In work early. Open locker. A tin of ground coffee falls out, showering the carpet outside the office. I call the cleaners to get it cleared up. They email me a reference number. As I am going to be working in studios in the morning, I forward the email to the first three people who are likely to find the coffee. They all congratulate me on the wonderful aroma of freshly-spilt coffee grounds. One asks me if I can do the aroma of freshly baked bread tomorrow. I say don’t worry, soon the aroma will be replaced by that of aerosol deodorant from one of our colleagues who thinks that her locker, rather than being in a corridor, is actually in a locker room.
Then a friend tells me some very, very bad news about his wife.
There is some other crap of a work-related nature. And it is still 29 degrees celsius in our office.
On the way home I try to take a faulty Nintendo DS game back to HMV. They refuse to give me my money back. At the exit a man - it’s not me, but it could be me soon - is being told by security that they “never, ever want to see your face in this area ever again.”
At home I cannot get the car off the driveway - I have to shift huge rubber blocks designed to stop people parking on the corner.
I have to visit the after school club and a relative’s house to collect children. Road closed, policeman waves me away. I park a block away from my destination and set off on foot. Normally busy main road closed and oddly quiet - in the middle there is a smashed up motorbike and a pair of sunglasses that clearly belong(ed) to a very small girl. Nice policewoman allows me across the crime scene tape several times to do my errands as the accident scene is right between the two places I need to visit and my sister-in-law’s house is right by the crash scene in the inner cordon.
Go to collect daughter. Reach in pocket and discover I have lost an envelope containing a large amount of cash. Want to cry, want to scream. Swear loudly. Retrace steps with children in tow. No luck. Go back to scene of accident. Speak to policewoman - hello, you again. Yes me again. I need to look for an envelope… The one we picked up in the middle of the road? Yes that one.
I could have kissed her.
When I got home I took consolation from the fact that at least in this heat it is - a rare thing in England - legitimately warm enough to drink pastis.
It has been suggested that I and a colleague may have now become the Pete and Dud of our office. Tragically I have to admit that Doug probably makes a better Peter Cook than me, although that means he has to go through a couple of bitter divorces and spend his twilight years pretending to be a Swedish fisherman, while I have to develop a club foot and bed a succession of nubile young women. It’s a work in progress.
Anyway, the other day he was on top form. Somehow we were talking about languages which give nouns gender and he said that the moon is not always female - the closer to the equator you get the more likely the moon is to be male. I was amazed by this. “You could write a book about it” he said, generously offering me his idea, “one you get for Christmas with a fake old-style leather cover. Could even be a film. KENNETH BRANAGH is COPERNICUS!”.
Genius, up there with Andy’s “Robert Plant and the Seedlings” line. You read it here first. Hollywood here we come.
Okay, my Humax is still chopping the ends off, but The Wire season 2 is three episodes in on BBC-2 and it continues to amaze me. It truly is a wonderful piece of TV.
Episode 2 contains this gem of dialogue, again from State’s Attorney Rhonda Pearlman: “Last night you were too drunk to fuck. This morning too hungover. What’s the most useless thing on a woman? A drunken Irishman. Only you’re not really Irish, are you, McNulty?”. This is followed by an admission by our hero McNulty which proves that he is, after all, an asshole.
And many thanks to Stefanie for sending me this fascinating interview with Wire creator David Simon: http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/04172009/watch.html
Nice item on BBC News about corporate gobbledygook. Well, it momentarily lifted my gloom at the prospect of everyone dying imminently from pig flu. I know two people who are about to go to Mexico and I hope they change their minds.
Anyway, my pate hate is “going forward”, especially when used in the phrase “progress this going forward” which I heard in a meeting once. Well, ducks, we can hardly progress it going backwards, can we?
As for “drilling down going forward”, it’s become a bit of a cheeky mantra (like ‘Blog My Wiki!’) so I can’t actually remember if it’s something we really heard or not. But I like to think we did.
‘Watch The Wire’, says the press, ‘watch The Wire’ says Charlie Brooker - hell, even Claire Bolderson tells me ‘Watch The Wire, you’d love it’, it is - they all say - the Best TV Show Ever Made. And I like a bit of Good TV. So I know I should like it, I know I would like it, only it’s several seasons in, I don’t have the dosh to buy the DVDs nor the time to watch it.
Then BBC2 start showing it from season 1, episode 1. Every night, just to make my life hell like they did with Larry Sanders. Can’t not watch it. It’s free-to-air and too damn good.
So - aside from the fact that my Humax box cuts off the last 2 minutes of everything on BBC2 when I use series-linking - I start watching (thank you bbcredux for restoring my missing cliffhangers). And I am getting hooked, even if I occasionally have to switch the subtitles on. It does require full attention and hence it does make The West Wing look like In The Night Garden.
The episode I am watching now (number 3) has - as far as I’m concerned - attained the status of genius TV with the following scene: McNulty makes a wonderfully clumsy, and rebuffed, pass at State’s Attorney Rhonda Pearlman, which immediately cuts to unexpected but somehow inevitable sex. The entire dialogue of the sex scene runs like this:
‘You? You? You?’
‘As if you give a shit. You’re an asshole, McNulty.’
‘What the fuck did I do?’
“There are no coincidences
but sometimes the pattern is more obvious.”
‘Keynsham’ - The Bonzo Dog Band
And maybe sometimes coincidence just doesn’t come into it.
What you need is
One. What face?
Two: face new
Three. Face mag for arse
Four. Three rules of audience
Five. Mug of Geoff Travis, framed
Six. The book Theft is Vision by the brothers Copeland.
The Fall, What You Need
I just watched the BBC4 doc on Rough Trade and am now watching the compilation of Rough Trade acts from BBC shows like Whistle Test, Top of the Pops etc.
Someone said in a TV review that the story of Geoff Travis and Rough Trade couldn’t fill a movie in the way that Tony Wilson and Factory Records did, and this is true, but it makes a fantastic companion piece to 24 Hour Party People. Both Factory and Rough Trade were idealistic, they tried to put the artists and the music first. Both went bust. Rough Trade’s story isn’t as romantic as Factory’s (how could it be?) but it’s a peculiarly London companion to Factory’s Mancunian rise and fall.
Forget Scritti Politti. Forget the Woodentops. Even forget The Smiths - why do I not have any Young Marble Giants records?! Why have I never even HEARD of Weekend, the band they begot, nor indeed Delta 5? And Mazzy Star?! I cannot bear to watch Mazzy Star, they are hurting my eyes at the same time as bathing my ears in languid vocals and slide guitar. Oh jeeeezus where have I been all this time?
Who knew that James’ ‘Sit Down’ was a Rough Trade single? James got screwed around my major labels who wanted them but didn’t know what to do with them. Tony Wilson once said that Tim Booth’s vocals were like sea shanties and my lord it sounds bonkers, but he was right.
Then there was Sandie Shaw’s version of ‘Hand in Glove’. I had totally, utterly, completely forgotten about that. It was a wonderful thing to behold, the Top of the Pops performance. At first so stilted, so awkward, then by the end even Andy Rourke is grinning at Sandie like a schoolboy. And now I am grinning like a schoolboy too. Right up to the point where Antony and the Johnsons make tears roll down my face.
So The Fat Duck is closed because of a food poisoning scare.
I guess it would be pretty galling to get food poisoning after stumping up a hefty amount of dosh to eat there, but it does all seem very odd. I’ve peered into the kitchen in The Fat Duck and it was… a bit dull to be honest, it’s just a kitchen, albeit a very clean and well-organised one, and one that produces wonderful and magical food. I hope they get to the, er, bottom of this mystery.
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