nostlagia isn't what it used to be part 1

i found the following video during one of those casual chain of links you tend to go through on youtube when you're looking for something in particular and then get carried away on a tangent - same sort of thing as going into a department store looking for a specific item and then leaving an hour later with a load of stuff you never thought you wanted

anyone of my generation whose childhood lasted throughout the seventies and into the early eighties will be very familiar with all of this stuff

some of them i miss - itv regional logos for example, which disappeared at the same time as most quality programming did on commercial television round about the mid-nineties - and although i hadn't watched top of the pops for years, i mourned its passing, as it was a popular culture icon and a symbol of continuity for generations of squared-eyed tv addicts - i also remember dabbling with 'roy of the rovers' in the late seventies when i was trying very hard to get into football, but the lure of spiderman and the fantastic four was too great

one or two things i was glad to see the back of - 'happy eater' was crap and could not compare to the little chef, which is still going strong, in spite of the bizarrely high prices they charge for all-day breakfasts and jubilee pancakes these days - driving up and down the a-roads of britain on family holidays, passing the odd happy eater sign, i always thought they resembled an advert for bulemia, as the little bald man always looked as if he was about to stick his finger down his throat: a rather apt indication of the quality of food served at happy eater restaurants, i think

i was also glad to see the demise of half pennies, as they were small and fiddly and they always ended up clanking around in my washing machine as I could never manage to get all the small change out of my pockets - half pennies would remain undetected rather like that last annoying teaspoon you always find in the sink after you've emptied the washing-up bowl

tv am's 'good morning britain' only served one useful purpose which was to give its name to a great song by aztec camera, who used it in an ironic way to comment on the fractured nature of british society in the era of the dreaded poll tax riots - tv am's programming was so twee and cosy it beggared belief

who could forget the 'man at C & A' advertsing campaign with nylon underpants and those delightful purple shirts with matching white collars - every time i see the logo i'm always reminded of one of those essex girl jokes that was doing the rounds in the late eighties - "why does an essex girl have C & A on her knickers? so she knows which way round to put them on"

blame canada!

happy birthday monsieur macphee!

great scott! here's a little birthday dedication...

manga city

cartoon signs and images adorn every part of tokyo from public information posters to advertising billboards - the manga influence pervades every aspect of japanese popular culture as you would expect

in my cynical-tinged youth, i would have found this whole enterprise dirisible - these days i find them endearing and cute - am i losing it big time? i wonder to myself...

alone in the park

two melancholy pictures which juxtapose well together (is that a tautology?)

cow parade

coming out of one of tokyo's main stations we saw a brightly painted fibre glass cow standing on a street corner - we naturally thought that there must have been a branch of the swiss market cafe movenpick around as the ones in singapore have similar bovine statues adorning their entrances



but there was no movenpick to be seen - then as we turned the corner we saw another - this one in fishnets and suspenders - and then we stopped to read the sign underneath : "cow parade"




cow parade is the biggest public art event in the world and since it started in switzerland in 1998, has been hosted in london, paris, new york and three times in tokyo - the white fibre-glass bodies of the cows are used as canvases for local artists to paint images on - colourful, amusing and surreal, particularly as there are seventy- three of them placed around the marunouchi district - turn a corner and who knows what you will find next...



and after this, many of the cows are auctioned off for charity

happy bidet - here come the warm jets

so this is the type of toilet we are using in our hotel bathroom...



i'd heard about how civilised japanese toilet culture is, but experiencing it first-hand is a lavatorial revelation

everything is clean, shiny and spotless over here, even cleaner than singapore, and toilets all over tokyo seem to be the ultimate expression of this high level of personal and communal hygiene as well as being yet another example of how the japanese are world leaders in any field of technological jiggery pokery they care to put their minds to



using a toilet is a bit confusing at first as there is a belwildering array of controls to familiarise yourself with - seat warmers, plastic seat covers, jets, sprays, scents to mask noxious odours and sound effects to mask embarrassing bodily functional noises, to name but a few - some toilets even play music to cover over the sounds made during the course of communing with nature, while others play a short recording of running water for about thirty seconds, a duration, however, i feel is too short in some cases - after a night's sleep and with a full bladder come morning, half a minute is not really enough to effectively obliterate the sounds of a long and satisfying evacuation - particularly if you are prone to three or four lingering shorts spurts after the main one...



there are two control settings for the bidet as the picture illustrates

so i experimented with both settings on my first attempt - i assumed you were supposed to use both - the first which sprays a direct jet up to a place where the sun never shines and the second which squirts the surrounding fleshy parts - both jets direct streams of water which move backwards and forwards slightly, so covering the whole undercarriage area

although this process was fairly effective, i was slightly disappointed when having finished, i discovered a little residue left over on subsequent investigation with a piece of two-ply



but then i worked out the solution - i call it 'the ainsley harriott manoeuvre' as it involves moving your lower body around on the toilet seat in much the same way that dear old ainsley rotates his hips when he picks up a wok or frying pan to mix up their contents - this proved to be much more effective, although i will never be able to watch 'ready steady cook' in the same way again...

so to conclude i would just like to say that, apart from a delicious sliver of pan-seared fois gras slipping down your throat, there is nothing better than a controlled rush of perfectly heated water shooting up your jacksy



i dedicate this posting to my friends shane and sarah currently residing in brunei - over the last twenty or so years we have shared many lavatorial anecdotes from our travels

so carry on up the khyber!

the dog's bollocks

so we arrived last night and couldn't believe our luck - this hotel apparently has the biggest rooms in tokyo

being a pleb, i've never stayed in a hotel with this many stars before, so you could say i've just lost my six-star virginity



this room is about the size of luxembourg, with a bathroom big enough to swing a whole neighbourhood of cats around in and still have enough room for a medium-sized sperm-whale in the bathtub



and the view of tokyo bay is equal to the one of sydney that we had when we were billeted above luna park

directly below us is a large watery park and to our right is the rainbow bridge which we drove over on our way from the airport



i'm not sure if the haziness that mists up the view of the buildings further away is caused by pollution, like in hong kong, or low lying cloud (it's still typhoon season over here - i prefer tetley myself as i always feel they make a stronger brew)



and when the sun goes down it's like this....

tokyo storm warning

well tokyo here we come - we'll be off tomorrow, leaving from changi airport at 9am

i'm only slightly worried by the fact that it's supposed to be typhoon season there at the moment - but after last year's near-capsized-ship-wreck incident off phuket, i have no intention of going anywhere near the sea or a boat of any description

my last experience of a city in the typhoon season was hong kong in august 1996 when it rained almost continuously for the four days i was there - the white logos were completely washed off my hush puppies canvas shoes i stupidly wore out one day and they ended up looking more like slush puppies

so in honour of my impending trip, i'm blogging one of my favourite elvis costello songs, the title of which seems most apt...


The sky fell over cheap Korean monster-movie scenery
And spilled into the reservoir of the crushed capsule hotel
Between the Disney abattoir and the chemical refinery
And I knew I was in trouble but I thought I was in hell
So you look around the tiny room and you wonder where the hell you are
While the K.K.K. convention are all stranded in the bar
They wear hoods and carry shotguns in the main streets of Montgomery
But they're helpless here as babies 'cause they're only here on holiday

What do we care if the world is a joke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant

The black sand stuck beneath her feet in a warm Sorrento sunrise
A barefoot girl from Naples or was it a Barcelona hi-rise
Whistles out the tuneless theme song on a hundred cheap suggestions
And a million false seductions and all those eternal questions

What do we care if the world is a joke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant

So they flew the Super-Constellation all the way from Rimini
And feasted them on fish and chips from a newspaper facsimile
Now dead Italian tourists bodies litter up the Broadway
Some people can't be told you know they have to learn the hard way

Holidays are dirt-cheap in the Costa del Malvinas
In the Hotel Argentina they can hardly tell between us
For Teresa is a waitress though she's now known as Juanita
In a tango bar in Stanley or in Puerto Margarita
She's the sweetest and the sauciest
The loveliest and the naughtiest
She's Miss Buenos Aires in a world of lacy lingerie

What do we care if the world is a joke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant

Japanese God-Jesus robots telling teenage fortunes
For all we know and all we care they might as well be Martians
They say gold paint on the palace gates comes from the teeth of pensioners
They're so tired of shooting protest singers
That they hardly mention us
While fountains fill with second-hand perfume
And sodden trading stamps
They'll hang the bullies and the louts that dampen down the day

What do we care if the world is a joke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant

We braved the cold November air and the undertaker's curses
Saying "Take me to the Folies Bergere and please don't spare the hearses"
For he always had a dream of that revolver in your purse
How you loved him 'til you hated him and made him cry for mercy
He said "Don't ever mention my name there or talk of all the nights you cried
We've always been like worlds apart now you're seeing two nightmares collide"

What do we care if the world is a joke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We'll give it a big kiss
We'll give it a poke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
Death wears a big hat 'cause he's a big bloke
(Tokyo Storm Warning)
We're only living this instant



elvis costello:

tokyo storm warning,

blood & chocolate,

1986

on bashing the bishop - some timely advice

we've been working our way through the showtime comedy/drama 'weeds' for a while now, trying to catch up to the end of the fourth series

recently we watched the episode where the young son of the main character starts blocking up the drains with socks which he's been flushing down the toilet after using them to 'mop up' after you-know-what - so recently widowed mom enlists the help of her brother-in-law to have a fatherly chat with the novice about 'jerkin' the gerkin'

a great scene which makes you wish you'd had an uncle andy just like this one...

the festival of the satiated rodents

in singapore we have just come to the end of the seventh lunar month celebrations of the festival of the hungry ghosts - the belief is that for the duration of this month, the gates of hell open and the ghosts of people's ancestors are allowed to roam freely around the world

it is marked by religious festivals to appease the spirits of the dead, who crave wordly pleasures that they once enjoyed in life, so ritualistic food offerings are made either on altars in temples or at temporary makeshift ones which can be seen at the side of roads and pavements all over singapore



people can also be seen burning bundles of paper in braziers - the paper is referred to as 'hell bank notes' or 'hell money' and is burnt in veneration of dead ancestors






















the ghosts need to feast their other senses too, so all over singapore tempoary stages and large tents are erected for traditional and modern entertainments such as colourful chinese operas, pop concerts as well as large feasts

to the eyes of a casual western observer such as myself when i first came to live in singapore, these traditions seem quite bizarre and elicit the same sort of puzzled and fascinated reaction as you see during other local religious festivals such as thaipusan, when indian men carry large metal structures, pierced through their skin in various places on their upper bodies and faces, for long distances to various hindu temples

in a place as clean and ordered as singapore i was surprised to see food being left out unhygenically on pavements and roads sometimes for days on end - a feast, i thought, for local populations of rats and the odd-looking tail-less stray cats you see all over populated areas here

i once asked a taxi driver how disembodied spirits could satisfy themselves on such corporeal offerings - he told me that the spirits consume the spirit of the food - good answer really - so killing two birds with one stone - keeping the souls of your ancestors happy and providing hordes of rodents with good-quality take-out

the whole hell money burning bewildered me at first too - one night i was sat at one of my favourite pavement coffee shop restaurants on east coast road when two kids came out of the karaoke bar next door - a brazier had been placed on the edge of the pavement and they proceeded to throw piles and piles of these thick wads of hell bank notes onto a small fire that had just been lit - within minutes an unfavourable breeze was blowing cinders and bits of burnt paper all over me and other displeased diners as we sat eating our dinners - loud shouts of complaint went up to various servers about food being covered in the fallout from the blaze, until one of the older waitresses, an 'auntie' of advancing years, strode purposefully over to the fire, which was getting larger and fiercer by the minute, causing not only flambed bits of paper to flutter down on plates of food but also covering everyone in acrid smelling smoke - i was under the impression that she was going to scold the two kids severely but what i didn't expect was that she would help them throw even more of the paper onto the fire, which is what she in fact did - i supposed that the reasoning behind her actions was that to stop the kids half-way through this appeasement ritual would be a very inauspicious thing to do, and so she did the next best thing, which was to get it over with as soon as possible to avoid more complaints

'a month of hungry ghosts' , a film detailing the festival celebrations in singapore has recently been released

a work of genius

'the dead' is the final story in james joyce's 'dubliners' - it was also the last film directed by john huston shortly before his death - a project he had dreamed of throughout his life - a fine ending to a memorable career, with, in my opinion, the most beautiful final scene i have ever scene in any film - the words taken straight from the last pages of the book (later parodied in an episode of 'father ted') and preceded in the film by a moving rendition of 'the lass of aughrim', stirring up poignant memories for the character of gretta played by angelica huston



He stood, holding her head between his hands. Then, slipping one arm swiftly about her body and drawing her towards him, he said softly:

"Gretta, dear, what are you thinking about?"

She did not answer nor yield wholly to his arm. He said again, softly:

"Tell me what it is, Gretta. I think I know what is the matter. Do I know?"

She did not answer at once. Then she said in an outburst of tears:

"O, I am thinking about that song, The Lass of Aughrim."



A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.