Bunning Gauloise Keeping It Gallic

Pleasure for One

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(Perfect) Piss Part 2

I told you I wouldn't shut up about it.

Taking The (Perfect) Piss

This was the view, from the urinal, when I had lunch at Lord's today...

Not only "The Home of Cricket", but also home to one of the best pisses of my life. 

Spending a penny after lunch in the Tavern Stand, I discovered each urinal had a porthole allowing each pisser (pissee?) a perfect uninterrupted view of the pitch. Such is the majesty of Lord's. 

Cricket is soaking deeper into my brain with every year that passes. I feel like I'm being progressively brainwashed, as it now occupies a space in my head that doesn't feel appropriate for a sport. I wouldn't say it's a religious feeling, but certainly spiritual, philosophical. It feels like deep thought, a contemplative state of mind, a higher plane of consciousness. Calm, deep brooding satisfaction. Wickets, turf, slow building momentum, the scope of high theatre, run outs, misfields, Ricky Ponting's face, all punctuated by the chuckling tones of Jonathan Agnew:

One of the more consistent strains running through my blog posts is my ongoing love affair with the radio.  

I'm glued to my laptop or one of the two digital Roberts (bedside+kitchen, natch). I'm passionate about it as a medium that has pioneered, persevered and lived to tell the tale. 

And in Test Match Special I have found my radio zenith. Engaging, intimate, irreverent and endlessly charming, and all the while (supposedly) commentating on a spectator sport, that most people (in this day and age) prefer to watch. Like you know, with their eyes and stuff.

And yet TMS is superlative to any other activity I could ever think of, and even if I am watching cricket on TV or say in the flesh at Lord's I still have Aggers and the boys on. RESPECT

 

Yesterday they had this funny chap on:

And the day before this really rather un-funny chap:

Yes I know 23 is too young to be a crashing bore. But when I rule the world TMS will be blared out of loudspeakers in every town centre from here to Daventry. In this country we have a plethora of phenomenal radio stations/presenters/producers that broadcast late into the night, under-appreciated, underestimated. TMS is just one example. What these guys do (ever tried to be funny/interesting for 8 hours solid?) is unbelievable, but there is a world of shows out there to discover. So discover.

Jonners RIP

X

Unforgettable

So just for the record I don't go out of my way to watch obscure films. I don't scour far flung satellite channels hoping to find some inspired, beardy, gem that I can be all cinephile and superior about, that's not my style. I hate all that film-oneupmanship I find it all a little, err babyish.

BUT here is a film that is worth seeing, and were it not for the persistance of my pal Joe I wouldn't have a clue it existed. It's not a classic (far from it) but is unmissable for it's sheer bare faced weirdness.

I've always found Oliver Reed films immensely watchable. This being chiefly because Olly is the doppelganger of my father. By which I mean he is his absolute twin. So no matter how dreadful the vehicle I always garner some entertainment from watching an alternate version of my dad slur his way through some old Michael Winner schtick...and guess whose behind the wheel again here?!

The plot when written down, just about makes sense: Successful ad man in very swinging 60's London, attempts to turn over new leaves. But Winners madcap, surrealist style, involving psychedelic flash backs every couple of minutes, shakes the whole thing up something rotten.

Olly is smouldering and stylish, playing his 60's Patrick Bateman as gentle and macho at the same time. Orson Welles is having an absolute shocker and looks half-cut in every single frame, (a scene where he puts a cereal box on his own head just looks like a drunk fumbling on camera). There's an endless procession of pointy breasted 60's "fillies" who are pretty ropey with the exception of Carol White, who's ok. But it's not really about the acting, or the shoddy script, or the diabolical sound dubbing...

It's about the swagger of Oliver Reed in his shawl collar, and sharp suit driving his soft-top Alpha round sunny west London in 67. It's about his weird flashbacks, to an arcane public school, and then his equally disturbing "college years" at Cambridge (naturally). It's morbid, it's silly, it's English, it's kind of shit. If that isn't enough of a reason to see a film, you shouldn't be reading this blog.

So there

I'll Never Forget What's'is'name - 6/10

Best Thing Vs Worst Thing

Eternal Moonwalk

A website where (mainly South American people*) moonwalk into infinity...

It's always going to be one of those heaven or hell experiences isn't?

Make your own mind up 

ChandlerX

(* South Americans love Jacko, cos he ended his life looking a bit like a sort of South American shaman, discuss?)

Hot Cuisine

Couscous and beans, with chicken ratatouille. Corn on the side. Don't hold back on the paprika.



H

That's Entertainment

There's a certain type of documentary about the 60's where most of the talking heads are old curmudgeonly guys in the street wearing cloth caps...

They spit with rage about how the youth are all crazies, who listen to bonkers music and throw themselves about the place like lunatics, and that being"cool" or "groovy" is just cover for being a bunch of no good, workshy, beatnik, scroungers 

NORMALLY of course I think this old man hasn't got a grumpy leg to stand on, and that being groovy and wigging out in the 60's was a righteous, legendary thing to do...BUT it's when I see clips like this that I start to think maybe he was right all along:

Jose Feliciano

(Finger Click)

Thanks Why That's Delightful

That Explains A Lot

Graffiti never ceases to fill all those gaps in my so-called "education"