The Last Post

And that last post seems like a pretty good place to wrap it up, even if I'm now making it a penultimate post.

One hundred and fifty pointless posts this year - it's been a banner year, so an early retirement has been well earned. Seven years and 784 something-and-nothings makes enough.

Thanks to the person in the US who stumbled across me and bizarrely, the two thousand page views from the Ukraine. OK, 2042 page views in seven years is nothing to write home about but nevertheless Дякую to you both.

I'd like to finish with a song....

But then...we all do in the end.

  

A Goal or a Gaol

Try Fry Fly

What if you started collecting something again?

Something specific, something simple and for the first time.

Something that wouldn't perhaps overtake or possess you but something fun and colourful and artistic which would force you to play and stare a little harder at a certain aspect of world - an aspect that by definition you already have some connection with.

What would that thing be?

I've always had a fascination with "promise", specifically that promise given to you by a snippet of entertainment. Notably the movie trailer… [insert booming voice] "In a time when aliens…" etc .

We used to call that promise "advertising". Nowadays it seems to be called marketing. The promotion of promise. But when that marketing becomes a product in itself, it takes on a kind of meta-interest.

I saw this week on television and advert advertising a further advert that would be coming up during the following program.. that that would indeed be a trailer for a movie that is about to come out.

A trailer for a trailer. An ad for an ad. It doesn't get much more meta than that.

The appeal of the distillation of course is in punchy conciseness. A little thimble punching well above its weight. A taste of nouvelle cuisine, but with the promise of an appetite satiated.

Hope.

Potential.

(prior to Delivery and perhaps Disappointment, but we will stop way before then).

Perhaps such a collection would also be an inexpensive hobby.

Ask anybody with a set of watercolours how expensive a hobby should be.

Collect Ferraris, and you are a spectacular tool and unlikely to know it.

The nerd-do-well develops fascinations.

The particular promotion I'm alluding to might be something like a beer mat but in fact I'm thinking of the theatre flyer. Specifically the A5 variety. (Don't you dare give me DL size. That's 1/3 A4, to the novice).

The A5 flyer has has a pleasing dimension and enough space for a graphic designer to go to town with a haunting image or boastful claim. They may speak of terror and mystery and primally connect with any schoolboy who ever walked into a theatre. They place their production at a venue that usually comes with hundreds of years of history, and they date and timestamp it as a transient moment in the ephemera of the shared human condition.

I quite like them.

Pen & paper

"There are no would-be writers. Only writers". 

Mark Gatiss

You've Been Maimed

Although the initial results claimed that nobody was actually harmed in the making of the video clips on You've Been Framed, we now know these assertions were based on short-term anecdotal studies alone. 

It has been revealed that despite the number of repeats and 'Best Ofs' transmitted TV researchers did not follow up on interim or long-term results.

An independent data trawl has produced a new meta-analysis released today with definitive results. This is the broadest survey of its type to date on the subject.

We now know that 36.4% of the people in You've Been Framed clips developed persistent complications (those that do not disappear within 6 months) or permanent injury requiring long-term medication or surgery. 

The cohort has a higher positive predictive value for attendance at Pain Clinics but a worrying 17% have criminal convictions for opiate or pregabalin abuse. 

ITV and Dr Harry Hill has refused to comment.

But I like it when they fall over.

Answering Back

About six weeks ago I went to a one-man comedy show. Accidentally.

In fact I just turned up by accident an hour  early for a show that I really wanted to see called 'Butt Kapinski'. The venue was a little hard to find (The Liquid Rooms annex... The clue was in the "annex"... should it have an 'e', should it not have an 'e'.. does anybody really know?). I spoke to the chap flyering at the door for a while. I wasn't quite clear on the message which was essentially that his show was about to start in same venue so I was early.

There was a bit of confusion so I walked in.

I entered the darkened room to see one obvious father on the front row with perhaps his 12-year-old son.

I walked out, feeling bad that I was leaving the two of them in there and even more guilty that I had to walk past the perfectly pleasant fellow was doing the show, but I had engaged at some length, now to my regret.

It was a beautiful day so I didn't really wants to spend all afternoon in the same dark dingy room.

But I felt a bit guilty.

So I went back in to support, well frankly... The audience.

He gave a perfectly amiable 50 min of his life so far. 

I liked his show. It was mildly amusing, highly real, and they had one or two props (a flipchart and a tape recorder) that made the time go faster.

None this is relevant to why I'm writing this.

There was a moment in the middle where he decided to involve the audience.

That's what you do at this type of thing.

So he asked us a question.

All three of us.

And it was this.

What sort of things make up a "real man"?...Anybody?.. He looked out hopefully at the front row... well, there weren't any other rows to look out on.

I gave him a fairly quick answer, partly because it was a fairly cosy arrangement and it didn't seem like the one and a half other members of the audience were going to offer anything any time soon.

He had told that he had asked this question 28 times for his 28 previous "preview " shows all around the country.

And it became apparent there was a standard response.

What makes a "man"?

We weren't going meta, here it was a simple question.

In retrospect the answers were known to be the likes of muscles, DIY, beer, football and fucking. You know... things like that.

However..

"Compassion", I had already instinctively responded.

He looked a little stunned.

It wasn't a faraway look in his eyes because he was only two feet in front of me.

But he took a moment.

He reminded me of the number of times he's done the show. And then infrequency of a similar response.

Because the audience was small and he wasn't in the state of well... Let's call it "microphone malicious" he didn't call me a twat. He didn't score a point against me with a comment like "that's so gay" because there were 14 hen nights in.

"That's beautiful" he said. "I am going to include that in my show tomorrow".

It's OK to stop now

You know how these reality shows have people who are desperate to show you what they have to "give".

Desperate to show what they have to offer.

So keen to tell us that they have so much more, if only they can come back next week. Pleeeeeease.

Well do you think there is any way of encouraging them to hang onto that thing?

Keep it special, like.

You know, for themselves?

Don't give it. Don't give it up.

Don't make that offer.

Do something more useful next week.

Please. 

For the greater good.

A Note To Virgin Rail

It was with some humiliation that I took the 07:57 on 22 September from Newcastle to York. I had splashed out on your first-class service having been attracted by the offer on your website.

 

I have travelled these services before and realised that there were certain caveats, for example, if you were making a journey that lasted longer no longer than 60 minutes, or on a Saturday , I have learned that there is an impoverished menu offer at the weekends. But I had done my research so I was confident. There would be no mistake. This was no weekend.

 

I was encouraged as the menus arrived and I wondered whether or not I would have the full English breakfast or perhaps just the bacon roll as a lighter option. With a busy day ahead the smell of bacon filling the first-class compartment was reassuring. There were not going to be any slipups this time.

 

I started to salivate as savoury filled the cabin and I prepared my tray for prompt service.

A cup of tea arrived. Looking good.

The person in front of me chose the bacon roll.

What to have myself? I thought I might get the full English this morning. It was going to be a busy day or ...maybe the bacon roll as well.

In camaraderie.

 

"Where are you travelling to?"

"York".

"Oh, I'm sorry sir" a look of horror locked onto the attendant's face, "I'll be back in a moment with the toast"

 

The menu you see was a trap.

The 60 minute limitation now read as 70 with a Virgin Policy that can only function as anti-northern segregation strategy.

 

It was clear that the first principle of customer service on the East Coast line was to prevent a decent first-class offer, (one comparable to the person sitting next to you) from anybody travelling within the North of England.

How could this  "apartheid" make good sense?

I pointed this out to the attendant.

"I know... we get a lot of complaints" he said.

"I'm not surprised" I replied. "It makes us feel like third class customers".

 

I wondered what the price of a piece of bacon was .... 20 pence perhaps. Not so different from the little mini bottle of diabetes that I was about to be threatened with.

This was an anti-Geordie policy.

 

As all the other travellers in the compartment looked forward to their English breakfasts and bacon rolls, the man returned on a special journey back to me alone and offered me a cold, bendy piece of toast with a sugar syrup passed off as English breakfast marmalade.

 

I wondered what it took to be treated like a first-class citizen in a first-class compartment but now here I was stuck. Humiliated. In Compartment 101.

 

This had never happened in second-class where everybody is treated the same way. Humanely.

 

It was clear to me that I was definitely a lower standard of customer than the person immediately sitting in front of me.

I was forced to smell his breakfast as he chomped into his bacon roll and I don't think I imagined the cursory laugh escaping from his pork-filled chops.

 

"Smell that", Northerner, he oozed bloatedly, hoggy disdain wafting over his seat at me.

"Enjoying your cold slice of toast where the butter doesn't even melt", he snorted. Pig eating pig. "Oh... you mean to say you were expecting a first-class service like the rest of us in first-class, you pathetic loser?"

We don't want your type here.

 

"I'm sorry sir", came the guard, "the man with the bacon roll is correct, we don't really want your type here. Why have you come? We have second-class as well for you and people like you?

 

"Bbb...but...I thought I would treat myself. I....I'm going to work" I stuttered, sounding like the loser they were making me out to be.

 

I removed the menu from my own table. It was testifying to my predicament. I decided to use it as a bookmark. They couldn't stop me reading. Could they?

If I looked away, they would not seen the bruises inside.

It wouldn't be long before I'll be able to escape. And never return.

 

Virgin Trains.

We hate Geordies.  

Don't come back.

And if you do, why on earth would you think you're worth first-class treatment from us, you pathetic, pathetic loser.

Quotable Me 17

Beautiful isn't a look, it's a feeling.

The one inside you, and the one you place inside others.

Going to the Moon

Your childhood is full of primal thrills.

They thrill at the time but they only become primal later.
When you look back.

Television has a big part to play in that. The art-form that so many dramas have perfected now started their journey in earnest in the 80s.

Now, there was an entertainment show which connected a generation to the wonderland  of America.

Jonathan King's Entertainment USA.

It was fast, it was efficient, he was caustic and fascinating and it had a theme tune to raise your pulse pressure.

(Note to self... Use the concept of Pulse Pressure for my first medical thriller novel... a quick Google tells me nobody else has done it because only a medic would put those two words together... the phrase hasn't reached public consciousness, otherwise it would be used for half a dozen books by now. It's always nice to stumble across something that other people haven't, in a world of billions).

So then, Jonathan King's Entertainment USA on BBC2.

It showed us the way to America. He fed us an intoxicating diet of colour and dreams.

Jonathan King was... well I think I will leave that to Wikipedia where I read he was just arrested again last week (sigh)... but he did do a turn at a pop career with a very pleasant ditty...
Here he is introduced on Top of the Pops by Leeds' own son ...Jimmy Savile.

It's a different world, isn't it?