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…?’

Constructing the Dustbin of History

I think it’s time to stop dilly-dallying consigning fascism, communism, shoulder pads, teletext and most iterations of facial hair to the dustbin of history in merely a metaphorical way. Where’s the sense in that?

I think it’s high time we actually built the blessed thing, located it somewhere central so everyone could reach it and then got on with the business of consigning things to it in a very real and rather satisfying way.

Perhaps there could be litter bins of history too, to save people the journey if there were local things they wanted to consign. So for instance, the people of Barking might want to consign the fascism in their area to their litter bins of history, as distinct from fascism in its entirety, which of course would still have to be deposited in the main dustbin of history, sorry, DUSTBIN OF HISTORY™ .

Of course, before you knew it, a small industry would spring up around consigning things to history. Inevitably there would be a large outsourcing firm, probably called ‘Consign’, with distinctive purple dust carts (branded: ‘When it comes to rubbish, we’re history’). Maybe the ‘operatives’ would wear a different uniform each week from a different age – this week deerstalkers and capes, next week periwigs, another week doublet and hose. All topped with a bright orange vest, obviously.

Excellent. I’m thinking something gun metal, perhaps with bright lilac bunting. And maybe with a crack team of trombone players playing comic fanfares whenever there’s a new consignment.

Next week: genetically engineering the mother of all lottery wins.

Suicide Isn’t What It Used To Be

I was standing at the station this morning when quite without any advance notice a little old lady walked up to me and said: ‘Those rails are there to stop people jumping in front of the trains. Wasn’t like that in the old days.’

Tactfully, I bit back the temptation to say: ‘No – then people were free to jump in front of trains as much as they liked. Shocking abuse of our liberties.’

I stared obediently at the railings in question. As it turned out, they were smack in the middle of the platform. So would-be suicides would have had a spectacularly wonky sense of spatial awareness to let the railings come between them and train-shaped death. They’d basically have to run away from the onrushing train as if their lives depended on it, which sounds like a pretty poor definition of suicide to me.

The railings also looked Victorian to me. How old was this little old lady? What ‘old days’ was she referring to – the middle ages?

She might have had a point there: people threw themselves in front of trains a whole lot less then.