Roman Holiday part three: Final Roundup.

Right, I'm going to finish this if it kills me. I'm going to quickly round up the rest of my holiday in Rome, because I've taken far too long to actually get round to doing it properly, and I'm sure you lot are fed up of reading about it by now. It's like when someone offers you their holiday snaps to look at, and you take them, interested, only to find that interest totally evaporated by the time you get to the fifth photograph. (I'm reminded of that quote from Black Books: 'All holiday photos are of people who didn't realise they were that fat, squinting!')

So anyway, I'll go through what we looked at, as quickly and as (hopefully) humorously as possible:


Trevi Fountain



You can tell this was built in a time before the tourist was invented. The fountain, which is huge, is in a really small square. Because of this, you end up shoulder-to-shoulder with other tourists, beggars, pickpockets and tat peddlers, and there's loads of them.

The beggars are odd. In most other places, they invade your personal space and ask you for money. Sometimes they tell you their story. Sometimes they stumble over, pissed up, and swear at you until you give them a couple of quid to go away. Maybe that's just Birmingham beggars. Not so much in Rome, as most of the beggars I saw tend to lie prostate on the floor, as if praying, with a tin can in front of them in which you're supposed to put any spare euros you might have.

We didn't even get to chuck any coins in the fountain either, as is the tradition, because it was so bloody crowded there, but I did get shat on by a pigeon, so it's swings and roundabouts.

It is a bloody impressive thing, though. An awesome piece of sculpture. We didn't see Anita Ekberg dancing in it though, but that's probably a good thing these days as she's nearly eighty, bless her.


Pantheon

This place was originally a temple for all the Roman gods, built by Agrippa, but it burned down and was rebuilt by Hadrian. In the sixth century, it was given to Pope Boniface IV who converted it into a Christian church, and it's also the site of Raphael's coffin. It was the biggest dome ever built before the invention of reinforced concrete, and at the top of the dome is a big circular hole, called the Oculus.

This place is amazing. You walk in, and you notice how much cooler it is in there, you're no longer baking hot. As I mentioned, Raphael is interred there, and you can see his coffin through a glass window. I don't know where the rest of the ninja turtles are buried, though. It is an amazing piece of architecture, especially when you consider it was built in the early second century.

Generally, though, all this religion stuff leaves me cold. I can appreciate the beauty of the buildings, but they won't convert me to God-bothering. What pissed me off about this place was when I heard it used to be covered in marble, but them pesky Catholics took it to build St. Peter's with. By this point on the holiday, I'd heard this a few times at different ancient Roman buildings (the Forum and the Colosseum, amongst others) mainly because I'd have liked to see it in all its original splendour. But then again, how many ancient buildings can you see in their original form, anyway?
Apparently, the best time to see this place is when it's raining, as seeing the rain come in through the oculus is supposed to be amazing, but there was no chance of that at the time we went.

Castel Sant'Angelo

The day we went here was my birthday. We tried at first to get into St. Peter's Basilica, but there was some hold-up and we were stuck in a queue that was going nowhere for the best part of an hour, baking in the ferocious sun, until we thought 'fuck this' and left to get a beer and something to eat, but not far from the Vatican is this castle, and I loved this place. My glamorous other half wasn't so keen, though.

It was originally Hadrian's mausoleum, but it was later fortified and turned into a castle. It's a big, round building, with lots of spiral staircases. The main courtyard has a sculpture of St. Michael by Raphael in it (left) , and a lot of the other courtyards have cannons and other military ephemera in there. Also in there was a mini art gallery, which, whilst we were there, had a collection of the creepiest paintings I've ever seen. You know, kinda like Heironymous Bosch, but shit. Also in there was a museum of old military uniforms and swords and pistols and stuff (luckily, no Mussolini-era fascist togs; that would've given out the wrong message), I love looking at stuff like that, as I'm fascinated by wars. Wouldn't like to be in one, however. As you go up the castle, you get great views of Rome, and the view from the very top of the place is supposed to be amazing, but I didn't get to see it as my girlfriend got an attack of vertigo, so we had to get lower down fairly sharpish. I did get to see the top of the castle when we went to see Angels And Demons with Heather's parents, as the castle featured fairly prominently in the movie. Luckily, there weren't any antimatter bombs there when we were there, or any of the other far-fetched shite from that ridiculous movie. I mean, a bloody parachuting priest jumping out of an antimatter-induced exploding helicopter. What a load of old bollocks. Still more believable than Ewan McGregor's Oirish accent, though.

Basilica di San Pietro


Or St. Peter's, to you and me. Like I've said, I'm not religious at all, but this place is impressive. The Piazza outside, with all the columns and the statues of the saints and the obelisk is an amazing spectacle.

We went inside and it was heaving. A big chunk of the basilica was cordoned off. Marching through it was lots of Germans in lederhosen and other traditional dress blowing trombones and tubas and playing various musical instruments and waving the German tricolour flag about with lots of other banners all with very long words and lots of umlauts. I thought it might be a world record attempt for the biggest oompah-oompah band, because it went on for ages, but then I thought that was a stupid idea, as St. Peter's isn't really the place for that kind of thing. But then, it also seems odd that Germany, probably the most Protestant country in the world, had a delegation marching through the Vatican. Maybe I wonder about these things too much. Anyway, because of this event, a lot of the basilica was off-limits, but a lot of what I did see was beautiful. Like Michaelangelo's Pieta, for example. It's behind glass, so you can't look at it properly, but it is a beautiful sculpture, and apparently, it's the only work of his that he signed, and that was only because people refused to believe that an artist that young could achieve such a masterpiece. I still had a cob on with the Catholic church for nicking all that marble, though.

All around St. Pete's are loads of monuments to different saints and prominent churchmen and martyrs and suchlike. I got into a little bit of trouble when I asked my girlfriend 'where's the monument for all the buggered schoolboys?' she told me this wasn't the time or place for such crude humour. I argued that all those poor boys who martyred their bumholes for the Catholic church should get some kind of recognition, especially since the current Pope has done his best to sweep all reports of abuse under the carpet. But I got that look that means 'shut up' and I stayed quiet until I saw an american lad walking around with a T-shirt on that said 'I AM AN ATHEIST' on it in big letters. I want one of those. I thought I was being a bit cool wearing a Nine Inch Nails T-shirt (seeing as the band is named after the things they stuck Jesus to the cross with) but that shirt was ace. Anyway, after having a good mooch, we decided not to go further into the Vatican, as it would've cost us something like ninety quid to go and have a look around, and as it was near the end of our holiday, we didn't have much money to spend. It's a shame, I would have liked to have seen the Sistine chapel and the crypt and all the other stuff, but it wasn't to be. Maybe next time.

What was weird was all the stalls just outside. There tends to be more stuff for sale with the last Pope, John Paul II, on than there is with the new one. I wanted to get my kids the lollipops they were selling. You should've seen them, they were brilliant. They had lollipops with photos of both John Paul II and Benedict XVI on them. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to lick a dead Pope's face, then this is how you find out. I was talked out of buying my kids the lollies by my girlfriend, who said they were in bad taste, and at seven euros each, they were expensive. After I got back and I told my daughters about it, they told me they would've loved the lollies, as they've inherited my sick sense of humour. Maybe next time.

Villa Borghese/Bioparco

Bioparco is a zoo. It's inside the Villa Borghese park, which is a lovely park, a little oasis of calm in the chaos that is the city of Rome. It has little paths in it all named after the world's famous authors, and these paths have statues of the titular authors by the side of them. It's so big you can hire pushbikes or segways, or them mad tandem things with roofs on that they had in The Prisoner to get around it in. (At one point, when we'd stopped for a breather, we saw a dwarf hunchback get off one of these tandems to have a look at Victor Hugo's statue. I thought it was strange, anyway.) We went to the Villa Borghese to have a look at the Museo e Galleria Borghese, which is an art gallery housed in a 17th-century villa, but when we got there, we found out that you had to book tickets in advance, and we hadn't, so that was the end of that. Just down the road from the museum was the Bioparco, so we decided to go in. I wish we hadn't. It was extremely busy, with seemingly thousands of children screaming in it, and because it was so hot, all the animals were either hiding or just lying there, asleep. Heather was particularly disappointed by the so-called 'Valley Of The Bears', which should have been renamed 'A Ditch With One Comatose Bear In It'. The best bit, however was the seals. Not because of the animals, as they were mostly just clinging to the bottom of their pools because it was so hot and coming up for a breath or two every five minutes or so. It was because the Italian for seal is 'foca' and that sounds rude in English. It is funny, though, seeing an Italian dad pointing out the seals to his kids and shouting 'fucker'. It livened up a horrible afternoon, anyway.

Trastevere

This place was supposed to be all bohemian and a cool place to hang out. It wasn't. It was a shithole.

Piazza di Spagna

We didn't really see the Spanish steps. They were there, and so were we, but every available step was occupied by a sitting tourist. I couldn't really see what the fuss was about. We did however, buy some tacky gifts from there, for a laugh. I bought my brothers some penis-shaped pasta and we bought Heather's Mom and Dad some tastefully rude kitchen aprons. Oh, and I was coerced into buying a rose for my girlfriend by a street peddler.

That's pretty much it. I could tell you about some of the restaurants we went to and all that shit, but I can't be arsed. I'm fed up of typing about Italy now. I'd love to go there again one day, but I've had enough of writing about it! I'll soon get back to writing about bodily functions, comics, football and all the usual shite soon.

Memorabilia.

Last weekend, our good friends Jamie and Theresa travelled up from Southend-On-Sea to come and stay at our home here in The People's Republic Of The West Midlands. (If you read my blog regularly, you'll know Jamie, as he's the only one who leaves me any comments!)

It was Jamie's birthday on the Saturday (and might I say, he doesn't look bad for fifty! Only kidding, Jamie!), and after he opened his cards and presents, and still feeling the effects of the alcohol and Moroccan cuisine from the night before, Jamie and I headed out to the National Exhibition Centre for the Memorabilia show. His other half decided her time would be better spent mooching around Brum's shops, whilst my other half was at the theatre watching His Dark Materials with my eldest daughter.

We went to the NEC by train from the lovely, awe-inspiring New St. station, mostly because it's probably the quickest way of getting there, as it's only one stop, and the fact that parking at the NEC would cost at least eight quid. The problem with going to the NEC by train is that after you get off at Birmingham International, you think you're nearly there, but you're not. You're in a building that says it's the NEC, but it's a bloody long walk to the exhibition halls. You go up escalators, down escalators, down endless corridors, along several moving walkways until, about a week later (okay, I'm exaggerating slightly) you get to the exhibition halls. But that's not the end. The Memorabilia show was in hall 12, we were outside hall one, so we walk for another three days (I exaggerate again) until we get to our destination. If we weren't sure if it was the right place, the shitloads of blokes dressed up as stormtroopers and a couple of Jedi outside confirmed that this was indeed the Memorabilia show.

After being allowed to jump the queue because we were paying for our tickets with cash (Ten quid! Each! Bloody Nora!) we went into what was frankly a massive room stuffed to the gills with all sorts of cool stuff. One of the first things we saw was a toy stall, selling lots of stuff similar to the things I had as a kid for shocking amounts of money. All of it was still boxed, and you weren't allowed to pick any of it up. I might've mentioned before that I collect models of the Batmobile (I know, it's a sickness, but they make the windowsill in my sketching room look a lot cooler) and I saw a Batmobile I'd quite like. It was from the 70s, made by the Mego company for their 7" action figures of Batman and Robin (not included) to sit in. We asked how much it was, because none of the items had prices on them. Probably because a little sticky price tag might damage the precious packaging. Anyway, the stallholder gets out a little folder that had all the prices in it, looks it up and then tells us that the batmobile would cost me £195. That was about £190 over my limit, so we thanked him and moved along.

We also saw, from the side looking in, Robert Vaughn doing a Q&A session, and he's a lot smaller than I thought he would be. Quite old, too. It's amazing, though, how he's kept his hair colour even though he's well into his seventies. More on him later.

One of the things that bugs me about this kind of event (comics conventions included), and it's only a recent phenomena, is the amount of cosplayers that turn up. I hate cosplayers. I know they're essentially harmless and they're only having a bit of fun but they do my head in. I reckon they give the rest of us nerds a bad name. People look at them and think 'what a bunch of sad bastards', and think all of us geeks are like that. There was a group of about ten teenage boys all dressed up as Doctor Who. All of them were the David Tennant Doctor, except for one who must have read the email incorrectly and turned up as William Hartnell. A fat, Asian, William Hartnell. Still, at least he was the only one who stood out. I saw all those young lads, with their brown full length coats, brown suits, Converse trainers and their hair all spiked up and I was reminded of the crowd scene from Life Of Brian; "Yes, we're ALL individual!"

There were also quite a few very young teenage girls dressed in not much, including one girl of about fifteen wearing a revealing corset, and this kind of thing brings out the dad in me. I say things like 'I bet her dad doesn't know she's wearing that' and 'there's no way any of my kids are going out looking like that!' even though I know, deep down, that if my girls did want to go out like that, there's not really that much I could do to stop them. There is such a thing as freedom of expression in this country, despite all of my objections!

Also, it's very stupid going to these things dressing up as the thing you love. If you're dressed up as Anakin Skywalker, a Star Wars memorabilia dealer knows he can charge you a bit more because he know's you're a Star Wars nut and you'll pay it. I bet all the dealers with Doctor Who stuff rubbed their hands with glee the moment they saw the ten Tennants approaching them. Only under tens and the Fathers 4 Justice and those people who are paid to walk around these conventions dressed up are allowed to wear superhero or sci-fi costumes (I might make allowances for people press-ganged into going to a fancy dress party. I'm not a big fan of those, either!) the rest of you should stop. Really. Especially the ones that make their own costume out of bits of egg boxes and Lego. Honestly, it's like Paris Fashion Week for the blind and stupid.

Rant over.

The amount of stuff available here was amazing. If spare cash and spare space wasn't a problem I would've come home with shitloads of geeky stuff. Honestly, if you're a nerd like me, you would have had a field day looking at this cool stuff. There was some crappy junk as well, but it was mostly cool. Less cool, however, was the 'celebrities' charging you at least fifteen pounds for an autograph. Some of them are people the non-nerd has heard of (Stephanie Beacham, Robert Vaughn, Richard Briers-who was a bit of a weird choice, I can't really see loads of obsessed cosplaying fans turning up dressed in tweed and kilts asking him to sign their VHS copies of Monarch of The Glen, can you?) but a lot of them were 'third alien on the left' types from Star Wars and I don't think having the autograph from the guy who was 'Yak-Face' is worth fifteen quid, frankly. I'm not really sure whether these are actually who they say they are, anyway, considering that these people spent their moment of fame under shitloads of prosthetics. He could be lying and pretending he was Yak-Face, for all I know, just to get his hands on fifteen quid from a Star Wars freak who really should be old enough to know better.
Don't get me wrong, there were people there I would have liked to get autographs from. There were a few Bond alumni there, for example. There was Richard Kiel, the man mountain who played Jaws, who is absolutely fucking huge- he's probably wider across the shoulders than I am tall. It was sad to see his mobility scooter, though. I also would've liked Guy Hamilton's signature, as he directed Goldfinger, the quintessential 007 movie. (Interesting fact about Guy Hamilton: In the movie The Third Man, that famous shot where you see Harry Lime's shadow running away, that shadow actually belongs to Hamilton- who was Carol Reed's assistant director, because Orson Welles didn't bother showing up for filming that day, because he was a notorious pain in the arse and probably because the only running Welles ever did was away from the salad counter.) The thing is, if you ever happened to bump into these people in the pub, they'd probably give you an autograph for free (although it's unlikely Jaws ever drinks in Moseley, there are a few Yak-faces, though.) and that's the main reason I refuse to pay for it. The other main reason is I don't have that many spare fifteen quids at the moment! I was going to get George Lazenby to sign my picture (see last post) but he wasn't there, so stuff the lot of them.
Saying that, one of us did pay for an autograph, and it wasn't me. Jamie saw the bloke who plays PC Stamp from The Bill walk past us, and had a brainstorm. His dad is a big fan of the show, apparently, so Jamie thought it would be nice if he could get PC Stamp (don't know his real name, and I can't be arsed to Google it, either) to talk to his dad on the phone. Which he did, fair play to him, but the trouble is, he might be a well-known face on British TV, but he doesn't really have a distinctive voice like, for instance, Sean Connery, John Hurt or Michael Caine does. Jamie's dad didn't have a clue who it was that had phoned him up so the first five minutes of that phone call were really awkward. I don't know what was said on the other end, but I can imagine it was along the lines of 'Who the fuck is this?'
Anyway, when Jamie's dad realised who it was, the conversation went a bit more smoothly, but at one point, PC Stamp said to Jamie's dad something along the lines of 'Well, your son is going to buy you a nice signed photo for you' and from that moment on, Jamie felt obliged to buy a signed photo of a bloke from The Bill for fifteen pounds. He didn't really mind, it was a nice gift for his old man, after all, but I think Jamie, being a rabid Star Wars fan, would rather have spent that money on Yak-Face's autograph. I think I upset PC Stamp though, he asked if I'd got everything I'd came for, if I was enjoying it, the usual smalltalk, then for some reason, he sort of accused me of being a cosplayer. Probably on the basis that I was wearing a Silver Surfer T-shirt. Not only did he accuse me of being one of the things I hate most in the world, he suggested that I probably dress up as a superhero when I'm having sex with my girlfriend. I know he was only trying to be blokey and have a joke, but fucking hell, that's a bit much isn't it? I replied by asking him whether they let him keep his uniform (for sexual purposes) when he left The Bill.
"I haven't left, actually, but thanks for paying attention."
And that was the end of that conversation. Next to him was the German guy from Raiders Of The Lost Ark (another favourite movie of mine, but surely it's a favourite movie of everyone's.)whose face melted at the end, and I wanted to ask him about his appearance in the Ferrero Rocher 'Ambassador, you are spoiling us' advert, but I didn't have the courage so we went away and watched some wrestling instead.
Well, I say wrestling. It was a bit like wrestling. There was a ring, a referee and wrestlers, but it was all a bit, well, rubbish. For some reason, the wrestlers kept trying to get the crowd to clap along, but they didn't seem to realise that us Brummies don't really do audience participation. We have the attitude of 'I paid ten quid of my hard-earned cash to get in here, and you want me
to do your job for you? You entertain me! I don't ask you to come to my factory and polish my power press, do I?'
So there wasn't much clapping. Anyone who did clap along were either children, idiots or interlopers from beyond the Black Country. It was a bit like like wrestling used to be when I was a nipper- you know, World Of Sport and Kendo Nagasaki and Johnny Two Rivers and fat blokes with a woman's bathing costume on worn back to front, before we got slick, polished American wrestling shows imported to show us how it could be done if we could be bothered to put the effort in. To be fair, they were going for the American style of wrestling, the 'good guy' wrestlers had washboard stomachs and muscles (something the World Of Sport bunch couldn't be arsed with, they just bounced off ropes and belly-barged into someone with their beer guts) but the 'bad guy' was a bit weedy-looking and the actual bouts were unconvincing. I know wrestling is fixed, but you don't make it obvious. They were stamping on the floor when they 'punched' someone, for God's sake! I wanted one of them to slash his face with a razor, Mickey Rourke-style, that'd be cool, and it would really freak out all the five year olds watching. To be fair to them, though, they did throw themselves around with gusto, and their backs looked all red and sore, so it must hurt, and it's something I'd never do (probably because the sight of me running around in swimming trunks and bright green knee-high boots would turn the Memorabilia Show into the Projectile Vomit-Con 2009) so, my hat goes off to them. If I ever wore one. Which I don't.
At the end of the show, Jamie went up to one of the guys who organises the show and congratulated him on how good it was (Despite all my moaning above, I did have a good time. Moaning's just what I do.) and on the table in front of him was a load of large glossy prints of various people sitting next to Robert Vaughn. They apparently had a scheme where you pay to have your picture taken with the former Man from U.N.C.L.E. and you pick it up at the end, like you do when you get off a rollercoaster at Alton Towers. The weird thing was that the ex-Napoleon Solo (another intersting fact- Ian Fleming came up with that name. Also, my dad was such a big fan of The Man From U.N.C.L.E. that I was nearly given the name Napoleon Trimble. I'm glad he saw sense) had exactly the same facial expression in all of them. They might as well have taken one picture of him and photoshopped him next to all of those other people.
(Actually, I read in the Birmingham Mail the other day, that the next series of Hustle is being filmed up here in Brum, and that Robert Vaughn is looking for an apartment in this very city. Hopefully I'll bump into him and get an autograph and save myself twenty quid!)
And so, after about three hours of looking at cool stuff, and after trying and failing to get our picture taken with a bloke dressed as Iron Man, Jamie and I headed on the long, long walk back to the train station with our freshly-bought junk weighing us down. I got a few books and a few more batmobiles (one of which Jamie bought for me, bless him) and we'd had a good time. I'd definitely go again. It's a good laugh.

Oh, and the guy who plays PC Stamp's name is Graham Cole, apparently.

Always Has Been, Always Will Be.

I read in the Birmingham Mail yesterday that some arsehole local councillor wants the mighty Aston Villa Football Club to change their name to 'Aston Villa Birmingham' and we should also replace the motto 'Prepared' on our badge with 'Birmingham'. He reckons that a lot of people don't actually know that Villa are from Brum and the name change will help raise the city's profile if the Villains win the UEFA cup.
Firstly, let's try and win the cup first. Secondly, we've been Aston Villa since 1874. It's been good enough for the last 134 years, why change it now? I mean, back in 1874 , Birmingham wasn't even a city yet, and Aston wasn't part of it.
Lots of football teams don't have the city they're from in their name, I mean, just off the top of my head, there's all of the London clubs, Everton, Port Vale, Lazio, Ajax, FC Twente, Espanyol, Benfica, Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian, Queen Of The South and Juventus. There's probably loads more. Any proper football fan knows Villa are from Brum. Anyone who doesn't know probably isn't that interested in football, so how does Villa winning a trophy raise Birmingham's profile in their eyes anyway? The main reason this is a bad idea, however, is the fact that our local rivals and worst enemies are called Birmingham City. How is Villa incorporating the scum's name into our own going to be a popular idea? It's not our fault if the team actually bearing the name of the city aren't raising it's profile because they're a pile of wank is it?
If the council want to increase this city's reputation, how about they spend their time coming up with better ideas, such as cleaning up the shit bits, for example? (I reckon one of the main reasons Birmingham has a reputation for being a shithole is, ironically, because of football, as both Villa Park and St. Andrews are situated in dogholes, so visiting supporters go home with a bad impression) . I know this idea isn't going to come to anything, and it will all blow over, but it has bugged me no end. Football is all about history, and our name is part of our heritage, so leave it the fuck alone.

If you want to read about how we got our name, and also, if it wasn't for Aston Villa there wouldn't be a football league to start with, read this fantastic article from the Times Online.

The Stuff I've Been Up To. (part two)

House Hunting:

One of the main reasons I've haven't been blogging as much as I'd like is because i've been looking for somewhere new to live. When I say 'I', I mean 'we' as my lovely girlfriend and I have decided to move in and rent a place together.
Now, as all of you who have ever been house or flat hunting know, estate agents can be economical with the truth. We wanted to move to the Moseley area of Brum (or as I call it, Mos Eisley. I'll explain why later), but so do a lot of people. This means Mos Eisley is prohibitively expensive, and estate agents say properties are in Mos Eisley when they're not. We looked at places that were in Hall Green (famous for its dog track) when we were told they were in Moseley so they could bump the price up a bit. Also, what an estate agent calls a double bedroom is not what I would call a double bedroom. what they would call 'desirable' some times is what I would call a 'shithole'. We looked at one house that was a relatively new build, but inside it was terrible; the stair rods were mostly missing and every room's walls were riddled with holes. (I reckon the previous tenants were fans of the 'floating shelf'.) Apparently, having a house that resembles swiss cheese is 'desirable' these days! Not to me, matey!
My lady and I also saw a house we subsequently referred to as 'the house of death'. It was completely beige inside, beige walls and beige carpets all through the gaff. It smelled bad. Its kitchen hadn't been updated since about nineteen forty-seven and it was obviously a house where someone old had died. To be fair to the estate agent on this one, though, he could tell it wasn't the right place for us and looked suitably embarassed as he was showing us round.
We did luck out though. The house we settled on is in King's Heath, not far from Mos Eisley, it's got four bedrooms, it's in our price range and it's lovely. We'll be moving in a couple of weeks, so I'm up to my ears in packing and measuring stuff and buying washing machines. It's worse for my girlfriend, who is moving up from Winchester, so her hassles are probably ten times what mine are.

Mos Eisley Folk Festival:

My girlfriend is middle class, and I'm obviously not, so we're kind of putting ourselves through a cultural exchange. She makes me watch rom-coms (some of the time, anyway! I still won't watch anything with Reese fucking Witherspoon in it, though. I have some standards!), I make her watch kung-fu and zombie movies (but not Peter Jackson's Braindead, yet. That combines the two genres in one fantastic scene. You should all go out and see that movie if you haven't, yet. One of my faves.) I make her eat baltis, she makes me eat salad from wooden bowls. (This is the biggest indicator that someone's middle class, this is; owning wooden salad bowls.)
My girlfriend's a big fan of Seth Lakeman, who I'd not heard of before I met her, and I've since found out that he's a folk-singing midget who mostly plays violin as well. She found out that Seth was playing at the Mos Eisley folk festival, so she bought tickets for her and a friend to go and see him, and all the other bands playing at the festival. As the festival got nearer though, it turned out that her friend couldn't go, so I agreed to accompany her. This had a cultural exchange aspect to it too, as I stipulated that we had to watch the Villa-Liverpool match (which was on the same day) in a grotty pub first before we head off to the folk festival.
After watching one of the shittest nil-nils I've seen in a long time (fair play to the mighty Villa though, we're third in the Premiership as I type this, only one point off top) we headed off to Mos Eisley. Now, Moseley does resemble its Star Wars counterpart. It's a weird place, maybe not the 'wretched hive of scum and villainy' that Mos Eisley is, but it does have a strange mix of residents, so the pubs do resemble the cantina from A New Hope. There are a lot of posh people, you know the types with people carriers who take their kids to violin classes, there are also a lot of grungey students, lots of new age types, all wiry hair and sandals and creative facial hair. And that's just the women! (Insert rimshot noise here) and, Moseley also has more than its fair share of tramps. Not the modern Big Issue, dog on a string homeless, but your old-fashioned tramp. Meths-drinking, mismatched shoes-wearing, big overcoat-wearing, piss-smelling, giant beard wearing paraffin lamps. There was a famous itinerant called 'Pete the Feet' who used to bother drinkers in Moseley for small change, he was called that because he refused to wear shoes. But I digress.
We went to the festival and it was pissing down. Torrential. As has most of what we used to call 'summer'. A friend of mine said that the British weather is like the Muslim community, sometimes Sunni but mostly Shi'ite. (But, Brum's muslims are mostly Sunni, apparently, so it's a crap joke, really)
The festival was in Moseley Park, which is a park you have to go down an alley to get to, and the festival was like any other festival you've been to, but a lot smaller. That's a good thing, the queues for the chemical bogs are much smaller, for one thing. There was a real ale tent. Another good thing. There were a few stalls, including, weirdly, one that sold violins. I think the cheapest one was three hundred quid. Hardly an impulse buy at a music festival, is it? Unsurprisingly, the stallholder wasn't doing much business. There were all the usual jewellery, joss stick and hippie shit on sale, and there was quite a good book stall. Because most of the festival goers were new age-y types , I was worried I wouldn't be able to get anything substantial (i.e. meat) to eat, and, at first glance my worries were confirmed, falafels, veggie burgers, vegetarian indian nosh. I opted for a falafel, and it was lovely, but I dropped my girlfriend's chilli, so hers wasn't as nice as mine. Then, after I finished my falafel, I noticed the hog roast stand. Bastard!
The rain was coming down in big sheets, and we couldn't shelter under a tree because all the other festival goers were hugging them. And the music, whilst not my thing, was fairly good. It's nice to see proper musicians playing instruments and enjoying themselves. Bit too much accordion, though. People have a go at the metal music I like for being all morbid and obsessed with death, but it's got fuck all on folk music. The songs are about such heartwarming subjects like lifeboat disasters, the highland clearances and dead sheepdogs.
After an escape from the rain for a bit (we went to the O'Neills round the corner) we headed back into the park to watch Seth Lakeman, and he was good. Not good enough to convert me to being an Arran sweater wearing/desert boot folky, but he was alright. Despite the rain and the boring footie match, it was a good day.

A Weekend In Winchester.

Last weekend, I went away for a bit. My girlfriend lives in the historical city of Winchester, and I thought it was about time I went and visited her flat for a change. (I won't go into the ins and outs of how I ended up going out with someone who lives a hundred miles away. It's probably not a very interesting story to the innocent bystander.)
Seeing as I can't drive, going to Winchester means putting myself through the delights of train travel. Ooops! I typed the word 'delights' when I meant 'pure fucking misery'! That always happens! So, last Friday, I packed my bag and headed for the Pritzker award-winning New Street Station.
Anyway, as usual, the train was delayed, but only by about fifteen minutes, which, these days, is seen as a bit of a result. I got on, and some cheeky mare was in my reserved seat. At first, I felt bad about getting a fairly attractive young lady to stand up for me to sit down (it goes against all the rules of public transport etiquette my mother installed in me) but then I had a change of heart because a) I had paid good money for that exact seat and b) I'd been at work all day and my legs were aching so bollocks to feeling bad about turfing a young woman out of my seat. I might have felt differently about it if she was pregnant, but she wasn't up for that so she had to stand, I'm afraid.
At the next stop, Birmingham International, a bunch of ladies got on who had heard of the notion of private conversation but decided it wasn't for them and proceeded to talk very loudly to each other. It was some kind of hen party, but they seemed a bit too posh for 'L' plates and inflatable penises. They instead had decided to go for a professional bra fitting, and then go back home to drink wine and eat 'mature cheddar and red onion' flavour crisps. See, I know all this because they said all of this very loudly. Posh people tend to talk loudly, I've found. Even their crisps were posh. Can't have boring old 'Cheese and Onion' like the plebs, oh no! 'Mature Cheddar and Red Onion' for us! Hooray!!
Anyway. I'd normally find posh women talking about bras and breasts and being felt up by other ladies quite arousing, but one of them had a slight Northern Irish accent, and this reminded me of Gloria Hunniford, and the thought of the Open House presenter being felt up by a 'butch dyke' (my fellow traveller's words, not mine!) put me right off. They all got off (oh, hang on, maybe I should put 'disembarked' in case I get accused of having a one-track mind!) at lovely Leamington Spa, the foot bath of the Midlands. The rest of the trip was fairly quiet and incident-free and I managed to finally finish the 700-page George R. R. Martin novel I've been reading on-and-off for about a year, and disembarked myself at Winchester, where I met up with my lovely new ladyfriend (I get brownie points for calling her 'lovely' on my blog, she does read it, so that's eight readers I've got now!) unloaded my bag at her flat (that's not a euphemism, by the way.) and went out on the town.
Now, we have historical buildings here in Brum. There's Aston Hall, Blakesley Hall, and Soho House to name three. But Winchester has them everywhere. You just have to throw a stone and you break the window of somewhere historical. Not that I did that. I realised that I was no longer in Birmingham and throwing stones at windows is not considered polite in the civilised south. Anyway, that Friday, we had a couple of drinks in the Royal Oak, which claims to be the oldest bar in England, it being there since 1002 ad, although I had my suspicions that the fag machine wasn't the original. Still, having a couple of pints in a thousand year old pub is cool. In fact, the whole High Street is cool, every building looks old, spoiled slightly by the modern shop signs stuck to them, but you do need to know if it's Boot's the chemist and not another museum, I suppose. Later on, we ended up in that very old and traditional boozer called O'Neills where there was a band on that consisted of four mid-life crises playing cover versions. Still, it was a good laugh. We played 'Celebrity lookalikes' and drinking with us were Paul Bettany, Owen Wilson and the Dairy Milk Gorilla.

Saturday was spent doing sightseeing properly, by daylight. I had a butcher's at the outside of the Cathedral. I didn't go inside, as they were charging people a fiver. Bollocks to that. Round the back of the cathedral was, you guessed it, more historical buildings. There was the Deanery, which is a history mishmash-it has a 13th century Norman vaulted porch, with a 15th century hall on the left of it, and a 17th century Long gallery on its right. Across from this are the ruins of the Norman Chapter House, and the Garnier garden, which is supposed to be a tranquil place, but had three very loud American women in it when we visited it. It is a nice place though, but there was no sign of the Laboratoire Garnier. Maybe it's a secret lab buried underground, like in a Bond movie, and Dean Garnier is down there sitting in a plastic egg-chair stroking a persian cat whilst overseeing the construction of a Doomsday machine that will aid him in his scheme to take over the world. Probably not, as the Dean's been dead for over a hundred years. That'd be ace though, wouldn't it?
Also, we looked at the Cheyney Court, a 16th century building that the bishop used to live in, apparently, and nothing to do with the current Vice-President of the United States.(I know it's spelled differently, never let that get in the way of a joke, however low-quality it is.) Then, we had a lunchtime pint in an old pub called the Wykeham Arms, which has a sign outside asking you to turn off your mobile phone. It's full of old desks and other memorabilia from the nearby Winchester college and had the type of old men drinking in there that you can imagine own blazers with masonic badges on them. After that, we looked at an old-fashioned bookshop and then we decided to get some lunch. Whilst walking back past the cathedral, my lovely (more brownie points) new girlfriend asked what I'd like for lunch. Now, those of you who know me personally know that I hate making decisions and tend to be fairly non-commital. I like to think of it as 'going with the flow' but the people around me think of it as 'fucking annoying'. So, I replied by just saying 'food'. An old man walked past us and said 'Good choice!' to me. So, I thanked him and he smiled. We ended up going for a pasty. I was starving and it was just the ticket. Haute cuisine or what? We saw more lookalikes passing by the pasty shop, Vinnie Jones, Julie Walters and that bloke with the curly hair from The Blue Lagoon.
After that, we looked at really extortionately priced organic chocolates at a shop called Montezumas, where we tried some free samples that were fucking disgusting. Then we went to look at the statue of King Alfred the Great (the Saxon king who basically united all of England, fought off the invading Vikings, but is most famous for letting some sponges overcook.) but you can't have your picture taken in front it, as there's a bit of road there. There's a little bit of paving behind it, so if you want to say to people whilst showing them your photos 'There's me by King Alfred's arse', you'll be in your element. It's an impressive statue, though, a lot bigger than I thought it was. We then went to the park opposite, which had a playground and a sundial that doubled up as a fountain. After that, we noticed there was a book fair on at the Guildhall (another impressive historical building that has all these heraldic shields on the outside of it. It also has a sign telling you that noon is actually five minutes and sixteen seconds later than Greenwich says it is), and no romantic weekend is complete unless you've been to a book fair, so we went in. I paid for us both, to which the man in charge of the entrance said 'ah, a gentleman, eh?' with a conspiratorial wink which seemed to say 'you're in there, now, mate!' So, if you're single, take a lady to Winchester and spend fifty pee on her, that seems to be the way to get some action, apparently. As usual, I was looking for comic-related stuff, and there was a few old Beano and Eagle annuals, a big book on Dan Dare, and a book on the history of comics that they wanted £17 for (no way!). There were some graphic novel anthologies based on the work of SF great Ray Bradbury, that were limited editions, signed by Bradbury and all the artists that had done the strips, all of them very famous artists, but there were four of them, and they were thirty quid each, a bit out of my price range, I'm afraid. There were also quite a lot of books on the occult, including The Book Of Magick by Aleister Crowley which seemed a bit out-of-keeping with the generally Christian vibe of the city of Winchester. We left without purchasing anything. What a waste of fifty pee. After another pint a watching a bit of the England-Ireland rugby match, we went back to the flat and had a lovely evening, interrupted by my constant journeys up and down five flights of stairs to go and have a cigarette outside, and once managing to lock myself out of the building in the pissing rain, because of the fiddly keys.

On Sunday, after a nice full English at a subterranean cafe, they weren't charging anyone to go into the Cathedral, so we went in and had a nose. Apparently, the big stained glass window of the cathedral got smashed by Parliamentarians, but the parishioners of Winchester collected all the bits and put them back in, albeit in a haphazard manner, so the window is now like a giant abstract collage, which is cool. The cathedral is an impressive building, even to a dyed-in-the-wool atheist like me, and it always strikes me as amazing what was achieved in the name of faith in times gone by. The thing that strikes me about the cathedral, though, was how obsessed by death it all was. There's a few tomb-effigies, gravestones in the floor, and lists of those lost in wars engraved into the walls. There's also boxes, that look like treasure chests dotted about, that contain the remains of holy men. There's also Jane Austen's grave, on the north side of the nave, which makes no mention of her writing at all! This is rectified by a big brass plaque telling us all about her literary work on the wall next to her final resting place. So, all in all, an impressive place, a bit morbid, but hey, it's a church!

We get to the train station later that Sunday afternoon, and guess what? Yep, my train is delayed! This is because of vital repairs on the line to Southampton. that's what the announcements said, anyway. Every five minutes. Eventually, I'm told that my train will come in as soon as the (heavily delayed)train that's at the platform now buggers off. Thing is, this train isn't moving. It's staying there for ages. Then, two British transport policemen turn up. They go on the train. They come off again. Two other coppers turn up. They all go back on the train and they all come off the train wrestling a large pissed-up Scotsman to the platform floor. He starts shouting obscenities at the coppers. The residents of Winchester looked shocked. I don't think they've heard the term 'fucking English copper cunts' before. They bring him into the waiting room where we were standing, and the arrested man keeps shouting at me 'Hey! Big yin! Take a fuckin' photo! This is abuse! Abuse! Assault!!' and so on. Also, because of the fracas, his trousers had slipped down round his arse, which he had cut in the fight, and was bleeding profusely. Not really the image you want to take away with you from a weekend away with your girlfriend. Anyway, after another mental episode when the police had taken off his hat; "Gies ma hat back!! See when these cuffs come aff, yous cunts are all deid!! Big yin! Take a photo! Cunt's got ma hat!!", they managed to take him away, and move the train on, so my one could come in. Lovely. The weekend had ended on just the right note!

Anyway, Winchester is a lovely place, and I recommend it. Just don't go by train.