The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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The boys are back in town!

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Whatever you think about their antics there’s no denying their entertainment value! Yes, its Clarkson, May and Hammond, and they’re back, back, back!

In a huge scoop for The Afterword I can reveal that they are launching a new motoring show, dedicated to improving the quality of the driving experience for all UK drivers (you’ll want to be sure to stay on board now, you Jock jokers – it won’t be available outside the Union!).

They’ll be campaigning for our vehicle excise duty to be spent on the warm black sticky tar stuff they pound into the holes in the road, ensuring our Maybach alloys stay undented!

Never mind the election results, it’s time to celebrate!

It’ll soon be time to tune in to weekly japes (I said japes, not Japs) with Pot Rage!

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So. Scotland.

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Who has the trickiest job ahead in British politics this morning? Nicola Sturgeon, that’s who.

I’m not sure how to characterise this, is it:

a) a magnificent political victory leading the way for the left in Britain to reunite and organise a ruthlessly orchestrated end to the philistine Tory hegemony in a few years’ time, and promising a better future for the whole of these islands, or

b) a spiteful foot-stamping vote against the Tories and a Labour party that’s perceived to have lost the plot, and to hell with the collateral damage to their like-minded idealogical comrades south of the border?

If it’s a) I’ll eat a haggis, never buy Japanese or Irish Whisk(e)y again, and learn to love midges, but if it’s b) I’m removing Scotland from my holiday destination list on a permanent basis, and I’ll be hoping they leave the Union and go to hell in a handcart shortly thereafter.

How is the SNP going to resolve the internal tension between their supporters who simply hate the Tories and have lost faith with the Labour Party, and those who still cling to a separatist agenda? She’ll have to negotiate this without causing an implosion. Tricky days » Continue Reading.

I’m With Her

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Venue:

Clifton Cathedral, Bristol

Date: 21/04/2015

Take three extravagantly talented women, all at the top of their games instrumentally and vocally, all of whom have been a part of stellar acoustic bands of one sort or another and equally successful as individuals, all of whom have worked with some of the very best musicians playing today. Put them in a room together and watch a band form. Hear their uniquely individual voices form a beautiful new identity when their perfect harmonies mesh. Put them on tour in their homeland, the USA, and watch them grow and develop a group performance that really works as an entity in its own right. Let them hone their act and learn how to play the room together. Send them to Europe for their first ever real tour, and let them start the UK tour proper with a gig in Bristol’s wonderfully airy and light modern catholic Cathedral in the leafy streets of Clifton on a balmy April night. Give them the deft skills of some of our very best home grown sound engineering talent in an enormous reverb heavy space that lets a falling pin splash across the soundscape with clarity and depth. » Continue Reading.

Apple makes a stand, and I applaud them for it.

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This struck me as a hugely important statement of intent.

The United States wants to lead the world in the battle against intolerance masquerading as religion, but seems powerless to halt the creeping, insidious evil in its own legislatures that promote the self same ignorant medieval attitudes in the name of a different prophet.

And finally here we have an arch capitalist who stands up and adds his voice, and that of his corporation, to the worried (and unheard in Washington) voices opposing the rise of a stealthy fifth column of God-bothering heathens.

Hurrah, says I, never mind that I think the iPad is the spawn of Satan, I’ll let you off this time, for taking a stand.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/pro-discrimination-religious-freedom-laws-are-dangerous-to-america/2015/03/29/bdb4ce9e-d66d-11e4-ba28-f2a685dc7f89_story.html

Those little lines are neat! Thanks, team.

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Not sure if it’s just that I’ve been glued to the blog mostly via my phone recently, or if it’s a new arrival, but can I just say that those little continuity lines are ace when you’re reading on a decent sized screen.

You guys should have got the gig to redesign the Beeb website, it would have been splendid instead of pants.

As you were.

An important circular.

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Here’s something to put in your calendars in advance, to be sure you don’t miss the festivities. It’s going to be one of those ‘had to be there’ celebrations, and I understand that anyone who takes part is on a promise to get their pi arse squared.

The date in question is 3rd January 2041 and the exact time for kick-off will be early in the morning at 59 minutes and 26 seconds past midnight. Set your alarms.

New £500 note to be a yard wide, printed on vellum made from bat’s scrotums.

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So the new quid coin is going to look exactly like an old thrupp’ny bit. Stunning. How innovative.

We should throw it open to the Massive to propose some new currency designs. Any PhotoShoppers here who can suggest a new coin of the realm, or a new note to capture our imagination? A twenty with a picture of Kanye West up to his chin in mud on the back and Kim face down in gloop on the front? How about a new note altogether, worth minus 5 pounds, with Osborne’s grinning mug on both sides?

So they have installed a double. But he’s just a Putin lookalike! The sneer is wrong.

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Play Nikolay Baskov & Sofi’s current Mockba chart hit “Ty Moe Schast’ye” backwards at half-speed underwater and you can clearly hear the chanting; “Vladimir is dead, Vladimir is dead.” And now we’re expected to believe that this is really him, back in circulation, when we know the KGB always had at least 2 clones ready and waiting to step in for any operative who fell in the course of duty. I ask you, do they take us for fools?

What’s your favourite conspiracy theory this month?

A trifle for a logical Friday:

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What’s the oldest item of clothing you’re wearing RIGHT NOW?

I’ll start, and I bet it’s the oldest clobber on the block; I’m wearing the leather belt I bought in Parikia on Paros in the Cyclades in 1978. I’ve worn it almost every day for the last 37 years. No wonder Greece is in financial trouble, they have no concept of built-in obsolescence.

Can you beat that for age, and are you wearing something that could tell few tales too?

Here’s another one of the tunes that Noel ripped off.

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Put the old See For Miles records 10th anniversary sampler on to play this morning, mostly because I hankered after hearing Marsh Hunt’s fabulous cover of “Walk On Gilded Splinters”, which is the second track. I let it carry on playing, and my attention drifted as I got on with few boring weekend tasks… until my ears pricked up again because the Kink’s “Waterloo Sunset” came on, and then the next track started and at the chorus I wondered, from the other room, why the office stereo had decided to play an Oasis song….

Anyone fancy a huge block of Moroccan kif? Souvenir leather pouf? Fresh spices?

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I’m planning a quick trip to Marrakesh to bring back a huge block of decent hashish. I figure if I fly via Gatwick it should be no problem at all; Special Branch and all the other officials there are obviously having a breather this week, and have switched off to the extent that three teenage girls can swan past them on their way to Turkey for a jihadi hen night. It beggars belief.

A mere 13 years before our “democracy” sinks without trace. Let’s party!

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Stepping out of my Time Machine this morning, having popped into the latter half of the century to get some REALLY fresh milk for breakfast from the village GrubOmatic, I chanced upon a copy of the day’s newskindle. Scanning the main story, I was reminded that the UK as a political entity will cease to exist in just a few years time, to languish under military rule for many years:

Back in good old 2015, tucking into buttered crumpets and real coffee over a printed copy of the Grauniad, I pondered that we could take all sorts of liberties with our politics in the coming election, reasoning that it won’t really matter anyway, given the approaching coup.

Then I thought that perhaps it’s this very sense of hopelessness to come that has somehow already seeped back from the future, colliding with today’s own political torpor and disgust to create a brew that will likely deliver an ineffective cobble of a government, unable to prevent any slide towards totalitarianism.

As my preferred tactic of rounding up the current Westminster establishment, dumping them all in the desert somewhere in the north of Syria with one shared » Continue Reading.