Whatever the nature of your business, you will use the written word. Whatever your final product or service, you will have to communicate with your customers, your suppliers, other businesses and service providers. And, however good your business is, if your use of the written word is not what it could be you are like a supermodel arriving for an audition with a missing front tooth.
I can provide a copywriting service to suit your business environment and a proofreading resource which will ensure that your ability to communicate meets the high standards of your other commercial transactions.
My rates are £50 per thousand words for copywriting and £20 per thousand words for proofreading.
Examples of my work can be found on this website. Just select a piece from the sidebar on the right, or simply scroll down the page. I can be contacted at mark_gullick@yahoo.co.uk
I look forward to hearing from you.
Mark Gullick PhD
Sunday 7 November 2010
Art exhibition
The following was written to accompany a picture in an art exhibition:
The London of the Victorian age saw building, engineering and architecture on an unprecedented scale. John Nash, the architect whose Arcadian grandeur delighted George IV, gave the city Regent Street, Piccadilly Circus and Oxford Circus. Joseph Bazalgette designed the Embankment, as well as the Battersea, Hammersmith, and Albert Bridges, and his sewage tunnels and pipes, which ran to over 2000km, did more to banish cholera from the capital than any medical advance. Barry and Pugin replaced the ruined Houses of Parliament with the imposing Gothic stage-set which stands today. The National Gallery followed Trafalgar Square. London’s first railway ran from London Bridge to Greenwich in 1836, and was joined by stations at Euston, Paddington, Fenchurch Street, Waterloo, and King's Cross.
In the suburbs of this architectural Monopoly board, Joseph Paxton built the incredible, though doomed, Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851, a magnificent folly which also bequeathed the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert. Father and son team Marc and Isambard Brunel, collaborated for the only time to build the first ever tunnel beneath water, the Thames Tunnel near Rotherhithe. It was a project which almost cost them their lives as the tunnel flooded. Alongside this urban evolution, and with rather less fanfare though no less importance to the public, it was also the great age of pub building.
The Princess Louise in Holborn – pictured above – was named for the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria. Built in 1872 and refitted in 1891 by architect Arthur Chitty, the tile-work was by Simpson & Sons, the glasswork by Morris & Son and the joinery thought to be by Lascelles. These were the cream of architectural artisans, and the love with which they imbued their creations can still detain the drinker even in these sterile times. Now, in London’s second Elizabethan age, pubs such as the Louise are an anachronism, fleeing like overstayed shades of morning before the march of the chain pubs, with their homogeneous cod-nostalgic decor designed by PR men to satisfy the whims of tourists whose country may have no comparable history.
Modernisation, the watchword and security blanket of the contemporary politician, despises institutions such as The Princess Louise. Anything which speaks of and from history, particularly an epoch responsible for Britain’s great imperial adventures, represents an intolerable impertinence to the moderniser. Fortunately, history simply views the pigmies of the modern through lazy eyelids, and continues to speak…
So let us listen, and drink to history. Look in at The Winston Churchill in Kensington Church Street, hiding behind its camouflage of hanging baskets a bunker of pictures of the great man. Detect The Sherlock Holmes behind Charing Cross, with its memorabilia charting the literary and cinematic career of the world’s most famous non-existent detective. Saunter down Soho’s Dean Street to The French House, one thing the French did capture from the Germans – it was formerly German-owned – and a favourite salon of de Gaulle. Cross Blackfriar’s Bridge and enter the Black Friar – just along from where Shakespeare’s company rehearsed – and marvel at the mosaics of monks at work and rest as you read the mottoes on the walls and relax. Festina lente, it says there; make haste slowly.
But pubs are many things to many people: places of quiet repose, a Sunday lunchtime retreat in which to dine and spread the newspaper, or an adventure playground in which fights, love and money may be won or lost.
Fights, love and money, and certainly fights over love and money, have spattered the walls of some of London’s pubs with blood. Come now, to the Spaniard’s Inn in Hampstead, where Dick Turpin’s pistol still hangs. Across town to The Ten Bells in east London’s Commercial Street, frequented by one Mary Kelly until, in 1888, she had her last tipple before an appointment with Jack the Ripper. Back to Hampstead again, to see the bullet hole still in the wall of The Magdala in fashionable NW3, where peroxide nightclub manager Ruth Ellis shot her lover David Blakeley in 1955 and became the last woman to hang in Britain.
To Belgravia, driver, 1963, and The Star in Belgrave Mews, where the £50 million great train robbery was apparently plotted. Forward three years to two of England’s iconic moments. The World Cup was famously held aloft by Sir Bobby Moore, who had briefly managed The Blind Beggar pub in Whitechapel, where in the same year Ronnie Kray infamously shot fellow gangster George Cornell in the head to the jukebox accompaniment of The Walker Brother’s The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine Anymore.
The blood continued to flow like wine in The Plumber’s Arms in Lower Belgrave Street where, in 1974, a blood-caked Veronica Lucan, estranged spouse of the Seventh Earl of Lucan, screamed that her childrens’ nanny, Sandra Rivett, was dead. She herself had also escaped an attack from a man who, if he is still alive, won’t be drinking in the Plumber’s again. Haul anchor to The Captain Kidd in Wapping, former watering hole of two collectors of doubloons. Scottish pirate Kidd was supposedly the model for Johnny Depp’s cinematic Jack Sparrow, and was hung by the banks of the Thames. In modern times, Barings Bank trader Nick Leeson, another irregular regular, was merely hung out to dry by the banks.
And just as pubs have played their part in the writing of history, history records too the writing done in pubs. And so we join George Orwell, with wonderful appropriateness, writing Animal Farm in The Dog and Duck which, naturally, is close to Oxford Circus. Along the bar is Jeffrey Barnard, sinking sufficient vodka in Soho’s Coach and Horses to compose his Low Life column for The Spectator. And we can go further back, back to Dr Johnson mulling over his dictionary in Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, a Fleet Street pub also patronised by keen young journalist Charles Dickens.
The thirsty Dickens brings us back full circle to the Spaniard’s, another favourite of the author. John Keats composed Ode to a Nightingale in what is now the beer garden at the Spaniard’s, and Byron would often drop in to nurse a hangover or search for a muse.
And the public house is itself a muse. At once oasis and carnival, sanctuary and bawdy-house, temple and black mass, the traditional London pub is, like Victoria’s daughter Louise, a princess among paupers.
Sunday 18 July 2010
Feature in Standpoint magazine
I don't believe the world would be a better place if everyone lived a little more like me but, curiously, all Western governments and most of the media disagree. I live on a narrow boat on the Grand Union Canal in London, and my dwelling produces, according to the Government's own online calculator, around 7% of the average carbon emission for a UK property. But if I'm expecting an eco-medal from the man from the ministry, I could face a long wait. In fact, the public sector would like to see me and thousands like me off the water for good.
Living on the canal is not illegal but neither is it strictly legal, and DEFRA is stepping up its efforts to make it impossible. It recently held a consultation, for example, without consulting most live-aboard boaters. It seems to be the lack of a fixed address that disturbs the mindset of modern government, and this trumps the fact that my carbon footprint is that of Tinkerbell compared with that of the sasquatch of most land-dwellers. To give just one example, I use around 20 litres of water a day, for everything, as against the 80 litres or so that an average visit to a power-shower will use. You may be cleaner than me, but I'm greener than you.
But while governments across the world nag their citizens to go green, those of us who are actually taking them at their word seem not far from being criminalised. Personally, the crowning irony of being an unsung role model for green politics is that I am that modern heretic, the climate change sceptic. Yes, I believe man is a pollutant animal, but I don't think he has a gun to Mother Earth's head. I'm more convinced by skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg's belief that achievable, affordable aims - potable water for Africa, for example - are preferable to flying Al Gore around the world to spout self-righteous platitudes.
As a resource, the UK's canals are woefully underused. There was much trumpeting by Able Seaman John Prescott in 2000 about returning freight to the waterways; it never happened. But as a residential option, marinas and cut-away moorings on the canal would be cheap and effortless to run. Boaters are naturally communitarian, can-do people.
But, until the fear of the moveable citizen of no fixed abode is banished, while it will still be permissible to talk the green talk, it will be increasingly difficult to walk the walk.
Living on the canal is not illegal but neither is it strictly legal, and DEFRA is stepping up its efforts to make it impossible. It recently held a consultation, for example, without consulting most live-aboard boaters. It seems to be the lack of a fixed address that disturbs the mindset of modern government, and this trumps the fact that my carbon footprint is that of Tinkerbell compared with that of the sasquatch of most land-dwellers. To give just one example, I use around 20 litres of water a day, for everything, as against the 80 litres or so that an average visit to a power-shower will use. You may be cleaner than me, but I'm greener than you.
But while governments across the world nag their citizens to go green, those of us who are actually taking them at their word seem not far from being criminalised. Personally, the crowning irony of being an unsung role model for green politics is that I am that modern heretic, the climate change sceptic. Yes, I believe man is a pollutant animal, but I don't think he has a gun to Mother Earth's head. I'm more convinced by skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg's belief that achievable, affordable aims - potable water for Africa, for example - are preferable to flying Al Gore around the world to spout self-righteous platitudes.
As a resource, the UK's canals are woefully underused. There was much trumpeting by Able Seaman John Prescott in 2000 about returning freight to the waterways; it never happened. But as a residential option, marinas and cut-away moorings on the canal would be cheap and effortless to run. Boaters are naturally communitarian, can-do people.
But, until the fear of the moveable citizen of no fixed abode is banished, while it will still be permissible to talk the green talk, it will be increasingly difficult to walk the walk.
Wednesday 27 January 2010
Feature for GP magazine
The following copy was written for Link News, a magazine for GPs in the Croydon area.
One of the fastest-growing areas of the modern health service is health information, and although many of the current initiatives are aimed at the patient, it may be useful to know that doctors are also being catered for in the rush for medical facts and figures.
Healthpoint is the regional Health Information Service [HIS] for the South Thames [West] region. Originally a Patient's Charter initiative, the HIS is a freephone service, and although 75% of the calls we receive are from the public, the service is also geared toward the health professional.
The service can help the GP in a number of ways. From the provision of self-help groups for the newly diagnosed patient to waiting times for most operations, from current research in medicine to complementary alternatives, the service is staffed by trained information professionals.
Healthpoint's affiliation to the Croydon Healthcare Library Service enables us to trace and order current and past research from a variety of medical journals and publications. The world-wide web is becoming increasingly useful for research into health topics, and we are 'on-line'.
Healthpoint is aware of the possible pitfalls of inappropriate health information, and we work to strict protocols. Information on specific conditions is only given to the public provided that a diagnosis has been made. Most importantly, it is always stressed that the staff have no formal medical training and that calling the service is not a substitute for talking to the doctor. If the caller is presenting symptoms, or is concerned about their health, we would always refer them to their GP in the first instance.
The HIS is an ideal referral point for health scares. GPs local to Croydon will remember the public concern over the recent cases of meningitis. In the case of a local health issue, Healthpoint takes its briefing both from the Department of Health and through liaison with local Public Health Medicine consultants, and can effectively relieve the strain on practice switchboards by being a one-stop point of referral for worried members of the public.
The service is personally staffed from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, and an answerphone service operates outside office hours. Calls are always returned the next working day.
The telephone number is 0800 XXXXXX, and we look forward to hearing from you.
One of the fastest-growing areas of the modern health service is health information, and although many of the current initiatives are aimed at the patient, it may be useful to know that doctors are also being catered for in the rush for medical facts and figures.
Healthpoint is the regional Health Information Service [HIS] for the South Thames [West] region. Originally a Patient's Charter initiative, the HIS is a freephone service, and although 75% of the calls we receive are from the public, the service is also geared toward the health professional.
The service can help the GP in a number of ways. From the provision of self-help groups for the newly diagnosed patient to waiting times for most operations, from current research in medicine to complementary alternatives, the service is staffed by trained information professionals.
Healthpoint's affiliation to the Croydon Healthcare Library Service enables us to trace and order current and past research from a variety of medical journals and publications. The world-wide web is becoming increasingly useful for research into health topics, and we are 'on-line'.
Healthpoint is aware of the possible pitfalls of inappropriate health information, and we work to strict protocols. Information on specific conditions is only given to the public provided that a diagnosis has been made. Most importantly, it is always stressed that the staff have no formal medical training and that calling the service is not a substitute for talking to the doctor. If the caller is presenting symptoms, or is concerned about their health, we would always refer them to their GP in the first instance.
The HIS is an ideal referral point for health scares. GPs local to Croydon will remember the public concern over the recent cases of meningitis. In the case of a local health issue, Healthpoint takes its briefing both from the Department of Health and through liaison with local Public Health Medicine consultants, and can effectively relieve the strain on practice switchboards by being a one-stop point of referral for worried members of the public.
The service is personally staffed from 9am to 5pm, Monday to Friday, and an answerphone service operates outside office hours. Calls are always returned the next working day.
The telephone number is 0800 XXXXXX, and we look forward to hearing from you.
Monday 25 January 2010
Book reviews
Celluloid Jukebox: Popular Music and the Movies since the 50s
Published in The Literary Review
Pop and rock music are now such potent markets that films often seem to be promoting soundtrack albums, and the modern record company can have a near-directorial influence on a film's final cut. The modern soundtrack can turn a movie into ersatz MTV or be as crammed with period nostalgia as a vintage Wurlitzer. You don't remember that song from the movie? Come on, there was at least a two-second burst in the drive-by scene. Celluloid Jukebox, however, is far more than mere discography, and its collection of essays shows every angle of the relationship between film and pop music. 'Essays' evokes the demon of critical theory too strongly; there are fans here as well as academics and, best of all, the two combined.
Romney's and Wootton's introduction drops the coins into the slot and Mark Kermode makes the first selection, his overview locating the soundtrack as a vital establisher of mood or period. Thus, whether it's Fonda and Hopper burning the highway in Easy Rider to Born to be Wild or De Niro's Johnny Boy swanking into a bar to Jumpin' Jack Flash in Scorsese's Mean Streets, something strongly auratic is being invoked. We know where we are because we know where we were. British producer Steve Woolley is cited with approval, describing soundtrack pop as 'the cheapest form of period scenery'.
Ben Thompson is an excellent music journalist whose short piece on pop stars as actors breezes by like the perfect three-minute pop single. NME house doodlers Chuck Death and Colin B Morton reinvent the films of Cliff Richard as one of their familiar, text-heavy cartoons. Andy Medhurst waxes nostalgic for those British beat curios where some surrogate Cliff always seems to stand on the espresso bar table and say, hey, let's do the show right here! Kodwo Eshun plots the genre mutation of the Seventies blaxploitation movie into latter-day rapsplotation. As for the rock biopic, Michael Atkinson considers the good, the bad and the hagiography, while those readers who thought that underground cinema began and ended with Kenneth Anger are led further into the labyrinth by Jane Giles.
David Toop sifts knowledgeably through the musicians who would be film composers, and the editors combine to assess the thorny problem of the rock documentary or, if you will, rockumetary. Just as the reader thinks all bases are covered, Mark Sinker's final essay turns the question around and assesses pop music as film, as filmic. This runs from the kitsch, three-minute narrative melodramas of the Shangri-Las to the album as soundtrack to imaginary movie as practised by Brian Eno and Barry Adamson. Finally, there is relevant filmography and a sequence of interviews with luminaries of both converging art forms.
Celluloid Jukebox is a delight. Alternately academic and bubblegum, it both reveres and ridicules where appropriate. It is also a schoolroom of wonderful apocrypha. Did John Barry really have a career choice when his mother was a concert pianist and his father ran a chain of cinemas? In keeping with its commentary on the twin cultures of pop music and film, the book is crammed with stills and photos.
Fittingly, Celluloid Jukebox's short preface is written by Scorsese, who has done as much as anyone to empower the current symbiotic affiliation between movies and pop music. Pop music 'has the power to bring entire sequences to life,' he writes. So today Tarantino hints at a director's working relationship with pop music which liberates it from the role of mere ornamental marginalia. 'I'd hear music', says the wunderkind, 'and I would imagine a scene for it.'
Published in The Literary Review
Pop and rock music are now such potent markets that films often seem to be promoting soundtrack albums, and the modern record company can have a near-directorial influence on a film's final cut. The modern soundtrack can turn a movie into ersatz MTV or be as crammed with period nostalgia as a vintage Wurlitzer. You don't remember that song from the movie? Come on, there was at least a two-second burst in the drive-by scene. Celluloid Jukebox, however, is far more than mere discography, and its collection of essays shows every angle of the relationship between film and pop music. 'Essays' evokes the demon of critical theory too strongly; there are fans here as well as academics and, best of all, the two combined.
Romney's and Wootton's introduction drops the coins into the slot and Mark Kermode makes the first selection, his overview locating the soundtrack as a vital establisher of mood or period. Thus, whether it's Fonda and Hopper burning the highway in Easy Rider to Born to be Wild or De Niro's Johnny Boy swanking into a bar to Jumpin' Jack Flash in Scorsese's Mean Streets, something strongly auratic is being invoked. We know where we are because we know where we were. British producer Steve Woolley is cited with approval, describing soundtrack pop as 'the cheapest form of period scenery'.
Ben Thompson is an excellent music journalist whose short piece on pop stars as actors breezes by like the perfect three-minute pop single. NME house doodlers Chuck Death and Colin B Morton reinvent the films of Cliff Richard as one of their familiar, text-heavy cartoons. Andy Medhurst waxes nostalgic for those British beat curios where some surrogate Cliff always seems to stand on the espresso bar table and say, hey, let's do the show right here! Kodwo Eshun plots the genre mutation of the Seventies blaxploitation movie into latter-day rapsplotation. As for the rock biopic, Michael Atkinson considers the good, the bad and the hagiography, while those readers who thought that underground cinema began and ended with Kenneth Anger are led further into the labyrinth by Jane Giles.
David Toop sifts knowledgeably through the musicians who would be film composers, and the editors combine to assess the thorny problem of the rock documentary or, if you will, rockumetary. Just as the reader thinks all bases are covered, Mark Sinker's final essay turns the question around and assesses pop music as film, as filmic. This runs from the kitsch, three-minute narrative melodramas of the Shangri-Las to the album as soundtrack to imaginary movie as practised by Brian Eno and Barry Adamson. Finally, there is relevant filmography and a sequence of interviews with luminaries of both converging art forms.
Celluloid Jukebox is a delight. Alternately academic and bubblegum, it both reveres and ridicules where appropriate. It is also a schoolroom of wonderful apocrypha. Did John Barry really have a career choice when his mother was a concert pianist and his father ran a chain of cinemas? In keeping with its commentary on the twin cultures of pop music and film, the book is crammed with stills and photos.
Fittingly, Celluloid Jukebox's short preface is written by Scorsese, who has done as much as anyone to empower the current symbiotic affiliation between movies and pop music. Pop music 'has the power to bring entire sequences to life,' he writes. So today Tarantino hints at a director's working relationship with pop music which liberates it from the role of mere ornamental marginalia. 'I'd hear music', says the wunderkind, 'and I would imagine a scene for it.'
Travel feature
The following is a travel feature written for Woman’s Own magazine.
‘Dear all. Cheerio, I’ve run away to sea.’ I don’t know why I left that note at work, really. I’ve just always wanted to, I suppose. But it genuinely was to be an ocean-going 10 days for me as I boarded the cruiser liner Sea Princess in Vancouver, Canada. I was en route, via the whale-inhabited waters of the Inside Passage, to Seward, Alaska.
The sheer scale of the ship is the first thing that strikes you: 77,000 tons, 14 decks and 3,000 people, 2,000 of whom are passengers.
It’s a vast, floating hotel and I spent the first afternoon getting agreeably lost before returning to my snug, well-appointed cabin and getting togged-up for dinner.
Dress is formal for two evenings, semi-formal and casual for the rest, although no one will object to you and your partner donning ball gown and black tie every night if you fancy a spot of the Kate ‘n’ Leonardos.
On the subject of dinner, we may as well clear up the food question right now. The ship’s menu is good for dieters, as long as you follow a diet that allows you to eat as much fantastically rich, beautifully cooked food as you like.
North Americans love their food, and I heard no complaints. There’s a great wine list, too. You can dine whenever and wherever you wish, but I was more than happy to hang out and join up with the charming Texan family I met and sat with on my first night.
After the initial wonders of the Sea Princess, the beauty of the coastline soon takes over and our itinerary gave us the opportunity to visit three towns on the way to the silent majesty of Glacier Bay.
Juneau was rainy but pretty – you have to expect weather fluctuations across Alaska. It wasn’t as cold as I expected, but a phrase I heard a lot was, ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.'
Ketchikan is a tourist town, and if you’re not busy on an excursion, your wallet may well become an endangered species.
Skagway was once the target of the original gold prospectors and still has the myths and legends of a goldrush town. It was also where I took my on-shore excursion…
A helicopter whipped us high above Skagway and over the craggy wedding cake of the Cassiar Mountains before setting us down on a glacier – and we weren’t alone. The husky dog camp there had over 100 dogs and a dozen or so ‘mushers’, and before I knew it I was hurtling round the glacier, pulled by 10 beautiful dogs and trying to recall how that sleigh-ride bit in Dr Zhivago goes. They even let me act as ‘brakeman’ for a while, and getting 10 flying hounds to turn left at the same time is surprisingly easy. It was truly exhilarating!
Back on board after my icy adventures, some entertainment was in order. Whether you prefer a dance revue or carpet golf, you’re in luck. Or you can just lounge-lizard around, soaking up the ambience provided by a fine supporting cast of musicians and personable staff. If you insist on keeping fit, there are gyms, spas and pools taking up what could be valuable bar space, and even I hit a few virtual golf balls on a simulator – more than enough exercise for one week. Apart from lifting chips at the roulette table, that is, and relieving the ship’s casino of a few dollars. Oh, and climbing all the way out to the hot tub on the top deck.
There’s one last natural miracle to go; Glacier Bay. It’s almost eerie in its silence as the boat glides past great ice castles. Occasionally, a great wedge of ice will crash into the sea, producing what the local Tlingit Indians call ‘white thunder’.
There was just time for bit of last-night decadence, with champagne, cocktails and my own acclaimed take on the chicken dance in Rocky’s nightclub, then suddenly we were in Seward.
I looked frantically for a spare cabin steward’s uniform or somewhere to stow away but it was too late – before I knew it, I was on the ramp, in the coach and on my way to Anchorage. One of these days, I really must go down to the sea again.
‘Dear all. Cheerio, I’ve run away to sea.’ I don’t know why I left that note at work, really. I’ve just always wanted to, I suppose. But it genuinely was to be an ocean-going 10 days for me as I boarded the cruiser liner Sea Princess in Vancouver, Canada. I was en route, via the whale-inhabited waters of the Inside Passage, to Seward, Alaska.
The sheer scale of the ship is the first thing that strikes you: 77,000 tons, 14 decks and 3,000 people, 2,000 of whom are passengers.
It’s a vast, floating hotel and I spent the first afternoon getting agreeably lost before returning to my snug, well-appointed cabin and getting togged-up for dinner.
Dress is formal for two evenings, semi-formal and casual for the rest, although no one will object to you and your partner donning ball gown and black tie every night if you fancy a spot of the Kate ‘n’ Leonardos.
On the subject of dinner, we may as well clear up the food question right now. The ship’s menu is good for dieters, as long as you follow a diet that allows you to eat as much fantastically rich, beautifully cooked food as you like.
North Americans love their food, and I heard no complaints. There’s a great wine list, too. You can dine whenever and wherever you wish, but I was more than happy to hang out and join up with the charming Texan family I met and sat with on my first night.
After the initial wonders of the Sea Princess, the beauty of the coastline soon takes over and our itinerary gave us the opportunity to visit three towns on the way to the silent majesty of Glacier Bay.
Juneau was rainy but pretty – you have to expect weather fluctuations across Alaska. It wasn’t as cold as I expected, but a phrase I heard a lot was, ‘If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.'
Ketchikan is a tourist town, and if you’re not busy on an excursion, your wallet may well become an endangered species.
Skagway was once the target of the original gold prospectors and still has the myths and legends of a goldrush town. It was also where I took my on-shore excursion…
A helicopter whipped us high above Skagway and over the craggy wedding cake of the Cassiar Mountains before setting us down on a glacier – and we weren’t alone. The husky dog camp there had over 100 dogs and a dozen or so ‘mushers’, and before I knew it I was hurtling round the glacier, pulled by 10 beautiful dogs and trying to recall how that sleigh-ride bit in Dr Zhivago goes. They even let me act as ‘brakeman’ for a while, and getting 10 flying hounds to turn left at the same time is surprisingly easy. It was truly exhilarating!
Back on board after my icy adventures, some entertainment was in order. Whether you prefer a dance revue or carpet golf, you’re in luck. Or you can just lounge-lizard around, soaking up the ambience provided by a fine supporting cast of musicians and personable staff. If you insist on keeping fit, there are gyms, spas and pools taking up what could be valuable bar space, and even I hit a few virtual golf balls on a simulator – more than enough exercise for one week. Apart from lifting chips at the roulette table, that is, and relieving the ship’s casino of a few dollars. Oh, and climbing all the way out to the hot tub on the top deck.
There’s one last natural miracle to go; Glacier Bay. It’s almost eerie in its silence as the boat glides past great ice castles. Occasionally, a great wedge of ice will crash into the sea, producing what the local Tlingit Indians call ‘white thunder’.
There was just time for bit of last-night decadence, with champagne, cocktails and my own acclaimed take on the chicken dance in Rocky’s nightclub, then suddenly we were in Seward.
I looked frantically for a spare cabin steward’s uniform or somewhere to stow away but it was too late – before I knew it, I was on the ramp, in the coach and on my way to Anchorage. One of these days, I really must go down to the sea again.
Film reviews
Das Boot
The Director’s Cut
The following are film reviews from Neon magazine [EMAP]
Fifteen years after its success surprised even its makers, the story of German WWII submarine U-96 gets not only a director’s cut but a full restoration. The film launched several careers and, although director Wolfgang Petersen has gone to Hollywood – In the Line of Fire, Air Force One – Das Boot clearly remains his first love. Sifting through a million feet of film, 5oo sound tapes and the film’s haunting musical score, Petersen and his team have finally finished one of cinema’s most authentic experiences of war.
Das Boot follows a U-Boat mission through the eyes of novice war correspondent Lieutenant Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer). But patriotic fervour turns to despair when Hitler’s naval command uses its submarines to play cat-and-mouse with British destroyers. Camaraderie and discipline are pushed to new limits – and so is the boat itself.
The added footage – nearly an hour and a half – allows Petersen to flesh out the human drama. Jürgen Prochnow’s masterful central performance as the jaded skipper now has more space to develop, and the everyday intimacies of crew life serve to emphasise the central horror of warfare in the only type of boat specifically designed to sink. Submarine movies generally sanitise the experience of riding underwater in a 70-metre metal coffin, but the effects on the U-96 crew as they move from early-mission high spirits to brooding neuroses reveal frightened young men longing for homes and families.
But where most director’s cuts simply add footage, this is also a restoration as painstaking as George Lucas’s recent work on the Star Wars trilogy. Technology unavailable during production allows a new, superior print, a remastered soundtrack and a remixed score – technical niceties elsewhere, but central players in Das Boot. Cinematographer Jost Vacano – who recently shot Starship Troopers – uses the limitation of constant, gloomy interiors to give a full sense of this constrained existence. Again, where submarine movies generally restrict themselves to bridge, deck and torpedo tubes, Das Boot shows the claustrophobic whole, with men crammed into the spaces left between provisions. Just as vital is the atmosphere provided by the Oscar-nominated soundtrack. With no visual link to the outside world other than the limited periscope, the crew of a submarine relies on what it can hear, and with every creak of the hull or ping of the sonar, the tension rises as the submarine sinks.
But it is still the submarine itself which dominates Petersen’s now-classic film. As the U-96 descends below safe levels, each depth charge and blown rivet makes this the most gripping and visceral of war movies. At over three hours, it’s not for the faint hearted, but there are few war movies to equal Das Boot.
Note: The sentence ‘The most gripping and visceral of war movies’ was used as a pull-quote on the video trailer.
The Rainmaker
Neon magazine
With the courtroom showdown as firmly installed in cinema consciousness as the Western's high-noon shootout (and each of his new novels doubling as a screenplay), the John Grisham industry rolls on. The 'rainmaker' is Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon), a rookie Memphis lawyer whose first shot at litigation comes via the fantastically sleazy Bruiser Stone (Mickey Rourke). Baylor's ideals are the first casualties as he enters a world of jury tampering, stolen evidence, embezzlement and fraud. And that's just the lawyers.
His first case representing the family of a boy dying from leukemia takes Baylor in over his head, and along with ambuance-chasing partner Deck Schiflett (Danny DeVito) he finds himself taking on the might of a corrupt insurance company, their pack of attorneys - led by a perfectly cast Jon Voight - and falling for a woman (Claire Danes) whose husband beats her with a baseball bat. So far, so predictable; fresh-faced innocence takes on corrupt exerience and everything is running to form in GrishamWorld.
But The Rainmaker has substance, and a heightened sense that today's idealist will be ground down into tomorrow's Jon Voight, whose dapper exterior and rotten heart makes for a stock Grisham character. The pet sharks gliding insidiously across the title credits speak volumes; the film's comedy revolves around the scavenging deviousness of the lawyers themselves. In a sense, The Rainmaker is one big lawyer sketch. DeVito's chummy behaviour belies his smarmy opportunism; he offers a poor black kid with a broken arm a stick of gum, then follows it up with his business card.
Where A Time to Kill made the viewer's moral choices for them, The Rainmaker shows ethical ambivalence at the heart of the American legal system. Leukemia victims and domestic violence make for standard emotion-tweaking, but no matter how black and white Grisham's worldview may be, there are still grey areas and a line that Baylor knows he will cross.
Though it's Grisham's film more than Coppola's, the direction makes for a swinging narrative and provides a trademark visceral, flat-trashing fight scene when Baylor confronts the wife-beater. But it's the murky morals of a questionable system that propel the movie. Predictable morality tale? Yes. Scathing, satirical indictment of America's legal system? Tell it to the judge.
The Director’s Cut
The following are film reviews from Neon magazine [EMAP]
Fifteen years after its success surprised even its makers, the story of German WWII submarine U-96 gets not only a director’s cut but a full restoration. The film launched several careers and, although director Wolfgang Petersen has gone to Hollywood – In the Line of Fire, Air Force One – Das Boot clearly remains his first love. Sifting through a million feet of film, 5oo sound tapes and the film’s haunting musical score, Petersen and his team have finally finished one of cinema’s most authentic experiences of war.
Das Boot follows a U-Boat mission through the eyes of novice war correspondent Lieutenant Werner (Herbert Grönemeyer). But patriotic fervour turns to despair when Hitler’s naval command uses its submarines to play cat-and-mouse with British destroyers. Camaraderie and discipline are pushed to new limits – and so is the boat itself.
The added footage – nearly an hour and a half – allows Petersen to flesh out the human drama. Jürgen Prochnow’s masterful central performance as the jaded skipper now has more space to develop, and the everyday intimacies of crew life serve to emphasise the central horror of warfare in the only type of boat specifically designed to sink. Submarine movies generally sanitise the experience of riding underwater in a 70-metre metal coffin, but the effects on the U-96 crew as they move from early-mission high spirits to brooding neuroses reveal frightened young men longing for homes and families.
But where most director’s cuts simply add footage, this is also a restoration as painstaking as George Lucas’s recent work on the Star Wars trilogy. Technology unavailable during production allows a new, superior print, a remastered soundtrack and a remixed score – technical niceties elsewhere, but central players in Das Boot. Cinematographer Jost Vacano – who recently shot Starship Troopers – uses the limitation of constant, gloomy interiors to give a full sense of this constrained existence. Again, where submarine movies generally restrict themselves to bridge, deck and torpedo tubes, Das Boot shows the claustrophobic whole, with men crammed into the spaces left between provisions. Just as vital is the atmosphere provided by the Oscar-nominated soundtrack. With no visual link to the outside world other than the limited periscope, the crew of a submarine relies on what it can hear, and with every creak of the hull or ping of the sonar, the tension rises as the submarine sinks.
But it is still the submarine itself which dominates Petersen’s now-classic film. As the U-96 descends below safe levels, each depth charge and blown rivet makes this the most gripping and visceral of war movies. At over three hours, it’s not for the faint hearted, but there are few war movies to equal Das Boot.
Note: The sentence ‘The most gripping and visceral of war movies’ was used as a pull-quote on the video trailer.
The Rainmaker
Neon magazine
With the courtroom showdown as firmly installed in cinema consciousness as the Western's high-noon shootout (and each of his new novels doubling as a screenplay), the John Grisham industry rolls on. The 'rainmaker' is Rudy Baylor (Matt Damon), a rookie Memphis lawyer whose first shot at litigation comes via the fantastically sleazy Bruiser Stone (Mickey Rourke). Baylor's ideals are the first casualties as he enters a world of jury tampering, stolen evidence, embezzlement and fraud. And that's just the lawyers.
His first case representing the family of a boy dying from leukemia takes Baylor in over his head, and along with ambuance-chasing partner Deck Schiflett (Danny DeVito) he finds himself taking on the might of a corrupt insurance company, their pack of attorneys - led by a perfectly cast Jon Voight - and falling for a woman (Claire Danes) whose husband beats her with a baseball bat. So far, so predictable; fresh-faced innocence takes on corrupt exerience and everything is running to form in GrishamWorld.
But The Rainmaker has substance, and a heightened sense that today's idealist will be ground down into tomorrow's Jon Voight, whose dapper exterior and rotten heart makes for a stock Grisham character. The pet sharks gliding insidiously across the title credits speak volumes; the film's comedy revolves around the scavenging deviousness of the lawyers themselves. In a sense, The Rainmaker is one big lawyer sketch. DeVito's chummy behaviour belies his smarmy opportunism; he offers a poor black kid with a broken arm a stick of gum, then follows it up with his business card.
Where A Time to Kill made the viewer's moral choices for them, The Rainmaker shows ethical ambivalence at the heart of the American legal system. Leukemia victims and domestic violence make for standard emotion-tweaking, but no matter how black and white Grisham's worldview may be, there are still grey areas and a line that Baylor knows he will cross.
Though it's Grisham's film more than Coppola's, the direction makes for a swinging narrative and provides a trademark visceral, flat-trashing fight scene when Baylor confronts the wife-beater. But it's the murky morals of a questionable system that propel the movie. Predictable morality tale? Yes. Scathing, satirical indictment of America's legal system? Tell it to the judge.
Residential prospectus
The following short piece of copy was prepared for a residential trust’s promotional brochure on which the paragraphs are separated by photographs.
Denholm Place is an attractive, quiet residential estate of 60 apartments in west London. Set opposite a village green, the four blocks were built in 1935, and feature a communal garden flanked by cedars and rose bushes. The internal communal areas feature original brass fixtures and Art Deco stair-railings.
Denholm Place is particularly quiet for London, with no main roads adjacent to the grounds. The 1930s architecture ensures that the separating walls within the apartments are thicker than those found in modern builds, and noise does not travel between properties. Outside, there are noise curfews and motorcycles are required to be turned off and walked into the estate.
The estate is managed by Norton Property Management Ltd, with executive decisions made by the board of a residential trust. All flat owners are automatically trust members and entitled to vote at annual and extraordinary general meetings.
The Trust is also strict about building and renovation work, with no such activity allowed on weekends or Bank Holidays, and at least a week’s notice given to all affected residents covering the type and duration of any work.
There is limited parking within the grounds of the estate, and there are an additional 30 garages which, every so often, become available for sale or rental.
A caretaker is on site between 8am and 4pm, Monday to Friday, and the gardens are tended by a professional grounds-keeper.
The service charge covers all hot water and heating, which is supplied by communal boilers.
Denholm Place is conveniently located for both the underground via the Central line, and the overground.
Denholm Place is an attractive, quiet residential estate of 60 apartments in west London. Set opposite a village green, the four blocks were built in 1935, and feature a communal garden flanked by cedars and rose bushes. The internal communal areas feature original brass fixtures and Art Deco stair-railings.
Denholm Place is particularly quiet for London, with no main roads adjacent to the grounds. The 1930s architecture ensures that the separating walls within the apartments are thicker than those found in modern builds, and noise does not travel between properties. Outside, there are noise curfews and motorcycles are required to be turned off and walked into the estate.
The estate is managed by Norton Property Management Ltd, with executive decisions made by the board of a residential trust. All flat owners are automatically trust members and entitled to vote at annual and extraordinary general meetings.
The Trust is also strict about building and renovation work, with no such activity allowed on weekends or Bank Holidays, and at least a week’s notice given to all affected residents covering the type and duration of any work.
There is limited parking within the grounds of the estate, and there are an additional 30 garages which, every so often, become available for sale or rental.
A caretaker is on site between 8am and 4pm, Monday to Friday, and the gardens are tended by a professional grounds-keeper.
The service charge covers all hot water and heating, which is supplied by communal boilers.
Denholm Place is conveniently located for both the underground via the Central line, and the overground.
Wednesday 20 January 2010
Health feature in a local newspaper
The following health feature was one of a series written for The Croydon Advertiser.
If you are one of the thousands of British people who will be holidaying abroad this summer, you may want to check that you have more than just ticket, passport and money.
No one likes to think of health problems arising abroad, and a health insurance policy will cover most eventualities, but there are steps that everyone can take to ensure that they get the health cover available to them.
For travellers to any of the European Community countries, it is essential to carry a form called an E111.
This ensures that what we call primary care - doctors, dentists, pharmacists and casualty departments - will either be free or the cost refundable at least in part. Britain has what is called a reciprocal care scheme with the EC countries, and the details of what is available at any particular destination can be found in a booklet called Health Advice for Travellers, also known as a T5. This booklet also contains the E111.
Obtaining a T5 is simple. They are available from main Post Offices, and the application requires basic information along with any one of three numbers.
These are your National Insurance number, Pension number or NHS number.
The names of family dependants can be included on one form. The form must then be taken to the counter of any Post Office to be checked and rubber-stamped.
The E111 is then valid, as long as it is not used, for any number of trips to EC countries.
For those travelling further afield than Europe, vaccinations may be required. Many diseases are still at large throughout the world, and your destination should always be checked for any immunisations which may be necessary.
It is not only tropical countries which carry risks for the traveller; TB is prevalent across much of the former Soviet Union, and visitors to Mongolia may come across typhoid, hepatitis A and diphtheria.
Fortunately, there is detailed vaccination information available. Immunisations recommendations fall into three categories: mandatory, recommended and recommended in some circumstances.
Mandatory immunisation is generally just for yellow fever, and there are specialist centres for this. Immunisation is recommended where the risk of infection is substantial, and recommended in some circumstances if the traveller is visiting the country three times in one year, staying for more than three months in a rural area or working in a high-risk occupation.
Malaria remains a problem in many parts of the world, and it is important to check the malaria status of your destination. Nets, sprays and repellent ointments can only ever be partially effective, and anti-malarial preparations should be taken for a week before travel and for four weeks afterwards.
Different countries affected by malaria may require different preparations, and differing doses for children should also be checked.
Information on the E111, vaccinations and all health aspects of holidaying abroad can be obtained by telephoning HEALTHPOINT, The National Health Information Service, on 0800 xxx xxx.
If you are one of the thousands of British people who will be holidaying abroad this summer, you may want to check that you have more than just ticket, passport and money.
No one likes to think of health problems arising abroad, and a health insurance policy will cover most eventualities, but there are steps that everyone can take to ensure that they get the health cover available to them.
For travellers to any of the European Community countries, it is essential to carry a form called an E111.
This ensures that what we call primary care - doctors, dentists, pharmacists and casualty departments - will either be free or the cost refundable at least in part. Britain has what is called a reciprocal care scheme with the EC countries, and the details of what is available at any particular destination can be found in a booklet called Health Advice for Travellers, also known as a T5. This booklet also contains the E111.
Obtaining a T5 is simple. They are available from main Post Offices, and the application requires basic information along with any one of three numbers.
These are your National Insurance number, Pension number or NHS number.
The names of family dependants can be included on one form. The form must then be taken to the counter of any Post Office to be checked and rubber-stamped.
The E111 is then valid, as long as it is not used, for any number of trips to EC countries.
For those travelling further afield than Europe, vaccinations may be required. Many diseases are still at large throughout the world, and your destination should always be checked for any immunisations which may be necessary.
It is not only tropical countries which carry risks for the traveller; TB is prevalent across much of the former Soviet Union, and visitors to Mongolia may come across typhoid, hepatitis A and diphtheria.
Fortunately, there is detailed vaccination information available. Immunisations recommendations fall into three categories: mandatory, recommended and recommended in some circumstances.
Mandatory immunisation is generally just for yellow fever, and there are specialist centres for this. Immunisation is recommended where the risk of infection is substantial, and recommended in some circumstances if the traveller is visiting the country three times in one year, staying for more than three months in a rural area or working in a high-risk occupation.
Malaria remains a problem in many parts of the world, and it is important to check the malaria status of your destination. Nets, sprays and repellent ointments can only ever be partially effective, and anti-malarial preparations should be taken for a week before travel and for four weeks afterwards.
Different countries affected by malaria may require different preparations, and differing doses for children should also be checked.
Information on the E111, vaccinations and all health aspects of holidaying abroad can be obtained by telephoning HEALTHPOINT, The National Health Information Service, on 0800 xxx xxx.
Tuesday 5 January 2010
Feature on punk rock in suburbia
The following feature was published in Deep magazine, the in-house magazine of a Croydon bar and club.
John Peel got it right. Any culture wars won by punk rock, said the amiable Scouser, were won in the suburbs. When punk exploded, the epicentre might have been the middle of London, but the shock waves had most effect out where the tube lines don’t run. Three years after The Sex Pistols played the 100 Club, most of the handful of people present would be dressing in tea-towels and mascara and standing like shop-window mannequins at Spandau Ballet gigs.
The biggest bomb-crater left by the punk wars was financial. Before punk, you could start a band any time you wanted, provided you had about twenty thousand quid. After punk, you went to Woolworth’s and bought a guitar and amp for about twenty notes and your drummer played on Tupperware boxes full of rice. Then your mates borrowed your ‘gear’ and it was all round to their bedrooms to play the songs of The Adverts.
My home town had only one real punk legend. Dee Generate played drums with Eater, who had an EP called Get Yer Yo-Yos Out. He was 15 and, when the anti-punk backlash started – and Johnny Rotten was razored in a car park – Mr and Mrs Generate had a brick heaved through their window a few streets from me. We saw Dee Generate and the VD Scabs at a village hall in 1977. Our local record shop put out singles by Slimy Toad and Johnny Moped, and the summer of 1977 is best summed up by an online ‘Diary of a Suburban Punk Rocker’:
‘May 13th. Sent off for Sex Pistols T Shirt. – The naked 13-year-old boy with a stiffy and fag. Not exactly rock n roll but it will annoy [sic].’
Annoyance was part of the package. On Jubilee Day 1977, me and my kilted mates avoided the street parties and sat in my room playing The Pistols’ God Save the Queen out the window through my crappy little speakers. We’d had our punk epiphany. Mine had come at my own suburban music Mecca; Croydon’s Greyhound. Here it was – with my long hair and Jethro Tull jeans patch - that I saw The Stranglers, the only band I’ve ever seen that I could also smell. They were dark and incredible, even if I did believe for some time that their bassist was called Jean-Jacket Borneo.
Bands I saw at the Greyhound include Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Slits, Ultravox [the good Ultravox, with John Foxx] and The Vibrators. At a Magazine gig, I stood at the bar with Siouxsie Sioux on one side of me and Billy Idol on the other, treading on Idol’s blue suede shoes for good measure. Other bands that, to my shame and regret, I didn’t see at the Greyhound include The Ramones (The Ramones played Croydon!), Blondie and Talking Heads. After an Adverts gig at the ‘Hound, my mate found two halves of a leather jacket in the road outside. He took them home and joined the two halves with safety pins (what were shares worth in that industry in 1977?). Functional and decorative.
The idea of punk fashion would be unrecognisable to today’s youth, who gauge style by expenditure. Oxfam shops have never had it so good as they did in 1977. I would regularly venture out in great baggy granddad shirts with ‘We’re the flowers in your dustbin’ stencilled across the front, and huge second-hand suits with ten or fifteen badges down the lapels. Cheap mail-order PVC trousers were big, DMs, home-sewn bondage trousers and kilts. I went to see Ultravox wearing a nylon protective coat I used for a weekend job cleaning planes at Gatwick Airport. Everyone I passed got a static shock.
Suburban music took longer to grow, but it outlasted its London origins. Watching a band called Easycure in a back garden in Crawley in 1977, I rated them. Watching them a year later in Merstham Village Hall – premiering a song called Killing An Arab and now called The Cure - you could still see big things ahead. But it took time. Crawley – one of the original 1960s New Towns - also had its sports centre. By 1978, The Stranglers were now moving up the league and, when they played the sports centre, my soon-to-be girlfriend leapt on stage and snogged the bassist, whose name I now knew to be Jean-Jacques Burnel. I played at Crawley Sports Centre myself in ’79, with my band The Escalators. We won a competition to support The Clash, and my abiding memory is playing table tennis with Paul Simonon while my mum talked to Joe Strummer.
There was some doubt by then, though, as to whether The Clash and The Stranglers were punk enough; there were never any such doubts concerning The Damned. The Damned have a well-documented Croydon connection, with Captain Sensible being a local lad. When Sensible moved to guitar, their new bassist divided his time between thwacking the strings for The Damned and looking for me to beat me up for an ill-advised dalliance with his girlfriend. The Damned borrowed a couple of amps from my band once and, with gobbing still being de rigeur, they came back looking like glazed doughnuts.
Music fads come and go, but it’s the differences rather than the similarities that mark out punk and post-punk. It was comparatively difficult to get the music, for a start, which is why I had to ride a dangerous and uninsured Yamaha RD200 seven miles to Croydon in torrential rain in order to buy Joy Division’s Transmission on the day of its release.
Punk’s legacy is debatable. Every talentless Brit artist out of St Martin’s School of Art claims to have been influenced by punk, but that’s just because none of them can paint. The real legacy, after all the coloured vinyl and Patti Smith T-shirts have been lost, is that, for a couple of years, we had some music which was ours.
THE SOUND OF THE SUBURBS
John Peel got it right. Any culture wars won by punk rock, said the amiable Scouser, were won in the suburbs. When punk exploded, the epicentre might have been the middle of London, but the shock waves had most effect out where the tube lines don’t run. Three years after The Sex Pistols played the 100 Club, most of the handful of people present would be dressing in tea-towels and mascara and standing like shop-window mannequins at Spandau Ballet gigs.
The biggest bomb-crater left by the punk wars was financial. Before punk, you could start a band any time you wanted, provided you had about twenty thousand quid. After punk, you went to Woolworth’s and bought a guitar and amp for about twenty notes and your drummer played on Tupperware boxes full of rice. Then your mates borrowed your ‘gear’ and it was all round to their bedrooms to play the songs of The Adverts.
My home town had only one real punk legend. Dee Generate played drums with Eater, who had an EP called Get Yer Yo-Yos Out. He was 15 and, when the anti-punk backlash started – and Johnny Rotten was razored in a car park – Mr and Mrs Generate had a brick heaved through their window a few streets from me. We saw Dee Generate and the VD Scabs at a village hall in 1977. Our local record shop put out singles by Slimy Toad and Johnny Moped, and the summer of 1977 is best summed up by an online ‘Diary of a Suburban Punk Rocker’:
‘May 13th. Sent off for Sex Pistols T Shirt. – The naked 13-year-old boy with a stiffy and fag. Not exactly rock n roll but it will annoy [sic].’
Annoyance was part of the package. On Jubilee Day 1977, me and my kilted mates avoided the street parties and sat in my room playing The Pistols’ God Save the Queen out the window through my crappy little speakers. We’d had our punk epiphany. Mine had come at my own suburban music Mecca; Croydon’s Greyhound. Here it was – with my long hair and Jethro Tull jeans patch - that I saw The Stranglers, the only band I’ve ever seen that I could also smell. They were dark and incredible, even if I did believe for some time that their bassist was called Jean-Jacket Borneo.
Bands I saw at the Greyhound include Buzzcocks, The Jam, The Slits, Ultravox [the good Ultravox, with John Foxx] and The Vibrators. At a Magazine gig, I stood at the bar with Siouxsie Sioux on one side of me and Billy Idol on the other, treading on Idol’s blue suede shoes for good measure. Other bands that, to my shame and regret, I didn’t see at the Greyhound include The Ramones (The Ramones played Croydon!), Blondie and Talking Heads. After an Adverts gig at the ‘Hound, my mate found two halves of a leather jacket in the road outside. He took them home and joined the two halves with safety pins (what were shares worth in that industry in 1977?). Functional and decorative.
The idea of punk fashion would be unrecognisable to today’s youth, who gauge style by expenditure. Oxfam shops have never had it so good as they did in 1977. I would regularly venture out in great baggy granddad shirts with ‘We’re the flowers in your dustbin’ stencilled across the front, and huge second-hand suits with ten or fifteen badges down the lapels. Cheap mail-order PVC trousers were big, DMs, home-sewn bondage trousers and kilts. I went to see Ultravox wearing a nylon protective coat I used for a weekend job cleaning planes at Gatwick Airport. Everyone I passed got a static shock.
Suburban music took longer to grow, but it outlasted its London origins. Watching a band called Easycure in a back garden in Crawley in 1977, I rated them. Watching them a year later in Merstham Village Hall – premiering a song called Killing An Arab and now called The Cure - you could still see big things ahead. But it took time. Crawley – one of the original 1960s New Towns - also had its sports centre. By 1978, The Stranglers were now moving up the league and, when they played the sports centre, my soon-to-be girlfriend leapt on stage and snogged the bassist, whose name I now knew to be Jean-Jacques Burnel. I played at Crawley Sports Centre myself in ’79, with my band The Escalators. We won a competition to support The Clash, and my abiding memory is playing table tennis with Paul Simonon while my mum talked to Joe Strummer.
There was some doubt by then, though, as to whether The Clash and The Stranglers were punk enough; there were never any such doubts concerning The Damned. The Damned have a well-documented Croydon connection, with Captain Sensible being a local lad. When Sensible moved to guitar, their new bassist divided his time between thwacking the strings for The Damned and looking for me to beat me up for an ill-advised dalliance with his girlfriend. The Damned borrowed a couple of amps from my band once and, with gobbing still being de rigeur, they came back looking like glazed doughnuts.
Music fads come and go, but it’s the differences rather than the similarities that mark out punk and post-punk. It was comparatively difficult to get the music, for a start, which is why I had to ride a dangerous and uninsured Yamaha RD200 seven miles to Croydon in torrential rain in order to buy Joy Division’s Transmission on the day of its release.
Punk’s legacy is debatable. Every talentless Brit artist out of St Martin’s School of Art claims to have been influenced by punk, but that’s just because none of them can paint. The real legacy, after all the coloured vinyl and Patti Smith T-shirts have been lost, is that, for a couple of years, we had some music which was ours.
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