The atmosphere of the Undergound

There is something unique about the smell of the London Underground. The metro in Paris smells like a sewage treatment farm (more of them later), New York smells of fear more often than not and Stockholm's underground reeked of celery & champagne on the night that Chelsea beat Stuttgart.

The tube on the other hand smells of a unique combination of metal and grime, from the first step through the barriers at Cockfosters, the lifts at Mornington Crescent or the platform at Mile End the rush and tumble of the commuters, the procession of the carriages and the rumble of the escalators lingers in the space between the world above and the world below ground.

Combine that with the shunts, grunts and occasional rhyming curse you bump into on every other journey and you have something remarkable, frustrating and surprisingly precious. Mind the gap!

Proper football banter

Of course e-mail is fine and texts work well but nothing quite stirs the blood than face to face confrontation. On a weekend like the last one it would have been so nice to pop into an Arsenal supporters office for a chat about the weekends surprising results or to buy the Spurs fan down a pub and get them to talk me through Pompeys second goal!

Robert Elms Radio Show

From the "Listed Londoner" to "Funky Friday", Robert 'Bob' Elms manages to cover a whole host of subjects with enthusiasm, wit and a fair dose of integrity. All in all, not bad for a QPR fan!

Socks

Perhaps because socks with Havianas is not a good look but the quality of socks, be they Argyle or black cotton M&S is sadly lacking down under. Can the next person out please bring me some size 10-12?

Slapton Sands

Completely covered in pebbles (of course) and perched on the Devon coast somewhere between Kingsbridge and Dartmouth lies Slapton Sands. A lovely long sharply sloping beach, it is an ideal place for long wind swept walks before stumbling into the Start Bay Inn.

Most famous for the site of the ill-fated Exercise Tiger in 1944, which was a pre-Normandy landing exercise that went woefully wrong when a couple of E-boats stumbled across the massed drill. A Sherman tank that was sunk in this action has been recovered and now stands on the road behind the beach as a memorial to the 600+ american soldiers killed.

Behind the beach is Slapton Ley, a nature reserve and a few miles up the road was a tiny little art gallery run by Broady a very cool surfer/artist (now living in Dartmouth). Bits of Broady's stuff seems to be in every room in the house over here as a gentle reminder of the beauty of South Devon.

Funnily enough whilst checking on the date of Exercise Tiger I discovered that apparently the eastern mile of the beach from the car park is generally regarded as one of the most attractive nudist beaches in England. All the times I went there and never knew that. Mind you it always was bloody chilly!

The walk from Shaftesbury Avenue to Winsley St

On average I would take the walk from Shaftesbury Avenue (bottom of Neal Street) to Winsley Street at least three or four times a week. My circuitous route would invariably lead me down Tin Pan Alley via Andy's Guitar Shop and the row upon row of Gretsch's and Rickenbackers, Foyle's (upstairs to Ray's Jazz), the Pillars of Hercules, Soho Square, The Ship in Wardour Street (with or without accompanying A-Bomb).

I would then execute a deft sidestep into Universal Sounds for an hour or so to ponder the tip-top tunes and then wend my way up Berwick Street (pop my head into Mr Eddie's), then back down Poland St to Yo! Sushi (if time allowed) or up onto Oxford St (via HMV's Jazz section) into the hidden mists of Winsley Street. Every time I stepped out, the thrill of living in London seeped into my soul once again. Magical days!

Last Orders

Crammed into a pub with only ten minutes before closing, landlord just about to call time and you still need another drink. Time to order a couple of double 'vodka limons' that should do the trick before being spewed out into the street at only 11.10pm.

Then of course thay had to spoil it all with 'twenty-four hour opening' and embracing cafe culture. Over here of course things are slightly different with the RSA (responsible service of alcohol) Nazis on the warpath.

Where is the irresponsibility? Where is the rash behaviour? Where is the nearest lock-in?

The County Ground – Hove (actually)

Sussex's home ground is the perfect place to just lose yourself for a few minutes, hours, days, summers, lifetimes…

Barely ten minutes walk from Hove station, set back from Eaton Road. One enters through blue iron gates, complete with resplendent Sussex county crest (6 martlets) having avoided popping into The Sussex Cricketer beforehand. You then by-pass the second hand bookstall, club and members shop, up the concrete steps and there it is, the true home of cricket.

Sussex county cricket teams have been traced back to the 17th century (albeit not at Eaton Road) and the county's involvement in cricket goes back much further than that. Sussex, jointly with Kent, is the birthplace of the sport. It is widely believed that cricket was invented by children living on the Weald in Saxon or Norman times, which is pretty mindblowing actually.

Anyway, you can either sit on the wooden benches, lounge in one of the many blue & white stripped deckchairs or simply mellow out in the Jim Parks Bar; all the while watching the mighty Sussex dish out another pasting to an unsuspecting opposition. Quite simply days, do not get much better than this…

"Cockney Driving"

Fast, brash, irresponsible, loud, pushy and often punctuated by blokes leaning out of the drivers window and yelling something completely unintelligible, it may be!

But it sure as hell beats the petty minded, indecisive and downright shocking driving over here. I’m amazed Jack Brabham ever won a race!

The Old Coffee House - Soho

Remember a drink is for life and not just for Christmas

On the corner of Beak St and Marshall St. The Old Coffee House, is one of those rare old theme pubs where the theme is drinking. I have been drinking in TOCH for 20 years and it has barely changed at all in that time. Barry & Gerry the husband and wife landlord team are still behind the pumps, the still nicotine stained war posters are still shuffled around once a year and the same old drinkers are still ordering the same old drinks. Many an afternoon has blurred into a long old evening in TOCH.

As an antidote to the modern drinking/members clubs called such cutting edge names as 'Moist', 'Player' and 'Thrush'; the warm red interior, low lighting and proximity to Carnaby Street, Oxford Street & Piccadilly Circus makes TOCH a perfectly decorated and situated establishment. Protected from invasion by too many media types (limited supply of latest Peruvian bottled beer 'Chumpitaz' being the key reason for their absence) it is also generally immune from part-time Christmas drinkers. Those that do make it through are quietly ushered upstairs, where they can don stupid paper hats and pull various assorted crackers to their hearts content without annoying the hardy annuals downstairs.

All in all The Old Coffee House is a veritable home from home. Cheers

Soccer AM & Soccer Saturday

When the blues were away, it was raining outside and there was nothing else to do. Tim Lovejoy, Helen Chamberlain & Jeff Stelling ruled supreme on Saturdays.

Cadburys Milk Chocolate

Flake, Chocolate Buttons, Crunchie & regular chocolate all desperately missed. The version over here just isn't the same. A different recipe, something to do with the heat apparently.

J.Simons

Run by John Simon the former proprietor of The Ivy Shop. This home of all things suitably modernist and often rocking is an oasis of fine clothing (Harrington Jackets to the finest tweeds) and fine footwear (Paraboot, Weejuns and the rest). Tucked in betweeen Covent Garden and Drury Lane it won't be around forever; so in the meantime make the most of it, you lucky people!

Seaside piers

The sad news that the pier at Fleetwood has succumbed to a fire, hot (sorry) on the heels of the destruction of the pier at Weston-super-Mare made me think about my favourite piers around the UK. So, here goes my Top Ten.

1. Eastbourne Pier. A simple choice really. The reasons are obvious, the fact that I saw it almost everyday of my life until the age of 22, the Blue Room and ‘Dixieland’. Also the home of the Eastbourne Birdman competition.
2. Walton-on-the-Naize Pier. Complete with low brow bowling lanes and shoddy ghost train, the pier at Walton even has a lifeboat moored at the end. As well as a Dotto train that trundles aimlessly to the end of the pier for no apparent reason.
3. Hastings Pier. The venue for numerous quality gigs in my youth, not least The clash, The Slits, Gang of Four, The Banshees and The Teenbeats (oh yes!).
4. Weston-Super-Mare Pier. With the tide out and the sun shining had one of the best games of beach cricket ever in its shadow.
5. Southend Pier. It’s very long, very long indeed.
6. Blackpool Piers. The entertainment capital of the world needs a good pier and it has got three! Ideal place to eat your chips and gravy and to blow away any crushing hangovers bought about by getting lashed up with members of the Glasgow East Militant Tendency.
7. Brighton West Pier. You are Kolly Kibber and I claim my five pounds.
8. Brighton Palace Pier. Mods v Rockers, dodgems and The Jam’s last stand.
9. Wigan Pier. At the end of a very long road, just ask Mr Eric Arthur Blair.
10. Clacton Pier. Another top mod hangout.

Proper shoes in proper shops

Being of a slightly debonair dispostion, I am getting near my wits end. With the exception of my trips back to the UK/Italy this year I haven't bought a pair of shoes since migrating out here in January 07.

This is truly an alarming state of affairs and the simple reason is that the nearest decent shoe shop is in Rome (or maybe Tokyo). Not an ideal scenario.

All I want is a decent bloody shoe shop with some proper shoes in. For heavens sake a man cannot survive on Birkenstocks alone!

Airships

"The transport of the future"

When working at Cosmopolitan magazine in the heart of Soho on Carnaby Street (not what it used to be), I would often look out over the throbbing heart of the British Empire to be greeted by the most magnificent of sights. A silver airship, catching the last rays of afternoon sunshine, high above the West End. The office would all stop throwing tantrums, teasing their hair and bullying the postroom boy to look up at the magnificent vessel gliding through the stratosphere.

It truly looked like something from another age, not the past but very much the future. They came from a time when everything was possible, the world was opening up to a bright, bold, highly infammable horizon!

It was pointed out to me that they were actually being used more for advertising than any practical means of transport. If so, they succeeded because I was sold, sold on the idea that I have seen the future and the future is airships (albeit with GoodYear printed on the side). That being said it is now some 20 years on and I'm still waiting to board my own personal airship to take me to work.

Stop! Wait! I've got it. Perhaps everyone in England is travelling by Airship and it's just that Australia is even further behind Blighty than I thought.

Now there's a thought that somehow just won't go away!

Articles on traction engines

Back in the day, when alcopops were confined to a can of Top Deck, being a paperboy was a noble trade and pubic hair was commonplace on the top shelf . The fashion for articles on traction engines and steam fairs was at its zenith. Barely a month would go by without one or other of the “Gentlemen’s Journals” featuring an in-depth review of the ‘Matlock Steamer’, the ‘Hartlepool Belle’ or ‘Old faithful’.

Whilst today’s "Jazz Mags" are filled to the brim with ‘Dial-a-Gran’, ‘Shag-a-melon’ & ‘Thrust me big boy’ Bermudan high premium phone lines, the informative yet slightly out of reach "Bongo Pamphlets" of my innocent youth, would take a more bucolic slant on life in the fast lane.

Tucked away alongside the Mary Millington feature you could guarantee a four page spread detailing Brian Forsythe’s painstaking refurbishment of his pride and joy ‘The Essex Spirit’, complete with truly compelling and incisive reportage: - Clacton based Brian spent 15 years rebuilding this classic Pendlebury Mark 4 in his garage. His wife Judy reckons he is bonkers but said, “at least I know where he is and he always comes in for his tea when I call him”.

It was as though the two were inextricably linked, women and traction engines, traction engines and women. I hasten to add that there was absolutely nothing erotic about it all. It was just a fact, men’s ‘personal’ magazines had features about traction engines. Quite right too!

And now as I wade through the vacuous and sterile ‘lifestyle’ magazines of today, every page featuring a scantily attired newsreaderette or a stripping tele sales executive from Maroubra/Tyneside/Latvia my mind drifts regularly… out there… beyond the photoshop skin tones, beyond the cantilevered breast work, back to a time and more importantly a place where the inner workings of a Pendlebury mk4 still work as a remarkable counterbalance to the lurid happenings on pages 15-96!

Decent tomatoes

Hard as it may seem, in this land of milk & honey, the tomatoes are decidedly lacking. Neither crisp nor particularly flavoursome. The humble English tomato leaves them flailing in its wake. Whether as a salad component or indeed pasta accompanying sauce, the pom tom wins hands down!

Pre-match ritual - Stamford Bridge

Whichever way one goes, the journey from Muswell Hill to Stamford Bridge normally takes about an hour and forty. Any combination of taxi, tube, bus, foot or car always amounts to the same thing. Assuming it's a Saturday fixture, in itself a thing of the past, I would take The Guardian (+ whatever other reading matter was left in the tube carriage), careful to make sure that I only ended up with the Sports section by the time I reached The Tup.

Once in situ, a bottle of crispy white to hand with a bowl of chips (+ a tuna sandwich from Tesco Metro), The Sports section and Jeff Stelling on the telly. I would simply sit back and wait for the pub to fill up. The regulars like Flash, Mongo, Big X, Ross and the beardy bloke with the numerous hawaiian shirts would come in and take up their rightful positions along the bar. Never more than a smattering of away fans in this pub, not because of any particular reputation or malice - just too far from Fulham Broadway station. By 1.30 (for a 3 pm kick-off) the majority would be in their own zones. Occasionally Suggs would amble in nursing what looked like the world's most enormous hangover. The banter begins to build, tactics discussed ignored and rehashed, the white wine consumption picking up pace.

By 2.30 Flash and I would be ready to go via the offie for some miniatures, these would be purchased and then cunningly secreted in various pockets, concealed zippers etc and we would then start the stroll down the Fulham Road and happily join the queue for programmes at the entrance by the railway bridge. This was key, if I got a £2 coin in my change we wouldn't lose, if by some chance it didn't happen then the result was very much in doubt!

A few neat sidesteps, pirouettes and blatant shoves and pretending to go to Ladbrokes and we're nearly in, only to be held up by the work experience bloke operating the bloody useless automated ticket system (do you see the flaw?). Then up the stairs, into the loo, read the same 'Talk Sport' ads that had been there since Ken was a boy then if time permitted a cheeky half, up the small stairs and out into the stadium. The lush green turf, the massed ranks of the Chels' and brace myself for a stirring rendition of 'The Liquidator'. Down to row 7, along to seat 136. Introductions done, teams on the pitch, ref ready to blow the whistle - this is what it's all about!

British Summer Time

A sly ruse to appease Scottish farm workers? A cunning plan to keep paperboys safe/put them in danger? The real reason we won WW2? A plan by pub landlords to keep everyone out in the beer garden for an extra hour? The only way you can play 20/20 without floodlights?

Whatever it is, I miss it!


"Britain was the first nation to adopt daylight saving schemes in 1908.
Some people believe the pragmatically minded British did it to make economy on candles." TASS, Moscow

Radio 4

I’m almost ashamed and most certainly reluctant to include Radio 4 on this list. Not least, because through a variety of means you can access the majority of it here in Australia.

However, it does have to be included for the simple reason that it sets the cultural tempo for a part of England that is dying out. It is the metronome for suburban homes, the very heartbeat of a generation, touched from birth by the clean clear tones that have echoed from Bush House to Portland Place since radio silence was first broken.

What do I miss about it? Well, it could be reasonably argued that life without The Archers, Desert Islands Discs, Punt & Dennis rehashing old sketches and random Jeremy Hardy lectures would be tolerable enough but I would argue, although not too vigorously, that with them it would be just a little bit better. Life without “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” may well prove for different reasons to be a sad and distinct possibility, life with “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” is/was a joy to behold – in fact “I’m sorry I haven’t a clue” certainly merits an entry all of it’s own (which in it’s own way is quite amusing).

So, the programming is all very well, when it’s written down it looks good, PIL did a fine elegiac piece on Metal Box called Radio 4 but what is it I really miss? The shipping forecast? – Undoubtedly. TMS? – A summer is incomplete without it but even they flit across channels and frequencies like a Tommy stuck behind enemy lines. What I miss is it’s totality, it’s unreasonableness and it’s faux authority, from Today to the sound of Big Ben on New years Eve you know exactly what to expect, nothing changes and everything moves on. Perfect!

Shoddy ghost trains

Fifteen bits of plywood hastily hammered together, a potential death trap on rusted tracks, synthetic hair dangling down overhead, a ghoul themed tarpaulin and some crap looking papier mache models. Plonked halfway along a knackered old pier and all topped off with a fiendish soundtrack and a permanently pissed off operator (resplendent in his 'Fort Fun/Treasure Island' red t-shirt).

You just can't beat 'em!