EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND SAY “YEAH!”
I made the mistake at a young age of going to see Prince in concert. It was just at the wrong time, when he was veering away from the rock and psychedelic pop of Purple Rain and Paisley Park to become an exponent of that most loathsome of musical genres, DANCE MUSIC. (By that, I don’t mean music you CAN dance to, but instead music that you can ONLY dance to.) And as I stood there in Wembley Arena, aged 19, with a now ex-mate and his 16 year old girlfriend of the time (he was 21) I found myself appalled by the DEMANDS that Prince kept making on me as a paying member of the audience to either put my hands in the air or to shout YEAH, as if I was some kind of brainless fucking sheep, who’d collapse under any slight peer pressure and have all the decision-making and discriminating capabilities and individuality of a dog in need of a shit in a field full of shitting dogs.
As you can imagine, I refused. And never bought another Prince CD again.
This was the point in my life when I recognised my utter and inexorable disdain for what can only be identified as FUN FASCISM.
Since then, I have experienced many other zealous devotees of this social philosophy. People who nurse a fundamentalist set of beliefs in regard to the whole concept of FUN. Narrow-minded bigots who refuse to tolerate anyone else’s doctrines or practices, labelling everything that doesn’t match their definition of FUN as BORING. In their slightly wide-eyed and socially-retarded opinion, people are either FUN or BORING depending on what they are willing to do.
Fucking Fun Fascists.
They store in their tiny-sized under-developed brain-blobs the Fun Fascist version of Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book or Hitler’s Mein Kampf – a detailed and unequivocally inflexible series of statements on how we should ALL have fun. And when Fun Fascists encounter each other, they reinforce their own prejudices, because they tend to carry EXACTLY the same Fun Fascist Bible in their minds.
For example, they would have dictated that I put my hands in the air and said yeah AND danced in the aisle at that Prince gig and indeed at all events I attend that involve music. Should I attend an event in which the music is not the type you can dance to, then it is BORING and I am BORING for going.
The Fun Fascists have a preference for what they like to call EXTROVERT behaviour, because EXTROVERT means FUN and INTROVERT means BORING. If these people had any ambitions towards political power, then they would sweep away democracy and INFLICT fun on us through a combination of biased PROPAGANDA and systematic, organised FEAR. They would use the FUN-POLICE to arrest anyone “not joining in” and send them for re-education in special camps, where we’d be made to wear stupid hats and be torturously “Dance-boarded” (forced to keep dancing for 48 hours when really you just want a sit down or a sleep.)
Fun Fascism would stipulate monthly pilgrimages to theme parks, the compulsory car-jazzling of all private vehicles, the use of abbreviated forenames or even nicknames as the correct way for companies to formally address their customers, the abolition of the speed limit and the castration of anyone refusing to participate in extreme sports.
Fun Fascists, due to religious-like indoctrination, will tend to spew out verbatim the dictums of their philosophy:
“Cheer up!”
“Smile!”
“Come on, let your hair down!”
You can almost hear the same authoritative menace in their voice as you would have done from the SS, the Khmer Rouge or Mao’s Red Guard. But maybe these are the wrong analogies to make. These dictatorships were relatively short-lived. My fear is that the Fun Fascists will hold sway over our lives for as long as the Catholic Church did in Western Europe. Expect the burning of HERETIC INTROVERTS. Expect the formation of a ruthless FUN INQUISITION to put people on the rack and ask “What did you do last weekend?” Expect your children to be brainwashed into believing that they will go to Hell if they don’t spend their half their lives in hedonistic dicking around and the other half Facebooking about it.
OK, perhaps I am scaremongering a little. These people cannot take over, because by their very nature they are too inept to do so. There is a simple method of combating their irritatingly trite and gormless optimism and that is to answer their demands to have fun THEIR WAY with the same response I made to Prince back in 1990: FUCK OFF.
Thus will the menace of Fun Fascism be countered!
Wednesday 26 October 2011
Wednesday 19 October 2011
Star Wars: Another Bastardised Version
Stop reading now if (a) you hate Star Wars, (b) you’ve never seen Star Wars or (c) you’ve had a bellyful of Star Wars parody and satire these last 34 years.
The rest of you, strap on your Millennium Falcon seat beats and prepare to be taken into Hyper-farce. Both of you.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, but coincidentally one with humanoid life forms, the same political concepts as Earth and common use of the English language (my God those Victorian missionaries got everywhere didn’t they)...
(cue music)
Star Wars opens with these two robots being shot at by laser guns. Your first thought is that the technology is pretty bloody advanced for 1977, until you realise that the guns don’t shoot straight. C-3PO and R2-D2 walk through the cross-fire and don’t even get hit. C-3PO commences his bleating and belly-aching, a galling habit he maintains without respite for 6 films. Clearly he is homosexual but his circuitry refuses to acknowledge this (it recognises binary though) and consequently he is suffering from a crisis of sexual identity, which makes him socially awkward and generally uptight. R2-D2 just beeps. The original novel was written in the first person singular from R2’s perspective, which is why it didn’t sell very well.
Princess Leia is now seen downloading some tunes from her USB into R2-D2, before running away at the sight of C-3PO (like he’s actually scary) and then getting captured by the film’s ultimate bastard, Darth Vader.
Now here’s a complex character amongst all the 2-dimensional ones. So complex in fact that 5 actors have to play him over the two trilogies of films, including a creepy brat of a kid, Hayden Christensen (so wooden he uses Pledge as a deodorant), the Green Cross Code Man, the Lion King’s dad and finally some innocuously avuncular-looking Johnny Morriss type who’d make a great Worther’s Original advert star if it wasn’t for the horror-film scarring to his head.
The scene shifts to Tunisia, where the two robot droids have landed and are captured by some of the dirtiest children you’ve ever seen, even smellier-looking than a kid I went to school with who we called Flump. This parentless band of shabby juveniles is named after the film which George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had been planning to work on together previous to this, called Jaw-Wars. (Artistic differences caused a rift and they went their separate ways until teaming up later to write the script for a Han Solo spin-off sit-com.)
The droids are then sold to Luke Skywalker’s uncle. They live on a moisture farm, which is like a real farm but without trampled cow shit and a suspicion of incest. Water is a rare commodity in this part of Tunisia, although you wouldn’t think it from the amount Aunt Beru uses to boil her vegetables in the next scene.
Luke discovers Princess Leia’s music downloads inside R2-D2, who then runs off (as far as that is possible with wheels that go a top speed of 2 mph) to find his favourite English actor, Sir Lawrence Olivier. Instead, he has to make do with Alec Guinness who suggests that they all go and rescue this Princess because she sounds hot. She isn’t, but that’s not the point; Luke is pissed off living on a moisture farm in the arse end of beyond, as you would be, and thinks fuck it, why not?
They drive into town, play a trick on some dumb Stormtroopers and find a pub. Luke gets ID’d as he looks about 17 and acts even younger, so Alec Guinness take out one of those fluorescent strip-lighting bulbs and burns off some ugly bastard’s arm. He then persuades a mini-cab driver called Han Solo to take them to Alderaan, Princess Leia’s home planet. Obviously, he should have rung a proper cab firm, because there’s no guarantee that this Han Solo is even insured to drive a spaceship. Furthermore and rather disconcertingly, Han’s BFF is a growling bear (or a bare growler, one or the other) named Chewie, a bit like the sweets. Chewbacca (his full name) really challenges the audience’s ability to suspend its disbelief, because in reality an animal that hairy would either have a prominent pair of pink buttocks protruding from beneath its fur or it’d have dry, hardened clagnets of shit stuck to the back of its thighs.
This motley crew of misfits then fly out of Tunisia’s main airport towards what remains of Alderaan. The government had actually blown up the planet earlier in the film as an austerity measure and tortured Princess Leia with one of those old globe-shaped security cameras you used to get in Boots, only with needles sticking out of it.
On the flight, Alec Guinness converts the impressionable young Luke to the same religious cult of which he and Luke’s dad were members. He basically tells some lies to Luke about the father he never knew, because it’s Darth Vader and well, how do you tell a kid his Dad’s such a horrible cunt?
Anyway, they get sucked into the government’s huge sports complex, the Death Star, which was built for the Galactic Olympics and cost a bloody fortune, but at least its huge planet-destroying laser gun works. Once inside our band of heroes split up to look for Princess Leia, thinking that the first to find her gets to ask her out. C-3PO is not interested, for several reasons, but Luke is. Luckily he never ends up shagging her; although with that farming background he probably wouldn’t have flinched to discover later that she’s his sister.
After some running around and shooting lasers they manage to get her back to the spaceship, but Alec Guinness has wandered away to turn off the Death Star’s sucky device and finds himself confronted by Darth Vader. They both take out their fluorescent strip-lighting bulbs and have a sword fight. By the standards of any such contest, this would never have been worth the £15 SKY charged for Pay-per-view. Audley Harrison dances better than this. In the end, Darth Vader wins because Alec Guinness lets him, but clearly disappears down a trap door in the floor-tiles. In his place, wearing his brown hoody and holding his bulb is Debbie McGee. Darth Vader thinks to himself WTF?
The others escape and fly off to the rebel base. The rebels are essentially an anti-government organisation, a bit like UK Uncut, but with X-Wing fighters. They have a space battle with government troops in Thai-fighters, which are smaller and a little spicey. In the end, Luke blows up the Death Star and Darth Vader escapes vowing to build an even bigger one once they’ve raised enough taxes to do so.
The film ends with everyone getting a pat on the back, except Chewbacca, who has a pat on his arse. A dry, hardened Wookie pat.
The rest of you, strap on your Millennium Falcon seat beats and prepare to be taken into Hyper-farce. Both of you.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, but coincidentally one with humanoid life forms, the same political concepts as Earth and common use of the English language (my God those Victorian missionaries got everywhere didn’t they)...
(cue music)
Star Wars opens with these two robots being shot at by laser guns. Your first thought is that the technology is pretty bloody advanced for 1977, until you realise that the guns don’t shoot straight. C-3PO and R2-D2 walk through the cross-fire and don’t even get hit. C-3PO commences his bleating and belly-aching, a galling habit he maintains without respite for 6 films. Clearly he is homosexual but his circuitry refuses to acknowledge this (it recognises binary though) and consequently he is suffering from a crisis of sexual identity, which makes him socially awkward and generally uptight. R2-D2 just beeps. The original novel was written in the first person singular from R2’s perspective, which is why it didn’t sell very well.
Princess Leia is now seen downloading some tunes from her USB into R2-D2, before running away at the sight of C-3PO (like he’s actually scary) and then getting captured by the film’s ultimate bastard, Darth Vader.
Now here’s a complex character amongst all the 2-dimensional ones. So complex in fact that 5 actors have to play him over the two trilogies of films, including a creepy brat of a kid, Hayden Christensen (so wooden he uses Pledge as a deodorant), the Green Cross Code Man, the Lion King’s dad and finally some innocuously avuncular-looking Johnny Morriss type who’d make a great Worther’s Original advert star if it wasn’t for the horror-film scarring to his head.
The scene shifts to Tunisia, where the two robot droids have landed and are captured by some of the dirtiest children you’ve ever seen, even smellier-looking than a kid I went to school with who we called Flump. This parentless band of shabby juveniles is named after the film which George Lucas and Steven Spielberg had been planning to work on together previous to this, called Jaw-Wars. (Artistic differences caused a rift and they went their separate ways until teaming up later to write the script for a Han Solo spin-off sit-com.)
The droids are then sold to Luke Skywalker’s uncle. They live on a moisture farm, which is like a real farm but without trampled cow shit and a suspicion of incest. Water is a rare commodity in this part of Tunisia, although you wouldn’t think it from the amount Aunt Beru uses to boil her vegetables in the next scene.
Luke discovers Princess Leia’s music downloads inside R2-D2, who then runs off (as far as that is possible with wheels that go a top speed of 2 mph) to find his favourite English actor, Sir Lawrence Olivier. Instead, he has to make do with Alec Guinness who suggests that they all go and rescue this Princess because she sounds hot. She isn’t, but that’s not the point; Luke is pissed off living on a moisture farm in the arse end of beyond, as you would be, and thinks fuck it, why not?
They drive into town, play a trick on some dumb Stormtroopers and find a pub. Luke gets ID’d as he looks about 17 and acts even younger, so Alec Guinness take out one of those fluorescent strip-lighting bulbs and burns off some ugly bastard’s arm. He then persuades a mini-cab driver called Han Solo to take them to Alderaan, Princess Leia’s home planet. Obviously, he should have rung a proper cab firm, because there’s no guarantee that this Han Solo is even insured to drive a spaceship. Furthermore and rather disconcertingly, Han’s BFF is a growling bear (or a bare growler, one or the other) named Chewie, a bit like the sweets. Chewbacca (his full name) really challenges the audience’s ability to suspend its disbelief, because in reality an animal that hairy would either have a prominent pair of pink buttocks protruding from beneath its fur or it’d have dry, hardened clagnets of shit stuck to the back of its thighs.
This motley crew of misfits then fly out of Tunisia’s main airport towards what remains of Alderaan. The government had actually blown up the planet earlier in the film as an austerity measure and tortured Princess Leia with one of those old globe-shaped security cameras you used to get in Boots, only with needles sticking out of it.
On the flight, Alec Guinness converts the impressionable young Luke to the same religious cult of which he and Luke’s dad were members. He basically tells some lies to Luke about the father he never knew, because it’s Darth Vader and well, how do you tell a kid his Dad’s such a horrible cunt?
Anyway, they get sucked into the government’s huge sports complex, the Death Star, which was built for the Galactic Olympics and cost a bloody fortune, but at least its huge planet-destroying laser gun works. Once inside our band of heroes split up to look for Princess Leia, thinking that the first to find her gets to ask her out. C-3PO is not interested, for several reasons, but Luke is. Luckily he never ends up shagging her; although with that farming background he probably wouldn’t have flinched to discover later that she’s his sister.
After some running around and shooting lasers they manage to get her back to the spaceship, but Alec Guinness has wandered away to turn off the Death Star’s sucky device and finds himself confronted by Darth Vader. They both take out their fluorescent strip-lighting bulbs and have a sword fight. By the standards of any such contest, this would never have been worth the £15 SKY charged for Pay-per-view. Audley Harrison dances better than this. In the end, Darth Vader wins because Alec Guinness lets him, but clearly disappears down a trap door in the floor-tiles. In his place, wearing his brown hoody and holding his bulb is Debbie McGee. Darth Vader thinks to himself WTF?
The others escape and fly off to the rebel base. The rebels are essentially an anti-government organisation, a bit like UK Uncut, but with X-Wing fighters. They have a space battle with government troops in Thai-fighters, which are smaller and a little spicey. In the end, Luke blows up the Death Star and Darth Vader escapes vowing to build an even bigger one once they’ve raised enough taxes to do so.
The film ends with everyone getting a pat on the back, except Chewbacca, who has a pat on his arse. A dry, hardened Wookie pat.
Wednesday 12 October 2011
Bastards that Piss on your Bonfires
You might have noticed that like most people I vacillate between doggy-paddling in the quicksand of morose cynicism and shuffling my soul in bouts of pants-soaking delight. For all that I lace my glass of dislike with a vial of vicious self-righteous disgust and hostility, when I like something a lot, I LOVE it. And that means that anyone who spoils my beautiful and gleeful moments of adoration should have all of their human rights suspended just long enough for me to exact revenge with the sort of fury and rage that would make the gods of ancient Greece feel slightly uncomfortable to witness.
This is why I refuse to go to the cinema. I like to immerse myself in a film. Without distraction. But cinemas INVITE distraction. They market themselves at the Pavlov’s Dogs section of society, who brainlessly allow themselves to be conditioned into associating the watching of a film with the desire to eat and drink. It’s never lunch time or dinner time and yet the moron-neurons are ignited by the sight of hilariously over-priced and over-sized buckets of popcorn and carbonated kids’ pop in the foyer; so they roll up with their “Fleece me and Feed Me – I’m a Flid” faces on, purchase a wholesaler’s lorry-load of crap and set up snack-camp in the auditorium.
Ironically, the pre-film trailers and information announcements include a plea to turn off your mobile in case it disturbs the enjoyment of others. After all, you wouldn’t want to punctuate the crunching and slurping and chewing and general fidgety fucking about of the thoughtless cinema snack-fiends with the chiming of a text, would you?
Fortunately, I only love a few films and can usually wait many months before one that I want to see appears on Sky Box Office and can be viewed without the pernicious penetration of my personal space by some popcorn-hoovering prick sitting a straw’s length from me.
But with music, it’s a whole different matter. I don’t play it at home unless the family are out, because Mrs Bastard and Child 2 (female variety) are both likely to walk into the lounge and slice through my soul-swept trance of “at-oneness-with-the-universe” with a casual nuke-bomb of a question such as, “What’s THIS?” Which really means “What’s this shit?” At that very moment my universe collapses, I can listen to no more and I want to set fire to all my CDs in sulky protest at this cold stabbing of my spirit.
So, I listen to my CDs in the car. And even though the roads are populated by the same breed of self-absorbed selfish cunts as cinemas, my encounters with them might be equally unsettling but they are at least usually fleeting. Moreover, I tend to enjoy recompense through some petty method of counter-irritating the bastards of the road in a way that is not possible with the bastards of the cinema. So, I enjoy and LOVE listening to my music in the car; and by MY music I mean the CD I have chosen to play and NOT the radio. NEVER the radio. That’s like inviting the wankers in, that is.
The problem is that when you become completely caught up in the music of a particular band or artist and you go to see them in concert, you want... sorry, “I” want... to listen to them with the same undisturbed concentration as I do in the car. I admit, I AM being a little precious here. But my favourite artists are not the ones who belt out sing-a-long anthems in football stadia, nor are they the ones who invite you to SAY YEAH and WAVE YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR or even sing-a-long. (OK, singing along to some tunes is appropriate.) No, the gigs I end up at are in small or middle sized venues and usually have a smattering of quieter ballads that wrench at your heart with an agonizing beauty...
Unless some cunt is talking.
What is it with people who talk through quiet songs at gigs? GO TO THE FUCKING PUB AND TALK, YOU SOCIALLY UNAWARE RETARDS!
Now, I’m quite aware that I must be coming across ever so slightly misanthropic. I’m not. I like people. But I kind of want the bastards nowhere near me when I’m trying to enjoy myself. So, if anyone knows of a restaurant with 10 metre gaps between tables, a beach with a “first-on-only-on” rule, a pub with a “no wankers” sign outside or a tourist attraction with no tourists, then please tell me where it is.
And I’ll go along with some crisps and a beer and sit there shouting YEAH with my hands in the air.
This is why I refuse to go to the cinema. I like to immerse myself in a film. Without distraction. But cinemas INVITE distraction. They market themselves at the Pavlov’s Dogs section of society, who brainlessly allow themselves to be conditioned into associating the watching of a film with the desire to eat and drink. It’s never lunch time or dinner time and yet the moron-neurons are ignited by the sight of hilariously over-priced and over-sized buckets of popcorn and carbonated kids’ pop in the foyer; so they roll up with their “Fleece me and Feed Me – I’m a Flid” faces on, purchase a wholesaler’s lorry-load of crap and set up snack-camp in the auditorium.
Ironically, the pre-film trailers and information announcements include a plea to turn off your mobile in case it disturbs the enjoyment of others. After all, you wouldn’t want to punctuate the crunching and slurping and chewing and general fidgety fucking about of the thoughtless cinema snack-fiends with the chiming of a text, would you?
Fortunately, I only love a few films and can usually wait many months before one that I want to see appears on Sky Box Office and can be viewed without the pernicious penetration of my personal space by some popcorn-hoovering prick sitting a straw’s length from me.
But with music, it’s a whole different matter. I don’t play it at home unless the family are out, because Mrs Bastard and Child 2 (female variety) are both likely to walk into the lounge and slice through my soul-swept trance of “at-oneness-with-the-universe” with a casual nuke-bomb of a question such as, “What’s THIS?” Which really means “What’s this shit?” At that very moment my universe collapses, I can listen to no more and I want to set fire to all my CDs in sulky protest at this cold stabbing of my spirit.
So, I listen to my CDs in the car. And even though the roads are populated by the same breed of self-absorbed selfish cunts as cinemas, my encounters with them might be equally unsettling but they are at least usually fleeting. Moreover, I tend to enjoy recompense through some petty method of counter-irritating the bastards of the road in a way that is not possible with the bastards of the cinema. So, I enjoy and LOVE listening to my music in the car; and by MY music I mean the CD I have chosen to play and NOT the radio. NEVER the radio. That’s like inviting the wankers in, that is.
The problem is that when you become completely caught up in the music of a particular band or artist and you go to see them in concert, you want... sorry, “I” want... to listen to them with the same undisturbed concentration as I do in the car. I admit, I AM being a little precious here. But my favourite artists are not the ones who belt out sing-a-long anthems in football stadia, nor are they the ones who invite you to SAY YEAH and WAVE YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR or even sing-a-long. (OK, singing along to some tunes is appropriate.) No, the gigs I end up at are in small or middle sized venues and usually have a smattering of quieter ballads that wrench at your heart with an agonizing beauty...
Unless some cunt is talking.
What is it with people who talk through quiet songs at gigs? GO TO THE FUCKING PUB AND TALK, YOU SOCIALLY UNAWARE RETARDS!
Now, I’m quite aware that I must be coming across ever so slightly misanthropic. I’m not. I like people. But I kind of want the bastards nowhere near me when I’m trying to enjoy myself. So, if anyone knows of a restaurant with 10 metre gaps between tables, a beach with a “first-on-only-on” rule, a pub with a “no wankers” sign outside or a tourist attraction with no tourists, then please tell me where it is.
And I’ll go along with some crisps and a beer and sit there shouting YEAH with my hands in the air.
Tuesday 4 October 2011
1970’s Working-class treats
It was that decade in which the generation that grew up never having it so good, sought some mild middle-class comforts for their shaggy-haired, flared-jeans-clad kids (like me) and in the process instilled a sense of low expectation in regard to the concept of luxury.
Tinned fruit salad for instance. The thrill of eating just one of the meagre number of cherries you’d find in a tin of fruit salad was beyond any experience I’ve had since from Tesco’s Finest range. See, I expect that to be good. But the sheer scarcity of cherries in any tin (relative to grapes) bestowed on that product a special character that you just cannot recreate in our disgustingly opulent supermarket aisles these days.
The gradual integration of “dessert” into our routine tea-time meals was a defining feature of the period. Fuck Jamie Mockney-Twat Dick-Face Oliver, I was cooking while he was still scooping the shit out of his own nappy and eating it. I handled an electric hand-whisk like Hurricane Higgins handled a snooker cue, and I could conjure up ANY Angel Delight from the whole range of four flavours. If Dad won on the horses that week, Mum might even let me open the fruit salad and use the sole cherry to decorate this dessert. (If he lost, we’d make do with a few Galaxy buttons.)
Some people have likened Primula cheese spread in a tube to chilled smegma. But when they started adding bits of ham to this product, then JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH that was it for my boring old crisp sandwiches at school, I was having cheese spread AND ham from ONE tube in my Mother’s Pride every day for the next five years.
As for drinks, Christmas always provided an occasion to break out the treats. Aged about 7 or 8, I’d knock back a whole BabySham (which came in wonderful bottle-shaped glass thimbles) and a glass of Advocaat and lemonade. A Snowball may have looked like whipped-up phlegm and jizz, but it was the TASTE OF CHRISTMAS. Not even Cresta’s range of pop from the milkman could beat that.
But you didn’t need to wait for Christmas to enjoy a Lucozade, you just had to wait until you were ill. In those days, it wasn’t a recreational drink. It was medicinal. And the bottles were mysteriously housed within a film of frustratingly sticky orange plastic wrapping, which so pissed you off that you just had to finish the whole bottle as your mum was having none of that nonsense of opening and closing it and getting increasingly sticky at each attempt.
These were the treats of the kitchen, compensating for the fact that it was only on your caravan holiday that you got to eat out in a restaurant and even then it was always highlighted by your dad that the gammon and chips was the most reasonably priced at £1.50 a plate, hint hint.
Mum and dad had their own treats, their own moments of consumerist infidelity. True, they needed an ashtray and a large one at that (or else they’d have to stand up during The Duchess of Duke Street to empty it) but did they really have to buy an ashtray STAND to put alongside the sofa? And as much as it got good use, a cigarette lighter that was the size and weight of an adult’s bowling ball was perhaps rather decadent and impractical. But then we lived in a house with a waste disposal unit. We had all the fucking mod cons.
And our car had a tape player. Not that my parents owned more than about three tapes and each of these would have been chewed up in it, because every tape player chewed tapes at some point. Luckily the seatbelt laws allowed one of the kids to climb through from the back seat and deal with this problem. My first tape was the Baron Knights. A comedy treat that was.
And on that note, I’d like to say to any of you Billy Two Shits Big Bollocks who have just gone out and bought some new iphone 4S or whatever it is you’re being fisted for, you’ve been spoilt to the point of cuntdom and you’ll never see the beauty or feel the joy in a Kit Kat that they’ve forgotten to put the wafer in. I pity you.
Tinned fruit salad for instance. The thrill of eating just one of the meagre number of cherries you’d find in a tin of fruit salad was beyond any experience I’ve had since from Tesco’s Finest range. See, I expect that to be good. But the sheer scarcity of cherries in any tin (relative to grapes) bestowed on that product a special character that you just cannot recreate in our disgustingly opulent supermarket aisles these days.
The gradual integration of “dessert” into our routine tea-time meals was a defining feature of the period. Fuck Jamie Mockney-Twat Dick-Face Oliver, I was cooking while he was still scooping the shit out of his own nappy and eating it. I handled an electric hand-whisk like Hurricane Higgins handled a snooker cue, and I could conjure up ANY Angel Delight from the whole range of four flavours. If Dad won on the horses that week, Mum might even let me open the fruit salad and use the sole cherry to decorate this dessert. (If he lost, we’d make do with a few Galaxy buttons.)
Some people have likened Primula cheese spread in a tube to chilled smegma. But when they started adding bits of ham to this product, then JESUS MARY AND JOSEPH that was it for my boring old crisp sandwiches at school, I was having cheese spread AND ham from ONE tube in my Mother’s Pride every day for the next five years.
As for drinks, Christmas always provided an occasion to break out the treats. Aged about 7 or 8, I’d knock back a whole BabySham (which came in wonderful bottle-shaped glass thimbles) and a glass of Advocaat and lemonade. A Snowball may have looked like whipped-up phlegm and jizz, but it was the TASTE OF CHRISTMAS. Not even Cresta’s range of pop from the milkman could beat that.
But you didn’t need to wait for Christmas to enjoy a Lucozade, you just had to wait until you were ill. In those days, it wasn’t a recreational drink. It was medicinal. And the bottles were mysteriously housed within a film of frustratingly sticky orange plastic wrapping, which so pissed you off that you just had to finish the whole bottle as your mum was having none of that nonsense of opening and closing it and getting increasingly sticky at each attempt.
These were the treats of the kitchen, compensating for the fact that it was only on your caravan holiday that you got to eat out in a restaurant and even then it was always highlighted by your dad that the gammon and chips was the most reasonably priced at £1.50 a plate, hint hint.
Mum and dad had their own treats, their own moments of consumerist infidelity. True, they needed an ashtray and a large one at that (or else they’d have to stand up during The Duchess of Duke Street to empty it) but did they really have to buy an ashtray STAND to put alongside the sofa? And as much as it got good use, a cigarette lighter that was the size and weight of an adult’s bowling ball was perhaps rather decadent and impractical. But then we lived in a house with a waste disposal unit. We had all the fucking mod cons.
And our car had a tape player. Not that my parents owned more than about three tapes and each of these would have been chewed up in it, because every tape player chewed tapes at some point. Luckily the seatbelt laws allowed one of the kids to climb through from the back seat and deal with this problem. My first tape was the Baron Knights. A comedy treat that was.
And on that note, I’d like to say to any of you Billy Two Shits Big Bollocks who have just gone out and bought some new iphone 4S or whatever it is you’re being fisted for, you’ve been spoilt to the point of cuntdom and you’ll never see the beauty or feel the joy in a Kit Kat that they’ve forgotten to put the wafer in. I pity you.
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