The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

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“Why should I?” The clarion call of the snowflake parent.

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It’s 3 o’clock on a Friday afternoon. I’ve just finished a particularly gnarly piece of work and I’m looking to call it a week and lay back into some music and beer. The primary school opposite Foxy Towers is kicking out in a few minutes and the yummy’s have started to appear in their oversized SUVs, parking badly in the narrow lane outside, just up from the school entrance, so that Jasmine and Teejay don’t have more than 30 metres to walk.

The one parked right outside my office window has a truck the size of Wiltshire, still has the engine running, and is concentrating hard on her mobile, probably trying to find TOWIE on Neflux or something equally engrossing. She’s breaking two traffic laws simultaneously, and pissing me off into the bargain. I go downstairs and put the kettle on for a wind-down cuppa, look out the the back and yes, she’s still there pumping fumes and tapping away. So I stroll out and walk around to the driver’s window. “Hello, would you mind turning your engine off while you wait, please?” I ask, polite and everything.

The response, with a snarl: “Why?”.

She’s straight in » Continue Reading.

Salute to Freddie Jones, who has passed away. Trooper par excellence. RIP

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Another one bites the dust – Freddie Jones, who absolutely EVERYBODY must recognise as one of the greatest character actors of our time, has slipped away. I can’t begin to count the number of times his amiable fizzog has brightened up my entertainment. Post your own tribute below.

Here’s my fave, where he’s bloody creepy:

https://youtu.be/KO2itnKNd5k

Condolences to Toby and the family. Your dad was a top fellow.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-48940202

Pattern recognition – we humans are good at it. Have a go yourself!

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Hello fellow human, can you spot the pattern in the list below?

David Amess (Conservative – Southend West) Steve Baker (Conservative – Wycombe) Henry Bellingham (Conservative – North West Norfolk) Paul Beresford (Conservative – Mole Valley) Bob Blackman (Conservative – Harrow East) Peter Bone (Conservative – Wellingborough) Suella Braverman (Conservative – Fareham) (Proxy vote cast by Steve Baker) Andrew Bridgen (Conservative – North West Leicestershire) James Brokenshire (Conservative – Old Bexley and Sidcup) Fiona Bruce (Conservative – Congleton) Gregory Campbell (Democratic Unionist Party – East Londonderry) James Cartlidge (Conservative – South Suffolk) William Cash (Conservative – Stone) Rehman Chishti (Conservative – Gillingham and Rainham) Christopher Chope (Conservative – Christchurch) Simon Clarke (Conservative – Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) Therese Coffey (Conservative – Suffolk Coastal) Philip Davies (Conservative – Shipley) David Davis (Conservative – Haltemprice and Howden) Nigel Dodds (Democratic Unionist Party – Belfast North) Steve Double (Conservative – St Austell and Newquay) Richard Drax (Conservative – South Dorset) David Duguid (Conservative – Banff and Buchan) George Eustice (Conservative – Camborne and Redruth) Kevin Foster (Conservative – Torbay) Roger Gale (Conservative – North Thanet) Paul Girvan (Democratic Unionist Party – South Antrim) Robert Goodwill (Conservative – Scarborough and Whitby) James Gray » Continue Reading.

Be proud of your political representatives, they deserve your respect.

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Hysterical (I use the word advisedly), gesticular and on the verge of insanity, Auntie Tom Cobley works herself into a stroketastic frenzy addressing the assembled unfortunates of the EU earlier today. What a laughing stock we now are amongst the grown-ups.

Meanwhile toad-faced Farrago grins inanely in the next seat while mentally calculating what he’ll spunk the £30k a month on that he trousers – on top of his MEP salary – just from being someone who appeals to wankers, because there are so many of them.

Who’ll give me decent odds she blows a big one before too long, rolls over boggle-eyed and foaming, pops them and croaks, and then we get the BBC tribute, the hilarious Strictly moments and all the rest of the nauseous amelioratingly apologetic treatments we’ve come to expect from the media when someone downright bonkers and dangerous does the decent thing and shuffles off?

The world has gone mad when these people are PAID – BY US! – to behave as they do.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-48869520

Bu99er the Tories, I’m watching Top Gear on iPlayer tonight instead

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F*ck ’em. They can debate all they like; they’re all pissing into the wind – their party has done the damage and now I want to see it go down in flames forever.

Rory needs to jump ship, sharpish, unless he wants to go down in the same sucking vortex of lethal mediocrity; I wish all of the rest of them the worst years of their lives in the coming debacle, but I’ll cut him a little more slack if his voting record improves on other issues.

I’m having another beer and watching the recent Top Gear episode on catch up instead. Is anyone else here as heartily fed up with this entitled bunch of smug tossers as I am? What do you suggest watching instead? Even paint drying would probably be more educational.

See you next Tuesday, Boris Johnson, for the next vote.

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So the tory party are playing to form, voting as expected and hardening their arteries and attitudes as we gambol gaily towards a catastrophic exit.

With 85% of them in the ABC1 group, and two-thirds at or close to retirement age, 120-odd thousand I’m-allright-Jacks at the tail-end of having-a-clue-about-anything-at-all are wagging the rest of us, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Democracy, innit?

ABC WTF Oz?

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Can we have some unbiased local angles on whatever the heck is going on in Oz as regards the state versus public service broadcasting?

From the coverage I’ve seen thus far, I can’t say I can easily reconcile recent police activities with the laid back ocker attitude to life I’ve come to associate with my antipodean chums.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-48522729

Tickets for Bath Festival Finale – Sunday all afternoon and evening – Van the Man headlining

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Simple question: anyone here want two tickets to the above? It’s this Sunday, June 2nd, and the gates open at 1:00 pm, with the event ending around 11:30 pm. Weather forecast is looking good.

I bought two adult tickets aaaaages back, but due to circumstances etc. we can’t go.

Tickets cost me £50 a pop; if you can use them, PM me and just make an offer; I can hand ’em over anytime until Sunday lunchtime, or courier them to you if that’s easier.

Gretchen has a string quartet…

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..and they make a wonderful sound. By the time you read this, Gretchen and her performers have played their Bristol and London gigs for the current tour, which is advertised as having “strings attached”.

We were there on Friday night, at a hushed St. Georges – obviously rammed with long term fans – where we heard a blinding set of songs; it was yet another treat of an evening.

Her band played a blinder, not swamping the songs but supporting them, and the strings really worked their extra magic. Gretchen announced early on that they were recording the show, so I can only hope that we will be treated with another live album as a result of the ‘strings attached’ experiment, and that one or two of the tracks will have come from Friday’s performance. Certainly, when she started ‘On a Bus to St. Cloud’ the place went silent and you could have heard a very small pin drop for the duration of the song, such was the calm of the moment, as 500 plus people allowed themselves to just go with the flow and the feeling of a very special and human piece of observational songwriting. Earlier on » Continue Reading.

Where the HECK is the latest CD Swap thread?

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OK, so I’m suffering at home with bronchitis, going nuts with boredom, when it occurs to me that I haven’t yet put the finishing touches (run-out groove etchings, hidden tracks, etc. etc.) to my contribution to the latest swaperama thingamajig.

So I fire up the various apps, rip a load of Tuvaluan throat-singing epics and obscure Sussex farmers singing agricultural favourites from the Napoleonic wars, and burn a couple of discs to send to my victim, er, swap buddies.

When it comes to finding the CD Swap thread, I can’t. Can we make it sticky in some way, or in any case possible to locate? Just until we’re done?

Tickets for Kathryn Tickell’s gig, Wednesday night in Bristol, going spare here…

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I have two rather good seats for the Kathryn Tickell gig at St. Georges in Bristol this Wednesday night (April 3rd) but can no longer make it to the gig.

If any of you good people of the Afterword can use them, or pass them on to friends who can use them, please get in touch as quickly as possible.

I don’t want any money for them, though they cost me £22 a piece, but if you can see your way to bunging a few quid to my pals at a dog rescue centre I know, that would be a nice compromise.

Humanity and forgiveness. Wherefore art thou in the British body politic today?

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Shamima Begum; at the age of 15 she did something really dumb. Now older, possibly wiser, certainly damaged by the intervening years, she wants to come back to the place where she grew up, with her new born child, to escape from the madness and the corruption that has surrounded her in Syria.

In the name of humanity, why are we not welcoming the return of the prodigal? Isn’t the refusal of that charity the very reason why we abhor the extremists in the first place? Wouldn’t our ability to respond with love & kindness be the perfect refutation of their ideology?

Take Three Girls – who resign their Tory party membership – and maybe something profound has started?

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So three of the most reasonable members of the Tory benches have decided that enough’s enough – and with a proud two fingers to the ERG and the DUP they are also off, resigning the whip and ploughing an independent line, at least for the moment.

Is this the start of a movement away from the margins, back into something with a broader appeal than the dusty carpeted halls of CCO or the formica tables & plastic cups of the sackcloth & ashes wing of the Labour Party?

I truly hope it is. Your thoughts, once more?

Tory hegemony for the rest of our natural? Slow decline into chaos? Good riddance?

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So Chuka and pals have jumped ship.

Does that split the difference and doom us all to seeing endless wittering nonentities from the beige corridors of provincial Conservative Clubs ease their sweaty bottoms onto the polished green leather benches and utter approving grunts to the ERG robots and the old-moneyed rural Tories for the next millennium? Or is this the first spring shoots of a revival of a centre-left with the heft to pull the UK screaming into the 21st century?

Or should I just concentrate on building up the tinned food stash, the log pile and the bottled water lake while keeping my head down?

Down the Old Kent Road, me old cock sparrer, cor blimey, apples an’ pears, luvaduck

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I’ve a few minutes to share this before descending into a day-long “workshop” (viz: Alexei’s immortal utterance) all about “Human Resource” information systems, so I’ll just have time to say that it’s a fab selection of paintings, by a woman called Doreen Fletcher, of everyday London – displaying a sweet innocence, humour and a great eye for detail.

Well worth your perusal – I was both charmed and impressed, and glad these made it into the light for more people to see.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-46959155

Mojo arrives with a charlatan on the cover. Subscription under threat.

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No, it’s not that Rees Mogg arse-wipe, and neither is it George Hunter (if only), it’s that monobrowed Manc charlatan who has somehow stretched a thin song-writing ability – just enough to produce the odd half decent Beatles pastiche – into a platform that allows him to spout arrant self-aggrandisement pretending to be self-effacing yet so loaded with hyperbole he even has the arrogance to name drop people like David Bowie.

Is it possible to get a subscription to Mojo that omits any mention of the fool, and are there artists for whom you wish the same sort of editing were possible too?