Hotels

The first thing that I do in when I get into a hotel room is turn on the TV and see what channels they have. Can’t beat sitting on the bed with a beer and becoming accustomed to TV channels in a language you don’t understand. I really think that I could live in one, for a while at least. For a start I would get the room cleaned and towels changed every day or two. Plus I won’t ever run out of toilet roll or soap.
This autumn I’m looking to go away for a few days. Somewhere in England as I feel that although I’ve been to quite a few countries around the world I’ve not been to many places in the country that I’m from.

When looking on the internet at some places to stay (well my girlfriend has and I've said ‘yeah that one looks good’) it just so happened that The Hotel Inspector on Channel 5 was on. Its like Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares but with a hotel instead of a restaurant and a lot less playing up to the camera.
Along with giving the place a good scrub The ‘inspector’ was telling the owner of the hotel to get rid of the clutter in the rooms. “What and take away all the character!” the reluctant to take advice owner said in reply.
I’m on the inspectors side, The more sterile and characterless the hotel room the better. I don’t care for quirky inertia with a theme and fancy lampshades. I don’t want ornaments and plastic flowers on the dressing table. You bring your own character to the room. As in the wallet, loose change, beer bottles, snacks, cigarette packet and lighter on the table. Reading material scattered around. Bottle of water beside the bed. Last nights clothes on floor. Bag in one corner of the room and pile of dirty underpants in the other.

Italian Folk Music (Not Recemended)

At the back end of last year I got my hands on the self-titled debut album by the Italian band Guano Padano. It’s a record that’s heavily influenced by their fellow countryman Ennio Morricone’s spaghetti western film scores, along with Tex-Mex Americana and surf guitar. I don’t own any other Italian music. I don’t really know any other Italian music. Sure they have the whole opera thing going on, which I will never get into for as long as I live. And they have their own pop music that’s stuck in 1980s cheese, but there doesn’t seem to be much of a music scene going on there. Well I didn’t see any places where bands might play when I was recently in Italy. Okay so I was in Cagliari, maybe there are places for bands to play in the bigger cities like Milan, Rome and Turin.

But I did see some kind of Italian folk music when I was there. Well I had it forced upon me. I was sitting with my girlfriend outside a restaurant having a beer. When this little man with a oversized accordion came up to our table and began to play away. Now when I say play I mean play very badly. It was like he’d only picked it up for the first time that day. The accordion is like the bagpipes, you can be a very skilled player, but no matter how well you can play the instrument it still sounds like a dreadful racket. And this small little Italian bloke was making an awful racket and more some. I said “no thanks” but he didn’t hear me or ignored me. He kept on playing and smiling away. Again I said no thanks but he was really going for it and was in the accordion zone. After about a minute which felt like five I gave in and handed him a Euro. Mostly so that he would go away and take his noise elsewhere but partly because he was making a lot of effort for a small bit of change. Plus my girlfriend seemed to find him amusing. Or maybe she was finding my awkwardness amusing.

I’m still listening to Guano Padano and I love Ennio Morricone’s film scores but I don’t think that I will be buying a CD of Italian accordion folk music anytime soon.

Some Sight Seeing At Least

Holiday's, sometimes I’m conflicted between what I want to do and what I think that I should do.

I know that I wouldn’t enjoy a holiday if I had an organised itinerary. On my days off work I don’t feel like doing much at all until after lunch, and when on holiday there’s no change in my disposition.
I don’t want to rush around on holiday, I want to relax. But I don’t want a in the sun by the pool type holiday either.

When I’m in a new city I spend a lot of time walking around. Just walking, with no real plan what to do. I just walk and get a feel for the place. Sure I’ll do a bit of sightseeing, but If I didn’t see the things that you supposedly have to see then it wouldn’t really bother me.
Recently I was in Berlin. I went to the wall. It wasn’t there anymore. I went to the Brandenburg gate looked at it and thought ‘How long am I supposed to look at it for?’ It’s a monument gate. Not much to look at really. I mentally ticked it off the list of things to do and moved on.
When I was in Australia some people on different occasions asked me if I was going to Ayes Rock (Uluru). When I told them I wasn’t the response was usually something like, “Why not? You got to see Ayres Rock while you’re here, It’s one of the main things to see in Australia.”
To which I usually replied, “I just don’t have enough time.” When really I was thinking: Why the hell would I want to book a flight to the middle of Australia where there’s nothing else around just so I can look at a big rock. I don’t care if it’s a spiritual place for the aborigines. It doesn’t have magical powers, it’s just a big rock in a barren wasteland. I know Australia doesn’t have a long history, and so there’s not many cultural landmark things to see but thinking a big rock in the middle of the desert is a must see place is still really pushing it.”

When I passed through Arizona I did kind of regret not seeing the Grand Canyon. I was staying a couple of days in Flagstaff where I met a girl who said that her and a mate are going to hire a car and drive to the Grand Canyon and that there was room for me if I wanted to come. Of course I said yes. Then she tells me they're leaving the hostel at 6 in the morning. I told her that I will see her then. But I went out drinking until two in the morning and of course didn’t make it.

Holidays, it’s somewhere else to drink and be hungover.

Gigs On A Tuesday Night

Whenever I try to venture out in a new city, if I get the chance I like to see some live music in a place where local bands play. Some other city’s version of The Water Rats or The Hope And Anchor in North London. When I was in Stockholm my mates band (http://www.myspace.com/letssaywedidmusic) had a gig in a nice little place above a restaurant. In Dublin I found a venue called Whelan’s. The first band I don’t remember at all. The second band were a three piece that I remember two things about. First that they did a really good cover of a Black Keys song and the second that the female drummer was amazingly good looking. Then came on a band that looked like they’d just wandered in from a travellers site and sounded like a Rage Against The Machine tribute act.
In Chicago I stumbled into a bar that quite randomly had a night of hardcore punk bands. Two hours of very short songs at a breakneck speed.
On the way back to the hotel that night some drunk bloke walking behind me called out at me. I ignored him. He then calls out, “Hey buddy, could you please sing me a song?”
This time I turn around and in bemusement say, “What?”
“Please, I need to hear a song." Then he holds onto my arm and pleads over and over with me to sing him a song.
“Please, I’m blind,” he says and tries faking being blind by half closing his eyes and putting his hands outstretched as a guide.
“What would you like to hear?” I say.
“Anything, anything at all. Please, I’m blind and need to hear a song.”
I tell him that I can’t think of anything, then I walk away from him very fast. And as I do I hear him singing himself.

When I was in Berlin I went out to see some music. The first problem is that it was a Tuesday night. The most dead night of the week in any city. I walked in on the sound check of a fresh faced emo/metal type band that went on for another twenty minutes. It was ten thirty by then. God knows when the sound check started. I go to the bar and get another drink and go outside to smoke a cigarette. By the time I come back their actual gig had began. There were two more people in the room than at the sound check. About ten in all. But did these ten people make up in volume and encouragement for what they lacked in numbers? Fuck no. Not one of them seemed like they wanted to be there at all. In-between songs they could only just about be bothered to raise their hands to put a few claps together. Meanwhile on stage they were acting like they were playing to a sold out crowd at whatever Berlin’s equivalent of the Brixton Academy is. For the first two songs the lead guitarist had on sunglasses that flashed red at the sides. Then he changes to a regular pair of sunglasses. Almost every song had its own signature move that the two guitarists and bassist did in tandem in a certain part of a song. On some there was a regular head bang. Then their was the side to side headband. And on one song they pulled out the ‘jump up and down at the same time’ move. All shockingly awful things to do, but I got to hand it to them for pulling out all the stops to the most disinterested Tuesday night crowd.

Why I hate Coventry

So it was FA cup weekend. And yet somehow I managed to avoided hearing all the usual cliques that get churned out every FA cup weekend like- ‘The Romance of the FA cup’ and ‘that’s the magic of the FA cup.'

My best and worst FA cup memories- The best is no doubt being at Wemberly stadium in 1991 seeing Tottenham beat the scum 3-1.
The worst was a game that I didn’t see live or even watch live on TV. 1987 I was ten years old, Tottenham got to the FA cup final against Coventry City. I remember my dad calling up to me in my room. I went to the top of the staircase and looked down to my dad at the bottom of the stairs. He had the biggest smile on his face.
“We got them, we got them!” He shouts with joy as he waves a pair of tickets.
I couldn’t believe it, I was going to the FA cup final!
But me and my dads joy was to be short lived.
“When is it?” my mum asked.
“16th of May,” my dad said.
“Well you can’t go then.”
We look at her like she’s mad. Like the last sentence that came from her mouth was in some alien language.
“Well that’s the day we’re going on holiday isn’t it?.” she says.
A feeling went through the pit of my stomach, a similar feeling in my stomach that I would feel a few years later when my first girlfriend dumped me.
Our pleas to change the flight for the day later fell flat.
“Sorry can’t change it, non refundable,” were the words my mum kept saying.
I was gutted.

Come the day of the final and of course the day of the holiday to Spain. The match kicked off when we were flying somewhere over France.
“What do you think the score is?” I kept asking my dad.
When we landed the match was over but we had no idea what the score was.
On the coach to the hotel we still didn’t know.
When we got to the hotel, checked in and took the bags up to the room the suspense was killing us. I went for a wander around the hotel in the hope of somehow finding out the score [it might seem weird now to let a ten year old just wander around a hotel but I guess it wasn’t back then].
So I walk around, then in the lobby I see a group of blokes walking towards me. They’re cheering and singing and I notice what shirts a couple of them are wearing. I check again as I don’t believe it. No, no please no! They spot me in my Tottenham shirt and a loud roar goes up. “Losers,! 3-2, 3-2, aargggrhhh,” and they point at me. I walk past them, run up to the hotel room, lie face down on the bed and burst into tears.
“The holiday is ruined, it's ruined. They might of won if me and dad were there,” I cried.
The holiday wasn’t ruined, I soon got over it. But when Coventry got relegated a few years back I laughed. I laughed as I remembered them blokes laughing at the ten year old me.
Bitter, me? Yes, yes I am.