Year: 2007

So, being the original sorts that we are, for the third year in a row Sal and I went up to Edinburgh again for the bank holiday weekend.

For some reason, this year we seemed to do a lot of rushing about. There barely seemed to be a moment when we weren’t supposed to be somewhere else. On Saturday evening, for example, we decided to grab something to eat before seeing Richard Herring. Knowing how much comedians love it when you are late to their gigs, I did wonder if the hour that we had allowed ourselves would be enough time for what Sal described as a “quick curry”, and my worries were not abated when, 15 or so minutes after we’d first sat down in the restaurant, a third different waiter came over to try to take the order we believed we’d already made. But it turned out that my fretting was unnecessary–our food arrived eventually, and although we had to walk rather briskly to the venue, when we arrived at the Underbelly there was still a queue snaking around the bar waiting to go in. At that point, somebody shouted “Matt!” across the room–which was interesting, because I hadn’t been aware that anyone knew I was there. It turned out to be my old work colleage Angel: of course, I suppose it was inevitable that if we went to see Richard Herring enough times we’d bump into Angel at one of his gigs eventually…

Probably the high point of the weekend for me was Mark Watson at the Pleasance: his faux-Welsh shtick might err on the side of conventional, but it’s very funny nonetheless, and appeals to my silly sense of humour. Unfortunately, the low point of the weekend came just a few hours later on the same evening… We’d been drinking in the bar at the Pleasance after Mark Watson when we were accosted by a Canadian “comic” who was touting for the stand-up show (“Underground Comedy Invasion”) that he was compèring later that night. He told us how they’d already been thrown out of one Fringe venue for being too offensive. He offered us a free “sample joke”. It wasn’t funny, but for some reason we agreed to go to his show anyway. Maybe this was because we were drunk and he offered us the tickets for £2.50 each…

As the time of the show ticked closer, we left ourselves with not quite enough time to get there and ended up rushing to the venue, not quite knowing where it was. We needn’t have worried, though, because as we climbed the stairs of The Green Room, there was our Canadian eating a takeaway pizza out of its box, telling us to keep going all the way up to the top. We also needn’t have worried because it turned out to be just as awful as you would expect a show to be if the compère is forced to tout his own tickets at half price to drunk people in the bars of other venues a few hours before the show.

It started ok, but it got substantially less funny as it went on, and by the time the stage was graced by a Dutch bloke who didn’t appear to have an act, we were ready to leave. [He opened with “Hello. I am a Dutchman and I do not use drugs. [PAUSE] OK. Any Questions?” Which is hilarious, obviously. It wasn’t until the next day that I realised that a good question might have been “Is that it?” or perhaps “Is this the first time you’ve done this?”] And so, with the quality going rapidly downhill, and with tiredness taking over, we were ready to do something we’ve never done before: leave a comedy gig before the end. Unfortunately, at this point the compère took the stage again and said something to the effect of “Right. Normally we’d finish there, but we’re going to carry on. It’s going to get more offensive, though, so if anyone’s easily offended they should leave now.” Damn. Well clearly we couldn’t leave now–it would look like we were just being prudish–so we waited for a bit like cowards. When it didn’t get any better we knew we had to make a break for the exit. There was clearly no way for us to leave the small room unnoticed, and I didn’t know quite how to leave in a way that conveyed the fact that we weren’t leaving because we were offended but mostly because we were tired (and also because it wasn’t really that funny). I made a break for the door and didn’t look back…

We also found ourselves rushing to our final show of the weekend: Andy Zaltzman’s afternoon dose of utopia at The Stand. This was unfortunate, given that, although we didn’t miss the start of the gig, we were too late to get anything other than the seats at the very front of the tiny venue, directly underneath Andy’s nose and close enough to see the sweat on his brow. At any other event I’d be happy to be so close to the front, but of course the reverse rules apply for comedy–luckily Andy isn’t really that sort of comedian, but he does ask the audience for input to help him create his afternoon utopia, and so it was that he asked me a direct question that I struggled to answer in a sufficiently funny way (this was the best I could do: he asked me if I was happy with my life, and what was so great about it, and after a pause all I could come up with was “er… I don’t have to starve to death…?” “Of course”, he responded, “if only they’d tried that in Africa in the 1980s, things would have worked out so much better…”)

Oh and the weekend also included a couple of celeb spots…

Who’s walking away?
Looking short and old and grey?
That was Frank Skinner

[I’m not sure if this one counts, because I realised afterwards that the reason he was leaving the Pleasance Courtyard at that time on the Sunday afternoon was because he’d just done a show there, but I’m claiming it anyway because we hadn’t paid to attend the show and happened to be just sitting on the benches having a beer as he walked past us.]

In the Pleasance bar,
Harassed by Doctor Who fans,
It’s Maureen Lipman

[Poor Maureen Lipman: if there’s a sentence to strike fear in the heart of an actor, then it must surely be the one uttered by the earnest young man who approached her as she stood alone waiting for her friend: “excuse me: I just wanted to say I thought you were wonderful in Doctor Who“.]

Up North for the weekend. Partly this was so that I could see the family (including a sibling who has briefly returned from the other side of the world), but also so that I could exorcise a long-standing demon.

I’ve now been embarrassed about not having a driving licence for over a decade. I took lessons when I was 17, like most people do, but I never really knew what I was doing. And so when I went off to university, where there was no real pressing need to be able to drive, and I had other things on my mind, I basically gave up. When I returned, almost seven years ago, I tried again. This time I actually managed to learn something, but I still managed to do something stupid in my test and fail. Then the test I rebooked in early January 2001 was cancelled due to icy roads, I moved to London to start working, and, with no real pressing need to be able to drive, and other things on my mind, I gave up. Again. Perhaps you can detect a theme developing here.

And so as time passed I gradually changed from being embarrassed about being in my early twenties and not having a licence to being embarrassed about being in my mid twenties and not having a licence, until finally I was embarrassed about being in my late twenties and not having a licence. Whenever the subject of driving would come up in polite conversation I would quietly try to change the subject or hope that I didn’t need to reveal to anyone who didn’t already know that I *gasp* couldn’t drive. I cringed when Dylan Moran’s character in Shaun of the Dead explained how he “didn’t really need to drive in London”. I endured the taunts of Sal’s Australian friends who laughed at me for my inadequacy–the concept of someone of my age not being able to drive being almost as ridiculous to them as it is to the car-obsessed Americans.

So earlier this year (with only a slight push from a girlfriend fed up with doing all the driving whenever we hire a car on holiday) I resolved to do something about it. And despite all the pain and anxiety I’ve associated with the subject of driving for so many years, it turned out to be remarkably straightforward: I took my theory test back in July, which proved to be as stupidly easy as it was the first time (“An old lady is crossing the road in front of you. Do you: a) Speed up, rev your engine and try to take her out, Grand Theft Auto-style; b) Beep your horn, swear at her and gesture for her to get off the road; or c) slow down and wait for her to cross“). After that, it was just a matter of booking in a few refresher lessons and a test, which just happened to be available on a Saturday afternoon in my home town–where I could use my mum’s car and the roads are nice and quiet–on the weekend when I was planning to go home anyway. It was almost like it was meant to be.

By the time I turned back into the test centre at the end of the test, aware that the examiner hadn’t made many marks on his little exam sheet (and that I hadn’t done anything really stupid this time) I was feeling fairly confident, but it was still a shock to hear him say the fateful words “I’m pleased to tell you that you’ve passed”. He might have said these words with no emotion whatsoever, conveying the sense that he was in fact in no way pleased to have unleashed another driver onto the roads, but he said them nonetheless. And I have a piece of paper to prove it.

So there you go. Something that has been such a big deal for me for so long suddenly isn’t. Feels like a bit of an anticlimax really.

So somehow I’ve ended up on some kind of official mailing list for former University of Bristol students. From time to time they email me with desperately dull missives about recent events at the university.

When they’re not doing that, they’re spamming me with promotional bumf about “The Big Bristol Reunion”, which they like to pretend is something organised by a few ex-students who fancied a get-together.

Thing is, I’ve looked at the website for The Big Bristol Reunion and I can’t help thinking that it looks rather familiar…

Oh yeah, that’s because there’s also The Big Birmingham Reunion, The Big Durham Renuion, The Big Bath Reunion, and The Big Reading Reunion. I wonder how many other unique reunion events these people are also organising?

Anyway. The latest email tells me that they’ll be recreating Wedgies. I can’t think of a worse way to spend my time.

The best thing about these events, though, is that their website has a sign-up form for you to register your interest. If you fill it in, then your details will be automatically added to the list of who’s coming that appears on the site (linked from the bottom right corner of the main page). Let’s ignore for a second the fact that this is probably a breach of the Data Protection Act (and isn’t something that they bother to mention in their privacy statement) and just think about the fact that the names are automatically added to the list: there’s no attempt to verify the specified email address, for example. If you have a look at the list then you can see that there are some interesting names on there: “Adolf Hitler”, “Joseph Stalin”, and “Anne Widdecombe” are all planning to attend, apparently. (Actually, that sounds like one hell of a party–maybe I will pop along after all.)

They weren’t even all mine. Perhaps you know a few people who might be going too…

[Oh, and it looks like they’ve forgotten to strip out any HTML tags that might happen to appear in your “name”…]

I’m not sure if I have anything particularly profound to add to all that’s been written about the passing of Tony Wilson… He was one of those figures who seemed to pop up all over the media when I was growing up in the North West in the 80s and 90s. Well, I guess I watched a lot of telly as a kid–he was the guy arguing the toss about something or other on a chaotic late night discussion show that you stumbled across after you came back from the pub; he was that bloke off World in Action and Granada Reports. I’m not sure if I ever really connected that Tony Wilson with the man behind Factory, the Mondays, New Order, Joy Division and The Haçienda until many years later. And of course, I certainly wasn’t anywhere near cool enough to have actually been to the The Haçienda (and I still remember the jealousy of talking to people at Sixth Form College who had, when I was still stuck at the Kingsway on a Friday night with their godawful cheesy chart music…)

I see that the NME have been continuing their recent run of quality journalism in their coverage. I was particularly amused by this piece, in which they’ve successfully managed to recycle some five year old quotes from Steve Coogan into a “Steve Coogan pays tribute” news story:

Steve Coogan, who played Tony Wilson in the 2002 film ’24 Hour Party People’, has spoken about his love of the Factory Records legend…

Speaking about the legend at the time of the film’s release, Coogan declared: “I’ve got a kind of respect for Tony Wilson.”

They don’t even bother to change the quote into the past tense after the first sentence…

Really very sloppy. And the Tony Wilson tribute coffee mug that they’ve linked to on ebay? Might give it a miss, thanks…

Good old NME, keeping things in context as ever…

Well, if Amy Winehouse can’t make it, I mean, what’s the point of having the V Festival at all? Might as well all just stay at home…

Interesting bit of context advertising in yesterday’s Guardian, here. I don’t know about you, but I can’t say that reading about the plane crash in Sao Paulo that killed 183 people makes me want to jump on a train to Gatwick, no matter how quick said train might be…

And I keep seeing this advert around on the Tube. I’m not saying that allergies aren’t a real problem for many people, but as a non-sufferer, I’m a bit confused about at least one of the “allergens” they’ve chosen to highlight in this typical camping scene. Down there in the bottom left corner, there’s a little label pointing to some tomatoes. Tomatoes?

Now maybe I’m showing my uncaring ignorance here, but surely, if you are unfortunate enough to suffer from an allergy to tomatoes, then you can take steps to remedy that by, er, not eating them… Are they seriously trying to suggest that there are people who come back from a camping trip saying “oh it was awful: some people on the other side of the field kept eating tomatoes and I just couldn’t stop sneezing. If only I’d taken some piriton…”

I spent rather more of my Saturday afternoon than was perhaps strictly healthy watching Live Earth.

Of course, it’s easy to be cynical. It would be the easiest thing in the world to point out the hypocrisy of a bunch of rock stars flying into London in their private jets to do their bit for the planet. But just because it’s easy to be cynical, I don’t know if I’m going to let that stop me… Al Gore might tell me in my Saturday Indie that “at least one act at the London leg will be arriving by tube”, but then I notice that Razorlight played Live Earth and T in The Park on the same day, while Snow Patrol had to get over to Oxegen. No mention of how they would have got themselves from London to Scotland and Ireland in time for their respective evening sets…

But anyway. Apparently it doesn’t matter if the London leg alone will have churned out something like 3,000 tonnes of carbon emissions, because it’s all about “raising awareness”. Maybe I live in a closeted liberal world, but is there really anyone out there who isn’t aware of global warming? (I mean apart from George Bush, that is).

Well, actually, watching the coverage I started to realise that maybe there is: early on in the day, Edith Bowman talked to some girls in the crowd (who were, inexplicably, most looking forward to Genesis) who talked about “the problem of all the carbon monoxide in the atmosphere”. Hmm. Well, if the atmosphere really was full of carbon monoxide then I think we’d have more to worry about than global warming… And someone keeps trotting out some statistic about 56% of the UK population believing that there is still an ongoing debate in the scientific community about whether global warming is happening and whether it is out fault. Look: there isn’t, it is, and it is, ok?

And here’s the Black Eyed Peas talking to Jonathan Ross: Ross asked them if rappers were going to change their lifestyles and ditch their hummers, which caused Mr Black Eye Pea on the left to admit the he indeed owns a Hummer. But he’s going to “blow it up and get a hybrid”, so that’s all ok… Hmm, even if he isn’t really going to blow it up, if you’ve already got a car is the best thing you can do for the planet really to ditch it and buy a new one (energy efficient or not)?

And what’s this: Jimmy Carr popping up on Ross’s sofa bemoaning the cynicism surrounding around the event. Jimmy Carr? Attacking people for being cynical? Hmm.

Actually, I didn’t mind the BBC’s coverage: Ross was not afraid to poke gentle fun at proceedings when necessary, in pleasing contrast to the irritatingly cringeworthy coverage of the world of awfulness that was the Diana concert the previous week (If you were fortunate enough not to see it, I can report that it was every bit as awful as you might have expected. Or perhaps slightly worse). Say what you like about Ross, and whether his massive salary is justified, but at least he can deal with the challenge of a live broadcast in a way that Claudia Winkleman and Jamie Theakston unfortunately cannot…

Anyway. So I had a telly on for most of the afternoon that wouldn’t otherwise have been switched on. And now I’m using a computer that wouldn’t otherwise be switched on to write about it. It’s ok, though, because I’m raising awareness. Well, everyone’s got to do their bit, haven’t they?

I’m still adjusting to being back: as it always does after the Glastonbury weekend, it feels awfully odd being back in civilisation, where the roads are paved and it is possible to get about without having to wade through 6 inch deep mud.

This year was definitely the rainiest of my 6 Glastonburies. Perhaps there was more rain by volume in 2005, but that all fell in one big go, whereas this year it was spread out over the whole weekend, which did put something of a dampener on proceedings. I think it was Rob who described it as a slightly schizophrenic experience: one moment I was queueing in the rain for what turned out to be some very disappointing vegetarian Mexican food wondering what I was doing there; the next, I was standing in the sunshine enjoying Ed Harcourt and Lou Rhodes in The Park, thinking about how great it was to be back at my favourite festival.

We didn’t really let the rain affect our festival too much, although I probably didn’t see as many bands as I might have. It’s hard to summon up the energy to wade through the mud to see a minor indie band you’ve vaguely heard of at the best of times, but even less so when it’s pouring with rain.

On the occasions when I did brave the elements, though, I was glad I had. Get Cape. Wear Cape. Fly on Sunday afternoon, for example, were a band I almost missed: We’d been sitting up at the tent trying to decide whether to trek through the mud all the way over to the Other Stage, but luckily I decided to go over in the end, and they turned out to be great. Not what I was expecting at all, but in fact I somehow knew a handful of their songs, and theirs is an album I will be getting hold of.

I also enjoyed stumbling across The View on Sunday night, and seeing them play all the songs we know at the end of their set. It was odd to have them bookending our festival, as they’d been one of the first bands on The Pyramid on the Friday morning. We hadn’t been aiming for them when we wandered off in search of food after the watching the excellent Manics/Kaisers double header from down the front of the main stage, but somehow we ended up standing at the back of the Other Stage field enjoying them from our muddy vantage point.

I should probably refrain from mentioning the two hours we spent queueing and shivering in the pouring rain on Monday morning, waiting to get on a bus to take us away from the site, as it isn’t exactly an experience that I am keen to remember.

The rest of the photos are in the usual place.

For the next couple of days, I’ll be doing this:

Actually, there was only one occasion when we had to deal with hassle that felt in any way unpleasant, and that was, of all places, inside the Capitolio Nacional, a carbon copy of the US Capitol building that sits by the Parque Central in central Havana. Whether due to an attempt to alleviate the boredom, or supplement their meagre wages, or both, the staff were extremely keen to extract money from us in whatever way they could. Having made the mistake of (a) carrying a camera, and (b) showing interest in the library, we were accosted by a steward who proceeded to rattle off some facts I’d already read in the guidebook before demanding “And now I take your picture”. The resulting snapshot, I’m sure you’ll agree, was well worth the convertible I had to pay her for it.

Elsewhere, other staff members heckled us with offers to take us to parts of the building that the other tourists couldn’t visit (“Sir, do you want to see the president’s room?”), and one lady even tried to sell us a 1 Mondea Nacional peso coin–“a souvenir of the typical Cuban money”. I didn’t hang around long enough to find out how much she wanted for it, but I’m guessing that it would have been significantly more than the CUC 0.04 that it was actually worth.

*

For the rest of our time in Havana, the weather (unlike what we are told that we can expect this weekend) was so hot that we could barely manage to walk more than a few metres without breaking out into a sweat and having to seek refuge within whatever nearby air conditioning we could find. Luckily, there are plenty of hotels and bars scattered around the city that offer just that. I suppose it was just as well that the Lonely Planet raved about the interiors of the Hotel Inglaterra, for example (“a better place to hang-out than actually stay in”, apparently), so we didn’t feel too guilty to be just sitting there trying to recover from the exertions of simply walking about.

On one occasion (on our way back from the Museo del Ron, which was sadly bereft of donkey jackets and Aston Villa memorabilia, and instead about some sugary alcoholic drink) we ducked into a hotel where all the staff were dressed as monks, which seemed an odd choice of branding strategy, but made for pleasant enough surroundings as we sat in the courtyard skimming through the guidebook.

When we ran out of hotels to sit in, we had to resort to the bars. We did our best to retrace Ernest’s steps: we sipped ludicrously overpriced mojitos in El Floridita amongst the bussed-in sunburnt tourists (our bill for two drinks was, at CUC 12, something close to the average Cuban’s monthly salary…), but I much preferred another of his haunts, La Bodeguita del Medio, which was just down the road, and where we drank beers at the bar, tried the cigars, and attempted conversation in Spanish with the amiable barman Enrique (“¿Como Sr Iglesias?” I attempted to joke) who told us how much he had enjoyed the two years he’d spent in London when he was younger, living at the Cuban embassy near Holborn. I never did establish quite what you have to do as a young Cuban to get that gig.

One of my favourite bars was the one that we stumbled into one night on the way back to our hotel: just across the other side of Prado from the Hotel Sevilla, we found a restaurant where we could sit on our own on the first floor balcony in the cool night air watching the world go by, drinking yet more cold cans of Cristal beer. We liked it so much that we went back the following night, and I did my best to take long exposure shots of the street below.

Our second trip to the bar was our last night in Havana, and we’d booked in for dinner at Paladar La Guarida, one of Havana’s most well known paladars. Or so we thought…

Emerging from the bar onto the street below, feeling slightly light-headed after all that Cristal, we hailed the first cab that passed. As with every other trip, I agreed a fare beforehand, and given that we’d caught a coco-taxi back from the place the other day when we’d been over to reserve the table, I didn’t want to pay any more than the fare for the previous trip. But for some reason the driver was very unhappy about taking us for the 5 CUC that I was offering, although eventually he reluctantly agreed.

We thought it was a bit odd when he turned the cab around and drove in the opposite direction to where we wanted to go, but I assumed that he was just taking the coast road because it was quicker than the pot-holed streets of Centro Habana. It was only when he sailed past what would have been the turn off, and continued onwards to Vedado that we began to wonder if this wasn’t, after all, a shortcut. With the Hotel Nacional looming into view, we decided it might be a good idea to check if he did, in fact, know where we wanted to go.

“¡Disculpe señor, La Guarida esta aii!” I attempted in best schoolboy Spanish, pointing back in the direction we had come. I fished around in my pocket for the business card and handed it to him as he pulled over and turned on his light.

“¿Sabe usted donde esta?” I asked as he swung the car around and set off back in the right direction, while saying that no, he did not in fact know where it was after all.

As we reached the edge of the city once again, he pulled up and jumped out, leaving us in the back while he asked a policeman for directions. After two more stops he somehow managed to produce a local who knew where it was: the chap jumped into the front passenger seat, and directed us to the restaurant, where, rather improbably, he turned out to know everyone, wandering into the kitchen to say hello to the chefs as we waited for our table.

To this day, I still have no idea where the taxi driver thought we wanted to go to, but we made it in time for our booking, and the food was the best we ate in our whole stay in Cuba…