Alan Coleman

It’s happened very quickly, in the last couple of years it seems that the way that we speak has changed more than in the last four or five decades.

It’s like an epidemic has taken hold affecting everyone between the ages of twenty and forty, and what’s more I’m sure people do it to annoy me specifically. Is it a fashion thing? It must be, it’s not like we’ve started using the word ‘get’ and ‘grab’ instead of ‘have’ just to make our request a little clearer. Also, people of my generation didn’t talk like that when we we’re at school, so it is, fashion.

I wouldn’t mind so much if it was teenagers that adopted this slang and carried it on into adult life, which would sort of make sense. But hearing adults using these teenage Americanisms sounds a little like being down with the kids. And there’s only one thing worse than an adult who thinks he’s down with the kids, that’s an adult that actually is down with the kids.

I almost want to get a job in Pret A Manger so that I can correct those thirty something’s who pretend to be too busy to ask me for a coffee properly.

“No, you can’t get a coffee, I can get one for you and you can have it.”

“No, you can’t grab a receipt, you can ask me for one and I’ll give it to you.”

The whole ‘Can I get a coffee’ culture just reminds me of Radio One and that ‘Too cool for school’ slurred middle England accent. It’s everywhere from T4 to Sarah Cox, which is fine provided you’re younger than twenty. Otherwise, it’s simply time to grow up.

It annoys me when people fake confusion when you’re trying to explain something to them. Looking at you like you’re from a different planet whilst repeating back to you what you’ve just asked,  slowly.

Managers are past masters at faking confusion, it’s something they learn at those high five motivational seminars. The fake confusion that accompanies the simple phrase, “How come it’s taking so long?” Will usually look like the face of a History student when asked to wire a mains plug onto an iron.

In fact, pulling faces in general is a bad habit to get into. Happy, sad or confused, you’ll always end up looking stupid, and probably quite ugly too.

What’s so wrong with telling someone that you simply don’t understand what they’re saying? That’s a sign of confidence surely?

I was taking some photos this morning on the way into work and managed to get a picture of something I noticed a few weeks ago. It’s a sign, painted on brickwork, for a cafe that was established in 1854. Veglio & CO’s Cafe.

This sign has only just become visible due to some demolition work being carried out on the rebuild of  Tottenham Court Road Underground station. It’s strange to think that this particular sign was probably covered up after the last war, only to be uncovered 60 years later. I was wondering to myself if any older person has seen the sign and remembers it, or even remembers going to the Cafe.

This sort of signage is nothing new of course, it’s practically everywhere. In fact I remember seeing an almost identical sign in Chelmsford a few years ago after some demolition work, it was only there for a couple of weeks before being hidden again for another 20 years, or however long it’ll be before the ‘Internet Ready’ lifestyle apartments see the wrecking ball.

It looks fairly precarious so will almost certainly be taken down, and I can’t decide whether or not that’s a shame. Part of me thinks it should remain as some kind of museum piece, but then I think about how today is so far removed from the society of 150 years ago there’s not really much point. It is a city after all, and there’s no point living in one unless you’re going to accept continuous progress. We can only keep hold of so much that attatches us to the past.

However, to contradict myself I’ve always thought that if I ever had a property with a sign like this I’d repaint it and restore it to it’s former glory – Champion Spark Plugs, Marmite or even Bryant and May Safety Matches, products from an austere and far less wasteful era when war was easy to understand and bullying was just a little bit of fun.

PS. There’s a Bryant and May sign down in New Cross just down from the Amersham Arms.

It was after I read an article somewhere a few years ago that I began to think that things were going wrong for British Pubs. I can’t remember what it was in or when, but it was about John Illsley, former Bass player from Dire Straits taking over a pub in Hampshire, which turns out to be called the East End Arms. He made a comment about the kind of clientele he’d like to attract, something along the lines of replacing the lagers with real ales in an attempt discourage the “Lager crowd”.

The reason I’m talking about this now is on the back of some reading I did yesterday about the Government and Local Authorities trying to regulate how and where we use our local pubs. Typical New Labour stuff, no standing at the bar, no swearing, children welcome, you know. I put two and two together and came to the conclusion that New Labour and John Illsley are actually after the same things. Gentrification and profit.

When John Illsley spoke of the “Lager crowd” what he meant was people like you and me. People that use pubs in the way that they we’re always intended, rather than his idea of them as restaurants for his own kind of people.  No more faded pictures of the 1979 pub football team, no more fruit machines, no more carpet complete with engrained filth, no more coloured curved glass hiding drinkers from prying eyes, no more raucous laughter, no more waiting for years to finally be let in. That’s all been replaced by inclusive entertainment for all the family. A restaurant, and a profitable one too.

I guess that’s what happened. The locals at the East End Arms were made to feel unwelcome, the place was stripped of any individuality and transformed into a hearty gastropub full of occasional diners and ‘hand cooked’ crisps. You could argue that it’s been voted one of the top 50 pubs in Britain, but by whom? The Guardian? What would anyone that writes or has ever read The Guardian know about local pubs? Nothing apart from the fact that the Sunday Roast can be ‘very pleasant’ when mum comes to stay and that the double buggy can fit through the doors that where widened for disabled access.

So John Illsley finally got the kind of gentrified clientele he wanted after installing “The Guest Ales”, an ordered and pleasant slice of New Labour’s soulless and boring middle classes.

Imagine this scene. Myself and Mandy, enjoying a nice Sunday afternoon pint outside a pub before moving on to a friends house for a BBQ. The sun is shining and we’re passing the time by talking about how much money we wouldn’t give our families if we came in on the Premium Bonds.

That was yesterday, at least it was until the Smug London Parents arrived and along with the worlds cleverest child and promptly ruined a decent afternoon.

The child prodigy, just about walking age, proceeded to push a wooden chair backwards and forwards on the concrete producing a perfectly pitched grating sound. The Smug London Parents looked around proudly before returning to their conversation about All Tomorrows Parties, which incidentally they were conducting at the top of their voices to be heard about little darling’s racket.
So now no one else outside the pub can speak because of the child genius and his grating sound interspersed with his parents shrieking bouts of side splitting banter.

It’s like people will do anything to demonstrate how liberal and cool they are, even if it means being incredibly anti social.

So I get the hump and we leave. Leave them to their vanilla perfumed tobacco, middle class chit chat about cool bands and their wonderful fucking brat.