For our annual Boys' Only Holiday this year, Sam and I visited the West Midlands, spending a lot of time in Dudley, which had more to offer than just the brush fire that got us kicked out of our hotel.
Dudley Castle & Zoo was much more impressive than I'd expected - to be fair, I thought it would be a castle with a few animals outside, but actually the zoo offered a greater range of wildlife than anywhere this side of Chester - lions, tigers, giraffes, wolverines, monkeys... and Sam's favourite, the snow leopards.
I always visit zoos with a heavy heart. I understand the conservation and protection of endangered species, and I've no doubt that they do good work in that regard... but it always makes me sad to see wild animals caged, or away from their natural home.
Equally, if not more impressive - and without the added layer of guilt - was the Black Country Living Museum next door, a real "step back in time" kind of place...
...well, you get the idea. Definitely worth a visit if you're ever in the area.
Did anybody actually drink coffee in the 70s and early 80s? Everyone I knew drank tea from an early age, but the only coffee you could get was that nasty freeze-dried stuff, and although there might have been a jar in the cupboard, I think it was only there for if we had a weird workman in.
By the time I reached my late teens, I was drinking a lot of tea. A large teapot full every night. And because I don't like milk, I was drinking it black and strong. Three bags.
I've written before about how I was invited in for coffee after my first date, and I didn't even like coffee, but coffee was all that was on offer. I'm covering old grounds here (you see what I did there?), but I ended that post by explaining that I finally ended up a coffee drinker when I started using the Klix vending machine to keep me awake on nightshift. There weren't a lot of great options from that machine. The tea was white only - at least you could get coffee black. Beyond that, there was a hot lemon drink that tasted like wallpaper stripper... and a sub-sub-Bovril effort that I once tried in desperation and can still taste how disgusting it was 30+ years later.
I don't know when I first tried a proper coffee, maybe as an after dinner treat in a restaurant, but it changed my life forever. Nowadays, there are more coffee shops in the UK than there are pubs, but back then there were hardly any. The interweb tells me that coffee shop culture was a big thing in the swinging '60s but died away when people discovered instant coffee in the 70s and 80s. This confirms something I've long suspected: the general public are idiots.
Various articles online suggest that the UK coffee shop resurgence happened in the 1990s as a result of young Brits watching the Friends characters hang out in Central Perk. It may seem hard to believe now, but the first UK Starbucks didn't open till 1998. I'm not particularly a fan of Starbucks - a bit too close in texture to the Klix Vending Machine Gravy - but I will drink it as a last resort. Unlike Neil Young...
My preferred chain, Caffè Nero, opened its first in that London in 1997, so I'm guessing they didn't get to the rest of the UK till well into the noughties. I remember when the Bradford branch opened; I was working radio advertising and it became a daily ritual to walk across Bradford in the afternoon for a proper Americano. By then, I was pretty much a coffee addict.
That addiction only grew when I became a teacher, but all that caffeine clearly wasn't doing a lot to help with the anxiety caused by the pressure of working at The Bad Place.
Nowadays I'm mostly a two coffees a day man, and visits to coffee shops have become a luxury rather than a necessity... who can afford at nearly £4 a pop? That said, I always feel more relaxed in a coffee shop than I ever felt in a pub. Even when I was a drinker, I found pubs to be intimidating places. And not just because of the stress of getting served at a crowded bar. I know I'm in the minority here - most people find pubs to be welcoming places, but I never felt like I belonged... even when I was handing over a small fortune for a double Jack Daniels and Coke. (I dread to think how much my former beverage of choice costs these days... one more reason to be grateful for being tee-total.)
My dad became a coffee drinker later in life, and I wonder if my love of strong black coffee was in some way an attempt to emulate or connect with him? Although Sam's way too young to indulge, he spends a lot of time in coffee shops with me... in the same way I guess many parents might have taken their kids into family pubs when they were growing up, to acclimatise them to that culture. Although he liked a pint of lager and lime from time to time, my dad wasn't a big drinker and I never went to the pub with him.
Every Saturday morning, about ten a.m. (once the Snapshots excitement has died down), Sam and I stop off at the local Co Op cafe before starting the weekly shop. I have an Americano, Sam has an Appletiser, and we both have a pastry. We sit and talk... it's good father and son time. The highlight of my week.
It wouldn't be my coffee shop of choice... but any excuse to watch this video again...
U2. Oasis. Sting. If only Preparation H was fully effective at dealing with every pain in the arse we encounter in this world...
You might not expect there to be a whole lot of songs extolling the virtues of this world-famous hemorrhoid treatment... but one immediately sprung to mind, so I figured I'd see if I might discover any more. Let's start in the fictional country of Bukravia with a French band who owe a slight debt to Borat...
Neither of which would have been enough for me to devote a whole post to bottom remedies... were it not for the wonderful Ben Folds and this, his debut solo single (after he ditched the Five who were actually three). It's a song about musicians with huge egos (but not much talent) and their whiny songs about First World Problems. There's a healthy dose of irony here as Ben often writes songs about just those things... but he doesn't take himself too seriously, so that's OK.
Let me tell y'all what it's like, Being male, middle-class and white. It's a bitch, if you don't believe, listen up to my new CD. I got shit running thought my brain, It's so intense that I can't explain. All alone in my white-boy pain, Shake your booty while the band complains.
I'm pissed off, but I'm too polite,
When people break in the McDonald's line.
Mom and Dad you made me so uptight,
I'm gonna cuss on the mic tonight.
I don't know how much I can take,
Girl, give me something I can break.
In a haze these days, I pull up to the stop light,
I can feel that something's not right.
I can feel that someone's blasting me with hate,
And bass, sending dirty vibes my way.
Cause my Great, Great, Great, Great, Grandad,
Made someone's Great, Great, Great, Great Grandaddies slaves.
It wasn't my idea, it wasn't my idea, never was my idea.
I just drove to the store for some Preparation-H...
