Everyone's Gone to the Movies....

We were having a discussion at work the other day. Films, movies, cinema, pictures….whatever you want to call them....was what the discussion centred on and the primary subject was what films were/are worth making the effort to go and see on the big screen?

Now, I’m not a great fan of the cinema-attending experience: overpriced popcorn, pic’n’mix and soft drinks combined with the close proximity of the rest of the audience makes for a dull evening’s entertainment in my book. When I combine that with some of the fare on offer I can quite cheerfully wait until the latest ‘must-see’ appears on the TV or on DVD. I think it’s because I come from an era when the cinema-going experience was one to be savoured. They were occasions that lasted hours. There would be a support film, a cartoon and other bits and bobs before the main feature. And the main features lasted hours. You would walk into the cinema in broad daylight and reappear hours later in the depths of night with blinking eyes and an arse devoid of feeling. Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, Spartacus and many others. They were that long the had intervals in the middle so you could relieve yourself and take on more refreshments. Proper films.

Whereas today they barely last ninety minutes to two hours. And if one should break the two hour barrier it’s almost always referred to in the reviews as though to warn those of a limited attention span that they would probably be best not bothering.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying old=good new=bad, some contemporary films are superb and equally some old films are crap. It’s the experience I’m castigating – or at least the experiences I encountered on my most recent visits to the ‘pictures’.

Needless to say my colleagues (who are mainly younger) disagreed telling me that the whole ‘movie-going’ business was brilliant nowadays and a far cry from their experiences in the distant past. It was then that we started harking back to the last film we had seen in a cinema and it was then that I started racking my brains.

I was convinced it wasn’t long ago but after sifting through my ailing memory it came as a shock to realise the last time I had set foot in one of the places was 1981! Dearest and I took the kids to se ET.

Nineteen eighty bloody one! My thesis was hanging in tatters. How could I maintain a credible argument when it was based on research that was not far off thirty years old? It was time to accept defeat and start considering the possibility of heading for the local multiplex which, I am told, are nowadays full of big comfy seats and bars. But what to see?

Angels & Demons
Doghouse
Drag Me to Hell
Last Chance Harvey
Looking For Eric
Night at the Museum 2
Red Cliff
Star Trek
Terminator Salvation
The Hangover

I have actually heard of the majority of them but ‘Looking for Eric’ apart I certainly wouldn’t make an effort to see any of the rest. Even ‘Looking for Eric’ isn’t really a must-see-on-a-big-screen flick is it? In fact it would probably benefit from a more intimate small screen showing from what I’ve read of the reviews. Mind you it’s about Manchester U-bloody-nited and it may just tip me over the edge. “Je ne suis pas un homme, je suis Cantona” my arse!

---

I’m off to see Neil Young next Tuesday evening. Finally, after thirty odd years of listening to him, I am able to actually attend one of his shows. In the past they have coincided with weddings, holidays, other already made plans and sold out signs. Eldest and Mrs Eldest are coming as well. Down to Nottingham via rail and then an overnight stay.

I’ve been perusing the set lists from the tour so far and the portents are good. I reckon we can definitely count on Mansion on the Hill, Cortez the Killer, Cinnamon Girl, Heart of Gold, Old Man, Hey Hey My My, Pocahontas, Everybody knows this is Nowhere, Are You Ready for the Country, The Needle and the Damage Done, Unknown Legend, Down by the River and Rockin’ in the Free World. We may also get Like a Hurricane, Tonight’s the Night, Fuckin’ Up, Comes a Time, From Hank to Hendrix and World on a String. That’ll do me – fan friendly and accessible to those (like Mrs Eldest) who don’t really know his stuff. Should be grand!

---

Hazel Blears eh? What a twonk. Mind you, she’s very sorry now for resigning when she did and taking the mickey (however justified) out of Gordon’s YouTube appearance. It’s patently obvious that she didn’t think the PM would survive the aftershocks of the European and local elections and even more patently obvious that she thought she’d been clever by getting out and – in her view at least – positioning herself for a cabinet position under the next incumbent. Whoops! Never jump when you’re not sure where the shore is.

What really got my goat was the brooch. ‘Rocking the boat’. What the hell was that about? What was going through her smug little mind as she pinned that to her coat? God knows but I know this, those three errors of judgement plus the little matter of her woeful paying back of the innocent £13,000 should ensure that she does not get re-selected for her Salford constituency again. If she does I think the local Labour Party are in for a surprise come the next General Election. Still at least she’ll be able to repent at leisure.

As a result of these shenanigans, I’ve heard and read some brilliant descriptions of Ms Blears. I thought ‘like a feral Krankie’ was good but ‘Bride of Chucky’ was spot on.

See The Sky About To Rain.....

Today we had a good old-fashioned trip to the seaside. Butties, a flask, a dog and a positive attitude was all we needed so the car was made ready and off we sped in the glorious June sunshine. Didn't we have a lovely time, the day we went to.......

We had planned on heading Southport way, to the endless beaches and dunes of that part of the Lancashire coastline that doesn’t have a place called Blackpool stuck in the middle of it like a running sore. Southport would be ideal, we could let the dog exercise for a good two minutes or so before she would collapse in an exhausted heap and I could photograph the endless horizon whilst contemplating mortality. Dearest could get some sea air to her broken bits and it would be just like being kids again.

“Are we there yet?”

Except we never made it to Southport. Somebody (ahem) wasn’t paying attention to the road signs on the motorway and he missed the turn off. We were heading for North Wales at a rate of knots with no immediate means of retracing, so we decided to stay with it. After all, there was no schedule, no timetable, just two crazy kids and a dog on the highway to oblivion!

It was looking like Conwy or Llandudno – that’s where we usually end up when we can’t think of anywhere else to go. And, to be fair we have had some cracking times there in the past with the kids and others. It’s a beautiful part of the world but one that we’ve been to too often.

Then we saw a sign that said ‘Prestatyn’. Now we haven’t been there for years so we thought we’d give it a go. I vaguely remembered a decent beach and tacky 1950s seaside architecture. To be frank I was in the mood for a decent beach and some tacky 1950s seaside architecture. Mirror, signal and manoeuvre – we turned right and tootled down some delightful country roads and through some cute little Welsh villages and hamlets before pitching up on Prestatyn’s sea front. After paying and displaying we set off down what turned out to be an absolutely excellent three mile walk down a practically deserted sea front. Dunes on one side, the beach on the other. No ice-cream kiosks, do-nut sellers, ‘amusement’ arcades or ‘kiss-me-quick’ hats anywhere.

We really did enjoy ourselves. A good six mile walk and the quality of the light was special – sunshine from one part of the sky and heavy clouds in the other. My favourite visual treat. There was a becalmed wind farm out at sea standing testament to the stillness of the day. It were grand, as they say in the vernacular.

And then my hip started to ache. Another physical niggle to add to the growing list. Old age? It’s a bitch.

---

I see Real Madrid aren’t “killing football” with their recent spending. It’s only City who get accused of that. £80million plus £45million for Kaka. Wages for the pair of them that would make anybody’s eyes water and hardly a Gallic eyebrow raised. Monsieur Platini mustn’t have been paying that much attention. Oh sure he did make the odd comment but it’s nothing like the bile he directed at the Sky Blues in January. But then again, Madrid aren’t rocking the boat are they? As long as the billions flow between the ‘Big’ clubs then all’s OK and the World can carry on spinning.

La petite tarte!

Her's some pics from today.......


See the sky, about to rain...


The errant possessive apostrophe.


Skulkin'


Outlook: Mixed!


Foreshore


Beach


Time to go.


Reflections in public art.

That's all folks!

Same As It Ever Was......

So, the vagaries of PR, coupled with a dismal turnout, have resulted in the current leader of the BNP and the ex-leader of the NF heading for Brussels to presumably team up with others of like mind. It’s a sad day when the political process delivers as unpalatable a pair as this but hey, that’s democracy and the people have spoken although they did poll fewer votes than last time. We may not agree with their choice but we have to take on board the thought processes behind the voting; thought processes that the chattering classes just don’t seem capable of ever understanding.

Like the politicians they endlessly interview, too many of our opinion formers and recorders have never lived in the world that the vast majority inhabit. A world of monotonous, far-from-secure, low-paid jobs that Polly Toynbee, for example, simply wouldn’t recognise. She looked shell-shocked last night Ms Toynbee, although she did accept that she could understand why low-skilled workers would feel threatened by a huge influx of highly skilled and ambitious young Poles, completely ignoring the fact that many of them worked for lower pay than existing workers and also ignoring the fact that the vast majority of them have now gone back home.

Personally, although I thought we wouldn’t find ourselves in this position, I’m not surprised that the far right have made inroads in the ex-textile towns of the North West and Yorkshire. Far from the cultural melting pot that the Toynbees of this world believe that these places are, all I see are ghettos where different cultures exist side by side and no matter how hard the powers-that-be try to integrate them, they are as compartmentalised as ever.

When I had the misfortune to deliver Mail my first round was in Glodwick. You may vaguely remember the place – it was the epicentre of the Oldham riots a few years back and it is almost exclusively Asian. Shops, businesses, mosques all geared to a population that definitely wasn’t, and still isn’t integrating. A couple of miles south and you’re in Fitton Hill: almost exclusively White and with a population that definitely isn’t integrating either. 5,400+ votes the BNP acquired in Oldham. I bet you could come up with a fairly good guess where they came from.

I would imagine this same situation is replicated in Burnley, Bradford, Blackburn etc. And yet, to listen to the great and the good you would think that entirely the opposite is true. We all dream of living in harmonious multi-cultural societies but to blithely assume, from the comfort of Hampstead, that such situations are the norm is, at best wishful thinking and, at worst sheer ignorance. As I said in my last post, this is a debate that needs honesty on all sides and it needs to begin soon. Middle class commentators interviewing middle class representatives of ‘Inter-Faith’ groups is not – and has never been – the way forward.

---

Another thing that has surprised me about the election results, both European and local is the lack of imagination the electorate has shown in their response to the ‘collapse of trust’ that the expenses farrago has supposedly triggered.

It seems to me that all they’ve done is revert to type, given the incumbents a kicking and transferred their votes to the other main opposition party or stayed at home and watched Big Brother. Lord knows there were enough alternatives on the ballot paper for some constructive protest voting apart from the BNP. It’s an opportunity lost and one that we may all live to regret. It wasn’t just Labour politicians with their snouts in the trough but I’ve got a funny feeling that years down the line the moat-cleaning and duck islands will be forever linked with Labour, just like the three-day week of the early Seventies is.

This electoral timidity will result in the psephologists of the main parties believing they got off the hook and it’s business as usual. All that’s required is to sit back, head down and wait until swine flu or something takes over the headlines again. Gordon, for example, is reported as considering slowing the privatisation of Royal Mail. Slowing down? What sort of procrastinating, Asquithian response is that? What the hell is that going to achieve? That’s not a change of policy. His response to this battering is to ‘slow something down’? He’s also apparently on the verge of announcing an enquiry into the Iraq war. An enquiry eh? And how long will that take to report? Decades I reckon and even then it will be a whitewash. Here's an idea Gordon, ditch the ridiculous ID Card scheme. That would do for starters.

They think they’ve got away with it and, you know what?

They have.

---

I watched the England v Kazakhstan game on Saturday. It was a scrappy affair not helped by the state of the pitch but, in the end, we got the result even though none of the team performed outstandingly. It’s always nice being able to watch two Manchester City players in England shirts as well.

Come Sunday morning I ambled down to the paper shop and bought The Observer, The Mail and the Daily Mirror (the latter at the request of Dearest as there was something in it she wanted ?). As I lazily poached a couple of eggs I skimmed the match report statistics in the Mirror. They have a helpful section called ‘villain of the game’ or something like that. Guess who it was. Yup, new City signing Gareth Barry. Now I don’t happen to think he had a great game but after the first twenty minutes or so I though he settled down and let’s not forget he did get the first goal. Glen Johnston on the other hand made mistakes that almost led to goals and was generally skinned every time the opposition approached. David Beckham was pointless, lacklustre and wasteful. But Gareth was the villain.

I opened the Mail, they gave Gareth 8 out of 10 for his performance and the Observer was similarly complementary.

Now I don’t normally read the Mirror as it’s a comic not a newspaper, but I have heard a lot of City fans complain about its in-built anti City reporters and I have seen some uncalled for bile on their website in the past, but this for me takes the biscuit. This isn’t reportage it’s petty and pathetic and the reporters (for it is more than one) need to get a life.

Oooops I Did It Again......

I’ll tell you what, this ‘house-husband’ malarkey is bloody hard work. Take the glorious weekend that has just flashed by. Instead of languidly greeting the morning and easing myself into the day ahead I had to jump out of bed and attack the garden, a garden that has not been attended to for quite some weeks (months possibly). The grass was a good 8 to 10 inches high and the ‘lawn’ itself was still damp from all the rain we’ve been experiencing in these parts. It was almost too much for the aging Flymo, but after an hour of cursing, pushin’, sweatin’, pullin’ swearin’ and a-cussin’ the first pass was complete.

“That looks a mess” observed Dearest helpfully as I wiped salty sweat from my eyes, jealously observed the next door neighbours reclining in the heat with a glass of something cool and considered phase two.

“We need a strimmer!”

I set off in the increasing heat to the local branch of Focus. This, in retrospect was a big mistake as the roadworks pixies had been out overnight putting up a temporary yet complicated six set traffic light sequence that was cheerfully holding up vehicles in what seemed like a twenty mile radius all round the store I was trying to access. A mass road rage outbreak was simmering just beneath the surface as I finally parked up in their crowded car park and marched purposefully in.

Within minutes I was walking resignedly out. There’s been a “run” on strimmers and all they had left were top of the range solid gold models with a price tag to match.

Time for plan B. B and Q. Once more into the congestion.

In short it took me nearly two hours to purchase a strimmer. Given that my original destination was a mere half mile from my front door I think that can be described as excessive. But, undaunted I assembled the various parts and approached the lawn edge. I pulled the trigger and the grass and weeds fell. Twenty seconds later I had the strimmer unplugged and was threading more cord through as the first ten seconds of activity was too much for the original. Over the next hour or so I must have repeated this fulfilling activity fifteen times as the flora took it’s toll.

Eventually it was over and the lawn edges were once again defined and the weeds and overgrowth had gone. “Dearest’ll be impressed now” I thought as I readied myself for one more mow.

“Where have my ornamental grasses gone?”

Sometimes you just can’t win……….

---

Later, after a long horticultural lecture from Dearest, we decamped to the local beer garden and were soon joined by Eldest, Mrs Eldest, Eldest’s best man and his two year old twin boys. By the time we were ready to leave we had been joined by another five or six – friends that is, not twins - although by this time we were inside the pub as it did cool significantly as the sun dropped. Before we left I had been convinced to book a flight to Nice in order to watch Barcelona take on Shakthar Donesk in Monaco. It’s the winners of the Champion’s League v the winners of the EUFA Cup and it should be a great opportunity for me to watch a shedload of City’s future stars play for Barca as we’re about to buy them all apparently.

Sunday arrived and the ironing pile had reached tipping point. What a great way to pass the time in a heatwave, The only way to approach this task was stripped to my boxers with an electric fan gently cooling me.

I’ll soon have lost pounds at this rate.

---

Here in the North West we’re “being targeted by the BNP” according to local news sources. Come Thursday’s Euro elections the “thugs in suits” hope to gain enough of a share of the vote to send a significant number of representatives to Strasbourg. Certainly the press seem to think so because the number of articles on the dangers of using them as a protest vote against the mainstream parties must now be in three figures at least. Locally we’ve had the Manchester Evening News, The Oldham Chronicle and Advertiser. Nationally The Observer, Guardian, Mirror and a host of others all running with similar analyses. Add to this the features on “the murky past” of most – if not all – BNP leaders and the worry among the liberal elite becomes palpable.

I think I have a little more faith in the electorate than that. I think the likes of UKIP, The English Democratic Party and maybe The Greens will receive the protest votes. Moreover we could see a massive rise in abstentions and spoilt papers. Sure there will be an increase for the fascists but not on the scale that is feared. People, on the whole, aren’t stupid and it will only be those that are who will vote for the racist tossers.

What doesn’t help in situations like this though is when a climate of fear of expressing a viewpoint that challenges the prevailing multi-culturism-and-diversity-is-always-good stance is met with a carte blanche charge of racism and bigotry. The left at present seems to me to be shooting itself in the foot over this issue by appearing to condone cultures that oppress women and discriminate against other cultures – mainly western capitalism – the very culture that allows them the freedom of speech to call for its overthrow. There’s some very flawed logic knocking around this whole area and the politicians and opinion formers need to start addressing it seriously.

Fascism exists in many different guises and it doesn’t always have a white face.

---

Dearest won’t be able to “roll with it” this coming weekend. Originally she was to have attended one of the Oasis concerts in Manchester’s Heaton Park with Mrs Eldest but the broken shoulder has rendered it unwise to do so. She will just have to make sure it’s OK for the Neil Young gig on June 23rd.