April 2006 Archives

HELL’S Waiting Room, my local in New Brighton, is getting back to normal after all the outbreaks of name-calling and aggression in recent weeks.
Well, I say ‘normal’ but ‘normal’ doesn’t really apply in Madford-on-Sea (nor anywhere in Wallasey for that matter) , and certainly not in the Waiting Room.

I WAS invited (by accident, really) to a meeting in New Brighton of posh people.
I know! I didn't think New Brighton had any poshies either, although the existence of grand old merchants' houses (still in single family occupancy) in Wellington Road is a powerful hint to the contrary.
It was to a palazzo on that very thoroughfare that I found myself invited, by a neighbour in my scruffy block of flats, the other night...

I KNOW I shouldn’t ... but I just can’t stop tuning in my car radio to Wirral’s Buzz 97.1 and its mega-bland mix of middle-of-the-road pop.
Really, I cannot bear to hear the simpering vocals and cod-philosophical lyrics of James Blunt come across the Buzz airwaves one more time.
And after I heard Bryan Adams’ “Summer of ‘69� for the 300th time this morning while on the road, I made the decision to re-tune for good.
Then The Kooks’ “Naïve� came on so I stayed with Buzz until I got to work...

SO Easter’s here. A few people will go to church, the embattled minority.
Most folk will either traipse around some ghastly visitor attractions with screaming kids, eat a load of chocolate or visit distant family members they never liked anyway. Nightmare.
TV produces its “special� seasonal programmes which are even worse than the usual ones, which is saying something...

YOU get a special sort of pleasure when you visit old friends from many years ago.
I’ve just returned from a weekend in Norwich that warmed the cockles of even my battered and barnacled heart.
This was the plan. Three cynical old journalists who misspent their twenties in that fine East Anglian city would book into a posh hotel there – so that’s me, Bad Gav and Sir Johnny Vino.

SO I was listening to Tony Snell on BBC Radio Merseyside this morning (Thu April 6) and heard his illuminating interview with Rick Buckler, the drummer with The Jam.
Buckler said it was unlikely that there would ever be a Jam reunion because Paul Weller, charismatic lead singer of the cult band, no longer even talked to the other two. Shame ...
Well, I guess, the Modfather was always a victim to his own ever-changing moods, which these days never seem kindly inclined towards his old muckers.

FOREIGN Secretary Jack Straw and the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, spent a bizarre week in each other’s company recently.
First came a visit to a city famous for bitter and noisy protests – Liverpool.
Then a tour around a hotbed of radical Muslim unrest – Blackburn, Lancashire.
So it was something of a relief when they reached the relative calm of the final stop in their three-cities tour – Baghdad.