by YOUR CELEBRITY DJ MIKE STEVENS & YOU CAN LISTEN TO HIM LIVE ON www.futureradio.co.uk Wednesday mornings 10.00-13.00
'A load of balls…………...! ’ By your celebrity DJ, you can listen to hime live on www.futureradio.co.uk Wednesday mornings 10..00-13.00 © Mike Stevens June 2010
Football mania seems to have gripped our nation. Something called the ‘World Cup’ is happening in South Africa and it’s very important. So important in fact that we are all expected to wear special underpants with the England logo on, as if that is going to make any difference to the team’s performance. There is an assumption, of course, that we all give a damn. Football was banned at my secondary school. Anyone caught at a match, or playing it, would be flogged. Going further back to junior school days I was taken on a trip to a Schoolboy International at Wembley. This was the proper Wembley, not the one we have now where the grass has to be rolled up like a Cyril Lord carpet after ever game. You may think such awesome surroundings would have a lasting effect on a small lad. Alas all I enjoyed was the Community singing before the match and the marching band during the interval, or should that be half-time?
When you weigh it up the whole ritual of football is a bit strange. Thousands of people, mainly men, gather around a field whilst a bunch of beautifully coiffured individuals with their underpants showing run round a after a ball pausing only occasionally to give their fellow players a girly hug & a peck on the cheek. After the match they all go and sit in a big bath together and play hide the soap. Any hint of injury or a bit of pain during the match and they are writhing a round in simulated agony whilst a man in black shorts who, I’m informed, is fatherless, blows a whistle and waves bits of coloured cardboard. The unfortunate individual is then carted off having damaged his delicate ankle, or worse still, with something called groin strain, whatever that is. Now I once met a bunch of male ballet dancers who were rehearsing at our local theatre. I appreciate that ballet is not recognised as the most masculine of occupations. These guys had foot and leg injuries which were not only painful but would have had your average International football player in cotton wool for months. Undaunted, agony or not, these dancers went on stage night after night giving an A1 performance because that was what they were paid to do. I rest my case.
Then there are the spectators, or fans. They come in all shapes and sizes, usually extra large because of the pies they consume. Quite often they are in various states of inebriation including, apparently, our local Number 1 one fan, Delia Smith. She has been witnessed coming onto the ground yelling “Let’s be havin’ you” one suspects somewhat worse for the cooking sherry. Not a good example to the young.
Football players are also renowned for not being the brightest of individuals. I appreciate this is probably a bit unfair, but a fair indicator is their taste in female companions. Most famous is the woman who is deluded enough to think she can sing, but bright enough to attach herself to one David Beckham who is, apparently, a God and a rich one at that. David was heard one day celebrating with shouts of “45 days, 45 days!" Posh, the ‘singer’, asks him why he's celebrating and David replies, "Well Victoria, I've done this jigsaw in only 45 days." "Is that good then David?" asks Posh. "You bet", said the jubilant David, "It says 3 to 6 years on the box."
As you head for the other side of the world to be fleeced, mugged, overcharged for accommodation which is a hundred miles away from where you want to be clutching an overpriced counterfeit ticket I can only say that you brought it upon yourself.
© Mike Stevens 2010
If you want to contact Mike he will be pleased to hear from you. email: mikestevens09@hotmail.co.uk
'BT – Phone home…..! ’ By your celebrity DJ, you can listen to hime live on www.futureradio.co.uk Wednesday mornings 10..00-13.00 © Mike Stevens
May 2010
I’d never considered how much we rely on the telephone until yesterday. My shiny new all-singing, all-dancing mobile went missing. I knew it was around the house somewhere. I also knew that it was switched on in the hope that someone would give me a call. This was probably unlikely as I had not yet passed round my new number. Never mind, at least I was open to receive important messages from Virgin Media and Nokia. I reached for the handset of the house phone with the intention of ringing the mobile and locating it by sound. I tapped away and nothing happened. I put the phone to my ear and there was silence, well, just a faint buzz.
OMG I thought, for I am already thinking in ‘text-think’. A few minutes juggling with various handsets revealed that my outside line had died. In deference to Virgin Media and their fibre optic cables this was a pretty uncommon occurrence. Unlike for BT customers who were recently unable to contact the continent because of a fire at a London exchange, or the assorted regions who periodically suffer from loss of service because enterprising criminals have been digging up the cables in order to profit from selling the copper. So there I was cut off from the civilised world unable to communicate, or be communicated with. How would those eager foreign gentlemen be able to enlighten me with the joyous news that by the grace of some Act of Parliament, which I have frankly never heard of, my debts could be written off at a stroke. I’ve never gone any further in these conversations because, firstly, I don’t really have any debts and secondly because Mummy told me never to talk to strangers.
A bit of frantic searching and I located my new mobile in the back pocket of yesterdays trousers. This did set me thinking about a time when we were less reliant on the phone. In my childhood the phone was regarded as a bit of a luxury. We only had one because my father was a policeman and communication was needed to alert him to rounding up stray cattle or whatever qualified as a police emergency in those days.
My parents never had a phone they owned themselves until well into retirement. Somehow, like millions of others they survived without one, not succumbing to becoming what the GPO called charmingly ‘a subscriber’. My father was a bit put out when push button handsets came in. There was a considerable delay on the dial-ups before communication was achieved that enabled you time to collect your thoughts. Phone calls had to be very short, so there was no time for waffle.
Now children are barely out of the pram when they get their first mobile phone. People hold inane, and loud, conversations in public places. Teenagers download music, and men, desperate for ‘entertainment’ are able to watch dubious videos on their mobile screens; or so they tell me.
Doubtless like everyone else I will be sucked into the electronic vortex. I now carry the best part of my record collection in my back pocket and wonder how I lived without it. I’ve got to leave it there, something, somewhere, is ringing. © Mike Stevens 2010
If you want to contact Mike he will be pleased to hear from you. email: mikestevens09@hotmail.co.uk
Photos above and left: Prototypes developed by Motorola designers included (top to bottom) a retractable version, a flip mouthpiece not unlike those seen today, a banana-like model, and a double-flip design. Rudy Krolopp holds Motorola’s first commercial cell phone, the $3,995 Dynatac 8000X, in 1984.
CELL PHONES OF THE FUTURE PAST
There's a very interesting/amusing story on the development of the mobile phone in the winter issue of Invention and Technology magazine. Motorola introduced the world's first handheld portable cell phone in 1973. What's so interesting is that nobody -- including Motorola -- thought the cell phone would be of much use to anyone. Because it was so big. Motorola's real motivation in prototyping the cell phone, it turns out, was to get the FCC to allot more spectrum for car phones, which they saw as a lucrative market for their equipment-making business. But this is a fascinating R&D story -- nobody thought they could pull it off. Could such a behemoth be turned into something light enough to carry around? In an age of satellite communication, trips to the moon, and the seeming miracle of the pocket calculator, it was assumed that any engineering challenge would eventually be overcome. But even if it was possible, so what? Why would anyone pay a monthly subscription fee and hefty per-call charges when 10-cents-a-call phone booths were everywhere?
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PHONE
1876 - LIQUID TELEPHONE - "Mr. Watson, come here; I want you!" It was the night of March 10. These first historic words, uttered by Alexander Graham Bell when he spilled some sulphuric acid he had been using in his tests, climaxed two years of extensive experimentation.
1882 - MAGNETO WALL SET - This handsome, oak-encased instrument, the first telephone built for the Bell System by Western Electric, used Bell's hand receiver and Blakes' transmitter. It was the standard for many years and one of the first to place the crank more conveniently on the side.
1919 - DIAL TELEPHONE - Coast-to-coast phone service had begun in 1915, and the United States had topped 100 million in population. Dial service was coming in strongly. Invented in 1892, it was many years before the complex equipment had been sufficiently developed for use in larger cities.
1949 - "500" TYPE DESK SET - After catching up with the immense backlog of work caused by the war, the Bell System brought out this new model with improved talking and hearing qualities and an adjustable volume control for the bell. Rugged and functional, it is constantly being improved.
1956 - WALL TELEPHONE - The telephone returns to the wall in this companion piece to the "500" desk set. The wall set is most often used in businesses and homes where counter and desk space is at a premium. It is popular in such home areas as basements and kitchens.
1969 - PICTUREPHONE SET - Men walked on the moon and a new model of telephone that made it possible to see the person to whom you're talking was market-tested. The Mod II set has a feature for individual or group viewing. Major use is for visual conferencing between different cities.
1973 - TOUCH-A-MATIC TELEPHONE - The Touch-A-Matic set is the first telephone with a solid state memory. At the touch of a single button, it can automatically dial any of 31 pre-recorded numbers. It is one of many communications advances that derive from the invention of the transistor by Bell Labs.
1976 - TRANSACTION TELEPHONE - As the telephone marks its 100th birthday, the Bell System offers a phone to make shopping more convenient. The Transaction telephone links with a bank's or credit bureau's computer to verify balances or transfer funds. It can also perform inventory control jobs.
'Electoral Roll ...! ’ By your celebrity DJ, you can listen to hime live on www.futureradio.co.uk Wednesday mornings 10..00-13.00 © Mike Stevens
April 2010
I’ve just been confronted by a huge billboard poster which depicts a personable looking chap in a blue boiler suit standing in front of a pile of flexible piping. The words underneath this picture are “I’ve never voted Tory before, but we need to sort out the economy”. I don’t know about the chap’s voting history, but I’ll not argue with the second part. But is this the way to do it? It would appear that our monetary problems can be solved by a sort of Dynarod solution. Just a quick flush through the system and everything will be OK again. Of course this is just the sort of potty stuff we can expect as we face the run up to the elections in May.
The lunatic fringe, or ‘Politicians’ as they like to call themselves have torn themselves away from filling in their expense claims, cleaning their moats and taking out mortgages on non-existent property and are once again appealing to the populace to come out and vote for them to join the most exclusive club in London.
The current crew have not only managed to land us in a catastrophic debt but also into unwinnable conflicts largely, one suspects, to provide their former leader, and his charming wife, with American holiday and shopping opportunities and consultative appointments in his ‘retirement’. One cannot help but feel that the current, unelected, leader’s policy of hand-outs of our money to failing financial institutions will open doors to similarly lucrative posts in the banking sector for him one day.
Stormin’ Gordon is seemingly a hard taskmaster and the school bully. The political ‘fix-its’ have done their work in order to try to remedy his public image. However, I’d much prefer to see Gordon throw the odd punch than, as we do now, see a sickly lop-sided grin instantly appear every time the cameras point in his direction. He looks as though he has just bitten the head off a, rather tasty, baby.
Consider the alternatives. There is the Conservative Party offering policies that are not a million miles from the stuff we got from ‘New Labour’ and we are not going to fall for that one again. Then there is UKIP who seem to think we are spending £40million a day in Europe, presumably to keep you lot in free swimming pools. Following behind are the Lib-Dems and assorted nutter brigades who, even if we vote for them would never know what to do if they were, by some miracle, elected.
Most of British public will stay in their homes on polling day as they so often do. Many young people who are entitled to vote just simply won’t be able to because they have not bothered to register.
Just in case you are thinking of returning to this green and pleasant land in order to join in the fun I can now inform you that there is now a Santander Bank on every High Street just to make you feel at home. Please don’t tell me they are failing as well as they have some of my money!
© Mike Stevens 2010
If you want to contact Mike he will be pleased to hear from you.
email: mikestevens09@hotmail.co.uk
I want to sell you a Tory: Hilarious (and politically incorrect) election posters from a century ago
Hard times (left): But is it really so different today? Telling Porkies (right): Nothing new about dirty tactics
A "Chinaman" poster from 1909 - featuring a character who has an uncanny resemblance to Tony Blair - was designed as an attack on Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith's Free Trade policy.
It implies the policy will result in a flood of substandard, cheap Chinese pork replacing English bacon.
Here is proof, should any be needed, that there's nothing new about dirty tactics in the battle for power.
And while many of the posters seem outdated, there are some which seem strangely pertinent to British politics today.
'the white stuff...! ’ By your celebrity DJ, © Mike Stevens 2010
The fact of the matter is that at the beginning of the year some cold white fluffy stuff fell from the sky and huge areas of the UK were instantly thrown into a state of utter chaos. This is called ‘snow’ and despite its regular appearance around the world its arrival in this Country always seems to catch us out. Before you rise up against me I know that several parts of Spain were affected as well. My heart bleeds for those of you who woke up to find your swimming pool like an Olympic ice rink and the solar panels out of action. Whilst some parts of the UK did have exceptional amounts of the stuff what fell in our part of the world was modest by comparison. Nothing more than a few inches. No small children lost in drifts.
A mere dusting of snow on the main roads and traffic ground to a halt. Vehicles unaccountably swerved into one another even when going at a snail’s pace. Two cars, on a perfectly straight piece of road nearby managed to end up totally upside down in the ditch. Schools, of course, have to be closed. This is not because of their inaccessibility, but because the education authority does not want to be sued by parents of little darlings who slip up in the playground. The snowball fights of our youth are totally out of the question. They contravene just about every aspect of Health and Safety; and probably discrimination as well.
It is said that in Norwich the coming of snow can be compared to local sexual activity. You may only get a few inches, but you will be totally buggered. There are no signs of snow shifting machinery. Even if they exist how do the operators get to work? The local council boasted about the amount of grit and salt it had in store. This stockpile remains reasonably static because it seldom seems to be used. I think someone sprinkles it on with a salt cellar. They even brought an extra load in by ship to a local port. This arrived just in time for a new Labour Government directive which said it should be diverted and sent to areas where the authorities had not been so prudent.
Then the siege mentality sets in. Those with 4x4s descend on the supermarkets and the occupants strip the shelves. Just how much do you need in reserve to get over a week of snow? One supermarket observed that there was a run on carrots. This was not for people who were anxious to get their ‘five a day’ but to provide snowmen with noses!
Power cuts were in evidence in the more northerly regions, often running for days at a time. The bins stand outside unemptied even though we have adhered to the complicated Christmas/New schedule that was, expensively, distributed before the holiday season. Now it’s another addition to the re-cycling bin.
Now all of this is blamed, as ever, on Global Warming. Although I’ve not worked out how this should make things colder rather than hotter. With the melting of the Northern ice cap we can expect polar bears to be moving south to Iceland, although how they will be able to get the packets of discounted frozen dinners-for-one open I cannot comprehend. The thing is that nothing will be learnt from this farce and we can look forward to it all happening again next winter.
© Mike Stevens 2010
If you want to contact Mike he will be pleased to hear from you.
email: mikestevens09@hotmail.co.uk
'mary, has the postman come yet?...! ’
nO mOTHER BUT HE IS BREATHING VERY HARD!!!
Postman Pat, with or without his black and white cat, didn’t call today. We are suffering the effects of a postal strike. It’s a real retro experience.
The picket lines at the local sorting office are manned (or is that personned), and from somewhere appears the obligatory oil drum which serves as a brazier. Where do you get an oil drum these days? Most of them must have been commandeered by steel bands.
Then there is the question of Picket line etiquette. How do you express your feelings as you pass by in the car? Does a ‘toot’ on the horn express solidarity with the brothers or, alternatively mean, get back to work you lazy bastards? One never knows what to do. Any attempt at hand gestures is sure to be misinterpreted.
These are ‘one day at a time’ events, just long enough to permit the system to back up like a dodgy sewage system. The ‘brothers’ have decided to call a truce this side of Christmas, so panic not, your Christmas cards will get through.
The thing is that the Post Office has been going slowly pear shaped for several years. Remember when they introduced First and Second class mail back in ’68? I’ve yet to come across a class-ridden postal service anywhere else. Presumably Second Class mail would be transported on foot by a spotty youth "in a cleft stick", whilst First Class is borne on a silver tray by a butler; at least it should be for something like 6 shillings in old money it now costs to send a letter. More recently the system has been further complicated by the introduction of different size ‘slots’. Whilst weight still plays a part in determining the cost of sending a letter now it has to be able to pass through the eye of a needle if it is to travel at minimum rates. For anything fatter than a gnat’s dangly bits you get charged more.
Automation has probably taken the fun out of working in the sorting office where every postman starts his day. In my misspent youth I worked in a local one during the Christmas period. Parcels would whistle through the air aimed, hopefully, at the right sorting bag. Sometimes you were rewarded with a satisfying crash as Auntie’s Royal Doulton came to a sudden stop on the hard floor. It seemed to be standard practice that any package containing an LP, if you remember what they were, would be mysteriously opened and the contents played on a battered Dansette until it was time to wrap it up again at the end of the shift. An added bonus was that the office had to sort out mail for Royal persons staying at Sandringham . There were hoots of delight at some of the cards that ‘her Maj’ received from her loyal, and obviously dyslexic, subjects.
All this entertainment has now been largely replaced by machinery and the highlight of Postie’s day is no more. They now have to trudge round with armfuls of junk mail advertising the local takeaway and cut-price stores. Anything really valuable goes with the courier firms that have suddenly prospered in the last few years. Mail goes by the interweb so letters, First or Second class don’t get to drop on the doormat any more, unless they are from Michael Parkinson who seems to have taken a sudden interest in selling funeral plans. What I really feel sorry for are all those dogs that no longer have to opportunity to chew bits out of the postman’s trousers.
© Mike Stevens 2009
If you want to contact Mike he will be pleased to hear from you.
email: mikestevens09@hotmail.co.uk
'summer has ended, that's official...! ’ nOV 2009
This week it rained. This may not seem like a momentous event but, in our part of the world at least, we have seen nothing more than a slight dampening since the beginning of July. That’s nearly 3 months without rain. What we didn’t get was the promised scorching hot ‘barbeque’ summer. The forecasters got that wrong; as usual.
Not being a lover of anything over 70°, in old money, I went out and bought an air conditioner in readiness. This was not one of those wall mounted jobs which I’m sure you all have, but it was a box on wheels somewhat akin to the Teletubbies hoover. The problem with these devices is where to stick the long flexible hose. No suggestions please! Opening the window rather defeats the objective.
I compromised by threading it into my redundant hot air system heating vents. Whilst the temperature in the main bedroom plunged to a tolerable level the back room warmed up like a crematorium furnace. Still, mission accomplished, but as the machine makes a noise like Concorde taking off it did rather defeat the object of getting a decent night’s sleep.
Water was, of course, at a premium although we were not subject to hosepipe bans. Being on a water meter makes you wary of using a hosepipe because of the cost. For some reason our water is owned by a French Company and nobody likes giving in to the French. As a result of this the garden became a solid block of earth, and the upside was that I only used the lawn mower twice all summer.
The threat of swine flu hung over us. Heavy advertising about what to do, and where to go, was everywhere.
Convenient notices appeared outside doctors surgeries, chemists and hospitals which said, in so many words, ‘If you have Swine flu please go somewhere else’.
Apparently you had to self diagnose from the internet, email the surgery and a man in a space suit would come round and push drugs under the door. Anyway I escaped and it is reckoned that many of the people who took time off work to get over swine flu didn’t actually have it anyway, but who was to know?
Another threat of the summer which was totally unexpected was the plague of bishybarneybees on a biblical scale. Now those of you who are not natives of Norfolk will not know that this is local name for the common ladybird.
For some reason, apparently attributable to a surplus of aphids, they descended on us in huge clouds, covering car windscreens, pavements and, presumably, aphids. It was not a pretty sight. Now we seem to have a surfeit of huge spiders. Apparently the hot weather has encouraged them to grow to twice their normal size. All of this is beginning to sound like a second rate horror movie. ‘Curse of the Killer Ladybirds’!
The Secret of Bishy Barnabee
You may be wondering just how Bishy Barnabee got it's name... well, 'Bishy Barnabee' is an old Norfolk name for a ladybird! Some say it's named after a bishop (although quite why a bishop was ever associated with a ladybird isn't clear!).
Here's a little rhyme about it:
"Bishy-bishy-barnabee,
Tell me when your wedding be:
If it be tomorrow day,
Take your wings and fly away."
Another plague, brought on by the credit crunch, was the ‘Curse of the British Tourist’. People were forced by economic stringencies to give up their holidays abroad and stay at home. This was at least a welcome plague for the British holiday industry, such as it is. They were everywhere. Hotels and guest houses were full for once and the Norfolk Broads had a record season as boat hirers put-putted their way round the waterways, occasionally falling in and having to be rescued.
Whether we put this all down to global warming or holes in the ozone layer is anybody’s guess. My money is on next year being exactly the opposite and all the holidaymakers will be heading back to Spain and giving us natives a chance to moan in peace.
© Mike Stevens 2009
If you want to contact Mike he will be pleased to hear from you.
email: mikestevens09@hotmail.co.uk
BRITS ABROAD SEPT 2009
An internet hotel booking company recently undertook its annual survey to determine who the world’s worst hotel guests were. On a worldwide scale the French unsurprisingly topped the poll, but within the European Zone the Brits won the accolade. It set me thinking if, after all these years, your average British tourist has really come to terms with foreign travel.
Our ventures abroad really came into their own with the invention of Package Tours in the 1960’s. I’m talking about the days when the family packed just about everything they owned and headed off to Luton airport for their annual foreign jaunt. These were the heady times of Clarkson’s holidays when planes, some still with propellers, would propel them to Spanish shores and other sundry destinations. If you were lucky they might still be in business to get you home. At the airport there would be travellers seemingly equipped for every eventuality. Stories abound of customers attempting to smuggle portable TVs on board because they didn’t want to miss their favourite programmes. For some reason the Duty 
Free shops would be invaded by the trippers seemingly unaware that drink and cigarettes would be available at the point of destination, in all probability cheaper than at the airport. Men would, for some bizarre reason stock up on cigars and would puff their way around the airport presumably in some sort of Churchillian gesture to show Johnny Foreigner what being British was all about. No matter that they usually smoked Woodbines.
My mother resisted going abroad for many years largely on the basis that she ‘liked to know what she was eating’ and her suspicions about the arrangements in foreign toilets. I suspect these were fairly common beliefs. The change of diet to something that bore no resemblance to anything on the limited British menu of the time was a real threat. To this end café owners cashed in by offering a ‘Proper English Breakfast’ much sought after by those wanting to avoid the nasty foreign stuff. ‘Tea like mother makes’ is still to be seen on the menu boards outside cafes in many parts of the Europe. Anxious to cut a few financial corners tea-making equipment would be packed into suitcases where the resultant brew would be met with disappointment because the ‘water tastes funny’. In the process of conducting these experiments fuses would be blown in hotel rooms all round Europe.
The motivation behind this annual exodus was not the guaranteed sunshine, the opportunity to see historic sites or to absorb aspects of foreign cultures. The prime motivator was the fact that you could drink all day, and relative to the UK, cheaply. Not surprisingly overseas bar owners could be led to believe that we were a nation of alcoholics. Yet again your ‘foreign’ product was regarded with suspicion. The beer had to be served from bottles and barrels with a recognisable label. Watneys Red Barrel was soon available throughout Europe. Nobody drank it except the Brits because it was so bloody awful. Your average donkey after nibbling on a few grapes and a small field could probably produce something similar at no cost to the consumer. I suspect that there are still barrels of it stored away in Spain somewhere to this day; Watneys Red Barrel not donkey pee. Once a base amount of 10 or so pints of beer had been consumed your connoisseur was ready to move on to the local hard stuff which, normally partaken in small measures, would be consumed in similar quantities to the beer. This would inevitably lead to calls being made on ‘the big white telephone’, assuming it was reached in time. The ‘Proper English Breakfast’ would then make a sudden reappearance.
Communication with foreigners was made, largely, by shouting loudly and s l o w l y at them as if this achieved some miraculous translation. Another way of communicating was to perform some form of ritualistic gestures. I recall a trip with some mates to Yugoslavia when we were presented with bowls of watery soup for breakfast. My intrepid friend performed a passable imitation of a chicken. The waitress nodded knowingly and, smiling, broke a raw egg into his soup.
Another novelty for your holidaying Brit tourist was the attraction of naturist beaches. Your average English person likes to keep their personal plumbing arrangements discretely covered at all times. Having being briefed, or is that debriefed, by the holiday rep that a certain beach in the area catered for the unclothed this would prompt the Brits to take a leisurely stroll ‘just to check the scenery’. Easily identified by their grey socks worn with sandals these curious tourists, usually male, would be investigating to see if their expectations matched up to what they had learned from the 1960’s soft porn movies. Often they were hugely disappointed by the lack of well proportioned young ladies playing enthusiastically with beach balls.
Now has anything really changed? The British tourist can now travel to more destinations and much further from home than ever before. Perhaps they are a bit more cosmopolitan when it comes to food and drink, after all where can you go that hasn’t got a McDonalds? Now your Brit has different weapons at their disposal. The ability to complain that the facilities provided are not up to 5 Star standards even though the cost of being jetted to the other end of Europe and housed, fed and watered three times a day would barely buy you a return train ticket to London at home. The objective is to find fault and claim substantial compensation for their ‘suffering’ through some cowboy no-win-no-fee legal firm. No matter that they neglected to wear sun cream, drank excessively and laid themselves open to being a snack bar for every flying insect. If their holiday had not come up to the standard of some God forsaken British seaside resort they find cause to sue. Better if they had stayed in the UK in first place.
With the advent of stag party tourists, ‘all inclusives’, 18-30 groups and, more worrying, the Saga Louts, who are the 1960’s tourists stuck in an alcoholic time warp, it is apparent that some things haven’t changed very much. Some resorts still cater for the worst kind of visitor and as a result they still get them.
Thankfully there are places which have either abandoned their former tackiness or never succumbed to it in the first place. This is why you would have found me on the island of Ischia near Naples earlier this year where there was not a McDonald’s or an English breakfast establishment to be found. Sorry Spain, but I will be back, I promise.
© Mike Stevens 2009
'Gitin’ orn….! ’ August 2009
I read recently that the current generation of 60-70 year olds are now deemed environmentally unfriendly. This is probably going to come as a great shock to all of those ‘baby boomers’ conceived in Anderson Shelters during the last ‘unpleasantness’ with Germany. The theory is this; we are all living longer and a lot fitter than we used to be. We have after all had a reasonable diet. Rickets, scurvy, mad cow disease and consumption are things of the past, except in certain parts of Norfolk. We now fall into one of two basic categories. Either we are sitting around at home using lots of electricity to keep ourselves warm, or cool, using additional megawatts surfing the internet and using all sorts of electronic gadgetry. Conversely we are jetting off around the world to visit all those places we never had the time and money to see before and in the process of doing this we are punching holes in the ozone layer and sucking up fuel. Either way the environment cannot win. We are damaging the planet by living longer!
Time was when growing old was a fairly simple affair. Your employer presented you with a cheap clock for all your years of hard slog and experience then kicked you, fairly unceremoniously, out the door to be replaced by some spotty oik who probably couldn’t find his own bottom without a map. Then it was round to Marks for a nice warm ‘cardie’ followed by a sortie round the charity shop for a few ill fitting cast-offs all smelling mysteriously of Vick, then back home to await the arrival of your meals on wheels lady.
You were fully equipped for retirement. Highlights of the week would be a visit from the chiropodist, and occasionally, a jolly mystery tour in some battered coach. If you were lucky the latter occasion would be enhanced by the driver getting lost and arguments breaking out amongst the passengers as to which is the best route home. That’s the ‘mystery’ part.
Social events would be at the local ‘Darby and Joan’ club where you would be treated to ‘reminiscence therapy’ which would lead to riveting topics being discussed such as why we no longer need Ration Books, how nice that Mr Churchill was and how much better he would be at getting rid of all the foreigners, and what a struggle it is to manage decimal currency. A sing-song would be the order of the day running through the Vera Lynn back catalogue. I suppose we might be coming up to a time when this will be replaced by the Sex Pistols greatest hits. When you could no longer cope with all this excitement it was off to the local Council run ‘Twilight Home for the Bewildered’ for a diet of watery soup, group incontinence and sitting around watching endless re-runs of ‘Cash in the Attic’. Eventually clogs would be popped and your ‘nearest and dearest‘ would then fight over what little you left behind. All this might probably happen before you reached your statutory three score and ten.
Now it’s a very different story. It’s ‘keep fit’ classes, yoga and the University of the Third Age, whatever that is. The leader of my local ramblers group is a sprightly gent of eighty-one whom I struggle to keep up with. The less mobile equip themselves with one of those electric scooter things. A trip to the shopping centre these days is like finding yourself in the midst of a geriatric Grand Prix. Tartan shopper trolleys are so ‘last year’.
Pensioners, or senior citizens, or whatever they are supposed to be called, take full advantage of the Government backed free bus fare scheme. The Government subsidies barely kept pace with the demand as enterprising seniors worked out how they could get from one end of the Country to another without paying a penny. Often when they get to Lands End, or wherever, they probably forget why they had gone there in the first place. Now local authorities have had to restrict the scheme or go bust. No pun intended! If you fancy a bit of aquatic exercise there is free pool time at your local sports centre that is if you can manage to find the free transport there and back. This too has had to be cut back because of over-demand. Some pensioners have found a trip down to the local pool saves on running bath water at home, although there have been no reports yet of the washing of smalls in the shallow end.
Medical advances have enabled worn out bodily parts to be replaced. How much longer before we have the totally bionic pensioner outpacing the younger members of society? Viagra and other performance enhancing drugs are available on the NHS and those with a bit of money to spend can look forward to pregnancy in their sixties. Of course all this available at a price and the availability of funds depends on where you live in the UK. The scheme is better known as the Post Code lottery. Life becomes a gamble.
It has only just dawned on the politicians that are currently running the show, when they are not moving house or spending our money on luxury items, that this population of ‘oldies’ is increasing at a phenomenal rate and is costing the Country money. In fact it is now predicted that within the next 20 years more than half the population of the UK will be over 50. Saga never had it so good.
Making pensions go further is becoming more of a problem. The UK pension is probably one of the lowest in Europe. Of course you can claim extra allowances, but the forms you have to fill in are so long and take up so much time you could probably drop dead before you have completed the task. Perhaps that was the original idea? Anyway, I was going to end this article on a jolly, upbeat and optimistic note about the joys of getting older. However, I cannot remember what it was…funny that seems to be happening quite a lot lately….
© Mike Stevens 2009
'don't get me started! ’ JULY 2009
Have you ever wondered what new laws you would make, should you be given the power to do so? A fellow presenter on the radio station I work for features an item where she gives air-time to local minor celebrities, passing tramps and anyone else she can persuade to come on her programme, to talk about what they would do if they were able to ‘rule the world’. Once you start to think about this a mental list of sundry punishments for those who irritate you on a daily basis will soon form in your mind. We’re not talking anything major here like dangerous driving or being a politician and fiddling expenses to pay for ‘duck islands’, just targeting all those irritating t***ers in everyday life that really get up your nose.
Top of my list are mobile phone users. Now don’t get me wrong I’m not totally against the things and I have one, which I occasionally switch on, sometimes as often as twice a week. Other people seem to be totally addicted to the things. They simply cannot leave home without them. You cannot avoid the inane conversations they have as they walk along the street, shop in the supermarket or travel on public transport. People blather on about what baked beans should they should buy or some intensively mind numbing event in their dismal lives which they glamorise into such a fashion so as to believe they are living in an episode of ‘Eastenders’. In reality the incident is so tedious it is only one stage removed from the experience of watching paint dry; but then so is ‘Eastenders’.
Then there are the mobile phone users with additional plastic devices stuck in the ears which are about as undetectable as a National Health hearing aid circa 1950. This enables them to wander down the street apparently talking to themselves about…well…see the above. There was once a time when we kept these conversations to ourselves or at least to the privacy of our own homes. We did not inflict them on the rest of humanity. My belief is that mobile phone connections should be set to a maximum time limit of one minute; by Law. Any offenders who overstep this time would have one ear surgically removed and their phones trampled on by a specially trained team of Morris Dancers.
Then there are what I call the ‘clutchers’. They walk along the street, jog, cycle, or sometimes drive clutching either a bottle or a polystyrene container. It seems they need, at regular intervals, to replenish their systems with either a bottle of so-called spa water drawn from the tap of some middle-European sewage reprocessing department or, worst of all, consume coffee. Now there is nothing wrong with an invigorating cup of traditional Nescafe into which you can dunk your Garibaldi. 
These offenders, however, have obviously been duped into entering one of the High Street chain of coffee merchants who sell vastly overpriced frothy milk/water mixtures enhanced with a dash of coffee flavouring and seemingly sprinkled with what appears to be chocolate coloured dandruff. They then ponce along the street clutching their beverage containers before them like they have discovered the Holy Grail. Apart from indicating to all and sundry that they are total ****ers, the ‘clutching’ is a bit of a give-away, it is also made obvious that they can easily be conned into buying almost anything. This ‘clutching’ is both irritating and dangerous. They could have somebody’s eye out! Offenders should be made to drink several litres of their obnoxious liquid in one session, and suffer the consequences of staying awake for several days whilst sitting on the toilet.
The next item may well serve to alienate me from 50% of the readers of this column, but what the heck! I refer to women in men’s clothing departments. These fall into roughly three categories. There are the feelers and fondlers who wander round caressing everything on the racks. Imagine what would happen to us chaps if we were found doing this to ‘ladies unmentionables’ in the lingerie department of Dorothy Perkins; or am I missing out on something here? Then there are the stout ladies in sensible shoes buying large sweaters, rugby shirts and roomy boxer shorts, presumably for themselves. Surely there are special shops for these people. Finally, and worst of all, are ladies accompanying their male companions. No matter what age their male accompanists are the environment causes those of the feminine persuasion to treat them as if they were all about five years old.
Unwanted advice like “Do you like the blue ones or the green ones?”, “Isn’t it a bit tight round the crotch?”, or “will you be able to sit down comfortably?” is all very well, but we are able to make up our own minds thank you very much ladies. If we look like a sack of manure tied up with string this is precisely the look were are trying to create. The subtle combination of bottle green trousers and an orange striped golfing jumper is, to us, a unique fashion statement. So there! And do we really want ladies who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time examining men’s underwear apparently testing them for expandability. This exercise can be far more rewarding for all concerned when the men are actually inside the afore mentioned garments.
My rule would be that women would be banned from these shops for at least two days a week when men could be free to choose their own stuff without coming under scrutiny or criticism. Women who break this rule would be made to spend an afternoon wandering round the Marks and Spencer’s Ladies department whilst wearing a straight jacket. With no chance of ‘feeling and fondling’, or indeed trying anything on, they would suffer intense mental trauma.
Restrictions on the lengths of these articles forbid me from telling you the punishments I would inflict on those who eat in cinemas, swim back stroke, have excessive tattooing, take children into restaurants, wear thongs, shout at foreigners, moan about the weather and have any interest whatsoever in football. Suffice it to say that the screams of pain would keep you awake at night and the increase in business for funeral directors would make you consider making the trade a worthwhile investment opportunity. Now when is Kate going to ask me on her programme?
' out of bounds....’ MAY 2009
By your celebrity DJ, you can listen to hime live on www.futureradio.co.uk Wednesday mornings 10..00-13.00
In April this year some parts of the UK got bigger and other parts disappeared altogether. The power structure of the Shires was changing. Whether it is for the better, or worse, remains to be seen. The whole idea is urged on by the Government, who want to get closer to the people. Scary thought!
Whilst the rest of the Country was undergoing changes, closer to home we were still undecided. The first moves were mooted some time ago when Norwich decided it might like to declare its independence from the County of Norfolk. Not a great idea when you consider what happened to Rhodesia when it dropped out of the Commonwealth. This proposal started a number of balls rolling.
The County Council are not the happiest of bunnies at the prospect; after all they would be losing a substantial part of their income to provide us with all the “amenities” that we enjoy. Norwich would have to expand the boundaries of the city in order to take in extra revenue, and other authorities would lose on the deal. Faced with this prospect the idea also sparked off several other districts having a similar idea. If Norwich were to become independent then perhaps this could happen to other parts of the County.
All of a sudden ‘little kingdoms’ were being planned. West Norfolk would have its own domain and the fen dwellers and other assorted swamp people would be able to make their own rules. They could launch invasion forces from the port of King’s Lynn on a scale which has not been seen since the ill-fated movie ‘Revolution’ was made there in the 80’s.
More worrying was that in the East a new alliance was proposed with, horror of horrors, a part of Suffolk being joined to the County.
The area including Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft was proposed to be the Serfdom of ‘Yartoft’.
The picture painted was that this delightful area with its rather drab and down-at-heel coastal resorts would become a kind of English Costa. However its supporters had failed to take into account one or two major flaws in this scheme of things. Norfolk dwellers regard the natives of Suffolk with some suspicion. They are seen as a kind of sub-human species who possibly have webbed feet and are prone to uncontrolled interbreeding. To be fair this is a view shared by Suffolk dwellers regarding their Northern neighbours.
Added to this you would have to take into account the rivalry of their respective football teams. The ‘Canaries’ and the ‘Tractor Boys’ meet occasionally on the football field cheered, or jeered on by their fans. The former team rallied on by the unedifying sight of the blessed Delia, the TV cook, obviously overdosing on the cooking sherry. All this does not bode well for unity.
The central part of Norfolk would be fairly easy to become autonomous populated as it is by people from Portugal and Poland, with the occasional enclave of Chinese. They could drop the use of the English language altogether, introduce the Euro and provide a steady income from packing vegetables and plumbing. The Chinese would be fairly self sustaining from the increasing trend of turning suburban semis into cannabis farms.
The remainder of the County Council was to declare that local rule should be dropped altogether and that they, from their 12 storey tower block full of pen pushers and bureaucrats, should take control of everything. This is an organisation that has just successfully lost £32 million in investments in Icelandic Banks. One of their projects last year was to install a redundant Jaguar fighter aircraft in their car park which, it has been noted, points in the direction of the UNISON union office. On the other hand Norwich City Council managed to hit worldwide headlines by turning out several old age pensioners from their homes so that the head of housing, and her boyfriend, along with several other assorted Council lackeys could move into low cost housing. They are also responsible for a neglected war memorial which has resembled a demolition site for the last four years whilst they decide what to do with it. It has been described as being somewhat worse than the one in Baghdad. In the meantime they managed to fund a collection of assorted statues, on a prime site in the city centre, resembling volcanic fallout, and for some unknown reason, includes a human brain. It has to be said this assemblage does serve one useful purpose in providing somewhere for customers of MacDonald’s to sit down whilst they consume the contents of their paper bags. Norwich people know a thing or two about ‘fine dining’. In the interest of European friendship these edifices were designed by a French artist.
So either way the prospect does not look good. The only thing that separates one organisation from another is the ingenious ways in which they find to waste our hard earned cash. Shortly we are to be faced with local elections, parish council elections and Euro elections. Most of the outcomes will be pointless if boundaries are suddenly changed. But, never fear, it takes years before any decisions are ever made. It has to pass Councillors, who will not want to lose their jobs, committees, sub-committees and countless other gatherings each with an axe to grind. By the time a decision is reached the costing of the venture will be so out of date that they will have to start all over again.
Change to Norfolk, if it ever comes, comes very slowly. Eventually a mushy compromise will be reached which is covered by the local expression in Norfolk, we “du diffrunt bor”. Well that’s our explanation for everything!
© Mike Stevens 2009
' Things that stick up! ’
“Very flat, Norfolk”, was a remark made by a character in Noel Coward’s “Private Lives”. Well, that’s not strictly true, there are some bumpy bits, and around some of the edges it is getting dangerously close to disappearing below sea level. In fact it has already been proposed that some parts of the Broads area, a popular tourist destination, should be turned over to the sea and flooded.
Norfolk folk, obviously want to conserve their flat landscape, and seem to have an aversion to anything that sticks up more than a few feet off the ground. When a proposal is made to erect a mobile phone mast the natives will certainly rise up in anger. Previous objections to these necessities of modern life where previously focussed on the “it will fry our brains” argument.
There was an apparent belief that people would be rendered insensible and their children, in particular, would become mindless zombies and bump into the furniture.
Now there are a significant number of kids like that already having been dosed on a regular basis with drugs to combat ADHD. Or “naughty kids disease” as I prefer to call it. Nevertheless, either to dispel the theory or out of necessity, mobile masts appear on the top of council flats and hospital buildings because no real scientific evidence of “brain frying” exists.
Campaigners have had to resort to other methods of protest in order to rid their area of this supposed “evil”.
Having failed to make any headway on the dangerous “rays” theory the next argument to be put forward is about the physical appearance of things. Although many are little more conspicuous than your average streetlight it has to be agreed that they do stick up in the air. Such goings-on are not in line with the Norfolk flat-earth theory. Although they can be disguised as other things, like trees for example, they are still objected to on a regular basis even though we now seem to live in a society with one ear glued permanently to a mobile phone and therefore have to rely on the things being built somewhere.
But a far greater evil has arrived to besmirch the landscape. The world energy crisis has brought about the need for alternative energy sources and with this has come the innovation of the “wind farm”. The introduction of the first wind generator to Norfolk was seen as a novelty. It was the centre attraction of the Ecotec Centre, a well-meaning theme park designed to educate people about the benefits of recycling. 
However the joys of discovering that you could grow vegetables in recycled human 'poo' somehow failed to equal the attractions of Alton Towers and the centre closed leaving only the major exhibit which was a large wind generator. Not only could the natives go to point at this magnificent piece of engineering, but they could ascend the tower and point down .
I should explain that Norfolk people like things to point at. "Look Mummy, the lights are changing colour all on their own, red, amber and green, is it magic?",”Hush my child, they are called traffic lights and are powered by dark forces". When the M25 was opened they even ran coach trips to enable local people to gaze upon it, and point.
But I digress. Having one wind generator to point at was one thing but “farms” of them was quite another. Now I have seen the forests of turbines on Spanish hillsides and I can assure you that plans for developments locally are on a much smaller scale. Probably ten machines at the most. Nevertheless planning applications are opposed on a regular basis. The noise will be a disturbance, is one argument. What about the birds? Won't they fly into them? Another fear was they would disturb the radar system which scans the skies over Norfolk. Now I'm left to wonder what kind of air security system we have that fails to determine the difference between a moving 747 and a stationary windmill, but there you go. Plans are submitted by individual farmers trying to scratch a living from their land to major industrialists like Lotus and Bernard Matthews. Obviously the turkey powered generators are not up to the job. All these applications are met with disapproval at some point. The benefits of saving the planet do not come into the argument at all. The overriding objection is that they will stick up in the air and spoil the view. The view of what? For the most part there is little view to spoil, and actually I find these windmills quite elegant.
The only exception to these objections is the construction of wind farms off the coast. The Scroby Sands development is comfortably placed a mile offshore. The turbines are seen more as a tourist attraction rather than a major contribution to minimise the effects of global warming. Something you can easily point at, and from a safe distance well out of reach of plummeting seagulls!
Now you may agree that the locals have a point. Maybe they want to preserve the landscape as it has always been. But you would be missing one factor here. For hundreds of years the Norfolk landscape has been dotted with windmills of all kinds. They ground the corn, and pumped the water into the dykes to keep huge parts of the landscape dry which are below sea level. Without them the North Norfolk coast and the productive fenlands of the Cambridgeshire borders would not exist. The ruins of these mills still stand, and in some cases have been rebuilt as holiday homes. Of course they are a lot smaller than the megaliths that generate todays power. The uses to which windmills are put may have changed, but the need to harness the power of nature still has its uses; this time to help save the planet.
© Mike Stevens 2009
'Tescopoly strikes again!’
The big news in town is not the credit crunch, unemployment or the likelihood of 2 centimetres of snow causing traffic chaos and several hundred schools to be closed. It is the news that Tesco Express is about to land in the Golden Triangle. Now I’d better explain that the Golden Triangle is not, as you might suppose, a high level to be reached in a computer game, nor is it a location where First Buses have mysteriously disappeared. It is, in fact a triangle shaped collection of streets of squat Victorian houses to the west of the city centre. They have very little in the way of front gardens and no garages. Indeed, when the dreaded grey and luminous blue wheelie bins were handed out recently many of the occupants could barely get out of their front doors because they were blocked by these plastic monstrosities. The residents were torn between the green ethic of recycling and the fact that the locality was beginning to look like Legoland. This is a minor scandal compared with their five year battle to prevent Tesco building a small convenience store on some waste ground in a side street off the main drag appropriately called Unthank Road.
The occupants of this area have, until the recent financial crash, been an estate agents dream. Living in the Golden Triangle is the local equivalent of London’s Notting Hill. Close to the city centre and the University it has attracted the yuppies, decision making high‐rollers and property speculators. Houses that would sell for about £120k if sited elsewhere would fetch twice that figure or more in the property boom. It was immensely desirable to live there even if some of the homes were sub‐let to scruffy students.
Now the ‘yummy mummies’ clutch their designer clad infants to their bosoms and cover their eyes. Flags fly at half mast and everyone has stopped moaning about the bloody wheelie bins. In spite of a long and expensive campaign going back for 5 years Tesco has at last been given planning permission to build its little sub‐store. Of course there is some sympathy for the local traders, but it is really very unlikely that the trendy residents really do all their grocery shopping in one of the two Co‐ops. Perhaps they pop in occasionally for a bunch of eco‐friendly bananas, but that is probably about all. In fact one might suppose that if a mini Waitrose were to be built instead there would have been barely a raised eyebrow. Even a Marks and Spencer food store would have been acceptable with its selection of salads, which everyone knows are plucked by angels and washed in mermaids’ tears. At least that is what you would expect at the prices they charge. Even a branch of Sainsburys might have passed the yuppie test. Of course Sainsburys was invented to keep the riff‐raff out of Waitrose.
Action groups were set up, websites appeared and banners were marched to City Hall. So far nobody has chained themselves to a Derby winner or appeared in a Superman outfit on the balcony at Buckingham Palace. The resplendent Art Deco monstrosity that is City Hall was the place to target. There the power of the City rests, astoundingly, with the Green Party. Now the philosophy of the ‘Greens’ is that if any other party is for something, then the ‘Greens’ are against it. Now everything is green in the Golden Triangle. They even hold a Greenstock festival where the natives dance naked around a burning wheelie bin. Apparently 66% of them vote for the Green Party and, presumably shop at the green grocers. So City Hall supported the residents in the fight. As each planning application was made, it was turned down. “What about the big lorries?” And “where would all the cars park?” Presumably the Co‐op parachute their supplies into the area. “What about the noise?” Do people trudge round the area in silence wearing carpet slippers? I think not.
Children were encouraged to make drawings of what they would like to see on the site and 200 of these were pinned to the safety fencing. Most of these drawings resembled edifices which were more horrific than a simple shop. Many of them appeared to depict a mattress factory undergoing a large explosion, but then most kids drawings look like that. Strange statistics appeared with a strong anti‐Tesco bias. Some genius dreamed up a ‘typical shopping basket’ and pointed out that a saving of £1.13 could be achieved by buying from the Co‐op. Now if you have been prepared to fork out £250k for a house you are hardly likely to fall apart over the cost of cut‐price toilet rolls, even if they are recycled!
Every planning refusal was met with a further re‐application from the big T. In fact there were 8 in all, before I lost count. An independent planner was eventually called in by the Council to look at the residents objections. They were confident that he would support their cause. To their surprise, apart from an agreement to limiting the car park space, he decided that all their reasons to object to Tesco’s plans, which were mainly based on the ‘big lorry’ issue, were without any foundation whatsoever. As a consequence of this all planning refusals were over‐ruled and building can commence. The Council coffers are lighter by around £250,000 as a consequence which is what all the support for the activists cost the local tax payers.
One local shop keeper was heard to quote “it is the start of a slippery slope”. There were declarations of “of course I will never shop there”, but strangely Tesco home delivery vans are frequently seen making drops in the area. Just in case you were wondering what was on the site before it became derelict it was not lush grassland with sheep grazing against a backdrop of sunlight dappled through tall resplendent oak trees. It was in fact the Arlington Service station which had an endless succession of cars going in and out day and night. I seem to recall there was something of a protest when it closed down. Some people are never satisfied!
© Mike Stevens 2009
GOODBYE WOOLWORTHS
By your celebrity DJ, you can listen to hime live on www.futureradio.co.uk Wednesday mornings 10..00-13.00
When started as a ‘new boy’ at a minor (very) English Public School more years ago than I care to remember we were given a list of school rules. I still have this and it might make a topic for another article but suffice to say most of the restrictions that were placed on all pupils are now handed out as punishments by juvenile courts.
Not eating in the street, not being permitted to go out at any time without wearing the school uniform and being banned from all places of entertainment were fairly self-explanatory. However one rule puzzled me. ‘Members of the school are not permitted to enter chain stores during term time’. Now, apart from a cycle lock, I had never felt the need to buy a chain. What was dreadful about them? Was there a danger than small boys would roam the street wielding lengths of chain and threatening passersby? It was pointed out to me that chain stores were branches of nationwide stores that were familiar to every High Street. In those days this meant Woolworths, Marks and Spencer’s and British Home Stores. All these establishments were conveniently, or inconveniently, situated directly opposite the school entrance.
Now I was not too concerned about the banishment from M & S. Perhaps the ‘powers that be’ were concerned that small boys would be corrupted by lingering in the lingerie department. After all this was an all boys school and we were also banned from going near girls. I suspect this had more to do with school uniforms only being obtainable from a designated outfitter who charged inflated prices and presumably gave generous ‘back hander’ to the headmaster. British Home Store seemed, almost exclusively, to sell lampshades as I recall. No great loss not going in there.
What did hurt was the forbidden territory of Woolworths. Now I had been brought up, as many of my generation had, to regard Woolly’s as a kind of Aladdin’s cave full of all sorts of goodies that we often affordable from meagre pocket money and holiday earnings. Who has never drooled over the day-glo splendour of the pick’n’mix section? In the early days there was none of the health and safety laws that ensured that consumable goods should be covered. Everything was exposed and many a child would scamper out of the store clutching a bizarre assortment of confectionary seasoned with fly droppings. Then there were the toys, again usually easily affordable, which came in garish boxes. Usually these were rip-offs of much more expensive items obtainable in ‘proper shops’. But did we care about the quality? Not a bit of it. Nor did we mind that the K-Tel records, which were so crammed with tracks that a grasshopper sneezing would send the pick-up arm on your record player scudding across the surface.
All the stores had the same layout. You knew where you were in Woolworths. Somewhere at the right side of the store was a tea and coffee counter. For some unaccountable reason you could only stir your beverage using a communal teaspoon that was chained to the counter. Had they been plagued by a gang of ‘teaspoon bandits’ who had snatched their entire stock except for this solitary item?
‘Saturday girls’ had a certain allure. These were casual workers, very, who would stare disinterestedly at the produce and defy you to buy something. After all these were the days before ‘scanning’ and so buying an assortment of small goods at various prices would involve them in a massive exercise in mathematics which was never going to be the strong point of these ‘Saturday Girls’ who would do their calculating on the back of brown paper bags.
But, alas, on January the 6th 2009 all these stores, some of which had become ‘big w’s, closed their doors for the last time. it was a sorry sight to see the staff lockers, shelving and baskets for sale in those final days. ironically in the final weeks, as stock was reduced to a fraction of the original price, they were packed to doors. I suspect a lot of items, including the pick’n’mix were being bought purely out of nostalgia. cheap and nasty goods can still be bought in pound shops and their like, but we shall never see the variety of ‘tat’, albeit useful ‘tat’ under one roof again. and small public school boys will never feel the sense of elation as we did on the last day of term when we invaded woolworths for a bit of down to earth shoplifting.
© Mike Stevens December 2009
Farewell to the English ‘Local’
If you are to believe the storylines of UK soap operas you may be led to think that the hub of any community is the neighbourhood pub. Whether it is the Rovers in Coronation Street, the Queen Vic in Eastenders or the dear old Bull in the Archers it appears that the whole community, rich or poor, pops in for a pint or a port and lemon at one time or another. Plots are hatched, hearts are broken and problems resolved within the oak covered walls of these cosy establishments.
Sadly this is rapidly becoming a thing of the past. No more are rosy cheeked landladies or busty barmaids pulling pints and dispensing crisps and pork scratchings; surely the food of the Gods! Old Jethro no longer sits in the corner of the inglenook toasting his boots in front of a blazing log fire picking the flies out of a pint of ‘Scruttocks Old Dirigible’ and making it last all evening. Darts and skittles are rapidly falling victims to health and safety regulations and, if they are played at all, are banished to some back ‘games’ room. The hazy fog that hung over the whole proceedings has gone with the onslaught of the smoking regulations. Even the prevalent smell of stale beer has been washed away by chemical cleaning agents in the name of hygiene.
The sad truth is that British pubs are closing weekly. The doors are shutting for the last time and the windows are being boarded up to ward off the squatters and vandals. The demise is down to many causes and has been coming for some time. The ‘Olde Worlde’ pubs run by independent breweries were merged into the major chains that set out to ‘modernise‘ them. Most of the charm of these places was replaced by ‘theme’ interiors where everything was seemingly made of plastic, even the staff. Out went the Real Ales and in came exotic, and insipid, Continental lagers. Whatever they were called they somehow all tasted the same spewing forth propelled by high pressure gas from metal tanks rather than the traditional oaken barrels.
There was a time when a selection of curly sandwiches or the ‘Ploughman’s Lunch’ was enough to satisfy the gastronomic demands of your average pub‐goer. Then the brewery presented us with a menu the size of a barn door with all sorts of exotic dishes which, in reality, nestle in the bowels of the kitchen deep freeze ready to be popped into the microwave and served up with a sprig of parsley. We never really complained, after all we are British. Of course there were some establishments who had real chefs usually desperate for a TV series. If you were prepared to be put on a waiting list for several months to get a booking, you could be served a pretentious and wildly overpriced concoction which looked nice but frankly tasted of dog food. Somehow this was not really what most of us wanted.
The young customers were what the pub chains wanted. They could be lured in with ‘Happy Hours’ when the deal was to drink as much as you could at reduced prices. Even this was not enough for the serious party seeker on a night out. The standard practice, I am informed, is to drink a large quantity of supermarket alcohol at home before you embark on the evening’s jollity. And here is the first factor in the demise of the pub.
You local Lidl or 
Tesco can supply booze at prices well below what some pubs pay their wholesalers. It has even been said that they sell alcohol at a lower prices than some bottled water.
When they are fuelled up by the ‘Happy Hour’ the revellers will soon move on to the clubs. Here they spend the rest of the night, and their money. I remember a time when discos overcame the licensing regulations by serving a ‘meal’ to their customers. Apparently you could legitimately serve booze after hours if the customer was eating. The ‘meal’ as I recall was ‘Scampi in a Basket’. A few lumps of re‐constituted fish product and half a dozen chips served on a sticky wickerwork container was all you needed to drink until the small hours.
Live musical entertainment was once the mainstay of many larger pubs. Whether it was a bunch of rustic folksingers, or an emerging local Grunge band, people would pack the place to doors for the free entertainment and atmosphere. Alas music licences are now being regularly contested by neighbours who are mainly Yuppies living in new developments. They apparently ‘don’t like the noise’ and so that puts an end to years of good entertainment and fun.
Next came the smoking ban. Now I, as a non‐smoker, was amongst the first to welcome this but I did feel that there ought to have been a compromise somehow. There was a time when we did have ‘Smoking Rooms’. It is true that the staff should be protected from the dangers of passive smoke inhalation but surely we could have come up with airtight hatch systems which, after all, have been well tested in Star Wars movies. The compromise is that people are banished to the great outdoors, whatever the weather, to crouch under a makeshift shelter usually with a gas patio heater punching an even greater hole in the ozone layer. Soon these are abandoned by even the most die-hard of addicts and alcohol from Netto, drunk at home, seems a much better option.
The credit crunch is probably the last nail in the coffin for many pubs. Even with the lifting of the restriction in drinking hours establishments are more or less empty on anything but Friday and Saturday nights. I’ve tried to find a way of ending this article on an optimistic note, but sadly there isn’t one. The only place you will soon be able to find a traditional English bar is in some Spanish resort. Make the most of them. They are probably the last British pubs we’ll ever see.
© Mike Stevens December 2008
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Bad Food Britain: How A Nation Ruined Its Appetite
Author: Joanna Blythman -you can purchase her book from www.amazon.co.uk
Synopsis
Award-winning investigative food journalist, Joanne Blythman turns her attention to the current hot topic - the state of British food. What is it about the British and food? We just don't get it, do we? Britain is notorious worldwide for its bad food and increasingly corpulent population, but it's a habit we just can't seem to kick. Welcome to the country where recipe and diet books feature constantly in top 10 bestseller lists, but where the average meal takes only eight minutes to prepare and people spend more time watching celebrity chefs cooking on TV than doing any cooking themselves, the country where a dining room table is increasingly becoming an optional item of furniture.
Welcome to the nation that is almost pathologically obsessed with the safety and provenance of food but which relies on factory-prepared ready meals for sustenance, eating four times more of them than any other country in Europe, the country that never has its greasy fingers out of a packet of crisps, consuming more than the rest of Europe put together. Welcome to the affluent land where children eat food that is more nutritionally impoverished than their counterparts in South African townships, the country where hospitals can sell fast-food burgers, but not home-baked cake, the G8 state where even the Prime Minister refuses to eat broccoli.
Award-winning investigative food journalist Joanna Blythman takes us on an amusing, perceptive and subversive journey through Britain's contemporary food landscape, and traces the roots of our contemporary food troubles in deeply engrained ideas about class, modernity and progress.
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