Category Archives: Messaged from the Outhouse

A Slice of Pub Heaven

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Yesterday was Easter Sunday, and the best girlfriend and I decided to try out one of our many guidebooks and opted for ‘Pub Walks in Essex‘. With the weather being absolutely rubbish we opted to cancel the ‘walk’ bit and instead headed directly for the pub. With us being currently stranded in a rather unfashionable bit of the notorious South East of the Essex, only the car was able to take us to a decent watering hole and so we made our way to the village of Stow Maries, a surprisingly lovely bit of countryside in this rather drab area.  The Prince of Wales, the villages only pub, is a surprisingly comfortable and cozy pub, run by an unusually (well, at least for the area) friendly team of landlords and has an amazing selection of real ales and belgian beers (Kriek on tap. Yum!).  With me driving I was unfortunately only allowed to try a modest amount of their wares, but the best girlfriend already promised me to drop me off there for an saturday afternoon. Yeah! For those who don’t want to drive home, there is a nice B+B attached and the food is supposed to excellent.  They even have proper website. Good on them.

The best girlfriend and I were in absolute pub heaven and the easter sunday brightened up considerably. Heartily recommended.

The Lexicon of Sparkly Pop.

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Last night I was sitting in the Royal Albert Hall, surrounded by the bald, the middle aged and the surprisingly badly dressed to listen (again) to Martin Fry and his merry posse of hired musicians. Tonight was nevertheless special, as this motley crew of musical mercenaries played some ABC songs with the BBC Concert Orchestra.

Well, not really ‘some songs’. Last night’s big promise was that these two groups of musicians would attempt to play each and every song of the best album of the eighties, the remarkable ‘Lexicon of Love’. This legendary mixture of northern funk, luscious string arrangements and Fry’s remarkable lyrics has always been a hidden gem in the history of the barren eighties and – being the ABC fan that I am – I obviously had to go.

By the time I arrived at the Royal Albert Hall (unfortunately 15 minutes late) ABC was already into the first half of their gig, a collection of their best loved singles outside Lexicon of Love. Interestingly enough, the ones that worked the best with the enormous orchestra behind the band were the slow traks from the ‘How to be a Zillionaire’ album, ‘Be near me’ and ‘Ocean Blue’. When you have three classic percussionists and a ‘contemporary’ percussionist, you can make a hell of funny noises and pretty much play your tracks picture perfect. The orchestra was led by (oscarwinning) Anne Dudley, who arranged the strings for the album all those years back.

The second set started with a bit of a let down: Trevor Horn might be a brillant producer, but his nervous and rambling introduction, read from a chaotic looking stack of papers was a bit embarassing. He was miles away from his convincing and calm self at his 25 year concert at Wembley. But then, finally, the main event. The orchestral introduction to ‘Show Me’ sounds 2008 just as good as 25 years and still manages to send shivers down my spine.  Steven Palmer, the drummer on The Lexicon of Love, was in top form. With a battery of midi pads and a ‘proper’ drum set, he was able to recreate all thoughs wonderful percussive sounds that made the album so special and groovy. From then on it was a bit like doing Karaoke with 4000 other singers (not that I do Karaoke, but that’s what it felt like). The whole arena obviously new every word to every song and a bizarre singalong developed that obviously culminated in a rousing rendition of ‘The Look of Love’ (played twice. The encore with Gold Lame Suit).

It cost my 75 bloody pounds, but it was the most enjoyable evening of Karaoke I’ve ever had.

“Don’t feel obliged”

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I almost choked on my cornflakes last sunday. In a wonderful article in last weekend’s Observer on Michelle Obama’s visit to Islington’s Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Language College (an inner city girls only school in London), this paragraph achieved to raise my eyebrows. Both of them:

“Jo Dibb, the headteacher, isn’t quite sure why, out of all the schools in London, hers was picked. “A piece of paper landed on my desk saying, ‘Would you like a talk from the US cultural attaché on civil rights?’ and I gave it to the librarian and said, ‘Don’t feel obliged’. But she went ahead and organised it and he was apparently very impressed by the quality of the girls’ questions.”

Well, why would you feel obliged? It’s only the American cultural attaché wanting to talk to your pupils about civil rights. According to the Observer article, 92% of the school’s pupils are from ethnic minorities. That gives me the impression that the history of the American civil rights movement might be actually quite topical. Possibly even educational. There might even be a chance that it would inspire.

But, you know, don’t feel obliged.

What is Britishness?

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This morning Radio 4 ran an item on ‘Britishness’. It is apparently a topic close to Gordon Brown’s heart.  As far as I understood the context, the idea was to find some unifying – if at all possible gallant and proud – traditions, habits or (the rather elusive) spirit of the British Isles.

I have been working in Scotland, Wales and England (I am way to chicken to put a foot into Northern Ireland), but as far as I can tell, there are few unifying things. What unites them all is a penchant for binge drinking and gratuitous violence on the weekend, but apart from that there’s few things I can think off. The Scots and the Welsh are united in the animosity against the English, the English look down on the Scots and Welsh, everybody’s wary of  Northern Ireland and none of them are particularly good at football but very keen for international glory (the big premiership teams can hardly be called English, as they are all coached by foreigners {sorry, Sir Alex} and there are hardly any English players present).

So, is Britishness a sense of mutual loathing, debauchery on the weekend and never winning anything with their respective national teams? There must be something more to it. I actually quite like their ability to incorporate vast amounts of immigrants from around the world and get them to integrate – kicking and screaming -into British life.  Of course there is mighty grumbling on both sides at times, but who else but the British would cope with a sudden influx of 1.000.000 Polish economic migrants within 2 or 3 years (actually, this was probably the best thing that happened to the British economy for years: sudden influx of a  bunch of highly skilled, motivated, multilingual, hard working individuals freshening up the gene pool). With me being of the German persuasion I had my fair share of  ‘don’t mention the war’ and soccer/war puns directed at me, for some reason this has been getting less, mainly due to the hundreds of thousands of happy british fans after the last world cup.

Another thing the British excel at is Public Broadcasting: The BBC (and CHannel 4) are peerless in the world and I can only wonder in horror about the state of national values and education if there wouldn’t be a regular steady drip of sensibility from Auntie into the British soul.

Then there is the link to tradition, the sometimes daring architecture, amazing music, lovely outdoors.

So, is there something that unites those lovely habitants of this small island?

Nope. There isn’t. I think the inhabitants of this country are far to diverse to be defined by just 3 or 4 meaningless attitudes, and that’s agood thing.

Let diversity be Britishness, and let it bloom.

Spandau Ballet are to tour. In other news, Igloos have been spotted in Hell

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picture courtesy of sd1-3500 from flickr

According to the Guardian, Spandau Ballet are reforming for a ten dates tour of Britain and some European dates.

While I am as guilty as the next person who grew up in the eighties of indulging in the music of my youth (hell, I have 12 Matt Bianco albums, but at least they didn’t stop making music and had to ‘reform’ {btw, their newest album, ‘Hifi Bossanova’ [incidentally, I really like the title. very retro] is coming out soon}, and I’ll be seeing ABC with the BBC Symphony Orchestra next month) but Spandau Ballet?

These guys split acromoniously after running out of songwriting juice, sued each other into oblivion, fought a little tabloid war and now everything is forgotten? Maybe I am too cynical, but I think a little monetary incentive was probably more likely to be responsible for the sudden reconciliation than a night out of shoulder slapping in a pub.

Maybe I’m just too cynical.