Thursday, July 29, 2010

Yasser Arafat, Rod Stewart and The Chinese


Iv'e had a hectic week lummers,

Lets start last weekend.
I have had it in my head for a while to buy a camera. As is my wont, I've read all the magazines and researched all the best buy guides and plumped for a Canon G11. A digital compact, but not one of those fiddly ones that get lost in your hands when your trying to take a snap and you press three buttons at once and end up with a picture that is actually more of a concept and could get hung on the wall at Tate modern, when all you wanted to do was get a pic of Anton Du Boak tripping and falling under a bicyle rickshaw.

Its a proper camera looking thing that makes proper click-clack camera shutter noises, though the camera on my phone does that with no moving parts. Anyway, its expensive, and I know I can get it on the Internet for £60 less than the high street, so I'm determined to seek out the best buy I can. My search took me into central London and specifically, Edgeware Road.

If you have never been to Edgeware Rd, and lets face it, unless your Yasser Arafat looking for a cheroot shop its unlikely, let me try and tell you what its like. Before I do, one more thing on Yasser Arafat, a girl down the bottom of my road in Dunblane, a pal of my big sister, used to go out with his nephew. Well, that's what he told her and why would you lie about that. If you wanted to impress a young Scots bird with your Arabic family connections, I think Omar Sharif or someone would be a better bet, not the beardy old leader of the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

Walking into Edgeware Rd is like stepping out of the costume shop in Mr Benn, one minute your in Oxford St, the shitty end right enough, but the retailing gem in the heart of capitalist darkness nonetheless, turn a corner and the next minute your in little Lebanon, Beirut without the bombed out buildings. Fruits stands, halal butchers and Arabic cafes, spilling out onto the street with big plush sofas and generous hanging canopies that Gaddafi would feel at home in.
They all had hosts of men in them, drinking there tiny china cups of tea and sooking on their enormous ornate hookahs that gave off this gorgeous liquorice aroma and jibber jabbing a thousand conversations in that attractive arabic tongue that sounds like they need to clear there throats of phlegmy tar every two minutes. One True God knows what they were talking about, bomb plots probably.

The reason I was there was for the electronics shops that you find in these places. Tiny shop fronts, windows full of last decades tech with brand names like Satsumi and Minceoni, but there was always a hope they kept the good stuff out the back, a stupid misplaced hope as it turns out, it was all a complete waste of time.
Burqa wearing ladies have been in the press a lot lately, and I did have the opportunity to see a lot of them during this saunter into the Middle East of West London. They are quite unusual and even a bit sinister when you see them, but I think its all to do with the colour.
They should bring them out in some new summery themes, maybe Laura Ashley could do a line of floral prints. Reds out of the question obviously, they would look like mobile post boxes, pensioners would be forever trying to post their TV licence renewals into there faces.
I was thinking soft pastel shades of lilac, or eggshell blue, that would lighten the mood when they walked in a room and instead of hearing Darth Vaders signature tune, it would be all birdsong and nice non threatening winsome tunes.
I think I'll take this to my local Imam, and see what he says.

We had a office party this week, in the O2 arena, well, a little nightclub in the O2 arena and it coincided with a Rod Stewart concert which was on the main concert hall. He attracts a funny crowd, all ages, shapes and sizes. A good number had Celtic strips on with Stewart and the Number 1 on the back. How could Rod Stewart ever have played in goal with those legs, ridiculous. Englishmen also should not wear a kilt unless they have been on a six week course and passed a test on how to actually wear a kilt. They have a habit of wearing it on their hips, like a pair of jeans, which of course makes it far too long and I saw loads of them with kilts half way down their calfs looking more like washed up Vivien Westwood models wearing her old ballgowns thay had managed to blag twenty years ago.

Standing on the tube station platform on the way home, as the train came in it slowed and passed me by before stopping, I saw all these people inside whizzing past and I thought of one of those wheel of fortune games at Las Vegas, you dont know what your going to get until it stops and the doors open. It could be a Lithuanian netball team, a carriage full of pumped up adolescent gangsta rappers or swivel eyed raving mouth breathers wanting to alternately be your best friend and kill, rape and eat you. Its the Lottery Tube of Life.

I couldn't resist nipping into Yummy on the way home, you will remember that is the name of my local Chinese take away. Yummy, not The Golden Yummy, or The Yummy Lantern, or even just The Yummy Yummy. It could be called The Reeking Yum, that would be good. But anyway, I digress, I wanted chips and curry sauce, a staple of the Scots diet, but when I got home I found it didn't come all ready combined in a silver tray with a fork, it came in a paper bag with an accompanying tub of curry sauce. That could have been disastrous if I had wanted to eat them on the way home. How would I have managed that? They gave us gunpowder, toiletpaper and the hydraulic powered armillary sphere, but these Chinese couldn't even give me a takeaway to eat on the way home.

Lang may yer lum reek.

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