High Heels – the Staggering Truth

We went to a do recently. I can’t think of another word to describe it – it was too small for a party, too static for a dance and too boozy for a prayer meeting. The women got talking about shoes. Normally when women get on to the subject of their shoes, I start to count the number of tufts in the carpet. Then one woman said she had 35 pairs. Her tone was confessional, a bit like admitting to owning just two teaspoons. Another woman, with purple highlights, said she had 50. She’d be bringing the stock up to normal soon.

Call me out of touch with the current female zeitgeist, but I’m baffled. 50 pairs? All for the same feet? It’s like having 50 phones. Per hand, it works out the same mathematically. By the time you get to pair 50, pair 1 will be out of fashion. You’ll have to hit that mail order website again, but I suppose that’s the idea.

I blame “Sex and the City”. Some women now think their lives are meaningless unless they can open the wardrobe door and 75 pairs of Jimmy Choos fall out. I’ve seen them staggering out for a pint of milk in a £5.99 Primark tracksuit and a 4” pair of Manolos. I’ve seen them running for a bus and falling over their stilettos. I’m sure they stockpile shoes like nuclear weapons  and creep out at night to gloat at them, glowing in an eerie radioactive light.

“How do you work through 50 pairs -” I asked highlight woman, “on a rota basis?” “Oh no” she replied, “some of them I never take out of the box.”

Quite right. Nothing wrecks a pair of shoes so completely as wearing them.

Downsized Abbey

"It's the neighbours complaining again about the clinking teacups"

Series 3 of “Downton Abbey” has finished, to the usual criticism that it doesn't reflect everyday life in the UK.  To refute this, here is an extract from my diary, to be published by Harper Collins next year at £57.65 and expected to outsell Pippa Middleton’s next etiquette book. Readers can study the extract below for free.

Weds. 8.30am  Carberry, my under-valet, brought up my tea and copy of “Radio Fun”. He inserted the sugar lumps into my shirt and dropped the cufflinks into the tea. I need to speak to him about this. Yesterday he spread toothpaste over my collar, which did at least whiten it. But a man can’t face the day with wet cufflinks.

11.45  I got out of bed. On the way to work, played my usual couple of games of cricket with the servants. I invariably win: it’s hard to throw balls about when you’re balancing silver trays.

12.10pm  Work involves staring at a book in the library while stroking my chin and sipping a sherry. It may not sound very strenuous, but I have to keep it up all day.

 6.00  As usual the entire household assembled in the conservatory for the daily family crisis. On Monday the second footman had fallen off the roof, on Tuesday anthrax spores had been found in the kitchen garden, today one of my daughters had been caught listening to jazz. It is always solved by 6.05pm so I can dress for dinner.

6.05  I have 27,000 collar studs which Carberry lays across the lawn. Today he recommended the ruby-studded one as it would perfectly match the Strawberry Mousse.

7.30  At dinner, an ancient family tradition: the weekly vote on which family member is to have an affair with the Chauffeur. Cousin Ethel won by a narrow margin but the Chauffeur has finally escaped across the Channel with the Bentley.

11.05. In the bedroom, my wife asked me the difference between a second footman and an under-valet. Embarrassed to say that I didn’t know. Summoned Carberry, but he didn’t know either. I thought about sacking him, but wouldn’t know what I was sacking him from.

Thursday 8.30am Carberry brought up today’s “Beano”. He told me there’d been a revolution and now the servants were in charge. I was sent down to lick the grate clean. Carberry may be speaking the truth, but I don’t know. I never read the papers.

The 1960s. Everything you wished to forget.

There'd been a run on grey paint during the War

The 1960s are turning into a mere memory. That’s bad news for a decade which no one claims to remember. So here are some Pass Notes for the kids. My recollections, of course, may not be more reliable than anyone else’s…..

SAN FRANCISCO  In 1967 the San Francisco Police Chief had a brainwave to make pedestrians more visible to drivers, urging them on TV to “Be sure to wear a flower in your hair.” No one took much notice.  To make the message punchier he set it to music. The song went global and the city was thronged with people following his suggestion. Traffic incidents went down, but there was a big spike in hay fever fatalities.

PSYCHEDELIA  Delia Farrington was a sociopathic London go-go dancer who would wait outside her club to bludgeon people who hadn’t tipped her. The dazed victims would stagger down Oxford Street, ears ringing and vision blurred, screaming “Man, I’ve been zapped by Psycho Delia”.

LSD  In the 1960s the CIA had a plan to destroy the Soviets: by introducing unpronounceable words into the language they’d drive the natives crazy. Operatives infiltrated the country to introduce the letter combination “lsd” into Russian; “Dlsda”, “Nylsdet”, etc. Of course, Russians have been speaking unpronounceable words for centuries and easily assimilated the phrases, which were exported back to America. Soon Americans were behaving bizarrely and unpredictably, driven mad by “lsd”.

THE BEATLES  As everyone knows, post-Shakespeare England was a cultural desert for centuries. A minor civil servant was ordered to find a UK version of French existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre. The best he could come up with was John Paul George Ringo. On being asked to interpret “L’enfer, c’est les autres” their funny Scouse accents turned it into “I am the Walrus”, which proved much more palatable to the paying public.

FLOWER POWER Hippies were notoriously aggressive. They would attack passers-by with clubs disguised by wreaths of marigolds. In those days “Pow” meant “To strike” or “To impress”. Hence, “Hey punk, get a taste of my flower pow-er.”

BOB DYLAN  For years this obnoxious untalented wannabe scoured Greenwich Village folk clubs for open mic spots. Embittered by constant failure, he flung open the doors of the Village Vanguard to the icy January blast, shouting to the punters as he stomped out, “Your asses, my friends, are blowin’ in the wind”. Both phrase and Dylan soon faded into obscurity.

Old folks - no sex jokes please

Wait till you see what they get up to when the car's gone past....

I went to a comedy club this week to watch a friend do his act. It was in a packed South London basement: it felt like going steerage on the “Titanic”. I was the oldest by about 30 years. The compere wanted to warm us up, even though it was about 45° down there. “Hug the person next to you!” he yelled.

I’m a Brit. I don’t really do hugs unless you’re Mrs K or the Kirwood sister or you’re rescuing me from a fire. The two girls on either side of me wrapped themselves round their blokes. “Hey – don’t leave him out!” screamed the compere. All eyes swivelled to me. Thanks, mate. One of the girls gave me a peremptory shoulder pat. I thought of screaming “Fire!” but it would have disrupted the evening.

The first act was in her 40s and her routine was about “fanny farts”. To the uninitiated, these are nothing to do with breaking wind. They involve a female sexual organ, an intimate act, and suction. Yep, you’re right. She wasn’t subtle. But her impressions of how ageing affects these noises - a twenty-five year old (like balloon air escaping) and then a thirty-five year old (imagine quicksand) - raised a lot of cackles.

She said “Now for a forty-five year old…” and someone shouted “Please – not that!” Then she “did” a fifty-five year old and was drowned out with groans of disgust. To these kids, jokes about older people having sex were about as off-limits as ones about strangling babies.

I was the only person laughing. All eyes flipped back to me. I touched volume control: maybe an older person actually chuckling in public is disgusting, too. I lifted my beer to my lips… NO! the sight of a sexuagenarian physically ingesting liquid would start a riot…

Luckily my friend was on next. He has a great routine about the difficulties of keeping your sex life going when you’re married. How we all roared. Mind you, he’s only 32.

History – what’s the point of having been there?

The Fender Stratocaster. It didn't  reach  England  until  '58.  Along with  the wheel. 

I had an acting job last week - a commercial for a Games Console. I played Klutzy Granddad. In a gap between filming I was sitting around with the young actor playing Cheeky but Clever Son. To kill time I asked the kid, “Who’s your favourite band?”  I expected his answer to be some dreary modern bunch I’d never heard of and that our exchange would go something like:

“It’s got to be the Wet Paint Watchers.”

“Oh. The Wet Pant Washers….good, are they?”

“Well, duh – they are my favourite band.”

His reply was “The Shadows.” What - my favourite band when I was his age?  Then he said, “Hank Marvin, the coolest pre-Clapton guitarist. You know ‘F.B.I’? Du du derrrr, du du du derr, du du derrrrr du du durrrrr….” as he meticulously air-picked the tune. “I got it off Youtube,” he said blithely.

“The Shadows!” I cried, “Wow, Daddy-oh!” Fifty years had slipped away faster than the fizz in a pint of Harp lager. “Hank, Bruce, Jet Harris, and I’m still getting over Tony Meehan having to quit the drum stool in ‘62”.

He looked at me coolly.  “I think you’ll find if was ‘61” he said.

“Whatever,” I said hurriedly, “But he was great in ‘The Rumble’, eh?”

“‘The Rumble’ featured Brian Bennett. Meehan’s replacement.…Don’t you ever look at the internet?”

“Anyway” I gulped, “What pioneers! Marvin, the first UK guy to own a Telecaster.”

He looked at me as if he’d just caught me chewing a bar of soap. “Stratocaster,” he said. I now began to notice his slightly pointy ears.

This kid knew more about my youth than I did. Soon he’d tell me what the attractive brunette in the Carlisle Dance Hall had said in 1964 after she’d laughed out my chat up line. And then give me the Youtube link to it.

All we had to refer to in our day was “Juke Box Jury”, and your mate’s grubby copy of “Melody Maker” which had been passed round the class. How the hell were we supposed to about the music that was going on?

Luckily the two of us were then called back on set to film the second scene in which Cheeky but Clever Son finally showed Klutzy Granddad how to work the console. How he loved it.

Is you is or is you ain’t a baby boomer?

That's what you get for dropping the marker pen in the laundry  

It's come to my notice lately that all kinds of people are claiming to be Baby Boomers. Some of them have even been born in the 60s! Out of pure public spiritedness, I have decided that, once and for all, there is absolute clarity on this crucial social issue. Answer the following questionnaire and your generational uncertainties will be sorted once and for all.

Your mobile battery runs out in the middle of a call to your stockbroker. Do you:

A.    Plug in your laptop and Skype her?

B.     Swear loudly – and borrow your wife/husband’s mobile?

C.     Wait till you get home and use your land line?

D.    Throw the phone into the canal and say “Hey man, I’m quitting this breadhead rat race”, drive your car over a cliff and join a commune?

You’re having difficulties entertaining your daughter’s moronic, monosyllabic boyfriend whom you’ve invited round for dinner. Do you:

A.    Try to bring him out of his shell by talking about the latest hip hop music?

B.     Recommend him to a social skills counsellor?

C.     Put on the telly and ignore him?

D.     Dust off your ancient Stratocaster and tell him “You’re going to love this Eric Clapton number, man”?

You’re in the pub and suddenly can’t remember the name of a 1963 pop band. Do you:

A.    Look it up on your iPhone?

B.     Think “It doesn’t matter, I never heard their stuff anyway”

C.     Bore everyone else in the pub by describing the band to them and saying “Go on, you know who they are”?

D.    Go very quiet, and when you get home, google “Alzheimers”?

At work a young female colleague strolls in dressed in totally inappropriate “slut” gear. Do you:

A.    Post racy banter about her on your Facebook page?

B.     Complain to your Line Manager?

C.     Ignore her. Women these days are all crazy.

D.    Stare at her, slack-jawed, thinking “I’d forgotten what it looked like”?

If you score mainly As: You’re under 35. You think a baby boomer’s some kind of music app on your phone. What in friggin’ heck made you do the questionnaire?

Mainly Bs: You’re a 90s person, so you’re in between the “Me” generation and the techno crowd. You don’t know who the hell you are and I can’t help you.

Mainly Cs: You’re a Thatcher/Reagan child. You’re still sulking because you’ve looked so skinny since shoulder pads went out of fashion.

Mainly Ds: You’re the real thing and I love you! Come round to my house whenever you want, as long as you have a boot full of beer.

Drinking's too important to be left to the young

He's been drinking the same beer for 40 years

Went to a folk concert last night. Hey, don’t get like that - it’s not all “Hey nonny no I’ll give my lady a necklace made of frogspawn”. Folk music can rock. If you don’t agree go back to licking the bacon rind off Lady Gaga’s headgear or whatever it is you think trendy.

At the station we met some young people I know.”We’re going out to get tanked!” screamed one. “Whooo – slaughtered!” said another. “Sooooo pissed!!!” they all yelled in chorus. They were dressed in modern young woman’s drinking kit: five inch matchstick heels for more spectacular falls, necks covered in bling as handles by which their mates can drag them out of the gutter, and thin diaphanous tops so they can shiver properly after missing the night bus.

My generation got drunk in simple gear which we could shove easily into the launderette the next day, or whenever our hangover could bear the twirling motion. And we’d get drunk by accident.

We’d meet in the pub because it was the only place that would fit all of us. How convenient - they sold beer there! So we had some. It tasted nice, so we had a bit more. And then we drank some more because drinking makes you thirsty. There were no idiots singing Karaoke. No huge sports screens. No eardrum-bleeding DJ trying to make you wave your arms around. All there was to do was drink.

And so we got uncomplicatedly, quietly drunk. Nothing to shout about. When we left the pub, we didn’t fall three feet over our shoes. We didn’t scream in the gutter. We didn’t vomit over the mate who’d come to pick us up.

We just fell over, that’s all.

After the concert (a great singer called Nancy Kerr) we headed for the bar. Shockingly it was empty. Twenty years ago we’d have clustered with all our mates and gone through the motions described above. Where have all the wrinkly drinkers gone? Maybe they’re all at home terrorised by the new high heeled screeching set. They need an example. Come on, oldies. Let's show youngsters how to get pissed properly.