So here it goes, here it goes again: my annual-when-I-can-be-arsed-to-blog look at the subjectively-best music of the recent year, in this case 2012. You’ll should know the typical rules of my fatty music charts by now, but for those new here: it’s a ranking of the tunes I’ve legitimately got hold of in the relevant 12-month span, ranked from the ones I liked enough to listen to on a permanent basis (bottom of the chart) to the ones I really bloody liked quite a bit actually (the top end). As ever, stuff I’ve heard on telly/radio but which hasn’t made it into my CD stack or MP3 inbox doesn’t make the cut, this is why Biffy Clyro’s Stingin’ Belle – not officially released until 2013 – didn’t make the list, and also explains the dearth of X Factor types in my rundown (though Rihanna squeaks in, sort of…) There have been some controversies this year, such as whether to count a B-side towards its parent track or separately, and whether to include an old track which was reissued to much more success in 2012, so I may have to change the way I do these (if I bother to do this needless crap again), but for now, these are my eighty (approx.) favourite (to an extent) audio tracks of 2012. And, in a freaky diversion, this year I’ve posted it twice, once as the old-style raw-data countdown but first with some words of justification for most of the tracks, should you wish to hear me explain what it is I actually like about the music. (I used to like talking about music, and maybe I’ll get to do it again one day.) Want to hate on these, or tip me in the direction of something I should’ve jumped on sooner? Comment box and Twitter are, time of writing, functional. Now let’s chart this…
1 — The Maccabees — Ayla
> How could it not be? From the album Given To The Wild, which got a little lost in the rush at the end of last year, comes this barnstormer, released as a single in the early summer, which just builds and builds to a proper power crescendo that’ll always have you feling lifted. Elegant, intelligent, soaring – a thing of true quality. Many tunes have caught my ear this past year – well, about eighty, as you’ll see here – but Ayla’s been rooted to my playlist pretty much the whole way since release because, while the track came close to being matched, it couldn’t be bettered – if someone wants to hear a tune which encapsulates the best of recent music in one shot, Ayla is the one you really need to play them.
2 — Kodaline — All I Want
> Simply a gorgeous tune: these Irish newcomers also delivered the video of the year – an office ‘outsider’ (denoted by his distorted features) working up the bravery to defend his longed-for sweetheart by stepping up to confront the sleazy coworkers who think they’ve got the right to treat her like an object. Stripped from its accompanying film, though, the tune is a soaring lilt that reminds us music can be beautiful – at a time when everything is shouting really loudly to be heard amongst the media muck, here’s something much more beautiful and wonderful to behold. Their album’s out in March.
3 — Haim — Don’t Save Me / Send Me Down
> Yes, the BBC ‘sound of 2013’ winners start their journey into my music file right here, as a band I discovered thanks to the decade-old and much-beloved 6 Music, when Adam and Edith were among those tipping these San Fernando ladies for future success. A controversial wrinkle in my chart compilation came from B-side Send Me Down being the first Haim track I heard, and almost warranted its own entry here until I realised that this random inclusion of a non-lead track may open the floodgates for all sorts of mayhem in future countdowns, downloads having skewed my old analogue view of singles and album tracks. In the event, to save my hair from being pulled out, I decided to, for the first time ever, combine my ‘votes’, such as it were, for both tracks to give a single placing to the complete single package. I may have to rethink how I do these, if I do this again. Still, a nice blend of classic pop stylings with a fresh, modern touch earns Este, Alana and Danielle a place on my rundown. Should’ve earned them two, but there’s the breaks.
4 — Frightened Rabbit — State Hospital
> A real contender for tune of the year – hence its presence up my top-end – and additional kudos for releasing this as a proper physical EP as well as on a download, something sadly so very close to dying out. As for the tune, the word ‘epic’ doesn’t really do it justice – a really rousing, emotion-filled anthem, well worth your time in its own right but a particular tonic in a year dominated by samey R&B which can’t really hold a candle to this gem, an evocative tale of broken Britain belted out with real emotion.
5 — The Temper Trap — Need Your Love
> Back with a big new tune that’s had a pretty consistent place on my playlist through much of the year: classic-style indie-pop with a proper hook.
6 — The xx — Angels
> This stripped-back track proved that, despite what most of the other tunes in this (and other) charts may tell you, you don’t need overproduced, overblown or autotuned gunk clogging up your song – a simple, mellow backing and tender vocals provided an oasis of beauty in a pop world too ready to be too nasty. A tune everyone needs in their collection.
7 — Lower Than Atlantis — Love Someone Else
> Proving that rock’s far from dead, these guys played a blinder this year, and this was no-messing route-one rock that didn’t outstay its welcome.
8 — S.C.U.M. — Whitechapel
> Ooh, this is controversial – this track from the band fronted by the fella now best known as the father of Peaches Geldof’s kid was actually released at the back-end of 2011, but came into my purview early in 2012, too late to make last year’s chart. Still, it’s a modern-day anthem, one of the classiest tunes I’ve heard in a fair while, and it’d be unfair to boot it out of my charts altogether, so here it is.
9 — Muse — Madness
> Devon’s finest still pushing the envelope, this cracker – from new album The 2nd Law – married soaring vocals to an inescapable bassline to create a real body-mover.
10 — The Cribs — Glitters Like Gold
> Back and still cranking out the tunes, the Yorkshire boys haven’t lost any of their swagger.
11 — Rudimental ft. John Newman — Feel The Love
> Dubstep? Nearly making my top ten? Truly, these times they are a’changing, but you have to admit, this was an absolute boomer, building through its four minutes to an utterly chaotic climax. If you haven’t thrown some shapes to this, you haven’t really thrown shapes at all.
12 — Karmin — Brokenhearted
> Proper big ballsy pop from an actual couple. No, really: Nick and Amy proved pop isn’t all bad with this tune, jaunty despite its tale of agony awaiting love. Uh-huh, that’s right, cheerio.
13 — Dog Is Dead — Teenage Daughter
> One of those big chanty indie anthems that in all honesty should be higher up this chart, but was hobbled in part by its release late in the year, giving me time to adore those above, but still worthy of the hands going into the air. Altogether now: “I get used to it…”
14 — Ellie Goulding — Anything Could Happen
> Ee-ee-ee-eep! Big glossy electric pop from the multitalented blonde, who hasn’t let high-profile relationships – seriously, she dated Skrillex, that makes Swift/Styles look OK – distract her from pulling out tunes that knock the oversold, internationally-hyped R&B-lite stars into a cocked hat
15 — The Killers — Runaways
> Brandon and the boys, back with Battle Born, unleashed this monster as the lead single, and absolutely owned it – only a few acts can get away with rock histrionics on this scale, and these guys have really earned their spurs. Whether they’ll ever really topple Mr Brightside as their signature song remains to be discussed…
16 — Of Monsters and Men — Little Talks
> Hey!
17 — Band of Horses — Feud
> The fact this indie disco favourite only hit number 17 – when in most years it’d be itching for a top-10 place – suggests how much actually-alright music was released this year. Perhaps if I’d done less whining about the charts and opened my ears more, it’d have been even lower, in a good way…
18 — Fenech-Soler — All I Know
> This and Dog Is Dead only just about squeaked in here, being released towards the end of the year, but as you’ll know from my previous big charts I’ve always got houseroom for a bit of FS…
19 — Two Door Cinema Club — Sun
20 — Spector — Celestine
> If I recall correctly, this was one of the ‘Playlist’ tracks the week that Unnamed Woman was on Sunday Brunch. She’s the only person that can get me out of bed at a decent hour on a Sunday, you see. Good to see big glammy pop-rock still going, anyway.
21 — The Vaccines — Teenage Icon
22 — All American Rejects — Beekeeper’s Daughter
> I’ve loved a bit of AAR right back since the Swing Swing era, and this was a nice big pop-rock stomper that just about anyone can enjoy. Unless they hate music, in which case why are they reading this?
23 — Robbie Williams — Candy
> Hey ho, here we go. Too old for Radio 1, apparently, but I’m never too old for a bit of proper pop, and the sometime-Take Thatter resumed his solo career with something well-crafted, suggesting the ‘difficult’ Bodies/Rudebox years are finally behind him: that stint back with Gary and the gang served him well, it seems.
24 — Family of the Year — Diversity
25 — Mull Historical Society — The Lights
> Colin Macintyre swaps back from his real name to his previous pop persona, and continues to pull out some lovely tunes from his vantage point on a tiny Scottish island, proving it’s not just the urban massive who can make hits.
26 — Miike Snow — Paddling Out
27 — TOY — Make It Mine
28 — Tanlines — All of Me
29 — Enter Shikari — Warm Smiles Do Not Make You Welcome Here
30 — OK Go — Needing/Getting
> Spotted this on Tuune – another brilliant video from the YouTube pioneers, here enlisting a car to play the song on carefully-positioned instruments and noisemakers. You can, should you wish, download that version separately and independently from the studio take listed here…
31 — Scissor Sisters — Only the Horses
32 — Jessie Ware — Wildest Moments
> Ware? Right here. Ithangyew.
33 — The Maccabees — Pelican
34 — Cosmo Jarvis — Love This
35 — Everything Everything — Cough Cough
> Man alive, they’re back. Next single ‘Kemosabe’ is even better, but while it got some airplay at the butt-end of 2012 it’s not officially released until this month (January), so there’s one slot in next year’s chart sorted if I do this again…
36 — Ladyhawke — Black White & Blue
> First heard this while sat outside New Look in Dartford, eating my lunch. Beat that.
37 — Maximo Park — Hips and Lips
38 — Public Enemy — Harder Than You Think
> If putting a track technically from 2011 in here agonised me, here’s one that definitely probably shouldn’t be in a best-of-2012 list given its release in 2007; however, this cut from the rap kingpins gains its place thanks to its role in the C4 coverage of the Paralympics, which was one of my favourite things about an otherwise-grotty 2012…
39 — Stooshe — Black Heart
> Proper big billowy Motownish harmony pop from the girls, and if Stooshe’s young fans start investigating the Dionne Warwick/Petula Clark backcatalogue as a result that’s no bad thing…
40 — Fang Island — Sisterly
41 — Yellowcard — Here I Am Alive
> One of those arms-aloft, roof-down tunes – always good to have some of these in the chart…
42 — Taylor Swift — We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
> The more-than-acceptable face of country pop returns with another quirky chart stomper, her noticeable twang now drenched in cheeky pop sensibilities on one of the earworms of the year, and a track which broke records with the ferocity at which it was downloaded.
43 — Lower Than Atlantis — Deadliest Catch
> It’s clear that those punky sods LTA have been one of my bands of the year, innit? Didn’t put their Christmas single on here as it was a fun festive one-off rather than part of the proper campaign (and would’ve made the numbers go funny), but I loved that too.
44 — Example — Say Nothing
45 — Admiral Fallow — The Paper Trench
46 — Two Door Cinema Club — Sleep Alone
47 — Run From Robots — Wolf Spider
48 — Daley ft. Jessie J — Remember Me
> You should know by now I like covers (even Marcus Collins’ take on Seven Nation Army came close to hitting this chart) and here’s a 90s rave anthem reworked by the Gorillaz collaborator and the Price Tag-toter in unison. Yes, even the geng-geng-g-geng bits.
49 — Labrinth — Last Time
50 — Birdy — 1901
> Yeah, another cover, but this blissy version of the recent-classic from Phoenix proved how a song can be reworked almost completely without losing the magic. Nice work.
51 — Kids Unique — Love Tunnel
52 — Coldplay feat. Rihanna — Princess of China
> Clash of the chart titans, as the Brit guitar band it’s still OK to like team up with Barbados’ own industry-owner, allowing Ms. Fenty to continue her near-uninterrupted chart reign of recent years.
53 — Wretch 32 feat. Ed Sheeran — Hush Little Baby
54 — Andy Grammer — Fine By Me
> Couple of minutes of inoffensive, plinky-plonk, early-Maroon 5-ish pop. Nowt wrong with that, and useful to clean the ear-palate after some heavy bangers.
55 — Pink — Try
> A track with real meaning and a great rhythm – Alecia knocks it out the park once again. Just because it burns, doesn’t mean you’re gonna die.
56 — Labrinth ft. Emeli Sande — Beneath Your Beautiful
> Emeli was everywhere in 2012, and this team-up with Lab was a sweet, positive song which proved not all tracks in the ‘urban’ subsector were about gold-diggers in bikinis. More of this sort of thing and I might actually start listening to a bit of R&B…
57 — fun. feat Janelle Monae — We Are Young
> I’ll carry… you home… tonight.
58 — Blur — Under the Westway
> Reunited, albeit briefly, but always good to welcome a stalwart of my CD racks back to action. And this also means they’ve now outlived Oasis, if you’re still keeping score…
59 — alt-J — Something Good
> Mercury Prize-winners, with a song which actually lives up to its name for once…
60 — Paloma Faith — Picking Up the Pieces
61 — Charlotte O’Connor — Treasure Island
> Another one of the several tracks on this list I discovered by tuning into Tuune. I’m so thankful there’s still an outlet for lesser-known artists, not just in indie-rock but also, as here, in wistful soul-pop. Charlotte’s not as well-known as, say, Rihanna, but is well worth your consideration.
62 — Beta Wolf — Domino
63 — Zulu Winter — Silver Tongue
64 — Stubborn Heart — Starting Block
65 — Paul Weller — That Dangerous Age
66 — Vince Kidd — Sick Love
> Heard this on Loaded TV, of all places, as I continued my difficult quest to find places that played non-Rihanna music videos.
67 — We Are Augustines — Chapel Song
68 — Arctic Monkeys — R U Mine?
> Still looking good on the dancefloor, then. Bonus points for the limited-release purple vinyl, but minus points for not making the MP3, which is what I was stuck with, purple too…
69 — Snow Patrol — In The End
70 — Lana del Rey — National Anthem
71 — Dot Rotten — Overload
> Sampling a 90s classic – in this case Robert Miles’ ‘Children’? That’ll buy you a few minutes of my time…
72 — Garbage — Blood For Poppies
73 — Pixie Lott — Kiss The Stars
74 — Keane — Silenced by the Night
75 — Gaz Coombes — Hot Fruit
> Ex-Supergrass man strikes out solo. It’s not ‘Alright’, but it’s alright…
76 — Muse — Survival
> Teignmouth’s finest were roped into the Olympics both as torchbearers and songbearers, though hardly anyone heard this on TV as the Beeb looped their own theme, Elbow’s ‘First Steps’, in the gaps instead…
77 — Owl City ft. Carly Rae Jepsen — Good Time
> ‘Fireflies’ hitmaker Adam (yes, Adam) served up a solid slice of summer pop which picked up plenty of traction as pretty Canadian vocalist Jepsen’s post-‘Call Me Maybe’ project
78 — Vanilla Gorillaz — Wilderbeast
79 — Alex Clare — Too Close
> That song from the Windows advert got under everyone’s skin this year. Apparently including mine. Ah well.
80 — David Guetta ft. Sia — Titanium
> Yeah, one of the big dance tunes of the year, which I briefly found quite bangin’, hampered slightly by being utterly everywhere but boosted by its proper mini-movie of a video. ‘Ave it.
And for those who don’t give a fig about my opinions, and just want hard raw data, here’s the same list all over again, but without my commentaries appended.
1 — The Maccabees — Ayla
2 — Kodaline — All I Want
3 — Haim — Don’t Save Me
4 — Frightened Rabbit — State Hospital
5 — The Temper Trap — Need Your Love
6 — The xx — Angels
7 — Lower Than Atlantis — Love Someone Else
8 — S.C.U.M. — Whitechapel
9 — Muse — Madness
10 — The Cribs — Glitters Like Gold
11 — Rudimental ft. John Newman — Feel The Love
12 — Karmin — Brokenhearted
13 — Dog Is Dead — Teenage Daughter
14 — Ellie Goulding — Anything Could Happen
15 — The Killers — Runaways
16 — Of Monsters and Men — Little Talks
17 — Band of Horses — Feud
18 — Fenech-Soler — All I Know
19 — Two Door Cinema Club — Sun
20 — Spector — Celestine
21 — The Vaccines — Teenage Icon
22 — All American Rejects — Beekeeper’s Daughter
23 — Robbie Williams — Candy
24 — Family of the Year — Diversity
25 — Mull Historical Society — The Lights
26 — Miike Snow — Paddling Out
27 — TOY — Make It Mine
28 — Tanlines — All of Me
29 — Enter Shikari — Warm Smiles Do Not Make You Welcome Here
30 — OK Go — Needing/Getting
31 — Scissor Sisters — Only the Horses
32 — Jessie Ware — Wildest Moments
33 — The Maccabees — Pelican
34 — Cosmo Jarvis — Love This
35 — Everything Everything — Cough Cough
36 — Ladyhawke — Black White & Blue
37 — Maximo Park — Hips and Lips
38 — Public Enemy — Harder Than You Think
39 — Stooshe — Black Heart
40 — Fang Island — Sisterly
41 — Yellowcard — Here I Am Alive
42 — Taylor Swift — We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together
43 — Lower Than Atlantis — Deadliest Catch
44 — Example — Say Nothing
45 — Admiral Fallow — The Paper Trench
46 — Two Door Cinema Club — Sleep Alone
47 — Run From Robots — Wolf Spider
48 — Daley ft. Jessie J — Remember Me
49 — Labrinth — Last Time
50 — Birdy — 1901
51 — Kids Unique — Love Tunnel
52 — Coldplay feat. Rihanna — Princess of China
53 — Wretch 32 feat. Ed Sheeran — Hush Little Baby
54 — Andy Grammer — Fine By Me
55 — Pink — Try
56 — Labrinth ft. Emeli Sande — Beneath Your Beautiful
57 — fun. feat Janelle Monae — We Are Young
58 — Blur — Under the Westway
59 — alt-J — Something Good
60 — Paloma Faith — Picking Up the Pieces
61 — Charlotte O’Connor — Treasure Island
62 — Beta Wolf — Domino
63 — Zulu Winter — Silver Tongue
64 — Stubborn Heart — Starting Block
65 — Paul Weller — That Dangerous Age
66 — Vince Kidd — Sick Love
67 — We Are Augustines — Chapel Song
68 — Arctic Monkeys — R U Mine?
69 — Snow Patrol — In The End
70 — Lana del Rey — National Anthem
71 — Dot Rotten — Overload
72 — Garbage — Blood For Poppies
73 — Pixie Lott — Kiss The Stars
74 — Keane — Silenced by the Night
75 — Gaz Coombes — Hot Fruit
76 — Muse — Survival
77 — Owl City ft. Carly Rae Jepsen — Good Time
78 — Vanilla Gorillaz — Wilderbeast
79 — Alex Clare — Too Close
80 — David Guetta ft. Sia — Titanium
There’ll be another of my big scribbly ones along in a few weeks, though I am planning to change the way I do this in the longer term. For the moment though, thanks very much for listening, and goodbye!
“If a live ostrich smells its partner’s anus on your breath, you are going to get pecked to death!” (Hello!)
Wake up! So, it’s been a scant few weeks since last I wrecked the internet with another of these fat bleeders, but enough has happened in my life in that brief time to warrant my coming in your airspace once again. You see, I really need an outlet. It’s been a frustrating, angering little while for me. I’ve been under the continued pressures of homelife and joblessness, as I have been pretty much since I started this ruddy thing, but just lately my anger, fear and mental subnormality has really been boiling over in the most unlikely and unhelpful ways.
Vicious wig-outs in the jobsearch centre, usually triggered by the weedy computers ballsing-up, application systems pushing me pillar-to-post or the reciept in my inbox of naught but rejection slips, have become a near-weekly event, and a break from the screen midway through the search process has had to be built into my timeframe for my own health and sanity; I risk causing injury if I don’t calm down: for instance, on one occasion amid my frustrated freewheeling I slammed myself into the desk so hard using my four-castored office chair that I hurt my stomach, and on another an attempt to pound my fist in rage ended up with me punching myself quite hard in the opposing hand, making it quite painful to use the mouse for a time thereafter. It’s even invaded my sleep: I did have one notably horrible dream in which I was throwing myself around the TC by the skin of my lapels, beating and shouting at myself, as though I was a vicious bully tired of the in-the-same-body weedy clot’s ridiculous failures, and I really have to hope and pray that something good comes through for me before the violent, bloody dream becomes a horrifying reality.
It’s not just the machines at the TC that have had the power to willy me about, mind: supermarket checkouts have also been excercising their power over me. On one occasion while I was trying to pump cash into the stubborn device at a big Sainsbury’s having done the for-home shop, the person behind me in the queue jabbed towards my screen and appeared to be attempting to prod the ‘pay by card’ button, perhaps in a bid to hurry me along so he could get his turn. I didn’t take this intrusion as helpful, and, already being quite grumpy after a heartshaking supermarket rush, I batted his arm away furiously and continued paying in the manner I had intended. On another occasion, I ended up having to pay by card in a little Tesco after picking up my lunchbits – the selfscan machines were all in ‘card only’ mode, and perhaps for this reason the queue for the tiny bank of manned tills was longer than most of those in it could tolerate. My options were to join this aberration of a queue, making the problem worse for myself and others, skulking around the shop like a loiterer for however many hours it took for the queue to die down or the machines to be fixed, potentially attracting the ire of the resident security staff, or just whipping out my nearly-plastic and getting lunch over and done with before sundown. It’s never a pleasant place to be, is the tiddly Tesco – I always feel a little endangered in there – and their lunch ranges have been cut back quite significantly, meaning I may have to start looking further afield come dinnertime anyway.
Family life is also a little fractious – perhaps best illustrated this month by mouthwashgate: on noting the mouthwash bottle in the bathroom was running low, I decided to pick some up alongside loo rolls and various other bits for the homestead on one of my big silly shopping trips; however, I had not communicated this to mother, due to our leaving the house at different times, and as such she returned home herself clutching a bottle of the minty slosh. I perhaps shouldn’t have been so angry to see that liquid – it saves me a trip later on, as we at least have enough to last us a while, and it does perhaps illustrate how important it is to actually communicate – which is quite an important point to raise given I’ve spent much of my adult life trying to actively avoid others! But then, even when I do try and communicate with the outside world, things do go wrong: I was invited to one job interview event in a retail store, and nearly cost myself the interview when, on arrival, I got into a flappy panic when I couldn’t grab the attention of any of the rather-busy staff to let them know I was in. I did eventually get to attend the event, and was told that they’d get back to me at some unspecified later time. So, when I got a call from the same store the following week, I assumed it was this feedback (I’d assumed it’d be a no given my panic before the event would have blotted my copybook, but it could have been a yes), but in fact it was neither – instead someone inviting me to attend what appeared to be the same event again, having looked at the same online application I’d made to gain entry to the earlier event. Bizarre. I’ve been turned down for jobs before, far too many times, but this was the first time I’d been invited to the same interview twice! I did agonise over whether it would be more embarrasing and unreliable to attend again or to skip it, but in the event fate had the answer: after putting off my departure until the last possible moment, I eventually arrived at the mall literally about two minutes after I had been due to appear instore (thanks, bus): I decided that, as I was pretty sure this was the same thing I’d attended previously, there would have been little merit in turning up again, particularly if they’d be within their right to turn me away either for my prior attendance or my more recent slight lateness, and decided instead to have a wander around looking for other options (albeit finding little of note, bar a half-price men’s top in Forever21 – good to see I can still spot a bargain when one makes the decision to present itself, and I do need new clothes to replace the now-very-ancient ones I currently wear). Maybe I should have had the balls to go into the potential workplace and clear the air – I don’t know if my nonattendance at the second event would impact on my score from the first – or had the confidence to phone up and clear the air before committing to the bus journey. You can probably see why I’ve been so schizophrenic lately – I’m being pulled around so badly it’s really starting to leave nasty bruises on my heart and brain.
I’ve been looking into why it’s taken so long to get into work and it’s perhaps because I’ve been stuck in the same rut for so many years. The way I apply for jobs has evolved – I now do a lot more online and fewer by post, simply as that’s the way the employers have been going, for instance – but the basic timbre of my quest is little changed: I still can’t get myself some permanent perch on the ladder, and so am still applying for jobs that the employer would rather fill with a malleable teenager than a decrepit oaf. The economy has played its hand – there are far fewer shops to work in than there were during the glory years, and with high-end jobs also feeling the squeeze, lots of graduates are taking the entry-level jobs which would have used to go to second-rate slobs like me! But you have to wonder what sort of mistakes I’ve made over the years to have branded myself with such a prominently-mounted scarlet letter. I’ve been looking at some of the old posts from my prior blog – in part because I’m looking for a way to novate them over here such that you lot can, should you choose, interrogate my archive – and I really haven’t moved on much since 2006: in one case, an early article included almost word-for-word the same description of my activities during illness as did the previous post here (“medical supplies, noodles, crumpets and soup”) without this repetition having been deliberate: clearly I’m looping round in circles, almost to the point that reposting the old guff almost isn’t worth it!
Maybe, though, if we’re invoking last month’s post, that rut is why a certain lady, who I’ve agreed not to mention by name any longer, has eased me out of her life: on one occasion, whilst sat at home listening to 6 Music and waiting to be called on by any surviving employer, I reread a section of this unnamed person’s recent book ‘Things Get Better’ (the book I can mention, the author I can’t) and noted a segment about what the book called “energy vampires” – people who drag others down by being stuck in their ways and constantly seeking help, to the extent that the helper can’t move on and has to stay held down helping their stubborn chum. Maybe this lady and others recognised I was one of these soul-sapping life-suckers, and decided I was beyond their help; but it was certainly an eye-opener. It’ll take a lot of changes to turn me around and perhaps I need to communicate with someone who is willing and able to help me – should such a person ever reveal themselves to exist – in order to get the assistance I so badly need. I know it’s important to provide help and assistance to those who seek it – I am, when employed, a retail assistant, after all, and I also loved offering hugs to tweet-mates back when I had a Twitter-capable mobile – but I need to be better at being the person who is looking for help. Another thing I noted about the posts from back in the day was that they were shorter – mainly because, prior to 2009, they were written in short bursts there-and-then in the time I could get online, rather than prewritten and ‘edited’ before going up on here as they are now – and I posted more frequently, sometimes flinging up several blogs in the same week – I’d never be able to keep that up now, not with all the other nonsense I have to do: doing one of these big oaty ones a month is almost too much for me (and to an extent, you) these days! But maybe from 2013 I’ll have a more balanced blogging schedule here – less weighty and more regularised posts, should my schedule allow, in a hotter and fresher sequence which would also allow you the reader to get back to the hits faster. And if you know how to import backdated MySpace posts to WordPress without massive amounts of faffing about, let me know: if push comes to worst, I’ll just upload the RTFs and let you read back through my needless old guff at your leisure.
One thing I do know from looking at the old posts – and the more recent ones already slapped up here over the last couple years – is that I need positives in my life. Maybe some happy news would cheer me up: as you’ll know from prior posts here, my chances of fatherhood are thankfully slim, even in the offchance I can hunt out a lady dippy enough to agree to be my partner. However, other people can undergo the glittering moments of joy (and agonising hours of pain) that parenthood brings, even if they are already pop stars. Marvin from JLS and Rochelle from the Saturdays (the couple previously named here as “the celeb couple it’s OK to like even though one of them’s in JLS”, if you recall) have, in the last few months, not only tied the knot (and got married, too) but also have just announced that one of them (Rochelle, probably) is pregnant with what I assume is a baby. Whilst my opinions on children are not 100% pleasant (and even an idiot like me was a baby once), I assume this is good news – the couple have shown that they are mature and ready to start a stable family, whilst also continuing to attend to their chart pop careers. I wish Mr and the now Mrs Humes (yes, Humes, really) the best with their offspring: I know there can be problems in pregnancy (and, from my mother’s point of view, for 30 years afterward) and that some children can have a difficult condition or life situation (it’s why we need organisations like the thankfully-Savile-untainted Children In Need), but with loving, caring parents any problem can, one hopes, be overcome; of course, there’s every chance that the as-yet-unborn kid will be happy and healthy and require little aid, though it’s not known yet whether the tot will follow mummy and daddy into the Big Top 40. Though as Beyonce and Jay-Z put Blue Ivy on a record at the earliest opportunity, anything could happen yet! What I’m less happy about is the Rochelle-baby is a sign that I’m getting old – I must be knocking on a bit if I’m now being lapped by the Saturdays! Two of the five of the girls are now married, of which one (Irish redhead and rugby – Ben Foden, if you need – wife Una) already now has a kid and the other (Rochelle, keep up) has the aforementioned bun in her oven.
Thankfully, currently blonde and rather pretty Saturdays one-fifth Mollie is not, as I can ascertain, currently married, though that quite posh lady – she’s been linked by the tabs to the occasionally-naked Prince Harry in the past – may well be some way out of my league! Guess I’ll have to settle for, say, the similarly perky and platinum-haired Perrie from Little Mix instead! Which wouldn’t be too shabby, to be fair, as Perrie is pretty – all of LM are, as it goes, with the genuinely-cute Jade frequently having purple hues in amongst her hair, to the extent her doll in the new ‘Mix toy range has solidly mauve locks (and for this reason alone I would buy that figurine, were it not for the fact I’d have to hang around in The Entertainer like a breathless, dirty leper to do so); Jesy, despite what the crowing, cackling women’s pressrags and grotty celeb-websites tend to say, actually has a perfectly fine figure; and Leigh-Anne, from the fragments of performance footage I’ve seen, appears to have fearsome singing and dancing chops; should Little Mix fizzle out (and they may not – the Rolling Stones, for instance, are still clacking along 50 years after formation) it appears Ms Pinnock (and yes, I had to look that up) has the street skills which would continue to pay the majority of the bills. I should point out that I am, as you would already be aware, more into 6 Music than ‘Mix music, and have spent recent months listening to the likes of Haim, Band of Horses, Everything Everything and Two Door Cinema Club rather than LM (I’d have to deliberately choose to download, say, Wings or DNA by the end of December if I were to wish to wedge the Mix into my still-might-happen ‘best of 2012’ chart), but I can appreciate the beauty of a naturally attractive lady regardless of what genre of music she’s performing. Indeed, no matter what colour hair she has or whether she’s in a pop group, I’d love to be able to say something nice about a woman, but how do I get a girlfriend if I’m not royalty, a rugby star or one of the remaining unhitched members of Jack-the-Lad Swing? I assume it’s possible, it’s just my natural lack of communication holds me back. Other people have friends, relationships, contacts, someone to talk to and someone to love. I only have lasagne if I can stand to be in the supermarket long enough to reach the tills without smashing myself up. Maybe I’d find this rocky road a little easier to traverse if I had some kind of support, someone kindly and caring that I could call upon to get me in and out of the foodstores before the buses go all haywire, someone who could offer strength and warmth when I feel so fragile and damaged I start beating my own hands up, someone who would offer me somewhere to be and someone to talk to when the remnants of my family or the TC advisors can’t or won’t help with the issue at hand. At very least, I’d like a ruddy hug.
I’ve said many times before that I’ve always been a lone wolf, taking on everything by myself and only accepting help when it’s forced upon me by someone higher up the chain, and I’ve spoken at various lengths about how I struggled to make friends, right back since my schooldays. I didn’t have much of a luck going to bars in my late teens/early twenties, which is why I didn’t do it very much (same as with the lottery – I only ever played it about sixteen times ‘cos the most I’d ever won was a tenner and I assumed that structurally I’d always be down on the deal!). Now it’d look sad, some rotten old thirtysomething trying to shark on the glossy youths who now make up the bar scene. Additionally, many (too many) years of bus travel have left me with an innate fear of others – I’d lean away from those around me so often during my pubic years that I have developed a crick in my spine which today means my head does not sit straight up on my body! There’s always a chance the bus won’t turn up – there are many times that I’ve been promised (by those dirty lies on the print timetable or LED countdown board, or more recently the actually-works-on-my-phone-somehow TfL mobile site) a bus within 10-15 minutes only to have to wait half an hour, an hour, on one occasion nearly two hours, for transit. No apology has ever been given (or technically sought), but one of the things that always gives me an unneeded dose of the fear before a job interview is the worry that shoddy bus service will bollix up my chance of getting the role despite no fault of my own, beyond my unforgivable lack of car ownership. Of course, if the bus does come there’s a pretty damn high chance something will go wrong – there’ll be a crash, or someone (possibly even yours truly) will get mugged or killed – these sort of disasters have happened on a tiny fraction of the tens of thousands of bus journeys I’ve been on, and could well happen again. I’m one of those people who gets off from off of a bus surprised to have retained the same number of limbs he got on with. And that’s if one gets off at the required stop at all, which is only a very slim likelihood – there have been many occasions among history when, either through a fault of the bus, the driver, myself or someone other, I have ended up in the wrong place and had to make alternative arrangements. Sometimes the bus will be busy and I have to get off in the wrong place just to please other passengers who may wish to disembark (or indeed embark). Sometimes there will be some kind of road problem, or technical bus flaw, which necessitates being stranded in the wrong location. Sometimes I’ll cock up and get off in the wrong place, particularly if it’s somewhere I’m less familiar with (my first ever visit to Croydon was a disaster until I accidentally stumbled into Debenhams…) Sometimes I’ll feel have to get off the bus in the wrong place due to the actions of others. One such incident, albeit one which was cute rather than scary, was when a tired little girl travelling with a relative took it upon herself to fall asleep on my arm, presumably mistaking my warm, musty smell for that of a comforting old teddybear. The pretty little lamb was still at rest on my limb when the bus sailed its way to my stop, and not wishing to send a resting tot crashing to the ground in severe pain I chose to simply sit and let the little lady remain in dreamland atop my sleeve. Of course, as it transpired, the kiddy and her guardian were going onward to the terminus, and any warm feeling I’d been able to take from doing my polite service as a travel cot was soon shattered by the colossal barracking I got when I called home from that station to explain my whereabouts to my own mother. Even when the bus actually comes at something approaching the right time, I constantly fear there’s only a 10% chance of reaching the right destination, in the appropriate time where there is a limit; the actual ratio of successfully-completed journeys is probably much higher, however, given I remember the correctly-functioned journeys much less frequently and fervently than the ones which have gone wrong. Maybe the problem arises from my pessimism – it’s almost my religion! I could even write a Pessimist’s Bible, but nobody would read it…
Maybe life would be better if I stopped swallowing the rubbish the modern media seems content to fling our way. Someone who’s had strongly-worded words for those in the position of power in the press is none other than Lord Justice Leveson, whose recent report into the culture and ethics of the media found them severely lacking in either. The judge was particularly clear that much of the press had been reckless, riding roughshod over decency and dignity in the avaricious pursuit of ever more sensational and salacious material with which to challenge the competitive threat posed by new media. The press have always had a duty to report on the doings and deeds of public figures, and long may that remain, but some sectors had become so obsessed with pursuing and in some cases destroying their targets that the reporters would sully journalism itself with the use of black-cloak techniques and a cavalier attitude towards those in their glare. Editors have been allowing their papers to be vile vehicles for attack on those who become enemies of the paper or its proprietor, and the poacher-turned-gamekeeper nature of the Press Complaints Commission meant the industry itself was keen to turn a blind eye to bad behaviour and to ensure complaints and sharp practice were not investigated too thoroughly. Of course, to keep his cronies in the press pit happy, our oily Prime Minister is trying to weasel out of giving any future press overseer real legal teeth, but we do need to ensure the media, whilst free to report and present the news, don’t have the freedom to ruin people’s lives needlessly in the way they have been doing for far too long. The horrible tabloids, crowing rag-mags, and more recently web-based shamehavens such as Digital Spy, have had the run of the yard for too long and it’s time those of us who still have what’s left of a spine took the initiative to yank the chain back. (Despite papers’ protestations at the scope of the probe, Leveson himself has been keen to stay within his mark, for instance by not calling for a ban on Page 3, saying this is an editorial decision for the Sun itself to make, perhaps in discussion with any future regulator, rather than an issue on which his probe could edict.) Of course, little of this announcement is actually news – those of us who have been cynical about the media for as long as I have already well know that the media isn’t really there for our benefit, or even the writers’ own: magazines and newspapers primarily exist to sell adverts, without which there would be little to gain from continuing in publication. Women’s mags constantly badger their readers to look ‘better’ and dress in the latest fashions because that’s what the big cosmetics and clothing companies who run ads in the same titles pay the mags to say. (Indeed, Grazia has just announced plans for a new app with clickthrough advertising and sale of items featured within its pages). That interview with a circuit comic or telly star in the pages of your TV/entertainment mag? It’s to plant their new DVD or book in your mind. Do you think ITV would torture wannabe singers or Helen Flanagan just for the hell of it? No, it’s because doing so brings viewers who may then interact with the commercial businesses that essentially fund the channel’s very existence. (And sometimes the victims are in fact complicit – Helen F’s herself got seminaked calendars to flog, I hear.) But then, you don’t have to be watching, or participating in, ITV to be bullied by the events thereon, as the press will often take what happens onscreen and crow about it, a shrewd move which is beneficial both to the paper and to ITV’s viewership, but also contributes to the general dumbing-down of standards.
One bit of ITV which got a lot of coverage over recent weeks was the exit from the X Factor liveshows of some girl called Ella (I have no idea, I still don’t watch the bloody show even though the media industry clearly wants me to) whilst the apparently-much-derided Rylan and Christopher were voted to continue in the show by viewers, apparently boiling the blood of producers who wanted to make XF more credible in an attempt to reverse the embarrasing decline in viewership the show has suffered in the Barlow/Tulisa era. The Ellascandal (hey, if ‘omnishambles’ is now considered a word, let me have this one) got masses of media traction, even though Ella herself apparently told one website (you can probably guess which one) that her departure felt like a weight had been lifted off her shoulders. Being on XF can, it seems, hurt as much as it helps a singer. I have to hold out hope that the poor girl will be able to build herself some kind of career: I then have to slap myself about the remaining chops and remember that she’s had months of free national telly publicity and she’s likely to be taken to people’s hearts in some manner. I also need to remember it doesn’t matter to me what happens, because X Factor and its applicants aren’t and shouldn’t be important to me: I’ve found more tunes I like from the saved-from-doom 6 Music than from the never-off-the-front-pages ITV songhell. Although I have chuckled at the thought that maybe I could now sue Digital Spy under the Trades Descriptions Act for including XF contestants under the heading ‘Music’… (SNOB KLAXON). Anyway, perhaps the reason people are tuning out of X Fac is because they’ve realised the show is too much of an overblown pressure cooker and if the show was pared back to something simpler, friendlier and less shouty it’d be more bearable. Won’t happen, ‘cos in this media age the advertisers love a show which shouts louder than the competition. And you apparently don’t get much bellowing on Strictly Come Dancing. Dunno if Victoria Pendleton’s exit is a disaster or a just decision as I don’t watch that either, though. I’ve decided that I should instead go back in time and revisit the Saturday nights of my youth, when there was actual entertainment on show. The peerless Challenge has been rerunning Bob’s Full House and 3-2-1 on Saturday nights in recent weeks and I’ve actually been lapping it up – the masterful Monkhouse at the peak of his pun-a-minute powers followed by Dusty Bin’s finest hour blows most of the current celebby noise right out of the park. I wish telly was still like this. Sundays have been good to me too, with the actual episodes of Fawlty Towers (no, same one, Major) butting against ITV’s revival of Surprise Surprise, which surprisingly for 2012 was actually, even with Holly Willoughbosoms (beat that, Celebrity Juice) in charge, fairly true to the spirit of the original – and proved the channel could still make nice shows if they tried. What they’re not so good at it seems is design – yes, I’ve seen the new ITV logo and my first thought on seeing that awkward-looking mass of curly something was, well, not pleasant; ‘owever, I’ll reserve full judgement until I’ve seen how it resolves on screen when it’s introduced from early next year – I don’t want another PhoneShop error (judging something too harshly on one screening) on my recordbook. Which I keep on-shelf next to my already-blotted copybook. Incidentally, if you want to watch Challenge’s better-than-current programming but your Freeview doesn’t go up to 46, you can now as of this month (December) recieve the channel on Freesat 145 if your dish and box happen to swing that particular way.
Of course, X Factor stars are small beef in the media dominance stakes compared to one lady who’s determined to keep herself at the top of the headlines come what may, particularly given she has a new album out. You’ll have seen the recent reports of mayhem on a press-packed plane hired to fly journos around the world on a Boeing in some kind of crazy seven-themed stunt; you’ll have seen the mass debates about her apparently-on-again relationship with punchy Chris Brown; you’ll have noted her recent willingness to strip off at the drop of a photoshoot, and for said near-nudity to be slobbered over constantly by our grubby press; and you’ll have seen what could be the nadir of this commercial Rihanna-mania, a three-hour slot on Chart Show TV devoted entirely to the Bajan lass, pumping out all her videos to the complete exclusion of all other artists – Rihanna is the gas that sucks the oxygen of publicity away from all the other performers in the belljar. Maybe my bristle at this particular wrinkle is because I grew up in an era when radio and TV shows – including the original Saturday-morning ITV Chart Show from which the digital channel was spawned – played a much broader mix of artists: it certainly gave me a musical education which today manifests itself in my CD/vinyl/cassette/MP3 collection containing everything from Oasis to Bananarama to Underworld to Deftones. Nowadays, it’s likely only a matter of weeks before some choad working in the marketing department of a digital TV company asks Island Def Jam for permission to run a 24/7 all-Rihanna channel! I even saw the fecking woman on a T-shirt in River Island, with whom the singer has a tie-up (I assume this is because River Island is referring to itself as ‘RI’ in recent branding, and Rihanna’s nickname is Ri-Ri, although that could just be me reading too much into a typographical coincidence…) It’s certainly been almost impossible to avoid the singer just lately, and though she’s a talented enough performer – and, whilst I find her nudity a little excessive, as I’ve said previously, she is very beautiful and not at all in need of the surgery she was reportedly considering – it too often feels we’re being hard-sold the Rihanna brand, rather than being given a choice. And as a retailer myself (sort of), I know the hard sell rarely really works. However, the Ri-Ri barrage will continue because it is, just now at least, commercially beneficial to do so. Chart Show TV knows her videos have an audience, and it would certainly find better favour with its advertisers for a focus on her tunes than it would for less well known, channel-skip-encouraging music. So we have to live with it. At one point, her near-total media coverage saw her tunes sticking in my head, and on seeing a couple of her early (pre-megastardom) albums going cheap in Woolies (that should tell you how long ago this was) I snapped them up. Indeed, when Zavvi was in its death-grip and selling off anything left on the shelf, I picked up an orphaned copy of the Good Girl Gone Bad bonus DVD in order to upgrade my regular edition of the album to a deluxe copy on the cheap. This was also the period of time when I was listening to N-Dubz, having, as I said previously, followed them from their days of flinging camcorder-recorded videos into Channel U (as it then was), back before all the horrible behaviour which got them onto the front of the papers, onto Saturday night telly and ultimately into solo careers. Needless to say, I’ve swung back the other way since then, but rereading my old posts brought those days flooding back – I even described grotty X Factor chav Tulisa as ‘talented and attractive’ once! No, really! You’ll see it yourself if and when I manage to get the old posts up here somehow… This was around the time that the likes of Tulisa and gorgeous Australian-Italian solo vocalist Gabriella Cilmi were being fetched up onto the pages of FHM, by a magazine which I now recognise was trying to seduce young, pubescent pop-fans to purchase the rag, which was desperate for young blood to lock onto in order to stay alive amid declining sales. Of course, as I pointed out in one of the old posts, this blew up in FHM’s papery face when Cilmi publically derided the laddy publication for digitally-altering her body in the shots (I’ll say again what I said back then – Cilmi has a stunning figure that in honesty needs no morphing, electronic or otherwise). Another example of press recklessness and needlessness right there, a good couple years before Leveson picked up his eyeglasses.
But then, men’s magazines have a habit of being needless and reckless, yet they still for the most part remain in publication – and oddly, the ones which have disappeared (Maxim, Arena) have been from the glossy upper-end of the market rather than the mucky lower rung. Sometimes, though, a men’s mag can actually surprise you: Loaded have just launched a TV channel (well, part of one – it shares channel 200 on the Skyguide with conspiracy-nut showcase Controversial TV, with the Loaded-branded block running from 9pm to 1am and again 1am to 5am nightly.) Yes, some of the channel’s output is about ‘nawty’ boys (they’re running a season of Danny Dyer films on Saturdays, for instance, despite the fact I still haven’t forgiven him for the Zoo ‘cut your girlfriend’s face’ incident) and slutty ‘glamour’ girls, but they also have gadget reviews, original comedy (that’s more than ITV have these days), and rather a lot of music content – and not just from mainstream artists, either: I tuned into a music showcase series Dial M and, although blighted by the typical not-quite-BBC production values of lowbudget mini-channel and studenty output, it was actually pretty tight – showcasing and featuring less-well-known bands in performance and video, on this occasion including a new indie rock outfit from the States and a folky lady-duo who, how can I put this delicately, despite their talent aren’t the sort of ladies you’d usually see in a bra-and-knickers Loaded photomontage; the channel also has regular music video slots which, from the blocks I’ve seen, tend again to focus on less-mainstream acts in a similar manner to the previously-mentioned-on-here (and somehow still going despite this) Tuune slot on Propeller, albeit with a slight dancey skew. So it’s actually enjoyable output, at least in part, despite its association with a brand which has done so much damage over the years. OK, so it’s not as good as having a proper new-music channel, and one would have to tune out of certain content fairly quickly to avoid being labelled a mucky pup, but it’s good to see a channel which doesn’t just see a music slot as an excuse to bung a massive big marathon of Rihanna videos out on repeat. Give it time, though, eh?
The increasing homogenisation of the media means I’m watching far less telly than I once did, but technology’s played its hand too; my bedroom telly (a crackly analogue-era CRT which can only recieve Freeview, via an attached box, and so lacks access to Loaded TV), which as reported previously was a bit wobbly, has decided to stop carrying a picture altogether. (Oddly, sound still comes in clear as a bell, so I still have access to Q Radio, which is nice.) Add that to the pile of tech I need to replace, then… Maybe in the post-Christmas sales I’ll go down to the retail park and see if there’s any shops that sell tellies left. I recognise that sounds a bit facetious given thousands of my fellow shopdrones are about to be parachuted onto the dole queue thaks to Comet’s crashlanding (and, like when Woolies bit the big one, that should have the effect of shoving my own employment back a few months…) but one galling thing about seeing “You know where to come” being gutted of its assets is that, just a few days before its collapse was announced, I’d applied for a Christmas job there, using a website which had been set up for the purpose! Said employment page is, of course, now offline. The news was quite a jar, though – we’ve gone back to the bad old days when shops would rather close down than hire me! I do need to get work soon, though, to replace the rancid old crap that I currently rely on to go about my daily life: and I’ll need to get to some form of electrical-appliance shop given I recently nearly burned my house down trying to clean it (the motor on the portable vacuum cleaner had burned out, resulting in no suction, a distinct crackling/burning sound from within the device, and a billow of smoke from within its innards. Needless to say, I soon surmised the best course of action was switching it off and not attempting a suck-job on the floor, as it were…) Maybe I should consider the technical failure of the vacuum, the telly, my DVD player, my DS, my phone and to an extent my body as a sign that I need to relaunch my life, and rather than replace one, all or (more likely on current budgets) none of the affected items, I should instead look to relaunch myself more fully, like a defunct and decaying shop or hotel being rebuilt and relaunched in a new format and potentially under a new name. It’s clear employers have no interest in me under my current identity, appearance and attitude – maybe I should change one or (preferably) all of these to try and gain a more gainful life? Nobody, aside from a few giddy perverts, would buy Rice Krispies if they were called Piddle Willy-Poos, for instance, and sold in a box made of sandpaper and adders, and perhaps my current brand identity is offputting to employers who would much rather hire someone with a simpler face and shorter name than those which I currently have. Of course, there’s so much of a paper trail under my own identity, the one you’re watching now, that any rebooted badge would come with no qualifications or experience, all of which have been amassed under my potentially-outgoing title, so here it would pretty much literally be right back to square one.
As you’ll be aware if you keep an eye on the news of the nation and the world, though, my various electronic, employability and medical problems mean squat compared to what some are going through. (NEWS SECTION KLAXON). Yet again our status as a damp little island has betrayed us with lives yet again wrecked by onrushing water – yes, the demon of flood has reared its head again, homes and businesses across many parts of Wales and of northern and western England left submerged and damaged; a row of houses in Whitby was left unstable and in need of demolition (only one of which was occupied on a regular basis, thankfully, but by a woman who appeared on the TV news clearly stunned at being given just minutes to say goodbye to many years of memories before her home and belongings were meticulously shredded), whilst one woman in St. Asaph, a tiny Welsh city which saw hundreds of homes drenched, even lost her life to the waves. Clearly, water is not only the giver of life, but the taker of it as well – it is more powerful than even the most wealthy human is or will ever be, as sea-deceased news-proprietor Robert Maxwell would probably corroborate. I’m still not sure whether to call this watery chaos some sort of punishment for our society’s vile and sinful behaviour, or just some weatherfront with ideas above its station; however, nothing can ever really stop the floods from taking their increasingly-frequent pound of flesh. Elsewhere, I can say and do little about the confusion, conflict and warfare out in the Middle East – I have no independent power or control over the situation, and simply have to sit by and let these things – which often involve death and destruction on a massive scale – happen, knowing I could do nothing to stop them. Young people have, as is often the case, been at the brunt of the sword this last few months: a massive schoolbus-train crash in Egypt claimed many young lives, whilst a teenage girl was viciously punched to the ground and left unconcious in an East London street, requiring surgery to facial and jaw injuries. What sort of monster would enact this viciousness? And again the roads have taken their toll, and I don’t mean coins in the booth – motorway carnage here in the UK continues to kill needlessly, and a tunnel cave-in over in Japan also ended lives. Of course, sometimes the law is an ass – two women who were raped in Barbados have waived their right to anonymity to state that the man standing trial for the crime is not the one who attacked them; however, despite this apparent miscarriage of justice, local police remain keen to pin the charges – it’s not clear why, maybe they’ve got a prior vendetta against the accused to resolve and can’t get any other accusations to stick? – but while this is going on the actual attacker is free to continue working his evil on the streets of Rihanna’s home island. As someone who is keen to promote respect for all women – yes, even Rihanna – that’s not something I can stand for.
There is some positive development closer to my homeland, however, as new schemes which could improve my corner of the country begin to bear fruit. The reinvention of Woolwich continues apace with the opening, after a major building campaign, of a massive enormous Tesco at the Woolwich Arsenal end of town, and whatever your opinion of that particular retailer it’s good to see a major company committing significant investment to the area, and Tesco’s presence could well encourage retail footfall that could well bring other firms to the wider zone. It’s also good to see a new foodstore at that end of town after the Somerfield previously sited on Woolwich New Road shut, replaced by a Wilkinson store, leaving Woolwich with only the mid-size Sainsburys at t’other end of town (Calderwood Street, if you need) and the discounter Lidl, which replaced Safeway at the riverside end of the town centre (Macbean Street, for completeness) several years ago, prior to Safeway being swallowed by Morrisons. Tesco’s site and its surroundings, incidentally, are not the only building work ongoing in greater Woolwich: Crossrail works are going on at the Riverside, to bring the new pan-London train link to the South East en route to its Abbey Wood terminus, whilst works at the Woolwich Triangle (the area bounded by Hare Street and the far end of Powis Street) continue, works which will include the bringing back into use (reports suggest as a hotel) of the former Co-op department store site which once anchored that part of town, and of the prominent corner unit which housed Burton and Dorothy Perkins before they moved to their current location a few years back. Many of the stores on this side of Hare Street, some long vacant, have been boarded up ahead of a wider revamp, and it’ll be interesting to see what arrives here, should I survive long enough to see the completion of the works: there’s certainly more that can be done with this area of the town given the stores generating custom on the opposite side of the Hare (Boots, Peacocks and Primark among them) and the fact the road is a major link between the town centre and riverside (providing access to the leisure centre, for instance, and bus stops). One change in Woolwich I’m less happy to report is that someone at Designer Kidz clearly saw my last blog, in which I praised their Our Price-reminiscent red fascia signage – they have subsequently exchanged this for a silver-coloured one. It’s just not reigniting my memory bank in quite the same manner! Though now, those who remember No. 27’s long post-OP stint as the silver-signed Bay Trading (before that retailer’s collapse left the store vacant for DK) have access to the pang. And clearly, if they’re investing in freshening up the appearance of their store, there’s a keenness within the childrenswear retailer to continue to build on its success, which is nice to see these days.
One thing I might struggle to get in Woolwich is a new telly – the town’s Dixons/Currys.digital closed years ago (now the site of Noir Menswear, if you’re keeping score of the stores) though Argos – having been one of the more heavily-raided stores in last year’s looting – is still in place, and, as I’ve posted before, I have bought some electronics in the area beforehand – my now-fried purple DVD player came to me a few years back from Powis Street’s outlet of that well-known purveyor of digital technology, Superdrug, after a high-speed dash through the firm’s stores around the area to see if any had the advertised purple player in stock. Another town in the area with a Superdrug among its retail stores (but which had no purple DVD players when I visited) could look on the current and recent developments in Woolwich – in particular the opening of a huge new Tesco and the revival of a long-empty Co-op site – with some interest; Dartford, ancestral home of the fifty-years-strong Rolling Stones, has plans for a major new Tesco development (much of Lowfield Street has been boarded off for some time awaiting demolition ahead of the long-gestating construction: the plans had hit a snag when Dartford Council revealed they wanted to plonk a road through the town’s park, which residents and even Tesco themselves didn’t think necessary) and has a huge former Co-op department store/supermarket site taking up much of Spital Street and currently rusting away doing nothing of much use. (They could of course just shoehorn a Tesco into the old Co-op, but that’s far too simple a solution for today’s brash young architects and planners…) In Dartford’s case, competition from the likes of Bluewater has changed the retail demographic of the town, with the departure of younger-skewing brands such as Topshop from the centre. However, as the Woolwich work shows, there is potential for major development which could revitalise the area and bring trade back. Dartford hasn’t been helped by much of the retail investment in recent years being undertaken at the edge-of-town Prospect Place rather than in the town centre, but if the town harnesses its potential there could be scope to shift into a new gear, and as well as the aforementioned sites there’s plenty of other scope (the former Courts site, for instance, between the Priory centre and the bingo hall, was demolished when Courts moved to Prospect Place then later collapsed; we’re still yet to see what if anything will take over this prominent slot.) Value retailers are on the rise too: 99p Stores has further expanded its Priory store into vacant neighbouring units, and Poundland has relit the former Peacocks site in the same mall. Further change could come – reshuffling remaining retailers into available vacant slots could free up larger sectors for a more comprehensive rebuild programme, for instance…
And given I’ve praised Woolwich in the past for being the home of my first-ever single purchase (the mentioned-many-times-now Supermarket Sweep tie-in bought from what is now Designer Kidz), it’s only fair I give Dartford mad props for its place in my recorded music and videofilm collections; the area was once home to quite a fair few music and entertainment stores, keeping its Our Price – later V.Shop, Virgin Xpress and then finally Zavvi – right up until the Zavvi network’s demise, and also boasting various other sound (and vision) outlets at various points, including proper independent music store Challenger & Hicks, which contributed hugely to the early development of my CD stack and which, when it closed, was taken up by the army-surplus store previously located next door; there was Tracks, which took up the slot in the Priory Centre vacated by the demise of Playhouse/Our Price Video and which today forms part of the first phase of the recently-further-expanded 99p Stores; and then there was Slam Entertainment, initially out in what is now Cash Converters and later in the Priory, from whom I secured several notable buys: it was where I bought my first-ever DVDs (nothin’ special, just a couple of cheap ones to get my then-new DVD player – not the purple one, the one before that – up and running) and it was also where my then-current obsession to catch sight of anything connected to the awesome Clueless turned up an unexpected find: in a big brantub of assorted, unorganised discount VHS videos, I spotted the corner of a case with the words ‘Clueless star…’ sticking out; based on these two words alone I grabbed this and added it to my shortstack of cheapo purchases. It wasn’t until long after I’d left the shop that I bothered to look at anything else written on the sleeve; it turns out the full phrase was ‘Clueless star reveals all!’, the star in question was Stacey Dash, famously already touching her thirties when she landed the role of teenage Dionne in Clueless, and the film in the box was in fact erotic thriller Illegal In Blue, made before Clueless but repackaged with its top-of-the-box flash after Dash broke out to fame. And whilst I pride myself on being quite broadminded, I was still in my teens and open to having my eyes widened; and Stacey’s far-raunchier-than-Dionne role here was quite a departure from what I’d previously known. At this point I could say something sweet and positive about just how nice her figure looked when she unexpectedly (to me) bared up, but I don’t want to sound like a perverse maniac; however, given the actress was later invited to pose for actual real Playboy when she was beyond 40, you can probably work out yourself just how luscious her appearance is. As for the once-beautiful Dartford, however, all these abovementioned stores, and for that matter a lovely local secondhand bookstore I used to frequent to take advantage of its wide range and low prices, are now long gone; even WH Smith no longer has a music and video department. All that’s left for music and DVD fans in the town is Asda Living’s chart-heavy selection on, yes, Prospect Place and the handful of second-hand releases being handed down to the town’s charity shops. Although at least here the income’s going to a good cause, which is comforting in these troubled times. And Dartford’s Gamestation store, unlike that in Woolwich, survived the administration of GAME Group, so that’s a win, and both towns now have mint-fresh CEX stores, so we’ll still be able to buy low-price pre-owned videogames, though I’ll hold off on doing this until I can afford to replace the broken DS to have something to play them on…
Proper music shopping, however, is unlikely to come back to Dartford – or for that matter Woolwich – now the wounded HMV, which has been scaling back rather than expanding, is the only specialist in the market. But in the wider sphere, the recent, ongoing and proposed changes in these towns mean the future may hold better tides for these town centres. And maybe a rebuilding of the more personal kind is what I need in my life, to reposition and rebuild myself from the dowdy and rotten station I find myself in just right now. I don’t mean I’ll have to have my chest hollowed out and replaced with a Tesco, though that’d make buying food a bit easier: I mean rebuilding my soul and spirit. Woolwich remained resilient and upbeat in the face of the damage it suffered in 2011’s riots; Dartford has remained sturdy despite the heavy-hitting Bluewater having been plonked on its doorstep over a decade ago. Like these fine towns, I need to be stronger and bolder, move forward with more confidence, retain even just a sliver of hope for the future, and hopefully over time I can clear out the cobwebby, rusting, underused nooks and byways of my brain and body, in order to give myself a fresher, more modern look and outlook whilst retaining the recognizable basic structure of my identity. And, like Woolwich’s glittering (well, a bit) new Tesco, what emerges from the dust may prove to be bigger and more useful than anyone could have imagined beforehand. There are, it would seem, some positive things about me – maybe through all the bile and fog in this blog you’ll have been able to pick them out, but they appear to include my willingness to take on new jobs and skills, my respect for women (well, most women, sorry Tulisa!) and my ability to seek out an unexpected bargain in an unlikely location, be it a reduced-price scrap of clothing, or a rarely-spotted, previously-enjoyed-by-others CD, book, film or game. (Remember that time Tourniquet by Headswim turned up unexpectedly in Orpington? I do…) Yeah, it’s not much of a skillset, but it’s something to build on. And who knows, maybe if I improve myself other people will be inspired to follow suit! I’ll never write a Things Get Better-style selfhelp book, but as one of my old posts said, maybe I can use my blog as a record of my journey towards self-improvement, and a reader, should I have any, could be inspired to make their own change – a longshot but I guess possible. There’s not, in the four-and-a-half years since I started the old blog, been a lot of improvement in my life to report thus far – that’s partly why I managed to go the whole of 2008 without blogging at all – but maybe if I start turning the tanker around now, I’ll finally have something to show you all in the future, rather than simply rooting around in the past to show how little life has actually changed.
Before I cut away the slipmat and send this dub plate spinning out into the discotheque, a quick word about my Winterval (late December and into January) blogging plans, or lack of. Over the festive period you may (or may not, depending on whether I have the time, energy, computer access and inclination to do them) see one or more of my festive traditions go up on here. Well, they’re traditions in that I did one or more of them in each of the years I’ve actually been blogging. You may, should I care to fire one out in the dying weeks of the year, see some kind of ‘review of 2012’-style post, which is likely to be little more than a best-of featurette culled out of the ponk I’ve posted for you thus far this year. You may get a quiz of some kind, as per those which turned up on the old blog when I felt like writing one, should the urge to game raise itself within the time allowable. You might well get a ‘favourite tunes of the year’ post, though as it’s me doing it expect all sorts of music (and some that aren’t) to make their way onto the count-up. And I feel like doing another one of those “things people have put into search engines” posts, a bit like ‘Slattern on t’internet’ redux, once enough determined souls have risked clicking on the link that their search provider gives them. Normal, or in my case abnormal, service should then be resumed sometime around early 2013 – though as I say, I may flick to a shorter-post format, if only because this has taken me sodding hours to write. I need my sleep! So I shall: stay tuned for some, none or all of the above-mentioned festive filler, and until that arrives have a peaceful and caring tomorrow. Taylor Swift is pretty.
“Ruthie, kick me away from this nightmare!” (Goodbye!)
Dom
OriginalPurple 