I Am Wearing The Hat Of An Alien Nobleman

At the Football Christmas Dinner-Dance this Tuesday friend Terry arrived sporting a rather handsome winter hat. It was one of those Russian jobs, all fur and flaps that make you like Muttley. Fantastic.

I asked Tel two or three times where he’d got it from, to the extent that he (understandably) ended up squawking, ‘I don’t know, all right?’ And even, ‘Leave me alone, stop ringing me, it’s 4am! Right, that’s it, I’m going to call the police.’ To be fair, the central tenet of the average Football Christmas Dinner-Dance is to sufficiently indulge yourself that you’re only dimly aware what your name is, let alone where you once bought a hat.

Undeterred, I set out last night to find my own Russian Muttley hat. I’ve blogged at work about how shopping for me - as with many right-thinking people – is essentially a race to the finishing post, rather than a pleasure in itself. This time, though, The Hat Had To Be Right. If I was going to look ridiculous, I was going to look my kind of ridiculous. Oh yes. It’s a distinction, though admittedly not an honourable one.

Ten shops later, I found it. Fizzing with fur, flapping with flaps, and strappy with under-chin straps. Arctic winds, I Am Ready For You Now. ‘Aaaaaandsome.

However, I feel obliged at this point to explain my purchasing decision. It immediately occurred to me as I stuffed it on my bonce in River Island that the hat was very much in the style of the Graff Vynda K, a character in the 1978 Doctor Who adventure ‘The Ribos Operation’. So much so, I was half-expecting some really dodgy special effects to creep up behind me and flop onto my shoes.

I’m convinced this comparison would have occurred to almost anyone, once they’re tried the thing on. I mean, it was pretty obvious (see photo above of me trying the hat on, ably assisted by a terribly helpful member of staff).

In fact, I can’t believe this wasn’t intentional on the part of River Island’s buyers. I can see the marketing meeting now: ‘Right, let’s start. Everyone got coffees? Good. Now, anyone seen ‘The Ribos Operation’ – Tom Baker, 1978? No…?’

The whole shopping trip was so successful that I’m determined to base all future retail decisions on the style choices of fictional alien noblemen from doubtful late 70s science fiction. After all, it’s a proven formula.

It also enables me to write a blog with a title that sounds like a really bad translation.

The Unmistakeable Reek of Nostalgia

Coming back from a curry last night our local station opened up a platform it never uses and a stairway to the Exit which emerges, Danger Mouse-like, from a doorway in a wall you never realised was there.

Man, that stairway took me back.

Long disused, it had managed to dodge yellow paint on the steps (obviously, I stumbled down them); helpful notices telling you to be careful on stairs (without which I was reckless, and even took two at a time – you simply can’t replace good advice when it’s gone); and no signs offering a call centre number to deal with all those late night stair-descent emergencies (“Hi there – I’m having trouble putting one foot in front of another. I think this is probably more my fault than yours, but can you help?”)

Best of all, it smelt like stairways, telephone boxes and car parks always should smell: of male piss. Ah, the nostalgia! Ah, those heady days, when no wall laboured without graffiti, and no street thumped to the bass from No 47 without black bin bags and dog turds!

And all the other long-gone strengths of this proud nation. People in what we would now call customer service jobs genuinely enjoying being snappy, dismissive and dumb. Trains with ripped seats in desperate need of a paint job. A general feeling that helping other people is basically suspect, and a bit weak.

Things ain’t what they used to be. What a stairway.

Canute of the Hair Waves

So, how do you deal with the stuff?

I mean, it’s a battle, isn’t it? There’s the shaving, for a start – that’s another tiresome pointless daily routine to add to teeth-brushing, operatic indigestion and pretending not to recognise people you work with when you see them on the train.

And I don’t know about you, but my hair hits a point for about two days every two months when it’s in between ‘Quite short – looks faintly thuggish’ and ‘Misshapen – quick, alert his Carer.’ Two days, people.

As if that isn’t enough, there’s also white nostril hair to contend with. I mean, what am I, Santa Claus? How come I’m only an albino nasally? And what’s the point of ear hair, and why does it sprout like the tops of carrots?

It’s as if some weird internal coat of hair is slowly being pulled through my skin by invisible fingers.

Back, I command you. Hell, there goes another pair of shoes. Drenched by a hair tsunami.

And you know what really makes me parp the vuvuzela of righteous indignation (yes, I think you’ll find there is such a thing)? There’s not a single scrap of evidence that hirsute men are more manly, or cleverer, or sexier. Not one. Can you believe it?

I mean, what’s it all for?

Hmmm?

Jacobean Space Programme

Few years back, BBC History Magazine had an article on the Jacobean space programme. One of those articles where the title’s slightly better than the read (something you could never accuse this blog of), it concerned a seventeenth century gent who wanted to open trade routes to the moon, and designed a machine to get there.

The machine didn’t work. ‘Zounds, can’t understand it. I mean, it’s hardly rocket science, is it?’ ‘Wot’s “rocket science”?’

Better still, ‘Jacobean Space Programme’ is clearly the prog rock band that never quite happened. Everyone in the band with pointy beards. Lots of frilly shirt cuffs and long harpischord solos. The lead singer insists on signing autographs with a quill. People in the audience playing Air Lute. Jokey ‘B’side ‘You Never Look Tough When You’re Wearing A Ruff’ roundly hated by the fan club.

Jacobean Space Programme: for everyone who can’t be arsed to start a band, and is perfectly happy just making up the name.

Next month: we review difficult second albums from The Zippy Tortoises, Stalin Henderson, Cumberland Rat Station and The Flat Earth Surfers.

Snuffing Out Ghost Trains at Spencer Road Halt

Just inside the less obvious entrance to Victoria station is a map of the Southern Railways network which I would guess was painted onto the tiles in the twenties. It’s a handsome piece of work, and includes a number of long-dead stations local to The World of Quark such as Selsdon, the outline of which can still be glimpsed from Sanderstead trains, and Bingham Road Halt, where Tony Hancock filmed a scene for ‘The Rebel’.

More bewilderingly, it also mentions a mythical beast called ‘Spencer Road Halt’. This rather marvellous website reveals Spencer Road to have been only fleetingly in use, between 1906 and 1915; but rather than being pulled down, it seems to have been left to rot – and can still be found, just about, between two streets of houses, one of which is Birdhurst Rise, best known for a series of notorious murders a decade or so after Spencer Road Halt closed.

A footpath links Birdhurst Rise and the eponymous Spencer Road. Weaving behind houses, flats and a Scout hut, you suddenly come across a large metal bridge which looms improbably up at you, as if someone’s left it there by mistake. It’s impossible to tell it was a bridge over a railway track – nowadays, it overlooks a long stream of large trees, which have dramatically reclaimed the area.

Endearingly, someone at Southern Railways has taken the instruction ‘Catalogue everything we own, Nigel’ to an extreme and even though Spencer Halt is now just an inappropriate bridge glub-glub-glubbing under waves of foliage, the bridge still has an official number and the edge of each step has been carefully painted yellow, so that very lost people, the phantoms of commuters and Scoutmasters don’t come a cropper. Thoughtfully, someone has even dumped some bags of rubbish to give that authentic ‘old station’ feel.

And then out onto Spencer Road, with a slight feeling of: ‘Did that really happen…?’