EuroBlog #1

"We're going to Europe to do the Europeans, that plain enough for you?"

Actually, that's not strictly true, but it's an excuse to use a line I love from Alan Clarke's The Firm, a superb piece of 1980s British television drama. It centres around the exploits of Bexy, played by lovely Mr Gary Oldman. Bexy isn't lovely at all - he's a football psycho mentalist-cum-estate agent with a dream of making a national football thug 'firm', and ultimately, he reaps what he sows. I first watched this late 80s, under the influence of something otherworldly, which helped it stick in my psyche. The final scene is hilarious, still slightly menacing, mildly embarrassing (are organised hooligans really this thick?), and would be more believable if it didn't contain a host of British soap stars (admittedly before they were famous). Am not sure if I'd shit myself on the terraces when faced with the malevolent evil of Jim off Coronation Street or Benny from Grange Hill.

In truth, I'm going to Europe, not to do the Europeans, but to do some general slothing around on the Costa Del Crime with a group of some of the finest and funniest people I know. The football isn't exactly incidental (McG is often a man with a plan), so there will be sun, sea, booze, books,  good food, good company, and with any luck, some good footy to boot (no more boot puns, promise).

Returning to London after a week by Little Mum's side, I nipped off the North Circular into Brent Cross shopping centre to gather some last minute holiday essentials. A lot on my mind, I'd forgotten what time it was. As I headed down the main walkway to the shops, it tickled me to discover about a hundred men, standing heads tilted upwards, all watching the first Euro 2012 game on an absolutely enormous screen. Their womenfolk were nowhere to be seen. Men + football = happy. Women + shops = happy. Everyone's happy. Stroke of genius, Brent Cross.

They've put a big flatscreen in the corner of the bar of my local, which, and only under these football circumstances, I approve of. I'm not saying where this is, as I've managed to get a bar stool and an unencumbered view two evenings in a row and I don't want you plebs spoiling it for me. Spain v Italy was a thoroughly enjoyable game. (I have a soft spot for the Italians - they make great footwear, and bestowed the gift of Toto Schillaci upon me in 1990. Grazie mille.)

Amore.

(Postscript: a very sincere thank you to all who've asked after Little Mum, particularly those pals who've never actually met the woman. She's definitely on the mend, but I think it'll be a slow process. Rest assured - she's absolutely thrilled to know her fan club are rooting for a return to 'rude' good health. Rude being the operative word for the woman who coined the excellent phrase 'cock-happy', with reference to philandering politicians who couldn't keep it in their trousers.)

The Bad, The Worse and The Queen

Seems like Her Madge and I have more in common than I could have ever imagined this Jubilee. We both managed to spend our Royal Bank Holiday Monday visiting our very nearest and dearest in hospital. Liz: visiting Phil the Greek and his dodgy bladder. Me: visiting Little Mum and her increasingly dodgy hips and knees. But every cloud does indeed have a silver lining. It also gave both me and Queenie the chance to avoid an enormous musical travesty, otherwise known as The Diamond Jubilee Concert.

"I told Gary Barlow I wanted Devo or Shellac. Or The Smiths reforming."

And we almost got away with it. Her Top Royalness was forced to show her mug at the dying embers and probably endure more pain than her hubby trying to pass The Royal Wee. Me? I was just helping settle Little Mum down for the evening, when I heard some dreadful wailing coming from the corner of the Ward 5. "Listen to that poor soul", I commiserated, thinking one of the old dears was in a frightful amount of pain.

Until I realised that what I could hear was some twat murdering an awful pop tune on a telly round the corner of the bed curtain. I'm told The Black Eyed Pea person is in the UK to judge our musical hopefuls as they belt out tunes on some TV singing competition. Now, that's actually funny, because Will.I.Am. can obviously not sing for fucking toffee. Further investigation revealed that he was duetting with some bird who insisted on shrieking painfully flat. I am reliably informed by a nice staff nurse that this is a creature called Jessie J, also a judge on aforementioned sing-for-your-15-mins-of-fame-fest. Quite honestly, I'd rather listen to hospital radio. Dreadful.

Two for the Tower, ma'am.

After leaving Little Mum to get some shuteye after her tiring day, I came back to my Sis's house to enjoy the rest of the concert. On telly? Watching it? Don't be ridiculous. You know I don't watch The Television. No, that nice Tim Jonze at The Guardian live-blogged the event, revealing each astonishing happening in minute-by-minute detail. Between him (and the superlatively funny comments of some of The Great British Public) I learned that neither Cliff Richard nor Elton John were in possession of their own teeth or hair, both old musical Queens wearing pink and hamming it up. Grace Jones (Gaga-With-Balls) sang Slave To The Rhythm whilst hula-hooping (I thought I might have accidentally swallowed a load of Little Mum's morphine when I read this, but it is TRUE). But my favourite insta-post was this, which I screengrabbed:

8.13pm Was Her Most Regal Rock 'n' Rollness watching Savages at The Old Blue Last??

(Postscript: this was the only Jubilee similarity between Liz II and me. Day One of Diamondfest had revealed no parallels. Not having to give a stuff about the constitution or any of that silliness meant I could spend my Sunday curled up, with an enormous bar of Cadburys, drinking tea and watching lovely old B&W films.  Queenie, the poor 86 year old love, was forced to spend her Sunday floating about on the Thames on one of the wettest, shittiest days of the year. Gawd bless 'er.)

Field Day 2012: The horror, the horror...

Note to self: Your Field Day days are over, baby. Do not be drawn in by a decent musical line-up, or buy tickets to this event ever, ever again. It might have been fine in yesteryear, but you have to leave it alone now. It can never turn out how you imagined it in your naive, optimistic head. It will likely, however,  destroy any last vestiges of faith you had in the youth of today, leaving you shaking your head, knuckles white, as you clench your ageing fists in dismay and rage, potentially culminating with a spell in chokey for Grievous Bodily. In fact, stop writing this right now, missy. Calm, calm. Breathe...

My sentiments exactly.

(Postscript: Leaving Victoria Park whilst still bathed in late afternoon sunshine, following just a few hours perseverance amongst vast swathes of the rudest, ill-mannered, loud, arrogant, look-at-me pricks, we pulled it all back by finding a decent pizza restaurant, later followed by several high-quality gin and tonics. All very grown-up. So, all's well etc,... and a valuable lesson has been finally learned.)

Love Savages (not freeloaders)

The It Girls of the mo were flying high again at The Shacklewell Arms this week. Savages are going from strength to strength, and a sold-out show arranged by those chaps of 5000, The Quietus and The Stool Pigeon (dream team) saw them on top form. I say 'saw' - couldn't see a bloody thing. That stage is too low, and most men are too tall. Fact.

They did sound amazing, though, no small thanks to them being brilliant, with a helping hand from their clever sound man, Matt (who has very big hands - good for twiddling knobs, suggested one ladyfriend). They have a new single out too - écoutez-vous!:

http://popnoire.com/2012/05/23/savages-debut-single-husbands/

I was alerted to a piece written by Mr 5000 himself, Andy Inglis, about the problems involved in keeping the small, grassroots venues of this music-loving country alive and kicking. Prompted by an article he'd read in The Guardian, you can get yourself into a furious frenzy about it all by reading his thoughts here:

http://fivethousand.co.uk/2012/05/beat-surrender-the-grass-roots-live-music-industry-is-self-harming/#more-1805

I'm good friends with Savages. Yet I'm proud to say that I bought my ticket for Tuesday's gig. How will bands / low capacity venues / small promoters ever make any money if we all end up sponging? I've accepted guest list places in the past - but as suggested in the article, it's generally been to repay some kindness or favour I've previously offered a musician / band / promoter. My good friend Mr Monk of The Local told me only recently that I'm his most-tickets-paid-for customer of all-time. My bosom swelled with pride. And the last time I accepted a guest list place off Mr Inglis, I repaid him with my homemade banana bread. And that's cake gold-dust, my friend.

London Festival Of Photography 2012

Like a gang of three proud Mums, we Blunt ladies set off on Thursday evening for the private view of the London Festival Of Photography "The Great British Public". Our photographer Arnhel has a series of his wonderful work in the exhibit, so we went along to represent our boy, who's currently busy snapping away in China.

It's a lovely exhibition, and apart from Arnhel's beautifully observed work, chronicling the events taking place at Britain's summer country fairs and fetes over the last few years, I was particularly taken with a series of work entitled "Centenarians" by Chris Steele-Perkins. Simple portraits of his elderly subjects were offset by a written piece accompanying each image. The spriteliness and humour in the mindset of each captured in prose belied the age they had actually attained. A couple of these lovely characters didn't look much over 70 either. Gives you hope for the future, and I found my spirits lifted by it.

http://chrissteeleperkins.com/about.php

There are various exhibitions dotted all over the King's Cross area - an exhibition in both King's Cross and St Pancras stations too. Have a look here - it's definitely worth a nosy:

http://www.lfph.org/

ATP I'll Be Your Mirror 2012: Orc 'n' Roll

The hottest day of 2012 so far brought an army of Orcs marching up the hill from the little rail station to its Mordor for the evening (Alexandra Palace - Day 1 of ATP's I'll Be Your Mirror). Oh, if only Mr Tolkien had thought of dressing Sauron's grotesque footsoldiers in Slayer t-shirts. It was a spectacular sight, and the two old blokes having a quiet game of pitch-and-putt obviously thought the same - they put their clubs down to watch the grim procession go by.

Napalm Death - on a bumbag. Honestly.

You can't really argue with Slayer. They do what they say on their thrash tin - loud, relentless, juggernaut metal. I've not seen hair windmilling at a gig for years. The last time was the Metalhammer Awards - we were invited guests on a pirate ship down the Thames (true), had to wear an eye patch to gain access to editor Alex Milas's private party (scary but true), where the lovely viking rockers Amon Amarth gave the best display of hair windmilling I've ever seen (completely true). I think this was the night that my pal Blondie patted Kerry King on his head. She patted King Slayer on his bald head. Blondie got balls.

King of The Orcs.

(I qualify windmilling as 'hair windmilling' because windmilling has many connotations, and only some of them relate to Mick Channon's famous football celebrations of the 1970s. Some of my other faves are right here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=windmilling)

The second day of ATP became hijacked by football, with Huddersfield Town's visit to Wembley for the League 1 play-off final. A valiant attempt to heighten our home town's footballing achievements, gaining us access to playing teams in the Championship (bring on Millwall). In true HTFC fashion, it went to extra time, penalties, sudden death, then their goalie missed, ours scored. Triumph. Apparently, New Wembley has no pies but you can get a pizza with rocket on it, which Washy suggested was all "a bit bent".

Leaving the footy euphoria behind, my Day Two highlight was seeing Aidan Moffat and Bill Wells. Aidan Moffat is a wordsmith. He has a truly excellent beard. And he introduced one of his songs thus: "This song's about children. Cunts that they are." Aidan - marry me. (I saw him in the crowd later on. I think I may have told him I loved him, but I'm not really sure. Perhaps I just said "you were really great earlier".)

Oh, Aidan. You shouldn't have.

Following a large dose of Mogwai's wall of sound antics, my aching feet and I were heading off for sleepytime when I bumped into lovely John Doran of Quietus. He tells me his children (who I'm sure Mr Moffatt doesn't include in his aforementioned description of small folks) listened to a lot of Mogwai whilst in the womb and he thinks that's why they're so calm. Nothing to do with having a big, gentle Treebeard for a Dad at all, I'm sure.

When Day Three dawns, the scorching weather is clearly here to stay, and none of us have the oomph to be inside when there's lazing around to be done. What started as a party of six has dwindled to two, and the two are struggling to do anything other than lie on the grass, and look up at a stunning blue sky and the majesty of Ally Pally.

We manage a spot of Tall Firs (good) and Sleepy Sun (also good). And then there was one.

Being the last (wo)man standing came as a surprise. But I rose to the challenge by taking in a bit of The Make-up - WTF?!? Quite honestly, I wasn't really aware of The Make-up in the 90s, so definitely wasn't prepared for the preacher-man-Billy-Graham-meets-James-Brown antics of Ian Svenonius. He's fascinating to watch - I half-expected a spot of speaking in tongues.

Quite some finale followed - red velvet drapes are hoisted, an enormous mirror ball is positioned centre-rig, and The Afghan Whigs take the stage in a blaze of soulful rock glory. Greg Dulli is a superb frontman - a louche man-in-black, and the fella has some belting pipes on him. It's a Greatest Hits set, and when they finish with a rendition of 'Faded' which segues into Prince's 'Purple Rain', I find myself singing along with a high-pitched 'whoo-hooo-hooo-hooo".

It's a superb ending, and I know I've witnessed something pretty special, and I'm pleased and proud to still have the prerequisite staying power at my ripe old age.

Then, I went home for my Ovaltine.

LifeCycle

As I tip-tap away this evening, my dearest male pal, Mister Doc, will be furiously pedalling from the dark satanic mills of Huddersfield, speeding through England's green and pleasant land for a day or so, culminating in his triumphant return to his adopted home of Old London Town in time for Saturday afternoon tea. He's doing this shit for fun. And dragging some of his oldest mates along. I imagine this'll be a right laugh, coupled with a few sore muscles and arses along the way. Middle-aged men suddenly doing physically challenging stuff - it's not a crisis - really, it's not.


Yes, it's official - it's hip to bike.


Those nice folks at Rapha know what they're doing on the bike front - this lovely bit of film shows just that:

And it might not be the most up-to-date, but while we're on a Rapha tip, might as well have a quick gander at this - one of my dream older men, dapper PS himself, lover of all things two-wheeled (I had a moment with him once, about 20 years ago, as he walked past a Notting Hill restaurant I was having dinner in - lifetime crush ensued):

I'd let him win too.

A few years ago, when I was in-house stylist for the lovely James Day, we were asked to photograph PS's bike. I almost did a mess in my pants, because I foolishly thought that Sir Paul Smith would ride up, glistening in a nice single-breasted worsted, and I'd get to spend the day with him. Numbskull. The bike came by courier, lovingly covered in bubblewrap and brown paper (PS knows it's the ONLY paper to wrap in, daaahling). It sure was a pretty bike, though - I'd expect nothing less from Mr Style:

When I showed the bit of Team Rapha footage to our Mr Rogers, he suggested I ferret out what he called "the Daddy of all cycling films". It shows a long-distance road race in Quebec from 1965, 2400km covered in 12 days, a phenomenal feat - watch all of it - nice bit of swampy surf rock too:

He's a cycling fiend, Mr Rogers. Despite having suffered the most terrible injuries in a cycling accident himself last year, as soon as he was up on his feet, he worked on the short film that follows. I only found out about this the other day - it features a great character actor, Timothy Spall, who can easily reduce me to tears with his performance. Watching Mr Spall in this was no exception - had a right blub - and it only grows my admiration for a photographer who hasn't let his injuries hold him back:

Right, that's enough of the soppy stuff.


The chaps at Blunt have been busy snapping anyone who's anyone on a bike. Turns out Mark Cavendish is a sweetheart (bravo on today's Giro, sir), Sir Chris Hoy is enormous and Victoria Pendleton has buns of steel (official):

Top wheel shots by Satoshi

The Boss has a new bike. It's a lovely old Jack Taylor:

Next year, she's buying some wheels.

Of all the films I've posted here, this film about Jack Taylor and his brothers is the sweetest. A lovely 1970s period piece, the film follows this tiny family firm round their shabby Stockton-On-Tees workshop, with comparisons to a hi-tech Italian handbuild, or the mass production of the Raleigh factory. I know what I'd rather own:

6m 41s: "Norman Taylor checks frame alignment by eye and string." 

Brilliant.

And me? Me + bikes = trouble. A late adopter, never having cycled as a kid, it was my late teens before my then flame Mr C encouraged me in the pedal arts. He bought me an old bike, and suggested I give it a go. Ever open to suggestion, I did. Total shambles that turned out to be. It lasted one week. I managed the following:


Day 1: clipped curb with wheel, fell in heap on path.


Day 3: tried to turn right at junction, panicked at sight of oncoming car, swerved off road, crashed into welcoming tree.


Day 7 (my pièce de résistance): following an evening at a friend's house, Mr C and I set off, about 2am, to cycle home. I'd like to point out right now - I was most certainly NOT drunk. I didn't, however, have any lights on my bike. Mr C ventured that we try and get off the main road as soon as possible. Just as we were approaching the safety of our chosen diversion, I spotted a police car heading straight for us down the main road. "Quick, follow me!" called Mr C, as he whizzed off down the side road. I made a valiant attempt to follow as bid, but was shitting myself so much, fear of a night in the cells for being in possession of a light-less Raleigh Shopper, that I looked behind me to see if Plod was chasing me...and rode really bloody fast straight into the back of a parked car. Smashed my face on the back windscreen, bust my lip, crumpled into a snivelling mess in the middle of the road. Police car pulls up, them absolutely pissing themselves, "Well, what happened there?" they guffawed. I could only blub that I thought I might get into trouble, sobbing, blood running down my cheek. "Only trouble of your own making, love. Now, keep off that thing before you do yourself a serious mischief." Wise words, officer. And I've stuck with that advice ever since.


(Postscript: as my oldest friend is hurtling towards London on his bike, he'll be celebrating his birthday. A couple more birthdays deserve a mention - two other wonderful Taureans I've known and loved, sadly no longer here. My dear friend Tabby - we should be getting smashed with you, 40 today, having a ball. And, for tomorrow, my Dad - I miss you every single day.)