Column July 21, 2010: Once upon a time there was a strange man in a shoe shop

I WAS sitting in a shoe shop at the weekend, at once completely bored and at the same time marvelling at the range of the shoes on offer, and thinking: “If this is your Big Society, Cameron, you can stuff it.”

And I found myself wondering just what was so unique about Cinderella’s feet that the glass slipper she left behind would fit only her.

Surely there would be at least one other person in Fairytaleland who’d be able to slip her foot in.

If that is not the case, it’s a wonder poor Ella’s nickname was Cinderella, based on the fireplace cinders which made her grubby, and not Weirdofeetella.

Maybe that is why Prince Charming couldn’t describe Cinderella’s face when he sent out Dandini on his quest. Maybe he spent the entire time staring at the servant girl’s unlikely tootsies and wondering how they could possibly exist in nature.

However, that is not the most unbelievable part of the story for me. I find it difficult to accept that somebody named Charming could actually be charming, even if he were a Prince. In my experience, naming somebody after a positive attribute is the single most effective way of ensuring they grow up into absolute horrors, Charity Dingle in Emmerdale being a case in point.

It set me wondering about other fairy tales. Jack and the Beanstalk, for example. How did the giant, so high up in his castle in the sky, get basic provisions and groceries, given that the only way to access the castle was up a beanstalk which had only grown that morning? Even his goose laid golden eggs, which he was unable to scoff. No wonder he was prepared to eat an Englishman, he must have been starving.

But fairy tales are a model of internal consistency compared with nursery rhymes. I wonder how our modern world, with its DVD players and packets of Space Dust popping candy, would cope with the sheer lunacy of nursery rhymes. And here I am, wondering . . . 

TWO SOCIAL WORKERS SIT DRINKING COFFEE

FRAN: Honest, Bel, worst thing I’ve ever seen in 12 years of social work. I turn up, and the baby’s in its cradle at the top of a tree.

BEL: You what?

FRAN: Honest. The wind’s blowing and the cradle’s rocking all over the place. God knows what would have happened if the bough had broken.

BEL: So what did you do?

FRAN: Well, I get the baby down and go in to see Mrs Hubbard. In her shoe.

BEL: What, she lives in a shoe? An actual shoe?

FRAN: Yeah, an everyday 25ft tall shoe, and dozens of kids all milling about. She doesn’t know what to do with them.

BEL: But how can you live in a shoe?

FRAN: Well, she’s got a little stove. But there’s no food in the larder. Cupboard’s bare. And there’s no water. She’s been sending a couple of the children up the hill to get some from the well.

BEL: What? She sends the children?

FRAN: It’s worse than that. When I get there, two of them have had an accident, and fallen down the hill. The boy’s got a serious head injury and what does mum do? Phone an ambulance? No. Pours vinegar into the wound and wraps his head up in brown paper. Not even a proper bandage.

BEL: So what did you do?

FRAN: Took ’em all. Applied for a court order. You can’t keep children in those conditions. So, what case you working on?

BEL: Kerry Katona.

FRAN: You poor cow.

Ah, well, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, children’s stories. They might be unbelievable, but they’re good training for believing the unbelievable, a quality we’ll need as adults if we are to give credence to Cameron’s Big Society.

Column July 28, 2010: You spin me right round, baby, right round…

I DON’T like revolving doors, especially the ones which revolve vertically.

And automatic revolving doors are not much better. These are the ones which revolve at a slow, but specific, speed, forcing one to walk at the same slow, but specific, pace.

Walk too quickly and the sensor stops the door, making everybody in the device smack their noses into the glass. Walk too slowly and one is smacked on the backside.

I suspect the inventor was some sort of pervert who gets off on people shuffling, a niche interest poorly catered for by the internet. Needs must, etc.

However, there’s one good thing about automatic revolving doors – it is impossible for the hapless user to go the wrong way. Not so with the manual kind.

I accidentally went the widdershins way through a revolving door a couple of months back. To be fair to me, I wasn’t really paying attention and the person coming out of the door had gone the wrong way. I just followed the rotation. Then I realised there was no handle.

But I’d gone too far to turn and go the right way round and, if I’m honest, it’s only just occurred to me that I could have done that. I had to press on, pushing against the glass and forcing the door the wrong way.

I emerged into the open air and was surveyed by the snoutcasts smoking outside. I could tell they found me wanting.

Since then, I have been scrupulously careful to go through the revolving door the right way. I’ve even become quite good at it, nipping into the correct compartment without getting my foot trapped despite the fact that it’s spinning a bit quickly.

And one day last week, I, along with my fellow users, achieved revolving door nirvana.

All four of the compartments were occupied at once, a state of being which happens maybe once or twice within the lifetime of a door. If we could have high-fived each other I reckon we would have, but of course the fabric of the door prevented this.

It couldn’t last.

I’d popped to the hole in the wall to get some cash. I did the little dash that one does when one realises somebody else is heading for the same cash machine and I’d won, so I was feeling pretty smug.

I headed back to the revolving door, stepped inside the compartment… and realised it was going the wrong way. 

And there was a man inside pushing the door.

We both stopped. I looked him in the eye. He looked me in the eye. Both of us absolutely still.

I cracked first. I rolled my eyes. It was the sort of eye-roll which says, “Never mind, we’ll extricate ourselves from this sorry mess and nobody need ever know that you tried to go through the revolving door the wrong way.” You know the sort.

And he rolled his eyes too. In exactly the same way. 

For he had decided that I was the one going the wrong way.

I’d exhausted all the diplomatic options. It was time for war. I gripped the handle and started to push. He gripped the lack of handle and also started to push. Irresistible force met immovable object. And neither of us was moving. It was a classic Mexican stand-off, only in a revolving door.

And then I realised that only one of us was going to win. And he was clearly more resolute. The door handle was behind him, for heaven’s sake.

A man who had decided, against all the overwhelming evidence, that he was right wasn’t going to be deflected by me.

I let him win. He pushed the door and emerged into the open air, where the sneering snoutcasts were waiting for him.

And I? Well, I have a column which allows me to put the record straight. So who’s the winner now, Mr Clockwise?

Column Aug 18, 2010: The customer is only right when we say so

I WAS amused to see that a college professor and strict grammarian was chucked out of a New York branch of Starbucks for failing to use the correct terminology when ordering a bagel.

The bloody-minded academic, according to the New York Post, had already had her card marked for asking for big and small coffees, instead of vente and tall Americanos.

And when I say “card marked” I mean literally. The big chains have “anti-loyalty cards” they stamp every time you fail to order properly – nine stamps and they get your next order slightly wrong. So think on.

I will do the same when I open my own chain of Bovril shops. This will be a tremendous money spinner.

Cups will come in calf (huge), cow (gigantic) or bull (affects the tides).

There will be several concentrations of Bovril too, from Milky (“gnat’s wee” levels) to Strong (“Oh, my sweet Lord, get me a jar of Marmite to take away some of the salty taste”).

For added luxury, I will provide the option of floating condensed chicken soup on the top of the Bovril, à la cappuccino.

For even more luxury, customers will be able to have “sprinkles”, or bits of mince, as you would probably call it, on top of their chicken soup.

And for the most luxurious option, the capo di cappuccino, I will put a sausage in it.

I’m going to call it “moo!” with a lower case “m”.

The Starbucks banning business reminded me of when “The Speakeasy” opened on Penny Lane, in the early 1980s. This was an American-style hamburger takeaway which arrived before the first McDonald’s in Liverpool and the various sizes and styles of burgers were named after American gangsters of the 1920s.

I imagine, 20 years from now, US kids will return the favour and eat fish and chips and jellied eel dishes named after Mad Frankie Fraser and Reggie Kray.

As this was an American-style establishment, the owners insisted that customers ordered in the appropriate manner. A sign was erected, explaining the various terms: overeasy, easy, tricky, difficult* . . .

To the 10-year-old me, this was the coolest thing since thick plastic spokes on BMXs. To one of my adult relatives (hereafter referred to as Terry) it was a laminated nightmare.

I was with Terry when he approached the counter. “Howdy, sir. What can I get you?” asked the perky assistant.

“Beefburger, please.”

Her eye twitched a little. “Which type of HAMburger, sir?” She pointed at the list of gangsters and blackguards lining the serving area.

He looked at me. “Al Capone,” I advised. He nodded at the assistant.

“And how would sir like his HAMburger?”

“Er, in a barmcake.”

“No, sir.” She patiently took Terry through the list of alternatives as the takeaway slowly filled up. Eventually he settled on “tricky.”*

“Does sir want all the fixings?” Terry looked blank. “Pickle, onion,” she said.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll have a pickled onion.”

“No sir. Would you like a pickle?”

“No, no pickle,” he said.

“Hold the pickle,” she said.

“What pickle?”

“No, sir. You say, ‘hold the pickle’.”

“Hold the pickle.” By now, Terry was the colour of a Coke can and not through embarrassment.

“Onions?”

“Yeah.”

“How many?” Blankness. “Would you like it heavy on the onions?”

“Yeah.”

“So you want an Al Capone, tricky, heavy on the onions, hold the pickle?”

She made Terry repeat it back to her in front of a shop filled with tired and hungry men. Then, satisfied with a good day’s work, she asked him if he wanted anything else.

“Yer, a bag of chips.”

The Speakeasy closed not long afterwards.

* MY MEMORY might be faulty.

Column Sept 1, 2010: It’s a chiller, thriller night

I AM wary of security guards who work in the retail sector. I understand that they do an important job and do not begrudge them their big walkie-talkies, but I had a nightmare once about being falsely accused of lifting a packet of Pacers (pre-striped) from Fine-Fare and still carry the emotional scars.

Consequently, when I leave a shop and realise I am going to walk past a security guard, I hold on to my receipt for dear life. If, for whatever reason, I don’t have a receipt, I “walk naturally,” an exaggeratedly loping gait adopted by gangsta rappers and drunks.

So I was perturbed when I was stopped by a security guard on my way IN to a convenience store. “Excuse me,” he said.

I panicked. I nearly said: “They didn’t give me a receipt.”

But then I realised I didn’t have any groceries on me. Maybe I looked shifty. Maybe they were being proactive, like the police in Minority Report, and had identified me as a potential shoplifter thanks to my “natural walk.”

“Yes?” I lamely offered.

“Can you settle an argument?”

I doubt it, I thought. I usually cause them. “Go on.”

“He reckons . . . ” – he indicated an embarrassed- looking young man filling the chiller section – “. . . you can turn fat into muscle. You can’t, can you?”

I’ll admit I wasn’t expecting this. Of course you can’t turn fat into muscle, you just can’t. It’s like changing marble into cheese. But, in the confusion of the moment, I couldn’t remember why.

“No, you can’t.”

“And why not?”

I looked around, hoping that Magnus Pyke or Dr Miriam Stoppard might walk in.

“They’re just different.” That should do it, I thought. It didn’t. They were still looking at me.

“They’ve got a different cellular structure.” I was pleased with that. I remembered the term “cellular structure” from Superman The Movie. That was definitely a science term.

I felt sorry for the chiller man, who up to this point had lived his life with the sure knowledge that you could turn fat directly into muscle in some sort of weird alchemical experiment. Now I was tearing his certainties apart.

It reminded me of a former colleague from my reporting days. He was the office junior, so we would give him onerous tasks such as making cups of tea and doing vox pops (ie, standing in the howling wind and rain with a notebook and camera while asking those punters too slow or distracted to avoid oneself what they think of the finer points of education policy/soup/etc.)

He came back one winter morning shivering violently. It had been a cold day and the passing pensioners uncommonly nimble. “Get that boy a cup of tea,” said the normally flint-hearted editor.

“Oh, no, it’s all right. I’ve got this,” said Junior, his lips blue and the first hint of frost-bite about his fingertips. It was an ice-cold can of Coke, so cold steam was curled around it.

“You need a hot drink.”

“No, you know how when you’re hot you’re supposed to have a hot drink to cool you down?”

We nodded. We’d all heard that old wives’ tale.

“Well, I’m cold, so I’m having a really cold drink to warm me up.”

Apparently, he’d done that since he was a child, despite the evidence which must have built up over the years. It’s a wonder he hadn’t become an ice-based super-villain.

I snapped back into the moment. The guard and the chiller man were still looking at me. I think by that point they were finding me wanting.
“Look, they’re just different. It’s like saying you can change marble into cheese.”

A moment of silence.

“See, I told you,” said the security guard and the chiller man turned away, defeated by the power of my argument.

I went and bought my ironically-cold Coke, then “walked naturally” out of the shop past the security guard. He was looking the other way.

How Politics Works

1. Fail to win a majority.

2. Make a “big, open and comprehensive offer” to the leader of the smallest party to join a coalition. Offer the leader a referendum on electoral reform as a sweetener. Note: make the reform to the electoral system the absolute smallest change possible, just in case. You never know.

3. Push through virtually your entire manifesto, especially the least popular/ most deranged bits, with the support of the leader of the smallest party, thereby making him incredibly unpopular.

4. Use the unpopularity of the leader of the smallest party – caused by his support of your legislative programme – as your most potent weapon in the campaign against any change in the electoral system.

5. Carry on doing whatever the hell you like. Change the name of Friday to Thatcherday. Abolish cheese. Christ, why not fill the unelected second chamber with party drones and cut the number of elected representatives to load the dice in your favour? The sky is the limit.

Late Night Omegle Chat

I had forgotten just how much fun Omegle could be. I am “You” and the stranger is “Stranger.”

You’re now chatting with a random stranger. Say hi!

Official messages from Omegle will not be sent with the label ‘Stranger:’. Strangers claiming to represent Omegle are lying.

You: so is dis twitter?

Stranger: no

Stranger: twitter is stupid

You: so what is dis? is it like Bigchat?

Stranger: Omegle

Stranger: its a chat site

You: have I gone in the wrong room? This is just like when I did that thing that time

Stranger: thers no chat room

You: it is still the internets, yes?

Stranger: this is it

Stranger: yes correct

You: sometimes I imagine I am typing to people. But dis is real, yes?

Stranger: yees it is

You: that is what always is said.

You: say something I wouldnt expect you to say

Stranger: people r wierd on here

Stranger: ignore them

You: the voices?

Stranger: voces?

Stranger: are u okay?

You: yes. The people making the typing.

Stranger: what ppl what are they saying

You: Hey! You have been totally fooled. See that little red light over your left shoulder? You’re on MTV! Smile!

Stranger: lol im a psych major i was worried

You: Oh. I think I might be talking to the wrong person.

You: This is a catastrophe. This is live!

Stranger: y

You: They are never going to let me be on MTV now. My ride will never be pimped. And my crib will remain unblinged.

You: I will have to kiss goodbye to any thoughts of swigging a massive bottle of Cristal.

Stranger: im sorry lol

Stranger: i thought u were serious

You: It’s not your fault. You know if you see me on QVC, will you buy some worthless tat from me?

Stranger: lol huh

You: You know, some fake gold chains or something. A derby hat with sleeves.

You: Maybe a rock for your garden which sings Burt Bacharach songs.

Stranger: i dont boy random shit

Stranger: lol

You: Not even for me? But you have ruined my TV career. You could at least buy a full-size cardboard cutout of Jennifer Aniston from me.

You: I don’t know where you’d put it.

You: That is not my concern.

You: For example.

Stranger: well give me a hot boy one

You: Hey, can I do my stand-up routine for you?

Stranger: um

You: Basically it involves me straightening my legs.

Stranger: ok?

You: And rising from a sitting position.

You: Do you have a different stand-up routine?

Stranger: ur waiting 4 me to disconnect arent u

You: No. As you said, you are a psych major. I am starting to suspect that I have become one of your subjects.

You: You will probably write a report about me.

You: I hope you get an A, or whatever Americans get when they do well.

Stranger: thinkin about it lol

Stranger: you’d be perfect

You: Hey, you know that Sesame Street song about the alphabet?

Stranger: i do

You: It’s not so useful when you realise it can be sung using the lyrics KZVC/ PST/ AYHJNLMOG/ URX/ BQE/ WF/ I & D.

You: Try it.

Stranger: rather not

You: Go on. You can just do it in your head.

Stranger: no thanks

Your conversational partner has disconnected.

Bye, bye, Bandage

When I was a young reporter I had a good contact in the local health service. I’d cultivated her and I got some pretty decent stories out of her. But we had only ever spoken over the phone.

Then one day she said she had a dossier for me to read and said she’d bring it in to the office. I met a woman in reception, assuming correctly that it was she, and said, “Can I help you?”

She said, “Yeah, I’ve got this for that new lad, what’s his name…?

“Oh, yeah, Graham Bandage.”

When I started blogging three years ago, I didn’t want to use my real name, for a variety of reasons with which I won’t bore you, and Graham Bandage seemed the obvious choice.

Since then, I’ve come out as a writer. I was shortlisted for a screenwriting award, I’ve had bits and pieces put on here and there, and I’ve had a column in a daily newspaper for the past 15 months, all under my own name.

Last night, I even did a bit of stand-up. It didn’t go well. Don’t ask. But I was on the bill – at my own instigation – under the name Graham Bandage. And it seemed faintly ridiculous for me to be going by two names when I can barely establish myself using one name.

And Gary Bainbridge was here first. You can still call me Graham or Bandage or Graham Bandage or anything crude, if you like, and I will happily answer to it.

But I won’t be calling myself that name.

Ash Wednesday

An old blog post from March 2008.

 

That’s a rum one, isn’t it?

The government is planning to ban cigarette displays in shops. If you want to buy cigarettes you’ll have to buy them from under the counter.

Now, in principle, I’m all for it. I don’t like the smell of cigarettes and I’ve read, on more than one occasion, that they’re bad for you. So any little obstacles the government can put in place to slightly put people off buying cigarettes is okay in my book.

In fact, why don’t they change the name of cigarettes to something difficult to pronounce, like Zxcghrwiralzsczx, and only allow the sale to people who pronounce it correctly? They could even change the name every day, but not tell customers what it is. A bit like Rumpelstiltskin, but with cigarettes.

The only difficulty I can see with the government’s proposal is the sheer size of the counters that will be required. There’s a vast display of tobacco products behind the counter in most newsagents or supermarkets. If that’s got to go under the counter, the counter will be huge. This surely discriminates against the small in stature (not necessarily midgets, or dwarfs, primordial or otherwise) who will no longer be able to see the newsagent’s face when they’re buying the People’s Friend or a lottery ticket. So if the newsagent is making a rude expression, or putting up two fingers, they won’t know. He could be making fun of their lack of height AND THEY WOULDN’T KNOW. How dare he, in fact? How bloody dare he?

Anyway I read about this on the BBC website, which directed me to other stories about smoking. Including this one. Have a read and then pop back.

Good to have you back again. Did you read it? I couldn’t quite make it out, but apparently they’ve worked out that people who have smoked are twice as likely to become smokers as those people who never smoke.

So, what they are saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that people who have never smoked have never smoked. You can’t, apparently, class yourself as a smoker if you have never smoked. It would be an ontological error, in point of fact.

Staggering, I think you’ll agree. If it wasn’t for this research, paid for by the charity Cancer Research UK, I would be stumbling through life thinking that lifelong non-smokers were smokers and that youngsters who had, in the first place, despite all the medical evidence, succumbed to peer pressure and tried cigarettes, were just as likely to take up smoking as those clean-living kids who wouldn’t dream of picking up a cigarette.

With insightful research like this, I think it’s a matter of days before we sort out that cancer cure once and for all.

And that’s good news for everyone.

Sketch: Life Before Mobile Phones

INT. A BUSY BUS – DAY
 
A WHITE TEENAGE BOY GETS ON. HE’S CARRYING A LUDICROUSLY MASSIVE PILE OF EQUIPMENT. HE STRUGGLES DOWN BUS AND SITS ON BACK SEAT.
 
CAPTION: 1982

HE PICKS UP A MEGAPHONE AND SHOUTS ACROSS OTHER PASSENGERS TOWARDS THE WINDOW.

TEENAGE BOY:
It’s me. I’s on me way now, innit.

PASSENGERS TUT, SHUFFLE.

OUT OF THE WINDOW… A SECOND TEENAGE BOY WITH MEGAPHONE.

CUT TO:

EXT. STREET CORNER – DAY

THE SECOND TEENAGE BOY IS SHOUTING THROUGH HIS MEGAPHONE

SECOND TEENAGE BOY:
It’s Lee. He’s on his way now, innit.

PULL BACK TO REVEAL, IN THE DISTANCE A THIRD TEENAGE BOY, ALSO SHOUTING THROUGH A MEGAPHONE.

THIRD TEENAGE BOY:
It’s Lee. He’s on . . .

CUT TO:

INT. BUS – DAY

TEENAGE BOY:
(STILL SHOUTING) Yeah. Laters.

HE PUTS DOWN MEGAPHONE. PASSENGERS RELAX. THE BUS STOPS.

A SWEATING, OUT-OF BREATH, MIDDLE-AGED MESSENGER JUMPS ONTO THE BUS. HE RUSHES UP TO TEENAGE BOY WITH A PIECE OF A4 PAPER.

PASSENGERS TUT AGAIN. TEENAGE BOY READS PAPER QUICKLY.


TEENAGE BOY:
Fool.


HE PICKS UP AN OLD-FASHIONED HEAVY MANUAL TYPEWRITER AND TALKS AS HE’S TYPING.


TEENAGE BOY:
M8 r u having a laff. LOL. i said 2nite “colon P”.


HE RIPS THE SHEET FROM THE TYPEWRITER AND HANDS IT TO THE MESSENGER. MESSENGER LEAPS OUT OF EMERGENCY EXIT DOOR.

SFX: SCREAMS AND SCREECHING BRAKES.

TEENAGE BOY PUTS DOWN THE TYPEWRITER. ALL IS CALM.

FAVOURING: ONE PASSENGER RELAXING AGAIN.

SFX: LOUD CRACKLY SOUND OF COLE PORTER’S CHEEK TO CHEEK.

PASSENGER ANGRILY TURNS ROUND.

TEENAGE BOY HAS AN OLD WIND-UP GRAMOPHONE, ITS TRUMPET IS PUSHING THE HEAD OF A SECOND PASSENGER AGAINST WINDOW.

TEENAGE BOY:
(TO PASSENGER) What?

 

END

Friday Interview: The Tube Man

In the second of an occasional series of interviews, Graham Bandage talks to Roger Dulwich, the last tube man in Great Britain.

Graham Bandage: Roger Dulwich, you’re the last tube man in Great Britain. Why do you stick at it?

Roger Dulwich: It’s the only life I’ve ever known. And, you know, it’s a craft, my father was a tube man, so was his father. And if it dies with me, then so be it.

GB: Tell me what the tube man did.

RD: Does, man, does! I’m not dead yet. They’ll have to crowbar my tube out of my cold dead hand.

GB: I don’t think so. Not straight away. Rigor mortis only comes in a few hours later. You’d be floppy at first… Sorry, go on…

RD: We all worked out of a depot. And we’d just wait for the letters to arrive. Then we’d go through the letters and decide who was going where. Then we’d put the contents in the tubes and take them out in our floats to the houses.

GB: So what would happen when you got to the house?

RD: Well, we’d knock on the door. And there’d be a proper old buzz. “Ooh, the tube man’s here. The tube man’s here. Quick, come and see the tube man.” So then they’d bring me into the lounge, sit on the sofa. And they’d make a fuss, bring me a cup of tea and that, and then it’d start.

GB: You could use a lubricant, like WD40 or something.

RD: What?

GB: To get the tube out of your dead hand. You wouldn’t necessarily need a crowbar.

RD: And then it’d start. I’d slip the content out of the tube. And I’d show them.

GB: What was the content?

RD: Ooh, it could be anything. Nothing blue. We didn’t do blue. Old films, emo kids talking, pointless re-edits of Doctor Who title sequences. That was the beauty of it, you see. Just the tube man standing there, with a massive unrolled flicker book, simulating animation.

GB: How long would it last?

RD: Ooh, anything from 30 seconds to five minutes. Or until my wrist gave out.

GB: And what happened in the end?

RD: Well, the last frame had a big roll of paper attached. And they’d write their comments on it, like “OMFG! That was TEH L4M3ST. LOLZ” and … actually, I think that was the only thing they’d write.

GB: Was the tube cardboard?

RD: Yes, why?

GB: Well, if you were cremated, we wouldn’t need to take it at all.

RD: Now they do the whole thing on the internet. But it’s not the same.

GB: No, because there’s sound and it’s quicker.

RD: You-bloody-tube? No. Let ME bloody tube for you, a professional.