Welcome to Portland Academy in Bromley, an exclusive educational establishment dedicated to the mental health and fitness of 8-9 years old boys. The syllabus at the Academy has been crafted and stress-tested to challenge and strengthen your child’s physical and mental resolve and acuity.
 
A typical day at the Academy starts at 8.00 am with the Head Teacher firing a multiple-choice quiz of breakfast options for the pupil for which there is no correct or satisfactory answer.
 
Please note that in order to retain our reputation the Academy has to enforce a dress code that requires all students to wear at least pyjama bottoms in the dining, class or the common rooms, as long as they have not been worn for more than three consecutive days and nights.
 
At 8.30 sharp the Head Teacher will engage in a fruitless struggle to log into one of the many online and distance-learning websites the school has to offer, searching through emails and bookmarks and resetting about a dozen passwords while pupils take a short break and engage in assertive mind-control games with faculty.
  
9.30 am and the students will engage in Minecraft Independent Study while the Head Teacher and other staff ensure that the main school building is fit to pass the most basic and cursory health and safety inspection.
 
At 10.30 am all students will move onto their Advanced YouTube 101 projects, where extra credit is on offer for retaining interest in a video for longer than twenty-two seconds.

NB. Online learning requires a strong WiFi signal that is not slowed down due to excessive consumption of streaming television services from other areas of the campus.
 
The school day winds up at 11.15 for all students and faculty to complete individual projects and autonomous study.
 
In exchange for this first-class schooling experience, the Academy offers a reasonable per-term fee that includes bed, board and sustenance, with additional contributions towards extra-curricular activities such as basketball, cycling, jigsaws, Lego, Airfix models, home-economics, drawing and painting equipment, gymnastics, crafts, gardening, after-school clubs and computing, all of which are enjoyed by pupils in prolonged bursts of at least a minute and a half each.
 
Pupils will graduate from Portland Academy fully prepared for a Bromley Borough Secondary School education and subsequent career in advertising.

So I have four types of mustard in my fridge. No bread, butter, vegetables, cheese or wine, but in case of a mustard-apocalypse we are well equipped.

In order of preference, they are:
​ 
1.Dijon. Yes, its Grey Poupon. Sure, whatever. Judge me. It is the crown prince of mustard, the standard by which all other mustards are judged and found wanting.

2.English, Colemans. It’s the granddaddy of all mustards, the surly, rotten toothed, winking at underaged girls mustard, the mustard you feel most guilty enjoying, even as the nose-burn takes hold and you start to cry in terror, just like you did when the head teacher caned you for drawing cocks on the toilet walls.

3.Wholegrain. Standard supermarket brand, used for cooking. It’s fine, per se, but not one I reach for often. 

4.French's Mustard. The Harry and Meghan of table condiments - a sauce that looks bright and flavourful on first acquaintance, but is actually bland and insipid, with nothing interesting to say. I once went to the Crooked Billet Harvester and asked for English mustard to go with my overcooked steak and overwhelming sense of irrelevance, and the waiter brought me a garish plastic bottle of French's instead. I told him that this was not English mustard. He insisted it was English. I said it isn’t, its called French's but actually it’s American. He informed me that they were both yellow, so I told him he might as well bring me a bowl of fucking custard by that rationale.
 
I’ve been socially distancing since the late eighties, so the last few weeks have not really been much of a change for me. My own narcissism and mistrust of other people always keeps me at least a broom and half distance from other people anyway so I feel like I’ve ben preparing for a pandemic all my life. The most tiring inconvenience is having to talk to my family and colleagues on a screen with a small image of my own face at the bottom right of my vision, which throws me into a rage.

My underwear drawer has become a repository for stuff I don’t know what to do with. USB sticks with random documents on them. A keyring of James Bond’s DB5 bought from the Bond in Motion exhibition. Bar soap. Old toothbrushes. Asthma pumps blue and pink. Roll-on deodorants only used when air travel is required. Postcards sent to me by friends about twenty years ago. Sim cards. A penknife. My dad’s medal from the RAF (awarded for just turning up, as far as I can ascertain). Two DVDs of my college short film, Backwards Compatible. A remote control for my old JVC turntable. My pants and socks barely fit in among this detritus. Clearing out my underwear drawer is a perfect job to do while self-isolating.  Do I have any intention of doing it? Of course not. 

Should I paint the fence? Rotovate the back garden that is more mud than grass? Strip the hideous woodchip wallpaper that still covers over 70% of my walls? Nope. I’m gonna wear my tracksuit for a month straight, watch every episode of Tiger King, do half a workout with Joe Wicks then give up and drink red wine out of a cereal bowl until I pass out. The underwear drawer can fucking wait.

Given I have been ODing on kids TV lately (not by choice, but our rigorous work/exercise/play schedule lasted about ten minutes, so the TV is pretty much always on), I thought I’d write a short story about the most insidious pre-schoolers show of all time. If you have never seen ‘Bing’ then this will mean nothing to you, but be aware that the character Flop – some kind of unidentifiable knitted creature tasked with raising a small rabbit called Bing – is voiced by Mark motherfucking Rylance. (In season one anyway). Here it is:

BING’S BIG DAY
 
‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ Flop said as he shuffled into his ward’s bedroom and pulled back the curtain. A beam of sunlight hit the small, tousle-haired bunny.
‘Morning, Flop,’ Bing said as he swung his stubby legs over the side of the bed, still sleepily clutching his constant companion, Hoppity. He watched as his knitted guardian removed Bing’s favourite pair of dungarees from a drawer. A cloud passed briefly across his normally sunny thoughts. Who was Flop, really? Why was a small, tousle-headed bunny rabbit being taken care of by a creature so unlike himself? Were there any other bunnies like him in the world? For a second Bing felt sad, close to tears. Flop laid out the dungarees on the bed.
‘Good news, Bing,’ Flop said, as he helped Bing into his clothes. ‘I’ve had word from the Directorate. Today, you are going to fight Sula to the death. If you win, we can level up.’
‘But Flop!’ Bing protested, ‘I love Sula!’
‘Oh Bing, you know that Sula talks about you behind your back, don’t you? She is a liar and she beats Amma.’
‘Oh Flop,’ Bing said, crestfallen.
‘So you’ll kill her then?’ Flop asked.
‘Alright, Flop,’ said Bing. ‘I’ll give her a beating that elephant will never forget.’
Flop smiled. ‘It’s a Bing thing. And after we shower her blood off your fur we can make cookies.’
‘Oh yes, Flop! I love cookies!’  The cloud passed, and Bing felt happy again.
‘Indeed.’
 
FIN.

I’ve got one for Octonauts too, but it ends up really badly with Captain Barnacles roasting the Vegimals for dinner, and Peso getting pissed on some pretty rough mezcal and getting it on with Shellington the Sea Otter. Kwazi auditions for a role in the Cats movie, but is turned down as he is too realistically rendered as an actual feline and not inappropriately sexy enough. (Cats is awesome by the way).
 
I’ve watched many films, but the one I recommend the most for anyone still reading this far (you don’t have to, honestly) is Guns Akimbo in which Daniel Radcliffe is bafflingly convincing as a guy in a depressingly predictable near future forced to participate in a gunfight to the death, with – and this is the kicker – two guns literally nailed to his hands. It’s a riot, if you’re me. If you’re not, and I can only assume that you aren’t, then its probably trash. But these days, trash and reality seem to co-exist in a kind of mutually opposing autonomous-sentient normality. Could just be me.

So, it is two years since I blogged. It just seems like blogging in 2019 is rather.. well.. 2014.  There are far easier ways to write and distribute words these days than a blog. Anyway - I wrote another poem, and as I published the last one here - The Fried Chicken Bus - it seems appropriate to dump this one here too.

The second my in (very) long-gestating poetry project, this one is firmly in my wheelhouse, the wheelhouse of a vessel that is middle-aged and white and not very well travelled. The poem itself isn't very good, but I like it, so piss off. 

It documents my love for the Great British High Street, and one shop in particular.  Here it is:


I ❤️ WH Smith
 
On every high street and railway station,
A nation agrees, without prorogation,
At airports, hospitals and motorway services
an oasis exists that exceeds all superlatives.
 
The plainest of logos, an ugly serif font,
a giant capital S standing above
a small WH, nonchalant.
A stalwart untouched by the downward momentum of progress
of the Great British High Street, in distress.
 
WH Smith
WH Smith
 
Stationary on the high street
Stationery on the high street
Still operational, still inspirational.
 
From magazines you can have a wank
or the Diary of Anne Frank.
 
Books post-apocalypse,
The feltest of tips.
Your Favourite Band: The Greatest Hits.
 
The Autobiography of Duncan Goodhew.
The Peppa Pig Annual, the Beano, Whizzer and Chips
The QI tie-in annual, with introduction by Sandi Toksvig,
only two for five pounds
at
 
WH Smith
WH Smith
 
The (exclusive!) Richard and Judy Book Club,
The middle-class housewife book club of choice,
tapping into national consciousness.
Richard and Judy know the score,
from ITV’s This Morning to your beloved bookstore
(Exclusively!) at
 
WH Smith
WH Smith
 
It has seen off Smiggle, garish schnizzle
A plastic pretender, a repeat offender.
Rymans can go fuck themselves
No Prue Leith on their paltry shelves.
 
Wait – there are two blue signs, standing side by side
Two old behemoths standing tall, astride
a high street, perhaps not as broken,
‘Exclusively at’,
still both their slogan.
 
Boots and WH Smith
Boots and WH Smith
 
Beauty and Hygiene, gotta keep clean.
It’s got the right cream for your self-esteem.
A pharmacy
for drugs to keep you in harmony.
An optician
for your cornea’s malnutrition.
A photo developer
To finally print off those memories,
the way you were before you needed these remedies.
 
Boots and WH Smith
Boots and WH Smith
 
Another blue sign, but with four orange dots
(For some reason)
A place that never cares about haves and have-nots,
Disposable incomes
spent on packs of five yum-yums
or a vegan sausage roll as you go round the shops.
 
Boots, Greggs, WH Smith
Boots, Greggs, WH Smith

A steak bake if you’re hungry,
It’s not gluten-free,
but years of expertise,
satisfaction guarantees, and
worth the risk of Coeliacs Disease.
 
Chicken sandwiches to suit every taste
(Mexican, Thai, Coronation, Chargrilled, BBQ, Peri-Peri, Southern Fried, Tandoori or Pesto)
Cheese, Onion, Steak, Sausage or Baked Bean Bakes
Heinz Tomato soup. Doughnuts. Walkers Crisps.
I could go on.
But you already know all this.
 
Boots, Greggs, WH Smith
Boots, Greggs, WH Smith
 
Tiger. Cashino. TK Maxx.
Fighting for consumer scraps.
Transient pretenders to the high street throne
on a high street that already knows its own.
That knows which side its bread is buttered,
truer words never uttered.
 
This is it.
I think this covers it.
The sacred, unstoppable blue-fronted triumvirate.
 
No need to panic, or shop online.
Head to the blue, you know the sign.
 
We’re doing just fine.

Boots, Greggs, WH Smith
Boots, Greggs, WH Smith
Boots, Greggs, WH Smith
 
BOOTS, GREGGS, WH SMITH!

So here is the first post of 2016. To commemorate the occasion I have written a new poem, much like a hormone-addled fourteen year old girl might. But my poem is not about unrequited love, Accessorize or menstruation, oh no. It's all about the joys of commuting, specifically having to catch buses in South London. I am a commuter in South London and I take buses, and so I am completely qualified to tell this story, and I choose to tell it in poetry form.
 
Were I to write a poem about operating predator drones in Afghanistan from a windowless khaki portacabin in the disused parking lot of a Waffle House in Philadelphia, the poem would not ring with quite the same truth, the same emotional resonance and clarity of fact; the ringing, precise authenticity of clear experience - despite the traumatic stress being broadly similar. So, commuting it is.
 
The Fried-Chicken Bus
 
A grim South London high street rain-slicked,
and home-sicked.
 
I'm waiting for the fried-chicken bus home.
 
The usual commuter beats, the hood ornaments, the freaks.
I'm one of them, but through wary eyes
all they know is that I'm a stranger,
a threat, a danger
of getting on before them,
maybe bagging the last double seat.
 
My app tells me I have two minutes to wait.
Flattering to deceive,
it's gonna be at least eight. Or nine.
 
I'm waiting for the fried-chicken bus home.
 
From out of the halogen night, a squeal of brakes, a roar.
A red rectangle of darkness,
Making us wait, bunched up at the stubborn door.
 
A flicker of light,
then a hiss of hydraulic,
a surge of movement, beeps electronic.
 
They say the British like to queue, but it's not true.
whoever 'they' are
have never tried boarding a bus in South London at rush hour.
It's more of a bundle.
 
The liver-spotted pavement releases me to the light,
handing me over from the night
into the tortuous portal of the fried chicken bus home.
 
The stairs are covered with dry white bones
sucked clean and splintered,
crunching underfoot.
Twisted bones from aggressive breeding,
modified for aggressive feeding.
 
Bright orange handrails slick with grease,
An atmosphere slimy with olfactory menace.
(When I get home I'll have to wash my hands with washing up liquid,
the horrors they have upon them inflicted.)
 
A small cardboard box sits on the only empty seats
(a double near the back, now I know why).
the name of the vendor stamped on the side.
'Ultimate Fried Chicken'
An unlikely claim for a cartoon chicken to squawk out with pride,
presumably before having its throat slit and strung upside down then plucked, still alive,
before being torn apart and deep fried.
 
Hell, we all love chicken though, am I right?
 
It's an incomplete feast, three half-eaten wings
and the remains of a bigger piece.
The box reeks of too much salt and eye-watering vinegar
(that's probably not recommended by any medical practitioner).
 
Gingerly pitching the box off the seat, it's somebody else's problem now.
Well, it's their job isn't it? To clean up our mess from the floor.
They wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for us would they?
They should be grateful dammit, let's all throw some more.
 
I'm sitting on the fried chicken bus home.
 
Five stops left and an empty bottle of Dr. Pepper Zero rolls around the aisle,
probably part of the meal deal.
It lodges against the greasy box at my feet.
Who drinks Dr. Pepper anyway? It's vile.
 
I kick it away but my foot takes a half consumed piece of chicken with it,
bouncing across the floor of the top deck leaving a spattered congealed fat- trail, like a snail.
Half chicken, half-snail. Snicken.
 
Three stops left and the stricken snicken is rolling back towards me,
and I can only watch helplessly
as it retraces its fatty trail
and returns to the fold,
to its foul, half-consumed chicken winged brethren of old.
 
Another kick should see it away, but I miss and step on it instead,
my foot squashing it against the floor with a gristly crack and a squelch.
 
A boy watches and laughs,
takes another bite of his superfood salad.
I'm kidding,
he's eating fried chicken.
 
That's it,
I'm getting off the fried chicken bus home.
 

I've been busy writing my second book, and so the blogging has rather fallen by the wayside.  It's with some beta readers now so I have some time to add more drivel to the infinite ocean of words already sitting unread on the internet.

Lets recap twenty-fifteen. On a personal level, I visited Venice and Vienna for the first time and climbed a small mountain in Scotland, wrecking my knee in the process. My son started school, I got jealous that my wife started jogging and became really physically fit all of a sudden, and work ticks by pleasantly enough.

World events have been dismal as ever, a never-ending parade of misery, terror and doping, which is why this year I have spent more time with my headphones on than ever before. 

The number of mass shootings in America has reached such a stratospheric level that if we simply let them get on with it, by sheer process of elimination eventually there will only be one left, and we can dispose of him (or her) easily enough. A whole new, empty country for the refugees to occupy. Yay!
As for doping - who actually gives a fucking shit? Seriously. Let them dope. Let them all take whatever the hell they want, and the ones that don't die of a massive heart attack are free to battle it out. The records would tumble every year, and it would be brilliant to watch.  There would be no limits as to what the human body could achieve. If everyone doped the playing field is level again, with increased spectacle, no illegal activity, no accusations of cheating and hopefully Sebastian Coe would fuck off.  It's a win-win.  So what if Lance Armstrong was cheating? A. It's only cycling, a  sport nobody gave a sweet damn about until Bradley Wiggins grew some sideburns, and B. Everyone on the tour was doing the same thing. It was a lot more of a level playing field than athletics is now.  Give him his titles back, you fuckers.
​
I watched many films - see my Pinterest page for more details - and am surprised that of the three seventh sequels this year, Star Wars is the one I am probably least looking forward to.  Furious Seven was everything I wanted it to be, and Creed is looking great. So is Star Wars for sure, but there's only so much excitement my body can physically handle. Best film I've seen this year? Hard one, but probably Fury Road. Or maybe The Raid 2: Berandal. Or John Wick. Ah, I don't know. Ask me again tomorrow.

Books-wise, I managed to read a lot which was nice, but really enjoyed Tigerman by Nick Harkaway, NOS4R2 by Joe Hill and Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits by David Wong. All beautifully written examples of genre writing to which I can only aspire.

I finished writing my own second book, kind of.  It needs a rewrite and it has already taken a lot longer than I thought, but there's a kernel of an idea in there that I really like. There's a link to the prologue somewhere around here to whet the appetite.

I have now started on the sequel to Gods of the Green Moon, but I reckon that one is a good year away, to be honest, although there is an excerpt up on the website for anyone interested. I wanted to clear up one of the questions some folk had about the ending of the first one, and I think this clip does that.

OK, I'm done for now, so see you all next year, maybe.

Since nobody has nominated me for this curious Facebook 10 Favourite Books thing, I have decided to just go ahead and do it myself, as it seems harmless enough and doesn't involve ice or buckets. Or giving to charity. And at least I have the decency to do it on my blog, so you can just go right on and ignore it if you fancy.  You want to ramble on about books? Get a blog.

Regular readers of my blog, of which there are none, will know that I love a list. Refer to Posts 13-16 if you want proof of that.

Lists are good.  Everyone loves a list, especially these days where bitesize information, soundbites and other bite-related metaphors used to couch the fact that nobody has an attention span anymore, rule.

Saying 'I could never whittle a favourite book list to just ten' and other equally pretentious remarks are rubbish, subconsciously and piously informing everyone how well read you are.  If nothing else making a list will merely clarify and inform your own internal-reader what it is you most like in a book. Or film, or whatever.

My internal-reader likes books that he can imagine playing out as a film in his mind. He also likes books that make him utterly despondent, thrillingly uplifted or in any way moved, for better or worse. He likes books that depress him that he could never shape sentences or paragraphs or expressions quite as well as the author he is reading, although he won't stop trying. (Damn you Jonathan Franzen.) It's a bit of a dichotomy, but the best books are the ones that simultaneously depress, uplift and entertain him.

He is a picky chap, for sure, my internal-reader.

My list, as per Facebook's darn 'rules' will only contain books I clearly remember as loving and having meaning to me at the time I read them, without recourse to scouring my bookshelves for ones that will make me seem well-read or interesting, or going on Amazon and picking ones out I like the look of.

So here goes:

1.     Freedom - Jonathan Franzen. (Damn you Jonathan Franzen)

2.     Ready Player One - Ernest Cline

3.     Watchmen - Alan Moore

4.     American Gods - Neil Gaiman

5.     The Long Walk - Richard Bachman

6.     Easy Riders, Raging Bulls - Peter Biskind

7.     The Captive Flesh - Cleo Cordell

8.     Slaughterhouse-5 - Kurt Vonnegut

9.     IT - Stephen King

10.   Destination: Moon - Herge

OK, so the earlier paragraph about only idiots not being able to whittle down to ten I utterly retract, as I had typed eighteen titles before I knew it. Wow, I killed some darlings there, for sure.  Oh well. 

I will end by paraphrasing Stewart Lee, which as anyone will tell you is a dangerous thing to do in your blog because he is quite evidently a better writer than you are:

"The eighteenth-century polymath Thomas Young was the last person to have read all the books published in his lifetime. That means that he would've read all the Shakespeare and all the Greek and Roman classics and all the theology and all the philosophy and all the science. But the same man today, a man who had read all the books published today, would've had to have read all Dan Brown's novels, two volumes of Chris Moyles' autobiography, sixteen volumes of The World According to Clarkson by Jeremy Clarkson... In short, the man who had read everything published today would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. That's not a good state of affairs." - Stewart Lee

Hello and welcome to any first-time readers of 'Nev Pitty-Rose: D'Blog'. And goodbye to all those who just read the first few lines on Facebook with a shrug and a 'meh'.

So, 'Gods of the Green Moon' is now officially on sale.  It's been a bit of a struggle to be honest, but only really the final few hurdles - the proofing, the formatting and the re-proofing and the re-formatting. And the re-re-proofing, re-re-formatting etc etc..   

The writing of the book took from August 2013 to now, which I suppose is about a year from beginning to end, even though I actually finished it back at the end of June.  That's why I haven't blogged to my army of readers for a while now (average number of readers per post = 6) I've been a bit wrapped up in my own hubris.

I would like to get more people to buy/read the book, but I genuinely don't know how. Whenever I try to learn how to use Twitter the information slides off my brain like olive oil from a hot skillet.  If anyone has any tips or can teach me, one-to-one, how on earth the wretched thing works, let me know.

Better still, if someone wants to do a bit of PR on my behalf for a huge slice of the pie, then by all means please do submit yourself to my rigorous interview procedure. And by 'the pie', I actually mean 'a pie.' I will purchase a chicken and mushroom Pukka and you can have a huge slice of it.  Promise. Also, by 'rigorous' I actually mean 'the job's yours if you want it'. I really must start writing what I mean up front, or these posts will pretty much be entirely explaining what I actually mean.

I'd like to share this picture with you. It's a painting of Casey Ryback and William Stranix in their younger 'black-ops' days before they fell out and Stranix tried to hijack the 'USS Missouri' and (spoiler) ended up with a knife in the top of his head.  I know, it's an awesome pic, right?


I fell out with a friend once because I hijacked one of those chocolate caterpillar cakes from Tesco - but we fought in his kitchen and not in the control centre of a US Navy Battleship. I ended up stabbing the cake in the head instead and eating the lot, creepy smartie eyes and all. Damn those cakes are fake-chocolately great, and I am sure there is an apt simile to make here about the heavy artillery capabilities of a US Battleship and the heavy artillery-esque symptoms on your heart of eating a whole Tesco caterpillar cake but darned if I'm gonna do that.

OK, so I'll start updating the blog and pouring more inane bullshit into the internet again more frequently I guess. Because the internet isn't nearly full enough of  inane bullshit. Fairly sure you guys are desparate to know what happened to 'The Throng.' too.

Hello to all my readers who only read the very first sentence on Facebook. I know, the thought of reading any more is just deplorable. I get it.

And so to more important matters – karaoke. Not sure what your thoughts are on karaoke. Personally, I fucking hate it.  What an absurdly dreadful waste of time.  Hey – if you like a song, put it on the jukebox five times in a row, buy it for your iPod or smart telephone device to listen to ad nauseam on the train, just DON’T ruin it by deafeningly belting it out in a pub when drunk.  Jeez people.

There are exceptions of course – 1. If you are a homicidal Thai police captain with a sword, backlit by cool neon, or 2. if you are the artist responsible for originally recording and releasing the track in question, and you find yourself drunk and standing in a pub in Brentford and fancy having a vocal workout, then go right ahead.  We won’t hold it against you if you sound a little off-key Enrique, or if you forget the words to a particularly complex rap, Jay-Zed.  Knock yourselves out.

However, if you insist on singing in public, and regrettably there is nothing I can do to prevent it, I have done your research for you. Here, courtesy of the magic of the internet, is my review of the five best karaoke versions of that perennial karaoke classic ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton.

1. ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton – Karaoke Inferno
Well, this – perhaps predictably – sounds like it has been played on an old Casio keyboard in someone’s bedroom.  There is definitely a ‘home-made’ vibe to this recording, including the use of the composer’s mother, or perhaps older sister, on the backing ‘la la la la’ vocal. It’s pretty awful, and given that Matthew White recorded his song ‘Big Love’ in his bedroom, these days there is simply no excuse for a shoddy recording.

2 ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton – Ameritz Karoke
Well, this is definitely a better version than the Karaoke Inferno version. From the first few bars there is a classier vibe to it. The keyboards sound much better produced, and the vocal sounds like it might actually be a professional singer and not some sound engineer’s mother.  The only real complaint about this version is that the percussion is far too loud, which for this 60’s inspired song, is too obtrusive.

3. ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton – Karaoke All-Star
Same as the Karaoke Inferno version.

4. ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton – Karaoke Spotlight
If it is feasibly possible to have a low point of karaoke versions of popular songs, this one is probably it.  This is the nadir, rock-bottom point of karaoke. This is the karaoke equivalent of realising you have woken up from a drunken stupor to find that your house has burned down, your kids were taken away by social services two weeks ago and you now simply can’t get comfortable in bed if you head isn’t resting in a pool of your own Newcastle Brown Ale smelling, phlegmy vomit. This sounds like it was recorded solely using the beeps from an old Motorola Razr repeatedly dialling out rancid porn lines that charge £6.00 a second.

5. ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton – Karaoke Action Replay
Well, this one is pretty good, but so utterly average it’s very hard to find anything particularly good or bad about it. If you really, absolutely must sing Emma Bunton’s ‘Maybe’ then this would be a perfectly valid choice to go for. The keyboard is competent, the backing singer sounds committed to the ‘la la la la la’ but it does lack a certain something, that extra special ‘oomph’ that would make the track, and thusly you, really ‘sing’.  Very much the ‘Mission to Moscow’ of the bunch so far.

6. ‘Maybe’ by Emma Bunton – A-Type Players

A very strong start, with good keyboards, nicely played. The rhythm section is understated and underscores the melody nicely. Then the backing singer starts her ‘la la la’ and it all goes terribly wrong.  She comes in a little too early, and is way too loud for the track, completely overwhelming it.  This one really sounds like it was the singer that suggested the song because she was proud of her ‘la la la’ ability and her reasonably competent keyboardist (her husband probably) just went along with it before ‘The Gadget Show’ came on.

So, to conclude it’s a close run thing between Ameritz, Action Replay and the A-Type Players.  I like the A-Type Players, they sound like they are both committed and talented, but overall the vocal kills it as a karaoke version. The Action Replay effort is OK, but in the end it’s just too forgettable, which leaves Ameritz Karaoke as the winner.  Well done guys.

Next time, I might review some more completely useless ephemera.

I spend a lot of my life with headphones on, listening to Spotify, surrounded by other people with headphones on listening to Spotify. It's like the opposite of a  callcentre, we spend our days actively avoiding answering the phone.  

Anyhoo - I tried Rdio instead of Spotify but it seemed to assume I was some kind of hipster, and whatever I fed into it as my preferred musical choices it just kept playing Chvrches and the Horrors and Fat White Family and George Ezra and all that crowd, who I kinda like in small doses, but they make me feel like a Dad trying to act too young in front of his offspring’s friends, and not in a good way. Is there is a good way for a grown man to try and act young in front of his offspring’s friends?  Probably not.

So Spotify it is, so I can have much more control over my own terrible taste in music.  One thing I have definitely noticed is that Country and Western songs have the best titles.

Spurred on by the Best Song Title Ever®, which I banged on about a while back, the amazing Jerry Reed effort ‘She Got the Goldmine, I Got the Shaft’ I have been listening to quite a bit of Country music solely to find the next best song title.

There are some classics in there for sure, ‘If My Drinking Don’t Kill Me, Her Memory Will’, ‘Don’t Come Home Drinkin’ With Loving On Your Mind’, ‘She’s Acting Single, So I’m Drinkin’ Doubles’, ‘Get Your Tongue Out Of My Mouth, I’m Kissin’ You Goodbye’, ‘If You Don’t Leave Me Alone, I’ll go and Find Someone Who Will’, etc.

The more astute among you may have noticed a theme there. Love, loss and excessive alcohol consumption. I cannot think of any other reason to write and perform a song in front a crowd of complete strangers.

If I wrote a Country and Western song, which I just might if you’re not careful, I would definitely write it from the point of a view of a middle class white guy from Kent who has never been to Wyoming or lassoed a steer in his life.

It would be about the acute emotional distress incurred from catching the 261 bus to work where there’s a beautiful woman who ignores him, but that’s OK, ‘cos he’s happily married, even though there is DIY to be done that he doesn’t want to do, so he eats too much junk food and drinks whisky instead, despite his Doctors warning about his high cholesterol.

This might sound impossible to put to music, but I gotta tell you, those guys can spin a tune out of the longest sentences you ever heard, its remarkable.

I finished the first draft of my novel.  Very exciting. It’s about 72,000 words, which I think is quite long enough. Its like when you go to gigs that end up going on beyond 10.30pm – its rude, people have to get home you know, pop star people. If you had bothered come on when the ticket says you were supposed to, then it wouldn’t be 11.45 and the last tube has gone, and now about five hundred people are trying to cram onto a nightbus that only vaguely goes to where they want to end up.

Its OK for you isn’t it, staying backstage with champagne and hookers, you don’t have to get up tomorrow. Or perhaps you have an interview with Ian Grimshaw on Radio 1 at 8.00 in which case you do. Thanks heavens for the private car your record company lays on to whisk you back to your penthouse suite, filled with more cocaine than a human person could ever consume in a lifetime.

I went to see Elton John once at an outdoorsy type of gig once, and I swear to god 15 seconds after he had walked off stage he took off in a helicopter. I bet he was home before I made it out of the car park.   At least the gig ended at 10.25. Classy. 

OK, so here is the latest, and definitely the most nauseating, of my band of crime fighters. It's not his fault, I think he's just a bit naive...


Is it a Bird, or is it a plane?
Or is that just a cliché, rolled out again and again?

Neither, it’s something a lot more inappropriate,
It’s Boy in Spandex,
his age
indeterminate. 


Seventeen or eighteen? Perhaps even younger.
it’s so hard to tell these days.
Jesus Christ, it looks like a plunger. 

A strapping young turk,
helping victims of crime,
at home or at work,
if he gets there on time.   

Bringing to bear all his abilities
to mainly white guys in their fifties and sixties.

In May 2014, prepare to feel slightly uncomfortable and question your own sexuality with:

Boy In Spandex!

Next in line, please: Drone.