Category: Moaning

I probably do this a lot

Advent #2

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1980s, Christmas, Moaning
The current image has no alternative text. The file name is: psb.jpg

I don’t know much about music, but I know what I like (to coin a phrase). Or at least, what I DISlike.

Certainly, I can remember quietly seething in the Winter of 1987 when the Pet Shop Boys ‘stole’ the Christmas Number One slot from The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl. The Boys’ high-speed, technopop cover of an Elvis classic seemed to my teenage ears a very poor excuse for a Christmas number one, not mentioning trees or snow or Santa once, not even jazzing up the backing-track with so much as a sleigh bell.

But as time has passed, with each year I find I rate You Are Always On My Mind a little more. Maybe my taste has improved, maybe UB40 murdering another Elvis classic in 1993 helped put it into perspective for me. Either way, in hindsight I have to say hats off to the record-buying public of 1987 who got the Pet Shop Boys to pole position that December.  I can’t include myself among their number, my single-purchasing days spanned the Smurfs in 1978 to Anita Dobson doing the theme to EastEnders in 1986, after which I think I pretty much gave up on buying records. (Or possibly the Hit Parade carried out an intervention and told me to just give it up as a bad job.)

This year the Pet Shop Boys are back, with a cover of All The Young Dudes. I’m not that struck to be honest. I mean, it’s OK but it doesn’t really add anything to the superb Mott the Hoople original, and frankly–

No, never mind. Give it another three decades, I’ll probably be telling you the Pet Shop Boys version is the best record ever made.

(Although of course, I don’t know much about music.)

The Easter Mystery

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Confused, Moaning, Pets

To misquote Noddy Holder, It’s Eas-ter!!!!!!!

There are of course two Easters, just as there are two Christmasses – that is to say, there’s the actual religious festival and then there’s the commercial event. And I think, whether wholeheartedly or begrudgingly, we just have to accept that.

It’s inevitable really, given that of all the many religious festivals only those two prompt Bank Holidays and all that go with them. No doubt there’s mutterings in some corners that even this simple fact is yet another example of how fundamentally discriminatory and just plain awful the British are… but in fact no, that’s just how our particular society has evolved. (Personally I’ve no objection whatsoever if anybody wants to get us an extra few days off work for Eid or Diwali – I often think that if Rishi Sunak promised three extra bank holidays (and to fix all the potholes) even he could still get re-elected.)

It would be foolish to expect an entire society to be of one mind, most of the time we can’t even agree on who should win Strictly; so it’s not unreasonable that for those who, to misquote Shakespeare, have Easter thrust upon them, there should be a secular element to give it some identity. Not that I’m suggesting the manufacturers of Easter Cards, and chocolate eggs, and the not-to-be-confused-with-Playboy bunny ears, are doing it out of a sense of civic duty. I’m guessing, to be blunt, they’re mainly in it for the money.

This was made very obvious to me today when I ventured into our local Morrisons to find that the Easter aisle has already been cleared out. No doubt come Monday it’ll be full of buckets and spades and other Summertime paraphernalia (which will be there until about mid-July when they’ll be replaced by new School uniforms and Halloween stuff). For the merchandisers, even before Easter has actually arrived it’s time to dump all that and move onto the next thing.

I’ll be honest, I don’t really mind that. I do, though, have a bit of a problem with the insidious playing down of Easter itself. Actually no, I think insidious is unfair – that suggests strategy, which suggests conspiracy. When, for example, Iceland bizarrely removed the cross from their hot CROSS buns, I don’t believe it was a calculated move to eradicate Easter. Much more likely it’s another example of this infuriating modern trend of trying to pre-empt somebody taking offence, and in the process offending many more people.

I’ve done no research but I’m prepared to go out on a limb and say nobody, nobody, has ever objected to having basic Christian iconography pushed on them via the medium of baked goods. I’d go so far as to say if anybody has objected to it, well, the problem probably isn’t with the bun.

Even the word itself, Easter, seems to be an embarrassment in some quarters, as though there’s a worry that poor innocent consumers might unwittingly come over all C-of-E simply by reading it. Just taking a quick straw poll of the five-and-a-half chocolate eggs currently in our house, the word Easter is only prominent on the two that my wife felt strangely compelled to buy for our dogs – the eggs intended for human consumption mention Easter only once and only in the small print.

All of which seems very odd to me. Of course we are a multi-faith culture now, which is a tremendously encouraging thing to aspire to (even if, as has been pointed out, ultimately only one of them can be right (possibly not even that many)) but at the same time you can’t unwrite the country as it has evolved and you can’t rewrite history. Nobody would visit Vatican City and complain that there are too many Catholics, or open a gift shop there but play down anything that was “a bit too Pope-y”.

So maybe the UK shouldn’t worry so much. Leave the cross on the hot cross bun, leave Easter on the eggs. Anything else, we leave that to your own beliefs.

To not misquote Dave Allen: Goodnight, and may your God go with you.

Happy Easter.

Advent #17

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Family, Moaning

Setting aside the stuffing/yorkshire controversy, I quite like cooking Christmas lunch. Much of it, to be honest, is done by the cooker so I can only really take credit for the preparation, the timings, and the co-ordination. However, for all that, I’m nominally the cook, and that’s all fine, and I don’t mind it.

But (and I suspect this will be just the sort of thing to prompt parents, Aunts, etc to say, “YOU used to do it when you were young!”) I can’t stand people being in the kitchen while I’m doing it. Particularly, and especially so, as we near the climax (that came out wrong but you know what I mean) I don’t consider it to be an area into which non-combatants should be admitted.

This isn’t, of course, some abstract, hypothetical irritation; it’s a very specific one because without naming any names, it’s something my wife and daughter both do. Paul O’Grady mentioned this kind of phenomenon on his radio show, referring to people who “just come in to stir something” – in his case, he was making the point that they want to do something so they can somehow lay claim to having done everything. This is not, I know, what my other two thirds are doing, they’re not looking to claim ownership they’re just as far as I can tell doing it to annoy me (I’m not sure if that’s better or worse). There is a time for coming into the kitchen to help bring the plates and dishes through – and that is when you’ve been asked to do so because everything is ready – NOT ten minutes before that moment.

Anyway, it may not be so much of a problem this year as, if they inadvertently read this, I’ll probably be dining alone…

Advent #4

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning

Like one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, or other similar portents, one of the sure signs of an imminent Christmas is the sound of Michael Bublé  – so much so that when he unexpectedly appeared on the car radio during the Summer both my daughter and I had to take a moment to check we hadn’t dozed off and it wasn’t actually December.

I’ve heard Bublé interviewed a few times now, he sounds a really nice, very genuine guy, great voice, good with his fans… So all in all, season of goodwill notwithstanding, I feel rather bad saying that I don’t like his records.

No, maybe that’s unfair. I don’t so much not like them as I find myself wondering why he bothers. I can see how it must be tempting for a singer to lean towards that easy-listening, Frank Sinatra, crooner style, because I know it’s incredibly popular. But the harsh reality is that he’s been beaten to it. By Frank Sinatra.

It just seems, to grumbly old me, that there are certain instances where something has been done so well that as a species we can consider it ‘job done’, stick a pin in it and leave it alone. Madonna didn’t need to cover American Pie, it had already been perfected by Don McLean (branching out while Peter Glaze was busy in Panto (sorry)). Similarly there’s no call, no need, for anybody to fill the easy-listening, 50s-style crooner slot because it’s already been well and truly conquered by Ol’ Blue Eyes himself.

Why would we want a new Michael Bublé album when we could just listen to the master belting out New York or Fly Me To The Moon?  Bublé’s got a really good voice, but in my opinion he should try and do it… His Way.

Advent #19

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Christmas, Moaning

Maybe I’ve just led a very sheltered life, but when did Cranberry sauce become ‘a thing’ (THE thing!) for turkey. I don’t recall seeing it before at least the turn of the century. The otherwise-excellent illicit turkey dinner I had last week came, of course, with a bowl of the stuff and it was, of course, the only thing left on the plate when it returned to the kitchen from whence it came.

Then there’s the nutcracker. It didn’t figure in any of my school-day Christmasses, but now not only do we have nutcracker decorations on the tree, the huge stone pillars lining Exeter’s Guildhall are this year decorated like the nutcracker characters –thirty foot tall soldiers looming over them MAY be nice for kids, but might also be the sort of thing to give them nightmares. However, making the case for it being me who’s wrong (normally a role reserved for my wife, but to save her a job) I accept that Tchaikovsky died in 1893 so perhaps it has been around longer than I think…?

But what about kissing under the mistletoe? That seems much too informal to be any kind of English tradition (if it was a comradely handshake under the picture rail, that I could believe). No doubt if I were to bother Google-ing it I’d find it dates back to Pagan Times, or the ancient Greeks or something; but setting that aside, not only do I not remember it being ‘a thing’ when I was young I’ve still yet to come across it anywhere!

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been kissed under things in my time. I was once almost-kissed in the doorway of Lloyds bank (insert joke about interest rates rising) but- Mistletoe? and Christmas? I don’t think so.

Merry Kiss-mas!

Another One Bites The Dust…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in BBC, Doctor Who, Moaning, TV

And just like that, she’s gone.

Not Liz Truss, who has discovered that although Janet Brown made it look easy during the eighties, it’s a tough job being a Thatcher impersonator. No, I’m referring to the impending (at time of writing) regeneration of yet another Doctor Who.

If I’m honest, I don’t entirely approve of this modern trend of ‘set your watch by them’ regenerations. In the old days things were much more random – a bit like schoolchildren used to memorise the wives of Henry VIII, so the departures of the old-school Doctors take some remembering (“sacked, typecasting, couldn’t get a rise, resigned, car park, Powell never replies”, something like that). Whereas nowadays there’s a definite pattern of three series, a handful of specials, and you’re out.

On the plus side, if you like that sort of thing, any six year olds getting into Doctor Who when it came back in 2005 will already have seen four regenerations, this latest being their fifth. Whereas I was not-quite three and still on Bagpuss and Bod when Jon Pertwee left, meaning I was almost in secondary school before I saw my first change (Tom Baker falling to his death saving the universe) and into puberty for my second.

Since I seem to be in a moaning mood, I don’t really approve of these new-fangled triumphant regenerations either – by which I mean they have all taken place with the Doctor actually looking pretty healthy, stood up and walking around in just the way I imagine people at death’s door don’t tend to, and with plenty of time to make long goodbye speeches (or in the case of David Tennant, what felt like a never-ending farewell tour).

For all my fifty-something grumbling however, I’m still excited, although I have to confess I’ve never yet felt the sadness that apparently a lot of people feel when a Doctor leaves – that has always been far outweighed by the excitement of a new one coming in. My main memory of the night of David Tennant’s finale, as he finally succumbed to his fate and exploded into death saving Bernard Cribbins, is not of reliving in my head the thrilling excitement of that action-packed, fan-pleasing hour-and-a-bit episode – no, it’s of logging on to the BBC website straight afterwards to watch the action-packed, fan-pleasing minute-and-a-bit trailer showing clips of incoming Matt Smith’s ‘Coming Soon’ debut season.

“The old man must die” says a character in Jon Pertwee’s final adventure (in an accent and in make-up which we’d nowadays call questionable, but let’s leave that for now) – “and the new man will discover to his inexpressible joy that he has never existed.” That’s probably why Doctor Who is still around all these years later – not just because of the brilliant idea of being able to ‘in story’ replace and refresh the lead, but because it’s always moving forward. That’s certainly why I maintain that new Doctor Who is always more exciting than old, because every time you sit down to a new episode there’s the possibility it will be the best one they’ve ever done.

So although I’ll no doubt be complaining if a perfectly healthy Jodie fireworks away on Sunday night after giving us her equivalent of an Oscar acceptance speech, I’ll still be watching. Excited for the regeneration and excited to see what’s next.

It’s quite a thing to think that, give or take a day or six, this latest regeneration is going out exactly fifty-six years after the very first one. All these years later it’s hard to imagine what it must have been like to watch that at the time – but the impossible effect of turning the face of William Hartnell into that of Patrick Troughton remains one of the most convincing and jaw-dropping sequences the show has ever done. An eerily darkened TARDIS, the sound of the time machine’s engines, a blazing light engulfing the Doctor’s face…

And just like that, he’s gone.

In Liz We Truss

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning, Money

I know it’s an awful title, sorry, but it just had the edge over “Elizabeth – Aaaarrrrrgh!” (By which I mean, I tossed a coin).

With the appropriate Spoiler Warning in case you’ve been recording all the news to binge watch later, it seems now almost certain that Liz Truss is going to win the Tory Leadership Contest. Nothing is ever 100% definite until it’s announced of course, and I certainly don’t always get it right (“what do you mean, the new Doctor Who ISN’T a woman?!”) but… well, the media seems to be taking it as read and who am I to argue? I really have to hand it to the Conservative Party: every time you think “at least the next leader can’t be as bad as this one” they somehow manage to pull it out of the bag and give us somebody even worse!

Not that Boris ‘Worse-Than-Theresa-May’ Johnson is gone yet, there’s still time for him to make a mess of things… And how kind of him to pop up yesterday to prove that very point, when he suggested tackling the cost of living crisis by buying a new kettle. I’m not disputing either the fact, or the general principle, that buying a more efficient kettle will save you money – but I suspect the people struggling most with their energy bills don’t have the luxury of buying a new £20 kettle now, just so that in three years’ time they can feel the warm self-satisfied glow of knowing they’ve saved themselves a tenner.

The bigger problem is the implication that Boris & co think “people worrying about their energy bills” actually means “people complaining about paying bigger bills”. Of course that’s a part of it, but the real issue is people NOT BEING ABLE to pay bills at all. In fact, although the recent pre-Autumn focus has portrayed this as an impending crisis, for the worst-off I suspect the crisis well and truly impended some months ago with the first massive price hike in the Spring.

Interestingly, Boris also claimed that his successor will be able to announce a huge package of measures – with the implication that it will be significantly more impactful than just giving everyone a free kettle. I can’t quite make up my mind if this is him putting the boot in by writing cheques his successor will have to honour; or whether he’s generously  letting his successor announce it so that they can make a good first impression. (I mean ‘generously’ in a political sense of course. Dragging the uncertainty out is not in any way generous to people sat watching their Smart Meters flashing away like a strobe light)

In terms of first impressions though, and going back to Liz ‘Has-The-Potential-To-Be-Worse-Than-Boris-Johnson’ Truss, she seems to be establishing her suitability for the role of Prime Minister even before officially winning the race – by which I mean she has already made several U-Turns and offended the French. Other than that, her main ‘cost of living’ policy seems to be the old tax cuts chestnut. Which is something I guess, but again I’m going to suggest the people that have already been heavily-impended on, may not be earning enough to pay tax anyway.

Maybe the problem, deep down, is that they (and I don’t mean this as a dig against politicians in general; only the present government which seems to be an extraordinary, Dickensian collection of grotesques)– They kind of think it’s our own fault if we’re struggling. Our fault for not getting a job; or another job; or a better job; for not having enough savings; for not investing wisely; for not even having the foresight to buy better kettles.

If they can manage then why on earth can’t the rest of us? That feels like it’s the attitude, that it’s all to do with organising ourselves better rather than not actually having enough money, and as such I wonder when it comes to it whether much more support will be forthcoming at all.

So perhaps Monday’s announcement won’t be so much about who will win; but, will the rest of us lose?

Have a good weekend! 😊

Ninety-Nine Problems…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Moaning, Weather

…but the Beach ain’t one.

My colleague at work came into the office yesterday to declare that the workshop was “literally boiling”. It wasn’t of course, any more than he was “literally dead from the heat” when he came in to tell us so an hour later – but in the sense that it was very hot yesterday, is very hot today, and (spoiler alert) will be very hot again tomorrow, he was right.

This sort of temperature always serves to highlight that there are two types of people – those who like it and those who don’t. True, that could be said of almost anything from the kumquat to the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, but the difference seems particularly acute when it comes to hot weather.

I’m not, without wanting to sound too much like a prude, madly keen on seeing a lot of flesh out on public display (that’s probably why I don’t even allow a full-length mirror in the bedroom) but during this morning’s trip into town there was, it must be said, an awful lot of it on show. Sadly the word ‘awful’ is very much applicable there.

I’m not a fan of barbeques either which, like beer bellies and knees also appear out of nowhere the instant hot weather kicks in. Call me an old-fashioned hater of food poisoning, I’ve just never eaten anything that was enhanced by being served either still-pink or charred to a cinder, and it’s never been redeemed by the offer to half-bury it in onions either. If I’m honest I don’t really think, deep down, with our grand history of Agas and Gas-Stoves, that the Brits are made for Barbeques – and I’m certain the increase in them during my lifetime is far more to do with Australian soap operas than it is any change in the climate.

And then there’s the beach.

In and of itself, it’s OK – but the problem is, the very time when the weather suggests it would be great to go to the beach is exactly when the very same suggestion occurs to everybody else. Finding a peaceful bit of real-estate on the beach is next to impossible on such occasions, and there’s no obvious enjoyment to be had from walking barefoot across shingle or from sitting on burning-hot sand. And then there’s the aftermath when for days after, in some kind of vague homage to Marilyn Monroe, you end up finding sand in places you didn’t even realise you had places.

That’s not to say I’ve never been to the beach, obviously. My hazy memories of what I believe we’re all now contractually-obliged to call “the long hot summer of 1976” are of going to the beach. Maybe, living nearby, we went EVERY Summer and I’m just too young to remember; or perhaps it really was “the long hot summer” that prompted it. Either way, I seem to think we went to the beach A LOT that year, and certainly that was when I first saw practiced what has sadly become a dying art in the intervening decades – namely tying a knot in each corner of your hankie and using it as a sun hat. But now that the urge to build sandcastles or collect seaweed has left me, I kind of think I’m done with beaches.

Not that I want to sound like a killjoy (although, if not already sailed, I accept that the ship is literally slipping from its moorings as I type). I wouldn’t want anybody to picture me as hunkering down in a darkened room praying for rain. I’ve been out with the dogs and the lawnmower and the laundry today. But only in the morning. This afternoon (which at time of arriving is about two hundred minutes in) is not, for me, a time to light the BBQ, or head to the coast, or even (heaven forbid!) to get my legs out.

In other words, to go back to my original point, there are those who like the hot weather and those who don’t. And rightly or wrongly, and as has probably become very apparent, I don’t.

What a proper little ray of sunshine I am!

Advent #21

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1970s, Childhood, Christmas, Family, Moaning

I’m happy to have been a child of the seventies, but there are a few areas where I’m not sure it properly prepared me for adulthood. It vastly overstressed, for example, how prominent quicksand and rattle snakes were going to be in my future, while at the same time vastly underplaying one of the great scourges of modern life: finding somewhere to park.

That concern is, for example, why I got to the cinema so early to see The Force Awakens; and although in general terms our recent shopping trip to Exeter went off OK, there was a very tetchy half hour stuck in the queue for the car park. Anybody who’s parked in Exeter’s Guildhall car park will know that its entrance is up a steeply curved concrete slope, so there was an awful lot of irritable faffing about with handbrakes, biting points, and the like. (Anybody who HASN’T parked in Exeter’s Guildhall car park – don’t!)

Given what I now know, it may be that when Mum refers to one far-past Christmas shopping trip to Plymouth as ‘not the best of days’ it was due to a parking fracas between her and Dad – Dad, as a rule, being the designated driver throughout my seventies-based youth.

During particularly long journeys, I can remember sometimes stirring in the back seat just long enough to be reassured by his face caught in the glow of the streetlamps. But I also (only very occasionally of course!) recall him being a bit short-tempered while looking for somewhere to park.

Hopefully he won’t mind me saying that – or if he does, hopefully he’ll have got over it by Saturday afternoon when we’ll be driving down to see him and Mum, where there will be presents, plenty of food and, I would hope, ample parking. 

Feeling Kind Of Temporary…

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics, Moaning

I’ve been tidying out the shed.

To be honest I’m not really a shed person. Certainly not in the ‘Dad’s pottering about in the shed’ sense, nor particularly in the ‘nipping out to the shed for a glass of sherry’ way from inexplicably long-forgotten one-time hit sitcom No Place Like Home. Nevertheless, and despite it not being my natural environment, I’ve been in there, tidying.

I hesitate to say there’s two decades of stuff in there (and by stuff I’m just avoiding the word rubbish) because for long periods of time it was inhabited by rabbits and guinea pigs. Based on yesterday, it’s now inhabited by an awful lot of spiders.

We have four categories of spider here. Small; Large; The sort of thing that did for Jon Pertwee; and We have to move house. The ones I’ve encountered so far have been in the region of a 2/2.5 so not too worrying. My daughter, mainly to be contrary, only has one category which is ‘Kill it with fire’ – and although that’s certainly a point of view, it has absolutely no practical application in terms of distinguishing one from another.

But I digress.

So anyway, I have been tidying out the shed. I found I had wood (stop sniggering at the back there) of all shapes and sizes, including the last remaining arm of an otherwise long-gone settee which I had previously disposed of in instalments via the fortnightly (though back then, weekly) bin collections. There’s also the traditional array of old paint cans, rusty tools, and all the other paraphernalia (and by paraphernalia I’m just avoiding the word stuff) which one might expect.

It’s one of those chores that ticks away at the back of the mind on the basis that sooner or later somebody will have to tidy it up. I’m not getting intimations of mortality or anything like that, I don’t yet seriously worry that my rubbish might outlive me, but because the house isn’t ours, I know that the time will come when it’s somebody else’s, and my successor may not unreasonably expect to have a shed they can use for storing their own worldy goods (and by worldly goods I’m just avoiding the word paraphernalia).

I must admit that even 21 years in, I sometimes feel very aware that it’s not our house. I might moan about cutting the grass (in fact scratch that, I DO moan about cutting the grass) but I wouldn’t ever contemplate taking drastic preventative action and concreting it over – because that would be removing something which at some point should be passed to somebody else.

It was Mrs Thatcher, wasn’t it, who really pushed the concept of converting council house tenants into homeowners? In rather lukewarm defence, I don’t think she originated the scheme, it was already in place – but certainly she was heavily associated with it from the early 80s onwards.  

I suppose I can see the appeal (and based on the fact that in our estate of ten, three are privately-owned, I have to assume that at least 30% of tenants were pleased about it) but I’m afraid I feel a stern sense of disapproval wash over me whenever I consider it. As no doubt some opposition political figure will have pointed out at the time, unless you use the sale proceeds to replenish your housing stock, sooner or later you’re going to find you have less houses than you do people who need them.

But I don’t want to come over all political and I’m certainly not bothered about not being a homeowner. Except… if I owned it then the person who inherited the house would probably also inherit whatever was left in the shed and therefore I wouldn’t need to be quite so worried about it. Knowing it’ll be a complete stranger means that I ought to keep it within manageable tolerances.

I can’t, frankly, see much point owning the house because you can’t take it with you – but equally, in the case of the accumulated curios in the shed, you probably should try not to leave it behind you either.

(And by accumulated curios, of course, I’m just avoiding the word c**p).  

In case the title is in any way perplexing, it’s just me being pretentious and referencing Arthur Miller’s Death of A Salesman, which I studied at A-Level. It’s a highly-regarded play, a bit like Reggie Perrin but with fewer jokes, and at one point the title character opines that he still feels kind of temporary about himself. I won’t elaborate on where that leads him because that might ruin the ending of it for you – although frankly the title is a bit of a giveaway.