Monday, May 04, 2020
30 Day Song Challenge - Day 04
Tuesday, April 05, 2016
Surviving Sting by Paul McDonald (Tindal Street Press 2001)
Joolz and I got together at the Walsall Town Hall disco in 1979. She'd been going out with a mate of mine, Brainy Kev, for some time but had recently put an end to the relationship.
'I've put an end to the relationship,' Joolz screamed, trying to make herself heard over the thundering funk rhythms of James Brown. 'I've chucked the bastard!'
'Why?' I shouted, watching in dismay as a fleck of my saliva flew from my mouth and landed with a silent splick in her tequila sunrise.
Knackers, I thought.
'He changed when he bought his new coat,' she bawled.
I knew she was referring to Brainy Kev's duffel coat. It was a charcoal duffel with a tartan lining purchased in preparation for his first term at university. He was going to read theoretical physics at Manchester. The coat was a symbol of his new life and status as an 'intellectual'. He deserved to be chucked.
We were sitting next to one another in the bar, a little way from the dance floor. Joolz had been dancing and her bare shoulders glistened with sweat. So did her cleavage. Trying not to stare at it was like having a plastic cup in your hand and trying not to do a Jimmy Durante impression. In those days my TNT testosterone kept me in a permanent state of arousal. My eyes followed girls like helpless puppies.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
True Confessions . . . by Sue Townsend (Penguin Books 1989)
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Monday, April 08, 2013
She's Gone
Monday, November 14, 2011
Lovely Thatch
If Meryl Streep's hair doesn't win the Best Special Effect Oscar at next year's Oscars I'll eat my bunnet. I wonder who they got to play Diana Gould in the film? A toss up between Judi Dench or Helen Mirren, I guess.
Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is playing who? Geoffrey Howe just sent Denis Healey a stick of Blackpool Rock with the words 'Fuck You' written through it.
Maybe it's just me, but if that trailer is anything to go by then Jim Broadbent and his prosthetic nose were seriously miscast as Denis. He really would have made an excellent Michael Foot.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
30 Day Song Challenge - day 28
day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty
I'm confused. Isn't this just a retread of the question for day 13?
Why would you feel guilty about a song? Maybe Mark Chapman has a pang of conscience listening to Double Fantasy but the rest of us? It is self-evident that whoever compiled these questions just ran out of steam towards the end. It's the Sparkle In The Rain of pop music memes.
A google search of "day 28 - a song that makes you feel guilty" doesn't really help. Clicking on a few links at random indicates that most people are just as bewildered as me by the question.
OK, I've already done the guilty pleasure pick so Hefner's 'The Day That Thatcher Dies' is just pure guilt on my part. Of course I'll play it at high volume come that particular day but as Hefner's Darren Hayman sings:
'We will laugh the day that Thatcher dies,
Even though we know it's not right,'
Speed the day and the guilt.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Smoking In Bed: Conversations With Bruce Robinson edited by Alistair Owen (Bloomsbury 2000)
![](http://web.archive.org./web/20200912091611im_/https://1.bp.blogspot.com/_0ZRnirp_1fQ/TFQ9KbmR4CI/AAAAAAAADuA/fAALoaWs9BM/s320/Smoking+in+Bed+%2B+Bruce+Robinson.jpeg)
I think there are elements of that, because being a pamphleteer was the most immediate and accesible way of communicating one's outrage and a lot of people did it. Every day you pick up your Guardian and there's a Steve Bell cartoon about a serious subject that can make you laugh out loud. Comedy is the greatest weapon there's ever been for dealing with politicians. I'd be sitting there with a boiled egg, saying, 'How can people not see what's going on?' I thought I was looking at reality, and I suppose I wondered why no one else was. If you rant and rave like I used to and you haven't got an outlet for it, people think you're a nut. That's when they say, 'Just lie down. A little bit of the old liquid cosh and you're going to feel much better.' I don't do that any more. Sophie says the first time I took her out to dinner I made an hour and a half speech about Margaret Thatcher. That was our first date. She told me that after twenty minutes she just cut off and nodded. And that's what became of the film: most of the audience cut off and nodded.