Pockets

The hot weather has led to a change in the way that people are dressing themselves. A week or so ago, it was essentially wellingtons and sou'westers, now, with the sun out, there is a rush to display as much pillar-box red flesh as possible.

The change in the weather has resulted in a staggering display of age-inappropriate clothing. Not quite grown men in romper suits, although I understand that this is a regular fixture in the swankier dungeons of the better class of knocking shop, but rather blokes dressed like toddlers, and toddlers dissed like grown-ups.

Children are being dressed like grown-ups to protect them from the harmful effects of the sun, possibly by parents who have seen one to many 'Twilight' films. That is; a 'Twilight' film. The reality is that it is easier to force a reluctant toddler into long trousers, a long sleeved shirt and a hat with a kopi than it is to force a toddler into a thin film of sun cream. Children generally, but toddlers in particular, have an aversion to sun cream which defies logic. Usually the little sods are all about getting themselves covered in all sorts of noxious goo that has to be bleached or, in extreme circumstances, burned out of their clothes, scrubbed from their bodies or cut from their hair. But one whiff of the Factor 15 and they take off like cats who have heard that Terry the Brutal Cat Fucker is back in town.

If you catch them, then actually applying the stuff is even more of a chore, as you are basically attempting to grease up a twisting, turning little ball of annoyed limbs. Essentially, one has to employ the same sort of holds that those Turkish wrestlers who cover themselves with oil and use sport as an excuse for slight of hand covert public buggery use when securing an opponent, with the handicap that you can't apply a choke hold. For long.

And when you do manage to slap some protection on, the child usually instantly conquers their fear of the sea and charges for the surf, leaping into the water and leaving nothing but a small slick of sunscreen and a sense of resentment as hot as the weather.

The infantilisation of men's wardrobes is down to one garment - the cargo short. The cargo short is now the single most popular item of clothing worn by men, because it means that they finally have a pair of trousers with enough pockets to carry all the crap that men consider so essential.

In the 1950s books about schoolboys made much of the TARDIS like ability for a boy's shorts to hold many items, such as a grubby handkerchief, a shilling to make a phone call, or to bribe the maid to administer a relaxing tit-wank, a catapult, and a frog, alive or dead depending upon the requirements of the plot. This of course, was in the days when it was wholesome to take an interest in the contents of a boy's shorts, before catholic priests gave that sort of thing a bad name.

Now, when an average chap leaves the house without enduring a panic attack, he will require at least his mobile, iPod, wallet, keys, hip flask, hankerchief, plastic bag to avoid being ripped off if he does any grocery shopping and probably at least three other items that I am far too uncool to know about, Kindle? Some form of bus pass? Whatever, the point is that cargo shorts give a bloke the opportunity to store all of that crap and have it within easy reach, even if it does require a bit of thought to ensure that the right item goes in the right pocket and one does not sit down to a sickening crunch and a bad case of 'Nokia-arse'.

The alternative to looking like a schoolboy is to look like a schoolgirl. I am referring, of course, to the 'man-bag'. Worn over the shoulder on a long strap one may as well complete the outfit with a tee shirt that reads 'look everyone, I have an iPad I must carry bloody everywhere'.

Postcard from Norfolk - Cod wars? Or just chip rivalry?

It always struck me as odd that a single city could support two football clubs, and that the fans would choose one or the other when at heart it’s just eleven blokes and a ball and who the hell cares what colour top they are wearing. The exception is of course Glasgow where the decision is based on what religion you were indoctrinated into at an early age – Rangers or Celtic, which then determined what church you went to.

In Wells the rivalry is between the two quayfront fish and chips shops; French’s or Platten’s. Maybe rivalry is too strong a word, as at the end of the day choice may boil down to which has seating available if it’s raining. Platten’s is much larger inside than French’s, and has a more modern feel, some might like that but then again other prefer a more intimate setting and windows that can see steaming up as the weather outside makes sitting inside sucking on a chip seem like a terribly good idea. But this doesn’t explain the happy looking locals I kept encountering with their Platten’s fish and chip boxes, taking their take-away away, or taking it to an al fresco setting to enjoy.

The basic differences, as far as I can work it out, are this. French’s serve their fish and chips in a cardboard tray wrapped in paper. They also, and I declare an interest as a big fan and the holder of a French’s loyalty card, make the best fish and chips in the world, with traditional chunky battered fish. Platten’s serve fish and chips in a cardboard box, a bit like a smaller, taller, pizza box and their batter is smoother. Perfectly acceptable.

I like to think that there is some unwritten history here, that you’re ether a French’s man or a Platten’s man not because of your taste in battering techniques, but because of the side you took in the feud years ago where the daughter of one chip shop dynasty took up with the son of another and it all ended badly, possibly with a scuffle and a battered savaloy.

Or it may be some sort of religious thing, but I prefer to think that something happened in a traditional small town manner to establish fanatical loyalties. Mine was established the fist time I tried French’s fish and chips and assured with a card that means every tenth fish and chips is free.

Postcard from Norfolk - Art and commerce

'Morston Reflections' by Trevor Woods

In all my years visiting Norfolk I’ve never been in Big Blue Sky, the distinctive shop that sits on the edge of Wells-next-the-Sea on the road to Cromer. The exterior is distinctive because it’s painted duck-egg blue and because it obviously used to be a petrol station. Petrol stations converted for other use are something of a feature in Wells, which has no petrol station itself (the nearest one is in Burnham market) but two converted ones, one being Big Blue Sky, the other being a funeral directors. Egg shell blue looks better than sombre black as a colour scheme, in case you were wondering.

The shop itself is, as you would expect, full of lovely things and I didn’t manage to get out without buying a tee shirt listing all the wind conditions on the Beaufort Scale. Stylish and practical.

Next to Big Blue Sky is gallery Plus, and sticking my head through the door was something of a revelation. Prints and paintings of London and of Norfiolk filled the walls, all done in a distinctive style, all desirable and all well out of my price range but, wait a moment…postcards!

The chap behind the desk, Trevor Woods, turned out to be the artist who had painted the fabulous pictures and, obviously mistaking me for somebody with money, showed me his latest project, a large canvas of the London skyline. Even at this stage, pencilled but yet to be painted, it looked fabulous, with familiar landmarks emerging from the crowded cityscape. Good job he works fast, as he’s almost able to keep up with the pace of construction on the Shard.

Postcard from Norfolk - Llama drama or other matter?

Wells is home to a small herd of llama, or alpaca. For most of the day they sit in a contented huddle in a field behind the church, looking exotic but, at five o’clock, their owner leads them from their pasture to, presumably, their overnight accommodation. This requires him to lead five haughty and frankly surly looking creatures along the pavement next to the road.

To say that the llamas (or alpacas) look skittish is an understatement. He does do a very good job of holding on to the reins of all five but one feels that if there was a concerted effort and a five way bolt for freedom, it would be chaos, South American style. The creatures manage to look both haughty and mad as a bag of bats at the same time and one feels that the whole herding process could get, literally, out of hand any moment.

For instance, if there were a problem, it would be a llama drama. If the problem caused upset to the beasts’ owner, then it would be a llama farmer in a llama drama. If somebody, in the midst of a stampede, attempted to hurt the beasts and the owner retaliated, might this not be a llama harmer and llama farmer in a llama drama? And off course, if a prominent television historian and a famous film director were visiting the region and were somehow involved in some sort of altercation with the beasts and their owner, then it would be Simon Sharma and Brian De Palma in a llama drama with a farmer.

If they are not llamas, then any unruly behaviour would merely be an alpaca fracas.

Postcard from Norfolk - Yarn Bombing is a sunny Hunny delight

Hunstantion is getting posher. It still maintains its kiss-me-quick sensibility, but that co-exists very happily alongside skinny lattes. It is also presently the home to an event known as ‘yarn bombing’.

This essentially consists of tree cosies, that is, finding a suitable spinny, knitting like a fiend and then draping the knitted product round the trees and branches. The effect was enchanting. There were scarfs, waistcoats, bunting and even dolls (one of which is of the type from the label of a popular jam!).


But it doesn’t stop there, in the town the parking signs and various poles of officialdom that conspire to tell us what to do, where and when had also been yarn bombed. Somehow a ‘no stopping’ sign seems much more reasonable when the pole supporting it is covered in a purple knitted wrapper.


It’s quite a sight to see something so indoorsy and fragile, and obviously made with so much care, placed in an open air environment against rough nature or a rougher town centre. Maybe it’s this contrast that provides the charm, but I suspect that the charm is more the love and care in every stich of something made for the public to enjoy.

And The Ship at Brancaster fully redeemed itself after the whole tricky ‘not serving dinner yet’ episode earlier in the week. Overhearing an ill-informed but as usually fully opinionated discussion at our dinner table about just what constituted a ‘flat white’ coffee (latte we know is mostly milk and froth and a bit of coffee, cappuccino is the same, but with the froth mostly on top and added chocolate, but what the hell is a flat white?) our waiter turned up with a flat white and the girl who had made to explain how she makes it. It was sampled and proclaimed very delicious and on concluding her explanation, the waiter remarked to his colleague that ‘that’s not what it says on the instructions in the kitchen’. ‘I know, but that’s how I make it for the owner’ was all the reply needed.

So, if you are in the ship at Brancaster and Sara is available, get her to make you a flat white – it’s delicious.

Postcard from Norfolk - A fistfull of chips

A trip out to Sheringham, via a stop in Salthouse for lunch at the Dun Cow. It’s the done thing. Sitting in the courtyard in the sunshine there was a moment of tension and trepidation introduced to this otherwise relaxed scene. We had ordered sandwiches of various types, which come with ‘a handful’ of chips. There was some conversation about just what ‘a handful’ constituted. We made the effort to keep the banter light but you could tell there was an edge to it. The expectation was that it would be the handful of the sort of chap who can palm a basketball and not, for instance, the handful of somebody just out the womb. We wanted a large hand, so that we wouldn’t have to beat the landlord to death with an example of same in order to drive the lesson home.

As it turned out, chef must either be a big bloke or have overheard our conversation, or got our note, because the handful of chips that arrived was just right.

Also lunching at the Dun Cow were birdwatchers. We had our suspicions of their pastime based on hats, beards, field glasses, vest of many pockets and stout boots but what put it beyond doubt was when they were able to correct our woeful misidentification of a little fellow pearched on the chimney, tweeting. They did very well to hide what must have been great irritation at our ham fisted attempts to Name That Bird. I think I was closest with ‘goat’.

Sheringham is the home to my new favourite bookshop. I’ve never been in to it before, always preferring to give the Brazen head in Burnham Market my custom but this time I wandered in and yes, it was because there was a sign in the window about how this was a Dickens of a good shop and potential customers were right to have great expectations of it. Who could resist?


Not me. Once over the threshold, the place is a delight. It’s like the illustration of some magical realist children’s book, a cave of books, a building made out of books. Every wall is lined, there are nooks, there are crannies, and they are all filled with books. It’s like the home of a literary hoarder and probably what my front room is going to look like in a few years if I don’t stop buying books.


As well as having a diverse and fascinating stock, the place is curated with care and humour, for instance the misery lit is opposite the children’s section. Displayed face on instead of spine on, one sees that the cover design of misery lit paperbacks are generic, there’s a title and author’s name in somber font and colour, then a black and white or sepia picture of a child looking either concerned or constipated depending on how much the publishing house was able to spring for a decent stock photograph. And they all have the same titles ‘No daddy no’, ‘Please stop mummy’, ‘Cut that out uncle Eric’, ‘Grandad you filthy fucker you could at least have washed it first’, that sort of thing.

Obviously, child cruelty must be stopped, if only to make sure no more of these bloody things are printed.

I’m also more convinced than ever that the Kindle must also be stopped, or second hand books will cease to exist. That means that in future years adults will be denied the pleasure of rediscovering ‘First term at Chalet School’, ‘Second term at Chalet School’, ‘Detention at Chalet School’, ‘In the showers at Chalet School’ and so on.

Postcard from Norfolk - Fret ye not

On holiday, the weather may be ‘brisk’ or it may be ‘bracing’. One is on holiday and so holiday speak is employed. ‘Wet’ is a word reserved for the condition of your glass at lunch time, the only acceptable use of ‘damp’ is to describe the bottom of one’s trousers after over-enthusiastic paddling and insufficient rollage. Along the coast what others would call ‘fog’ or ‘mist’ is more accurately described as a ‘fret’. A fret is where the warm sea touches the cold land, or possibly where the cold sea touches the warm land but whatever the cause the opportunity to use the word ‘fret’ is seized upon by one and all, usually incorporating it into a sentence such as ‘I am fretful that it is going to piss down all day today. What?’

In truth, it’s not raining, although there is something of a breeze or, more accurately, a ‘breeze’ of the sort that would allow a wind turbine to power every intimate massager in Holloway, before ripping the sails off.

To get out of the fret, took a trip to Burnham Market. Mid-week one can just about find a parking spot, if one is prepared to circle endlessly like some sort of car shark or just do what I do, which is [do you really think I’m going to say?]. There is an art exhibition put on by a local art club in the village church. As with any art club exhibition, the hang reveals a mixed ability. The very best painting were N.F.S. as the painter has just has a stroke and the family want to hang on to them in case they are the last paintings the chap is ever going to do.

Elsewhere in the exhibition there was some talent and some quirk and, unfortunately, the level of talent in the quirky entries was not always enough to bring off the intent.

Naturally, signed the visitors’ book with gushing praise and told the two lovely Burnham market ladies how wonderful it all was and how lovely the church was (which it is). I like art in churches, it makes one feel less of a penitent and the occasional landscape is a welcome distraction from all the stained glass and scenes from the bible stuff.

Stopping off at The Ship at Brancaster, it made a stab at redeeming itself after not serving chips on demand earlier in the week by coming up with simply the best hot chocolate ever. It wasn’t so much the hot chocolate but rather the sheer amount of whipped cream and marshmallow that they crammed onto the top of it. Any more and it would have had to come in a separate bowl.

Postcard from Norfolk - Friends and family

It is always important, when holidaying with one’s family, to choose the largest holiday cottage that you can afford. Essentially, you want to ensure that when on holiday with people you love very much, it is possible to put some distance, and rooms, between yourself when you realise after about five minutes just how irritating they can be. Not that you ever actually need to stomp off into another room, but the concern that such an option does not exist can put everyone on edge from the outset.

Holiday anxiety is cubed when one is joined by friends on holiday. People who you enjoy drinking with, or dining with, are not always the same happy go lucky folk when it comes to sobering up or scrubbing out pans.

Moreover, if friends are staying with you at the same time as family, you run the risk of one group offending the other accidentally or causeing some sort of embarrassing scene.

Luckily, and unsurprisingly, my friends rock up with industrial levels of booze, and social lubricant saves the day.

Postcard from Norfolk - The importance of chips

Saturday. Burnham Market is awash with bloody bloody weekenders. This means that basically, you have to park the car at Burnham Thorpe and walk in. After a wander round sought sustenance in the Ship at Brancaster, only to find that they don’t start serving until an hour after we were there and hungry.

Bolted instead to the White Horse which serves food all day, and where we recovered.

It is odd that the pubs on the coast don’t serve food all day. There are walkers along the coastal path, and birdwatchers who like beer and like chips at any time of the day. Up in Yorkshire they realised that walkers walk until they are hungry and then stop by and you had better have your kitchen open to flog them 8,000 calories at inflated process, and chips.

I’d actually forgotten how good the food is in the White Horse. I’ve not been in there for a few years and chef makes a mean crab salad. And of course there’s the chance to walk it off along the coastal path that runs along the back of the hotel.

Gentleman's relish

Jesus fucking Christ would you believe the amount of porn the is on the Internet? A year or so ago the population of Lego minifigs actually surpassed that of human beings. That is, the factory that turns out the colourful choking hazards churned out its seven billionth or something. The calculation did not take into account that, very much like human beings, minifigs have a finite lifespan. Unlike human beings, I imagine that a lot of them end their days in the intestinal tract of an infant, or canine, or infant canine. That's what porn has become like, there is now so much porn that one person could not hope to get through it all and remain hydrated in their lifetime.

And the variety is staggering. I'm told that web sites these days offer sub menus to cover every taste, some of which, and I like to think of myself as a man of the world, I have never heard of. Believe me, once you do hear about them, they tend to be something that you will never forget, no matter how much you want to. For instance, if you type 'pegging' into Google will you be rewarded with links and images about a) how to secure guy ropes, b) how to hang clothes on a washing line in such a manner that creasing will be minimised or c) something so bloody deviant that you think you'll have to bloody sandpaper yourself to ever feel clean again. Answer: c, and no, pegging does not involve sandpapering bollocks, that's an entirely different category.

Before the Internet, in a kinder, gentler age, porn was distributed in one of three ways. It was sold in newsagents. Hard core stuff was sold in sex shops. And children accessed it by finding discarded porn mags in hedges. Quite why porn was so freely available in hedges I'm not sure as I never imagined that browsing through a porn mag was an activity hat leant itself to being undertaken al fresco. Now I know that there's a category for that too.

The hedge dwelling discarder's mag of choice was 'Razzle'. There's probably an official advertising or publishing industry term to describe the demographic that it was aimed at, but let's just settle for 'downmarket' and leave it at that, although 'downmarket porn lovers' is probably a fairer, shoddier picture. Razzle did though, years before people started posting pictures of their girlfriend passed out drunk and naked on the web 'for a laugh' and lads' mags featured high street girls in their pants on the covers, blaze the trail with using very-much-not-models to fill its filthy pages in a section titled 'readers wives'.

This provided a terrifying insight into the world of kitchens because, for some reason, the kitchen was the place of choice for the ladies to pose. Terribly unhygienic. There were three constants in the resulting snapshots. Harsh and unflattering lighting. That sort of flat, characterlessness that you get from Polaroid shots (this was in the days before digital photography and one hardly wanted to rock up at Boots to collect some explicit photographs and be smirked at by the oik behind the counter). And unattractive, bordering on scary, subject matter. In many cases where there had been 'tidying up' of hair down there, any trimming would of been better done taming the horrendous perms that often topped the model off.

Simply put, the 'readers wives' section was more horrific fascination material than erotic. An overweight housewife atop a kitchen counter legs akimbo is not, and never will be, erotic. Adding stockings does not help. Stockings do not automatically make something erotic. The sight of a shotgun wielding bank robber does not immediately fill anyone witnessing a bank raid with the urge to crack one off. Indeed, of anything likely to invoke gentleman's wilt, 'readers wives' would do the job. Maybe that's what the editors were thinking placing the feature half way through the magazine, instead of simply having a page adorned with the words 'enough skiving in the bogs, get back to work'.

Razzle has, I imagine, long gone and, until broadband reaches rural areas, so has accessing porn in hedges.

Postcard from Norfolk - Fish and chip crisis

Norfolk in May is plump and green. Such succulence is quite a change from my normal visiting time of October, when it is less crowded, rates are off season and the hedgerows are thinner. Now, everything is in leaf, pumped up and big. This includes the tractors that roam the roads, pulling trailers of badly secured root vegetables ready to bounce onto your bonnet and put a dent in your metalwork and crimp in your day alike. The tractors are like rural caravans in their ability to create a tailback occasionally slowing the journey along the A road leading to passing the time with classic car games such as I spy. After three miles at twenty miles an hour following a tractor the most popular ‘I spy’ letter is cee.

The first night in Wells-next-the Sea is also the first night of the holiday and holiday rules apply, meaning that such high level decisions as ‘what shall we have for dinner’ are not the subject of prolonged consideration, debate and risk assessment but rather come supplied with an answer prepared in anticipation of such a moment: ‘fish and chips from French’s’.

In truth, fish and chips from French’s is a good meal decision at any time and actually a fairly good solution to any decision, up to and including ‘is it time to tell this person I love them, or is there something else I should be doing?’.

Rocking up at French’s, I was met with the sight of a chap standing by the door. Cooks standing by the door of their establishment is never a good sign, unless it is at the back door of the establishment and they are smoking a fag, in which case it is situation normal.

It was not situation normal. The family ahead of me turned away at the door, dad choking back rage, kids choking back tears, mum wanting to choke back Malibu. It’s never a happy sight when a family set on chips are denied same.

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

I choked back emotion. The chap could see that what he had on his doorstep was his worst nightmare, a bloke who was not going to explode into violence but rather burst into wracking sobs. He tried to justify this gross violation of my human rights.

‘Sorry. We’re reopening again at eight, but we’ve got one hundred and fifty schoolkids to cater for and if we don’t shut, we won’t get the order done.’

This was, I conceded, fair enough. If you had been dragged around all day in the rain on an ‘educational’ trip that began and ended with a trip in a coach with a load of other kids smelling mostly of anorak bad hygiene, it would take a harder heart than mine to begrudge the kids a fish supper.

Of course, the wait made our anticipation even keener.

Eight o’clock on the dot I was walking through that front door, no queue, straight to the counter. French’s still do the best fish and chips in the world. One hundred and fifty school kids can’t be wrong.

Frost at midnight

Laudanum loving scribe Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a fabulous poem titled 'Frost at midnight' which begins with the enchanting phrase 'The frost performs its secret ministry'. It goes on to describe how his son will have opportunities that Coleridge never had when he himself was growing up, such as looking up at a clear sky, and, presumably, ready access to laudanum, very much the calpol of the romantic era, but concludes once more with a reference to the ministry of frost.

If there were a Ministry of Frost, one imagines that it would have been busy earlier in the year, when a succession of hard frosts resulted in a number of sporting fixtures being called off. Horse racing is always being called off when the going shifts from 'firm' to 'iron'. It's a dangerous sport at the best of times but on a frosty morn the only way to make it more dangerous would be to actually jump the horses into the intake of a roaring jet engine. Football too suffers cancellations, both in the Premiershit, and at a more local level, as evidenced by the sight of an optimistic but disconsolate boy returning from the park where Little League had been abandoned that morning, sullenly booting a plastic bottle along the pavement.

If one were to work in the public sector, currently it seems subject to more strikes than championship evening at 'Lanes of Glory Bowlarama', then the Ministry of Frost seems like a pretty good place to do so. It conjures the image of a government department that was originally established to officially declare the Thames safe for a frost fair (done by driving a horse and cart across the river - history does not record what happened to the 'looks like it needs another day' attempts but one suspects that they did not result in a short but harrowing public information film advising children not to drive horses and carts across rivers) and later went on to approve the frost patterns that would be etched across windows, which is still housed in a magnificent Victorian building and where the staff have very little to do during May to September, unless they are attached to the Scottish office.

The secret Ministry is also strongly evocative of John Steed turning up for work and foiling an enemy plot using nothing more than charm and a super-vixen side kick specialising in mixed martial arts. Because while queues grow at Heathrow and people wait for up to three hours to enter Britain, it's still true that while the public sector has of late got a bit bolshie and struck, there are still certain roles that one simply cannot imagine the private sector undertaking. Spying is one of them, if James Bond worked for Group 4 the world would be a glowing cinder ruled by a nutter in the sole remaining undersea volcano base.

As for queues at Heathrow, anyone who has queued for one of the more popular rides at Alton Towers will know that three hours is a doddle, and at Alton Towers you are actually queuing to get on a ride that will throw you about, instil genuine terror, make you wonder about the safety of the thing and leave you feeling sweaty with anxiety, at least at Heathrow you have just got off something that left you like that and you can have a drink and a weep in the queue. Other airports are available although 'Cardiff, gateway to the Games' is a bit of a stretch.

Other fabulous private sector queuing experiences include Clinton Cards. While the last thing anyone needs is another high street chain going under, one does have to wonder about a business model that appeared to consist of having two bored teens talk to one another at the till while studiously ignoring the queue of customers to the extent that it provokes an existential crisis in the more insecure. Possibly the source of apparent indifference is bitterness based around selling thousands of valentine's cards but never receiving one, because Cupid would need an aim like Robin bloody Hood and shoot rohypnol tipped arrows to make the average Clinton's shop assistant a romantic object.

Kindling again

Apparently, women are reading erotica on their Kindles. This is, apparently, newsworthy. Newsworthy for a couple of reasons, firstly because it allows editors of tabloid newspapers to write about women reading erotica, and possibly use a saucy picture of a woman with a Kindle looking a bit flustered, and also because if the paper is owned by a group with a publishing arm, it allows them to plug a few of their filthier titles. Newsworthy also because any bloke reading it will be staggered that a woman can both own and operate a gadget, despite previously showing no aptitude for technology beyond the niche talent for bringing up the browsing history on your laptop, yet apparently still being incapable of fucking recording the footie when asked.

One wonders how this story ever surfaced at all, as one of the features of the Kindle is that nobody can tell what you are reading without looking at the screen. Possibly a Guardian journo was on a bus journey and noticed the woman next to him with a Kindle in one hand, furiously thrumming herself with the other, but more likely somebody checked out the on-line sales chart, wondered 'who the hell is reading this crap?', downloaded it and concluded 'women'.

This is a natural conclusion. Women read erotica and men read porn the same way that ladies glow and men perspire. If a bloke wants to read porn, he goes to the top shelf, not the book shelf. It has to be noted though that in recent years, the top shelf appears to have got rather prudish, with wrappers round the covers. This is despite the lower shelves awash with lads mags with covers featuring the sort of thing that requires artful captions to keep things even within stroking distance of decent.

So, people are reading things on their Kindle that, presumably, they would be embarrassed to read if it was in paperback form, although this has not stopped the publication of 'Fisty shades of shite' or whatever it's called now being published as a paperback, with a discreetly arty cover.

Possibly this is a reasonable fear. People do make judgements about other people based on what they are reading, in the same way that they make assumptions about them based on the contents of their shopping trolly (fifty cans of cat food and a microwave meal for one tells a sad story). In the past, it was a frequent occurrence on public transport to find somebody attractive right up until the point where they pulled out a copy of the Daily Mail and started reading with every sign of enjoyment. Now that everybody reads the Metro, you won't know that somebody is a Nazi until you start talking to them, although its a pretty safe assumption that if they are reading the Metro, they're an idiot. It's also a safe assumption that if you are English and on public transport, you won't be talking to anyone.

So the Kindle allows people to read books that they might otherwise think twice about reading in public. This applies not just to erotica, but for instance to far right literature. The bloke next to you could be smiling and nodding while he reads 'Mein Kamph' or whatever the hell it's called. Likewise, they could be reading the literature of the hard left, if Socialist Worker ever gets round to putting out a Kindle version.

And of course they could be reading children's books. This implies that there is some kind of shame in reading children's literature if you are a grown-up, a trend that was reinforced when Bloomsbury brought out editions of the Harry Potter books with different covers for adults. I didn't think there was any shame in reading the kids' edition, certainly not compared with the shame of paying an extra quid for the adult cover. I certainly know people who still have all their old Enid Blyton's and why shouldn't they while away a train journey reading about the famous five? Certainly better than reading the bloody Metro.

As for me, I shall stick with my 'Lads Book of Fun' from 1957, discreetly tucked inside a copy of 'Razzle'.

Review: I Partridge, we need to talk about Alan

'I, Partridge, we need to talk about Alan' is a magnificent book. Clearly printed on good quality paper and soundly bound, with a pleasingly robust dust jacket, the quality really shows. As a hardback, it's solidly enough put together to cause either a pleasing thump to a desk or table, or injury to a small child, should it be dropped on either. It's also lavishly illustrated with not just one but two sections of pages containing full colour photographs. The publishers obviously believed in this book, or considered it a last desperate throw of the dice to save the non-fiction arm of the company after a difficult year.

With Celebrity autobiographies timing is everything. It's amazing the number of celebrities that are caught up in sex scandals or suffer and untimely demise just as their book is about to be published. After reading this book, I can imagine that the publishers were craving a timely celebrity death to boost sales. Ghoulish, but there it is. Something tells me that prior to publication a publishing executive executive was filing out a 'treat day' form for Alan to go base jumping.

This is a book that's going to be around for a long time, it will be in remaindered bins, charity shops and discount book outlets for years to come. And that colourful front cover will be beautifully preserved as it sits, undisturbed, for years on library shelves until the library is closed down and it and the rest of the stock is incinerated.

I was lucky enough to pick up this book at my local petrol station. Dawdling by the travel sweets, deciding whether to go with 'Maynards' or own brand wine gums, I noticed the books in a wire bin by the till, a fluorescent sign declaring that they were free with every ten litres of petrol. Well I had a full tank and a full of a sense of entitlement. I grabbed my wine gums, a copy of Razzle and the book.

I was so eager to look at it that I actually stopped in a layby on the way home and flicked through it for about ten minutes. Then I drove home and started reading the book.

This is not the sort of book that one reads and re-reads regularly, although I would suggest that it is the sort of book that will regularly be found in the homes of people who have perpetrated a shocking crime on society, or a celebrity, before turning the gun/taser on themselves.

As a general rule of thumb when reading this book, if you find yourself making notes in the margin, step away from the book. If you find yourself nodding and muttering 'fuck yea, Alan', seek help. And if you find yourself underlining passages, especially ones that end in "needless to say, I had the last laugh!"' which you double-underline, mix yourself a sedative and go for a lie down in a quiet room, that locks from the outside.

This then is the autobiography of Alan Partridge, boy, man, media personality, radio presenter and if not quite king of chat then at least minor courtier at the court of the king of chat, the chap who empties the chamber pot, that sort of thing. The story takes us through the medium-highs and the many lows of a broadcasting career that can often be described as breathtaking. The man literally has made a career out of hot air.

What's fascinating is the way in which Partridge uses the book as a platform with which to set the record straight about many incidents in his life, hitherto unknown except to himself and, if they can be arsed to remember, the person Alan thinks slighted him. Alan pulls no punches in letting the reader know exactly what he thinks of everyone from school bullies to BBC executives. Presumably the punches were pulled later in the publication process by the publisher's lawyers, judging from the disclaimers and qualifications surrounding the accusations. Alan is not one to let go of a grudge and this same petty minded tenacity has seen him rise to a career in local digital radio.

What's fascinating about the book is the amount of help that Alan needed to write it. The thing has four other authors! While ghost writing might be an accepted if not acceptable practice in publishing, there is surely a limit. What sort of cack-handed author needs four people to help him write a book, is it one to read the manuscript notes, one to type them up, one to do a spell check and one to make the tea or what? Another major issue is the editing. God knows the book could have used some, it's littered with unfinished passages or drafting notes to have facts checked. Something tells me this proof was approved after lunch.

These petty annoyances aside (and I imagine that Mr P is pretty miffed by this sort of slipshod quality control), this is an entertaining and sometimes surprisingly heartwarming story of an outsider in the world of talent.

So, why was I 'lucky' to pick it up? Well, upon examination of the till receipt that I had been using as a bookmark, I noticed that although the petrol station had been giving the book away free with every ten litres of petrol, I had only bought seven litres (I favour a 'top up' strategy - others might call it the 'Arab Spring' or 'the spread of democracy', to me it's straightforward unrest in the Middle East and we all know what that does to prices at the pump. You don't want to be caught with an empty tank when it all goes tits up in Syria, let me tell you). I had, in essence, got the book for less than free! Needless to say, I had the last laugh.

Review: New Order at the Brixton Academy

Parents, generally, if encouraging their children to play a musical instrument, ask them if they would like to play the violin or the cello. When a child asks for an instrument that they actually want to play, any parent will feel a surge of relief if it is 'electric guitar' rather than 'D J decks'. The end of the journey for somebody who can play an electric guitar is on stage with the crowd chanting the name of your band. The end of journey for a talented D J is, if last night is anything to judge, playing to a theatre of people who are chanting the name of the band that they want you to fuck off the stage to make room for. A more likely end is printing business cards in a motorway service station with the term 'mobile disco' on them. D J Tintin was supporting New Order at the Brixton Academy and, even though he was trying every trick he had learned in D J school, he would have done better just to have stuck on 'Dancing Queen' or, if he really wanted to please the crowd, 'Blue Monday'.


When New Order did take the stage they were excellent. They did everything that you would want from a pop group whose music you have listened to for years. They were loud, they played the hits, they turned up on time and they finished promptly, allowing you to get home and pay off the babysitter before double rates kicked in. The crowd lived every track but certain tracks, 'Blue Monday' in particular, excited the place beyond reason, as well it might with a guitar so loud it sounded like a cross between construction and a seismic event.


Yes, it was a night of live music! At a venue! And an interesting venue at that.

If a tinpot dictator should ever need guards for his brutal, repressive regime, then the thing to do is to kit out people with high viz orange jackets (a sure sign of petty authority if worn by anyone not shovelling Tarmac) and apprentice them at the Brixton Academy as security. There is nothing that builds expectations of a great gig quite like being shouted at to keep in line by a runt dressed like a traffic cone with delusions of having 'steward' as a job description.

Once through the door of the theatre they split the crowd up into men and women, just like they do in an internment camp or in a temple of one of the rougher sorts of religion, then do a bag and body search. I am talking about two entity different things thankfully, although the pat down was pretty intimate. I had not known there would be a bag check and so had not thought to pack any of my bag check conversation pieces; garden gnome, double headed dildo, spring loaded bear trap, that sort of thing. As it was all he found to object to was my water bottle, which was binned because presumably I might have filled it with vodka in order to avoid the bar prices. This was a grossly unfair assumption, it was in fact filled with an indifferent Chardonnay which, to be truthful, I was quite glad to see the back of.

Obviously tango boy could smell I was a rum 'un and indeed prior to the gig I had tried to offload a spare ticket to a tout, only to be turned down because it was an e ticket, meaning I could have printed two, flogged him one and so stuck him with a worthless ticket. It comes to something when your character is being questioned by a bloody petty criminal. Still I suppose it only takes one disgruntled burly customer to be turned away from the gig and come back and beat the living shit out of the tout in order to put him off e tickets, if not a life of crime.

Brixton Academy is a mixture of faded grandure and rough as hell venue. The stage is surrounded by a sort of Italian village fresco, with little towers and trees. Like most actual Italian villages it's in a right old state, but I suppose that a steady stream of rock bands, rock fans, spilled beer and loud music will have an effect on a place.The shouty security extended inside, although I thought it was a little bit over the top when there was a bloke shouting at the line into the gents to move faster, it was an excellent cure for anyone with problems about urinating in front of others.

Grim though the Brixton Academy may be, its a great, intimate, pop venue, allowing you to actually see the band and rather more fun than standing in a field in the rain watching a figure on a screen because your view of the stage is obscured by the sound mixing marquee and the twelve thousand people in front of you.The demographic was interesting. There were young people there, easily identified because like young people everywhere they were wearing Superdry tee shirts. The older people frankly looked happy that this was a gig with seating. I had imagined that the majority of those attending would be the sort of people who had sweated through their tee shirts dancing to Blue Monday every weekend when it was first released, but of course the music of previous generations is enjoyed by the younger generation, usually to the annoyance of the older generation, although in truth if music was not enjoyed from generation to generation, Mozart would be fucked.