www.paulcoia.com
A few weeks ago I mentioned the Croydon Von Trapp fan club who I encountered in Salzburg on their Sound of Music tour. One of them, Mo, texted me this week whilst I was working on Smooth Radio.
Mo, a dear, a female dear, was listening to my show and wanted to join in. She and the other listeners are a great lot, both funny and clever and, as I’m about to head off on holiday, I thought I’d give the blog over to them this week and let you enjoy their thoughts.
On Monday I asked what the biggest lie told by our listeners was and amongst the expected white lies to parents and partners, Bill from London shamefacedly admitted his great lie came from when he dated women as a single man. He used to turn to them romantically and say “It’s OK, I’m infertile”.
The insight Bill and others give in to their lives is truly wonderful and I’ve even found out about other generations of their families. For instance, when I asked what was the biggest disappointment in listeners’ lives, Beverley in Middleton admitted to being gutted to discover recently that her Dad hadn’t really killed hundreds of the enemy in the war as he’s always told her. She found papers confirming he was a chef. And Jim in Glasgow told me he’d grown up thinking his Dad was very religious as he used to leave the house every evening for a few hours saying “I’m away to The Bible Class”. It was only when Jim became a teenager he discovered this was the name of a pub in the Gorbals.
Next day, following the story of David Gray being upset by his music being played to inmates at Guantanamo Bay as a form of torture, I asked what song the listeners would put on to annoy people. A guy called Mike admitted in a text that, at the end of the night in his local pub, he used to select Oh Superman by Lori Anderson and put it on repeat play as he left the pub to go home. The idea that the remaining revellers would be suffering that six minute single over and over made him smile all the way home.
Jean emailed to say she is a receptionist and, at certain times of the month when she’s moody, she deliberately puts her son’s Metallica songs on the telephone system at work while people are waiting.
When I asked where listeners liked to hide things when they were younger and what objects they tended to hide there, our best answers came from youngsters. Susan who is twelve texted in to say her brother, Simon who is eight, hides his chewing gum behind his ear, while Hannah who is ten emailed to tell me that her brother George knows when washing day is approaching and deliberately hides snails from the garden in his pockets so that his mum gets a surprise when emptying them.
Bill informed us that he usually hides himself under the bed until the husband has gone back downstairs.
As a presenter, asking your audience to join in like this has many advantages. I get a real laugh and feel in touch with the listeners, the audience feels involved and they basically write my script for me. Take last Tuesday when I asked who they would take on holiday if they could choose absolutely anyone.
Barry wanted to take Jesus on holiday because he felt God’s son could do with a bit of a rest, Pete in Salford wanted Frank Spencer as his companion for a few laughs and Margaret from Glasgow wanted to invite the comedian, actor and noted transvestite Eddie Izzard. As she said, “it would be someone to have a laugh with, but also, think of all those clothes I could borrow”.
Many ladies of a certain age found their imaginations running riot and variously picked Piers Brosnan, Yul Bryner, Brad Pitt and George Clooney but one lady from Nottingham went in to great detail about how she and Mel Gibson would get snowed in after an avalanche and spend weeks digging themselves out with just one chopstick.
But I think my favourite on this subject came from Danny in Coventry who wanted to take Tony Blair on holiday. Was it for a chat about politics? Global warming? Third World debt? No, it was “so that I could guarantee I wouldn’t have to pay for anything”.
Perhaps the best response came when I asked for inappropriate presenters for TV shows. Some of the replies were hilarious but defamation and libel laws mean they cannot be read out on radio, or indeed printed here, however one of the tamer ones came from Steve in Tipton who nominated John Leslie to present ITV show Loose Women. Strictly Come Dancing should have a new host, according to Sam in Barwell, who suggested Stephen Hawking for the role, Cops On Camera was to be presented by the Kray Twins and Songs Of Praise will get Gordon Ramsay in charge if Gaz in his white van gets his way.
Wisely, the listener who suggested Rose West fronting Family Fortunes didn’t want to be identified.
I will miss this daily fun over the next few weeks as I lie by the pool sipping Margueritas and Smoothies, listening to my iPod and working out which restaurant to eat in at night, but I’ll just have to cope, somehow.
Have a hazy, lazy summer and I’ll see you in a few weeks.
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Oldest Swingers In Town
www.paulcoia.com
It’s a cliché, but true I guess, that there’s no fool like an old fool - and anyone who thinks that means that this week’s blog is going to be autobiographical is being mean, hurtful and is going to the bad fire.
The old fools I’m referring to are the increasing number of male pensioners who, as Billy Ocean once said “run around town like a fool and think that they’re groovy”. And I’m not just talking here about guys who refuse to grow up – nothing wrong with that, it’s part of the gender description - but rather about those oldest swingers in town who enjoy being photographed with a Barbie on their arm.
Salman Rushdie, Mick Jagger and Peter Stringfellow have always been at it, trading in the current girlfriend when her braces come off, but now we have the bloke from Tyne and Wear who was this week accused of stealing a priceless Shakespeare portfolio. He is in his Fifties while his girlfriend is twenty one. And I really expected better of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood who entered rehab this week after disappearing for a few days with a girl almost old enough to use her pink Pay As You Go phone to call the Tooth Fairy and ask for a delivery of wisdom teeth.
And what about Gary Lineker whose girlfriend is the same age as my plasma TV or Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik who is dating one of the Cheeky Girls. Making love to an odd looking, charmless, strange faced individual must be upsetting but, fair play, Lembit Opik managed it for over a year even though he’s old enough to be her father’s older mate.
At least Hugh Heffner has the decency to keep three or four on the go at once so their collective ages add up to his, but I’m left wondering just why all these old guys go so easily from slippers to slappers. The simplistic answer is that the guy gets the prestige of other blokes mentally high fiving him because he got a dolly bird with a beautiful, flawless, gravity defying cleavage while she gets access to the large, well used, battered old wallet and bank account. I think it’s called tit for tat.
I have summer bedding plants in my garden that are older than some of these girls and I just cannot imagine what these odd couples find to talk about. I’m guessing that she’ll chat about false boobs when he mentions his false teeth, she’ll speak of hip hop to divert the conversation from his hip op, and then she’ll mention Jay Z while he’s showing off his LayZee recliner. But what then?
There must be a few embarrassing silences and misunderstandings. When she says she wants a Wii does he hand her the chamber pot from under his bed?
I have to confess that I once went out with a twenty year old, but I was nineteen at the time and so it defeats me what is going through Ronnie Wood’s mind just now. His pal Mick Jagger is notoriously careful with his millions and I wonder if Ronnie is attracted by the thought of buying cheap presents from Clare’s Accessories. Is he relishing the money saved when the girlfriend travels to see him for half price on the bus, and what about the pounds saved on restaurants with the promise that their happy meals together will be at McDonalds?
It seems Ronnie is going out of his way to affirm the stereotype of us men as daft old gits who fall for flattery every time. Not that I’ve ever been flattered you understand, unless you count an ex girlfriend who told me one night at Glasgow’s Maestro’s nightclub that I was a great dancer. I had actually been burned on the arm by a cigarette waved around by a girl squashed up beside me on the disco floor and was stamping on it in temper to put it out.
I’d love to find a reason for Ronnie’s behaviour but I can’t. We could excuse his off piste adventure as a mid life crisis but, unless he’s going to live to be a thousand years old, the old charmer must have passed his mid life point when they discovered electricity. What a day that must have been when he plugged his lute in for the first time to work out the chord progressions of Greensleeves.
As she digs him, he digs the garden, and this relationship is a recipe for disaster with the mother of all arguments between them when Gardener’s World and Sabrina The Teenage Witch clash on TV. But perhaps Ronnie can turn to his old band compatriot Bill Wyman for advice. His mid life crisis led him to marry Mandy Smith who bought her wedding dress from Asda’s dressing up playtime range.
I realise this takes effort and it must be a struggle for these men pretending to be hip and trendy, learning all the latest band names and being able to tell their Dizee Rascals from their Ting Tings whilst knowing how to say the word posse without sounding like a Wild West sheriff. But as we get older God gives us wrinkles for a reason. We’re supposed to stay hidden away, lying flat, to stop gravity’s worst excesses whilst young people stagger home from clubs singing at the top of their voices. It’s practically the law.
Old and young don’t mix in romance so, guys, get over it. We’re not high fiving you, we’re laughing at you. And don’t tell me I am just jealous, because I’m not.
Well, maybe just a bit.
It’s a cliché, but true I guess, that there’s no fool like an old fool - and anyone who thinks that means that this week’s blog is going to be autobiographical is being mean, hurtful and is going to the bad fire.
The old fools I’m referring to are the increasing number of male pensioners who, as Billy Ocean once said “run around town like a fool and think that they’re groovy”. And I’m not just talking here about guys who refuse to grow up – nothing wrong with that, it’s part of the gender description - but rather about those oldest swingers in town who enjoy being photographed with a Barbie on their arm.
Salman Rushdie, Mick Jagger and Peter Stringfellow have always been at it, trading in the current girlfriend when her braces come off, but now we have the bloke from Tyne and Wear who was this week accused of stealing a priceless Shakespeare portfolio. He is in his Fifties while his girlfriend is twenty one. And I really expected better of Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood who entered rehab this week after disappearing for a few days with a girl almost old enough to use her pink Pay As You Go phone to call the Tooth Fairy and ask for a delivery of wisdom teeth.
And what about Gary Lineker whose girlfriend is the same age as my plasma TV or Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik who is dating one of the Cheeky Girls. Making love to an odd looking, charmless, strange faced individual must be upsetting but, fair play, Lembit Opik managed it for over a year even though he’s old enough to be her father’s older mate.
At least Hugh Heffner has the decency to keep three or four on the go at once so their collective ages add up to his, but I’m left wondering just why all these old guys go so easily from slippers to slappers. The simplistic answer is that the guy gets the prestige of other blokes mentally high fiving him because he got a dolly bird with a beautiful, flawless, gravity defying cleavage while she gets access to the large, well used, battered old wallet and bank account. I think it’s called tit for tat.
I have summer bedding plants in my garden that are older than some of these girls and I just cannot imagine what these odd couples find to talk about. I’m guessing that she’ll chat about false boobs when he mentions his false teeth, she’ll speak of hip hop to divert the conversation from his hip op, and then she’ll mention Jay Z while he’s showing off his LayZee recliner. But what then?
There must be a few embarrassing silences and misunderstandings. When she says she wants a Wii does he hand her the chamber pot from under his bed?
I have to confess that I once went out with a twenty year old, but I was nineteen at the time and so it defeats me what is going through Ronnie Wood’s mind just now. His pal Mick Jagger is notoriously careful with his millions and I wonder if Ronnie is attracted by the thought of buying cheap presents from Clare’s Accessories. Is he relishing the money saved when the girlfriend travels to see him for half price on the bus, and what about the pounds saved on restaurants with the promise that their happy meals together will be at McDonalds?
It seems Ronnie is going out of his way to affirm the stereotype of us men as daft old gits who fall for flattery every time. Not that I’ve ever been flattered you understand, unless you count an ex girlfriend who told me one night at Glasgow’s Maestro’s nightclub that I was a great dancer. I had actually been burned on the arm by a cigarette waved around by a girl squashed up beside me on the disco floor and was stamping on it in temper to put it out.
I’d love to find a reason for Ronnie’s behaviour but I can’t. We could excuse his off piste adventure as a mid life crisis but, unless he’s going to live to be a thousand years old, the old charmer must have passed his mid life point when they discovered electricity. What a day that must have been when he plugged his lute in for the first time to work out the chord progressions of Greensleeves.
As she digs him, he digs the garden, and this relationship is a recipe for disaster with the mother of all arguments between them when Gardener’s World and Sabrina The Teenage Witch clash on TV. But perhaps Ronnie can turn to his old band compatriot Bill Wyman for advice. His mid life crisis led him to marry Mandy Smith who bought her wedding dress from Asda’s dressing up playtime range.
I realise this takes effort and it must be a struggle for these men pretending to be hip and trendy, learning all the latest band names and being able to tell their Dizee Rascals from their Ting Tings whilst knowing how to say the word posse without sounding like a Wild West sheriff. But as we get older God gives us wrinkles for a reason. We’re supposed to stay hidden away, lying flat, to stop gravity’s worst excesses whilst young people stagger home from clubs singing at the top of their voices. It’s practically the law.
Old and young don’t mix in romance so, guys, get over it. We’re not high fiving you, we’re laughing at you. And don’t tell me I am just jealous, because I’m not.
Well, maybe just a bit.
Tuesday, July 15, 2008
The Hills Are Alive
www.paulcoia.com
Last week I hinted that my Austrian trip was uneventful. Well, I lied.
I saw a guy die, I visited a brothel, gathered with others around a skeleton which was being exhumed from the ground, got stuck in a lift, was serenaded, saw a part of movie history and was abducted by a pony and trap man. Not bad for a three day trip, eh?
I know you think I’m making it up but I’m not. Like a guy trying to impress a new date with his anatomy, I’m just exaggerating small bits.
For instance I didn’t see the guy die for real and nor did I visit a brothel, but I did attend the rehearsals of an opera set in a bordello with ladies running around half naked and with more hanky panky going on than on a Dubai beach full of British ex pats. I watched the hero prince take ages to die of stab wounds because, like all opera deaths, he took twenty attempts to snuff it. Every time he slumped to the floor the game singer came back gasping and choking to sing one last aria and then collapsed again theatrically like James Brown. I guess it was the thought of all the naked ladies that kept him returning for more but, if I’d had a gun, he and the rehearsal audience wouldn’t have suffered for quite so long.
Ask any new graduate language student and they’ll tell you that most of the world now speaks English or Spanish and that with opera you can usually expect to listen to Italian or German. So, armed with Common Languages For Dense People and another book called Opera For Idiots that I’d bought at the airport, I settled back but soon found myself completely lost till I discovered that this one was being sung in Czechoslovakian. I resisted the urge to sing along.
The opera was part of a festival and, next door, I interviewed the event’s boss on a stage set for Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t meet the singers but, being another opera, you just know that Romeo will be in his Sixties with dyed hair and a beard while Juliet will be so large they can use her bust for the balcony scene. The theatre was magnificent, carved out of a cliff face with hundreds of stone alcoves, and I recognised it as a piece of movie magic. It was the stage where the Von Trapp family sang in concert when trying to escape the Nazis towards the end of the film The Sound Of Music. Had they escaped to the room next door, the sound of Czech opera would have had them running back to surrender.
In Salzburg everywhere seems to be a location from that film which will please many on my flight out from the UK. All were ladies of a certain age with cropped grey hair who had saved up for years for their trip and were wearing T shirts announcing the Croydon Von Trapp Family Fan Club. Periodically I’d see them in horse drawn carriages singing The Lonely Goatherd around town but when I took a trip in a carriage for some filming, the driver mistook my director’s instructions of “go round and bring Paul back to do that piece to camera again”. He thought she’d said “take Paul and get lost”. God knows what he thought he was doing as we sped off but I had visions of being discovered in twenty years time in his cellar with several ladies from Croydon dressed in harnesses and eating hay.
As we trotted along he decided to tell me his life story, followed by a series of jokes all of which were anti women, and he kept repeating that he was happily divorced. I’ve a feeling his ex is even happier.
We passed a small crowd looking at a couple of archaeologists working outside the Residentz beside the Cathedral and they were carefully dusting off a skeleton which they’d found in the ground. That was a bit overwhelming. Here was someone from possibly centuries before with a story to tell but, having lost his tongue, lips, vocal chords and everything else, he was unable to brag or show off his blog. I’m going to follow this up and see what they find out about him over the next few months. If you happen to be outside the Salzburg Residentz over the next few weeks, you’ll see him lying in the square behind some netting. Be careful as he may burst back in to life and sing an aria or two before dying again.
The city is the birthplace of the composer Mozart and a visit to his house is an absolute must, not just to see where the musical genius was born but to marvel at and photograph the eight foot high plastic ice cream cone stuck tastefully on the front to advertise the sweet shop underneath. You can’t miss it as it has neon coloured scoops of strawberry and vanilla with pistachio on top, perhaps appropriate for a famous child prodigy. Later in life Mozart became a freemason which proves all precociously talented young people eventually go mad.
Salzburg is a great place to people watch and I recommend it highly. From the buskers on street corners playing their medieval instruments to the Salvador Dali effete twirly moustached men carrying arts catalogues and discussing the merits of pointillism in the art work of Sesame Street, there’s always someone to stare at and enjoy.
Oh, and I really did get stuck in that lift. It broke down while I was on my way to the opera rehearsal. Unfortunately they fixed it.
Last week I hinted that my Austrian trip was uneventful. Well, I lied.
I saw a guy die, I visited a brothel, gathered with others around a skeleton which was being exhumed from the ground, got stuck in a lift, was serenaded, saw a part of movie history and was abducted by a pony and trap man. Not bad for a three day trip, eh?
I know you think I’m making it up but I’m not. Like a guy trying to impress a new date with his anatomy, I’m just exaggerating small bits.
For instance I didn’t see the guy die for real and nor did I visit a brothel, but I did attend the rehearsals of an opera set in a bordello with ladies running around half naked and with more hanky panky going on than on a Dubai beach full of British ex pats. I watched the hero prince take ages to die of stab wounds because, like all opera deaths, he took twenty attempts to snuff it. Every time he slumped to the floor the game singer came back gasping and choking to sing one last aria and then collapsed again theatrically like James Brown. I guess it was the thought of all the naked ladies that kept him returning for more but, if I’d had a gun, he and the rehearsal audience wouldn’t have suffered for quite so long.
Ask any new graduate language student and they’ll tell you that most of the world now speaks English or Spanish and that with opera you can usually expect to listen to Italian or German. So, armed with Common Languages For Dense People and another book called Opera For Idiots that I’d bought at the airport, I settled back but soon found myself completely lost till I discovered that this one was being sung in Czechoslovakian. I resisted the urge to sing along.
The opera was part of a festival and, next door, I interviewed the event’s boss on a stage set for Romeo and Juliet. I didn’t meet the singers but, being another opera, you just know that Romeo will be in his Sixties with dyed hair and a beard while Juliet will be so large they can use her bust for the balcony scene. The theatre was magnificent, carved out of a cliff face with hundreds of stone alcoves, and I recognised it as a piece of movie magic. It was the stage where the Von Trapp family sang in concert when trying to escape the Nazis towards the end of the film The Sound Of Music. Had they escaped to the room next door, the sound of Czech opera would have had them running back to surrender.
In Salzburg everywhere seems to be a location from that film which will please many on my flight out from the UK. All were ladies of a certain age with cropped grey hair who had saved up for years for their trip and were wearing T shirts announcing the Croydon Von Trapp Family Fan Club. Periodically I’d see them in horse drawn carriages singing The Lonely Goatherd around town but when I took a trip in a carriage for some filming, the driver mistook my director’s instructions of “go round and bring Paul back to do that piece to camera again”. He thought she’d said “take Paul and get lost”. God knows what he thought he was doing as we sped off but I had visions of being discovered in twenty years time in his cellar with several ladies from Croydon dressed in harnesses and eating hay.
As we trotted along he decided to tell me his life story, followed by a series of jokes all of which were anti women, and he kept repeating that he was happily divorced. I’ve a feeling his ex is even happier.
We passed a small crowd looking at a couple of archaeologists working outside the Residentz beside the Cathedral and they were carefully dusting off a skeleton which they’d found in the ground. That was a bit overwhelming. Here was someone from possibly centuries before with a story to tell but, having lost his tongue, lips, vocal chords and everything else, he was unable to brag or show off his blog. I’m going to follow this up and see what they find out about him over the next few months. If you happen to be outside the Salzburg Residentz over the next few weeks, you’ll see him lying in the square behind some netting. Be careful as he may burst back in to life and sing an aria or two before dying again.
The city is the birthplace of the composer Mozart and a visit to his house is an absolute must, not just to see where the musical genius was born but to marvel at and photograph the eight foot high plastic ice cream cone stuck tastefully on the front to advertise the sweet shop underneath. You can’t miss it as it has neon coloured scoops of strawberry and vanilla with pistachio on top, perhaps appropriate for a famous child prodigy. Later in life Mozart became a freemason which proves all precociously talented young people eventually go mad.
Salzburg is a great place to people watch and I recommend it highly. From the buskers on street corners playing their medieval instruments to the Salvador Dali effete twirly moustached men carrying arts catalogues and discussing the merits of pointillism in the art work of Sesame Street, there’s always someone to stare at and enjoy.
Oh, and I really did get stuck in that lift. It broke down while I was on my way to the opera rehearsal. Unfortunately they fixed it.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Why Don't You Write Me
www.paulcoia.com
What’s a blog for? I used to think it was supposed to be entertaining or informative, but a friend recently keeps telling me that she enjoys reading my “weekly rant”. I wasn’t aware I was doing this as, to me, ranting is what lonely, old, penniless men and women in scruffy clothes do as they sift through dustbins, shouting at a world that doesn’t listen and which goes out of its way to avoid them. A bit like a Daily Express journalist must feel.
So is a blog simply an opportunity to give vent to prejudices? Is it to laugh at the oddities in society, the men who wear hairpieces, women who wear big knickers and friends who wear badly, or is it to look for sympathy? Should it give an insight in to the writer’s life and, if so, am I an arrogant git for thinking people want to read about me? That’s rhetorical by the way.
After ten months of writing I find I have absolutely no idea what the answer is, which is a bit troubling for someone who writes a weekly blog. My life’s no more interesting than yours and my opinions no more valid. I’ve seen the same number of hairpieces and big girls’ knickers as you have though, working around showbusiness, I’ve seen them on the same person and I’m not sharing a dressing room with him again.
Until this week I had never read a blog for fear it might influence my weekly drivelings but I thought I ought to check out what’s out there. I have now seen the most unbelievable writing, some boring and some even less entertaining than that, and I’ve endured the most dreary stuff ever committed to memory chip. As a blogger I feel like I’ve joined a club of social outcasts who stand in the corner at their own parties wondering why no one came. Bloggers are simply weirdos aren’t we?
Talking of slimy repulsive things, I’ve just come across a new blog from a man who is going to inform us each day how many slugs and snails he catches in his garden as he believes this will be a useful guide to climate change. You really have got to feel sympathy for any animal living in the garden of someone who thinks writing about them each day is interesting, and I suspect that after snaring them he’ll buy them a doll’s house and keep the creatures as friends, inviting them to his birthday parties. Of course they’ll set off too late and he’ll still be left in the corner on his own till they arrive four days later.
If a blog really is to commit to record the trivia of our everyday lives, then I’ve failed. I noticed back in December at Schipol airport in Amsterdam that the urinals had little flies painted on them and I thought of reporting the fact here but I dismissed it as trivia. Well, blow me, I now read that these flies have led to a decrease in splashing on the floor by eighty per cent as guys try to hit the flies square in the eye. Top marks to the designer who realised we men just never grow up and no marks to me, unless you count those on the floor.
So, I missed a great story there and now I’m wondering whether I am supposed to write about the tannoy bongs at Geneva airport being the first few notes of How Much Is That Doggy In The Window (which they are) in the hope that a story is soon released saying that the song has been proven to calm terrorists and persuade baggage handlers that stealing from luggage is really not nice. Or do I write about the train between terminals at Zurich airport where, honestly, the noise of yodelling and cowbells is pumped in whilst a busty Heidi lookalike in pigtails blows kisses on screens as we move past? Perhaps cowbells subtly shepherd us to the gates, yodelling eases tension, and Heidi’s huge bust makes us all buy baps in the restaurants.
I think that if you decide to share the trivia of your life then you run the danger of becoming like the Reverend Robert Shields. The American, who has just died, lived in Washington State and left behind ninety one boxes of diary containing thirty seven and a half million words on the trivia of his life over the last thirty five years. He even taped nasal hair to the pages so scientists can analyse his DNA, and only slept for two hours at a time so that he could write down his dreams.
He is fixated on his toilet habits. On Sunday August 13th 1995 he wrote “07.25 – 07.30. I sprayed, and puddle and piddled and widdled”, then at 07.35 “I peed again and took a tablet”. I don’t think he would have been welcomed at Schipol airport.
The Reverend’s attention to detail includes what he wears every day, his grocery lists, what his cat ate, how he shaved, what he read, thought and said, the junk mail he received, his blood pressure and this great bit of social history “09.35 – 09.40. I cleaned the cerumen from both my ears and from both hearing aids.”
And, admirable as it is, I think the diary exposes the weakness of writing about a life. If, like millions out there on blogs, you just share the trivia of your life then it is, how shall I put this, boring as hell! I could tell you, truthfully, that I got back from a three day trip to Austria today and there was nothing unusual about the airport toilets and I landed on time. If I did, I’m sure you’d rather be out in the garden catching slugs.
There’s one plus to blogs though. You’ll never get my nasal hair stuck on your screen.
What’s a blog for? I used to think it was supposed to be entertaining or informative, but a friend recently keeps telling me that she enjoys reading my “weekly rant”. I wasn’t aware I was doing this as, to me, ranting is what lonely, old, penniless men and women in scruffy clothes do as they sift through dustbins, shouting at a world that doesn’t listen and which goes out of its way to avoid them. A bit like a Daily Express journalist must feel.
So is a blog simply an opportunity to give vent to prejudices? Is it to laugh at the oddities in society, the men who wear hairpieces, women who wear big knickers and friends who wear badly, or is it to look for sympathy? Should it give an insight in to the writer’s life and, if so, am I an arrogant git for thinking people want to read about me? That’s rhetorical by the way.
After ten months of writing I find I have absolutely no idea what the answer is, which is a bit troubling for someone who writes a weekly blog. My life’s no more interesting than yours and my opinions no more valid. I’ve seen the same number of hairpieces and big girls’ knickers as you have though, working around showbusiness, I’ve seen them on the same person and I’m not sharing a dressing room with him again.
Until this week I had never read a blog for fear it might influence my weekly drivelings but I thought I ought to check out what’s out there. I have now seen the most unbelievable writing, some boring and some even less entertaining than that, and I’ve endured the most dreary stuff ever committed to memory chip. As a blogger I feel like I’ve joined a club of social outcasts who stand in the corner at their own parties wondering why no one came. Bloggers are simply weirdos aren’t we?
Talking of slimy repulsive things, I’ve just come across a new blog from a man who is going to inform us each day how many slugs and snails he catches in his garden as he believes this will be a useful guide to climate change. You really have got to feel sympathy for any animal living in the garden of someone who thinks writing about them each day is interesting, and I suspect that after snaring them he’ll buy them a doll’s house and keep the creatures as friends, inviting them to his birthday parties. Of course they’ll set off too late and he’ll still be left in the corner on his own till they arrive four days later.
If a blog really is to commit to record the trivia of our everyday lives, then I’ve failed. I noticed back in December at Schipol airport in Amsterdam that the urinals had little flies painted on them and I thought of reporting the fact here but I dismissed it as trivia. Well, blow me, I now read that these flies have led to a decrease in splashing on the floor by eighty per cent as guys try to hit the flies square in the eye. Top marks to the designer who realised we men just never grow up and no marks to me, unless you count those on the floor.
So, I missed a great story there and now I’m wondering whether I am supposed to write about the tannoy bongs at Geneva airport being the first few notes of How Much Is That Doggy In The Window (which they are) in the hope that a story is soon released saying that the song has been proven to calm terrorists and persuade baggage handlers that stealing from luggage is really not nice. Or do I write about the train between terminals at Zurich airport where, honestly, the noise of yodelling and cowbells is pumped in whilst a busty Heidi lookalike in pigtails blows kisses on screens as we move past? Perhaps cowbells subtly shepherd us to the gates, yodelling eases tension, and Heidi’s huge bust makes us all buy baps in the restaurants.
I think that if you decide to share the trivia of your life then you run the danger of becoming like the Reverend Robert Shields. The American, who has just died, lived in Washington State and left behind ninety one boxes of diary containing thirty seven and a half million words on the trivia of his life over the last thirty five years. He even taped nasal hair to the pages so scientists can analyse his DNA, and only slept for two hours at a time so that he could write down his dreams.
He is fixated on his toilet habits. On Sunday August 13th 1995 he wrote “07.25 – 07.30. I sprayed, and puddle and piddled and widdled”, then at 07.35 “I peed again and took a tablet”. I don’t think he would have been welcomed at Schipol airport.
The Reverend’s attention to detail includes what he wears every day, his grocery lists, what his cat ate, how he shaved, what he read, thought and said, the junk mail he received, his blood pressure and this great bit of social history “09.35 – 09.40. I cleaned the cerumen from both my ears and from both hearing aids.”
And, admirable as it is, I think the diary exposes the weakness of writing about a life. If, like millions out there on blogs, you just share the trivia of your life then it is, how shall I put this, boring as hell! I could tell you, truthfully, that I got back from a three day trip to Austria today and there was nothing unusual about the airport toilets and I landed on time. If I did, I’m sure you’d rather be out in the garden catching slugs.
There’s one plus to blogs though. You’ll never get my nasal hair stuck on your screen.
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Summer In The City
www.paulcoia.com
Being a Scotsman living in the land of London, I just love Summer. This is the best time of year to see England, and the English, in all their glory as this season seems to confirm all the prejudices people have about the country being stuck in scratchy black and white celluloid and portrayed as the old, infirm, matriarch with a stiff upper hip and vowels more rounded than Beyonce’s sitting gear.
English summers may be quaint, but they work. Back home, this is the time when we Scots have the odd Highland Games meeting in the rain or throw open Edinburgh Castle to rampaging military bands who show off the musical baton twirling and dog acrobatics that have the world’s terrorists trembling in shock and awe. We even put on the Festival to give theatre groups and arty farties a chance to watch each other perform Shakespeare on unicycles for three people in cagoules.
But when we organise these events we always do it with one eye on the tourist dollar and the other on deposit rates. The land of Adam Smith and Andrew Carnegie loves the tradition of making money, and so our tourist traditions tend to be simply functional and cash generating, whereas the English have turned theirs in to an art form that would have Toad throwing his bowler hat in the air with a quick Hoorah while steering his punt away from Toad Hall over a river of pink champagne.
The English are very good at keeping the tourists happy, ignoring ridicule and sniggers. I’m not thinking here of the Changing Of The Guard at Buckingham Palace or the kicking of the guard at the Tower of London to see if he reacts, but more of the summer traditions which are everywhere just now.
We’ve just had Royal Ascot, which for those of you reading this in far off places is where a bunch of horse faced people get very drunk on champagne while watching their relatives race round a course for a few days. The Simons and Ashleys of England take their Taras and Nigellas to the Ascot racecourse each year in a chauffered limo while more cars follow behind with their wallets and hats. The event starts with Ladies Day which is a highlight for press photographers who look for skirts flying up or hats blowing off, while Simon and Ashley sit in the champagne tent, blowing off too.
Over at the summer Henley Regatta, deckchair manufacturers use off cuts of material to run up blazers and caps for the male spectators who wear them like a Sixth form boarding school outing accompanied by lashings of lemonade and oodles of cake. Foul mouthed cries of “Gosh”, “Golly” and “Cripes” greet any rowing crew which loses, and then it’s back to the picnic and a visit to matron for upset tummy.
Sticks figure heavily in English summers. Morris dancers, who are bearded men dressed in pyjamas and wearing hats stolen from Spanish donkeys, hit each other with bits of wood while their mate stands by ready to wallop the loser with an accordion.
And sticks feature in Cricket too. This is the summer sport invented by the English to confuse Americans, and trying to explain the rules is akin to detailing the complete DNA breakdown of a parasitical mite whilst reciting the periodic table, backwards. Basically someone throws a ball at some sticks while his opponent protects the sticks with a bigger one. After five minutes they break for tea, then start again for a few minutes before stopping for elevenses, lunch, siesta, afternoon tea and tiffin, with any clouds in the sky halting proceedings for a scone and clotted cream break. After a game lasting several months, it can still be declared a draw.
Of course the English tradition the world is watching just now is Wimbledon, perhaps the pinnacle of English summer madness, and when I visited last week the sun was blazing, a chance to see the straw hats and flannels sup their Pimms and eat strawberries with colonial efficiency on the lawn whilst watching the world pass by. Most had probably come fresh from the Hay Festival, a gathering of book people in faded khaki T shirts with thinning hair and beards. It’s not all sexist as some men go too. They exchange recipes for organic pulse lasagne, sign a few copies of their latest book on mediaeval knitting, and then back to the tent for a sing along before bed time.
This is just one of the many festivals over summer and, as I wasn’t made for camping, when I want the authentic pop festival experience, I sit on the grass in my garden with my kids pouring buckets of water on me while I drink Red Bull and squint at a band on my tiny iPod screen which is hanging on a fence a hundred metres away. Occasionally I get up and go in the kitchen where my wife charges me ten pounds for a bottle of water and a jam roll.
I cannot fathom events like the very English Glastonbury Festival which has just ended. At Scottish festivals bands are booked only if their decibel levels directly correlate to their testosterone levels with rock bands competing in bad behaviour and macho posturing. Glastonbury had Gilbert O’Sullivan, Neil Diamond and Shakin’ Stevens and the organisers must have been gutted that they couldn’t get The New Seekers back together to close with a rousing I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.
So the English, and their summers, are madder than a stalker in sandals but the world would be a sadder place without them. Quaint, bonkers, old fashioned and completely daft.
Being a Scotsman living in the land of London, I just love Summer. This is the best time of year to see England, and the English, in all their glory as this season seems to confirm all the prejudices people have about the country being stuck in scratchy black and white celluloid and portrayed as the old, infirm, matriarch with a stiff upper hip and vowels more rounded than Beyonce’s sitting gear.
English summers may be quaint, but they work. Back home, this is the time when we Scots have the odd Highland Games meeting in the rain or throw open Edinburgh Castle to rampaging military bands who show off the musical baton twirling and dog acrobatics that have the world’s terrorists trembling in shock and awe. We even put on the Festival to give theatre groups and arty farties a chance to watch each other perform Shakespeare on unicycles for three people in cagoules.
But when we organise these events we always do it with one eye on the tourist dollar and the other on deposit rates. The land of Adam Smith and Andrew Carnegie loves the tradition of making money, and so our tourist traditions tend to be simply functional and cash generating, whereas the English have turned theirs in to an art form that would have Toad throwing his bowler hat in the air with a quick Hoorah while steering his punt away from Toad Hall over a river of pink champagne.
The English are very good at keeping the tourists happy, ignoring ridicule and sniggers. I’m not thinking here of the Changing Of The Guard at Buckingham Palace or the kicking of the guard at the Tower of London to see if he reacts, but more of the summer traditions which are everywhere just now.
We’ve just had Royal Ascot, which for those of you reading this in far off places is where a bunch of horse faced people get very drunk on champagne while watching their relatives race round a course for a few days. The Simons and Ashleys of England take their Taras and Nigellas to the Ascot racecourse each year in a chauffered limo while more cars follow behind with their wallets and hats. The event starts with Ladies Day which is a highlight for press photographers who look for skirts flying up or hats blowing off, while Simon and Ashley sit in the champagne tent, blowing off too.
Over at the summer Henley Regatta, deckchair manufacturers use off cuts of material to run up blazers and caps for the male spectators who wear them like a Sixth form boarding school outing accompanied by lashings of lemonade and oodles of cake. Foul mouthed cries of “Gosh”, “Golly” and “Cripes” greet any rowing crew which loses, and then it’s back to the picnic and a visit to matron for upset tummy.
Sticks figure heavily in English summers. Morris dancers, who are bearded men dressed in pyjamas and wearing hats stolen from Spanish donkeys, hit each other with bits of wood while their mate stands by ready to wallop the loser with an accordion.
And sticks feature in Cricket too. This is the summer sport invented by the English to confuse Americans, and trying to explain the rules is akin to detailing the complete DNA breakdown of a parasitical mite whilst reciting the periodic table, backwards. Basically someone throws a ball at some sticks while his opponent protects the sticks with a bigger one. After five minutes they break for tea, then start again for a few minutes before stopping for elevenses, lunch, siesta, afternoon tea and tiffin, with any clouds in the sky halting proceedings for a scone and clotted cream break. After a game lasting several months, it can still be declared a draw.
Of course the English tradition the world is watching just now is Wimbledon, perhaps the pinnacle of English summer madness, and when I visited last week the sun was blazing, a chance to see the straw hats and flannels sup their Pimms and eat strawberries with colonial efficiency on the lawn whilst watching the world pass by. Most had probably come fresh from the Hay Festival, a gathering of book people in faded khaki T shirts with thinning hair and beards. It’s not all sexist as some men go too. They exchange recipes for organic pulse lasagne, sign a few copies of their latest book on mediaeval knitting, and then back to the tent for a sing along before bed time.
This is just one of the many festivals over summer and, as I wasn’t made for camping, when I want the authentic pop festival experience, I sit on the grass in my garden with my kids pouring buckets of water on me while I drink Red Bull and squint at a band on my tiny iPod screen which is hanging on a fence a hundred metres away. Occasionally I get up and go in the kitchen where my wife charges me ten pounds for a bottle of water and a jam roll.
I cannot fathom events like the very English Glastonbury Festival which has just ended. At Scottish festivals bands are booked only if their decibel levels directly correlate to their testosterone levels with rock bands competing in bad behaviour and macho posturing. Glastonbury had Gilbert O’Sullivan, Neil Diamond and Shakin’ Stevens and the organisers must have been gutted that they couldn’t get The New Seekers back together to close with a rousing I’d Like To Teach The World To Sing.
So the English, and their summers, are madder than a stalker in sandals but the world would be a sadder place without them. Quaint, bonkers, old fashioned and completely daft.
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