A Different Beat

“What do you call those Italians that nobody likes?”

That was the question I was asked four times over lunch this week, and I had no idea at all what to reply. Would you know the answer?

I had flown home to attend a funeral in Scotland, God’s favourite holiday destination, where it usually takes me a few minutes to rediscover my roots and embrace the accents, the slang, the weather, and the wonderful sarcasm. Scotland is my kind of big town, obsessed as it is with sweets and cake shops on every corner, and I even ended up wearing a suit made of puff pastry. But more of that later.

What would sound amateurish and twee elsewhere can sound homely and comforting in Scotland, although the jury’s out for me on the serious debate I heard on Radio Scotland about the state of football north of the border which was signed off by someone, who I assume considers himself a journalist, with the words “Toodle oo the noo”. Either he thinks only his granny listens or I have been away far too long.

In Scotland they do things differently. I picked up the Valentine card sent from my mum to my dad and she’d signed it “Lots of love from Jean. Guess who?”. I’m not sure that after almost sixty years of marriage she’s got the hang of this romance thing yet.

The crematorium is situated in a place called Castlemilk, a renowned district given a bit of ironic class by locals who call it Chateau du Lait. Looking at the floral tributes from previous funerals I spotted one bunch of flowers with the message “To Dad. Lang may yer lum reek.” This is a traditional Scottish good luck saying, expressing the hope that you may always have enough money and security wherever you are. It translates best as “long may your chimney have smoke” which, as we were at a crematorium, could be seen as maybe just a wee bit ironic, no?

I’ve mentioned before my mum’s visit to this crematorium where, in a badly timed gap between hymn verses, she sniffed and said loudly “there’s something burning in here”. But in Scotland there’s no such thing as inappropriate, just different.

At the funeral lunch afterwards I sat beside a nice, kind, elderly man of ninety five who regaled me with stories of the war and how he had got himself involved with “those Italians no one likes.” I couldn’t think of what he meant, so the stories simply started over again as I heard about him being blown up and losing his hearing, then being sent to Kenya to recover.

Listening to another generation like this of course makes us think of how lucky we are that we haven’t lived through world wars, but it can also re affirm how kind people are. On returning to Italy after the war he was given a hero’s welcome by the village where he’d been in charge of Italian prisoners of war. They respected him simply because he’d been fair, even though he had been doing business of course with those Italians no one likes.

Unfortunately, before I could work it out, our meal carried on with sausage rolls, the flakiest, messiest foodtuff it is possible to find. And when the person eating it has ill fitting dentures (that’s not me incidentally) and speaks at the same time as munching, unfortunately everywhere within two to three feet gets decorated with pastry. My suit, hair and face ended up covered in the stuff as the stories started all over again.

But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There is something slower, easier, less fraught about life in Scotland, almost as if everyone bonds and gets on, if for no other reason than to simply survive the weather. It may have been a lightning quick visit, and it may have been for a sad occasion, but I came away with a smile. They even arranged for me to stay a bit longer than expected as I arrived at the airport to find my flight delayed by two hours because the co pilot had called in ill. You would think he could have dragged himself from his sick bed to bid me “toodle oo the noo.” Probably eaten too many cakes.

I’m now back in London and my suit is off to the dry cleaners, but I did in the end “get” which unloved Italians he was talking about after he eventually added the clue that “they are a wee bit naughty”.

He was talking about the mafia.

Fool If You Think It's Over

So that’s another Valentine’s day over. I offered to take Debbie somewhere warm that would remind her of our place on the Portuguese coast but our local fish shop closes at five so, instead, I bought her something black and lacy. Those football boots cost me a fortune.

Not true of course. We actually had a lovely meal out and watched a movie. It did strike me recently that this year we’ve been very lucky in that the quality of movies coming on to our screens has been exceptional. But I think I may have been wrong.

I’ve really enjoyed, The Artist, The Iron Lady, War Horse and The Help, I’ve thought movies like The Descendants, Shame and Moneyball have been OK, and I even believe that Madonna’s W.E. is, like her religion, not as bad as the critics say.

However, just as I was starting to believe that the movie makers had grown up, along come a couple of really awful movies that make me blink with surprise and gasp in astonishment as I search for other glorious clichés to describe something you might step in at a dog show. If you thought movies like Snakes On A Plane and Centipede were the worst things ever committed to celluloid, get ready for the release of ABRAHAM LINCOLN, VAMPIRE HUNTER.

It’s based on a book written two years ago in which John Wilkes Booth, the killer of Lincoln, is revealed to be one of the “undead”. In consequence Lincoln becomes a vampire as well and turns up at Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech a hundred years later . Oh, also, in the book Walt Disney becomes a vampire too. I’m guessing here, but I don’t think this is an accurate historical document.

In the movie President Abraham Lincoln uses his top hat, a bit like Oddjob in Goldfinger, to try and decapitate vampires and, if you think I’m making this up, you can see the trailer here at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPxdjECyPmw&feature=player_embedded

If I put this movie down to a blip and still think there might be a chance that Hollywood has grown up this year then that might fade when I get to see JOYFUL NOISE starring Dolly Parton as a choir mistress. In the film every man who sleeps with a member of the choir seems to drop dead, although Kris Kristofferson comes back to life half way through to sing as a ghost! Maybe Lincoln and Disney appear doing a duet.

Another, soon to be released movie, is THE WICKER TREE, in which two Christians travel to Scotland, on “the border of England” to convert pagans. The trailers look hilariously bad, but not as awful as IRON SKY, in which earth comes under attack from Nazi spacemen who escaped after World War 2 and have lived ever since on the dark side of the moon. It is left to Sarah Palin to save us. Dialogue includes “Invasion? Y’all must be trippin’” and the posters have the strapline “The battle for earth is about to get Nazi”. It’s out in April but you can see a trailer now at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Py_IndUbcxc

This movie is billed as a comedy but looks about as humorous as tapeworm.

Bad movies are nothing new of course but it always amazes me that people are given money to make this rubbish. I have a pal who has been trying for over a year to raise money for a good movie (involving Charlie Chaplin and India since you ask) and he’s nowhere near getting enough dollars to start filming.

In a global recession the lesson for him seems to be to come up with an idea that couldn’t possibly succeed and then sit back as people throw money at you, a bit like Mel Brooks’ character did in The Producers by writing a musical about Hitler. Yesterday’s musical is today’s Nazis on the moon.

Next year on Valentine’s, as we’re all reading the Oscar and Bafta nominations, I don’t expect vampires and Nazis to sweep the board but I do expect Abraham Lincoln and Walt Disney to be seated in the audience telling anyone beside them that it was better in their day.

Just steer clear of the garlic at dinner guys.

Doctor, Doctor

I didn’t write a blog last week as my wife and I have been playing doctors and nurses. And before you get carried away with some fantasy involving bed baths and visits to the Anne Summers and Victoria’s Secret outlet stores, I mean that my daughter has had pneumonia and we’ve been mopping her fevered brow and her bedroom floor.

Getting any of our local doctors to come and visit this week has been a nightmare as they only come out for old people, or so they say. In the end, and under protest, a lady doctor came, demanded an X ray, pronounced pneumonia and antibiotics, and then reminded us that she would not come back for my teenage daughter, no matter how sick, but only for an old, infirm, patient. I’m not sure where we’re supposed to find one, or perhaps she was looking at me.

But the thing she fails to understand is that old people aren’t at home waiting for doctors. They’re all at work. News on pensions this week means that we’re all going to have to be employed till we’re old and incontinent with whiskery ears and fluffy bits missed by our razors and eyesight. Pensions look set to be postponed later and later in life as yet another politician said this week that we will all have to wait till we’re in our Seventies before we can retire.

So now that no one can be ageist and get rid of staff because of age, who is going to gently tell us when we’re no longer up to the job?

Am I going to see pensioners playing rugby or football for Scotland? Arguably, of course, results may improve. Will we have someone on a zimmer frame going for the Olympic pole vault gold medal? Will Joan Rivers enter beauty contests and Richard Attenborough play Braveheart 2?

The thing about getting older is that you get odder too. Who doesn’t know loads of people of a certain age who are slightly off centre? They call it “speaking their mind” and I often find myself roaring them on, delighted that they don’t care what people think of them. But, in the work place?

Part of playing the game of Work is biting your tongue. When someone messes up or spills coffee over your desk, for the sake of a calm working environment you bite your tongue and shrug it off, don’t you? It won’t be the same if you tell your colleague that you’ve missed a deadline and he shouts back “you young people don’t know you’re born. Bring back hanging and national service, and by the way you should be wearing a vest in this cold weather”.

And fancy going to see an old dentist whose dentures are looser than a skeleton’s waistband? His hand will be shaking so much that your teeth will rattle. And just imagine the reading material in his waiting room. There are only so many back copies of Gardener’s World and People’s Friend I can cope with.

Although I’m way off retiral age, I found a strange side effect of getting older this week. I discovered that I have become a goody goody. I have always hated people telling me what to do and I have ritually rebelled, often realising within minutes what a stupidly embarrassing thing I’d done. But this week I surprised myself by doing something odd and experiencing a strange feeling that I had to look up in the dictionary. Apparently it’s called “maturity”.

A female friend of mine who is Polish asked me for a favour. She has been offered a job doing security at the Olympics but needs to prove she has been living here for five years. She’s one year short so asked if she could give my name and number, telling the authorities that she cleaned my house for the year in question. Now it’s not that I think she’s a secret terrorist or drug smuggler, but it would be wrong wouldn’t it? It would be a lie, so I said “No”, which for a rebel like me is a big step.

So now I am officially “mature”, which is fine. I’m supposed to be grown up now and leave childish things behind. I guess the next stop is old age.

It may mean I’ll get a doctor to visit me a little bit quicker.