Romance ahoy

One of the best things about renting films on iTunes and streaming them is that there are no tedious adverts to sit through. In particular there are no 'piracy' adverts (not, you might imagine a timely public service announcement about giving the coast of Somalia a wide berth if in anything less than an battleship, but about movie piracy, and not the ones starring Johnny Depp either). If the authorities are serious about catching the movie pirates then I suggest they do a round of pubs and arrest the people selling dodgy DVDs out of a basket (why the hell is it always a basket?), or go to a car booter, rather than litter the front end of DVDs with crap adverts

Those adverts were hellish annoying, and, for those of us who have seen it all before, doubly irritating.

Because back in the day when they had proper record shops (independent, small, dusty, run by staff who cared deeply...about being smug), proper records (vinyl), and proper pop stars (blokes wore more make up than the women, hair like a startled seagull, shoulder pads you could land a 747 on), records used to come with a little sign in the corner of the sleeve declaring that home taping would kill the music industry.

No, Simon Cowell did. What home taping did was allow the cation of the mix tape which, before the invention of STDs, was the best way to show somebody that you loved them.

Back in the 80s, nobody could be arsed with the analogue version of file sharing, that is, copying an LP onto a cassette for your mates and then handing them round in the playground. Instead, everyone used to go round each others' houses and listen to the music together. Home taping was more or less reserved for taping the top 40 on a Sunday, a practice that nobody ever indulged in more than a couple of times because of the nerve-shredding skill required to record a song without the DJ talking over the intro and then speaking again over the last few seconds. I am sure that attics and sheds the country over are full of recordings of the middle of pop songs and the first syllable of 'that was...'.

As a romantic gift though, the mix tape was ideal. It was personal, it sent a message and it was cheap, leaving a young man (men make mix tapes, women receive mix tapes) plenty in the budget for Lynx should things go well. They also make the ideal anonymous gift, being easily posted, deposited, or gaffa-taped to the front door of the object of your affection.

The small card inlay is an ideal canvas for not just the track listing, but exquisite biro art, with plenty of hearts and flowers. The tracks can be jaunty pop songs interspersed with the occasional gushy ballad. It's all about hitting the right note, conveying how you feel about a person. Having the same song played over and over and over again rarely results in a successful seduction but if it does, hold onto the tape because when the inevitable break-up occurs, you'll be able to listen to it repeatedly while sobbing and thinking this was 'our song'.

The tricky thing was gauging the reaction and judging whether to risk public humiliation and private heartache. Best result, you hear her saying how great she thought the tape was, casually reveal you were glad she liked it and you arrange to do something interesting involving chips. Bad result, you hear her saying how great she thought the tape was, some other scrote expresses an interest in the same bands and she either lends him the tape or they arrange to go off and do something interesting, involving chips. Apocalyptic result, you get the tape back the next day, it has been recorded over, with the sounds of her brother and his friends doing very bad impressions of you declaring your love for his little sister. It ends not as you are now hoping with a death threat, but instead a message from the object of your affection kindly explaining that you appreciate the thought, but don't ever speak to her again, posting stuff anonymously is creepy, being spotted in the bushes doing so is worse, and your taste in music is atrocious.

The mix tape was a rite of passage and recording one, even if you never sent it, was an important formative cultural event in the life of a young man. Today it's easier than ever to make a mix CD or playlist, and I wonder if there are lovelorn bedroom DJs out there patiently assembling a twelve track message of affection, or if it's a thing of the past. File sharing may well be piracy, but using music to send a romantic message is surely what the damn stuff was invented for in the first place. Send somebody a mix tape, you're not a music pirate, you're a love buccaneer.

A bloggable offence - kebab couple

So what goes in a blog? Easy, if you have a themed blog, reviewing sandwiches (especially exciting at seasonal holidays when festive flavours and 'special editions' are on offer, who can forget the 'Sandwich Nook' festive offering from Christmas 2008; the 'Lapland loaf' that, when the filling was discovered, became known as the 'red Rudolph' and known to parents as 'the reason my child cried to the point of dehydration'. Ill advised as it was to use an animal that appears on Christmas cards as a sandwich filling, that was as nothing to the fuss their 'Wind in the willows' triple decker caused. That, and the surprising discovery many made that lots of people are allergic to badger, is the reason you don't see any 'Sandwich Nook' shops on the high street any more) or something where your stimulus is supplied on a regular basis. More problematic where the blog is about as focused as a fog bank, but less of a problem if your supply of happy pills has dried up and you can find something to be articulately outraged about on a daily basis and use the blog as a therapeutic rant which doubles as an economic measure, relieving you of the necessity of purchasing a stamp to mail your paranoid ramblings to the Daily Telegraph, or more likely from the stress-inducing deadlines one faces as a columnist on the Daily Mail.

I like themed blogs. I love those blogs that review things, like toilet roll or instant pot meals, and really love the enthusiasm and delight that the writers convey when, having exhausted the supply of martial on the shelves of national chain supermarkets, they discover regional chains and independents selling different brands, then start buying foreign brands on the internet. I'm not sure what I'd like to review least, an instant pot meal from an unlikely country with a GDP measured in goats that hasn't had an election since the British packed up and left, or toilet roll from the sort of place where the President gets driven around in a stretch tractor and the currency is a root vegetable. All I know is, if I had eaten the former, I'd be grateful for a large supply of the latter.

Ultimately, when not blogging about something; a favourite television show, books, films, comics, chocolates, rabbits, hinges, wigs, shoes, ducks, being left handed in a right handed world, having one of those blogs where you record a something-of-the-day like your poo or your kids' paintings or something else that really, really, really, is only of interest to you and even then should not be of that much interest, or if you just post occasional pictures of kittens, then blogging tends to be about nothing. A random thought, experience or image captured forever and recorded for posterity.

Like the other night, in the kebab shop.

I like my kebab shop. I know the chaps, the chaps know me. We grunt our greetings and at Christmas exchange mumbled compliments of the season. I don't go to the kebab shop for social intercourse, I go to the kebab shop for a kebab, or occasionally a burger, and for chips. The kebabs really are excellent and I should clarify that they are not purchased when I'm drunk or consumed when weaving down the street leaving a trail of dropped onion slices, the snail trail of the kebab consuming inebriated, but rather provide a delightful alternative to cooking ones own dinner and, importantly, bring a touch of that 'going out for dinner' sensation but with the added bonus that one can eat dinner at home (and my idea, Dragons, is for a restaurant chain where the seating is not the traditional table and chair set up, but rather a sofa, a telly and a couple of trays, and which will serve customers who wish to wear pyjama bottoms).

This night the couple ahead of me in the kebab shop looked young, groomed, and in that stage of their relationship where personality kinks are endearing rather than bloody irritating. Giggling like freshly medicated loons and touching each other like a pair of grooming monkeys, they eventually made their choice of supper.

A kebab.

To share.

It was, I think, difficult to decide what it was about their behaviour that I found most contemptible, hence the blog entry, to order my thoughts.

That a man would share his kebab is bad. That any self-respect woman would be seen with a man who would share his kebab is bad. That when faced with the 'let's just order one portion and two spoons' challenge, the bloke folded, is bad - but understandable, he will learn later that it's better to put a stop to that kind of behaviour early on rather than have to explain at some later date that he ordered the cheesecake because he wants a slice of cheesecake, and that if she also wants cheesecake, then please tell the nice man with the order pad that she wants cheesecake, not an extra spoon, unless she intends to help herself from food from a neighbouring table, because she sure as hell isn't getting any cheesecake and...why are you crying?

Written down, I realise that my thoughts were as mean as they were unnecessary. On balance it's better that young couples touch each other in kebab shops and, presumably, feed each other morsels of kebab once home. I expect to find kebabs, burgers, chips, a warm welcome and slightly shameful fellow customers at the kebab shop, I don't expect to find romance. So maybe my reaction was shock.

But I maintain that it's a bad idea to share your kebab.