Nurse: Hello, are you the new doctor?
Doctor: Yes, I am. Oh dear……
Nurse: What is it?
Doctor: I think there is already a simmering sexual tension between us, a tension which will be unaffected by scenes of blood and gore all around us.
Nurse: My God, you’re right. I am now looking at you with adoring, hero-worshipping eyes.
Charlie Fairface: Get ready everybody, there’s been a desperately unlikely and tortuously convoluted multiple accident. Expect a lot of badly injured character actors, many of whom have appeared in the series before, and in other programmes you cannot quite place but will certainly include The Bill. Here we go.
Patient: Ouch…..oh God…….ouch, that smarts…….I’m a distinctly dodgy patient with an obscure and tedious rift with my daughter. We loathe each other but, thanks to a graze on my left shin and interference into other people’s private lives by a nurse, we will resolve our lifelong differences in under an hour……
Fairface: Get me an intravenous stethoscraper and 400.567millipedes of oxy riboenucleooxyurehtramoxin………….
Nurse: Sorry, Charlie, I was just wondering how many times you are going to leave the series, live in Ghana or Coventry, and come back again for no apparent reason. Fancy a drink to celebrate?
Fairface: OK, everybody, 1, 2, 3…
(Sound of people straining to lift a patient and the patient’s cries of pain)
Patient: ‘Ere Nurse, I’m a seedy old bloke who will continually pester you with suggestive or racist remarks. You will respond with a weary sigh and by asking all your colleagues if they fancy a drink after work, even though it is never clear what time of night your shift actually ends.
Voice: Where’s my son? I need to see my son so we can have a row about the most intimate family secrets in front of a crowd of strangers.
Fairface: Ah, here’s the handsome, brilliant, but mentally unstable surgeon
Surgeon: Hi, I left Eastenders expecting to be cast in a major new drama series but that didn’t work out and I ended up here instead…………..Nurse, fall in love with me……..Charlie, look empathetic and concerned………….I need to find a hopelessly caricatured faceless bureaucrat I can argue with about resources……….
Fairface: That’s it, I resign………….
Tuesday 8 December 2009
Friday 4 December 2009
Is there anybody out there?
To the Wellcome Collection to hear Seth Shostak of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute give a talk on the search for evidence of alien beings out there in the cold, relatively large Universe. I keep thinking his surname is Shakatak - was he also the creative genius behind the greatest of the awful Brit-funk bands of the '80's? They did produce an album called 'Out of this World'.......No, he wasn't, he's an astronomer.
There is an agreeably cold wind blowing down the Euston Road, forcing the Cockneys to swaddle themselves in jellied eels to keep warm. I partake of a rancid Heineken costing £3.bleedin'45 in the Northumberland Arms on Tottenham Court Road, served by a brutish barmaid who resembles Mussolini. Avoid.
Before the talk, an element of chaos intrudes. The lights are dimmed, raised, dimmed, then raised again for no apparent reason. One member of the audience continually stomps up and down the stairs as if wearing hobnailed boots. After being told to hold it about six inches from our mouths, a trial of the roving microphones is abruptly halted after one old chap decides to speak with it seemingly halfway down his throat. His voice booms around the auditorium causing much tutting and tittering amongst the assembled throng.
Shostak, despite a dour appearance, proves to be a fascinating and witty character. He is scathingly forthright on the amount of people, predominantly silly Yanks, who contact him every day to inform him they have personal knowledge of aliens. He denies the US Government would step in if we finally do receive an alien signal and keep the whole thing secret. He is relentlessly optimistic that we will eventually make contact with aliens although, slightly disappointingly, he thinks it will be with machine rather than biological intelligence. No little green men with long pointy fingers then.
The microphone bellower returns to the fray during questions and expresses concern that inter-galactic warfare would inevitably result if contact was made. Shostak dismisses this, saying the 'transport costs' involved in any such conflict would be too high. The microphone is quickly wrenched from his hand just as he is about to roar another daft question. A young lady prefaces her question by inexplicably bragging: "I belong to no organisation but I am a lovely person", instantly disproving the last part of her sentence. Unfortunately, I do not get chance to ask Shostak whether he agrees with Jeff Wayne that"the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one". Perhaps he only knows about Brit-funk anyway.
There is an agreeably cold wind blowing down the Euston Road, forcing the Cockneys to swaddle themselves in jellied eels to keep warm. I partake of a rancid Heineken costing £3.bleedin'45 in the Northumberland Arms on Tottenham Court Road, served by a brutish barmaid who resembles Mussolini. Avoid.
Before the talk, an element of chaos intrudes. The lights are dimmed, raised, dimmed, then raised again for no apparent reason. One member of the audience continually stomps up and down the stairs as if wearing hobnailed boots. After being told to hold it about six inches from our mouths, a trial of the roving microphones is abruptly halted after one old chap decides to speak with it seemingly halfway down his throat. His voice booms around the auditorium causing much tutting and tittering amongst the assembled throng.
Shostak, despite a dour appearance, proves to be a fascinating and witty character. He is scathingly forthright on the amount of people, predominantly silly Yanks, who contact him every day to inform him they have personal knowledge of aliens. He denies the US Government would step in if we finally do receive an alien signal and keep the whole thing secret. He is relentlessly optimistic that we will eventually make contact with aliens although, slightly disappointingly, he thinks it will be with machine rather than biological intelligence. No little green men with long pointy fingers then.
The microphone bellower returns to the fray during questions and expresses concern that inter-galactic warfare would inevitably result if contact was made. Shostak dismisses this, saying the 'transport costs' involved in any such conflict would be too high. The microphone is quickly wrenched from his hand just as he is about to roar another daft question. A young lady prefaces her question by inexplicably bragging: "I belong to no organisation but I am a lovely person", instantly disproving the last part of her sentence. Unfortunately, I do not get chance to ask Shostak whether he agrees with Jeff Wayne that"the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one". Perhaps he only knows about Brit-funk anyway.
Wednesday 2 December 2009
What the Dickens?
To the Bishopsgate Institute, bangslap in the middle of the Square Mile, the Temple of Mammon, the Belly of the Beast, The Den of.........sorry.......overdraft extension been turned down. Emerging from Moorgate station I am made aware of a sudden aridity in the oesophagal region but, oh the pubs in this Slough of Despond, this Bedlam of................(all I wanted was an extra 50 quid!)...........but I digress. I enter one establishment near Liverpool Street and my jaw is thwacked by a steaming babel of bellowing testosteronic inanity. I am forced to dart furtively down a side street to find a decent pub with some actual human beings inside.
A young lady behind me tells her companion in a doom-laden tone: "She hasn't been on her Facebook page since October. I'm very worried about her". The digital equivalent of milk bottles remaining uncollected outside the front door. I quench lingering aridity with another cheeky one in Dirty Dick's (don't Google it).
I am in the Pit of Malevolence, the Bowels of...........apply cold flannel to forehead......... to attend a discussion on 'Dickens's Tales of the City', looking at how London influenced the life and work of bearded scribbler and adulterer Charlie Dickens, author of such timeless classics as 'A Tale of Two Twists', 'Great Dorrit's Papers' and 'Barnaby Chuzzlepip and the Goblet of Doom'. The fading grandeur of the hall is enlivened by a table groaning under bottles of wine. I seek to alleviate the burden.
Fings wot I learned, innit:
- Charlie D used to hire a couple of bobbies to protect him on his nocturnal forays into the rookeries of Old London Town
- Omnibus drivers apparently used to just grab people and haul them on board even if they had no desire to go anywhere
- Chazza was such a stickler for order he used to inspect his kid's bedrooms every morning and leave little notes detailing any failings. Daft Victorian bleeder.
- Waterloo Bridge was known as 'The Bridge of Sighs' as so many of the bereft and the lovelorn would volley themselves into the Thames from its ramparts
One of the participants then gave a spirited rendition of one of Dickens's short stories. Sadly, a member of the audience, clearly well-refreshed, had to leave to inspect the facilities and I missed most of it. On conclusion of the talk, I seek to alleviate the table's burden still further.
Nearing home, I realise I am in thrall to the grape and duck into a local hostelry to indulge in a few more glasses of fruity red, washed down with a delicious duck and smoked sausage cassoulet. Must ask the bank for overdraft extension.
A young lady behind me tells her companion in a doom-laden tone: "She hasn't been on her Facebook page since October. I'm very worried about her". The digital equivalent of milk bottles remaining uncollected outside the front door. I quench lingering aridity with another cheeky one in Dirty Dick's (don't Google it).
I am in the Pit of Malevolence, the Bowels of...........apply cold flannel to forehead......... to attend a discussion on 'Dickens's Tales of the City', looking at how London influenced the life and work of bearded scribbler and adulterer Charlie Dickens, author of such timeless classics as 'A Tale of Two Twists', 'Great Dorrit's Papers' and 'Barnaby Chuzzlepip and the Goblet of Doom'. The fading grandeur of the hall is enlivened by a table groaning under bottles of wine. I seek to alleviate the burden.
Fings wot I learned, innit:
- Charlie D used to hire a couple of bobbies to protect him on his nocturnal forays into the rookeries of Old London Town
- Omnibus drivers apparently used to just grab people and haul them on board even if they had no desire to go anywhere
- Chazza was such a stickler for order he used to inspect his kid's bedrooms every morning and leave little notes detailing any failings. Daft Victorian bleeder.
- Waterloo Bridge was known as 'The Bridge of Sighs' as so many of the bereft and the lovelorn would volley themselves into the Thames from its ramparts
One of the participants then gave a spirited rendition of one of Dickens's short stories. Sadly, a member of the audience, clearly well-refreshed, had to leave to inspect the facilities and I missed most of it. On conclusion of the talk, I seek to alleviate the table's burden still further.
Nearing home, I realise I am in thrall to the grape and duck into a local hostelry to indulge in a few more glasses of fruity red, washed down with a delicious duck and smoked sausage cassoulet. Must ask the bank for overdraft extension.
Tuesday 1 December 2009
The Speaker speaks at a speech
To Portcullis House to hear the House of Commons Speaker, Big Johnny Bercow, give a speech on Parliament or something. Gratifyingly, the Attlee Suite was punishingly stuffy but, even more gratifyingly, free wine was on offer. I chose the red and took my seat. The lady in front of me turned round to reveal a strikingly pink face framed by ice-white hair, making her look like one of those little gibbons you see on the Richard Attenborough animal show.
A hush descends as Bercow, small in stature but stentorian of voice, takes to the dais (or is it a podium?). His speech is peppered with the tinkling sound of wine glasses being carelessly booted over by clumsy buggers. Carelessly late people continue to invade the room, including two violently ginger students who sit in a corner and bestow adolescent smirks on the congregation.
Sadly, the Q & A session is hijacked by a bearded monomaniac from UKIndependence Party who rumbles something tedious about the Lisbon Treaty, supported by a comrade-in-boredom. Bercow deflects them with faux olde-worlde courtesy: "Sir, prithee, mayhap thou wilt find that verily, sir, with the utmost and enduring respect.......". The crowd is getting restless; a 'reception' will follow and cognitive processes are turning to canapes and, dare to dream, vol-au-vents.
Finally, the speech is over and the crowd moves, nay surges, to the next room to be confronted by a paltry smattering of plates hosting unidentifiable splodges of food. Is that mackerel? Perhaps its a sausage? No, its aardvark croquettes smeared with vanilla pesto. There is much pushing, gouging, pinching and slapping; ligaments snap, cartilages tear as the crowd hoovers up the fare. Little cartons of fries with a desultory lump of fish are brought out and quickly consumed. One woman's plate of chicken (or it could have been walrus) is overturned by a wayward elbow. The UKIP contingent wield cocktails sticks with unerring precision. I scoff with voracious efficiency and demand my skip load of free wine before heading off, diffusing vinous essence, into the night.
A hush descends as Bercow, small in stature but stentorian of voice, takes to the dais (or is it a podium?). His speech is peppered with the tinkling sound of wine glasses being carelessly booted over by clumsy buggers. Carelessly late people continue to invade the room, including two violently ginger students who sit in a corner and bestow adolescent smirks on the congregation.
Sadly, the Q & A session is hijacked by a bearded monomaniac from UKIndependence Party who rumbles something tedious about the Lisbon Treaty, supported by a comrade-in-boredom. Bercow deflects them with faux olde-worlde courtesy: "Sir, prithee, mayhap thou wilt find that verily, sir, with the utmost and enduring respect.......". The crowd is getting restless; a 'reception' will follow and cognitive processes are turning to canapes and, dare to dream, vol-au-vents.
Finally, the speech is over and the crowd moves, nay surges, to the next room to be confronted by a paltry smattering of plates hosting unidentifiable splodges of food. Is that mackerel? Perhaps its a sausage? No, its aardvark croquettes smeared with vanilla pesto. There is much pushing, gouging, pinching and slapping; ligaments snap, cartilages tear as the crowd hoovers up the fare. Little cartons of fries with a desultory lump of fish are brought out and quickly consumed. One woman's plate of chicken (or it could have been walrus) is overturned by a wayward elbow. The UKIP contingent wield cocktails sticks with unerring precision. I scoff with voracious efficiency and demand my skip load of free wine before heading off, diffusing vinous essence, into the night.
Monday 2 November 2009
Westminster wreath laying ceremony
Attended moving little ceremony in Westminster Abbey to mark the birthday of Keats. Wreath laid, 'Bright Star declaimed, Lord's Prayer intoned amid tourist cacophony. When a child, I was fascinated by the Abbey's gloomy splendour and ancient monuments. Now, it seemed a lot smaller than childhood memories. Henry VII's Chapel still a glowing Gothic marvel. Nice to stand on the gravestone of the Great Cham himself.
Unpleasantly humid outside. Then to the National Gallery for short talk on Salvator Rosa's tenebrous 'Witches at their Incantations'. His self-portrait glowers at us from along the wall.
Derby lose miserably to Ipswich, who haven't won a match since LBJ was in the White House. Relegation threatens.
Unpleasantly humid outside. Then to the National Gallery for short talk on Salvator Rosa's tenebrous 'Witches at their Incantations'. His self-portrait glowers at us from along the wall.
Derby lose miserably to Ipswich, who haven't won a match since LBJ was in the White House. Relegation threatens.
Wednesday 14 October 2009
At The Pines
In Putney recently I passed The Pines, the former home of that flame-haired pagan sensualist Algernon Charles Swinburne. The strange little chap was rescued from alcoholic isolation by Theodore Watts-Dunton, and sequestrated there in relatively sober senescence with his moustachioed care worker. I visited a pub in Wimbledon recently which he apparently visited on one of his long rambles from his new home. The house now is obscured by foliage, the blue plaque's lustre dimmed. I looked up at the windows - was that the bald cranium of the aged Swinburne I saw fleetingly at one of the upstairs windows? No.
Waddling down by Mother Thames, I am shocked into increased embarrassment at my portly figure by the hordes of floppy-haired, muscle-bejewelled canoeists striding around with 12 foot canoes carelessly tucked like crayons under their massive Oxbridge armpits. I walk sweatily and shame-belliedly away. Unnecessarily warm for October.
Overhead in The Fitzroy Tavern at the weekend: "I've seen the Shawshank Redemption three times and I still can't remember the end".
Waddling down by Mother Thames, I am shocked into increased embarrassment at my portly figure by the hordes of floppy-haired, muscle-bejewelled canoeists striding around with 12 foot canoes carelessly tucked like crayons under their massive Oxbridge armpits. I walk sweatily and shame-belliedly away. Unnecessarily warm for October.
Overhead in The Fitzroy Tavern at the weekend: "I've seen the Shawshank Redemption three times and I still can't remember the end".
Friday 9 October 2009
Greetings
My first venture into the realm of the blogosphere so be gentle with me. My aim is to record the cultural and alcoholic wanderings through Old London Town of a debt-crippled, lager-sodden, swollen-bellied, manic depressive ginger dilettante, who occasionally imagines himself as a character in a Patrick Hamilton novel. Tired and fatuous musings on literature, politics, football, etc, will abound with nauseating regularity.
To the Barbican for my first classical music concert - the LSO performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's magnificent 5th Symphony. Emerging from Moorgate underground, pummelled and battered by flailing commuters, I seek solace in a local hostelry, John Keats at the Moorgate. Ah, little Johnny Keats! I raise a glass to the consumptive cockney scribbler. The place is full of braying City types, their laughter characterised by volume, ferocity and a total lack of mirth. Cheap lager for London though. Through the concrete canopy to the concert hall. Before the concert begins, the dread pressure from the bladder begins as the lager cries for release - and I'm in the middle of a row! Visions of tripping and stumbling over middle class legs as I interrupt the adagio with my torrential flight to the gents. Must drink wine before concerts in future.
Arabella Steinbacher is the soloist and very good she is too, although if she had been wretched I would have been none the wiser. The Sibelius is exraordinary, the brass section achieving epic volume. What would the sozzled, rumpled Finn maestro have made of Strawberry Switchblade using the fanfare from his work? Ovations follow. A quickie in the Balham Tup before collapsing in front of walnut-faced Glaswegian Lothario Andrew Neil on The Politics Show.
To the Barbican for my first classical music concert - the LSO performing Beethoven's Violin Concerto and Sibelius's magnificent 5th Symphony. Emerging from Moorgate underground, pummelled and battered by flailing commuters, I seek solace in a local hostelry, John Keats at the Moorgate. Ah, little Johnny Keats! I raise a glass to the consumptive cockney scribbler. The place is full of braying City types, their laughter characterised by volume, ferocity and a total lack of mirth. Cheap lager for London though. Through the concrete canopy to the concert hall. Before the concert begins, the dread pressure from the bladder begins as the lager cries for release - and I'm in the middle of a row! Visions of tripping and stumbling over middle class legs as I interrupt the adagio with my torrential flight to the gents. Must drink wine before concerts in future.
Arabella Steinbacher is the soloist and very good she is too, although if she had been wretched I would have been none the wiser. The Sibelius is exraordinary, the brass section achieving epic volume. What would the sozzled, rumpled Finn maestro have made of Strawberry Switchblade using the fanfare from his work? Ovations follow. A quickie in the Balham Tup before collapsing in front of walnut-faced Glaswegian Lothario Andrew Neil on The Politics Show.
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