BA40

So, being forty then. What was I worried about? It's fine. I've not suddenly gone all uncool, started eating Werther's Originals, stopped liking loud music or moaning about aches and pains. In fact, seven weeks in, I think forty suits me quite well. It means I can now go "Of course I don't know who Jessie J is, I'm forty for God's sake" or "I'm a little bit past all that, I'm forty for God's sake!" or "Of course you won't remember the YTS/not having a mobile phone/having to do a paper round/Margaret Thatcher/John Major/Tony Blair, because you're an embryo and I'm forty." It's also great fun to say to your friends who haven't reached forty yet "Make the most of this year, after your 39th birthday it's the quickest year you'll ever know. Can you hear that clock ticking? 'tick tock tick tock tick tock' is how it goes. Can you hear it? 'Tick tock tick tock tick tock.'" Yes, I am a pain in the arse, aren't I?
Besides, I often think that getting older will suit me as I'm quite looking forward to being one of those old gits who makes out they're 'a little bit deaf'. Deaf enough to be able to hear "Would you like a cup of tea and a biscuit?" but deaf enough not to hear "Would you like to come and help with the washing-up?" Hoo-hoo, I can't wait for all that. I'll have the time of my life.
What I do find about reaching this age is that other people of a similar age without kids suddenly want to come on holiday with you. As though we've all got to huddle together for warmth from the Parent Mafia. I don't care whether you have kids or not, I'm telling you now, I DON'T want to go on holiday with you. Holidays are a little bit like Christmas Day: spending them with other people is weird. Everyone has their own traditions and customs, like eating pork pie for breakfast or making up their own rules to Monopoly. I don't want to go to the bloody pub with you every night that we're on holiday. Or go to that nice place where you and Clive went last year. Or have a cream tea at the place that you can't find but you know it's down this lane somewhere. Or listen to you two shagging. Okay? I'm not going on holiday with you.
I've had this "Hey you should come on holiday with us!" thing twice in the past few weeks. The latest coming from a very good friend who is forty next year along with his wife. Their big idea is that they hire a castle and loads of us all go for the week. No, no, NO! I refuse! For a start there'll be loads of people I don't know, there'll be enforced jollity and his wife gets on my wick after a couple of hours (They've been together for well over ten years and are entirely wrapped up in each other still. Which is nice, it must have been kismet or something. Yeah, there you go you see, I'm still an old romantic really). Besides which, I'm intimidated by her breasts.

So yeah, I'm really chilled now I've got to forty. Can you tell..?

I'm going to ring-rang-a-dong for a holiday

This is going to be my last blog post for a while as, thanks to my employer's policy of making us all have two weeks off when holidays are at their most expensive, I'm going away at the weekend and, along with the fact I'm going to be away for a chunk of August, I'll have limited internet time over the summer. So I thought I'd do a what-I've-been-watching-on-TV round-up.

Let's start with Guesstimation, a dreadful new Saturday night vehicle for Nick Knowles. It won't surprise you to learn that I hate Knowles. He comes across as the kind of idiot who stands at the bar in pubs spraffing off to his pathetic mates about how great he is while mentally undressing every woman who walks into the bar. To compound my hatred I heard him being interviewed on Radio Nottingham last week while trying to promote Guesstimation. While he was at it he thought he'd slip in that he's doing a new reality show. The woman interviewing him stopped him and reminded him that in the past he's slated reality television (while conveniently forgetting that he made his name on DIY SOS, and appeared on Comic Relief Does Fame Academy), well of course he went off on one defending what he'd said and his show. Like I said, an idiot. And have you ever noticed that, apart from DIY SOS, his shows never get past a couple of series before being canned? Why is he still employed by a major terrestrial broadcaster, anyone else would be on QVC by now. Oh, and that permanent 'designer stubble' winds me up a treat an'all.
Anyway, getting back to Guesstimation, it's crap. It surely has to be the dullest game show format ever devised. the aim of the game is, get this, to guess stuff. Well that's not very interesting for the viewer is it? There's no conferring so we have to wonder what two teams of twats are actually thinking. There's nothing for the viewer at home, well, apart from throwing crisps at the telly when one woman guessed that Tokyo was 350 miles away from London. That's the distance form London to Edinburgh.

At the weekend I watched a film on BBC4 called The Mother, it was shown as part of BBC4's season about old codgers. The film's plot revolved around a widow (Anne Reid) having an affair with her daughter's boyfriend (Daniel Craig). I don't know why, but the sight of Ken Barlow's first wife being taken up the Gary Glitter by James Bond has traumatised me and left having nightmares.
The film didn't really go anywhere and at the end I was left feeling worthless and empty. No doubt Reid and Craig had similar feelings when they watched it back. Having said that though, Anne Reid does have nice knockers for her age.

What about Wallander? Have you seen that? I'm not talking about those Kenny Branagh ones from last year, I'm talking about the Swedish ones currently running on BBC4. I've only seen the one, but they're very good. I have to watch them in bursts of a bout thirty minutes at a time though because of the subtitles. Normally when you watch a film with subtitles it's usually French and the action's punctuated with bits of rumpy-pumpy so you have time to give your brain a rest. Wallander's relentless though, the plots moving on constantly so you don't even have time to think that they all sound like the chef off of The Muppets.
Apparently Wallander says an awful lot about modern Sweden. Shame that, I've always fancied going to Sweden, but I don't fancy getting blown up in a bank.

Don't get me started on On Thin Ice, a show where Ben Fogle and James Cracknell try and race other teams to the South Pole. I watch it because I find polar exploration fascinating, but I find the whole thing rather pointless. If you're going there for scientific purposes, fair enough, but to go and race? You need your head looking at. And they're so miserable doing it, especially when Cracknell's foot looks as though it's going to drop off and he wakes every morning to a massive coughing fit. Factor in the fact that you're constantly trying not to get frostbite in your winkle every time you go for a leak, and a happy time is not being had by all. I find it oddly enjoyable though.

Also good to see the return of Only Connect. The contestants are usually overgrown students, but I enjoy it, not least for Victoria Coren. I'd marry her, I would. The problem is she's a shark at poker and I have trouble remembering the rules to snap. Never mind, we can but dream.

While I'm away this blog will celebrate its 1st birthday (a week tomorrow), which is something of a feat for me as my blogs don't normally make it that far. So happy birthday Modern Gutnish! You'll never know how much trouble I had naming you.

Right, that's me then, I'll leave you with my favouritest summer song in the history of the world. Have a good summer and I'll see you in a few weeks. Bye!

Get it right or I kick your head in

Well, here we are again. What have I been up to? like you're interested. For starters I've booked two holidays. One of them is a get-away-from-it-all affair to the north of Scotland in a small place overlooking the Moray Firth. Apparently you can watch dolphins from the garden. I hope they don't get too close, there's a word in The Meaning of Liff for the point when animals stop being picturesque. I don't get on very well with animals and have never seen the fascination of wanting to swim with dolphins. Mind you, I don't see the fascination of wanting to swim. As Billy Connolly says "Man spent thousands of years evolving to get out of the water, and the first thing he wants to do is run back in". We don't belong in there, there are things in there that want to hurt you.

Anyway, I'm going up there to just switch my phone off and chill out, away from solicitors, bank managers, pension companies, fawning funeral directors, the DWP etc etc. Having said that though, I get on quite well with our solicitor, she's a laugh. I knew I'd gone a bit far the other day though when I launched into an anecdote about The Great Soprendo before realising she didn't have a clue who I was on about. The penny dropped when I was reduced to saying "You know, The Great Soprendo off of Crackajack...piff paff puff......he was married to Victoria Wood...used to do Dictionary Corner on Countdown...Geoffrey Somebody...no?...oh." Obviously she'd spent her formative years poring over legal texts while I watched telly. Never mind, it's her loss.

I've also been thinking about buying a new car, thanks to Lord Mandy of Mandelson's scrappage scheme. I hate buying cars though and I'm desperately trying to put it off. It's the salesmen, I went with an ex-girlfriend to look for one for her once and the salesman kept addressing me. I had to tell him it wasn't me buying the car. He also kept saying 'superb' at the end of every sentence, like a complete wanker. The last one I bought the salesman said "I can see, sir, you look like the kind of man who loves his gadgets." How could he tell that? And he was wrong anyway. I'm still putting it off though, and knowing my luck, when I do brave the showroom it'll be the day after all the scrappage money's run out. Bah!

I've been reading The Northern Clemency by Philip Hensher. It's a sprawling book that spans two decades in the lives of two middle-class Sheffield families. I love that kind of thing. (See my love for Stan Barstow's Vic Brown trilogy, Jonathan Coe's Rotters' books and Our Friends in the North for more details) It's a 700+ page monster but it's one of those books I don't want to end. He takes ages getting the detail right, which some would probably find infuriating, but it's the detail I love. Also not much happens, but it's very involving. So involving, in fact, that I had a day off work yesterday and took it to the pub yesterday afternoon. I never take books to pubs, and never go to pubs on my own, but I did yesterday. I read about eighty pages while getting slowly half-cut on pear cider and sitting at an outside table which I think was meant for smokers, but fuck 'em. Have you tried pear cider? It's a great summer drink, very sweet, but it slips down as easily as pop.

I went to see Telstar - The Joe Meek Story at the cinema last week. What a disappointment that was. It didn't know whether it wanted to be a knockabout comedy or a serious drama about mental health issues. I have a passing knowledge, and general interest in Meek, but the film told me very little I didn't know already, apart form the fact that his session guitarist of choice was Ritchie Blackmore. It also concentrated too much on his relationship with a complete turd of a man called Heinz, who Meek fell in love with and spent loads on trying to get a string of hits out of him. It all went pear-shaped, as you'd probably guessed. I was frustrated that it didn't tell you how a tone deaf man who couldn't play an instrument became a producer of such note. I reckon they made it with the interest of the average cinema punter in mind and didn't want to get bogged down in all that detail. It would have made a better TV drama, like those BBC4 films about real people. Especially as I was at a weekend showing with only six other people. That was after I'd picked myself up off the floor at how much the cinema wanted to charge for a) premium seats (Which turned out to be Mastermind chairs at the back with a small table, worth £14 of anyone's money. Not. I'd want a mid-film blowjob by a Polynesian handmaiden thrown in for £14) and b)the price of popcorn, surely the world's most inexpensive food product somehow made on par with caviar.

I'll leave you with this. How hateful is that? It's like those annoying tear-off calendars at work which each have a bit of cod philosophy at the bottom of each page. The filmed report on that page is worth watching just for the sound of the train driver's monotone voice spraffing off a a bit of Immanuel Kant, and saying "The passengers love it." Really? Oh, and it's also worth watching because I've taken a fancy to the woman at 50 seconds.

Nuts in August

I'm currently reading Emma Kennedy's book on family camping holidays. It's made me 'LOL' a few times, even though I'm sure that quite a lot of its been embellished for comedic purposes, nevertheless it's a good read.

All of which reminded me of the only time I've been camping (I was never in the cubs or scouts. Male-bonding has always left me slightly cold. Besides, all you seemed to do was play Britsh fucking Bulldogs). It was 1984 and my sister had just got married so mater and pater were a bit skint from forking out for a showy wedding, so a 'proper' holiday was out of the question. My other sister had announced the previous year, right at the end of a fortnight in Cornwall that she "never wanted to go on a family holiday ever again". So, as in 1984 she was 17, it was deemed that she could be trusted to stay at home on her own for a week. It was decided that we would borrow my aunt's tent and go and slum it in the Lake District, just my parents and me. In the spirit of inter-family unity, my just-married sister's new in-laws decided they would bring their tent and come with us.

Here's a run down of what went wrong that week:

• First night there and the campsite offers grass-skiing, which involves hurtling down fellsides on ski boots fitted with tank tracks. Dad's too tight to pay for me to have a go so I have a go at running down the hill very fast, lost my footing and bounced down more than I ran, ripping my Brutus jeans and getting grass stains on my black and white, Big Country-style plaid shirt. Caused much hilarity with my sister's in-laws.



• Got accosted by a gang of teenage girls while going to the camp shop to get my dad's Express and a bottle of milk. They could obviously smell a boy who'd never been kissed before at twenty paces. Put me off girls for at least a year.



• Went to visit an uncle who worked at Sellafield and lived within sight of it. His stepson made me touch the Irish sea because "it's radioactive and you ain't got no bollocks if you don't touch it". He then took me to his bedroom where, in a display of twattishness that would shame those two American Judas Priest fans, he played me Deep Purple's Child in Time over and over again at shrieking volume. A song that still leaves me traumatised*.



• Stopped for a leak in a mountain stream then thought it would be a good idea to drink the clear water with my scooped hands. The same hands that had just been holding my penis that hadn't had a proper bathing for a few days. And, in my youthful stupidity drank water downstream from where I'd just pissed. Caused much hilarity with my sister's in-laws.



• Had a tin of lager which caused me to collapse into my deckchair resulting in me touching the sides of my tent. Dad went mad, got a smack round the bonce (it was allowed in those days). Touching the sides of a tent is the worst thing you can do when camping. Ever. Caused much hilarity with my sister's in-laws.



• Woke in the middle of the night. As it's a camp site it was pitch black, thought I'd gone blind as I could see absolutely nothing and screamed. Caused much hilarity with my in-laws.



• Had to listen to two 'neighbours' arguing due to one of them being able to hear everything the others were saying, and singing because the bastards had taken a guitar with them. Just like Nuts in May. Yes, really.



• Decided it would be a good idea to go the pub at a place called Kirkstone Pass, one of the highest pubs in England. It's accessed by a notoriously steep road. Sister's father-in-law decided he would drive, he's not the world's greatest driver. I had my eyes shut most of the way, when I opened them, his false teeth, which he wasn't overly keen on wearing, were grinning up at me from the map pocket in the car door. The pub itself is like The Slaughtered Lamb off of An American Werewolf in London. Stuffed crows on every window ledge. Needless to say, the trip down was just as scary as on the way up. Made worse by my sister's father-in-law's insistence that we listen to his Jim Reeves tape. Gentleman Jim.



• We had to take the tent down and pack up in the pouring rain.

I've never been camping again.

*Especially as it's since been used on the rather excellent Oscar-winning feature documentary One Day in September, a film about the Israeli hostage crisis at the Munich Olympics. The music accompanies footage of actual police photos taken of the carnage inside one of the helicopters that was blown up. I find it a scary but great track all at the same time.

Going where the sun shines brightly. Hopefully.