Review - Thursdays in the park

Oh Jesus, make it stop. 

Reading this is like literary waterboarding, with slurry.

It’s worth noting that this edition at least had 1.5 line spacing, so it’s actually a slim novel. 

Better still if it had been anorexic. 

The first page has a husband criticising his wife because she drinks too much.  Certainly reading this book drives one to the booze, so actually being a character in it would inspire a terrible thirst one would imagine. 

So far, so formula, the reader gets all of two thirds of the way down the first page before wondering when the first vicar is going to pop up.  In that at least, the book does not disappoint (page three, in case you were wondering).

Full disclosure: writing this review was something of a challenge, as the most straightforward way of conveying my opinion of this book would to be to take a well-used carpet knife and gouge the words ‘THIS IS SHITE!’ into the cover of the book. 

Then smear it with excrement.

Then torch it.

I freely acknowledge that this is an over-reaction.  There is no place for the exclamation mark in any considered review.

So just how bad is it?  Let me express it this way.  If the Taliban’s media strategy had been to post one of their trademark fuzzy, foam flecked rants on Youtube with some bearded arse pointing to a copy of ‘Thursdays in the park’ and screaming ‘this is where educating females to write gets you’, and not ‘let’s shoot schoolgirls’, then I’m not saying anyone would be any more accepting of their wicked message, but maybe, just maybe, they’d be playing a little less dodge-the-drone every time they popped out of the cave for some fresh milk.

This is a sad, unhappy and deeply cynical book.

Why cynical?  The author has clearly thought carefully about the demographic of her readers and how to convey that her principal character is successful and affluent.  Hence, early on, it is established that the main character’s kitchen has Bosche appliances and is decorated with National Trust paint.  Mid-range appliances and a paint brand more associated with heritage and tea shops than actual decoration sends a message alright, and that message is ‘the author looked round her kitchen and described what she saw’. It’s cynically judged to appeal to people who either want it confirmed that they have achieved the sort of middle-class life that they read about, or who aspire to owning a Bosche cooker and decorating with National Paint.  It’s also not right.  Affluent people who live in leafy suburbs of London have Agas and decorate with Farrow and Ball paint.

Sad and unhappy because it’s full of sad and unhappy characters.  Everyone in this book is, to a certain extent, sad and unhappy and that includes, by about page seven, the reader.  The principal character is unhappy because her husband has moved into the spare bedroom and won’t explain why.  Her daughter is unhappy because her husband is annoying, the husband is unhappy because he is an unappreciated artist, the bloke the principal character meets in the park is unhappy because, oh, I don’t know, either he’s a widower or allergic to trees or something.

There are a couple of toddlers involved. 

In fairness, they are not unhappy. 

But by Christ they’re irritating.

The toddler also provides the plot driver for the Great Peado Scare.

It has a plot so formulaic that this novel could have been packaged not so much as an e book but rather a powerpoint slide at the sort of desperate conference held at a hotel chosen for its convenient transport links rather than its beauty, where the chef is on the run and the rest of the staff are hoping to be deported back home any day now.

Positives?  Well, it’s quite short, and it confirms all the prejudices one might hold about the sort of people who frequent health food shops, but essentially it’s an exercise in grinding frustration unhappy married to a failed attempt at being a novel seeking to examine the relationships of family life across generations and the effect dramatic change can have on what are thought to be certainties.

Dear Sir...

Britain is, by and large, a charitable nation.  Certainly charity is the only possible explanation for the continued enthusiastic support of some of the nation’s national football teams, who can be relied upon to put in a truly tragic performance in any tournament more challenging than the one down the rec using anoraks for goalposts.

Charity takes many forms.  For instance, many older men, even married ones, help to support young women by putting them up in a small flat in Mayfair and ensuring they have enough money for their education, gym memberships, discreet visits to Harley Street and, if necessary, impromptu foreign travel one step ahead of the press.

There are national charity days for broadcasters, when the BBC tests to destruction the patience of an audience who have only tuned in to see the special seven minute long ‘Doctor Who’ episode and who have to sit through musical number after musical number for fear of missing it and not Tweeting something snarky in the moment.

There are charity days that take the form of brave volunteers who, armed only with regulation anorak and a thermos containing a cocktail of gin and paraffin, stand on the high street for hours rattling a tin, in aid of funds for Lifeboats, or the fight against some vile disease, or the welfare of any animal from the donkey to the, well, it’s usually donkeys.

The English in particular love their animal charities.  Ironically this is a result of knowing fuck all about animal welfare and thinking meat comes from the supermarket rather than a Disney character voiced by a beloved recovering alcoholic.  This affection and affectation has given rise to the myth that the English give more to animal charities than they do charities that look after humans.

Why does this myth persist?

The thing is, charities have started sending gifts to those who contribute, like calendars and stickers and, frankly, people are much more likely to use, and display, their bookmark of a grinning donkey in a hat than they are the sort of image usually sent out by a charity that looks after children in some war torn hell hole, which is usually, how shall we put this, authentic, and not the sort of thing you want fellow commuters thinking you consider appropriate to mark your place in ‘What Ho Jeeves’.

Whilst charities may send you gifts to prompt you to donate (‘please find enclosed a free biro, now use it to fill out the enclosed standing order form you middle class biro stealing bastard’), that’s a lot better than the menace that risks turning us from a nation with our hand in our pocket to a nation with our hands round the throat of the gurning tosser obstructing our path on the pavement.

I speak of the ‘chugger’.  And if you thought the BBC News team doing a ‘Kids from Fame’ medley in aid of ‘Children in Need’ was irritating, that’s nothing compared to some twat in a cagoule with a smile and a clipboard trying to get your bank details off of you without even the common courtesy of pretending to be a Nigerian prince.  Or giving you a coaster.  These are young people who are employed to cheerfully try and slow your progress to the cake shop or pub by asking you if you have ever thought about the problems of the lack of availability of drinking water in the world.

BTW the correct answer is not, as I found out, ‘absolutely, Waitrose is out of Highland Spring again, it’s a fucking disgrace’.

I think people find chuggers irritating because British people are genuinely generous to charities but like it that by giving they can be both anonymous and altruistic.  That’s why those (now considered to be a little bit offensive and, actually, when you think of it, somewhat creepy) collection boxes in the shape of life-sized replicas of children that used to stand outside shops could do so safely and unchained, no one would dream of nicking one.

Actually, it was because they were full of coppers so they weren’t worth nicking, and, because they were full of coppers, nobody could lift the fucking things anyway!

Review - The Warden

A masterpiece and, fittingly for a novel about money, a plot that revolves around accountability. It’s a compelling story of a good man who tries above all to do good in an imperfect world where others, through ignorance or because they are misguided or, in the case of members of the press, because they are vile, cause harm either intentionally or unintentionally.
This is a stunning novel, but with every turn of the page the reader mutters ‘this will not end well’. The question here is not so much can a good man triumph? but rather what would his triumph look like, and what, coming back to accountability, would be the cost?
It is, however, an absolute joy to read.
I grew up in a cathedral town and, reading the description of Barchester in the opening pages of ‘The Warden’, where Trollope describes the town in loving detail, I was convinced that he had based his fictional Barchester on my home town. Trollope’s description of everything from the cathedral close to the alms houses that the plot of the novel turns on being, if not exact, then an entirely faithful depiction of the essence of the places in the town I grew up in.
Then again, anyone who has grown up in a cathedral town will probably claim the same. There is a pattern to those places. More probably, it is Trollope’s genius that makes the place familiar.
As there is a pattern to the cathedral closes of Barchester, there is a pattern to the story here too, although that is by no means a weakness. Rather, the reader progresses with a gathering sense of foreboding as the tale simultaneously unfolds and tangles.
An honourable man is confronted with a criticism of his character by a family friend when the accusation is levelled at him that he, the titular Warden of the alms houses, profits personally from an arrangements that sees the residents of the alms houses disadvantaged.
Essentially, everyone is content until an individual acts out of a misguided sense of public spiritness, with the situation further complicated when others with their own agenda intervene to their own ends.
This is, in short, an astonishing book, and a compelling read.
In it Trollope takes aim at some obvious targets, but justly so. Given that the principal characters in the book are clergymen, and the story features eminent lawyers, it really does say something that it is the press, and the popular press in particular, that is singled out for vilification. Trollope’s demolition of the principles of the press is absolute, his demonisation of those who sit in unaccountable judgement of others they do not even know, utter.
The Warden contains the best depiction of the unaccountability of the press, and the lack of care journalists have for individuals fed to the press that I have ever read. Trollope so neatly captures the self important arrogance of the popular press and those that write it that one is almost compelled to hire a muckspreader and head for Fleet Street to make a not very subtle point about what newspapers are full of.
Barely as the reader stopped muttering ‘fucking right Tony!’ when Trollope takes aim at the even less accountable, anonymous, ‘author’, the pamphleteer hiding behind an alias, sharing their ill informed opinions in a desperate bid to be as popular as they are smug (which would take some doing).
Having essentially destroyed the tabloids and bloggers, the reader might expect lawyers to come in for some criticism also. The reader is not disappointed.
The church itself is spared harsh criticism. True, it’s the Anglican faith being described here, so the only thing the choirboys need to be worried about is being late for evensong, but generally the priests of Bartchester are a jolly pleasant bunch who are genuinely committed to serving the spiritual needs of their flock.
‘The Warden’ is a compelling tale of the unintended consequences of the actions of those who meddle to do well, how events once set in motion can move beyond the control of those that set them in motion, and how those without morality or honour seek to exploit discord for personal gain.

Rolling bad news

If I’d committed a war-crime, I’d probably want to hide the evidence too.

A couple of weeks ago, special scientific instruments in remote observatories in Orkney, Peru and Western Australia measured a surge in British national pride.  The epicentre was Scotland, but it was felt throughout the United Kingdom and her dominions.  Queen Elizabeth (II) named a ship ‘the Queen Elizabeth’ and, unlike many quite lovely ships that have borne that name and are intended to transport the sort of people who really, really like buffets from port to port, this one is the very last thing in the world you want to see steaming in your direction after you have committed an act of aggression – an aircraft carrier.  Of course, there are smaller warships that carry racks of cruise missiles that can flatten cities, but fuck it, ‘Top Gun’ is not a film about clever chaps in white coats who programme guidance systems.  Aircraft carriers rule, the waves.

In fact it’s baffling that the Government is even considering not bringing the Queen Elizabeth’s sister (or more properly son) ship, the ‘Prince of Wales’ into service, as quickly as possible, because the last time I Googled ‘is the world getting safer?’, the answer still failed to come back ‘yes’.

This week, the news has made pretty grim viewing.  Rolling news has barely been able to keep up with rolling tanks, as the Israelis appear to be on something of a spree targeting, as far as I can work out, families and pharmacies.  The way they are going, they will have levelled the only kitten sanctuary in Gaza before the weekend is out.

Obviously, things are complicated.  Hammas are firing rockets into Israel, Israel are firing rockets, rolling tanks and undertaking air-strikes in Gaza.  The problem is that none of the fuckers appear to have gone to fucking school and learned how to fucking programme a fucking guidance system.  On Bonfire Night I occasionally light the blue touch paper on a rocket and hope for the best, but I’m not aiming the rocket at downtown Tel Aviv and the effect I’m hoping for is a pop and a colourful bloom of shimmering sparkles, not carnage.  When you are in charge of a weapons platform, you have to do rather more than hope for the best.

Which brings us to the arseholes who shot down an airliner this week.  The only thing that appears to be up for debate is whether the people that did it are actually evil, or just incompetent.

Now, I don’t know much about warplanes, but I do know this.  First, they don’t fly at 33,000 feet (they fly low, fast, unload everything and then back to base for tea and medals).  Secondly, they don’t fly along recognised commercial routes.  Thirdly, those inside warplanes do not watch in-flight movies and eat peanuts.  Those three things would make that dot in the sky a passenger jet and if you don’t know if it’s a warplane or a passenger jet, here’s an idea, don’t just hope for the best and press the red button.

In the absence of information, one can theorise to the point of conspiracy nutter.  Who stands to gain most and lose most (apart from the victims) as a result of this atrocity?  Was it a genuine accident?  A Ukrainian separatist militiaman is, after all, unlikely to be a professor of mechanical engineering on sabbatical and more likely to be some sheep-fucker attracted to military life by the prospect of a free balaclava, so it may have been a genuine accident.

But that looks less likely.  Barring access to the crash site is inhumane, but perfectly sensible if you want to dispose of any evidence.

Between Gaza and the Ukraine, it can seem as if the world is teetering a little.  At times like this, what you need is a counterweight.  65,000 tonnes of aircraft carrier should just about do it.  Actually, better be safe, make that 130,000 tonnes.

Of course, it could just be that the arseholes are denying access to the crash site so that they can loot iPods.  And I hope every single one has Toby Keith’s greatest hits on it.  You fuckers.

Toby Keith - Red, White and blueneck

Vietnam was the first televised war, and the first time many people saw that iconic image from the inside of a Chinook helicopter sweeping low over a combat zone, a lone crewman standing, silhouetted, ready by the open tailgate as the jungle wheels below. 

Successive conflicts have changed the landscape glimpsed out of the tailgate, but not the image, or the message; if you are a bad guy, the very, very best you can hope for is that they’ve rigged up a tail-gun and you are about to be sprayed with bullets, the alternative is that the thing is going to touch down on it’s rear end, rearing up like a begging dog or a prancing stallion depending on how you like your imagery, and a bunch of hard-ass soldiers are going to pour out of that tail gate, determined on making your life interesting for the next few minutes.  That’s a moment that’ll have you revaluating your life choices. (Remember kids, pick-up trucks are for transporting lumber and dogs, not weapons or youths in flip-flops carrying automatic weapons).

General rule, you had better be terrified of whatever comes out of the back end of a Chinook, and yes friends, that includes country singer Toby Keith strumming his guitar in the video for ‘Courtesy of the red, white and blue’.  Because Toby Keith has weaponised folk music.

I first heard of this chap way back, when his video ‘I wanna talk about me’ was featured on Jonathan King’s (a teevee personality judged to be so odious that he was convicted of being a nonce or whatever many years before Yewtree was even set up) show ‘Entertainment USA’.  But it took twenty years and a global act of terrorism before I heard another of his songs, ‘Beer for my horses, whisky for my men’.  Thanks to Youhootube, I was able to see what else the guy had been up to.

Keith is, it would appear, the epitome of a country rock star.  His songs, at least the ones that are popular on Hoooeeeeeetube are either rich with folksy charm (‘I love this bar’ is about, well, take a wild guess, and ‘Trailerhood’ is an affectionate tribute to those sorts of communities that can be regarded as ‘tornado fodder’) or essentially pissed off promises to kick bad-guy ass, of which ‘Courtesy of the red white and blue’ is probably the best example.

Country is an interesting medium.  In terms of sentimentality, only one other music genre comes close – hip-hop.  Who can fail to be moved by the exhortation to put the bonds of friendship before carnal desire or even romantic attachment (or possibly gardening equipment) or, as it’s so neatly encapsulated, bro’s before hoes?

Country music allows men to sing with real feeling about the sort of things that men feel passionately about but, as men, are not allowed to express feelings about, and ignore completely those asinine things that men, generally, do get overly worked up about in public.  This is why there are great country songs about family, home and every variation of woman trouble known to man but, thankfully, none about football.

It’s also the music of the cowboy, the tree with a convenient branch, the length of rope and the hemp fandango, in short, frontier justice.  Keith does righteously-pissed-off really, really well.  If you were about to jump out of the back of a Chinook to give the sort of arsehole who thinks kidnapping schoolgirls is a proper occupation for a man, you’d probably not have ‘Courtesy’ on your iPod for the simple reason that you’d want to set your rifle down and settle the thing with your bare hands, but I bet it makes a hell of a tune to get everyone singing on the way back from a successful mission.  He channels the sort of baffled anger many people feel when they watch some atrocity unfolding on the news, and conveys perfectly that guys who love their bar and their trailerhood are the very, very last people to annoy, because when they saddle up and start rolling, God help the unjust.  Shakespeare had something to say about self-depreciating hard-asses in Henry V, but Keith’s take on it isn’t bad.

Of course, if you want a really angry singer, you need to listen to Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Wrecking Ball’.  It sounds like he recorded the entire album after somebody took away his punchbag and his medication, simply astonishing.

Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

Bloomin' trenches!

The 2014 Hampton Court flower show was, as always, fantastic.  The stand out garden had to be the WWI shell-crater garden, complete with actors explaining what life was like in the trenches (shite!).

A man appreciating art.

It’s crowded this year.  It takes more than low cloud the colour of lead and the sort of humidity normally associated with latitudes and morals that make it socially acceptable to drink gin at/for lunch to put off the RHS faithful, but the promise of good(ish) weather has brought out, well, the fair-weather show-goers too.

Accordingly, you need to be mindful of personal space.  This is not just because every second person appears to be dragging a small plastic trolley behind them, like the horticultural equivalent of the wee wifie out for her Saturday messages with her tartan shopper, but also because many people have plants in bags.  The bags themselves contain just an average plant pot with soil, but the plants can extend up to three foot and more, and swing along beside their owner like fragile metronomes. 

(The etiquette on accidentally beheading what was, five minutes ago, a prized purchase is to act casual, use the damaged flower as a buttonhole and deny all responsibility, explaining that you were by the Pimms tent when this tragedy must have happened.  For this reason you must always be drinking Pimms).

Pimms makes the crowds tolerable, that’s why it’s the perfect summer drink, it also makes spectating at summer sporting events bearable.  If your team loses at cricket, it takes five days for this to happen.  That’s a long time to travel from a state of anxiety to disappointment.  Pimms is the HS2 of mood enhancers, it takes you straight from anxiety to relaxed without all that faffing around at weepy, depressed and angry.

Also part of the crowd this year, mobility scooters, chariots of dire. 

Now, I am all for people who would not normally be able to enjoy events being able to enjoy them to their fullest, but isn’t that what telly is for?  I’ve never been to the British Grand Prix, but I’ve watched it on telly and, unlike anyone who actually went along, I was home opening a beer just as soon as the winner crossed that finish line. 

More needs to be done on integrating these things into crowds I think, as a muted peeping noise is just not enough warning that some sod driving what appears to be a small car is barrelling up behind you with a sense of entitlement and a small child on their lap.  Maybe they could double as plant porters next year.

Scarecrow?  Or cunning device used to fool German prison guards?  For months at morning parade they thought this was 4287623 Private 'Pinky' Brown.

The plant porters were much in evidence this year, youths with wheelbarrows ferrying around purchases for folk.  But really, plant porters, must you all snooze in your wheelbarrows when not working?  Just because it forms a stock shot on the BBC show coverage each year doesn’t mean you have to recreate the scene.  This is an RHS show, not Titchmarsh cos-play.  It’s like some twisted Anne Geddes tableaux.  Worse, a gangling teen asleep in a barrow just looks like another Friday night when the agricultural college students have drunk themselves insensible.

As well as the more ordinary examples of show-goer, there are some rare blooms, that special breed that leave their garden only a few times a year, this being one of them, and are identifiable by having dirt under their fingernails so old it will form the basis of a ‘Time Team’ special later in the year, and by having at least one garment fastened using something normally used in the garden, such as twine, or a dibber.

Over at the growing tastes marquee, one thought occurred – I fucking hate the recession.  Back when Tony Blair or Gordon Brown was PM, you could come here and be insensible of free samples of gin within the hour.  Now, the cheese samples resemble the crumbs left over when one has had one last go at the cheese-board on Christmas Day.  One bloke was even handing out samples of cheese with tweezers.

Also, parents, just because young children get into the show for free does not mean that you are required to bring them.

Who'se the Daddy?

Right!

Let’s be quite clear, I love condiments.

I occasionally consider that food, actual food, is essentially a primitive condiment delivery system (the same way that celery performs two functions; a thousand island dressing long spoon, and a jaunty adornment to your bloody Mary (the acceptable face of problem drinking)).

Condiments represent, to me at least, that moment in man’s evolution after he had tamed the beasts of the field (by cooking them) and the fruits (and veg) of the land (by turning them into alcohol…no, dammit, by roasting them on a Sunday alongside a joint of Beast o’ the Field) but before it all went Captain Titsup and his Carnival of Terror and industrialists instead of cooks started producing food.

(BTFW: Message to all ready-meal makers – I can add my own salt.  Salt is a readily available substance and many English people are quite capable of shaking it onto their food.  Normally before they have even tasted it.)

Condiments come from a golden age of food when people were thinking ‘oooh, these spices are interesting, what happens if I snort some…'

…twenty minutes later, when they had quite recovered, they decided that mixing spices with a vinegar base was a better idea.  And so condiments were born.

My favourite?  Worcestershire Sauce, naturally (see above), but I think a close second would be brown sauce.

It used to be HP Sauce.  Not now.

HP Sauce used to be made in England, it is now made abroad.

I have no problem with foreign condiments.  Tabasco sauce perks up a meal, especially when your host has neglected to mention it is a feature.  Still, who doesn’t sweat at dinner?

But, really?  It’s not EU Sauce, it’s HP sauce.  Houses of Parliament.  It has a history connected with England which if you could be arsed to ask Siri, I am sure she would tell you all about.  Surely this is the sort of thing that the EU invented that thing for food where it can only be made in the area it’s named, like Melton Mowbray pork pies, or some sort of cheese that can only be made by a particular cow in a specific field.

Also, it now tastes different.  And fuck right off if you are of the opinion that every single ingredient, including the bloke that stirred the mixture, was imported and is hence still the same.  It just does.  The same way that Banks’s Bitter took on hints of piss, shire horse piss mind, but still piss, once the brewer changed.

HP sauce is now made in the Netherlands, which may be neither here nor there, but that it is made abroad is, I think, important, because this is something that can raise a sausage to a religious experience.

Every time we sauce our sausages we are hoping for something extraordinary.

I have had a lot of sausages in a lot of places.  Generally the best have been from roadside cafes where I strongly suspect they have their own sauce recipe, which is the dregs from all their previous sauce bottles cut with (oh God I really hope it’s) vinegar.  In which case somebody should market it, although in retrospect the reason the sauces were so good is probably because they had been fermenting in a hot caravan for a while and hence are  a) mildly alcoholic and b) insanely wrong to serve to HGV drivers.

Hey ho.

But to the point.  HP Sauce is polluted.  Not actually, spiritually.  That’s why, when it comes to brown sauce, in the absence of a Roadside Cafe, I go Daddies.

It may possibly be owned by the same people, and made in the same factory, by the same stirrer guy (or lady), but it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not.

Because a sauce is created to add flavour, not disguise it, and for that reason it needs to be honest.

The Big Off, it's the Tour de France...in England

If you want something done right, do it in Britain.

No matter what your event, it goes better in Britain.  The best Olympics ever?  London.  Best city for a marathon?  London.  Greatest arts festival in the world?  Edinburgh. 

But if you want something done exceptionally do it in Yorkshire.

This is a country with special qualities.  Yorkshire is often described as ‘God’s own country’, especially by Yorkshiremen.

Yorkshiremen are without doubt the lovliest people in the world, who can greet you with a cheery ‘ow do?’ with equal enthusiasm and with their flat cap equally horizontal in sun, sleet, snow or rain…when they are in Yorkshire.

The moment they step outside the County, you truly understand why they refer to it as God’s own country; to hear them endlessly bang on about it you’d think it was the Garden of Eden as they bring a missionary zeal to describing just how bloody great Yorkshire is.  Tirelessly.

So, best stage of the Tour de France ever?  Yorkshire.  Naturally.

It would appear that the simple solution to securing the success of any sporting spectacle is simple; hold it in Britain.

Especially cycling.  And no wonder.  This is a country that loves cycling.  When you’re a lid cycling means freedom, when you’re an adult cycling means being able to purchase loads of cool gear and nod meaningfully when people talk about carbon fibre.  And no wonder we produce such talent.  Every kid with a bike has the capacity to become a world champion.  And plenty of them have a training regime from an early age, up at an early hour summer and winder, putting in the miles.  They’d go even faster if they didn’t have to stop every few yeards and put newspapers through people’s doors.

But it’s not just children.  The sight of men in lycra thundering along Britain’s roads is not at all an unusual one.  Or a pretty one.  The sight of athletes, who actually look good in lycra, thundering along Britain’s roads, is a little rarer.  And a lot prettier, if you like thighs.

Usually the sort of chap to be seen of a weekend, top to toe cycling gear, looks like he is racing towards a pub or pie shop rather than a yellow jersey and a drugs test.  Middle aged, but like many middle-aged men not old enough to know better, men who wander into cycle shops appear to suffer from the same condition that grips the type of man who purchases an insanely powerful motor cycle, or lots of Lego.  They are trying to recapture their youth, which is something of a challenge no matter how hard one peddles.

The Tour de France traditionally starts with a stage called ‘The Big Off’, which takes place outside France.  Usually this takes place in a country so near France that it is indistinguishable from France, like Belgium, which is either a country or a beer and mussels theme park, I’ve never been sure.

In truth, the nation is right to be excited about hosting the Big Off.  It’s actually right to be over-excited about hosting the Big Off.  This is a big deal.

Because the Tour de France is impressive, the race footage tends to be swooping helicopter shots of idyllic villages, castles and monasteries.  It should really be accompanied by a swirling, stirring orchestral score and a telephone number at the bottom of the screen to ring to get your brochure.

The excitement has been building for some time now, developing into expectation.  This is drama, this is excitement, speed, colour, swooshing along roads, flinging water bottles left and right, the crowds loving it and, of course, the names of the villages being rendered in French on the BBC, something that will especially cheer a certain class of claret-coloured illiberal xenophobe and possibly stimulate UKIP membership.

This is the greatest Big Off ever because it’s taking place in a country that loves cycling, is used to putting up with road closures, is enthusiastic to the point of mania when it comes to cheering and is taking place in a country so beautiful one might be mistaken for thinking some of it is CGI for a fantasy film.

Making wristbands at the festival

Music festival time is upon us again and, if they are proliferating then who is to blame, in these times of agricultural diversification, any farmer using his fields for that cash crop that is middle class people listening to music with their faces painted.

There’s the Big Festival, there’s the Folk Festival (formally the Crusty Festival), there’s the Hipster Festival (formally the other Folk Festival), there’s the Other Folk Festival (formally a Great little Folk Festival That The Family Really Enjoyed), there’s the Family Festival (formally Just Another festival until somebody added a comedy tent, a poetry tent and a puppet theatre), there’s the Rock Festival and, of course, there’s the Corporate Festival In The Park, probably sponsored by a credit card company or arms dealer.

There’s lots of festivals.  Want yours to stand out?  Here’s how you do it.

Every ticket holder gets their own toilet.  Which is cleaned every three hours.

Impractical?  Have you seen the price of tickets for festivals recently?  Never mind Madonna playing your festival, for the sort of money you could pay her, the woman would be on with the marigolds and forming a supergroup with Kim and Aggie.

If you had sensational toilet facilities at your festival, then I don’t care if thanks to Time Lord technology you had the original line up of the Beatles headlining, all everyone would talk about when they got home was that after a three day diet of lentil burgers, tofu shakes and whatever the fuck kale is, which is the only sort of thing permitted by law to be sold at a music festival instead of food, nobody had a bad word to day about the cludgies.

Want to enjoy music festivals?  Well, it used to be that wags would suggest you watch on telly, put the telly down the end of your garden to simulate a stage not just in a different post code but in a different time zone, charge yourself ten quid for a warm lager and fifty quid for a bag of something that comes in a baggie that still bears the ‘Barts’ logo on the side.  Then spend three hours trying to find the tent you have pitched in your garden.  That’s all very well except that if you actually attend the festival you don’t have to contend with teevee presenters doing live links.

Jesus.  What is it about deejays and live telly.  Presumably, these people should be quite good at live broadcasting, as most radio shows are live, allowing the deejay to react to news, read out tweets and make emotional farewells, promising their listeners they will be back after their trial where they are confident they will be acquitted.  Maybe it’s the camera, deejays look into the camera like members of the public from 1950s Pathe films who had never seen a camera before, they are hypnotised, or off their faces.

The best way to enjoy a festival is to cover it as a journalist, as this means that no bad the acts or how disappointing it is that a singer you really liked has turned into one of those massive dicks that think it’s acceptable to hold their microphone out to the audience when performing a song (and oh, how we yearn for 10,000 people to chant Wanker! Wanker! The second they do so), you’re still getting paid, and you get to leave mid-afternoon on day one, which is about the time when the toilets turn.

If you can’t photoshop a press pass using the ‘Tattler’ logo and a home laminating kit (trade secret…invest in a convincing lanyard, one that says ‘Chelsea FC’ is unlikely to fool even the dimmest security guard, who is probably a fanb and has one of his own at home) then the best way to enjoy is to up your accommodation budget.  This is available in several packages:

Bronze – a day pack, 200 wet wipes and a carton of pro-plus.  Who needs to sleep, or regular bowel movements for a week afterwards.  Just white-knuckle three days of festival fun.

Silver – a yurt.  If you’re an absolute cunt, this is the festival accommodation for you.  Make sure to bring your own dreamcatcher.  Today’s yurt dweller knows that when it comes to wifi and being able to bang on endlessly about a spiritual experience, nothing beats a yurt.  If, however, you arrive to take possession of your yurt not in a hybrid people-carrier but at the head of a rabble of restless Mongols and a herd of yak ready for slaughter and barbecue, then that is a different proposition entirely.

Gold – (always believe in your soul!) helicopter.  In, bop, out.

Platinum – ahhhh, here we go.  Motor home.  Do you know what the difference between living as God intended and living like an animal is?  Six inches.  That’s the distance separating the ground from the bottom of your camper van.  Drive up, park up, plug in, barter some steaks from that nice Mr Khan in the yurt paddock, then turn on your telly and watch the festival with a finger covering over the ‘mute’ button in preparation for the arrival on screen of the lackwits who present the thing.  As for red button coverage, if I press a red button I expect to see a surface to twat missile streaking away from the launcher on top of my camper van and vaporising whatever cultural excrescence has offended me, most likely somebody who wears sunglasses indoors and says ‘like’ too often.

Anyway, this post was supposed to be about wristbands.

Different tribes have different markers for honour, success, experience.  In the military, your medals show the world that you have a nodding relationship with heroism.  In the racing world, the form is to suspend your enclosure passes from your field glasses, resulting over time in a rather pleasing multicoloured effect not unlike a paper lei.  If you are a regular festival goer, then your scars are your wristbands.

A wristband is an easy way to ensure that only the people who are supposed to be in a place are in that place.  By the way, if you are anywhere where you have to wear a wristband, you might want to think about what you can do to become the sort of person who doesn’t need a wristband to be at that event.  My advice?  Photoshop.  Home laminator.  A very small loom that can produce a lanyard that reads ‘Reuters’).  They are popular with festival organisers because once they are on, thanks to the wonders of modern synthetic materials, the person wearing them is going to rot faster than the wristband, essential given the need to establish if somebody had paid the £800 entry fee or tunnelled under the fence, and essential given the festival microclimate.

In most circumstances, those allocated a wristband can’t wait to cut that fucker off the moment they leave hospital, which is about the only other place where knowing somebody’s identity is really really important and they are not always drug-free enough to tell you.  Not so the festival wristband.  For some reason, festival goers like to continue to wear their wrist bands, and these are wrist bands that didn’t even give them fast-track access to the executive cludgie, long after the festival has finished.

Harmless, probably.  Decorative, possibly.  Twatty, definitely.