To retreat to a local bar at 4.31pm where a DJ will be playing “rare grooves” no doubt.

(Note - Rare Grooves. isn’t it better, if you’re a DJ, to - oh I don’t know - play tunes that people know? So they can join in? Or dance? Or in some way enjoy themselves? Rare might make the DJ look cool, but it would tick me off if I fancied a boogie. Oh, and while we’re on the subject, if all the DJs in every London pub and club are playing, as the A4 window posters suggest, the same rare grooves every single Friday and Saturday fucking night, then - well - they’re hardly rare, are they. I think it’s time just to call them grooves, don’t you gang?)

Anyway, Friday. A day for convincing yourself that for reasons nobody else quite grasps and will never question, it’s apparently all right to just throw your pen down at about quarter past three, lean back, scratch yourself and just go for a big poo and a wander about. Hell, it’s Friday, in’it.

A word on the work poo. Or indeed, the public poo. "Poo-blic", if you prefer. Not a long word, this is nary a scatological column and we’re all too grown up to find references to plop-plop entertaining. See this as more as a public service.
I’m going to make some assumptions (note, I didn’t say “ass-umptions” which I could have done) about you and your lavatorial habits. I may be wrong about them, but I don’t think I am. And feel free to correct me anonymously via my guest book. (Note, I didn’t say Turd Book. Not that I would have. Anyhap, let’s move on. But not move our bowels. Oh for heaven’s sake Richard, get to the point).

Anyhap, I am confident that, like me, when you are in need of a poo, (a number two, to lay a cable etc) you much prefer an empty lavatory.
I don’t mean an empty cubicle, you infantile twit munch. That goes without saying. I think all of us (apart from…well you know who you are) are more relaxed being alone in our cubicle. I mean, an empty room. To be alone among the tile and sinks and doors and cisterns. For we all enjoy privacy when it comes to…

shall we say…noises? We know what we mean. We’re adults. We don’t need to go any further. I don’t need to say “trumpets”, “parps” or “splashes.” For heaven’s sake people, grow up.

Anyhoo, I’m going to confidently state that all of us, without exception, become more uncomfortable - albeit microscopically - at the sound of another person entering.

(Entering the room. Not entering our cubicle. Or entering any part of our delicate selves, porn riddled infantile twerp that you are).

Guys - you all hope the visitor will just be coming in for a quick stand-up number one widdle. (Nobody says “widdle” anymore. Or at least, not in my company. Those among you who have children I’m sure say nowt but). And that they’ll leave quickly.
Gals? Uhm, I don’t know. Probably the same. Except due to plumbing errors, you require a small room and  chair, so you presumably hope gals will shuffle in, skirt up, knicks down, quick dribble, tissue here, dab dab and off they pop,

The point I’m skidding towards (I woud be walking but the floor in here is soaking. I mean what is that? Oh it’s on my socks now. Oh that’s gross) is that, while we hope the other-goer nips off quickly, we certainly appreciate the sound distraction while they run taps and fire off the blow-hand dryer.

It’s a great moment of freedom, isn’t it. The blow hand dryer moment. Thirty seconds when you can be virtually certain the visitor in the room won’t be able to hear a squeak from your cubicle over the twin-cam engine whine of a sturdy chrome Warner-Howard. Thirty seconds to strain and let rip any sound, object or Newtonian reaction you were uncomfortable about sharing publicly.

Which brings me to the point I want to make, this fine Friday. I have, ever since the first blow-hand dryer was installed in the UK, given the dryer a final EXTRA blast as I leave the toilet. Oh yes. I’m not talking about drying my hands. This is AFTER the hands are dry (or at least after my hands have got as dry as a blow-hand dryer will get them). I’m talking about a final thump of the big silver button, setting the blaster roaring away to itself for 30seconds. I am then happy to leave, the dryer sighing noisily away behind me, happy that I’ve given the nervous and clenched-up cubicle dweller a bonus half a minute of  discreet botty release.

Granted, it doesn’t work with those piece of crap “motion sensor” dryers that never really work anyway. I think it’s a little too much to ask me to stand with my hands getting drier and chapped and chipped and crinkly under the air for an extra 30secs just so you can open the bomb bay doors and let rip your lunch like a bum-based Barnes Wallace. But it works a treat on the push-button dryers. Chromier the better.

So on this fine Friday, I pass this gesture to you. The courtesy blow, as I call it. It’s the little things that make the world go around. Next time you’re leaving a bathroom and you sense a quivering, constipated wallflower squatting behind a thin plywood door, terrified of relaxing for fear of an oily peep or bombastic kersplosh, give the Warner Howard an extra elbow on your way out. They’ll thank you for it.

As I thank you, once again, for your time.

I’m off now to enjoy a drink at my local. The DJ has promised to spin tediously common and over-played grooves. He’s my kind’a guy.

Love to all
Rx
Well hello all.

Another week passes. The snow, you won’t have failed to have clocked, appears to have buggered off back to Lapland to hang out with Santa and Edward Scissorhands and Aslan. Bit grey still, though, don’t you think? It was drizzly this evening (Thursday) on my long walk home from Vauxhall station to the point of having to fish the ole brolly out.

There’s a luverly brolly shop on New Oxford Street. Do you know it? It looks like something out of a Sunday evening BBC1 costume drama. I don’t know the name. Cratchit B Twizzlestix’s Galoshes Emporium or something. I thought about that shop today as I plucked my £4.99 Boots the Chemist brolly from my bag.
How nice it would be, I pondered, drizzle running down my collar, to own a sturdy, non-collapsible, wooden-handled Jeeves n Woostery umbrella. So useful for blustery days. So useful for using as cane as I stroll up Burlington Arcade looking for brass buttoned waistcoatoons, silk spats and silver cow creamers. So useful for biffing ruffians and urchins on the noggin for their cheek. It would be on the day I bought it, anyway. Which would be the only fucking day I’d be able to do such things as I would - without fail - leave it behind in a pub/cinema/restaurant as I have done with every brolly I have ever owned. So instead, I buy a virtually disposable fiversworth of umbrella every few weeks - a spindly, spidery, fragile, papier-mache piece of crap I spend winter days wrestling with, inside out, before stabbing it into a bin in a grumpy fug. Look out for it splayed in a litter bin near you like a polythene octopus any day now.

I also thought about that shop this week when my darling wife made a wisecrack about me needing a cane. Reason for this, dear reader, is that I have - as my grandmother would have said - “cocked my spine into a fedora.”

You won’t recall because you have a rich, fulfilling and colourful life, I played badminton a couple of weeks ago. A splendid 90 mins in Old Street in a sweaty “Brooklyn College” t-shirt (a nod to associating all group sporting activity with pretending to be a weekend soccer-mum thirtysomething WG Snuffy Walden-humming hoop-dunking Jewish ad exec). Anyhow, sartorial errors aside, I awoke after this shuttlecocking about- as I said a post or two ago - with a twingey back.

Now. I grew up in the 1980s. My formative years, betwixt 8-18, was spent in that questionable decade. A decade of shoulder-pads, nuclear threat, Bros, Moz and Thatch. I know what suffering looks like. I’ve seen The Karate Kid, Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, John Maclean, Schwarzenegger, Van Damme and the like. When they hurt, when they’re down, when they’re beaten, bleeding, bruised and bashed, they . . . Well, they get back up. With gritted teeth, bloodied lip, black eye, torn vests. With a manly wince, a quip, a flex and a nod to a divorced wife (or an aging trainer or old army captain), up they get and on they shoulder.

Example. You know that scene in Rocky III? Where he’s training with Mickey in the meat packing freezer and his knuckles are bleeding? And then it cuts to Rocky in a warm bath full of Radox, surrounded by tea lights, reading Grazia and shouting “Adriaaaaan! Put on some Enya?” 

No, of course you don’t. And there’s a reason for that.

Well to cut a long story short, the 1980s lied to me about sprain-handling like it did about duck and cover and the heels on Wonder Woman’s boots during running scenes (where did they go?). It turns out the best way to deal with a twingey back is to avoid Press-ups, Sit-ups, Lunges, Squats, Chin-ups, Dips and 45 minute runs every other day for 10 days.

Avoid. Not, y’know, do.

So I speak to you today after 2 agonising days off work. Days spent lying on my back with a pillow under my head on the cold lounge floor, bored out of my tiny mind. I managed to prop myself up a bit and watch 6 episodes of “Man To Man With Dean Learner” (I thoroughly recommend) and a Marlon Brando double-bill (On The Waterfront & A Streetcar Named Desire). All of which were marvellous. And would have been more marvellous watched from, oh I don’t know, a fucking chair.

Exercise, according to my GP, is now out for 2-6 weeks. Arghh. I am on Co-Dydramol, Dicloflex and - for nighty-nite time - Diazepam for the next who-knows-how-long. I also can’t sit down for an hour without a 15 minute standy-up and stretch break. Which makes writing very difficult. Although for you, dearest Drivel-fans, I am willing to suffer.

But not in silence…

For yes, I have found something to be furious about. Which will no doubt slow the spinal healing process, I know. But this one, I can’t help. I’ve tried.

It’s the new promos that the twit knuckles at the BBC have come up with to advertise Eastenders. Have you seen them? If so, you’ll know what I mean. If not, here’s an example:

CUT TO: A vox pop member of the public of the most ordinary variety.
He/she talks in an animated-to-the-point-of-special-needs about their favourite Eastenders cliffhanger. Eg. Den divorcing Angie at Christmas. They then mime the closing synth-drums.
CUE VOICE OVER: What’s your favourite doof-doof?

Yes. Doof-doof.
This is what the BBC have come up with. A completely invented and artifical piece of slang. Like there is anyone, ANYONE in the world who refers to the long-pause, cliff-hanger finale of Eastenders as “the doof doof.” Do you? I mean, really?
Now, you probably refer to the remote control in your house by some cutesy family name (the buzzer, the zapper, the clicker-clocker, the buttons). You probably refer to your loved one in a cutesy family way (hon, sweetheart, toots, pumpkin, snookie-lips, cuddle-buns).
But has anyone, ANYONE ever turned to the person sharing their leatherette DFS at the end of another episode of Eastenders and said anything remotely resembling, “wow, that was a classic doof-doof.”

No they haven’t.

All of which is fantastically irritating for 3 reasons:
Firstly, it just is. I mean “doof doof.” Twits.

Secondly, this is the channel that came up with the game-changing tag-line brilliance of BBCiPlayers: “Making then unmissable, unmissable.” Brilliant.

And third-fucking-ly: EAST-ENDING! Call it an EAST-ENDING. For the love of God! “What’s your favourite East-Ending?”
Do I have to do every fucking thing myself?
AAAAARGHH!

Great. I’ve put my back out again.

Love to all
Rx
A few words on brollies, backs and doofusi
28th January 2010