Crinklybee

Caribbean Procession

This afternoon in scenes slightly reminiscent of Withnail and I me and Frankie went to a carnival by mistake.  What happened was that we emerged from Manchester Museum (where we had been paying a visit on our favourites the monitor lizards who we have secretly named Zillard and Lilleth, respectively after Frankie's pronunciation of the word 'lizard' and a bit-part character in a once-popular high-brow US sitcom) to find Oxford Road unusually quiet.  Putting this down to the student exodus which transforms that that part of south Manchester into a ghost-town for three months annually, we settled down to wait for a 197 bus.  Half an hour and an interminable (is there any other sort?) game of I-spy later, I realised that not only had our bus not passed, but neither had anything else whatsoever.  This should probably have struck me as a little odd, but it was only when a Police saloon car outrider came crawling up the deserted thoroughfare with all lights flashing that I remembered seeing an A4 size notice pasted to one of the bus stops we had passed on the way to this one.  Something about a 'Caribbean Procession', which might cause disruption to services on Saturday afternoon, apologies for any inconvenience, etc.

Sure enough within two minutes the silence was broken by a succession of articulated lorries, each of them opened on the side to reveal either a professional steel band in full swing or a dishevilled collection of revellers swigging from cans of Red Stripe to the accompaniment of dance music emanating from an industrial-sized ghetto-blaster.  Every second lorry was trailed by a troupe of dancing girls aged 10-80-some dressed in full carnival costume complete with sequins and featherboas, others in the sort of skimpy swimwear about which my mother's mother might have archly said 'now that'll be nice when it's finished'.

Twenty lorries and ten troupes of scantily-clad dancing girls later I was more or less convinced the 197 wasn't going to come any time soon, so we set off on an unscheduled nostalgic hike along Wilmslow Road, Rusholme, passing the spot where on my first day in Manchester 17 years ago the black taxicab from Oxford Road station dropped me off in return for the first fiver of a soon-to-be-frittered-away teaching student grant.  For old times' sake (and also because I think it is the law) I picked up a vegetable samosa from one of the takeaways, which came microwaved to within an inch of its life and nearly didn't survive long enough to be eaten, as a sudden gust of high wind (which must have been playing havoc with the dancing girls' costumes back at the Moss Side junction) sent it shooting out of its plastic plate while we waited for the green man to come on at the corner by the Hardys Well pub.

Thirty minutes later- or a mere two and a half hours after the time we were due back home- we boarded a cross-town 168 at the Queen of Hearts (where if we are going to continue in the vein of Wilmslow Road reminiscence, was where I used to watch Keegan's great Newcastle team take on allcomers back in the 90s, and where our last gasp failure to bring home the Premiership in 95 saw me sink to my knees in emotional exhaustion, well that and the effects of seven pints of strong European lager on an empty stomach).  By teatime we were at home.

All of which would be all very well, except we are going on holiday- holiday!- tomorrow, and the afternoon was the time I had set aside to do all my packing.  There was nothing for it but to write out one of those neurotic lists that you do when you're going on holiday, with items such as 'remember passport', 'book taxi for 3:30AM' and 'wear trousers'. 

It's now 21:44- in other words well past my bedtime considering I've got to get up at an hour of the night my brain actually refuses to contemplate- so I'll be off.  Sweet dreams everyone- next time, tales of our French adventure (Frankie's first trip abroad) featuring my no-doubt vain attempts to impress the locals with my rusty command of the past subjunctive and hastily-revised vocabulary gleaned entirely from a twenty-minute perusal of the website of FC Red Star Paris 93 (which is a minor league football team from the working-class northern suburbs of the capital which I have developed a fascination for, which I cannot really explain except for saying they were founded by Jules Rimet and play in the same strip as Blyth Spartans).

Right- it's 21:50 and I really must get some sleep.  Bonne Nuit Tout Le Monde et Au Revoir.

Hit the North: Eggs, Chips, and Complimentary Yorkshire Puddings

Easter Saturday, and me and Frankie head North on the early morning train.  We are off to visit the Geordie side of his family tree.  Here are the edited highlights.

1.  The Easter Egg decorating competition

As readers of long-standing will recall, this annual event was initially planned as a one off to entertain tiny cousins, but has grown into an institution comparable in size, scope, and potential to cause bitter internecine resentment only to the Eurovision Song Contest itself.  As well as entering an egg (usually very badly and hastily decorated) I play the part of Terry Wogan (or, as older readers may prefer, Katie Boyle).  I also add the scores up of the various juries (well OK, of the various cousins, sisters, brother-in-laws and aunties), which is the most complicated job of all as it involves (don't ask why) the application of a weighting system meaning the scores of certain contestants need to be divided by six, then multiplied by five, in order to arrive at the final figure.  Usually I am in need of a stiff drink by the close of proceedings.

This year I had high hopes for my entry 'Scoot to Commute', which was an egg wearing a crash helmet and riding a 50cc Vespa fashioned from a desk sellotape dispenser.  I thought the last-minute touch of adding a tiny 'L' plate to the back would be the kind of thing that would catch the judges' eyes and garner me an all-important extra half-dozen points or so.  No such luck- I trailed in in second-to-last place, just ahead of one of Frankie's several entries, which as far as I could see amounted to an egg scribbled upon, in what I can only describe as a juvenile manner, with several colours of felt-tip pen.  The boy will have to do better if he is to compete with the elite entrants, which this year included (courtesy of one Gosforth household) the entire cast of the Wizard of Ozz.  My Auntie Viv's reproduction of Dorothy walked away with the top prize of a giant Cadbury's chocolate egg filled with Smarties. The defeated contestants had to console themselves with medium sized confectionary, and thinly veiled accusations of Balkanesque collusion between voting allies.  We'll all be back next year.

2 Cullercoats

Cullercoats is the poor relation of Newcastle's three main coastal resorts.  It doesn't have cute antiques markets and upmarket tearooms like Tynemouth, or stips of amusement arcades and crazy golf like Whitley Bay.  In fact it doesn't have very much at all, just a chip shop, which on Bank Holiday Monday had a queue of Geordie scallies, most of them clutching packets of Regal Kingsize and six-packs of Fosters, stretching almost back to the Metro station.  Once we'd finished queuing there was just time for me and Frankie to bury two of his large cousins (the ones who used to be tiny when the Easter egg thing started) up to their heads in sand before we all had to run back to the station because me and Frankie had to get back to Manchester. 

3 Stoke City away

As an exile I've grown used to watching Newcastle games in the company of fans of the other team.  Usually this passes off without incident, although there was the time when a giant Levenshulme skinhead took exception to some innocuous comment I may have made about Roy Keane being a 'dirty cheating bastard' and threatened to 'batter' me (and I don't think he was proposing a trip to Cullercoats for fish and chips).  There was also the time, just the other week, when I risked the wrath of a bar full of dandily-dressed Zimbabwean Arsenal fans by some over-exuberant celebration of an equaliser.  So it was a rare treat to take in the Saturday teatime fixture at Stoke in a bar full of black-and-whites.  It was a cricket club bar, though, and a very slight bit on the posh side, so I did receive a couple of askance glances when after twenty-five seconds I yelled something like 'Haway Ameobi man where's your fucking first touch' at the top of my voice.  After that I concentrated on becoming a picture of restraint, and by half-time the barman had clearly concluded I presented no immediate danger to the social fabric of the borough of Gateshead because he offered me one of his tray full of complimentary Yorkshire puddings.  This gesture seemed to signal the succesful passing of some kind of test, and by the end I had been accepted into polite cricket club society to the extent that my views on the unsuitability of Damien Duff as an emergency left-back were given a respectful hearing.  I'll be back, and not just for the Yorkshire puddings.

There were other highlights too such as a visit to an allotment site in Jesmond that is slowly being colonised by my entire extended family and a sighting of one of the blokes who write the Viz comic running for a Metro train.  But I haven't got time to tell you about those as I am writing this in Chorlton library and the time-clicker at the bottom of the screen says I've only got 10 minutes left.  Next time out, something slightly less hurried, maybe...

Best Laid Plans

Predictably enough, the whole New Year Efficiency Drive fizzled out as soon as I emerged from my idyllic two-week Christmas bubble and was forced to actually Get Out Of Bed And Go Back To Work.  The return of the 6AM mobile phone alarm clock, and of grey post-dawn hours spent shivering at cross-town bus stops trying to remember what exactly I'm supposed to be doing at the office once I actually get there, has come as something of a shock to the system.  By the time I get home at sometime past 6PM, far from feeling ready to Wage War On Sloth, it is all I can do to add the day's discarded workclothes to the accumulating pile gradually annexing the bedroom floor before stumbling downstairs, collapsing onto the couch, and clutching the first of several restorative cups of tea.

Meanwhile the list of Things In Our House That Don't Really Work (So Let's Stop Pretending That They Do), far from shrinking in the face of  zealous attention, is actually getting longer.  The latest addition is my electric razor, which was always slightly temperamental and now seems to have given up the ghost entirely- possibly as a result of me throwing it at quite hard onto the bathroom floor in a fit of pique at 6:20 on Tuesday morning.  I still haven't managed to get to Boots to buy a new one either, so face the prospect of shambling into work tomorrow morning, in all probability in an unironed shirt, looking like David Bellamy after a particularly gruelling night on the tiles.  Not exactly the image we were looking for in Uber-Efficient January.

Needless to say the spangly new digital TV box remains up the spout as well, so yesterday teatime found me leaning on the bar of the Fiddlers Green taking in Manchester United v Newcastle.  On the way there I had given myself the bi-annual stern talking-to in preparation for this fixture.  'Remember now- you're in enemy territory here so no jumping up if they score, and definitely no rousing renditions of the Blaydon Races at half-time.  Just keep your head down, limit yourself to a couple of 'Haway now, Lads' under your breath, and you might have a chance of getting out of there in one piece.  And for God's sake stay off the strong stuff'.

Of course this plan (rather like the January Efficiency Drive, come to think of it) falls to pieces almost as soon as it is conceived.  Shortly after kick-off a disputed offside call causes a startled yell of 'Ah Haway Referee Man!' to escape my lips, and by midway through the second half the combined effects of two pints of Fosters and the cartoonesque flounderings of the Newcastle defence have caused all decorum, not to mention sense of self-preservation, to be thrown out of the window.  As the giant plasma screen replays the particularly embarrassing black-and-white mix-up that leads to Manchester United's third, I am scandalizing the nearby clientele with an expletive-laden rant lasting upwards of two minutes.  I can't remember the exact words but 'Hadaway to Bollocks Cacapa man, you're a liability.  A fucking liability!' are definitely among them.

This unseemly diatribe seems to get something out of my system, however, and I manage to meet United's fourth, fifth and- yes- sixth goals with what I fondly imagine to be Zen-like stoicism but is more likely straightforward punchdrunkness in the face of such a devastating onslaught.  Whatever, while home supporters, drunk on four teatime pints of Guinness and a Ronaldo hat-trick, cavort in front of me like so many sponsored replica shirt-clad salmons, I cut a stockstill figure, leaning backwards against the dead centre of the bar, gazing into the middle distance, and waiting for the final whistle to bring an end to the agony.

After what feels like half-an-hour of injury time the ordeal is over.  Unlike the only other non-United fan in the room (a loudmouthed Arsenal follower who had marched in apparent disgust out onto Stockport Road as soon as the second goal went in) I have at least managed to stay to the bitter end.  Mindful of the ambassadorial responsibilities incumbent upon the exiled football fan when following his team in hostile territory, I grit my teeth and, before departing, make a great point of shaking hands with the gaggle of United-supporting barroom acquaintances who have been my garrulous companions for the afternoon. 'Best of luck, Son', one of them shouts after me.  'Aye', I think as I step out onto the pitchblack A6,' We'll be fucking needing it an' all'.       

As High As You Can Get

Now if you have been reading very carefully indeed for the last three years you will know that my worst-ever job was during the summer of 1994, when I survived two weeks as a comically incompetent trainee skirt pleater in Gorton, south Manchester- only managing to escape when, owing to a bizarre sequence of events rather too complicated to relate here, my place on the shopfloor was taken by the exiled son of a Ugandan Prince living in straitened circumstances in a Victoria Park bedsit, who my flatmate had found one Sunday afternoon down the launderette.

All of which is simply a roundabout way of leading up to telling you about my second-worst-ever job, which came much earlier- in the long hot indiepop summer of 1988, when I was in between my first and second years at Wolverhampton Polytechnic.  Finding that the fortnightly dole money was stretching no further than six pints of McEwans Best Scotch and a Darling Buds single, I reluctantly signed up to become a catering assistant at Newcastle Airport, then enjoying a brief boom transporting daily small armies of Glaswegians off to package holidays in Benidorm and other Godforsaken points of the Mediterranean littoral.

We operated a punishing shift pattern- one week starting at five in the morning and slogging through past lunchtime, the next starting at lunch but not finishing until eleven at night.  The work itself consisted of clearing the tables, scrubbing the dishes, and, most memorably of all, manning the tills when the shout went up of 'Delay!', meaning that any second now three hundred ravenous Scottish people would come bounding up the stairs from the departure lounge brandishing £5.00 refreshment vouchers from their charter companies like freshly-sharpened claymore, and generally looking to our sleep-deprived eyes like a terrifying mix between a crowd scene out of Braveheart and a particularly gruesome riot at a Jesus and Mary Chain concert. 

If the long hot indiepop summer of 1988 was the first time in my hitherto genteel suburban existence I had made the prolonged acquaintance of The Sort Of People Who Went On Package Holidays (we might have lived on a council estate in the West End but we were strictly a rainy-week-at-the-seaside-caravan and disastrous-camping-adventure-ruined-by-cousin's-rampaging-dog sort of family) then it was also the first time I had come across planespotters; these lone middle-aged men with notebooks who would sidle up to your table-clearing trolley and enquire, 'Is this as high as you can get'?

Once we realised these dishevilled fellows were not making enquiries about our lack of professional and personal ambition, but simply looking for the top deck viewing platform, we would direct them towards the lifts to the upper concourse, and never see them again.  They used to bring their own flasks and sandwiches so had no use for our £1.75 cups of watered-down coffee (never mind our £4.25 plates of reheated chicken casserole that had come from a vat and didn't really have any chicken in, because the big fat Geordie chefs had nicked all the good bits for their breakfast).  I had forgotten about the whole phenonenon of planespotting, in fact, until last weekend, when I decided to take young Frankie (who has grown fascinated with air travel since we came back from the place he calls 'Americawhereabbyandjohnandoscarthebabylive') along to the airport to watch the planes taking off. 

Needless to say, we found (or at least I did, Frankie's memory doesn't go back that far) that planespotters in 2007 Manchester are in every respect indistinguishable from those in 1987 Newcastle.  There were maybe fifteen of them in all, huddled together in the corner of the sun-baked upper deck of the carpark in ill-fitting anoraks.  Their necks were festooned with an array of high-end binoculars, which they kept constantly trained on the runway action.  I say 'action' but there really wasn't any-or at least, there was very little to speak of.  Once every twenty minutes a massive colourful jetplane would take off (with spectacular supersonic special effects, causing me, Frankie, and the smattering of other daytripping-dads-with-their-lads to look up suddenly from our sandwiches and mouth 'Wow!' to each other) but the seasoned hobbyists in the prime viewing positions would studiously ignore such amateurish pyrotechnics in favour of training their expensive eyepieces on- I assumed- some rare piece of ground equipment being used to transport a load of suitcases from a parked Boeing to a Terminal Three conveyor belt. 

After the best part of an hour (and fourteen miniature home-made ham sandwiches each from our packed lunch box) me and Frankie were becoming ever-so-slightly restless at the slow midday pace on the sweltering upper deck.  I made enquiries as to the possibility of any upturn in the airborne action with a nearby chap who I took to have some kind of official responsibility , given that he was turned out in full RAF uniform complete with freshly starched shirt, regimental cap and (although I admit the sun was getting to me a bit by this stage) a blazer covered liberally with gleaming medals.  The fellow took one look at us and made a bolt for the lifts- I think he may have been somewhat shy, even for a planespotter.  We gave the bashful wannabee wing-commander ten minutes then followed his lead, ending up downstairs in the main departure lounge, where I flagrantly disregarded a stern-looking sign ordering 'No Children Beyond This Point' to wheel Frankie's pushchair into a postion from where we could both take in the last ten minutes of the Manchester derby on a big screen in the corner of a darkened and smoke-filled room. 

On the way back out to the train station, veering unsteadily between giggling Easyjetters and congoing sunburnt United fans filled with championship fervour on the strength of Ronaldo's first-half penalty and fifteen Duty-free Embassy Regal, I felt a trifle faint all of a sudden.  It may have just been the overpriced Boddingtons and the sunstroke of course- but I suspect that in there somewhere a dose of nostalgia was playing havoc with my damn nerves.  Hell, if a shout of 'Delay!' had come over the tannoy it would possibly have finished me off altogether, or at least sent me scurrying off to the tills ready to put in a graveyard shift.  That long hot indiepop airport summer of 1988- when I spent so many hours on the middle concourse of Newcastle Airport that I really did suspect it was As High As I Could  Ever Get- has a lot to answer for, for damn sure.

Happy in the haze of a drunken hour

8:45PM last Saturday night, and I find myself in the upstairs room of St Dominics Catholic Working Men's Club, a short number 12 bus ride East of Newcastle city centre.  I have made the pilgrimage to my native city partly so that Frankie can catch up on the family gossip with his grandparents- but the main purpose of my visit is to attend only the second-ever staging (as advertised in the previous post) of Popklubb, the self-styled 'indiepop social' being hosted by my good friend David, along with his associates Cath and Bill, fellow devotees of so-left-field-it-is-nearly-falling-off-the-edge Swedish electropop and wilfully obscure early Wedding Present singles.  Bill (it will later transpire) has even more in common with me, in that as young boys we used to run around his back garden in Fenham NE4 together while our mothers sipped that new-fangled instant coffee and discussed church jumble sales and suburban house prices.  More of that later.  What I came here to tell you about was the fantastic Saturday night experience that was Pop Klubb.

The evening, it must be said, got off to a somewhat inauspicious start.  The night had been advertised as starting at 8PM, so I had planned to make a fashionably late arrival at 8:30.  In the event (I had been waylaid in Rosies Bar at the top of Chinatown by a man with some rather insistent theories as to the unworkability of Ramage and Taylor as a central defensive pairing) I made my entrance a quarter of an hour later- but still found myself only the second paying customer of the night.  I joined the first customer at the bar- clearly a St Dominics member, resplendent in the northern pensioner's 'Night Down The Club' uniform of blazer, white shirt and tie-emblazoned-with-vaguely-military-crest.  The fellow had clearly missed the Popklubb flyers, so was somewhat bemused to find that his usual Saturday night of dominoes, darts and six pints of Exhibition had been rudely commandeered by a shambolic-looking college graduate playing a scratched vinyl of  'Talulah Gosh' by Talulah Gosh at the wrong speed for the apparent amusement of nobody whatsoever. 

My assurances that the evening would surely pick up once DJs found the box with the cutting-edge Swedish electropop in fell on deaf ears with our aged first-footer, who proceeded to stumble out of the function room, noisily demanding his money back and complaining about the absence of live music from the itinerary ('three pund fifty on the door and nee bloody band on- I'll be having a word with the secretary, bonny lad').  DJ David, breathing a sigh of relief, handed over the decks to Fenham Bill, and, as the opening chords of Crawl Babies by the Pastels echoed across the empty rows of copper-topped tables, the first few indiekids to climb off the evening's eastern-bound number 12 buses- unmistakeable with their jet black floppy-fringed hair, checky retro skirts and polka-dot shirts- started to amble into the room and form an orderly queue at the bar for pork scratchings and subsidised cans of Red Stripe.  Nine o'clock, and the night was starting to look up.

Four hours later the room was empty and stark with light again, but for myself, the twin DJs, and a smattering of burly indiekids who had stayed behind to carry the equipment down the stairs.  I would have given them a hand but an evening of club-priced Newcastle Exhibition and twirling around the dancefloor to classic Juniper Moon singles had taken its predictable toll and, happy in the haze of a drunken hour I was fully occupied brandishing my last twenty pound note in the general direction of the bemused barstaff, pleading for 'just a couple of broon ales, man, to take home for the lads- haway!'.

They let me have eight in a carrier bag in exchange for my crumpled note- but being an indiepop kid raised on shandy, unrequited love and unspeakably twee Talulah Gosh 'B' sides I only managed a bottle-and-a-third before falling asleep on DJ Bill's couch in the leafy Eastern suburbs.  Somewhere along the way I found out that me and Bill grew up in the very same Fenham street (although we attended different schools).  We couldn't remember each other at all, but the next morning back by the Swalwell roundabout my mam, presented with the family name, knew exactly who I was talking about, as I knew she would. 

'Oh William S? Charming little boy- I knew his mother from the church playgroup.  I called in one time for for coffee and you and Abby were running about with your teddy bears with the boy and his sister in the back garden.  The dad worked down the shipyards, didn't he?'.

And the funny thing is, all of a sudden I remembered that particular autumn Fenham afternoon from near on twenty years ago with absolute cinematic clarity.  I would be maybe ten, DJ Bill a year younger and our respective little sisters a couple of years or so more our juniors.  The whole scene, as I now recall it, is played out to the backing track of 'So Little Deserve' by Heavenly- which I realise is taking artistic licence a trifle too far, not to mention the remit of Pop Klubb's playlist.  But then perhaps, with our teddy-bears-instead-of-action-men , floppy Christoper Robin-esque fringes, perfectly-coiffured pig tails and mothers exchanging suburban chit-chat the other side of the net curtains, that genteel coffee-and-cakes existence was always going to lead us children inexorably into the realms of indiepop, all four of us, whether we liked it or not. 

That's right, it's the parents who are to blame for this sort of wanton Rock and Roll hedonism. Popklubb will be held monthly (or as regularly as my indiepop friends can get it together), most likely at St Dominics Catholic Working Mens Club, a short bus ride East of Newcastle-upon-Tyne city centre.  The night starts at 8 -but unless you want to be inveighled into a game of dominoes and an impromptu brawl with an enraged pensioner, I would arrive fashionably late if I were you- aim for the number 12 leaving Rosie's Bar at 8:52.  When you get to your destination, you will find Newcastle Exhibition at one pound sixty-five a pint-and eight pints of Brown Ale in plain late-night wrapping and service included, a snip at your last twenty pound note only and no change on account of 'we've shut the till already, man- now bugger off and leave us alone you flamin' piss-artist'.   Never mind. The price of a taxi home is something we can worry about tomorrow morning, at the earliest.

Popp Klubb

Tomorrow night, in what will be a welcome change from social engagements spent being chased around a freezing field in Shropshire by fat, sweaty middle-aged marketing executives intent on shooting me up the arse with surprisingly painful squash-ball-sized globs of bright yellow emulsion paint, I am off out on the town in my native Newcastle, where I am due to attend only the second ever staging of Popp Klubb, the self-styled 'Indiepop Social' being put on somewhere in the city's Bohemian Eastern Quarter by my good friend David.   In a bizarre reversal of the usual arrangement, the DJ has emailed me to ask me to ask him for requests.

Now, I've never had much luck with requests, ever since that fateful day in 1984 when I asked the DJ at the West End Boys Club Friday Night Disco for (I think) New Song by Howard Jones and he looked at me with absolute disdain before replying, 'What do you think I am bonny lad, your fucking perfoming monkey?'.  Admittedly mind you, I haven't been helping myself these last fifteen years or so by only ever approaching the podium when beyond the point of drunkenness where speech is technically viable- and then always asking for the same wilfully obscure Pastels track ('I'm All Right With You' if you need to know). 

It gets worse: in moments of extreme weakness I may even need to plead guilty to having asked for the Close Lobsters 'Never Seen Before' to be played in venues where requests for classic late 80s Glaswegian jangle-guitar tracks are not by custom entertained, namely the backroom of The Horseshoe Public House off Stockport Road during the May Sunday Hurling Finals, Johnsons the Butchers by Levenshulme train station (poultry counter), and maybe just the occasional launderette. Nowhere have I had any more success than I had in Fenham NE4 with Howard Jones back in the day- although when I got home I did find the bloke with the receding floppy fringe in the butchers had thrown in an early Fat Tulips flexidisc with my pork chops and half pound of best braising steak. You see, that's the sort of service you don't get from Tescos, and only rarely in Selfridges.

So- you will appreciate that the task of asking for a record via email, while stone cold sober on a Friday lunchtime, and actually having a chance of hearing it played, in the foreseeable future  is one that I am not about to take lightly, hell no. Luckily I have spent much of the week dancing around the living room with young Frankie, in an attempt to inculcate in the young fellow a connoisseur's appreciation of the exact moment in 'Talulah Gosh' by Talulah Gosh that you have to start the really flamboyant arm-swinging, so I am in a position to make an informed choice.   So, after much soul searching I have just whisked a reply off to bonny David with the following eclectic selection of tracks from the depths of my MP3 player, the sound of any one of which bouncing across a Newcastle dancefloor in approximately 36 hours' time is liable to make me near to incapable with euphoria, catharsis, and other associated phenomena (I know, it's pathetic):

Saturday Looks Good To Me....... Lift Me Up

Juniper Moon.... El Resto De Mi Vida

The Pastels............ Crawl Babies

So there you are.  If any of you are in Newcastle and looking for somewhere to dance to 60s girl bands, Swedish Electropop and obscure Wedding Present 'B' sides, then Poppklubb, somewhere in Newcastle's Eastern Quarter is your very man- check out that MySpace site (if I have got the address right, I can't actually access it from here).  It's officially somewhat better than being shot in the arse by very hard balls of paint, and you have my personal word on that score.  Prior requests by arrangement only.

Communique

I nipped across to the Fiddlers Green for a swift one, and bumped into Jimmy, a fast-talking, glint-eyed Glaswegian straight out of the pages of James Kelman, who writes for one of the Celtic fanzines and, like all commited exiled football supporters of a certain ilk, considers it his duty to represent the interests of his club in bar-room conversations- to act as a kind of roving ambassador, if you will.  I recognised the role immediately as it is the same one I perform for the black and white cause.  It is kind of thrust upon you, really- you will be standing in a bar and someone will hear your accent and ask, without any kind of preliminary small-talk, 'So-do you reckon Sounness has got what it takes?'.  A definitive reply is expected- shrugging your shoulders and mumbling something non-commital might leave you in danger of having your Geordie cards taken off you.

Anyway I think that was how the conversation started-  I was getting change from a pint of Guinness when Jimmy leaned across the bar and said,  'So, er-what about this Owen signing- eh?'  I gave what has by now become my practiced watercooler and bar-room response to this enquiry (the little striker may be a touch overrated but is still an arch goalpoacher worth twenty goals a season), and, as is customary in this type of diplomatic exchange, enquired about the current fortunes of his own club.  Twenty minutes later I had been provided with rapid-fire analysis, not only of Celtic's latest signings (a choice Bulgarian midfielder is the pick), but also of the respective managerial styles of the last four coaches and the prospects for the upcoming European campaign.  Thrown in for good measure (the man was straight out of the pages of Kelman after all- all combative working-class eloquence and dangerous glint-eyed charm) there was detailed observation of the north-of-the-border system of Secondary Education and its links to Sectarianism, and a political deconstruction of the use of the term 'Teuchtar' to define any person (for example the Manchester United reserve midfielder Darren Fletcher) hailing from beyond the Scottish West Coast conurbation.

In return I offered a detailed account of the famous goal Newcastle's Mark McGhee scored against Barnsley in 1987, complete with an illustrative demonstration of sidesteps.  And then it was time for me to go home.  We shook hands warmly and thanked each other for a stimulating exchange of views. 'Aye, see you later Geordie', he shouted as I stepped back onto the A6, wrongfooting a couple of Irishmen in cardigans, McGhee-style, on the way down the steps.   Our diplomatic exchange had been brief, just one pint of Guinness’ worth, in fact- but I like to think that in our small way me and Jimmy had made steps towards the achievement of a greater understanding between our two peoples.

Harried

Most Geordies plan at one time or another to compete in the annual Great North Run, the public Newcastle to South Shields half-marathon which has become an indispensable part of the North-Eastern sporting and social calendar since its 1980s inception as a brainchild of the local-born Olympian Brendan Foster. Most don't get a lot further than cutting out the entrance forms from the Evening Chronicle, rescuing some old trainers from out of the shed and limbering up briefly on the hall landing, before remembering an important darts match they have to attend down the social club.

But my mate bonny David is made of sterner stuff, and is going to join the hordes shown live on BBC2 next Sunday lunchtime sprinting the first 200 metres over the Tyne Bridge while bellowing the immortal, and charmingly innocent, rallying cry, 'Oggy oggy oggy! Oy Oy Oy! With a bit of luck he will be interviewed by well-known Sunderland sympathiser Steve Cram after crossing the finishing line in a creditable 14,326th positon,and the coffers of his chosen charity Shelter will be boosted by a few hundred quid from his band of sponsors.

Me, I'm frankly in awe, as my only excursion into competitive jogging was not one of my proudest sporting moments to date. I fancied myself as a bit of whippet at the time- I was about 23- and turned up at the weekly meet of the renowned amateur running club Elswick Harriers jogging on the spot, all keen, rosy-faced and ready to go. The trainer took one look at me and said 'You can go out with those lads'.

The 'lads' in question were a spindly-looking group of sextuagenarians in Chariots Of Fire- era training costume, limbering up gingerly in the corner. I approached their leader.

So, new to the game son?'

'Why, I've done a bit on me own, yer knaah- a couple of miles here and there.'

A couple of miles' was a bit of an exaggeration. The distance of my usual run- from me mam's house to the West Road and back- was more like three-quarters of a mile, and I used to take a lengthy rest leaning on a handy fence at the half-way mark.  Still, these frail old pensioners were hardly going to extend me, were they? I would show them a clean pair of heels, and next week be out with the main group of young fellers who had just sprinted purposefully out into the November dusk.

Back in the changing rooms the chief veteran coughed (asthma, I imagined; the poor lad) and raised an eyebrow at his group. I thought they looked impressed at my tales of Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner re-enactments on the streets of Fenham.

'Aye well son', he said, hitching up his preposterous 1950 shorts. 'Haway out with us and we'll see how you get on'.

Forty minutes later I was bent double somewhere on the edge of the Town Moor, coughing and spluttering helplessly into the winter air. The half-dozen group of veterans, the coat-tails of whom I had been trying desperately to hang on to for the last four miles of determined sprinting, had come to a halt and were now gathered around this pathetic youth slavering shamefully in their slipstream.

'What do you think's wrong with him?'

'I reckon he's a bit knackered, like- he's never gannin' to make it back'.

'Here's a bus. Here son, the number 36 any use to you?'

I indicated in the affirmative, as well as I could without recourse to my temporarily absent powers of speech, and was bundled aboard the approaching conveyance.

'Aye, see yous next week, lads', I managed to wheeze as the double-doors snapped shut. 'Mebbees I'll get a bit of training in in the meantime, eh?'.

Needless to say I never went back.  And I've never quite got around to the Great North Run either. Maybe I will get a hold of the forms next year- or better still, wait another thirty years or so until I've, er, got a bit more experience, like.  For now, I am limiting myself to pledging a fiver bonny David's way (if you know the lad, and maybe even if you don't, you might like to join me here) and watching out for him crossing the line on BBC2.  Good luck to the lad- he's a braver man than me, that's for sure.