When the Music's Over

After 45 years, it looks increasingly like the second-best jazz venue in London - one of the main reasons for me living where I do - will be closed.

Yes, it's true, The Bull's Head in Barnes has been served with a Noise Abatement Notice by Richmond Council. If it does not install suitable soundproofing by February 15th, this fantastic venue will be ordered to cease with putting on a live jazz show every evening.

Why?

I'll tell you why. Because someone has complained about the noise. 45 years of no-one complaining at all, a perfect example of entertainment and residential sectors working together in harmony. Then this cretinous individual decides to kick up a fuss, and all of a sudden, the future of live music in Barnes is threatened.

To be fair, it's not entirely the dense homeowner's fault. Richmond Council, that useless shower of bastards, elected to reclassify the area immediately surrounding The Bull's Head from a "light industrial" area to a "residential area". Consequently this allowed some compulsively-masturbating property developer to decide to build very hi-tech flats in the impossibly small amount of space between The Bull's Head and the nearest house.

These flats are absolute eyesores. They are totally out-of-place with the rest of the surroundings, and all of them have exhibitionist-style plate glass front walls overlooking the river. As a result, if you're slobbing in your dressing gown watching TV on your gigantic 28inch Sony screen, it means the plebs below can look up and marvel at the fact that you can afford such a comfortable flat with such a plush interior.

Alternatively, it means passers-by wander past and shout "Fucking Show-Off Wankers! NO-ONE CARES!!!!" at them. Because, yes, these are "executive apartments" - for which read "hopelessly small bedsits which cost ridiculously large sums of money so they're only affordable by accountants and compulsively-masturbating property developers".

To be fair, the majority of these exhibitionist "executives" haven't complained. No, the complaint is down to one person, S.F., who has bemoaned the fact that she can’t get to sleep because of the noise.

Now, apparently Ms F is pregnant. I pity for the child, because the mother is obviously an insane, and most importantly, deeply STUPID, individual. You would think that, if you're going to buy a house or a flat, you would research the area you're going to move into.

Clearly not Ms F however. She probably went "Ah, Barnes, sounds nice dunnit?" and splashed out ridiculous amounts of cash to buy the first flat she heard of there. Because if the stupid bint HAD done a bit of research she would have realised that "Oh yes, the flat I want to buy is situated next to a pub, therefore there may be some late night noise." Perhaps if she'd opened her tiny closed mind, she would have also realised that the pub was not any old pub, but one of the best and most popular jazz venues in the country. And it wouldn't have been too hard to go there and gauge the noise, given that they have a concert every night. And she would have realised that perhaps the noise would go on...ooo...maybe until pub closing time?

But no, because she couldn't be bothered getting off her lazy arse to actually find any of this out, she moved in and decided to complain, thus ensuring that many hundreds of peoples' entertainment and happiness would be compromised. What a truly selfish and inconsiderate muppet.

I'm giving the daft bint quite a lot of abuse, but really, it's the Council's fault. That bunch of in-bred, self-flagellating, upper class MORONS decided that cash was more important than common sense and flogged the land to developers in the first place.

There's a special place in Hell for greedy people like Richmond Council. It's in a room with Ms F and that fucking wanker from South West Trains yesterday, being tortured for all eternity with dentists' drills, broken glass, TCP and Celine Dion.

Burn in Hades you bastards. I'll be standing there laughing in your crying faces.

Phew, that feels better...

After having vented about that complete waste of space I encountered yesterday, I feel somewhat better.

This has been helped quite massively by the fact that, when checking who has been referred to my site, I see that MSN referred to here from a search for "19 year old lads in the nude".

That's hilarious - do you think it came from one of the orchestra posts? I'm highly amused by this.

Volcano U-B

Yesterday was like starting the day finding out you've won first prize in a beauty contest (collect £10) followed by being dowsed, head to toe, in raw liquid effluent. Totally unconnected events, but one totally ruins the memory of the other.

To summarise - good, followed by unmitigated shit.

It was all going so well too...I'd had a nice long Christmas lunch with some friends, a bit (well, a lot) of mulled wine and a relaxing stroll.

Then all hell broke loose.

Firstly, the server at one of our off-site locations finally died after running agonisingly slow for several weeks. We tried repairing it, but to no avail, and all the time aware that the clock is ticking and people are noticing their network is down. After spending the best part of an hour cramped in a very small computer room with our heads inside a large box filled with electricity, myself and the head of IT decided to replace it with the backup server at our original location.

The taxi we telephoned to assist us with doing this didn't turn up until half an hour after it said it would. It then disobeyed our instructions to park outside and parked several streets away, refusing to come nearer.

Once we replaced this, I received a long awaited update of some software we've developed. It was two days later than I expected and requiring a turn-around by the end of the week, so I wasn't too happy when I discovered it didn't work.

However, all these could be treated as water under the bridge if it weren't for what I encountered with South West Trains.

I had to get an extension to my Oyster card into Zone 4, so I went to the ticket office, and arranged this. I was told it was £1.20 and, beign very low on cash at the moment, I had to hand it over in bits and pieces: one £1 coin, one 5p coin, 5 2p coins and 5 1p coins. I divided it up into piles so he could check easily, and apologised for not having any rounder figures.

SWT Employee: I don't have to accept this you know.

I smiled and shrugged in a resigned way.

SWT Employee: Don't laugh. I don't have to accept this.

U-B: Well, I'm sorry, I don't have any other money.

SWT Employee: I could give this to the next person - how do you think you'd like it if that was you?

U-B: (Tad flabbergasted)...errr...I'm sorry...

WHAT A RAGING FUCKING COCKMASTER!!!! I'd like to hold his head out over the train tracks at a non-stopping station and watch as his stupid fat fucking face gets purée-d all over the front of one of SWT's nice new trains.

Furthermore I can't believe I apologised so often to this steaming lump of horse shite masquerading as a man. What I should have done is say "I'm sorry, since when did 2 and 1p coins cease to be legal tender?".

Actually no. What I should have done is smash the glass separating me and the useless fuckwit. Then I'd should have reached across, grabbed him by his shirt and repeatedly smashed his smug fat grimace into the broken bits of glass at the bottom. Then I would have ripped off the top of his head and SHAT ON HIS BRAIN!!!!

You give a mindless fucking moron like that total twat a little bit of power and he goes wild with it. I hope he dies under the wheel of one of his trains with several people looking on and laughing.

A Brief History of Chaulk: Part I

No, that's not a spelling mistake. You say it as it's written, with an "OW" sound in the middle. It's how Rich Anderson used to say it.

Chaulk was the first band I was in at University. It was one of the best bands I've ever played in. It was the hardest band I've ever played in. It's the closest I've ever come to being signed on a record contract. And it was, by turns, fantastic and upsetting.

It started within a few weeks of me joining University. For the first time I was having to make a fresh start with music. My hard-built reputation in the North-West counted for nothing. My long standing band at home, Wug, was on hiatus until the holidays (and, as it turns out, almost permanently). And I was too old to be a member of County Youth Orchestra any more.

To my relief I managed to grab the Bass Trombone seat in the University Orchestra, something I'd been determined to do upon arrival. And the rest of the trombone section seemed refreshingly normal, after the madness of Youth Orchestra. In particular, Richard (AKA Dickie), the first trombonist, seemed like a decent kind of person. A music student, he was very serious and committed, and quite clearly immensely talented. He also had a demented and seriously wrong sense of humour, and was deeply strange anyway, which helped.

After our first rehearsal the conductor, Paulie Brown (a fellow trombonist who played in the Chamber Orchestra alongside Dickie and I when we were needed) invited everyone to the pub for beverages. Dickie and I dutifully went along, and over much drunken carnage, a friendship was born. Along with the friendship came an invitation to audition on bass guitar for his band. Next orchestra rehearsal, we fixed a date for an audition with the other significant band member Chris. Dickie gave me some pieces to prepare. I'd made quite a good impression because I could read music for bass anyway, but one of these pieces was quite possibly the hardest thing I'd ever come across (and I grew up playing jazz bass, which isn't exactly easy). Cue long, late-night practicing after pub visits and last minute essays...

The day of the audition arrived and I turned up at Chris' house. He seemed an amiable kind of bloke - very quietly spoken, and deeply sarcastic, which was a good point. Together with Dickie and Chris was Chris' friend Simon, who was the band's roadie and manager (you can tell this was a bit of a professional set-up now can't you?) - he was a large bear of a man, who, like Chris, was quietly spoken and quite serious, but also sarcastic. And both of them were tremendous beer monsters...but anyway, I played the pieces, which amused them no end, because they genuinely hadn't expected anyone they auditioned to actually be able to play the hard piece, yet I managed to get all the way through it. I then found out a little bit about the band itself...

Apparently, there was a bloke called Benedict who sang "with the voice of a (very masculine, he was keen to point out) angel", Chris on guitar, Dickie on piano and a guy called Rich on drums (who apparently was exceedingly nice). Dickie and Chris had formed the band when they'd been at school together in Nottingham, had recruited Ben and Rich in the first year of University, and had previously been playing with Stephen Poliakoff's nephew on bass. They'd decided he was a tad poo, and so recruited for a new bassist - hence, me.

So, consequently, I found myself a member of Chaulk - named as such because, Rich being a true London boy, pronounced "Chalk" in this way, and it stuck. Rich did turn out to be a ridiculously nice bloke - 6 foot odd of tall Londoner, crowned with a shock of bright ginger hair. Ben too did sing as well as they'd told me, though I didn't really speak to him so much at first. In the end, I ended up spending most of the spare time around rehearsals with Dickie and Rich.

The first few rehearsals were held in the Undercroft to the College of St Hild and St Bede. This is where the University Radio Station, Purple FM, broadcast from, but every few days, we took over the area. It was a fairly massive place, underneath the main hall of the college. The walls were covered in a mixture of band and gig posters, newspaper articles, and graffiti. There was a large entrance hall, where several tables and chairs were normally stacked, before you descended into the main hall section. In the far corner was an extremely grotty unisex toilet area, while along the side ran a raised stage. Bemusingly, in the middle of the main hall section, on the floor, a large, animated carrot had been painted. Finally, along either side of the room ran two large gutters. These were indicative of the Undercroft's dark secret...

We discovered the secret about the Undercroft, when, one rehearsal, we went in to discover that the walls and the floor (and particularly, the carrot) had been covered in clear plastic sheeting. A couple of people were still finishing off the sheeting, so naturally, we asked "why?"

"It's for the Chundering Carrot Club."

Next we asked the question we really shouldn't have done - "what's that?"

"Basically every year, the Chundering Carrot Club come downstairs and lock themselves in here for twenty-four hours, with an unlimited supply of alcohol." One of them pointed to the beer barrels stacked up in the entrance hall. "It's a case of last man or woman standing. The only rule is, if you're going to be sick, you have to be sick on the carrot..."

I Hate This Place 5

Two things happened to me on the way to work today.

Both of them add weight to the belief I have that London turns people into automatons, zombies trapped inside their own hermetically sealed bubbles.

The first was that, while sat on the train, someone was using my head to rest their newspaper on while they read. Not in an accidental way, they just propped it there.

The second was that as I emerged from Charing Cross tube I was borne down upon by a flood of people who jostled me, knocked me out of their path, and swept by as if I wasn’t there.

The thing is, I have no doubt that any of these people did these things on purpose. I firmly believe that the person on the train didn’t realise the thing he was leaning his paper on was a person’s head (or at least he didn’t until I moved). While the tide of people who mowed me down I firmly believe didn’t register I was there. They were treading their normal path to work, the same as they do every day. They do this on autopilot, not taking anything in around them, not realising there may be obstacles.

I know this because I do it myself. First thing in the morning, I just walk the usual way, and don’t look around at things. I barely register that anything is different or in the way. This occurred to me during my journey this morning, when I found myself on the Tube, having previously got off the train. I had no recollection whatsoever of the journey from the train to the Bakerloo Line.

Partly this is the effect of mornings. Very few people are at their best first thing in the morning, and especially not when they’ve been commuting.

But it’s also London. When people say that people are more unfriendly in London than in other cities, it’s true. It’s not a myth. It’s not us outsiders bemoaning where we grew up. As mentioned previously, I grew up in Blackpool, a place I loathe with a passion you can only dream of, but you will always find people friendly and willing to share a few words, whether it be on the bus or on the train, or just in a shop. And Hell, even the people when I lived in Nice were chatty and friendly, thus blowing the myth of the French being aloof and supercilious out of the water.

Here, when I’m my usual self and just try to exchange a few words with, for example, shopkeepers, they look at me like I’m strange, or treat me brusquely in order to move me on.

This is a gross generalisation, I realise. Sandro at our work café is always ready to chat, and I happily while away a few minutes in his company. I had a good chat with the people in our local chippy last night. But the majority of people I encounter are completely sealed off from the outside world.

It links in to the last “I Hate This Place”. London has more eccentric and disturbed people than anywhere else I’ve encountered. Therefore, keeping yourself to yourself is probably advisable. People probably think I’m crazy chatting to them randomly (I probably am). But then, as I said, a lot of the eccentric people are probably lonely BECAUSE no-one speaks to them, so they speak to themselves. It’s a vicious circle.

But there’s a difference between keeping yourself to yourself, and being rude. And unfortunately the isolationist tendencies encouraged through living in London exacerbate this. People lock themselves away into their own worlds, almost like they’re surrounded by an invisible barrier to prevent people getting in. And they rarely see outside this barrier. Everyone’s in such a rush to get everywhere, you don’t have TIME to look outside that wall. You don’t realise you may have knocked someone over, you don’t realise that you’ve been using someone’s head as a newspaper stand.

Most depressing of all though, is that I can’t think of a solution to this, without necessitating a total culture change. And that’s quite tragic.

Night of the Mulberry Wine

Orchestra tours were always an excuse to see many of Europe’s most interesting towns and cities, and locate the English-speaking bars in these places. Obviously we went on tour to play music, but this was a very distant priority compared to Getting Pissed and Getting Acquainted With Ladies.

On tour in Italy, the trombone and tuba sections were foolishly allocated a four-bed room together. Given that, by this time, Man Mountain Paul was one of the only people in the orchestra who had achieved the Holy Grail of legal drinking status, sharing a room with him was perhaps not the most carefully-thought-out of moves.

The strange Italian Youth Hostel we were in was strictly segregated. One floor held the boys, the other held the girls. In between, there were some large, annoyingly cool Italian watchmen. In the boys section, our room was designated the Alcohol Storage Depot for all the people there. Given the legal status of Paul, he was willing to store and take the blame for all the alcohol and empties, in exchange for a tariff – 25% of all alcohol stores.

Unfortunately, one night, we had a party, and Paul got rather carried away, demolishing the vast majority of the alcohol store which we hadn’t so far managed to put away, while we looked on in awe. The carnage that ensued is quite memorable. After a biscuit fight, using the home-baked cookies that Big Ian’s mum had given him to bring with him (most of which ended up out of the window), Paul finished off the remainder of his Home-Brewed Mulberry Wine, belched and toppled over.

A comatose Paul was an opportunity too good to miss. While he was passed out, we covered his head in toothpaste and shaving foam. We then put cigarettes in his ears and nose (not lit – Paul WAS gigantic after all – 6ft 6, and 25 stone). He didn’t wake up. Then we shaved his legs (alright, we were stupid, we know). He still didn’t wake up, even when Big Ian took a chunk out of his knee. Unfortunately, Big Ian’s brother Mark, the Percussionist, then decided to go a little too far. Taking the empty two-litre bottle of Mulberry Wine Paul had earlier finished off, he proceeded to insert it, narrow end first and with some force, into Paul’s arse. An enormous cry went out. Then, miraculously he passed out again.

Photos were taken. Again, a bad idea.

With Paul unconscious, and the booze gone, we then had to decide what to do next. The night was, after all, young. So we decided to make a break for the Girl’s quarters. At the time, I was going out with a rather lovely violinist, who had expressed a desire earlier, to cross the line into our quarters. So an exchange was agreed. I would create a diversion on the boys’ side, and while the watchmen were distracted, the boys and the girl would swap sides.

The diversion was quite easy to create really. I simply claimed someone was locked out of one of our rooms, and we needed a key to get back in. So, while the guard was otherwise distracted, the majority of the boys’ section emptied into the girls arena, while the lovely Davina escaped into our section, and hid in one of the rooms while the Security Guard attempted to let me back into my room.

Once this amazing feat had been completed, and we had received the OK from the floor above (From the window above, Mark throwing some alcohol from the girls’ side down to me on the balcony below), Davina and I got on with the important business of finding a suitable location to “entertain” ourselves in. Our room was out, due to the large comatose Man Mountain in there. Most of the other rooms were locked, apart from those with a few “sensible” people in who hadn’t made the mad break for freedom. Consequently, the only remaining place was the shower block.

Bad mistake.

No sooner had we ventured in there and begun feverishly trying to discover how many layers each other was wearing, one of the “sensible” boys decided to take a late-night shower. On entering the block he was surprised and announce, in a loud voice “Davina! What are you doing here?”

The noise alerted the guards. Resisting the desire to beat said boy to death with whatever blunt instrument I could find, we frantically tried to find a place for Davina to hide. She ended up going for a changing cubicle.

The guards entered, and demanded to know, in best pidgin English, why we had chosen to shower at such a stupid time. God knows why it annoyed them so much – they probably thought myself and the Muppet Child were having some man love out of ours. Or they did think that, until they ordered us back to our room, and then proceeded to knock on the changing room where Davina was hidden, demanding that the occupant leave the shower so they can lock it.

So there was no choice. Davina sheepishly came out, at which all Hell broke loose. She was marched to the other side, and in the progress of this, the Guards bumped into the boys hastily exiting the girls’ section. Having heard raised voices, they’d decided to beat a hasty retreat. In the chaos that ensued, Davina broke loose and escaped into the girls’ section. There was no such luck for Mark, Big Ian and myself though. The Guards proceeded to give us quite a thorough kicking. The bastards knew they could get away with this, because if we were to complain, it would automatically imply that we’d been up to something which was Against The Rules.

So battered and bruised and frustrated, we retreated to our rooms. Entering the carnage that was our room, we stepped over the comatose Man Mountain, and started tidying. Empties were stashed into two rucksacks (including the bottle, which was dislodged from Paul’s colon). Ash trays and remaining biscuits were emptied out of the windows. We slept…

…until we were ordered out of our room at 7am for a meeting with the Conductor. Turns out that, immediately below our window, our Tour coach was parked. A coach which was now coated in dregs of beer, cigarette ash and cookies. This, coupled with Paul (who was still covered in shaving foam and toothpaste, barely coherent and complaining about his arse hurting), and the discovery of the rucksacks of empties (roughly 80 or so – we’d foolishly stored all the empties for all the rooms since we’d arrived) meant that the next few concerts on tour were done without a Lower Brass Section.

Paul’s revenge is another story.

I Hate This Place 4

"The Lunatics Have Taken Over The Asylum"

For so long, I thought of this as a cliché-d, hackneyed phrase, yet, having managed to escape from the Beast that is London for a few days, it has simply confirmed that this phrase was in fact coined about London.

There are more mad people per square kilometre in London than in anywhere I have ever been before (and I grew up in Blackpool, so that's saying something).

Now I have nothing against mad people. They've presumably suffered some hideous mental trauma which has succeeded in detaching them from the rest of the world. I can't comprehend that fully, and am certainly not going to criticise the majority of these unfortunate people. It's fascinating, however, to observe the various divisions of madness around this city:

Type 1: Mutterers

These are the people who you can walk past and become aware that they are carrying out an constant monologue. We all do this - you try and think of an instance when you haven't been walking along and thinking to yourself at the same time. Mutterers are just vocalising these inner thoughts, and are mostly harmless. However, as we all know, there's a reason why we don't tend to vocalise our own internal monologues - we often can think fairly bad things about people around us. When that rude person barges us out of the way to get on the tube, you think "Tosser". The Mutterer, on the other hand, will say "Tosser" in an undertone, and as you can quite imagine, this can lead to social problems.

Type 2: Shouters

Shouters are normally one stage removed from Mutterers. They often have the whole external monologue thing going on, but this will occasionally be interrupted by loud outbursts. Normally these seem bizarre, but are rarely aggressive or offensive. A case in point is the chap I talked about on "Commuter Boy" a while ago, who suddenly erupted with "SADDAM HUSSEIN SAVE US! THE GERMANS ARE ALL DEAD..." Random and very strange, but pitiable more than offensive.

Type 3: Ravers

Now Ravers are the aggressive Shouters. Again, they seem to be descended from Mutterers, but this time, they actually focus on swearing and aggressive behaviour focussed at a particular individual. This can be extremely awkward, and although rarely physically violent, the Raver can be perceived as so simply through the aggression of their outbursts. The only solution in this case is to walk away. On the Tube there was an unpleasant incident where an elderly man seemed to focus his wrath on a slightly rotund man who got on the Tube after him. This old man was screaming in the face of this larger man, and the latter seemed completely at a loss as to what he had done, and what he could do to help this man calm down. Other people interceded but nothing seemed do-able. That was very sad indeed.

Type 4: The Lost

The Lost are most upsetting. They are people who clearly have lost most of their faculties and often just sit staring vacantly before shuffling away. They do not speak, and look totally vague. They often smell as if they have lost the ability to look after themselves, which they in all probability have done. These are the people you have to help, even if it’s just guiding along or smiling. It’s heart-breaking to see people like this, and I just hope that even a little kindness can help lighten their lives a little bit.

Type 5: The Sinister

The Sinister are truly terrifying, because there is a feeling that they would, and will do anything. A case in point was at Richmond station two nights ago. A group of three men staggered out of the toilets. They all appeared to be vagrants, in ragged clothes, and with the unfortunate odour. The first was a Raver, swearing repeatedly at two business men as they walked down the stairs. The second was simply legless, barely even able to negotiate the stairs. The third however, was sinister. He was balding on top, but his hair was long at the back, and clawed back in greasy lumps. He carried a guitar, and emblazoned across the back of his jacket was a large Swastika.
There were two girls walking down the stairs in the opposite direction. Both were about 20 and both were wearing smart skirts which came halfway down their thighs. This man stared at their legs as they walked down the stairs, then turned and kept his eyes fixed on them as they walked through the barrier and towards the platform. The look on his face was…I want to say a leer, but that implies smiling. It had all the attributes of a leer, but mingled with anger. He walked down the stairs a few times, before his drunken companion called at him to help him.

Having seen this, I am not ashamed to say that that man, to me, seemed like a potential rapist. I really don’t think anyone like that should be allowed unsupervised in the community. But you can’t stop him, because he hasn’t done anything. But his face is etched in my mind, and I swear it’s only a matter of time before he DOES do something. And that, quite frankly is terrifying.

London is disproportionately full of all these types of people. I would be willing to say that at least one in twenty people I see during my day is a “Mutterer”. And I see at least one of the more severe cases during the average day.

Why is this so? It could be because of Care in the Community not working correctly. But I think it’s London that’s to blame. I believe a lot of these people clearly need some attention or care. They need to feel like they’re not alone. And London is the worst place in the world in which to feel alone. I feel that, if I didn’t have my friends around me in London, I would have deteriorated. It’s a lonely place, where people can only afford to care about themselves and their little unit. No other city I have ever lived in has made me feel as isolated as London does. And in a city of this size, that’s a bad thing.

Here endeth the lesson.

Arse

For some godforsaken reason I ended up watching a bit of football on the telly while I was cooking the other night. It was Arsenal versus Rosenberg, and Terry Venables was among the people commentating. They had a quick "Coach's View" section, which was ironic given that Venebales isn't a coach at the moment and had never coached either of the teams playing. In the middle of this section, he let rip with the following fascinating insight:

"The Rosenberg defence...they're having a holocaust..."

What a twat.

I hate that word, but he is. He's a total and utter twat. I want to slice off the top of his head and shit on his brain. I want to slowly peel strips of his skin off and make him eat them, and then, when he's only got tender red new skin left, dunk him up to his neck in TCP. The man is a perma-tanned, talentless, cheating, shitty, heartless, incestuous fuckwit and I hope he dies lonely and alone.

You NEVER misappropriate that word. Especially not in the context of fucking football.

Rant of the Week: Buildings

Enter U-B, stage right, with a flourish of the coat

Greetings my fellow citizens.

I thought, on my return, that I would re-introduce ROTW. And what better subject to do this on than Buildings.

I have just got back from one of the greatest areas of the planet - the North East. We were on a grand tour of York, Durham, and Newcastle, revisiting old haunts and friends who never made the foolish decision to move away.

While in Durham, I did something I never did in all the four years I spent as a student there. I went to Evensong in the Cathedral. Don't get me wrong, I went in the Cathedral a lot - at least 60 - 70 % of our concerts took place in there, so I knew the environs like the back of my hand. But this was the first time I had been to a Church Service there, and it was wonderful. The Cathedral Choir sang beautifully and I don't think can sufficiently describe the atmosphere I had form attending a service in this monolithic building, which, for centuries, has seen worshippers come and go. Furthermore, it also made me realise another of the reasons WHY, many hundreds of years ago, people slaved for an impossibly long time to erect this building in honour of a spiritual concept.

I could rhapsodise for pages on Durham Cathedral, but I will spare you that, especially as most of you know it well. However, late in the evening, we had a discussion with our very religious friend D-B about, amongst other things, the state of religion and especially, the state of the Anglican church. It is fair to say that it is in dire straits, and a great schism is fast approaching. And it saddened me to think that, having survived assaults, wars, and air strikes, Durham Cathedral may be rendered fairly ineffective as a place of worship by the very people who worship there.

(I shall pick up on this topic in a later post).

So I got thinking, what are our grand building projects in the current era? What do we construct to worship in?

A stroll along the Gateshead bank of the Tyne highlighted the best bits of Modern design, with the massive regeneration project taking place. The Millenium Bridge and the Baltic are exceptional examples of design old and new, with the Baltic in particular, being an entirely galvanised space inside a shell constructed in the 19th Century.

The there is The Sage, a masterpiece of modern design and, for me (being a Music Geek) one of the most important new spaces for music created in the past ten years.

For many people, these buildings are the modern equivalent of the Cathedrals, where we worship the Gods of Art and Music. However, it doesn't hold the same sway over the population as the old Cathedrals used to do. There is no sense of ritual with these buildings.

Then, on the train home, it struck me.

Our modern Cathedrals are Sports Grounds, and in particular, Football Grounds.

Yesterday, the train sidled into Kings Cross, passing on its way the new, rapidly-developing shape of the Emirates Stadium at Ashburton grove, the proposed new home of Arsenal FC. When completed, it will take up a similar ground space to a major Cathedral and seat 70000 people. The people who attend will worship their team, their people, and in the same way as a congregation at a religious ceremony raise their voices and sing forth, so too will the 70000 people here.

But the fact is, it's vile. It's concrete functionality at best. It will take three years to build, as opposed to the 150 it took people to complete Durham Cathedral. Sure, they'll gloss over the giant concrete frame with images and plastics and metals, but it'll still be a big concrete bowl. And I'm fairly certain I prefer "Thanks be to God" as a form of worship to "Who's the Bastard in the Black?"

I wonder if, in 500 years' time, people will traipse round the Emirates Stadium and marvel at the ceremonies that took place there? I doubt it very much, as by then it will no doubt have collapsed and been redeveloped. But I would be willing to bet that, even if unused, Durham Cathedral will still be standing.

This isn't really a rant, per se, just a set of observations about our time. I thought I'd share them with you.

Exit stage left, pursued by a bear.

Quotes of the Month Archive: November 2004

• 'Oh God.' (The Guardian)

• 'A piece of cheese on toast purportedly showing the Virgin Mary' (BBC News picture caption of an item recently sold on E-bay)

• 'Fox-hunting? Cor blimey! What are we getting worried about fox-hunting for? Iraq's a very serious question, fox-hunting isn't.' (J. Prescott, Deputy PM)

And a little note...

I shall be off to "for'n" parts for the next few days (well, back to the North East til Wednesday). So I shall probably be quite quiet until then. Hope you all miss me.

If you liked the last post, there're plenty more where that came from.

If you didn't, what a shame.

"This one time, at band camp..."

Now, I’m only bringing this up because I’ve been reminded recently of much of the bad behaviour we got up to when we were younger. And after a particularly embarrassing experience at my first ever work do last night (a charity quiz won by the people playing on behalf of the Cornwall Monkey Sanctuary, where the entire room ended up laughing at me when I proved to be the only person other than the quiz master to know the name of the sixth book in the Harry Potter series, which hasn’t even been WRITTEN yet), I was reminded of various other embarrassing experiences in my life.

When I was at school it was assumed that the kids playing sport were the cool ones, who messed around and generally got up to the worst behaviour. People who were in band and orchestras however, were seen as freaks, straight-laced, and dull.

Not so.

I remember discussing the various goings on at a band concert with one of the sport team once and leaving him flabbergasted that, contrary to what he thought, band tours and rehearsals weren’t serene paradises of good behaviour. I consumed mammoth amounts alcohol and drugs during my time in the County Youth Orchestra, and indeed, I hold it entirely responsible for creating this well-balanced, pleasant, smiling individual you see before you today.

So anyway, this one time, at orchestra…

We were playing a concert in lovely Lytham St Annes (scene of the hideous “Vom River” incident). Now being a trombonist generally means you’re a bit of a slacker. As a comparison, we played Brahm’s fourth symphony once. The string part consisted of around 120 pages of music, double sided. The trombone part consisted of a single double-sided page (this was actually a bit of a downer when you were going out with one of the violinists, meaning every spare moment together was spent frantically trying to find quiet corners that you could disappear into to do stuff to each other).

Generally however, ladies aside, this meant we had a lot of spare time, which was normally spent at the nearest pub to the venue. In this particular case, we played in the first item in the concert, and then weren’t due to play until right at the end. We estimated the gap would be about an hour, including interval. So, the trombones, the percussionist and the tuba player buggered off for a quick bit of liquid refreshment.

Given the paucity of public houses in Lytham, we improvised as best we could. Cans of McEwen’s export quaffed at great speed in the small cloakroom where the instrument cases were. After about 20 minutes, there was a frantic hammering on the door to the room. Panicking, (given that we were all ostensibly well-behaved, god-fearing children, and our conductor made George W Bush look a picture of tolerance), we hid our beer in the only available place (Big Ian’s tuba case) and opened the door, waiting for the inevitable bollocking.

Instead we were confronted with a red-faced timpanist.

“There’s no fucking interval you daft fuckers!”

Cue mad scrambling over one another to make ourselves presentable and to not be the last person on stage. Happily, after kicking the first trombonist in the hamstrings, I wasn’t the last one back on stage. Scrambling back in under the watchful and glowering eyes of the conductor, we were relieved to find that the harpist was still negotiating into position, so we had a little time to warm up.

We all reached for our trombones, which we always left on our marvellous trombone stands.

Always, except this once.

Queue me looking confused, seeing the others warming up, and uttering…

“I’ve lost me trombone.”

I legged it back off stage to discover that it was neatly packed away in my case, where I’d put it so I could do a little warm up before playing again (yeah, right). Running back on with my trombone in various pieces, and being tripped up mercilessly by Big Ian, who was literally crying with laughter, I settled myself back into place and started rebuilding my trombone. While the conductor continued to stare at me. Like he was carefully weighing up exactly how many bones he could get away with breaking without preventing me from carrying on playing.

Still I had my revenge on Big Ian for laughing. You remember that beer we hid in his Tuba Case? He didn’t…