Past Drinks of the Week

LOWER LIFE 8
It’s been a troubling week, mainly caused by the football. Sadly, I don’t share the common belief that the England performance in the World Cup has been bright, positive and a good thing that has united a divided nation. I think it’s been rotten all round with only one redeeming feature which I’ll come on to later.

The context for my utter misery was set in 1990. I was 20 then and as a football fan I seen as a very different creature. In those days Britain was OK with fans being killed in stadiums and stood passively by as the media lied about the causes, the government, police and courts happily colluded to put the blame firmly on the fans and to completely exonerate the authorities responsible. It was all fine. Football fans were hooligans no better than animals and if they chose to go to matches they were frankly asking for it.
In 1990, it was Gazza’s tears and all that. This was a time before Nick Hornby, before Baddiel and Skinner and when I was at university, not only was I a rarity as I was educated in a comprehensive school, I was a social leper as I was a football fan. There were always plastic fans, plenty of Man United and Liverpool fans knocking around who had never been to a match, let alone see their own team. But a Luton Fan knocking about in West Yorkshire was a real outlier.

Gazza’s tears sort of seemed to be the beginning. A loutish Geordie with an aptitude for the beautiful game, he charmed us with his cheekiness and most of all his sublime skill. And then he got booked in the semi-final of the world cup that meant if we won and got to the final he would not be playing. The tears of an unreconstructed eighties man were very powerful. More powerful in fact was Gazza’s performance in extra time, knowing he’d not play in the final he was magnificent.

But we lost. And it was quite earth shattering. Watching it in the pub with my mates, we were stunned and drifted home alone but together on a tide of utter desolation. And that feeling has been with me ever since. So in the run up to last Wednesday evening I was aching. Nerves and dread, the exhaustion of twenty-eight years of unprocessed grief. I just didn’t know where to put myself.
Let’s add to this, and forgive me if you’re not a football fan, I didn’t think that England had played at all well in the road to this semi-final. Professional is about the most glowing adjective I can come up with. We did a job over some quite mediocre opposition, conveniently losing to Belgium in the last group match so creating a much easier path through to the final and on top of this some of the more fearsome sides, Brazil, Germany, Argentina, France went home early.

Facing Croatia, to people who know little of football, seemed a bit of a walk in the park. But if you look at their team they all play for the better European clubs, Real Madrid, Juventus, Barcelona, Inter, these are not merely amateurs having a go. And then we come to the way we approached the game. I noticed in the Quarter against Sweden (whose players come from clubs like Krasnodar, Crotone and Leeds United) that we started off very slowly, there was no tempo to our play, we were leaden footed around the park, we were playing like we had the handbrake on. The Croatia game was pretty much in the same vain. Passing was sluggish and inaccurate, we failed to take chances in the first half and in the second a good number of our players just went missing. Where was skipper Harry Kane? Harry Maguire was poor as was Kyle Walker, I couldn’t see Dele Alli, Sterling and Lingard were absent too. We ended up the same old England, lacking imagination and lumping the ball up the park to the opposition time after time. It’s pass AND move fellas, pass AND move!

In short it was a very poor performance. It’s easy for us to take the media line that it was great simply on the grounds that our expectations were so very low. But that’s the psychology of feeling great because you were expecting a kick in the knackers and only got a slap in the face. Poor and not at all inspirational for tournaments to come. We played some very average teams and did ok, when we faced a team with a little quality we were found wanting. So, losing for me was not nearly as bad as Italia 90 as I thought we were lucky to get where we got.

But on the plus side, well we were charmed by them, weren’t we? Southgate is clearly a decent man and some of that decency has rubbed off on the team. The personnel had changed too so whereas in the past we’d had Rooney, who liked to shag old prostitutes, Ashley Cole who literally shot a person in his workplace and proven racist John Terry, this time we got players who had worked hard at being professional sportsmen.
Charm goes a long way.

LOWER LIFE 7
So we get these hot spells. We come out in shorts and smiles and sweat. In the words of Kenneth Williams “The boiling sun is relentless: the sort of weather one loves on a holiday & loathes in London.” Frankly we’re never happy, but never happier, it gives us something to talk about in the office and as Wilde says, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative”.

Right now, I’m sitting outside a pub in Guildford, yes, I know, Guildford. Nice pub mind and where I’m sat is sort of the back of the pub, although it appears this place doesn’t know where the front is and where the back is. My bit is in the shade, and it’s hot. But as the sun goes down through the oak tree I’m looking at and the blackbird sings its going to bed song, I can look across to a graveyard. It’s just me, my pint, the bird and the dead. The breeze gently dances through the branches and I have the place to myself. It’s about half past six and not far away on the roads and rails, cars and commuters are shoving their sweaty way home.
I’ve done my commute. It was terrible on the 7.14 this morning from Milton Keynes to Euston, bastard commuters, rude and professionally passive aggressive but I got a seat and then the train was delayed. I’d left myself plenty of time to get across to Waterloo and my train to Guildford but not at the pace my Virgin was moving. ‘Expected to arrive at 8.10’. my heart sank, and my anxiety rose to replace it. That would give me 20 minutes to get on the Northern Line to get to Waterloo and find and get on my train.

Did I say I’ve been going to the gym? Since last November three, sometimes four times a week. Have I lost a single pound? No. Am I any fitter No. And this I found out on my brisk jog from train to tube and tube up escalators to train. I say jog, I was much more like Usain Bolt than you could imagine - albeit puffing and blowing like a good ‘un.

So, my tip is don’t bother going to the gym for your physical health, it’s useless, you’ll burn bugger all calories and it’s a right old pain. Go to the gym for your mental health. It really does give me something to rail against and a s a sufferer of poor mental health over the years it really helps, it REALLLY helps get your head in order. I think it’s your body telling your head that you’re talking control, which is really your head telling your body that your taking control.

Talking of taking control, last Friday I was lucky enough to be in St John, the most perfect restaurant run by Fergus Henderson, and there he was having his Friday lunch of black pudding and fried eggs with some chums, taking control. Believe me I could see the kitchen from my seat and boy did they take are over those fried eggs. I had pigs’ tails, freshly harvested from 1950’s schoolgirls. You don’t see pigs’ tails on menus so that’s why I ordered them, my mum had lambs’ hearts and the paramour rabbit. My, that’s a good selection from a very good restaurant.

I’ve not had the chance to sample the finest dining that Guildford offers, I had a burger in Wetherspoons, does that count? Guildford’s ‘Spoons seemed a very civilised place and believe me I look for the roughhouses. A bloke even spoke to me about England’s chances in the World Cup in very friendly and well-defined tones.

Well let’s not hold our hope out for the Three Lions. They will only be dashed cruelly by England as they did to me in 1990, and more harshly 1998. I’ll keep those tales for another day. For the time being I’ll sit here on this hot hot day by the graveyard in Guildford, listening to the wood pigeons and thinking about Richard McLintock, born 1821 died 1883, a much-loved son. Here’s to you Rich and on St. John, here's to it's most devoted advocate Anthony Bourdain. He wrote of Hendersons epic restaurant as "an eye opening, inspiring, thoroughly pleasurable yet stripped down adventure in dining, a nonsense-free exaltation of what's good..." Those words from the his introduction to Nose to Tail Eating (the St. John cookbook) could have been written about Bourdain himself. A great life, well lived and much missed.

LOWER LIFE 6
I’m one of the many writers that you never hear about. This is for a complex number of reasons, mainly I don’t get a lot published under my own name, sure, countless ghosted autobiographies of footballers, squash players, brick layers and politicians, but not a lot with me in the byline. (But do look out for my work in the Sunday Telegraph).

A reason I don’t get a lot of airtime is that I am not the son of a famous media personality, writer or celeb. If only my mum had been to Roedean and Cambridge and published numerous poems in the Oxford Review of Books. Or my dad, instead of spending his time behind bars (he was a publican) was a witty writer with a column in Punch. You don’t need my sour grapes to tell you that our writers and media luvvies come from a very small gene pool. Possibly more importantly the commissioners and editors share their metaphorical family tree.
So like many writers of my ilk I have a day job. By God it doesn’t half get in the way. Well, it gets in the way of my long formed dream of being a dilletante, spending afternoons in the pub tossing off these 800 words over a large VAT. I could do this sort of thing but modern offices frown on drunken staff. I can occasionally get away with a hangover, but it doesn’t make for a happy Pete.

I suppose I should look the positives and this dull old drudgery, the getting out of bed and into work for 8.30, the early nights, the stress, all this is good fodder for a writer. Well it would be if I could be arsed writing about it after having lived forty hours if it each week.
This week is in fact a bit of a week. It’s our big conference coming up so all hands to the pumps which is tiring but I work with some fabulous folk. Talented, energetic, funny, saucy and well, young. It’s been a real livener working with some youngsters unsullied with disappointment, torpor and decades of grey, nine to five futility. I’m working with people who have never seen a floppy disc let alone a cassette, so no matter how saucey they are I can never make them a mix-tape.

So that’s where I am, like most folk, if your mum works in an office you work in an office, if your dad edits the Sunday Times, you’ll inevitably work for the Sunday Times. As I said my dad was a publican but I learnt very early on that a life serving beer to thirsty punters would be the death of me. I simply don’t have the discipline to not drink in a pub.

Talking of pubs it was Beer Day Britain this week - it passed me by too. And dear old CAMRA has been going through the ringer, first with it’s Chief Exec calling time on his time there and then this week a whole hoo har about carbon dioxide. Apparently there’s a world shortage of CO2, this means there will be a risk to all the fizzy beer and cider sales. CAMRA, protecting real ale gave a ya boo sucks statement saying ‘we’re all right jack, none of our good beer uses CO2’. Ignoring that there might be untold damage to pubs through the shortage and if pubs close there will be no beer, real or otherwise. This was a rather ignorant and insensitive thing to do, appeasing the CAMRA old guard and insulting both pubs and brewers - most brewers maker all sorts of drinks and very rarely only real ale, so it’s a loser all round.

So it’s back to the pub for all of us. Writers and office workers, paupers and princes. The pub is the area of slick social mobility of equality and poetry and it’s oil is the booze. Let’s hope that the beer, of whatever persuasion, keeps flowing.
Bottoms up.

LOWER LIFE 5
I’m at the age now where I’m beginning to realise, through gritted teeth, that there are some arguments that I am simply never going to win. These arguments revolve mainly around three things, mobile phones, driving and language.

I’m sure, long ago, before mobile phones, about fifteen years ago, that people were equally annoying and selfish but it just showed up in different ways. But there is something ever so inward looking about the culture of mobile phone use. It makes the user, and by that I mean you, assume the world is centred on them. The easiest way to spot this is in the head down one mile an hour walk, the sudden stop and the pavement slalom. It’s as if we’re all just characters in the phone user's world and we’re the ones who have to change our behaviour because they’re reading Twitter on a busy street.

I’m sure it won’t be long until we have public information ads on the telly and on posters in the Tube. “If you need to use your mobile move to one side”. “Just because it’s a mobile - doesn’t mean you have to be moving to use it”. “Get out of the way you stupid bastard!”.

It’s evident that these people, and by that I mean you, are not that important that they require constant updates or need to be permanently on-line. I doubt they’re receiving messages that they need to be a the hospital to perform life saving hear surgery. I am confident that the vast majority of this use is social media and telling your mum you’ll be late home from work.

But of course the inward looking phone use is just the beginning. There’s the phone use which requires all of us to join in. I’m often on the train and have to listen to some idiot watching the football or re-runs of crappy sit-coms. The bizarre thing about this is that the main culprits here are grown adults, the sort of people who you’d have thought might have some consideration for their fellow travellers. And they get ever so uppity when you ask them to use headphones. Clearly they’re enjoying it so you should be too.
It was bad enough when it was simply headphones leaking out tinny drum-beats and heavy base with the person wearing them nodding up and down like a demented donkey, worse still jigging around like he's having a fit. Now we have to listen to every word of some TV programme that they’ve missed. I don’t like music or the telly when I’m at home so listening to yours on the train is totally unbearable.

But I might as well be howling at the moon, I have to accept I’m in the minority here and I have lost this argument. Much the same as the situation of middle lane motorway drivers and anyone who uses a roundabouts in Bletchley. You’d have thought that being so close to Milton Keynes, spiritual home of the roundabout, that they’d understand how to use them correctly, not so - idiots and arses every one. Indeed I see a lot of these drivers (and cyclists come to that) who are wearing headphones and again this shows they can’t be concentrating on what they’re doing or hear me sounding my horn angrily at them.

Another very good indicator of crap motorists is any driver wearing a hat. We all know that when you go indoors you take your hat off, it’s just what happens in polite society. I can see only two reasons you’d defy this social rule, the first being you’ve forgotten you’re wearing a hat the second that you’re wearing a hat for a reason, ie. for fashion’s sake. Neither is a valid excuse, you’re not with it or you’re too with it, either way you’re not in a fit state of mind to be driving.

And so to language. I’m a reasonable person, I’m not one of these grammar freaks who shouts “it’s ‘fewer’ not ‘less’” at the TV, I often bugger up my own grammar myself. Additionally I appreciate that language changes, it evolves so the rules are constantly shifting. But occasionally I think I must have missed a meeting. When did ASAP become a word? It was always an acronym and spelt out ion conversation. A.S.A.P. Now it’s a word apparently. When did it become OK to pronounce ‘th’ as ‘f’? I mean OK, in the pub and on the street but not on Radio Three for God’s sake. Sorry, Radio Free. The BBC used to be the bastion for this sort of stuff but now everything has to be gritty and urban. What a happened to shitty and urbane? “The FA Cup at free firty on da BBC”.

There you go big fella, breathe, you’ve got that off your chest now. I’ll never win these arguments, but it does help to talk.

LOWER LIFE 4
It’s been a wretched week for me. Always is around this time of year. I was in Beijing in 1989 and saw the Tiananmen Square student protests from their peaceful, hope-filled beginning in the middle of April to their woeful and bloody end on June 4th. It’s a rotten time all around. I was 19 at the time and immortal like all 19 year olds are. I’d got a job working in a hotel nightclub in my gap-year, a time that amazed me and shaped the person I’ve become.

The catalyst for the protests was the death in April of Hu Yaobang a former General Secretary of the Communist Party, still a member of the Politbureau at the time he died. Popular among the young as an advocate of economic liberalisation and transparency in government a protest saw 50,000 students march on Tiananmen Square to present a petition to the Premier Li Peng asking for a state funeral. This was the start of the demonstration, its focus was much more on freedom of expression, press censorship, government corruption and the general spirit of repression in China and not simply a protest for democracy as our media may have stated.

The students occupied the square and there was a fevered period of political debate, posters and manifestos were drawn up, hunger strikes and popular demonstrations began in towns and cities across the vastness of China. Inevitably on May 20 martial law was declared, I still have the decree handed to me in my hotel lobby. A curfew, a crackdown on movement in the city and foreigners were strictly confined to barracks - my barracks were a five star hotel so I was in clover.

The upshot of all this was that May 20 was also the date of the FA Cup Final and being football mad I was chuffed that my nightclub had been closed as part of the curfew so I was free to watch it. The match was between Liverpool and Everton, two clubs from the same city that had weeks earlier endured the shock of Hillsborough.

My only issue was that I needed to venture out into the streets to find a shop selling beer so I could enjoy the match in appropriate style. Being a reckless 19 year old I didn’t even consider the threat of arrest by being caught on the streets. I hid behind parked cars, dodged the checkpoints and dashed across blockaded streets in a bid to evade the Red Army, happily retuning with armfuls of chilled Tsing Tao beer.

While the protests grew from May into June the Chinese government was pulling troops in from across the country, the armies local to Beijing would not be appropriate for the job at hand. A decree was sent to the army commanders stating that the Square must be cleared using “any measures” and on the night of June 3rd the troops closed in from the outskirts of the city.

The estimates of the dead during the crackdown of that night range from 180 to over 10,000. Bear in mind that there were over 70,000 people in the Square at the time and so it seems fair to assume the true figure is way higher than 1000.

For me interwoven into this timeframe is the horror of Hillsborough and the death of 96 Liverpool fans on 15 April 1989 and although I was 5000 miles away it was a tragedy that really hit home. Hillsborough need not have been Liverpool fans, it could have been any of us in those days, any of us who followed our teams in ill-equipped and poorly policed stadiums across the country. It really could have been me and my friends. My team Luton got to the FA Cup Semi Finals in 85 and 88.

Hillsborough is tragedy that worsens as the quest for justice unfolds. It was heart-breaking at the time but the process revealing cover-ups, political and police corruption and a distorted and vile press coverage multiply the injustices.

And thinking about this injustice my thoughts return to the dead of Tiananmen. There will be no justice there, no enquiry, no reports. In fact in China the 1989 massacre has been air-brushed out of history. And granting Beijing the Olympic Games in 2008 suggested that all was forgiven on the international stage. Business as usual.

As a young man both of these events being so close together and so close to me really brought home the fragility of life, the lack of justice for decent powerless people and the heartbreak of those left behind. In the words of Martin Luther King “The arc of moral history is long but it bends toward justice”. The Hillsborough families however know that sometimes that arc needs a little persuasion, 39 years later and their journey toward justice is still on-going. Let’s hope that one day that might be the same for families of the Tiananmen dead.

LOWER LIFE 3
The papers are full at the moment of stories of mass brawls at the races. There have been a couple of rowdy incidents caught on punters phones and beamed across the internet by the tabloids, highly unsavoury stuff with the implication that it’s drug fuelled violence. The Racing Post this Sunday seemed almost disappointed that there wasn’t a huge bout of fisticuffs at Newbury or Newmarket at the weekend. No one likes to see this stuff happening but if you’re pulling in large crowds and filling them up with booze all day long it’s sort of inevitable in the UK.

I was at Towcester Races a short while back where I did see an unsightly and undignified display, a shameful farrago of epic proportions, sadly no one was injured by this, save my poor eardrums, it was Mel C, formerly Sporty of the Spice Girls, playing what I believe the young people call a ‘DJ set’ after the last race.

The performance took place on a small stage, the size of a burger van at the end of the main stand in the howling wind and hosing rain. A modest gathering of devotees, no more than 120, crowded around Mel’s van, I’m sure I heard one confused punter ask her for two cheeseburgers, while Sporty and her wheels of steel belted out some of the classic tracks from ‘the funky house scene’.
Not being up on these things I assume she basically plugged in her i-phone and pressed play, she then pretended to spin the discs, the platters that matter, while wearing a set of oversized headphones and jigged from side to side like a crab on a hotplate.

So what was Ms. Chisholm’s reasoning for doing this, the world famous multi-millionaire clearly wasn’t in it for the cash, I can’t think that Towcester would pay her that much anyhow? It must be why we all do this, why I’m writing this now, it’s not the money we need, it’s the attention.

My fellow travellers and I didn’t stay long in this spiced tempest and headed off instead to the safer haven of The Canon in Newport Pagnell. Again, I am sad to report there were no fights, it was all very genteel and well-mannered but that’s the media for you, a couple of punch ups at the races and the world is going to end. This sort of thing has happened time immemorial but we have phones to capture it these days so it appears a lot worse and confirms our worst suspicions that we’re all going to hell in a handcart.

Personally I think we may be but not because of fights at the races but because of tired old pop acts being hired to help pull in the punters, Paloma Faith (in her Skoda obvs.), Tom Jones, James Blunt, all the old stagers are being shoved out there, presumably in an effort to find new racegoers. Not my cup of tea at all, these newcomers get in the way at the bar and the bookies, how would they like it if I went and stood in front of Craig David halfway through his act not knowing what I was doing?

Sporting events and pop concerts really don’t mix. I’m still not even sure about the Band of the Coldstream Guards playing Abide With Me at the Cup Final to be honest. For sports lovers these contests don’t need music and fireworks the event in itself is why we’re there, all these extras just get in the way. And you’re not going to attract new sports fans just by having a big event in concert with a concert - if that would work they’d run the Ayr Gold Cup through the middle of Glastonbury, (in fairness I would pay hard cash to see that). It is simply a rouse to wring money out of a captive audience.

But if you are going to Towcester and fancy a punch up can I please recommend the Final of the Greyhound Derby on June 2nd? There will be no run of the mill B-list ex-girl-band members. No, with this extravaganza they’re really pushing the boat out for their celebrity DJ set and have none other than the mighty Vernon Kay! Yes! I know! THE Vernon Kay! So get yourself off to Towcester and give him a right good kick in the knackers, punch the tosser’s lights out, he’s there for the attention, it’ll do him good.

LOWER LIFE 2
Off into town for a big trade wine tasting, lots and lots of hard work. Remember I taste this stuff so that you don’t have to. It’s a lot harder than you think sampling 150 wines in a morning. There was an excellent lunch however, confit du canard and they always put on a spectacular cheese board which I can never avail myself of as cheese buggers up your palate. This exhausting work was tempered by a second tasting, this time Vintage Port. My, I do love Port. This was put on by some of the big players in the Port world, Croft, Dow’s, Graham’s, Cockburn’s et.al. but the vintages were quite disappointing, 2016, 2007 and 2003. The ’16 being very young and fresh faced and the ’07 and ’03 not having matured enough, like spotty teenagers. So then it was off for a well-earned pint.

Met up in the C&A with My Boy Eugene to console the poor fellow on the appalling way he’s being treated by his employer. He’s an architect and working for some fancy practice in London and has just been made redundant - although for all sorts of reasons it’s not going smoothly and the bastards are making him work his notice. This for me is very odd as I thought architects were all laid back lefties, cool linen trousers and over designed spectacles (notice you never see a fat architect?). Apparently it’s not as very nice sector generally and they’re all pretty much all shits to each other, and the work is very often is less St Pancras and more Stevenage Station.

I’m not much of a fan of the C&A but it’s a Euston drinker, I prefer the Exmouth or the Doric and used the Bree Louise until they shut it to build HS2. But Eugene likes it, it’s a touch professional, very much on the journey from Peroni, to Estrella to Moretti and all stations in between. Euston pubs serve a purpose but they are what they are, watering holes until we get to M&S for a couple of cans for the journey home.

The C&A is also the site of one of my great drinking achievements, in 2009 Eugene, Diddy, Chubbs and I drank the place out of Champagne after the mighty Hatters won the Johnston’s Paint Trophy at Wemberlee beating Scunthorpe 3-2 in extra time. Ah, the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, after winning that I was quite overcome with emulsion.

Eugene’s experience is very much why I try to avoid the world of work, apart from anything else he spends more than four grand a year and the better part of two hours a day getting there and back. Not for me thank you, much rather be in the Green Man. No nasty bosses there, although Donna and Tara can be a bit demanding and they’ve just put their prices up. I might go on strike. Why not join my union, The Amalgamated Boozers, Topers and Soaks? ‘What do we want?’ ‘Free re-fills’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘Until at least closing time’.

I’m sure not all workplaces have to be terrible, I’m sure if you worked for Cockburn’s in Porto your day starts with a lovely coffee and if you’re lucky one of those Portuguese tarts. You’d then spend half a day laughing at your boss’s name and in the afternoon get sozzled on Port and snooze in the evening sun. Some days you might take a trip up the river to see how the grapes are growing and on others you’ll fly around the world selling the stuff to expensive restaurants. I might have to write to Mr Cockburn, I feel I’m already over-qualified for this role, I might ask to see if he needs a new bodega designing and rope in old Eugene.

LOWER LIFE 1
I was in Catalonia last week. I’d only been to Barcelona once before and that was rather by accident, taking in only the rail station and the Camp Nou. Sadly my first real trip to Barcelona was somewhat overshadowed by an attempted mugging. It was my own fault I suppose, trawling the Gothic Quarter in the small hours looking for really seedy bars (we’ve all got to have a hobby). He was a slight chap, no real English language skills and he tried to lure me in by handing me a flyer of some kind. He put his hand on my shoulder and walked with me a few paces and I should have known at that point - physical contact in the back streets of Barcelona is always an ominous sign. He then attempted to trip me by forcing his left ankle in front of my right foot, we hopped along for a bit and then, thinking this was not right, I gave the chap a bit of a wallop, sending him sprawling.

He took umbrage at this and gave me a few brusque words in Catalan, I responded with a few of my own in Anglo Saxon, my pace quickened and I was away. The strange thing about this is that it took a large brandy for me to realise that this was an attempted mugging and not some kind of drunken misunderstanding. The logic of it now defies me. He was on his own, he wasn’t the biggest or sharpest of guys and I’m a big lump of a man, frankly I’ve had bigger shits than him, so what on earth was he trying to achieve? This clouded the rest of my trip rather, I got a bit paranoid and couldn’t relax until I got a Bloody Mary on the plane home.

Muggings aside I’m not sure I’m a fan of Barcelona. Sure the padron peppers are good and I had the freshest squid I’d ever eaten in the Llibertat market at Gracia but it’s a bit of an ugly sprawling city. Not a fan of Gaudi either, to me it’s just gluing things to buildings. Picasso hated him, thought he’d gone mad on religion, he lived as a recluse, fasting and refusing to wash and was eventually killed, run over by a tram. There is a plan to finish the Sagrada Familiar by 2026, can’t see it personally, these builders are really stringing it out. You would though wouldn’t you, like the maintenance team at the Acropolis or my dentist?

My mood was much improved on my return to these shores by a quick weekend jaunt up to Edinburgh. Now there’s a town I feel at home in. Getting off the train to that lovely beery, yeasty odour that hangs over the city, pints of Heavy, salt and sauce, Iron Bru! Rose Street isn’t what it was though, I remember it in the 80s, properly dirty and seedy, it’s all Hens and Stags now. But you’re never far away from a good pub in Auld Reekie, take a trip a street or two away from Princes Street and you’ll find easy-going drinkers and room to breathe. I always take in the Café Royal, the most civilised city centre pub in the country.

Walking back to my hotel in the early hours I was once again accosted, not this time by a guy wanting my wallet but by a well refreshed gentleman who simply wanted me to listen to ‘Islands in the Stream’ on his phone. He was very insistent, clearly a big fan of Dolly and Kenny, he put his arm around me, “Listen to that! Listen to that! Fantastic!” he cried in a broad Glaswegian brogue. We shook hands enthusiastically and went our separate ways.

A while back I learnt that talking about trams to Edinburghers never goes down well. It’s not that they’re all fans of Gaudi it’s that theirs, which eventually opened in 2014, ran years over time and at £776 million twice the original budget, and then the track didn’t go as far as it should have. I imagine there’s more than a few folk they’d have happily seen be hit by one, my fear is that the folk who do get run down are probably listening to ‘Islands in the Stream’.

Pete Turner The Drinker 2018