About Editor Mel LewisHow’s this for a varied career? Ex-lead guitar with cult sixties R & B group The Downliners Sect … Fleet Street journalist … editor … author … teacher at university, college, schools (64!) … financial and corporate PR … roving photographer for Millers Price Guides (antiques) … auction/internet correspondent … prison tutor (French, guitar) - Mel Lewis has been all of these and more.
From his first job as a sub-editor on SHE magazine, Mel went on to work at The Times, The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Observer and other national papers. A busy ‘Money Mail’ (Daily Mail) contributor, he wrote a Times column on street markets, a finance and legal page for Parents magazine and reported on ‘New Ideas’ for the Sunday Telegraph colour supplement. Author of six books His other books are, How To Write Articles For Profit And PR (Kogan Page) RAW SPIRIT – UNCORKED! Mad Mel hits the Newcastle blues circuit SMOKE DOESN’T get in your eyes any more, out on the jazz/blues/rock pub circuit – and mercy, lawd, for that! But something was definitely coming up cloudy. Raw Spirit, off the leash (I said “leash, not “lash”) at a hard, driving Newcastle pub gig, had hit my male musical G-spot (yes, men have them) in so many ways. But how had they done it? A week on, fresh from seeing Chris Farlowe perform at Darlington’s late summer Rhythm ‘n’ Brews festival, I know the answer. The secret lies in the line-up, and it’s all in the brass … Farlowe - a Sixties blues belter behind hits like Out Of Time, All Or Nothing, Handbags And Gladrags and only days away from age 67, as I write - stepped out as a hot six-piece outfit: guitar, keyboard, bass, drums, sax, Chris on vocals. Raw Spirit takes the classic rock line-up – lead and rhythm guitars (Steve Key, Barry Nichols), bass (Keith Patterson), drums (Bob Porteous), vocals (Rod Foggon) – and adds not just saxophonist John Hall but also brother Jim Hall on trumpet. These 'brothers in brass' sure do blend! More than blend, they drive the music, with riffs and unison blasts, the musical equivalent of underscoring and italics in print. Punctuation - excellent punctuation, in words or music – gives pace, drama, variety, spice and, above all, irresistible forward motion. I should be slumped in an old Ercol with a tartan blanket and a cup of weak tea, watching On Golden Pond. But the older I get the more I crave momentum in my media. No movie has more forward thrust than Enemy of the State. And few groups have the raw spirit of, well, Raw Spirit – and not a spring chicken in sight, on stage at the Star Inn, Westgate … All Your Love (penned by Otis Rush and iconically recorded by Mayall and ‘God’) showed how switching from a hanging beat to a steady 4/4 creates rhythmic ‘canapés’ that tease an audience hungry for a more meaty entrée, such as Nobody But You, where Barry - more of a deputy lead than a journeyman rhythm guitarist - showcased his serious slide skills. Street Walking Woman socked it to us with some excellent unison riffing from the brass brothers and plenty of thumping support from bass and drums. Keith may have that Kris Kristofferson, low-in-the-saddle Texan look about him, but there’s nothing laid-back about the backbeat he lays down. Credit is due, too, to balls-out tub thumper Bob – I’m talking 24inch bass drum here, chaps, not God bothering ... Meet Me In The Morning had the Strats swapping spit with a lingering, shared opening theme statement. Singer Rod had somehow morphed into Cyril Davies (RIP) and John put on a solo alter ego Heckstall-Smith was surely applauding from Elysium, or whatever they call the Great Marquee In The Sky. Hoochie Coochie Man and I Got The Blues, both delivered in ripping style, were eclipsed by She Upsets Me, a Moore milestone which Steve lifted with a soaring chromatic solo, torn from the Pearly Gates humbucker in his Hot Rod Fender. The first set closed (too soon for most of us) with Early In The Morning and B. B. King’s Woke Up This Morning. You can have too many mornings, lads. Apropos of which, any hot blues outfit that does not include Mayall’s Wake Up Call in its repertory is missing out on one of the finest variations on a 12-bar blues ever concocted. Over drams of fizzy in the interval I learned that the Hall brothers have impeccable musical credentials and quite a reputation. When Jimmy Nail, another native son, of course, and equally Passionate about the North East, found himself facing a Newcastle City Hall set with no brass section to hand, he called John for a lightning line-up. “There was no sheet music, and I never knew the numbers. Working from a CD I had the music written out in half an hour,” John says. Before Raw Spirit was laid down Jim had been linked with major local names - Jazzboard … James South ~Set … Highwater … Sneeze …. East Side Torpedoes and Eat The Peach … Round two, seconds away, and Rod’s mouthing off about a perceived inappropriate “jazz ending” on Talkin’ Woman Blues; but makes up for the lapse with a wailing vibrato that so captures the tone of King’s Stop Messing Round, the foot-pumping audience are rudely reminded of where Raw Spirit was really brewed and bottled. The Thrill Is Gone, a haunting minor blues, famously laid down by Moore and King on a 1992 ‘live in London’ video, saw Steve reconstructing that moody, smoky session, with some awesome forced harmonics. Familiar classics followed: Sweet Home Chicago, Every Day I Have The Blues (featuring the one and only trumpet solo of the night – more, please, Jim, because you’re worth it!), Crossroads, Soul Fixin’ man (plenty of dancing from a hen party, with bride-to-be wearing an unlikely L-plate on her butt), Shaky Ground, and a cataclysmic Walking By Myself. By now Rod’s voice had turned into a klaxon. The wood stage was vibrating fit to conflagrate. And everyone (even the Brass Brothers had black gooseneck mics, attached to their horn-ends) was reaching for the 10 spot on the amp dials. This veteran meat-humping band might have started out Raw but by eleven they, and the audience, were well and truly cooked - and what a feast it had been.
BLUE ROCK JAM SESSION NIGHTS IN SHILDON! Mad Mel isn’t only mad. He’s also musical. Hence this bash… MUSICIANS, SINGERS, GUESTS are all invited to The Fox & Hounds, Market Place, Shildon, on Monday 3 September, from 8.30 pm. This is the opening night of a hoped-for series of jam sessions. Entry free. The County Durham (near Darlington, near Bishop Auckland) pub has just been bought (and renovated from a wreck) to be run as a community pub. New owner Chris Jones has big plans: “We have outbuildings that will be restored for local people to hold events, celebrations, and so on.” The jamming idea came from me – a veteran guitarist, former lead with Sixties group The Downliners Sect, ex-editor of Guitarist magazine. I’ve just finished two and a half years teaching guitar to prisoners. I miss the crack and this will be a good way to get it back. We’re looking for confident players, electric or acoustic. Blues, rock, folk, jazz, Country - whatever. Got a new song … own composition you want to try on an audience? This would be a good place to do it. We’re a bit light as yet on house gear (amps, mikes, etc). Bring your own to be on the safe side. I’m also hoping to form a new group to be called LET THEM EAT CAKE. So I’ll be looking out for players with no talent or taste … Fox & Hounds owner Chris adds: “We’re not here to line our own pockets. The money we make will be ploughed back into the community. I love seeing people engaged and active. I’m open to ideas for fund-raising, new uses for the premises.” How to find Fox & Hounds Contacts
Missing Madeleine – why this chaos and confusion, asks Mad Mel? FOR DAYS NOW we’ve been hearing that the cops investigating the disappearance of little Madeleine McCann have been gathering evidence from the flat where she slept. Three months on from the disappearance, I’m amazed there’s anything left to detect or analyse. Let me put it another way: THERE SHOULD NOT BE ANYTHING LEFT TO COLLECT OR ANALYSE. Since the initial search the flat, in the Algarve village of Praia da Luz, Portugal, has been let to other holidaymakers. The mind boggles. In every civilised country the flat would have been instantly locked and the entrance festooned with CRIME SCENE DO NOT ENTER yellow and black streamers and every unauthorised person banned from entry. Just in case there was some snippet of cloth, some gobbet of body fluid to be recovered (in a sterile package, of course) and analysed. Now we hear that blood has been found, or may have been found on the wall of the flat. This may be Madeleine’s blood, and the horrible notion has been floated that this suggests she was never abducted live but was murdered in the flat and, presumably, carried out dead. I fail to see why such a conclusion should be drawn or even mooted. Blood on a wall means someone bled and their blood got on a wall. It may even have been daubed there by someone with sinister intent. It may of course be someone else’s blood. Some more recent holiday maker’s blood. Or the blood of the abductor. Leaping to a murder verdict is inane, and her distraught parents are right to maintain their hope and dignity and belief that their beautiful daughter is still alive and recoverable. It gets worse Many days have passed and still we have not heard a) whether this possible blood on the wall actually is blood and b) whether this blood carries Madeleine’s DNA. Why not? I’m not a scientist. Just an observer, an occasional crime writer, and someone who – like millions of you – watches CSI. In CSI DNA tests seem to be the matter of an hour or so’s work. And blood is detectable on the spot, instantly, with some kind of blue light or dabbed on chemical. And if CSI shows a make believe world of fast tests and near-instant computer analysis of DNA perhaps we should be told and the show re-labelled as science fiction. My own view, for what it’s worth? The Portuguese have Stone Age systems, weird, secretive protocols and sad manana attitudes. And the sooner someone has the balls to yell it out loud the better. More mistakes than you can shake a stick at Take a look at this tosh. Exactly as lifted from the internet. Much of it is illiterate. Worse, it’s in your face illiterate. So bad – Scholorship should be Scholarship; Accademic should be Academic – it’s ironic, laughable. The Song Book Music ListThese lyrics are provided for Private Study, Scholorship, or Accademic Research only. Commercial Use is Prohibited
I love that Everly Brothers song, Like Strangers. The version above has them as “stamgers””Stangers” and even “strangers”. And to top it all, the chords are wrong! I’ll leave you to spot the rest of the ungrammatical glitches. I bring this up in a week of bad news about the educational attainment of UK primary school kids. The Sun commented, “ … almost half of all 11-year-olds have been failed by the primary school system …These dire results are no fault of the children who, at this age, mop up good teaching like sponges … “It is the product of poor discipline, dubious teaching methods AND the Government’s non-stop classroom revolution … None of these criticisms are new.” Well, there we have it. Sorry, old Sun, it’s not “None of these criticisms are new.” “None” is official English shorthand for “not one”. So it’s always “None … is”. But then Sun writers have been out of short pants for a long time. Or have they? Only a dope smokes cannabis, insists Mad MelHANDS UP! Mine. I’ve smoked pot. Everyone else is doing it – putting up their hands and owning up to that form of criminal activity (historic, of course), even cabinet ministers – so why not Mad Mel? The last time was way back in the Seventies. It was a mistake then, and it’s a mistake now. The worst trip was 10 years earlier. A college mate came back from North Africa with seeds in a bag the size of a saline drip. His idea was to get me hooked so he could sell me the rest. My head spun for a couple of days and, for the first time, I actually enjoyed lectures in linguistics. But I won’t smoke it again. And nor should you. Why not? The news (Radio 4) is that, “People who’ve used cannabis, even infrequently, are up to 40 per cent more likely to develop a psychotic illness”, such as schizophrenia, delusions, hallucinations. Once again newsreaders don’t do the maths, presumably because they can’t. But let me do them for you. There is a 3 in 100 chance of developing such illnesses normally. So a 40 per cent increase makes it a 4.2 in 100 chance of becoming mentally ill. The British aren’t very good at probability. We know that because millions of us part with pounds every week in the expectation of becoming multi-millionaires in the National Lottery where the odds are something like 14,000,000 to 1 that you won’t win a million. The fact is we (yes, hands up! I’ve foolishly done that, too) are much more likely to be struck by lightning. (Consider a punt at the bookmaker’s this weekend for a bet that you will be electronically flattened by God. But who would collect your winnings?) Now suppose someone told you that for every 100 times you left home to walk to the post box, drive to the supermarket or the bingo hall your car would be bashed or you’d get injured or killed on 4.2 occasions. You’d stop going out and do all your shopping and games-playing on the internet and send emails instead of letters. In fact many people are doing that anyway, and they haven’t done the maths! Now let’s be clear, there is no recorded incident of anyone being killed 4.2 times. And computer monitors can explode without explanation or prompting. The real reasons I gave up the weed have nothing to do with figures and more to do with fags. I gave up smoking, so that put the kaibosh on cannabis. But even before it was clear that cannabis had stuffed my memory. But even before it was clear that cannabis had stuffed my memory. And then there was the case of my tenant who had to be forcibly restrained, with the help of a burly mate, from climbing out on a window ledge to fly back to France. That was nothing to do with cannabis. Just LSD. Mind you, he was never ever seen eating anything other than garlic sausage the size and consistency of a dead man’s dick – smoked. So the window incident was the least of his madnesses. No, the most compelling reason for not smoking dope was that it made me happy with my lot. However bad things were going I could always light up and enter a dream state where all was hunky-dory. But when I “woke up”, hours later, no problem had been solved, no corner turned, and now I had a bad cough to contend with. Only morons smoke cannabis, and however mad I may be I’m not a moron. How Mad Mel would save Royal Mail and millionsfrom being washed away …EVERY TIME I GO for a jog I come across what look like tiny squiggles of red rubber in the kerb and on the pavement. They’re the elastic bands postmen and postwomen use to parcel up the mail. If the bands look clean and are not too close to a lamp post that might have been used by a passing dog I pick them up and shove them in my track suit pocket. They’re good to tie the tops of black rubbish bags. But why are they ever thrown away? Why aren’t they pocketed and reused to save money and the planet? If the bands were collected and reused every UK home could be equipped with a Li-Lo dinghy, and it looks like we’ll be needing them. Alternatively … remember the fuss there was recently about the Queen in an alleged spat with a famous photographer? Just the BBC behaving badly again, as it turned out. The real Royal story that should have been exercising the nation was the postal strike. Businesses grind to a halt and go belly up when the mail stops. Posties want more dough? Well, stop throwing away money on all those elastic bands and give it to them. Does gramma matta? Spend enough time on ebay and you realise that good grammar is a currency in short supply. Looking for a Hamer American-made guitar I stumbled on a “hamer drill”. That’s not just funny. It’s self-destructive. Anyone – well, anyone literate - searching for a hammer drill would never know that seller was in the market. Working on a recent project I met a top architect. His plan drawings for a new apartments mentioned an “aproved scheme”. We all make mistakes … slip of the finger? Until I read on and found the word “ariel”. An oriel window is a “projecting window in an upper storey” (Oxford Compact English Dictionary). Oriels are his territory, so to speak. Surely an architect should get the spelling right? Then I looked at his website. His new architectural practice had been established by two directors previously with other companies. Only one had been a director, the other had been a Director. Your website is your business CV, available to millions and arguably the most important “choose my company” pitch a boss ever gets. The architect’s web copy continued, “We have obtained ISO9001 acreditation …[It’s accreditation]… and we use the discipline it demands …” What about the discipline correct spelling demands? An upmarket London property developer’s website was similarly littered with bad grammar and misspellings but the blurb talked about their painstaking “attention to detail”. Sorry: the two notions clash. How can someone pay scrupulous attention in their work and overlook language points? The inclination is to disbelieve the larger claim that their work is carefully vetted and monitored. Of course not everyone can be good at grammar or spelling, and some people are dyslexic. But I do expect that a developer whose recent flats were on sale “from £500,000” could find a few bob to pay for the services of a literate proof-reader. My local free paper, the Town Crier, is as prone to typo cock-ups as the Guardian newspaper – often jokingly referred to as the Grauniad. In the last issue of the Crier we had: RELIVE THE Those “swines” on the sub-editors’ desk had done it again! The missing “G” in the headline is a laugh, sure, and they get “swinging” right in the copy below, so that’s just sloppy proof-reading. But what about “60’s” and “70’s”? They’re referring to all the years of each decade, so plurals are called for - “60s” and “70s”. No comma needed. How’s this for an easy rule, one I’ve never seen in any school textbook and I’ve taught in scores of schools. No plural ever has an apostrophe. Wow! That was easy. So all those “banana’s” and “tomato’s” you see at the greengrocer should really be bananas and tomatoes. Nit picking for the fun of it? Not quite. The crew who run the Crier paper have regularly offered to teach school kids about newspapers as a work experience option. Now that is a concern.. Those editors don’t know the rules, don’t know that they don’t know, and are keen to pass that ignorance on. They should be told and kids warned. My point? Poor language often translates into wider issues. Look to your CV now! Oxymoron to end them all? My daughter’s gushy, pretty friend K. stayed over recently. The girls’ bedroom has a bookcase and one shelf has a row of the books I’ve written, three or four copies of each title. “Oh,” said K., wide eyed, “I didn’t know you were famous.” Honours case failure equals tosh for transparency, Mad Mel writesSo … the Crown Prosecution Service has ruled. After a £1 million police inquiry lasting 16 months, and a 216-page report, no-one is to be charged in connection with the “cash for honours” allegations. Were the cops leant on by the politicos? What an outrageous thought! Tell you something. In K T Tunstall fashion, Suddenly I See that those conspiracy theories – dodgy death of Diana, odd suicide of David Kelly – might just have seeds of truth in them. Why not? If the honours story can be exhumed, autopsied and then indecently reburied in full public gaze, and no collar felt, what do you think our masters might not engineer behind closed doors? Sir Menzies “Ming” Campbell, leader of the Liberal Democrats, reckons the episode has “diminished politics and politicians in the minds of the public”. Well hardly, Sir Ming. It’s a bit like some sleazy oik wanting to bring a case for libel or slander and being advised, ahead of proceedings, that they cannot possibly win, because they have no reputation to lose. All that glows may not be good “Rates of leukaemia are far higher in children and young people living near nuclear plants …,” I read in the SUN (July 19). Researchers had reviewed 17 studies, seven in the UK, and here was their verdict. Dr Peter Baker from the Medical University of South Carolina said, “There are still many questions to be answered … further research is needed.” Wow! More research is almost always needed on things scientific; it’s the nature of the beast. What is clearly needed – and right now - is simple thought and action. Like, if you have kids and live near a nuclear power station, move. Soon as you can. In fact if you haven’t got kids and you live near something nuclear pack your bags and get out now. I just “researched” that intelligent option. In my head. It was easy. Indeed I guarantee the accuracy of this statement: it’s safer to move further from a nuclear reactor or nuclear storage facility than to move closer to one. What is desperately needed when pondering the “nuclear debate” is a healthy measure of cynicism and commonsense. Reports came in his week that the Kashiwazaki facility in Japan – the world’s biggest nuclear power station - had been hit by an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale. I waited for the disclaimer that there had been “no damage to the installation … that there was no danger to the public” and all the rest of it. That verbal Valium – presumably composed by a Samurai spin doctor - was quick to arrive. The first response stated there had been no damage and no leaks. A couple of days on we learnt there were fires, 50 malfunctions, leaks of radioactive gas, umpteen gallons of radioactive fluid had spilled into the sea and 438 canisters full of radioactive waste tumbled over - “Many … split open”, The Times reported. The Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), which owns the plant said that the concentration of radiation in the water was lower than national regulations … And - guess what? – there’s still no danger to the public. The Times reveals, “ … seismologists recommended that up to a third of the country’s 55 atomic power stations should be closed for inspection ... “ Japan, which has almost no oil or gas reserves, generates 33 per cent of its electricity in nuclear power stations, but the Government hopes to increase this to 40 per cent by 2010.” Japan, of course, sits on an active fault line. Earthquakes happen all the time. Britain – thankfully - boasts no such natural hazard. But the nuclear option has numerous drawbacks. Like the greenhouse gas toll of building them. The gargantuan bill for construction - £1.5 billion apiece, I read. And the nightmare of radioactive waste disposal and storage. According to Greenpeace (http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/no.nukes/waste01.html ), “ … although a variety of disposal methods have been under discussion for decades -- including disposal in space -- there is still no solution for what to do with nuclear waste.” Nuclear detritus remains dangerous for thousands of years. We read, endlessly, about the benefits of clean, renewable energy from wind, wave and tidal power. And some moves – like wind farms – have been sensibly made in that direction. But it’s tickling the problem. Why can’t some of the £billions set aside for our own scheduled new generation of nuclear power stations be siphoned off now into researching – and quickly building – more of those safe, green alternatives? Answers on a Chernobyl postcard only, please. ebay boy finds £44k in Playstation boxA schoolboy’s ebay purchase had a surprise inside. The 16 year old’s £95 Playstation auction win came complete with £44,000 in euro notes stuffed inside. Given that today’s teenagers can’t do maths, how did he know it wasn’t 44p rather than £44k in euros? But that’s not my point here. The Norfolk police will keep the handed-in dosh for three months: “If we find the rightful owner of the money and they have a legitimate reason for having it, it will be returned to them,” said a police spokesman. If ownership remains a mystery the boy’s family can keep the notes under the Police Property Act. I make two points. First, I don’t believe cops normally go about “finding” owners in any active sense of the word. They log items handed in and wait for someone to turn up and claim the property – though I grant they might be a bit more curious in this case, given the size of the haul. And second, I have my own “treasure trove” experience to help all you who bid on ebay for a “spares and repair” Dyson and find the ribbed vacuum tube stuffed with £50 notes. Take it to a police station a long way from the vendor! Selling at a Sussex boot sale a few years back – one of the UK’s biggest boot sales – this geezer and his bird bought some collectable knick-knack from my table. “Mind if I leave my bag here while we go round the rest of the tables,” asked the chap. Into his carrier went the collectable I’d just sold, and into the back of my van went his bagged gear. I never saw those punters again. Today you might search, gingerly, for a bomb in a mystery bag – or call the bomb disposal squad right away. But in 1998 I searched the carrier bag with gusto when I got home. Inside was a flour sack with a Nazi swastika on and a cute vintage teddy bear. I took all three items to my local police station, twenty miles away in Eastbourne and waited the stipulated period. The sack and toy eventually sold for £18 and the collectable already sold to the couple resold for another few quid. I don’t know if the bear was stuffed with zlotys or drug dollars; with hindsight I should have looked. But I do strongly suspect this: cops in different towns don’t talk much to each other. I’m sure handed-in items should be fed into some massive computer mainframe, sorted by slick, perfectly functioning software, and accessed and checked on a regular basis by a super-efficient desk sergeant. In the real world, if the couple didn’t announce their loss to the same cop shop I visited I bet the link would never be made. That’s why I say, if you happen on a fortune, take it to a station miles away from the possible owner and all will be yours. In the fullness of time.How curry could save the planetYou should listen to the radio more. Hear news. Learn facts. Have a laugh, Mad Mel writes LAST NIGHT I HEARD HOW COWS are responsible for two per cent of methane in the atmosphere. Methane is a bad news greenhouse gas. It is to global warming what petrol is to a forest fire. Cows make methane by farting and belching. The latest idea is to lower their methane output by mixing garlic in with their feed. Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall a few times. Don’t scientists eat curry or know people who do? Garlic is to farting what … Mind you, I can see how, with ingenuity and malice aforethought, you could use garlic to save the planet. How about drilling lots of holes in cockpit doors, and insisting that airline pilots and navigators eat plenty of garlic? Air travel – a prime source of greenhouse gas from jet exhausts - would nosedive overnight. Ryanair and others would go out of business. The ozone layer would recover and the earth be rescued. Thinking “outside the envelope” is easy, once you get the hang of it. Watch out! Oxymorons are alive and well and living near you … Have you noticed how jargon, like “outside the envelope” and certain cult words have viral qualities? “Oxymoron” has become almost a dish of the day with media commentators. Oxymorons could reach a pub quiz near you any day now. An oxymoron is (Oxford Compact Dictionary) “a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction”. Teaching Citizenship to a class of yobs one day, our topic du jour was the Nazis. One reluctant pupil yelled, “Why am I having to learn about this. I’m going to be a professional footballer”. If oxymorons could be packaged this one would be on a Tesco shelf and labelled “Finest”. No-one aged fourteen knows they are going to be a professional footballer. Even Michael Owen doesn’t know he’s going to be a professional footballer from one day to the next, and he is a professional footballer. Some promising youngsters don’t make the grade. Or they pick up career-changing injuries, or change their minds. And then there’s the racism issue. If football fans and players were better educated might there not be fewer racially fuelled moments on and off the pitch? But oxymorons are available to us in our own home. I looked in my TV guide and saw trailed a programme called Big Brother Live. Fighting talk The other day I left my car, perfectly parked, to do some shopping in Darlington. An hour later I came back to find a smart new Audi parked a centimetre from the boot. Literally a centimetre. So laughably close in fact that my daughter decided to take a photograph. While she framed the phone viewfinder I wrote large on a scrap of paper: WHAT IF I’D WANTED TO OPEN THE BOOT TO PUT SOME SHOPPING IN? INCONSIDERATE? WHAT DO YOU THINK?, shoved it under his windscreen wiper and drove off. Sure enough the loutish Audi owner soon appeared, waving his arms and yelling. Fortunately I was a few hundred yards away and moving. What do you think would have happened if I’d gone back? An apology? Or a mouthful of teeth for daring to complain or molesting his wiper? It put me in mind of a similar incident when I lived in the Smoke. Jogging in Highbury Fields I came across a chap exercising his dog. He and his mutt could have been anywhere in 30 acres of parkland, but his preferred spot was this small fenced-off bit with a sign asking people to keep dogs out as it was reserved as a play area for children. I pointed to the sign and said (a lie) “my child plays here”. Did the cockney sprat show surprise, remorse or remove himself and his shit-machine pet from the no-go zone? Never. He fixed me with a vicious, vacuous grin and grunted, “Come ‘ere and say that.” And now foreigners threaten to change our way of life and culture!
Only Mad Mel dares to link Gaza with the UK property market!So the BBC’s Gaza correspondent Alan Johnston is out, released by his terrorist captors. Terrific news for his family, the media endlessly repeated. I daresay Alan isn’t too disappointed himself. Alan talked about his “dangerous and unpredictable” captors and incarceration in a cell “two-and-a-half metres by two metres square.” No, Alan. That’s a rectangle. What can you say? Journalism isn’t what it used to be? Perhaps Alan can be forgiven the lapse after his horrific ordeal. But what about the money experts on the Wake Up To Money Radio Five Live show? One guru was talking about Tesco’s new foray into the housing market. Tesco is offering a new online service for house sellers. To help with marketing they joined forces with established online website Fish4homes.com. But it’s not all home sweet homes. Fish4homes is getting flak from estate agents who’ve been advertising on their site. The agents, clearly rattled by mighty Tesco and the potential threat to their livelihood, are threatening to pull their ads off the fishy site. Tesco charge a flat fee of £199 for their service. A normal high street agency slice is about one per cent of the selling price. Enter estate agent boss. The Five Live financial journalist asks him: “What does your firm charge?”. He answers, “0.5 per cent”. You could hear the “wow” in the journo’s voice. Gosh that’s cheap … however will Tesco compete … how does your company manage to operate with such a tiny commission? Oh really! As the average UK house price is nudging £200,000 a half per cent estate agency fee comes to £1,000. But the journalist didn’t do the maths. Not for himself and not for his audience. Five times cheaper Tesco might just have a chance in this overheated market place. I’ve been out of the property market for a while. But I have bought and sold nine houses and flats. The most memorable occasion, in a previous property boom, was a London home. I’d bought a tiny “one down two up” Georgian property in Islington for £53,000 but now I was keen to move to the country to start a family with my new partner. You’ve read the magic words: “Georgian” and “Islington”. Period cachet, plus location, location, location. The estate agents were falling over themselves to tie me up in an exclusive deal. But a low rate of commission – their “sign with us exclusively” inducement - cut no ice with marketing man Mel. I knew – from my mail order background – that selling most things is a numbers game. There was no internet at that time but Islington was littered with high street estate agencies. How does a seller work out which agency is most likely to be chosen by the prime prospect – the person who will actually buy your property? Answer? You’ve no bloody idea. And neither have the agencies. Which is why it made sense – makes sense - to go to loads of them, all at the same time. I ended up placing the property with 14 estate agents. The house sold for £140,000. Peanuts at today’s prices, but not a bad mark-up. Did the estate agent who made the sale have some special technique or access to hot contacts? Hardly. He went bust weeks after the sale went through – which in Islington must count as a Nobel prize-winning degree of incompetence. No, it was a numbers game. Play the game and win with property. And much else besides. Fallout as smokers run for coverThere was much jollity and some irony as the smoking ban slunk in last weekend.Along the lines of, “now joggers are at risk from smoker hordes hogging the streets and spewing out their cancerous filth” … “Cigarette packs need new warnings, such as : SMOKING CAN LEAD TO HYPOTHERMIA”. One publican had to ban a regular. Because he was a smoker and insisted on lighting up with his pint? No, because the punter had a flatulence problem and couldn’t stop breaking wind. Nothing new there, apparently, but without the pervasive tobacco smell the stench was unbearable. If you publicly state your intention to break the law that counts against you in a damning way, surprise, surprise. I see two outcomes for the smoking ban, one good, one bad. My product of the year is the Sneaky Smokers Ashtray. The familiar cue to light up was always the sight of an ashtray. Now they’ve gone it’s a powerful inducement to hold fire on lighting a fag. But what if smokers had their own, portable foldout ashtray … You heard it here first. And the bad news? When (if) we get summer weather non-smokers who want to sit outside with their pints of Vier and jug of Pimms won’t be able to. The alfresco seats will all be taken up – for the duration – by banished smokers. I’m worried about Gordon, Mud Mel writesGordon hasn’t got it. He can’t compete with Tony “snake oil” Blair. Have you heard a Brown speech? It’s a dull, dated, brown paper parcel of platitudes and generalisations. He just doesn’t have the halting, stuttering sincerity, the charm, the wit, the presentational skill, Blair’s flair for extemporising, the spin doctor speech writers … Hold on a minute! Of course he has the speech writers, or access to them if he wants them. So where are they … what’s going on? Since Gordon can buy the skills of any gifted wordsmith why doesn’t he? If he doesn’t know he’s naff at the lectern there’s a desperate lack of self-awareness. If he does know and thinks his style is fine he’s delusional. And if he has been told about his shortcomings (as he must have been) and steamrollers over his critics … well, isn’t that the control freakery we were warned about? Mud, glorious mud! Kept flicking to Freeview channels to glimpse Glastonbury gems. Most of the new “hero” groups merged into one energised blur. Guitars played like skiffle washboards do not do it for me. But slinky, jazzy Amy Winehouse continues to fascinate. I heard a 15 foot reticulated python, a snake famed for its stroppiness, had been sighted in the shires. Could that have been a tripping Amy trying to get back home to Southgate, North London? “Glastonbury ain’t what it used to be,” a radio comic observed, as star guests and bleary-eyed, doped-up revellers departed as the mud, far from congealing into a kind of manageable Serengeti riverbed pancake, turned into the River Yuck following torrential rain. “Nah,” he drawled in a fake West Country brogue you could bottle and sell, “moy mate caht trench foot, an’ naht n’a gud place!”. I’ve had trench foot – a variant of athlete’s foot – and not in a good place, which is why I wear flip-flops even round Richmond swimming pool, probably the cleanest pool in the Western hemisphere. It was memory of that youthful groin affliction, and other hygiene anxieties that made me insist to my boss that Mel, editor of the Guitarist magazine the company had just launched, would not be dossing in a tent when reporting on the 1973 Cambridge Folk Festival. Instead I stayed in a four-star city centre hotel on expenses. I even “rescued” a damsel from scruffy tent life one night, for the night. And that was how I discovered that six cans of Newcastle Brown do not a tent pole make. Why don’t women move? No, not leave town. Not jig about more on the dance floor, though you can’t have too much jigging. Not move to their side of the bed. Why don’t they move – intelligently, cautiously, caringly – out of the way when I’m out jogging, facing them, as the Highway Code recommends, on a narrow country lane as they drive by? Male drivers instinctively know what to do. They move out. Away. Some even switch lanes to give an old jogger room to keel over full length sideways. Most women drivers don’t budge. Even on an empty road they won’t deviate. Steely-eyed they stare straight ahead and hold their course. And if that means their side view mirror flattens my arm hairs, so be it. What is that about? Could it be lack of sympathy with the activity? Oh sure, plenty of women run to keep fit. But mostly on a modified airport luggage carousel in a gym. Few have the bottle to jog solo down country lanes, and who would blame them for that? Or is it that old sexist bogey, a deficiency in spatial perception. They think they are far enough away, when in fact the car’s turbulence is stripping flesh from my arm. Could it be the very same female lack of judgement that enables a man to convince a woman that an item the size of a top thumb joint is in fact six inches long? Ah yes. The old ones may not be the best, but they do feel like old friends. God gets new lease of life as debate rages over ‘poisonous’ religionAs I write (Mad Mel writes), there’s an intriguing debate raging, about God and between brothers. God we know. More of Him, later. The brothers are Daily Mail columnist and TV pundit Peter Hitchens and Christopher Hitchens, academic and author of the recent *‘God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything’. I’ve just been listening to the bros. battling it out on Radio 4, one in a London studio, the other in the BBC’s radio car in Oxford. For Hitchens, P. religion is a positive, life-affirming force, giving us essential notions of good and bad. Hitchens, C., on the other hand, claims that the concepts of right and wrong are innate, part of our evolutionary inheritance. We don’t need religion to know the difference. And of course terrible acts have been committed in the name of religion. Better then, Christopher’s argument runs, to uncover a consistent, universally acceptable “moral” and humane basis for behaviour and dump religion. That, at any rate, is my take on their positions. There was a slight problem with the radio clash, though. The Hitchenses, though dramatically opposed in their views, sound exactly the same: their voices have the same timbre. It was like a bad actor, with a mask on a stick, having a row with himself, leaping about the stage, masked and unmasked and convincing no-one. Their row has also hit the web. “The real difference between Peter and myself,” Christopher writes (Hitchens v Hitchens - www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/newscomment), “is the belief in the supernatural. I’m a materialist and he attributes his presence here to a divine plan. I can’t stand anyone who believes in God, who invokes the divinity or who is a person of faith.” Peter retorts, “I like atheists and enjoy their company, because they agree with me that religion is important.” Now I don’t sound like either of the Hitchens brothers, but I do have sympathy with both camps. I’m worried about God. I’m not saying He doesn’t exist; but if he does, I don’t much like the way He carries on. On His watch – and isn’t everything on His watch? – a very old friend of mine, Roland Levinsky, checked out of this life a few months back in shocking circumstances. Roland was out walking with his wife and their dog in the West Country. In the violent spring winds an 11,000 volt cable fell on him and he died on the spot. I don’t know whether Roland, 63, and a father of three, was a good man in the Judeo-Christian sense - we lost touch 39 years ago. But he had certainly done good things. The Independent described him as “an immunologist of international renown whose achievements included performing, at Great Ormond Street Hospital, the UK's first successful bone-marrow transplants in children. Later he performed the first successful gene therapy in children with serious inherited diseases who would otherwise have died. As Dean of the Institute of Child Health in London, he transformed it into a top-class research institution. He subsequently performed a similar transformation as Vice-Chancellor from 2002 of Plymouth University…it was zooming its way up the league tables and attracting high-calibre students.” Here was no geeky boffin-in-a-white-lab-coat. Roland stood six feet five and was a transatlantic yachtsman. The last time I saw him, across Russell Square in the 1980s, he’d grown a black beard to rival that of the late tycoon, Nubar Gulbenkian. When we shared a flat in London’s Finchley Road - he a newly qualified doctor, me a morose, recently separated husband, scratching a living as a casual sub-editor on the TV Times - we would go out drinking in and around Hampstead. Roland gave me some good advice: “Smoke nothing; drink what you like.” How smart was that? Simple messages tend to be understood and followed. Even better, in with the “don’t” part was a licence to enjoy some pleasurable activity to excess! Thanks, man, wherever you are. I’ve been taking your advice ever since. By any token, then, Roland appears to have been a poor candidate for sudden and violent death. A pastor friend tells me God is always “on the case” but the devil is also always at work. I wish I understood the pecking order better. I wish I understood lots of things better. One evening, out teaching in a Newton Aycliffe adult centre, I met a man, a sober, intelligent young chap, an educator, who told me about an alien encounter. He was riding his motorbike in the Cumbrian hills at night. Up ahead was a man driving a Jag. Suddenly they were both caught in a beam of light or energy emanating from what they took to be a space ship. The bike and car engines failed; the surfaces of both machines heated up in the glow. Over the next few days my friend’s leathers disintegrated and he later developed a kind of benign tumour behind the ear – something familiar to others who have had contact with space visitors, he told me. It was a credible story and I believe it. Fifteen years ago I saw a ghost at work in my 17th century Norfolk cottage. It wiggled a very heavy leather motorcycle jacket which was hanging against a brick wall. Three other (sober) people, my then-partner and two neighbours, saw it, too. There were no draughts or strings to move the jacket. It just flapped about without visible help. The ghost seemed to be saying nothing more than, “Look at me! I can do things in your world, and you can’t see me!”. Some years later, the successful and sane businessman I’d sold the property to sidled up to me in the street and asked, “Was that house you sold me haunted?” He’d also felt the presence. Religions have problems with aliens, ghosts and even dinosaurs, none of which sits easily with their earth-centric world and creation timeline as delivered in the scriptures. What worries me more is how questions are discouraged by faith leaders: “Just accept” … “Have faith” … “Believe it, for it is the Gospel truth”. Questions fuel research and progress. Faith must be tempered with common sense. “You can pray that our children will not be knocked down by a bus,” I told my born-again ex-partner. “But you also teach them the Green Cross code.” As a young student of business I read that one of the reasons why the Japanese had soared ahead of the West as a technological powerhouse was not the calibre of their solutions to problems, but the quality of the questions they asked. Ask the right question and an empowering answer might follow. As a kid, fascinated by science and astronomy I struggled to understand the notion of an infinite universe. I asked questions: If it wasn’t infinite how might it end, what kind of boundary might there be? A brick wall, any kind of wall? And how would that end? Because if the wall didn’t stop somewhere in outer space I was back struggling with that infinity demon. And if it did stop, then what? Modern thinkers tell us there are questions - such as “what lies to the north of the North Pole?” - that are “invalid”: they’re meaningless and shouldn’t be asked at all. Scientists now believe that some 70 per cent of the universe is made up of “dark matter”, a mysterious kind of energy or gravity – they know not what - that could force us to rewrite the rules of physics. One thing’s for sure. If there is a God He plays His cards very close to His chest! *God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Warner Books. Bush warns: “Not on my watch” – as Albanians run off with Bush watch …Visit Albania at your peril. Bush learned this the hard way. According to the media, a light-fingered Albanian reveller – terrorist-hating Albania is pro-America in a way only those immune to Polonium 210 can afford to be – squeezed Bush’s wrist and “accidentally” made off with the Presidential timepiece.US secret service funded media were quick to counter: the watch was only a £25 Timex … there was no watch; why would there be: Bush can’t tell the time … And so on. Then a close-up magician came on Radio Five Live and explained exactly how the trick is done. Squeezing the wrist is the last of a series of subterfuges. It leaves a kind of mental “impression” that the watch is still there, when in fact it’s already on ebay. Could the Albanians have been taking lessons from my ex-students? Fact: I lost three Lamy (classy German) pens to thieving secondary school students. You have no idea how quick off the mark these youngsters are. Except when it comes to work. Or learning. When I was desperate to successfully wrap up my Post Graduate Certificate in Education (PGCE, the piece of paper that makes you a “proper” teacher), I asked, no begged, my class to help me put on a good show for my PGCE examiner. I went out of my way to make the learning material “fun”. Students lucky-dipped their place in a queue to compete in a fun game using some antique bone dominoes I’d placed in a bag. I’ve never seen the dominoes since. Another dumbed down “task” involved identifying odd objects. My pink plastic guitar string winder went walkabout and has never resurfaced. Mind you, as thieves students are second class citizens. Top dog accolade goes to professional, accredited, convicted thieves. As a prison guitar teacher I’d lent a student convict a treasured glass guitar slide (think Ry Cooder, Chris Rhea). The con committed an ultimate sin (possession of a mobile phone or doped to the eyebrows? I forget which) and was transferred away from our open pen to a secure unit. He took my slide with him. Could I get the item back? No. I ask you. If you can’t recover a stolen slide from a named convict in a known prison what chance is there for justice? Answers on a Rolex watch, please. Prison? If it’s good enough for Paris, it’s good enough for criminals, Mad Mel writesFREE PARIS NOW! “Celebutante” Hilton, heir to the Hilton hotel empire, so the nice telly news people tell us, made her name following the release of a home sex movie filmed in a hotel bedroom. You can do that when you own hotels. Have you seen her film? I’ve seen more sex – under better lighting – watching badgers having a 3am bonk in their sett on Springwatch. THE DRIVE OF YOUR LIFE The academic who explained this to me – my PhD psychologist ex-wife – scored 160, and that was only while we were engaged. (Joke, dear! if you’re tuning in). It didn’t have to be 100. Could have been five or 50. That’s just the way the scale has been calibrated, I think she said. More puzzling is trying to understand what 100 means. What does an average IQ person look like? What do they do that lets you know they have an IQ of only 100? Now that’s easy. Keep taking the A1, or any dual carriageway or motorway. Anyone driving 10 feet or less from your bumper has an average IQ. INSTANT PICK ME UP – AT THE POST OFFICE Feeling down? Just walk into a post office (if it’s not on a lunch break), suffer the queueing … savour the drear décor … thumb through overpriced, tacky stock a boot sale trader would dump … before meeting the staff and computers that like to say “no”. Only in a post office are my Halifax and Co-Operative bank cards turned down for cash withdrawals. The same pick-me-up trick works in Co-op stores. Jobcentres. Council offices. Charity shops. No prescription or drugs needed. Walk in sad. Walk out with a spring in your step. Life got worse. But it’s better now. Could it be … warm food, dehydration, bruised bananas and a numb bum are really behind schoolkids’ bad behaviour, Mad Mel asks?It took a master of copywriting to teach me the truth about mailings, unsolicited sales letters, cold calls and the like. As a journalist drawn to the wider, better paying, more reliable world of commercial writing I’d been lucky enough to find a guru; someone I could learn from – free of charge and without commitment. Of course it helped that we had other interests in common, such as table tennis and classical guitar, which was how I’d met the late Lou de Swart. I’d just sounded off to Lou about all those unwanted, irritating letters in the post and how I’d always chuck ‘em away unread. Guru Lou turned on me with a wily, mischievous grin, “Do you really … put them in the bin without a glance? What if a letter came in the post with the title, HOW TO MAKE YOUR C - - K TWO INCHES LONGER. Would you read it? Or would you chuck it away unread?” Point taken. Some letters or spam emails – not many - have you reaching for your wallet. And some have you reaching for the calendar. To see if you’ve somehow missed that it’s April 1. Which is how I felt when this news story hit my Hotmail inbox today. “Teachers and parents are all too well acquainted with …listless kids fidgeting in class or gazing aimlessly out of the windows. But now Concentrate Design (http://www.concentrate.org.uk) is launching an ingenious range of award-winning products that will help schoolchildren focus on their lessons by keeping them comfortable, well-hydrated and well-nourished. “The colourful Concentrate range includes the ‘Chairpadbag’, a bag that doubles Inventor Mark Champkins, a graduate of the Royal College of Art and the London based founder and director of Concentrate, dedicated four years to the research, design, development and testing of these products. Lol or what? But it’s no joke. These are real items, available at John Lewis, the Science Museum and the Design Museum (both in London); at National Schoolwear Centres Champkins explains, “I worked with a number of schools that were moving from an old school building to a new one. The government was investing billions of pounds in new school buildings, but quite often the absolute essentials for learning had been overlooked in favour of futuristic-looking architecture and equipment. “Kids attending new schools were fidgeting on the same hard, plastic chairs they’d had in the old building. They were still eating unhealthy food and still dehydrated because they weren’t drinking enough water.” Poor muppets. After teaching at 64 (6-4, you heard right) secondary schools in the northeast, let me share with you some classroom experiences.
What could have caused such behaviour? A bandy, bruised banana? Lunch too warm? Seats too hard? “Something in the water”? Or something in the home? Like piss poor parenting.
Grammar schools are great – whatever the Tories now tell us, Mad Mel writesSo the Tories are giving up on grammar schools. Comprehensives are fine, they say. Less “socially divisive”. And as you were with academies. Another worthy project, right wingers now agree. It’s like Marco Pierre White endorsing fast food and joining the Board of Macdonalds. Brian Sewell doing an aerosol makeover on the Adoration of the Magi. Some things don’t feel right. They fly in the face of taste … commonsense … tradition … experience. Take mine. I’ve taught at scores of comprehensives in our area, and a handful of academies. Academies are nothing but comprehensives in bib and tucker. Once upon a time I believed fresh, sympathetic architecture would have a beneficial, cathartic effect on mood, behaviour, culture. In a word, that yobs – on housing estates or schools - would draw back from trashing palpable quality; that new buildings and a regenerated environment would work a kind of civilising magic. If you have any evidence for this, please tell me about it. I don’t see it. I suspect the denouement will have more in common with this parable. Parked outside my house was the new Mondeo I was road testing recently. From behind my front window I saw this seven- or eight-year-old boy approaching. He was walking ahead of his chav parents and grandparents. As he approached the gleaming black Ford - a rare trophy in a deprived district - I watched and heard him gather phlegm and spit which he gobbed on the car once in range. Academies are just hotter targets for vandalism. You’ll see. Cards on the table. I went to a famous – now infamous – London grammar school. Hackney Downs Grammar (earlier known as the Worshipful Company of Grocers). So did Nobel laureate playwright Harold Pinter, actor and dramatist Steven Berkoff, Lord ‘cashpoint’ Levy and a famously dodgy entrepreneur of the Sixties, John Bloom. Someone – a disgruntled student? – burned down the charming Victorian school building in 1960. My A-Level artwork portfolio – needed to get me into art school - went up in the blaze. By the 1990s the school had earned the title ‘worst school in the country’ … Face facts, Dave: life is divisive. Uneven. A lopsided struggle between unequal contenders. Ever applied for a job, watched X Factor, American Idol, The Apprentice, Wall Street? Wall Street? Yup. That seminal film where Michael Douglas delivers the notorious ‘greed is good’ speech. Here I’ve taken out the word ‘greed’ and substituted ‘competition’: The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that competition, for lack of a better word, is good. Competition is right; competition works. Competition clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Competition, in all of its forms - competition for life, for money, for love, knowledge - has marked the upward surge of mankind … Of course some youngsters suffer psychological indigestion from an exam-rich diet. Of course some children have skills and talents that only show in later life, and would therefore miss the grammar school boat. But what about those who shine from birth, so to speak? Why can’t they be properly considered and catered for? To compete on the world stage this country needs an elite. When it suits the Government they’re happy enough to induct youngsters into the harsh real world. I’m not talking the ‘world of work’, that ludicrous, smarmy, spun euphemism for the more honestly named Rat Race. No, I’m talking about the enforced rite of passage most university students face: the scabrous ‘world of debt’. Mad Mel savours Britishness at its best24rd April 2007 by Mel LewisIt’s been a very British week. Where else in the developed world could you find an ad in a local rag for a ‘GIANT CAR BOOT FAIR at Harperley POW Camp, Fir Tree, Crook’ with a tacked-on message for crooks and informants: STOLEN FROM HARPERLEY Who steals Portaloos? Worse, used Portaloos. Or even in-use Portaloos! Were they towed away? Air lifted? Was anyone in them at the time? I hear Harperley is bidding to become the Elstree of the North. Stand by for remakes of Can-Can, Gone with the Wind and Dog Day Afternoon. The same newspaper also carried a full page ad announcing stock clearance bargains at Boyes, the famous general store. Star billing goes to the cutprice ‘Rock Box’, a cool box with built-in radio, knocked down from £39.99 to £19.99. Does anybody at Rock Box know that civilised British picnickers journey into the countryside to get away from electronic noise … audio vandalism … other people’s bad music choices? Maybe there’s a bigger market than has been appreciated for non-PC, inappropriate add-ons. Consider: a Zimmerframe that upturns and doubles as a TV aerial. Or a can opener that also cuts toenails. From Our Own Correspondent, a Radio 4 weekend programme, carried a startling story this week. As the BBC reporter stopped at traffic lights in some African capital a Mercedes drew up alongside. The driver was breastfeeding her baby and talking on a mobile at the same time. How many points off your UK licence for that trick, he wondered. My anarchic, post-modern 17-year-old daughter had a different take: “Full marks for multi-tasking”. She’s just started driving lessons, so watch out. Back in the recently sundrenched UK, in Richmond, North Yorks., a blackboard outside a restaurant at the back of the delightful cobbled market square told passers-by it had a “full lisens”. Was it saying something about live music? Of course not. But why, since I arrived in the North Yorks. market town at midday, and since Richmond seems to have a fairly elderly, and therefore properly educated population – why had no-one told the café oiks that their spelling needed attention? At work on a copywriting project, the new designer has been emailing me about the “fith proof” and reminding me, “your expecting this …”. Grumpy old grammarian? Of course. Doesn’t obscure the fact that anyone who can’t claim even a kissing acquaintance with English shouldn’t be working with words. So why is he? Because the person who took him on hasn’t a clue either. So much for “Education, education, education,” Tony. It didn’t work. Britishness isn’t all trivia, however. I’ve suffered a bellyful of tradesman tosh this week. The council decided to install smart new fireplaces and eco-friendly boilers in a string of properties in our town. While I beavered away on my computer the joiner was busy carving out an awesome splinter-in-waiting in the new bathroom door opposite. I turned to find a total stranger, mercifully with his back to me, peeing in my loo – bathroom door gaping, of course. This would be the fireplace fitter. Only no-one had introduced us. Not even the balls-out twit himself. What happened to “please may I” or “is it alright if …”? It gets worse. Back at my desk the computer suddenly dies. I turn to the newly arrived plumber fiddling with the boiler: “Has an electrician turned off the power?” He yells downstairs. Up comes a six foot four youth, aged maybe 19. “I didn’t know anyone was here …,” blabbed the stupid sparks. “That’s why you need to ask,” I screech. No manners, no sense. No notion of a job well done, either. His wiring work over the fuse box cover was left on the floor for the tenant – me - to reattach. There were more farewell gifts. Someone had deposited a grease smear six inches long on the beige jacket I’d left on the banister. And out in the street the pavement and road around my car were littered with tiny nails. Are Poles any better? Could they be any worse? Common sense corner – seat up or down is the least of your worries!by MEL LEWISWould a magazine or a regular report on commonsense issues find a market? I pondered this question 10 years ago. And did nothing. Too much investment … risk … unquantifiable prospects. Today, with the internet, everything is possible, writes Mad Mel Just back from London, following a welcome Easter break. It truly is hotter in the south. And more expensive. My sister took me and my daughters as guests to her David Lloyd leisure club. The cost: £14 a head. Waffle and coriander soup at the St Alban’s, Herts, Waffle House was £5.15. My brother-in-law complained about weak coffee, got an extra shot and was charged 45p (later cancelled after protest). How did I get to the Smoke? Only sheep use the M1. Drivers think, foolishly, that the UK’s first wide, fast motorway is the way to go. It isn’t. The MI obeys Sod’s Law/Murphy’s Law with a vengeance. If something can go wrong it surely will. My son, victim of our 24/7 society, recently hit an M1 traffic jam at 1am. Not for me. I took the meandering, leisurely A1. And discovered that BP service stations have roughly the same level of public sanitation I’ve been experiencing there for the past 20 or so years. Dire. Unforgiveable. When BP boss Lord Browne leaves in July he could pick up a cash, shares and pension package worth £72 million. But the company can’t fund decent clean toilets. We’ll stick with loos. Since (at an optimistic guess) only one in ten men wash their hands after using a public loo (much worse at home, I reckon) why don’t doors open the other way? Consider. You normally leave by pulling the door – in other words, lads must make contact with the door handle, coated with germs from untold unwashed hands. Given my first sentence – and I challenge anyone to query my figures – loos are a great place to transfer all sorts of bugs: hepatitis, herpes, other STDs. If you see me pulling my jacket or sweater sleeve up over my hand as a makeshift glove when leaving a gent’s, you now know why. Me and the family love exploring the luxury bathroom section in our local DIY superstore. Dream on, kids! Imagine our shock to discover that someone had actually done a poo in a (non-flushing) display lav. I told the assistant who said, sheepishly, “Yes, they have”. I didn’t see any cleansing action … Let’s stick with that department. Have you noticed that lavatory seats – and, more importantly, the holes in them – have been getting smaller? Sadly, people haven’t. So much so that a radio newsreader announced yesterday that some coffins won’t fit the incinerator hole at crematoria … Now it seems fatties can’t cope dead or alive. Vicious shape of things to come? Also over the glorious Bank Holiday we trekked to my favourite pub: the Black Bull, Frosterley. Way ahead of legislation this real ale and wholesome food haven is smoke-free. Not only can’t you smoke inside, but you can’t light up outside, either, and there are signs spelling this out. I settled my daughters on a free bench in the sun and went off for the beer and J2Os for the girls. On my return the bearlike oik on a neighbouring bench started puffing away. “This is a non-smoking pub,” I told him. “But I’m outside,” he said. “No smoking inside and outside. Look at the signs,” I stood my ground. He turned away, all coy, seeking refuge in his companions and black humour: “What am I supposed to do? Go on the railway [opposite] ... chuck myself in the river?” I also heard something (directed at me?) that included words not unadjacent to “kick” and “bollocks”. Stand by for similar reactions from diehard smokers come the July 1 public places smoking ban. One thing’s for sure. It will be a hot summer. Mad Mel blows a gasket on motoring issues…BY MEL LEWIS
Mad Mel in biker mode (it’s a Yamaha FZX 750)
When I was 43, having driven a car for 20 years and written about them (The Guardian, Antique Dealer & Collectors Guide, Home Business, etc) for much of my journalistic life, I decided to become a biker and had to retake my test. What an eye-opener! My instructor was an ex-pursuit cop. I asked him: “When should you start to signal your intention to leave a motorway or major A-road … At the first countdown marker, the second or the third?” His answer: at the first – obvious. When was the last time you saw anyone doing that? You’ve heard the arguments about re-testing drivers. Since only about a half of one percent of drivers seem to know when and how to use their indicators when driving on to and leaving roundabouts that might be a good (if expensive) move. It gets worse … Over 50 rule hits white van yobs Why some drivers never lighten up But get this, The Highway Code, says front and rear fog lights must not be used unless visibility is seriously reduced - which generally means when you can’t see further than 100 metres (328 feet). And that’s the law. Here’s another reason why drivers use front fog lights indiscriminately. One of their headlights is out, or half out. Many drivers (especially in the wild north east?) run cars with defective lighting. Next time you see a motor with faulty headlamps check out the offending vehicle in your rear view mirror. Pound to a penny one of their numberplate lights is also stuffed. Or both. Consider this. On average a vehicle is six months away from its next/last MOT. What are the chances of a headlamp bulb and a numberplate bulb both blowing in that short time? Not a lot. My guess is many of these psycho drivers have no MOT. And if you haven’t got one of those you can’t get a tax disc. Therefore, Mr Plod … stop tossers with their lights out and check their windscreens. No MOT (plus lighting issues) means insurance is invalid. Assuming there is any … Talking about lights, next time the fog closes in or rain screams down and you’re driving along peering through a wall of surface spray, check out the quality of rear lighting from cars and lorries. Modern motors are really quite bright from behind. Especially with rear fog lights on. But lorries are pathetically dim. Why so? The light clusters most lorries use look like they all come from the same Pound Shop. Isn’t it time some authorising body specified big brighter lights for big lorries? New tax motorists deserve … The fact is the “hole” that lets you drive on to your property will always be clear to allow access – whether you’re in or out, using your garage/parking area or not. So no other road user ever gets to use that bit of parking space. I reckon people should pay for that privilege. Yup! Another new tax for motorists … But, at last, a justified one. p.s. Have I got off road parking? Nope. But you already knew that!A little wine and a moan’(with apologies to Lily Allen!)BY MEL LEWIS
Mad Mel, recent self portrait.
Browsing the wine shelves at the Co-op last night I overheard a couple of customers, husband and wife, or partners maybe, bemoaning, “I wish I knew what a good bottle of wine was …”. Well, dear reader, after 20 years as a Fleet Street journalist and with a liver fit for a formaldehyde bath in a laboratory jar, I do. And being the kind of helpful guy I am I shuffled closer to share that wisdom. “Ignore screw-top bottles,” I told them. “Go for a single grape variety … insist on a printed vintage – a date on the label – don’t buy French or Italian (they’ve shafted the Brits for years); prefer, instead, South African, Australian, Californian, Chilean at a pinch …” I held back from delivering the punchy Jeremy Clarkson dictum on buying worthwhile wine – more of which, later. No screw tops? Why ever not? Think of the convenience. No corkscrew to search for. No cork to manhandle out of the bottle. Besides, they (who they? The manufacturers?) say the contents keep better under a screw cap. The hell with that. What matters much more is how good the contents are in the first place! I’d long had the impression that whenever I’d bought wine in a screw top bottle it was somehow second rate, sour, not fit for purpose – i.e. drinking. Or maybe fit only for some other purpose. A mate of mine – a biker mate (they don’t get closer than that) and an environmental health officer to boot – had told me that some wine, namely the kind of sweet German wine that finds its way into bottles beginning with an “L” or is reserved for nuns – is used in Deutschland in winter to defrost the roads … But the ‘screw’ issue had been the subject of a more recent debate and expert assessment. A leaflet through my door had offered a FREE wine-tasting session. Do ducks like water? I’d been on a wine-tasting training course years back. We learnt how to swirl the wine in our mouths, drawing in loads of air, practically gargling the stuff to get the full beauty of the elixir. But this was different. A crate of wine brought to my home. The wine expert and I sat and sampled wine in little plastic throwaway thimbles. I voiced my screw-top anxieties. “Ah!” said the expert from afar. “Screw tops are always third pressings.” Third pressings? Sure. Like olive oil. The “virgin” stuff is a bit better than plain old olive oil, but only “extra virgin” is (or should be) first pressing. In other words, screw top wine is thin dregs, like a mobile phone conversation with Jack Straw when what you really wanted was an audience with Tony Blair. The advice I gave my stressed colleague Co-op customers about single varietal wine was easier to digest. “Sauvignon blanc is good” I told them – “if you like really dry.” But avoid some mixed-up concoction of, say, ‘Semillon Chardonnay Polonium 210’. It might be a cheap and convenient sheep dip brew from the vineyard’s point of view, but think of the aftertaste, the handkerchiefs, the hospital bills. And then there was the Clarkson effect. I’d told my roving wine guru, when I signed up to his visit, that my wine-buying price range stopped at a fiver. Sadly, everything he offered in those plastic thimbles came from bottles priced at £9 a throw so “shumfing wong wiv de reshearch, old shun”. Jeremy Clarkson has a simple rule: “I never buy wine for less than £10 a bottle,” he told Sunday Times readers recently. Quite. And I never own cars costing more than £3,000. |
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