Crinklybee

La Dolce Vita

In a surprise development I have taken to starting my days by pretending to be an Italian, and not just any Italian, but one who is a professional racing cyclist taking part in a particularly leisurely stage of the Giro d'Italia. It is a life-affirming experience which I would recommend to you all. The following is my cut-out-and-keep 7-step guide to the way it is done.

You are going to need:
a bicycle;
some replica cycle-race kit purchased over the internet, or failing that a very colourfully designed T-shirt, three sizes too small and with European writing on;
a branch of caffe Nero;
a working knowedge of any Mediterranean language.

Step one
Put on your (real or pretend) cycle-racing kit and get on your bike. If you have not got on a bike since 1977 when you were 10, do not worry. It is true what they say, you never forget how to ride a bike, even if you might do so in a slightly wobbly fashion at first. And if you feel slightly foolish wobbling about up there, put this thought out of your head also. The time for worrying about looking foolish and wobbly was 10 minutes ago, when you put on a very colourfully designed T-shirt 3 sizes too small for you, and walked out into the street. There is nothing you can do about that now.

Step two
Cycle towards your workplace. Hopefully the route does not take in any motorways. If it does, you will need to find a scenic route through back roads, parks, people's gardens, and other parts of the urban landscape not populated by fast-moving articulated lorries. If this necessity changes your 2 mile commute from the suburbs into a circuitous and gruelling four-hour stage, taking in three minor peaks, a picturesque spa-town, and a time-trial, simply grit your teeth and keep pedalling. They do not call it the Giro d'Italia for nothing, you know.

Step three
Just before you get to your workplace, stop at a nearby cafe. A Caffe Nero is ideal, but a Starbucks or Costa Coffee will serve almost as well. If however, you work in an out-of-town industrial estate and the only eating establishment is a parked van from which a large bloke called Joe sells greasy bacon butties and big mugs of tea, then you are going to have to use your imagination a little during...

Step four
This is the leisurely part of the Giro d'Italia. Avail yourself of the most European-style items the establishment has to offer. In Caffe Nero, this may be a medium Caffe Latte with extra chocolate, an almond croissant, a very small biscuit and a glass of chilled water. If you are at Joe's trailer just off the A534, you can give your breakfast that mediterranean feel by smoking a Gauloise cigarette while waiting for your slab of bacon to be fried to within an inch of its life.

Step 5
Using the working knowledge of any Mediterranean language that you prepared earlier (perhaps by taking Spanish 'A' level sometime in the late 1980s) take the 'Rebublicca' from the rack of newspapers thoughtfully provided by the cafe proprietors, and begin to peruse the comment section while nodding earnestly for the benefit of any impressed onlookers. Nod especially earnestly at any phrases you do not quite understand, owing to your actual command of the Italian language stretching only to the word 'catenaccio' and a selection of provocotive hand-gestures taken from The Sopranos. Smoke another gauloise cigarette.

Step 6
Get back on your bike and cycle the short distance to work. If you think you can get away with doing your job wearing a pair of lycra shorts and a colourful t-shirt three sizes too small, proceed directly to your desk. Otherwise, lock yourself in the disabled toilets and change into something more in keepign with the prevailing 'smart-casual' dresscode.

Step 7
Take to your desk. Reminding yourself that you are unfortunately not a professional cyclist but a worker in a call-centre, and pausing only to light up a final Gauloise, start your working day.

And there you have it. English office-worker to chic, sorty European urbanite (and back again) in seven easy stages, and all before 9:15AM. I heartily recommend that you give it a go:at the very least it will keep you fit, as long as you take it easy on the almond croissants. So search out those tiny t-shirts and climb aboard your bicycle- you have nothing to lose, except perhaps your dignity.

My life as a penalty shoot out

One of the advantages of being a football fan is that you can tell a very abridged version of your life story simply by recalling who you watched the big games with, and where. For example, this is how I have watched England getting knocked out of the European Championships, every four years since I was 12 years old:

1980. Tournament held in Germany. England draw 1-1 with Belgium and lose 1-0 to Italy, in games I watch in the front room of a boy named Henry McGrath from the year above me at school, while his mother plies us with tea and biscuits. For the third and decisive game against Spain, I for some reason have decamped to the front room of another boy from my class named Martin Goldberg (maybe Henry's mother wanted to watch a film on the other side, or maybe I have broken one of Henry's subbuteo players and he isn't talking to me). Anyway, England lose 2-1 and are out.

1984. Tournament held in France. England have not qualified, and the games hardly seem to be on the telly. However, I am allowed to stay up late with my cousin Simon to watch the highlights of the great France v Portugal game that finishes 3-2 to the hosts.

1988. Germany. I am at college, and celebrate the end of the second-year exams by watching England's defeat by Holland with Gavin Lok and his flatmate Nick Jones, while we add a further layer to the growing stack of empty Carling Black Label cans decorating their front room in Bushbury Lane, Wolverhampton. A few days later, England crash out of the competition by losing 3-1 to Russia, in a game me and my dad listen to on his car radio while he is taking me home for the summer. I will spend the holidays (including the 90 minutes of the classic final between Holland and Russia) clearing tables in the cafe at Newcastle Airport for a meagre wage.

1992. Sweden. I have just finished a year teaching English in San Sebastian, Spain, and celebrate by watching England play France with my flatmates Liverpool Mark and Arsenal Nigel while drinking vast amounts of cheap European lager, vomiting over the edge or our 10th floor balcony onto the cars on the Avenida de Madrid, and falling over senseless in a back street pool bar. My night is more eventful than the match, which finishes 0-0. Another scoreles draw with Denmark, and a 2-1 defeat by Sweden, see England out in the first round- again.

1996. England. Hosting the tournament, the national team has reached the semi-finals, and I have persuaded my new girlfriend Charlotte to take in the big-match atmosphere at a massive student pub in Fallowfield, Manchester, where I am working answering telephones for British Gas having abandoned a brief and not-very-promising career as a secondary school teacher. The date takes a turn for the worse after 5 minutes of play when Alan Shearer scores and the pub erupts into pandemonium, causing a major spillage of student-rate Stella Artois onto Charlotte's jacket. We retire to a quiet corner of the bar from where we can just make out on the flickering screen a Germany equaliser, the onset of extra-time, and, inevitably, penalties. While I am attempting to explain to my enthralled and lager-soaked new girlfriend the intricacies of the 12-yard shoot out, the German footballers demonstrate that they have grasped the concept quite ably, and shoot England right out of their own tournament.

2000. Belgium. Having miraculously forgiven me for the Stella Artois/ jacket incident, Charlotte is still my girlfriend, and we are on holiday in Portugal, whose national team is facing England in the decisive first round game. As night falls around the poolside bar, we watch with a happily mingling crowd of tourists and local kids, as England go into an early a 2-0 lead. Their opponents mount a comeback, and the local kids get excited and start chanting 'Portugal! Portugal' until they are told off by the stern bar-tender, who doesn't want them upsetting the thirsty English holidaymakers crowded around his bar. He needn't bother- we are upset enough by the Portuguese footballers, who incredibly score three times without reply and run out deserved winners. England subsequently lose 3-2 again- to Romania- and are back at Gatwick airport just as me and Charlotte are touching down in Manchester, covered in incredibly itchy mosquito bites.

2004. Portugal. Having miraculously forgiven me for suggesting a holiday to the mosquito capital of southern Europe, Charlotte is now married to me, and we have a beautiful four month-old baby named Frank. As Frank is too young to get into crowded student sports bars, go on holiday to Portugal, go to college in Wolverhampton, or enjoy the life of a trainee alcoholic TEFL teacher in the Basque country, we take him to his friend Oreana's flat in Hulme, Manchester, to watch the quarter-final against Portugal. Oreana is another four month old baby, and her parents are a German man and a Colombian girl, who we met at Preparation for Parenthood classes. Chris is a very knowledgeble and intellectual European-style football fan who drinks only coca-cola, while Luz is most charming but doesn't understand the importance of the inevitable penalty shoot out, and decides to start showing Charlotte an album of wedding photos while David Beckham is lining up the first spot-kick. While Charlotte admires the bridesmaids' outfits, the England captain reminds everyone of his own occasional penchant for wearing women's clothing by hitting a penalty like one of my my grandmother's. Darius Vassell later hits one like my Aunty Mary, and England are coming home early- again!

So there you have it. My life story in European Championship matches that England have lost, or occasionally drawn. Of course some stuff happened in between (to both me and the England football team) and not all of it involved cheap lager getting spilled on people's jackets (although admittedly a lot of it did). Anyway you can probably fill in the gaps without going to far wrong. Where will I be watching the 2008 competition, and who with? And will it go to penalties again, and will Charlotte get to see them this time? Come back to this site in four years' time, and maybe we will all find out.

Raining on our cow parade

I am cycling through the university precinct on my way to work when I come across a large fibre-glass cow standing in front of the library. It seems rude not to stop and admire its wondrous multicoloured design. While I am doing so two schoolgirls walk past, seemingly without taking much notice. But then I hear one of them asking the other, 'Here, what's that cow for?'.

I am quite intrigued myself, and on a hunch set out at lunchtime on a longer, whistlestop bike ride through the city centre. In fifteen minutes I meet 5 more cows (if it is indeed possible to 'meet' cows, especially multicoloured ones made out of fibre-glass). There are one each in front of the town library and the Bridgewater Hall, two more on Market Street, and one in St Annes Square. Each has a different design, and most of the designs are quite bizarre; for example the one in St Anne's Square is lying down in a full-size rowing boat (I think it is a real rowing boat as opposed to one made out of papier mache) and appears to be adorned with a map of the city of Chester. While one of the Market Street ones (I think it was the one outside of Virgin records) is covered in really bad 'cow' jokes, such as 'When do you milk a cow? When he is in the moooooooooood'.

What can be the explanation for this unusual invasion of the city streets? A search reveals that what we are witnessing is an artistic event going under the name of Cow Parade. Apparently ours is not the first city to be blessed with this phenonemon, which first emerged in Geneva a few years ago, and, since everyone involved thought it was such damn good fun, has decamped to a different city every year since, getting bigger, and, I should imagine, slightly more bizarre each time. Now it is Manchester's turn.

The exhibits are made (I think I may have mentioned this) out of fibre-glass and started off life as blank canvases, or should I say blank cows. Judging by the information given on the plaques next to each one, it appears some owe their multicoloured liveries to the work of professional artists, while others have been designed by members of the public who have submitted drawings to a competition based in the central art gallery: the one with the jokes, for example, was the brainchild of a group of schoolkids from somewhere like Moston (oh, schoolkids; in that case I will let them off with their appallingly immature senses of humour).

What will be the reaction of your average Mancunian? Well some, like the schoolgirls in the university precinct, will walk on by with merely the passing thought, 'what's that cow for?'. Other pedantic types (well, OK, me) will insist you cannot really call it a 'cow parade' when none of the animals in question are showing the slightest inclination to move anywhere at all, and seem content to stand stock still (or in the case of the St Anne's Square cow, sit stock still in their rowing boat) in their appointed spots, for as long as necessary, or for that matter until the cows come home. If they had really wanted a parade (these pedants who are really me will continue) perhaps they should have made fibre-glass models of something with a bit more zest, like jaguars or goats.

Whatever, one thing is for sure. The multicoloured ruminants might be lazy, and might not really be 'for' anything at all, but they sure as hell brighten this rainy old town up a bit. I say to them, thanks for coming, and good luck to their crazy, bovine luck.

Calling an army of hidden gardeners a spade

I woke up this morning with several aches and pains for which I hold Alan Titchmarsh and his evil assistant Charlie Dimmock personally responsible. If you have a TV and have tuned it in to the BBC at any time during the last 6 months you will have seen one of this sadistic duo's 30-minute propaganda campaigns for the garden fork and wheelbarrow industry, or as they prefer to call them 'lifestyle magazine programmes'. There are, I think, about 37 of them, but if I tell you there is just one, and it is 14 hours long and called 'Home Front Celebrity Ground Force Challenge Special Small Garden Taskforce Makeover- Uncut!' you will get the idea. What happens in these shows is that our heroes Titchmarsh and Dimmock descend on some unsuspecting householders, and with the apparent aid of nothing more than a pair of sturdy spades and a regular supply of strong tea, transform their 'garden' - an overgrown 6-foot-square patch of land whose central feature is a rusty burnt-out Ford Cortina- into an open-air urban paradise containing fully seventeen hectares of lush greenery, complete with fountains modelled on those at the Alhambra and, over in a shady corner, a team of mermaids strumming pensively on harps made of solid gold. All this in 10 minutes flat and for a total budget of £17.63.

The important word in the preceding paragraph, of course, is 'apparent'. You think it has all been done with spades and tea because of the skilful editing which has obscured from view the small matter of the 16-ton articulated lorry containing an army of slaves, each with the strength of a lion and armed top-of-the-range B & Q rotovators, pneumatic drills, cement-mixers and a giant crane borrowed from the reconstuction of Wembley stadium. Oh, and the fact that the programme is not really filmed over lunchtime at 37 Railway Cuttings Harrogate, but over 6 months, and at a cost to the British licence payer of £350 000, in the secret private garden of the crown prince of Trinidad and Tobago, who happens to be a personal friend of Dermot Mernaghan.

Anyway you get the idea. You watch the show (whichever of the 37 shows it happens to be) and you start to get ideas about the possible transformation of your own, adequate but unspectacular patch of greenery into something more eye-catching and contemporary. 20 minutes later you are in B and Q, and having scoured the aisles in an unsuccesful search for mermaids, content yourself with a spade, a fork, a dutch hoe, a wheelbarrow and a trowel. Later that night you start cheerily hacking away at your lawn with the spade, reckoning to be putting the final touches to the giant musical fountain in time for Coronation Street.

Except, of course, you have been fooled. Giant musical fountains, as you come to realise during 2 solid weeks of hacking, spading, shovelling and swearing (most of all swearing) are the sole preserve of the Crown Prince of Trinidad and Tobago and his evil henchman Dermot Mernaghan. At the end of these two weeks you look up to see the result of your labour, and see that it is the following:

One not-very-level and rather grubby patch of muddy soil. liberally splattered with housebricks.

No mermaids at all

A bad back and some strange shooting pains down the left side, possibly a small heart attack.

It is at this point that you put down the dutch hoe, walk calmly into your front room, and with a mighty cry of 'Alan Titchmarsh you lying, cheating BASTARD', hurl your thirty inch colour television into the High Street. At this point, strangely, you start to feel ever so slightly better.

Which reminds me. Euro 2004 starts on Saturday and my television appears to be out of order. Titchmarsh, you really are a bastard, aren't you?

Flag Days

The last weeks have seen the build-up to Euro 2004, and, in what has become a tradition whenever England have qualified for an international football tournament, the nation has been busy whipping itself up into a sort of patriotic frenzy. The first St George’s flag was spotted flying from a white Ford Transit outside St Albans towards the end of April, and by mid-May it was impossible to look in any direction anywhere at all without seeing the ubiquitous red cross on the white background. Now that we have entered the tournament proper, the thing has got entirely out of hand and, as a small paper flag cut out of the newspaper has become almost de rigeur for anyone who does not want to be branded a traitor and thrown on the first train through the Eurotunnel, it has become necessary for those who consider themselves true supporters of the national cause to raise the bar a little, and go for a real full-size flag, on a pole, in the middle of the front lawn. For some particularly diehard patriots, even this display of national pride will not suffice, and there are reports that a greengrocer from Rickmansworth, Herts, has erected a full-scale model of Big Ben in his front garden, and has taken to parading around it every hour on the hour in a beefeater’s uniform while playing ‘Rule Britannia’ on the trumpet.

Which is all very nice, but it does leave those of us not naturally given to deranged flag-waving a bit of a problem when it comes to watching the England games. You want to support the team, but you don’t want anyone thinking you drive a white van and vote for Robert Kilroy-Silk. It is important to have a strategy, and stick to it. This has been mine so far:

1: during the weeks of frenzied build up to the tournament, adopt a lukewarm attitude. Tell anyone who will listen that you really aren’t that bothered about the England team, and there is certainly no way you will be found watching any of the games in a crowded pub, with a distant view of the screen, and 200 lager-soaked people singing ‘Engerland. Engerland , Engerland’ while spilling Stella Artois on each other’s shoes.

2: during the days just before the opening game, begin to have second thoughts about the whole ‘lukewarm’ thing. After all it is your national team. And there’s someone at work who knows a quiet little boozer in the suburbs where there’s sure to be a decent view of the big screen and no queues at the bar.

3. as the game kicks off, find yourself in the ‘quiet’ boozer, along with 350 other people, who have been attracted there by its famed quietness, and who are all trying to get served with four pints each at the bar while craning their necks to catch a view of the tiny footballing figures over on the flickering screen in the corner.

4. 20 minutes later, England score. You think it was Frank Lampard Junior but you can’t be sure. Dropping all pretence of lukewarmness, aloofness, and general inscutability, leap into the air shouting ‘go on England!. Spill Stella Artois on your shoes.

5. Wake up on Monday morning with a hangover and a half-hazy memory of singing ‘Football’s Coming Home’ in a park somewhere and telling everyone you were going to build a scale model of Tower Bridge in your front yard. Feel slightly ashamed, and resolve to watch the second England game in your front room, with a cup of tea, some biscuits, and a properly aloof attitude more befitting a Guardian reader like yourself.

It’s a lovely plan, isn’t it? And I must say so far I have been sticking to it quite resolutely. As for the England team, well, they have managed nearly to beat France, and actually to beat Switzerland, while being unable to string three consecutive passes together at any time, and generally doing a good impression of a pub team. Hell, if they actually start playing football, they could win the tournament. It is a frightening thought- and as for the outbreak of patriotic fervour that will result- well, never mind the flags, it may just take a personal appearance from St George himself to calm us back down again.

And me? I will be the one at the back, trying to look aloof and non-nationalistic while singing ‘England’s coming Home’ at the top of my voice and spilling Stella Artois on my shoes. Good night, and best of British- sorry- English- luck to you all.

The Postman

It was the local and European elections yesterday and I very nearly didn't vote. I would like to claim that this was due to some firmly-held political principle. However the real reason for my near-refusal to exercise my democratic right was a firmly-established fear of the British Postbox.

Ridiculous, I know. But then the whole business of getting an item of mail together and actually getting it in the box is a fantastically long-drawn out and stressful one, is it not? I mean, first of all you have to

1- get the item of mail into an envelope. Easy, you say- except where can you find an envelope? I mean one of the right size, that hasn't been in a drawer for 5 years gathering dust and losing all of its precious stickiness? Well, you can't, can you? Which means you have to go to the newsagents and buy one. Except you can't buy one, so you have to buy fifty. So you do- one for your letter, and the other 49 to gather dust and lose their precious stickiness in a drawer for the next five years. Still, you've got what you needed and march back home with a happy step, only to remember when you get there that you also need......

2- a stamp. Of course, you've got stamps, because last time you posted a letter you bought a pack of 5. Except, can you find them? Of course not- so you have to go back to the newsagent for five more. This is when you find out about the Stamps and Sundry Mail (Retail of) Act(1969), which makes it a criminal offence for a shopkeeper offering envelopes for sale also to keep stock of postage stamps. So you embark on a whistle-stop tour of the high street, taking in a stationers, a hardware store, a florist and a launderette, before finally discovering that stamps are actually sold at the butchers, where they are available at a discounted price when purchased along with a pound of lean Cheshire pork chops. Which is a bit unfortunate as you are a vegetarian. Still, you now have your envelope with a piece of mail in and your stamps. What could possibly go wrong? Well, you could...

3- forget to take the letter with you the next 6 times that you leave the house. This also appears to be obligatory by law, at least it is for me. Things take a turn for the better on the seventh occasion that you leave the house, when you do remember to take the letter. Of course, you immediately forget about its existence and bring it back home with you where you find it in your jacket pocket a week later. This process is repeated several times, until one day you find yourself quite miraculously approaching a postbox, with the letter in your hand, muttering to yourself 'remember to post the letter' over and over again. At this stage it is still possible you will become distracted and walk past the postbox. However (as I can see you are starting to think I am making this up now) let's assume you hold it together, and get to the next stage, which is....

4A dealing with the postbox. Now this in theory is the easy bit. You just have to put the thing in the slot and walk away. Except this casual action seems to be quite beyond you; you find yourself walking away thinking, 'now did that really go in the box? Very soon you are convinced that your letter has somehow missed the slot and fallen into the drain at the side of the road, or that it has gone into the box but failed to land in the basket inside and is lost forever, or that it only went half-way into the box and was stolen from its mouth as soon as your back was turned by a cheeky grubby-faced urchin. In short it didn't really go in the box, or at least you will not be satisfied of the fact unless you adopt stage

4B- dealing with the postbox (advanced). This is where you move from muttering to yourself 'got to remember to post this letter' to speaking out loud, as you go through the action of posting, the following phrases:

'I am going to put it in the box'
'I am putting it in the box'
I have put it in the box', and then finally as you turn away,
'It is in the box'.

Which of course, it is. But I hope you get the idea that really, posting things is not very straight forward at all (and I haven't even begun to talk about when you have to take some kind of parcel to the post office and, as it is too big to go in the box, have to entrust it to some liveried employee of the Royal Mail who might do anything with it at all. So you can imagine how delighted I was when they decided to change the voting system for the municipal elections, from the apparently very very difficult one of walking twenty yards to your local polling station, putting an X against the candidate of your choice and walking out again, to a postal vote involving a dizzying array of instructions involving putting envelope A inside envelope B, making sure the barcode was visible, getting someone who knows you to be your witness, and then proceeding to stages one to 4B above of actually getting the thing in a box.

Needless to say this task was absolutely beyond me and my package of voting paraphanerlia remained on a table near the front door until it was too late to be posted at all, at which point I brought it into work, where my similarly postally-challenged colleague Chris took it, along with his own, along to the Town Hall, where he handed it personally to the Lord Mayor himself. At least that it what he said. In reality of course, he could have done anything with it at all.

Oh, and the result of the experiment with postal voting? A massive increase in turnout with something like 38% attending the polls in the north west. They say the other 62% are apathetic, but we know that the true threat to British democracy is nothing so abstract- in fact it is bright red, made of solid metal, and standing on a streetcorner near you. Do not underestimate the power of the British Postbox.