I Say, I Say, I Say!

A strange thought struck me the other day while watching the televisual feast that is UKTV History.
I like most of the stuff they show, and show and show again! Ok, joke over, back to the subject.
I’ve been watching it because they’ve been showing “The World At War” the early ‘70s saga narrated by Laurence Olivier. I always remember it from being a kid. Well, I remember the music because as soon as it came on my old man would say “Oi, bed!” So I never actually got to see it. Hence watching it now.
Anyway, the episode I was trying to watch [sitting here with my B/Fs niece, Fat Bird, yapping away on her phone] was all about London during the blitz. Most of the story was coming from a group of 50 something old dears, sitting around a table in a pub. Because she is a loud, obnoxious cow, I couldn’t help but hear what she was saying, even though I kept turning up the volume on the telly!
Now you would think that in a vox pop with a whole load of people, well, six anyway, and all of them being from the “East End” that it would be full of “viss and vat, innit?” or “finkin and fortin, nowamean?” Not a bit of it. Not it was like a speech by Penelope Keith either, but the other surprising thing was that not one said “Er” or “Um”. Not even once! It was just spoken in their own dialect.
For all the years that I’ve been away from Leeds I’ve never managed to loose my flat northern accent [think of Vera Duckworth of Coronation St. fame. Another ex-Leodian.
All this is unlike Dave and Fat Bird, who both come from Northern Ireland and when I first knew then both had a strong “Porteedown” twang.
Dave lost his on purpose and now has an indefinable, puffy sort of voice. Fat Bird although not quite having lost hers, has embellished it with a polish that only comes from mixing upwardly.
Back to having to listen to her phone call. “Well it’s, like…like so, er, unfair.” To my way of thinking if it’s only like unfair, then unfair it is not. True? Every other word was either er or like.
And the point of this is…In the 70’s people spoke properly. Then came, er, literally. Then, post-Sex and the City, it’s all been like, so QED!

Been there, bought the T shirt

Vanilla (va – ni ‘-la) [Sp. Fr. L. vagina, sheath] A form of fag who only indulges in the ordinary. Professes be up for it but can be difficult to bring to either 1. A state of erection. 2. Onto all fours for a “dogs Marriage”.

I had meant to write this piece when I came back from holiday [gay pride in Gran Canaria] but having just seen a review of “Fetish Shops” in BOYZ magazine I finaly got around to writing. The whole place was filled with vanilla queens sporting RoB of London T shirts. Not that I care too much what people have printed on their shirts, I mean, look at all the arch Tory public school types wearing Che Guevara shirts…
RoB of London are a well-known supplier of gay fetish gear. Now this is not your Ann Summers sort of old tat, this is the full on kind of kit. No edible G strings here. Well, maybe, not any more.
Many, many moons ago, I had got myself a set of PVC trousers and waistcoat made at RoB, and fukin expensive it was too! Since then I’ve stayed with the ready to wear stuff.
Now it seems, having been there, you can buy something as shite as the “ T shirt”.
I only discovered this, after [my version of] sweet-talking this lovely bit of rough for an hour or so. Trying to suss-out how, well, kinky, would be the simplest way of putting it, things would get, I was beginning to wonder if I was talking a different language but having ascertained that he was a Brit, I knew I wasn’t. Turns out he was as vanilla as Walls. Only thing he’d bought in RoB was the fukin T shirt. Thinking about it now, I suppose it’s only the same as tourists going to Harrods and buying a Mars Bar just to get the carrier bag!

Evening All

Good old Mail on Sunday, always good for rattling the pearls of the blue rinse brigade. Today’s bafflement was how come the police are beginning to look more military. To illustrate this was a pic of some poor sod who’d been issued the complete webbing kit [pouches, straps, gizmos and toys] all topped of with the MP5, a bit bigger than an I-pod but less tuneful.Much as many would love to go back to the blue serge tunic, buttoned up to the neck, it’s never going to happen. Where would you keep your cigs, lighter, spare lighter, nail clippers, mobile phone, chewing gum etc And that’s before you’ve even picked up all the toys you’re supposed to carry.

Sidney Hound

Just thought I'd put this in because it made me chuckle.

Cigs

Have you noticed how many people smoke? Counting myself as one of that number, there are still lots of people who do. You can tell that it is still a profitable enterprise because the supermarkets still staff a counter that sells the damn things. If it wasn’t worth a carrot, and I’m not talking about the value of the individual packets, I mean the value of the sales to the business, then you would be reduced to taking them from the shelf yourself, same as your tins of beans etc.
Well seeing as how the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury’s et al do go to the huge expense of paying one of their highly intelligent members of staff to dance attendance on your, almost, every whim you would think that they would have one the extra yard and included some product knowledge training.
I cannot think of the last time I went into a supermarket, asked for the brand of cigarettes that I usually smoke and the body behind the counter knew any of the following
How many cigs are contained in the different types of packet i.e. 10 or 20.
Multiples of packets i.e. 40, 60, 100 etc.
Which brand is which.
Which is left, and which is right.
Here is an example, it’s actually what prompted me to write this.
“20 Mayfair, please.”
After several seconds doing the Quasimodo shuffle along the display, Assif selects Benson and hedges and whizzes them across the scanner.
“No, not Benson and Hedges, Mayfair, the blue ones, on the right hand side.”
So now he goes through the whole rigmarole of un-scanning the B&H then it’s back to the Quasimodo shuffle.
Second time lucky, almost.
What I end up with are Mayfair Lights. Probably the same thing in a different coloured box but still not what I asked for.
Now if you think this sounds a bit picky, think of it this way; if you went into a shoe shop and asked for a particular style in a size nine and they gave you a size eight you wouldn’t accept them, would you?

Holding on to it

More often than not I can keep my cool. I may shout, swear, growl and scowl a lot but I tend to keep it together [this is another moonlighting story, by the way].
“Celebrate Oxford Street” festival this time. The first one ever; and with any luck the fukin last. What a mess [the Old Bill cock it up again, as per usual].
My plot was the main stage. Quite handy really because it contains lots of little corners to sneak away into to have a sly ciggy, our base point, so it’s handy for a skive while talking to Meryl, the boss, and also because it was an “Andrew Cheeseman Productions” event, and I know most of the crew and hence can ponce cups of tea / coffee etc. It also has the access points to the backstage area.
My door security-moonlighting partner in crime, Sylvana, was on the gate at the House of Frazer side of the stage fending off people who could see down the side of the stage to Wigmore St. but couldn’t get down to it.
Along comes the old man from hell. Shoves the gate open, shoves Sylvana out of the way and strides off down the side of the stage. Syl jumps in front of him and he gave her a full, open-handed, slap in the face and continued walking.
Now I saw all this but only in the detached sort of way that you do when you are chatting [actually shouting at the top of my voice over the music] to somebody else.
I leapt off of my perch, ran after him, grabbed him and spun him around. This was where I lost it. I’m suppressed my shouting didn’t drown out the music, my boss sitting in the control point twenty yards away heard me. It was one of those full issue, red mist, type things and all I remember is the shouting and shoving him out of the gate. As soon as he was back out on the pavement the cold light of day snapped on and I nearly shit myself.
“What in the name of God was all that about?”
“He slapped Syl”
“I know that she told me, but did you have to go on at him so long?”
Well I had no idea how long I’d been ranting at him but it was long enough for Meryl to get the full SP from Syl and to draw a bit of an audience from the backstage bunch.
Apparently the old boy was petrified, which wasn’t the intention, but as Meryl said, if he thinks he can go around slapping women he deserves it [I disagree, but we won’t pursue that one, I was only helping my colleague] you should have “tapped” him.
A certain person from a department within the lovely Westminster Shitty Council came up to me and whispered in my ear
“I thought you did that brilliantly. How you didn’t hit him, I don’t know. And you didn’t swear once!”