He's only got one hall! The house that looks like Hitler

Gems from today's papers. In the Telegraph, 'Britain's Worst Roundabouts' - and it doesn't even mention Gants Hill http://bit.ly/f6qe1M - and in the Mail (and I suspect several other places tomorrow) is The House That Looks Like Hitler which began life as a Tweet from a Welsh girl sitting in a traffic jam and is now a sensation. It is reprinted above and is hilarious (at least I think so).
In particular I love how the house next to Chez Adolf (the one on the reich!) looks ever so slightly shocked.
It works best in low res and blurred. The Mail took a decent pic of the house and it ruined the effect. Which you can tell by the negative comments from the online readership on the lines of 'Worst. Story. Ever.'
Best comment was the one which slammed the Mail writer for calling the house a semi when it was clearly an end-of-terrace. And the subtly naughty comment from one who said 'I have a semi that looks like Kojak wearing a rollneck sweater.' Very good and got past the moderators.
Of course these kind of stories attract the 'going to hell in a handcart' comments about what makes news and why is this news on a day when so much is going on in Libya and Japan and blah blah blah.
That's not the point and hasn't been for some years, particularly in a world where the BBC and other 24-hour news channels cover the heavy stories round the clock so that by the time you open your paper they are old news.
And if newspapers want to gatecrash on what people are talking about then, unfortunately in some people's eyes, that means the trivial and often very funny topics hotfooting it round Facebook, Twitter and other social networks (of which there aren't any others worth mentioning, let's face it.)
So that is why papers carry stories about the worst roundabouts in Britain, The House That Looks Like Hitler, Britney Spears in very tight clothing and some bollocks involving Jersey Shore, the Kardashians or The Only Way Is Essex.
And good for them!
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Talking of TOWIE, as it is apparently known, they were filming it last night in our local hostelry The Nu Bar, previously known as The Crown.
The place is shut on Monday but they opened specially to film two of the Essex girls having a mock conversation as if they were in a crowded late night venue, rather than an empty bar at 6pm with white van drivers and pedestrians going past shouting 'oi oi darling' and other Wildean one liners.
I still can't bring myself to watch more than ten minutes I'm afraid.
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Two things to mention to Andy Townsend. You don't need to start every summary with the word 'yes' or 'yeah'. And when there is one of them, it's a 'goal' not 'goals'. He's wankers.
Loads of Ghana fans heading to Wembley tonight from stations in East London. Very colourful as they swarmed around Leyton and even outnumbered the Eastern Europeans at Stratford, and that's saying something. And typically the Jubilee Line went down between Stanmore and, yep, Wembley at about the same time.
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I've never been a big fan of Neil Morrissey but seeing his programme about his childhood in a care home was moving and genuine. I suppose it hit me because it was set in Stoke and Stafford, where my family are from (on my mum's side). But it was both shocking and warm at the same time. It brought back the whole 'pindown' scandal which I'd forgotten about but which should never be forgotten. What people did to kids in care during the 70s was horrific.
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I have to hand it to my boy, he was wonderful as Ben Gunn in his school's production of Treasure Island last week. He had the funny lines and seemed to enjoy being the centre of attention and making people laugh. Strange that.
Now he's had his first taste of acclaim, I fear it's going to become a habit. Lots of late night rehearsals, fretting over lines, being all melodramatic and arty. The next few years are going to be tough, I can feel it.
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Norman Tebbit is 80 today. A lot of people will go on about how he should have been Prime Minister and how that would have sorted us all out. People remember him being tough and how brave he was after the Brighton bombing, and he was. But he was also a nasty right winger. He railed against the BBC for only putting across the left wing view. I know this because he was constantly on the BBC saying so. He would rather we had not signed a peace deal in Ireland, preferring a situation which would have led to 100 more Brighton bombings. And everyone bangs on about his 'get on your bike' comment which he made at a time when his government was responsible for closing down British industry and raising the jobless total to post-war records. So while we should sympathise with the injuries he sustained in the unjustifiable terrorist atrocity, it should not blind us to the kind of man he really was and how lucky we were never to have had him as Prime Minister.
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Reunions are all the rage, probably thanks to Facebook reuniting friends (now that's a good idea for a website) but I'm not always sure how good an idea it is. My old college mates are arranging a get together in September to 'celebrate' 30 years since we arrived for our year's journalism course at Harlow. Sensibly we are not having the event in Harlow as it is a shithole that no one wants to go back too (and I say that as a parent of three kids all born there). Instead, one of my contempories is going to have it at 'his club' in London - and he's the former anarchist and football hooligan. I'm a member of two clubs - Tottenham Hotspur Football and Athletic Club and Epping Video. Neither of them are suitable.
The class of 82 didn't do badly. We have a Daily Mail columnist and a Guardian one, a very high flying PR guy, a couple of local newspaper editors, a TV journalist or two, some specialist national newspaper writers and me. And not a degree between us.
The thing that I find a little unsettling about reunions is there is always someone who finds a way of saying, in not so many words, 'hey, you lot never thought I'd amount to anything, well look at me now you bastards.' And then I realise the desperate person doing this is often me and I feel ashamed.
So yes, I'll probably be there in September.
See you there guys...Solly

Unlucky Heather

My little niece, Heather, who lives in Aberdeen (Scottish Heather) is only six. But she's lovely - to us anyway.
Yesterday she was at her local swimming baths and she saw GB Olympic hopeful and local hero Hannah Miley practising for the Commonwealth Games.
Hannah's stroke is, apparently, butterfly. So Heather says: "I want to do that," and jumps in alongside Hannah. She then swallows so much water trying to do the butterfly she throws up in the pool.
The announcement goes up that everyone must leave the water while they begin 'netting'.
So the whole place is evacuated, the pool closed and if Hannah Miley fails to win Gold in the Commonwealth Games then we know who to blame!
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Which reminds me of a great quote from Victor Lewis Smith (who may well have pinched it) when he reviewed a Little Chef restaurant once. It had a smoking section which he said was about as segregational as having a non pissing section in a swimming pool.
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It's no good, it's been going for a whole year or more but the sight of 'DJs' on the Halifax bank's staff radio station, particularly the woman doing 'ISA ISA baby' still makes me wish there was someone with a shotgun nearby.
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Cover versions. Sometimes I just don't see the point. You have a great song and then someone else does it but in exactly the same style. Ronan Keating is the latest. He's done an album of Bacharach songs. Every one of them has been done 100 times and, let's be fair, better in most of those cases. Put simply, he has nothing to add apart from that slightly nasal voice.
I know it's a matter of taste but even the greats do it. I love David Bowie to bits but Pin Ups is my least favourite of his albums (up to Let's Dance, after that it's all a bit downhill quite frankly.) Pin Ups is an album of covers and not worthy of the Thin White Duke (and what was all that Aryan stuff about Dave?)
I love The Jam but don't see any improvement in their version of David Watts. I quite like The Fall but they didn't do much with There's A Ghost In My House which was that much different to the original.
Of course, there are exceptions. The original of Light My Fire was brilliant and true Doors fans may have been revolted but at least Jose Feliciano did something different (although Will Young just redid Jose Feliciano) and I happen to think Stevie Wonder's version was out of this world. Even the instrumental by Ananka Shankar was, I thought, wonderful.
Similarly, I Put A Spell On You (Nina Simone, Credence Clearwater Revival - two very different versions to the original) and talking of Bacharach, you have to hand it to both The Stranglers and Isaac Hayes for doing two very original and distinct versions.
But back to the original question, I guess that if you like Ronan Keating you'd buy a recording of him filing his nails. Personally, I find the sound of nailfiling to be nicer.
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So I've been invited to a 'Royal Wedding Party' next door, at the South Africans. They've asked us to bring a bottle and wear a hat. I know I'm a Republican but I love a bit of a do. But what kind of hat should I wear?
It's a bit like the boat race. I actually went once when I lived, ever so briefly, in Putney, but I couldn't get excited about either team. It's still on the BBC who probably think they are satisfying some public service edict to the posh inbreds.
I notice Oxford and Cambridge are no longer the best universities in the world and it's no surprise if they would rather let in square jawed foreigners whose only ability is to row a boat rather than be bright.
The race took place today, along with some violent protests in central London.
So what self respecting student is going to spend today standing by the banks of the Thames painting their cheeks light or dark blue in the hope of getting a quick shag after some posh bloke who might eventually make them rich when they could be in central London throwing fire extinguishers through the window of Top Shop. Beats me.
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The terrapins are back. Every year walkers, cyclists, doggers, witches, gangsters dumping bodies and other regular visitors to Epping Forest are taken aback by what look like dinner plate sized, slightly flattened German helmets on an island or floating on a branch in the water of Strawberry Pond.
They are terrapins - I believe they are known in their native Florida as red-eared sliders. Every year when there is a sustained burst of sunshine one or more of these animals come out to bask in the rays. The rest of the time, experts believe, they lie at the bottom of the water where the temperature remains at a constant few degrees above zero no matter what it is doing on the surface.
It's a remarkable sight though not completely welcomed by all. They are the result of being pets that outgrew their original tanks and were dumped in the pond. Probably around the time of the last big wave of Ninja Mutant Turtle hysteria (the only superheroes who are more recognisable when wearing masks than without them).
They are unlikely to breed, say wildlife experts. And they feed on the ducklings and goslings produced by the pond's resident Canada Geese, mallards and other ducks (including another introduced species, the Mandarin).
But as to those of us passing the pond while walking the dog, it's quite a sight. There's not that much variety in the forest so anything new and different is a bit exotic to us.
Turtly yours...Solly

Herd of swans? Of course I've heard of swans

Headline in the Mail Online refers to a village in uproar over a woman who feeds a 'flock of swans.'
Then the intro refers to a 'herd of swans'. And gets the place wrong.
Honestly, I despair sometimes.
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According to the latest figures, the number of viewers for Vanessa Feltz's chat show on Channel 5 (where else?) has fallen to 100,000. Which is appalling. I mean, 100,000 people stupid enough to watch that?
I only 'met' Vanessa once. I was lucky enough to be sitting in Upper Class of a Virgin flight to Las Vegas when she swanned in (swans being a feature of today's blog). She sat on the edge of my seat and started talking to some bloke next to me who asked her about her much-publicised recent break up with her husband. She started crying. It was awful, I had to turn up the volume in my headphones really loud to drown her out.
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I have an Elizabeth Taylor anecdote. It's not that one about her gay French butler who called her 'the old trampoline' because even at the age of 71 she had to give him viagara so he could satisfy her sexual appetite. Thanks to Matt Drake for planting that unsavoury image in my head.
I have a friend who is a genuine Russian Princess. Her forefathers were kicked out after the revolution. I joke that her lot kicked my lot out of Russia so it was just deserts.
When she was a child, she and her brother used to play on a yacht owned by Taylor and Burton in the Med. As you do.
Liz used to towel down the young lad, kneeling before him as he stood. As she rubbed him down she would look in his eyes, wink mischievously and tell him that a lot of men would like to be where he was at that moment. He had no idea what she was talking about of course.
What I like about her is that she didn't make many crap films as she grew old. She made a few while young but also made some brilliant ones. She also trailblazed the campaign to highlight AIDS when gay men became pariahs. Having had to snog the likes of Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson and Montgomery Clift on screen, she was well aware of the love that dares not bear its name. Those kisses prove she could act and her fundraising and campaigning prove she had a heart and a conscience. And the most fantastic eyes in the world.
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Asda's advert says it called its food range 'chosen by you' because it is 'chosen by you.' So, not by a focus group or via the millions of pounds a year it pays to the likes of Matthew Freud then.
Of course, it could do something revolutionary like not sell booze for less than bottled water, or take a moral lead and stop selling cigarettes, but it doesn't.
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There is a Facebook page going round titled 'that awkward silence when you tell someone you come from Essex' or something like that.
I know the feeling. I caught ten minutes of 'The only way is Essex' the other night, much of which is based round the corner to where I live.
I have grown up and still live in Essex. Not everyone is orange. But a lot of people are. And they're not all thick - but empty vessels make the most noise and all that.
I love Essex. I love (most of) the people, the culture, the history, the countryside, the coast, the towns, the honesty and the hard work.
A lot of us are here because our East End parents moved out to better themselves. I love that. A lot of people here with money have money because they worked bloody hard for it. They didn't inherit it. As a result, they wear it, they drive it, they spend it. But they don't sit around counting it and moaning about it. They get on with it. They are generous, both financially and in spirit. They are funny and warm and honest. Yes, really. Among the geezers and painted ladies there's a great deal of 'what you see is what you get' and I love it.
A great many of my friends come from Essex. They don't all live here still but many do. They are wonderful. They are warm. They are funny and they are diverse.
The stereotypes here could be stereotypes anywhere but I can live with that. I can live with the sniggers when you say you're from Essex. I'm from Essex, via Stepney and a bit of Stoke-on-Trent. I guess, like the hair of those in The Only Way Is Essex, I am sometimes betrayed by my roots.
So when I'm asked on Facebook, then, yes, I have to say I 'like' the awkward silence you get when you tell people you're from Essex.
Oi oi saveloy...as we say round here....Solly

Get it?

I don't want to vote for AV in the referendum because I now hate the Lib-Dems for their cowardly U-turn on tuition fees. But now I discover those right-wing lobbyists who pose as some kind of friend of the people, The Taxpayers Alliance, are behind the No2AV campaign and I couldn't possibly vote for something they agree with.
At this rate I'm going to have to have an opinion of my own! Wait, I wonder what my favourite newspaper/columnist/celebrity thinks I should do?
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Talking of columnists I am one of the few non right-wing people in Britain who actually quite likes Richard Littlejohn even though I don't often agree with him. I know I'm not supposed to and it's not just his connections to Ilford, Spurs and The Sun that swing it for me. I think he is wrong, for instance, in his column today where he suggests it's wrong to hold a minute's silence for Japan because of their war crimes. But he's right in that, as football fans, we do have too many 60-second silences before games. Soon it will be a compulsory part of every match.
And I completely agree with his observation that there is nothing quite as ridiculous as the sight of a bloke in a giant chicken costume bowing his head in silence in memory of tsunami victims at White Hart Lane last week before the West Ham game.
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There are things I don't get, as opposed to don't like. For instance, I'm not a fan of sailing but get why others would like it. Similarly for parascending and dangerous sports. I don't really get rugby union though I guess some people like to see fat posh men who might have a punch up at any second and I can see why people admire the way they haven't adopted football's more unsavoury habits like arguing with referees or pretending to be injured (except for the fake blood incident of course.) But league is so much better, surely?
I can sort of understand people who run marathons even though they don't realise it makes them look ten years older than they really are. And even cycling - those homo erotic outfits can be quite appealing to thin people.
But, like you, I have things I just don't get. Or at least I don't get why they are so popular. These include Adam Sandler, Phil Collins, 99 per cent of West End musical theatre, Lost, tribute bands, obsessive exercising, Miranda, prog rock, speedway, Crocs on men, decaf instant coffee, puffball skirts, Heat magazine, any car by Chrysler, owning Koi carp, Fred Bassett cartoons, street mime artists, the Welsh language, Katie Price, Sarah Sands column in the Evening Standard, the dipping sauce on Papa John pizzas (it's revolting and everyone I know thinks so), Vanessa Feltz, transubstantiation, Jamie Redknapp as a pundit and Rush.
And that's just for starters. It doesn't include things I don't like but at least can understand why others might such as peas, Coldplay, EastEnders, Sunday newspaper travel supplements, Arsenal, Range Rovers - oh, the list goes on and on and on, believe me.
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Trying to organise a night out with the boys up west on April 16th when we realised there is the all-Manchester semi final that day and then the Bolton-Stoke one the next, both at Wembley.
That's three sets of Northerners, plus Manchester United fans, all in the capital on the same night, doing what they always do on such occasions - moaning about how much a pint of bitter costs in central London, how miserable and impolite Cockneys are, how packed the tubes are and how many prostitutes there are in Soho. They've got a point, mind.
Then they'll take photos of themselves outside strip clubs, gawp at the lights in Piccadilly, shout suggestively at the hen parties going into Tiger Tiger and piss in the fountains of Trafalgar Square before they all strut around doing that funny Northern walk they do with their arms out and legs forward a la Liam Gallagher (don't think we haven't noticed!
Welcome to London lads. Leave it tidy.
Oi oi....Solly

Beyond the Palin

Sarah Palin visits Israel and wears a Star of David to show her support. So now she's Jewish. After 2,000 years haven't we suffered enough?
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My doctor wants to see me on Friday to 'discuss my cholesterol'. When was the last time a doctor asked to see someone to tell them their cholesterol is fine and there's absolutely nothing to worry about?
As regular readers know, it was a doctor - in Harley Street no less - who told me I would die at the age of 54. This was 30 years ago and he based his opinion on looking at my hand and the fact I then smoked 20 a day. So I've got six years left. Unless I hear something different this Friday of course.
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Cross dressing. I touched on it yesterday (oo er missus) but I reckon most men have tried it at some time or other.
Think about it. Stag nights, rugby club dos, fancy dress parties or just doing it for fun, I genuinely believe a clear majority of the male population of this country has donned female attire at least once. Not to mention those who have done it, on their own, when everyone's out, and they have looked through their wife's underwear draw to...oh, sorry, I digress.
Me? I've been to a tarts and vicars party dressed as a tart, of course. I wore a boob tube, short skirt, fishnets, borrowed shoes from my friend's mum (a fantastic woman called Deanna who I still miss) and, in my opinion, looked bloody fantastic. The right foundation can make your nose look a lot shorter, I discovered.
The only other time was slightly odd. I met a girl from Yeovil called Rachel who was a helicopter engineer for Westland (though that has nothing to do with it) and I gave her my shirt and she gave me her taffeta ballgown. She didn't want to go home in a ballgown. I kept it in my wardrobe at my flat in Dagenham (or Becontree Heath as I liked to call it) and one day, after a few drinks and a funny cigarette with some mates, they dared me to try it on. So I did.
Again - and like most men who have dragged up - I thought I looked fabulous. In the end I gave the dress away to the girlfriend of a mate of mine.
I'm betting that most blokes reading this have dressed up in drag at least once. So leave a comment and let me know if I'm right or just a bit warped.
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Dead badger in Buckhurst Hill. By the side of the High Street. This is the first badger, dead or alive, that I've seen in this part of the world, well, ever. I remember several years ago being told there were no badgers in Epping Forest due to hunting but this is clearly untrue. Just like the official Epping Forest web site which says there are only two types of deer - muntjac and fallow. But I regular see roe deer (and there's a major road nearby called Roebuck Lane so there is a history of this species!)
It reminds me of a story of the night when two groups representing the Forest's most popular activities came together accidentally - that's nature lovers and East End murders.
Apparently a group of badger watchers were settling in (pun intended) for a night's observation when they noticed two men dumping a large, black plastic bag, in the bushes.
The men saw the badger watchers, and calmly walked off. Naturally the bag contained a dead body (they say there are as many corpses as badgers in Epping Forest.)
Everyone from the Krays to East Enders has reputedly used the Forest as a woodland grave. Never found a body myself and I use the woods regularly from walking the dog to messing around with my bat detector to taking a shortcut home when there's a rail strike.
But as soon as I do, I'll let you know.
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There's an advert on the tube for Eurostar to promote a five hour train journey (including a change from one station in Paris to another) to Strasbourg, all for £99. You can fly to Strasbourg for less. It takes an hour and a bit and you don't have to change mid-air to another plane. So what's the big deal? No, really. I love Eurostar. I've been on it dozens of times and only had one bad journey coming back from Paris when there were some serious delays. But for £99 and for five hours to get to Strasbourg? I just don't get it. Obviously the main customers will be MEPs who can put in on their expenses.
Adieu mes amis...Solly

Amazing

I lost count after a dozen but I'm pretty sure Fearne Cotton said 'amazing' at least 15 times on Comic Relief. But she must have something to appear on TV so much. It's certainly not her use of the English language, actually. No, I mean, literally, she's, like, crap.
Alan Partridge, however, was simply brilliant. Watch the YouTube clip if you haven't. I particularly liked the link between poverty and Southend.
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Of course it was all about Africa. And rightly so. No matter how many homegrown issues they try and highlight, it is the short films from Africa that hit home most. Even when it's Russell Brand doing it. Perhaps because Russell Brand was doing it.
Britain's involvement in Africa is not always to be applauded but we're not alone.
It part amuses but also part disturbs me when I see so many Africans so dedicated to Jesus and the church. When I go to Spurs - my own church, if you like - I walk through the grounds of a local school near the ground and on a Sunday the local African community uses it for their gospel meetings.
The exhortations and singing is something to behold. It sounds like they are having an exorcism sometimes. But while it is not for the likes of me to say whether or not their belief is genuine, Africa didn't have Christianity until the Western world gave it to them. I know of Jamaicans in East London who now run missions to convert yet more Africans in countries like Malawi. Of course the irony is not lost on them but they would do more good if they just handed out condoms to Aids sufferers, of course.
But while some think so many black faces in church is refreshing and part of some kind of racial equality, I find it a reminder of our racist roots. It is testament (new and old!) to the days when Africans were considered uncivilised barbarians unless they had the same God as us.
I don't mean to be anti-Christian, I just mean to be anti religion.
Because the attitude we had was 'any religion you may have, any belief you may have, is worthless. So have ours or remain idiots.' So we stopped their mumbo jumbo and gave them our mumbo jumbo.
But it's now too late to do anything about it. And now the irony is African Christians look down on the Western world as uncivilised barbarians, who have strayed from the path of righteousness with our drugs and porn and wild ways.
Africa still needs a lot of help with its problems...but what they don't need is nuns telling them not to use condoms and all the other religious rubbish we've been exporting to them for decades.
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Talking of Christians, my mate Paul - one of the nicest happy clappy evangelists you'll ever meet - was part of a crowd of us who used to hang around together 25 odd years ago. We had this tradition of trying to choose something a bit different than a pint and a curry when it was someone's birthday and Paul used to come up with the most cultured, most obscure and often most disastrous but funny nights out.
These included seeing such classic films as Paris Texas, One from the Heart and perhaps the worst of the lot, Come Back to the Five and Dime Jimmy Dean Jimmy Dean. He also arranged evenings out to see those legends of music Morrissey Mullen, 24 Carat Soul and who can forget Roman Holiday? We can actually. We had all arranged to meet outside the concert. Three of us turned up and weren't allowed in because we were three blokes and there were not enough girls in the audience! So we waited outside. Paul turned up late, because he always turned up late, and didn't see us and walked straight in. So spent the night at the gig alone while we went out for a pizza.
Anyway, the reason I mention this is that Paul has decided to resurrect this tradition for his birthday next month - his 48th as it goes. So any suggestions for really awful groups or crap arthouse films that we can all go and see will be most welcome as I've rather lost touch with this side of unpopular culture.
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And talking of religion, happy Purim to those who celebrate it. It's a Jewish festival that celebrates a beauty contest, cross dressing and eating a cake that represents a baddie's ears.
Or, as someone once said when asked to describe what every Jewish festival is all about: "They try and kill the Jews, the Jews win, let's all go and eat."
Apparently the bible forbids cross dressing though only in the same way that some bigots find ways to find passages that they interpret as banning everything from homosexuality to German yodel music.
But God allows cross dressing on Purim.
At my Jewish primary school, Purim was celebrated with a fancy dress competition throughout the school. I didn't cross dress for this - I can remember going with Andrew Mendelson and Jonathan Weinberg as The Marx Brothers. I was Harpo, so wasn't allowed to speak. This went down well.
And one year my mum made me this costume consisting of a cardboard box over my head with a 'screen' cut out so it looked like a TV set. Then I would wear a football top, cricket pads, golf shoes and carry a hockey stick and tennis racket and say I'd gone as 'Grandstand.' It was that bad.
But many others would don a skirt and go as, ooh I don't know, Barbra Streisand say. Some of them have never quite grown out of this habit.
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So, do I spend £325 on going to Madrid to see a football match or do I avoid going further into debt? Or do I do what a fellow fan has done and buy an air ticket to Barcelona for the date of the semi final, not knowing a) whether we'll be there or b) whether Barca will be there? It's either extremely prescient or extremely arrogant.
So either I spend £325 going to see a game we'll probably lose in a city I went to last month for a holiday or I write off £90 and buy a return fare to Barcelona that I won't probably need.
Or I just wait until we get to the final and spend £300 on a ticket for that. Somehow I know that whatever happens, it will all end horribly. Maybe I'll just go and support my hometown team, Stoke City, in the FA Cup Final instead.
Perhaps I'm just barmy on the crumpet, as they say....cheerio Solly

My Big Fat Gypsy Tsunami

Oh come on, it's the headline the Daily Star is just itching to write given half the chance. But I owe them an apology. After suggesting they were being far fetched in claiming '100,000 feared dead' while all the other papers estimated it at around a tenth of that, it turns out they may be closer to the real figure in Japan's death toll than anyone else. Kudos to Hugh, Mick and the boys.
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My daughter played in a school concert tonight which included Mozart and some of that plinky plonky modern stuff by swan-eating Orcadian Peter Maxwell Davies. And guess what, the composer himself turned up. No, not Mozart. He couldn't even be bothered to send a note, the wiggy bastard.
But Peter - or Max as his new BFFs call him - stood up, applauded the orchestra (even though the flutes were a bar late in one piece) and socialised with the various dads and MILFs afterwards. Bless.
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I know it's a good cause, but either everyone I know is a cynic or it's getting harder and harder to find anyone who enjoys seeing these D-list celebrities trekking the desert or climbing Kilimanjaro or crying because they've split a nail or pretty much anything they do for Comic Relief these days.
And I bet Chris Moyles would find it easier to raise £100k if he promised to shoot himself live on air once he'd reached that target.
Tonight I caught sight of Craig David singing to some people I'd never heard of around a campfire in Kenya. Of course it was something he had a hit with 10 years ago as he hasn't done anything since then. As if the people of Africa haven't suffered enough.
Red Nose Day? It's just an excuse for Andrew Marr to wear stockings and fat women and spotty kids who work in Sainsbury's to pretend they've got a sense of humour.
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I hope England continue in the cricket World Cup. Not out of partisan support but because win, lose or even that remarkable tie, there is no other team in the competition that are simply as much fun to watch.
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Did you know that the bank which spent the most money on advertising in 2010 was the Halifax? That's right, the ones whose adverts show staff working in an imaginary radio station. And that BT doubled its TV ad spend so that we could watch even more repeat showings of that wimpy bloke who used to be in My Family in some kind of second rate Gold Blend rip off.
So much money, so little class.
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Listen, you're not Irish, so take that stupid bloody Guinness hat off and stop pretending. Top of the evening to you...O'Solly.

Twollocks

Twibel. I kid you not, this is now the word used to describe a libel action brought by one person who feels offended by something another has tweeted about them.
Now I'm all for made up words in newspapers but this is ridiculous. I mean, I can understand when the reference fits - like twitterati or twiticisms - but this doesn't rhyme, scan or make sense.
So I looked up others. And they are legion. There's tweeple (for people on Twitter) and twitterverse and even twittercal mass.
It's as if you just put the tw in front of a word and twey presto, you've got yourself a new tword.
I must admit, I've never quite got the benefit of the whole Twitter twenomenon though I have plenty of friends who swear by the twenefits it offers (ok, no more, I promise.)
My company has a Twitter feed but we are only occasional users because we rarely find anything to say that we think will actually help our company. And we write Tweets for others as part of our services, and they find it helpful.
But unlike Facebook and Linked In which has genuinely led to work, I don't think we've ever had anything tworthwhile from Twitter. Sorry, couldn't help that last one.
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As I've only a couple of years left until it hits me, I've started considering all the fun things I can take up when I turn 50 but which I am reluctant to do beforehand in case it makes me old before my time.
So far the list includes cruising (on a cruise ship that is, not dressed in leather with a yellow hankie in my left back pocket which is meant to signify a strange sexual preference I believe), golf, a Porsche and paying off my credit cards. I would add running marathons and boasting about being able to do so aged 50 plus but I have no intention of doing this before or after my 50th to be honest.
Other suggestions from my friends - displaying what they consider to be activities one should not touch with a bargepole when trying to keep young - include pyjamas, watching Formula One, line dancing and touching things with a bargepole.
I would also consider adding skiing to the list. Honestly, it's wasted on the young, all that drinking sweet, warm wine and trying to look cool in the most unfashionable clothes known to mankind (see, also, golf).
Plus Pringle. No one should wear Pringle until they have grandchildren (see, also, golf).
And who knows, once I turn 50 I may even start to like Downton Abbey, Phil Collins and Alan Titchmarsh. Actually, not Phil Collins.
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Talking of golf, it reopened a debate between some pals over what constitutes a sport and what constitutes a game. One friend refuses to acknowledge snooker as a sport. His reasons are not totally clear but he thinks anything involving a table and sitting down every few seconds is more like going out for dinner than playing a sport.
Personally, I've always considered anything in which you can smoke a cigar while doing it is not a sport - hence ruling out darts, cards, that horse and carriage thing that the Duke of Edinburgh does but, strangely, not synchonised swimming (so perhaps there's a flaw in my argument).
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Interesting headline on the back page of the Daily Express this week. While the front page was all about possible nuclear disasters in Japan, the back page, relating to the woes of the English cricket team, screamed: Meltdown.
I think they got it the wrong way round.
Then stablemate, the Daily Star, bolding declared that up to 100,000 were feared dead though, on closer inspection, it turns out that no one with any kind of knowledge has actually predicted this.
But best of all are the TV news channels, including Sky with its legendary frontman Mark 'er' Longhurst who cannot string five words together without going 'er'. Watch him and count the 'ers' in every sentence.
They keep getting proper nuclear experts on who then go and spoil all their fun by not claiming that the world is on the brink of nuclear disaster and then going on to claim that the authorities in Japan are actually handling the power station failures properly and may avoid spreading deadly radiation across the globe. All attempts to get these kosher experts to forecast armageddon are failing miserably and you can tell the er disappointment in er Mark er Longhurst's er voice.
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Sad news from Israel this week where a Palestinian crossed the divide, snuck into a house in the occupied territories and stabbed to death a Jewish couple and their three baby children. That's appalling enough on its own but there is now a row between many Jewish organisations and news gatherers like the BBC and the CNN who compounded the tragedy by refusing to acknowledge there was anything racial about the murders if they covered it at all. Lots of inverted commas around words like 'terrorism' and a lot of excuses to print a litany of charges against the Israeli state rather than concentrate on what is a mass murder of innocent people.
I'm not particularly pro a lot of what goes on in Israel but this is more to do with the right wing leadership than the whole legitimacy of the state argument which I genuinely believe is used by a lot of people to try and hide their anti-Semitism.
There is an awful lot wrong with the way in which Israel sometimes conducts itself but not in this case. This is a human tragedy, wherever it happens. The picture of the murder scene, the photos of the murdered children, the grisly details such as the fact the family were discovered by another daughter who wasn't in at the time and arrived home to find her brothers and sister and parents slaughtered, are too horrific to contemplate.
And then there are the reports of celebrations in the streets of Palestine when the news came out. No matter what your politics, this is just plain wrong. On the other side of the coin I have seen Jewish friends react to these scenes by saying some hateful things themselves about destroying the Palestinians - as if the sentiments behind a final solution don't have enough tragic resonance already.
I don't believe anyone has claimed responsibility but if a terrorist organisation can do something as shameful as this in the first place then surely they can't be too ashamed to own up. And if and when this happens, I hope the BBC and CNN have the guts to report it.
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Professor Brian Cox. It seems my kids love him and a lot of people with no interest in astro physcis think he's dead cool. Personally I think I like him except that he talks as if he's about to laugh all the time and keeps looking away wistfully. I also find it hard to watch his TV series about the universe without trying to work out how many different all-weather outdoor jackets he owns. Ooh look he's wearing a Berghaus, and now he's in a North Face and so on.
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Raymond Blanc. Blimey, how French is it possible to be. He is even more Gallic than Robert Pires. I'm sure he puts it on.
Adieu....Solly

Solly's logs

Can a tree surgeon be struck off? We had a couple of mimosas lopped back, professionally mind, in the summer and now they are struggling to survive. We haven't given up hope as there are a couple of green leaves on each of them but considering they are supposed to be evergreen, it's not looking good.
Naturally I'll keep you informed.
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I'm sure the people of Japan feel a lot better knowing that Britain's PR industry are posting status updates about how sad it all is.
The day starts with Twitter and Facebook messages from journalists telling all their friends that there's been an earthquake.
Thank heavens for these guys. One day someone will invent a better way of relating breaking news like on a television channel devoted to news or on radio programmes. But until one of those magical breakthroughs, we'll rely on friends who are journalists to tell us.
Then come the Christians and other do gooders with their 'prayer waves'. Is anything sicker after a tsunami kills thousands than to post a 'prayer wave' on your status and ask others to pass it on.
Then come the PRs with their conscience-salving 'our thoughts are with them' saccharine crapbook status updates. Or some vacuous stuff about 'if you think you've got problems, consider what's happening in Japan.'
That's right, because no one else in the world is allowed to feel sad or depressed or angry or frustrated or aggrieved about anything else that happens when there's such terrible things going on elsewhere.
So we're not allowed any other emotion when there's a disaster. But is there a time limit on this? Two days later can I feel annoyed when someone cuts me up on the M25? And how long do I have to wait before I get pissed off again that we've let in a soft goal and dropped two points? Tell me, I want to know when I can allow normal emotions back into my life.
Still, there's still another couple of stages to go in the Facebook life of this event. Next will come the conspiracy theory that it has something to do with the stars or the bible or numbers in the dates. Then will come the criticism of relief efforts and the warnings. Then will come the sick jokes.
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And if all that wasn't enough, next week is Red Nose Day when we have to suffer James Corden's ego and prolong Lenny Henry's unfunny career for another two years and decide that while we don't usually give money to charity, we'll make an exception because there's a couple of newsreaders in drag.
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And while we're at it....what's the point of praying for those involved in the tsunami when all those prayers in the past didn't stop it happening in the first place?
Is it the free will argument? Well surely if there is a God and he allows free will, then there's no point praying anyway.
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And on a lighter note...oh, there isn't a lighter note. Take care...Solly

No smoke without ire

I don't blame being able to smoke on the top floor of buses, in reserved tube carriages or turning up for my first day at work to find my desk had a spike, a typewriter and a metal ashtray ready for me (the spike was particularly handy as those who have read my unsubbed copy will attest!)
I don't blame the half of a cinema that allowed you to smoke while watching Weekend at Bernie's or Kentucky Fried Movie, the newsagent who sold single fags - and our local one was called Fags and Mags -or the fact my gran ran a pub which had a 'smoke room' and my other gran smoked 80 a day until she was 80.
I don't blame the the giant billboards for Marlboro outside schools or those clever Benson and Hedges ads set in a swimming pool in the middle of the desert which none of us understood.
And I don't blame the Formula One cars and their drivers adorned with the very cool JPS livery, those attractive thin packets of Dunhill or the packets of Gauloise you could buy for 50p each on a school trip to France.
I don't blame bank managers and job interviewers offering you a cigarette from a box on the table, the bike sheds at school, the Skilton sisters, journalism college, or John Thaw in The Sweeney.
No, I blame Ross Shine's barmitzvah.
That's where I had my first cigarette, 35 years ago.
Like all such events including weddings and funerals and anniversaries, the tables would have a menu, flowers in the middle, a book of matches with the date and occasion printed on them and a round container full of free cigarettes - John Player black tubes of them on this occasion, if I remember rightly.
A group of us on a table at Ross's barmitzvah grabbed a handful and made our way outside - not because you couldn't smoke indoors in those days but because we were 13 and didn't want the grown ups to see us.
We went outside and we all lit up. Andrew Mendelson was sick, Ross gagged and chucked his away, a couple of others watched but didn't have a puff and me? I smoked a whole one and carried on smoking for the next three decades with a few gaps in between as I tried to give up.
It wasn't immediate. I didn't go out the next day and find someone to buy me a packet of Woodbines. It was a few weeks later that I found myself on the way home from school on the top deck of the 129 bus where Martin Warner offered me a cigarette.
A few days after that it was, I think, Kevin Rose who gave me a fag as we waited at the bus stop outside school.
And that was it.
Now I'm a sort of non-smoker. I'll have the occasional one when offered and perhaps two or three if I'm with smokers and there is alcohol around but generally I refrain.
It is said that if you ask a smoker to go back to when they had their first cigarette and say yes or no, knowing what was to happen, all smokers would refuse that very first one.
And let's face it, we probably would. As well as telling our kids not to do what we did. But today, on non-smoking day, there is still a side of me that hates the preaching, holier-than-thou hordes of anti-libertarian do gooders who come out of the woodwork every time they hear the latest government wheeze (and the pun is intended).
All these antis seem grumpy and puritanical and wound up. They need to relax and chill out. Perhaps they need to unwind with the cool, refreshing taste you only get in Camel's unique blend of finest Virginia tobacco. I find you can't beat a good, rough, shag.
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Incidentally, Ross Shine works in Preston these days which is where I was on Monday. That's twice I've been up north in a week and, you know what, both times the sun shone, the trains ran on time, and I didn't get mugged by anyone in a flat cap and walking a whippet.
I even find I have a loyal band of blog readers in Newton-le-Willows. Wherever that is!
Much more of this and I'll have to chuck away my book of regional stereotypes. At least until the in laws come round again.
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After the Barca-Arsenal game, Sky 'expert' Jamie Redknapp said 'Arsenal were literally passed to death.'
What a way to die.
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According to a story in the papers - okay, we wrote it but I'm sure it's true - parental happiness disappears when you have a fourth child. I have three. Which is why I'm in such a great mood, all the bloody time.
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Blackboard Jumble

At the end of the day....it's night. And that's the only time you ever need use that expression.
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Rumbold, Haylett, Bordall, Welsh, Bown, Jones, Thomson...go on, you have a go. Write a list of your teachers who were rubbish. It's really quite cathartic. And I've only done a handful from secondary school. Imagine how long the list would be if I'd gone to university.
Everyone bangs on about the 'teacher who made a difference' when they were growing up. The one who inspired them, made them choose what they did for a living, introduced them to Shakespeare, brought physics alive, that kind of thing. And, yes, I had one or two of them too.
But what about the others. The ones just treading water until their pensions, the ones who couldn't care less and, worse, were counter productive in that they turned you off a subject for life which, with a better master or mistress, could have sparked a lifelong love affair with a science or a language or an art, if only you'd been given the chance.
Michael Gove, the education minister, thinks only people with first class degrees should teach. I bet most my teachers had first class degrees. But only a handful were first class teachers. And I suspect that anyone who has been to school feels the same. The teacher who influenced them most wasn't necessarily the cleverest in the staff room or maybe not even the nicest. He or she was the one who got through.
Then again, Michael Gove is a journalist who has risen above his station. Journalists are great - they can inspire, they can be creative, they make wonderful husbands (second time round) and they can keep a table full of dinner party guests amused for hours with anecdotes about Kelvin McKenzie. But we're not experts. On anything really.
I know there have been chancellors and foreign secretaries and spin doctors and chat show hosts and great novelists who started off as journalists. But we're not the sort of people to entrust with the future of this nation's children. Nor are lairy chefs with mockney accents, incidentally.
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My wife came home with a spring in her step I've not seen for a while. She'd taken our son's guitar into a shop in Harlow to get a new string - having trawled Essex to find one open on a Sunday - and the man had 'hit on her' in her words.
His name was Rob, he was a bit of hippy and around 60 but that didn't matter. He told her that as soon as she entered the room the aura changed and everyone felt it.
Far be it for me to say this is bollo but it certainly had an effect on her, I think (it was hard to tell as I was watching the Wolves v Spurs game when she got in).
More to the point, Rob charged her £1 for the string and put it on the guitar for her which took half an hour because the old string had broken and...oh, I don't know, I stopped listening at this point.
But if it means better service and cheaper prices in every shop she goes into, then I may send her out with this aura a bit more often.
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My wife, who knows about this kind of thing, thinks it's a given that HSBC will move out of the UK, as is being rumoured at the moment. She's usually right.
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I'm told that nurses and other hospital workers are given lists of rules about patient care. Years ago they had about half a dozen on the list which said they should make sure patients are comfortable and wards are clean and that sort of thing.
Now there are about 50 rules which include the instruction to prevent a patient from committing suicide if they see it and not to give them the wrong medication and to call a doctor if they are about to die, that kind of thing.
Thank heavens they've got these rules to stop nurses going round putting pillows over our heads when we get a boil removed.
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I think pretty much everyone has had their say on paedo-befriending freeloading porkster Prince Andrew. There was a good little tale by a Welsh MP who said the Duke of York turned up once to open a scout hut, flying in by helicopter. The cost of the flight was about as much as the scout troop had spent a year raising to build its new hut. Also, I can't help but notice that his daughters have the wide eyed look of someone who looks like they are walking round with a broomstick permanently wedged up their arse.
The Royal Family aren't like us. Just because Wills is marrying someone who is creepily turning into a dark haired Princess Di, (have you seen how skinny she's become?) doesn't mean they are.
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Jack Straw said that what is happening in Libya shows that we were right to get rid of Sadaam. Does that mean we were wrong not to get rid of Mugabe?
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At the end of the day....good night, Solly

Ultimate faux pas

I know I had a go recently at the number of lazy travel writers who would describe a country as 'a land of contrasts' - and take a bow City AM for describing Chile as such recently and even today in What's On TV, actress Caroline Quentin said the same of India - but there is a new cliche in town.
 It's 'the ultimate fashion faux pas' and it appears on an almost daily basis on the Mail Online website. In the last week it has been applied to Lorraine Kelly for wearing slippers, Kelly Brook for wearing sheer leggings and Paris Hilton in pretty much whatever she puts on.
 I know the standards of reporting and subbing online at the Mail (and the Telegraph come to that) are woeful compared to those on their respective print editions but, come on, even teenage subs in an Australian warehouse - as some papers are resorting to - could do better than that.
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As soon as you hear someone ranting about Zionist conspiracies, rush them to rehab. Mel Gibson, Charlie Sheen and John Galliano all resorted to anti-semitism when they had a few. I don't know if it's a case of in vino veritas (ooh, get her) or if their views have been warped by whatever they're on. In which case they need help not ostracism. And in the case of Sheen, he doesn't need a worldwide audience of a million Twitter followers waiting to see if he commits suicide live on a social network.
But David Lynch - the white supremacist not the film director - was killed yesterday. Shot at his home in redneck America. The police have arrested someone though apparently they had 127 million suspects. He wasn't mad. Just evil.
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I had a really nice evening yesterday at the Royal Opera House, not to see their version of Anna Nicole but in a rehearsal studio on the site where the director David McVicar and others talked about the forthcoming production of Aida which is possibly the grandest of grand operas.
It was incredibly interesting to hear people who really loved what they do talking about...well, what they do. Though I was put off slightly by McVicar wearing one of those Mujahedin triangular scarf things like a 1980s student protester.
But will I be going to see Aida? I wish. Tickets are around £200 a time. No matter how much they talk about it, opera on this scale will never be for 'the people' and that's a great shame.
I'm not trying to be a snob but seeing an opera in the flesh is magical. One of the genuine 'things to do before you die' events I would recommend everyone tries at least once (though not at those prices.)
McVicar only got into opera after seeing it on TV as he grew up in the 1980s and when, as he put it, the BBC did culture properly. Though saying that, tonight the BBC has a doc on the wonderful and barking Maria Callas.
Sheikh McVicar then made a valid point. Aida has a cast of over 120 and has been given a budget of £400,000 to bring it to Covent Garden.
Round the corner, Andrew Lloyd-Webber invested £7 million to bring Love Never Dies - or Paint Never Dries as my theatre chums call it - to the West End stage with a cast of a dozen or so.
At the end of the session, McVicar took questions but my wife wouldn't let me ask: 'Why are you wearing the fucking stupid shawl?'
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If a joke's worth doing once, it's worth doing every week I say. So whenever my wife asks me to 'wind up the clock' - it has an eight day mechanism - I go up to it with my arms wide open, stand in front of it and say: "The clock next door is better than you, so what are you going to do about it, muppet.'
It makes me happy.
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It's a different world in the office where I work. The two young girls on my floor - they work in PR - were discussing school today. One went to Charterhouse, the other went to Roedean.
Apparently - and I'm not sure if I believe this or not - at Charterhouse some of the older kids used to go to neighbouring woods to have a crafty cigarette in the evening.
The teachers would, literally, set the dogs loose to find them. The way she described it was as if it was a kind of game. But it sounds horrific to me. Obviously it's in the blood for posh people - just ask foxes.
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Phil Collins is retiring from music. To anyone with musical taste Phil Collins is a bit like Marmite. You either hate him so much you want to shoot him or you hate him so much you want to stab him.
Looks like another day in paradise then...good night, Solly

Confused dotcom? Simples!

March 8th is both Shrove Tuesday and International Women's Day. So let's combine the two and get women to cook their men pancakes.
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I'm told the smug consumer geek Martin Lewis regularly Googles both his own name and the words 'money expert' to see who's talking about him. He'll have a busy week this week then. Regarding the EU ruling on male-female insurance policies, he supplied the following quote to The Sun as 'My View':

WHAT is supposed to be pro-fairness is likely to end up being anti-consumer.

Don't expect men and women's prices to meet in the middle. The biggest hit will be on car insurance costs for under-40s. Women will also face hikes in life insurance costs.

Men will likely be hit on private medical insurance. Many will suffer in retirement due to worse annuity rates - Martin Lewis (The Sun, March 2nd)

In The Scotsman and Guardian he was quoted as: 

But Martin Lewis, creator of MoneySavingExpert.com, believes banning the use of gender for car insurance is sensible: "With car insurance I think there is some logic to this ban – gender price differences are based on behaviour. Why should one man pay more because others behaved badly? Would we allow the same to happen based on racial differences?" (Guardian, March 2nd)

It must nice to be able to be so many things to so many people.

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Regarding all this insurance stuff, I had dinner this week with some senior sorts from the industry. They paid up without any hassle - so it obviously wasn't Sainsbury's Insurance then.

But they did tell me some interesting stuff about this law that says companies cannot charge women less for car insurance premiums than men simply because men are a much greater risk.

Forget all the talk of men paying less and women paying more. Underwriters are a sneaky lot and they will find a way to retain the balance - ie: get those who are most likely to have a crash to pay the biggest premiums. And this is how they will do it.
They will ask a series of questions, much more detailed than the forms we currently have to fill in, to establish a lot more detail about occupation, lifestyle and personality.
Remember, they are not allowed to charge you less for being male and if they charge more for people who answer yes to  'do you have bollocks' and 'do you pee standing up' they will be caught out by the equality police. But they can load premiums for, say, apprentice mechanics, plumbers and others trades people where 90 per cent of the young workforce are male and lower them for secretaries, human resources and Arsenal defenders, where most of the workforce are girls.
If you fill in questions that reveal you play cricket, drink bitter, and smoke a pipe then they will guess that, with the exception of perhaps, female vicars, you are male and thus load your car insurance premium.
Likewise if you tell them your favourite films are Top Gun, Dirty Dancing and Sex In the City II they will assume that a) you're female and b) you have no taste but that this means c) you're less likely to wrap your pretty little heads round the steering wheel coming out of the Blackwall Tunnel on a Sunday night.
Talking of which - do you know why so many footballers crash their Ferraris? Its because the wall is never moved back far enough for their liking. Anyone who gets this joke will face a hike in their insurance and anyone who doesn't will get a discount from Sheila's Wheels.
Confused.com? You won't be.
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Puerile behaviour continued: Asking followers to send me refreshing examples of not behaving like grown ups a teacher friend of mine - who shall remain nameless because she moulds impressionable young minds who deserve to be protected - went on a training session to learn sign language.
Picture the scene. A deaf person makes a sign and the teachers have to shout out the word or the phrase. The session ends and the deaf person scratches their ear and the teachers shout out a word or phrase. The deaf person waves at them to stop, and they shout out something else. And so it continues!
Mind you, I've always had some sympathy for signers after BBC News 24 sacked a woman during a news report on the floods in Cockermouth last year.
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It says something about the standard of education today. When Downing Street hired that moggy to catch rats at Number Ten a bunch of students were caught protesting with placards reading 'No to Tory Cats'.
You couldn't make it up. Except I just did.
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The new iPad is thinner and lighter. No wonder they got Steve Jobs to launch it.
Shutting down....Solly

Sex. Ha Ha Ha

Solly's tips for being creative in a brainstorm: No. 17
When the facilitator - for that is what they are called - writes a word on a flip chart and asks everyone in the room to say the first thing that comes into their head, no matter how daft it may seem, just say 'sex.'
Everyone tries too hard to come with something fancy or pretentious but it's the simple things that work.
For a start, you can always find a way to link it to the word - be it 'refreshing' or 'Primark' or 'savings' or anything. Second, it always gets a laugh and allows someone else to try and think of something poncey.
For those of you in jobs where you never go within a mile of a brainstorm...lucky you.
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I went to Manchester for a brainstorm today. Or is it a thought shower these days, I forget. Contrary to many of my geographical location who think Hatfield represents 'the north', I love Manchester. I go quite often for work. Today it was warm and sunny, which is a record. It took my taxi driver 30 seconds to mention Oasis, which was also a new record. Two girls getting off the train in front of me and one said to the other 'it's sunny, but she said it was going to be cold and grey and wet' to which some bloke walking past said 'it's Manchester, love. Don't worry, it will be.' But it wasn't and the city looked great. And the job went well too. When my ideas form the basis of a multi-million pound ad and marketing campaign, I'll let you know what it was all about. Anyway, it's Preston on Monday. I'll wrap up.
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It bemuses rather than angers me and millions must get the same feeling but why, when you buy a simple return train ticket, do you end up with five different bits of printed card?
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On the bus to school the other day my daughter walked past a group of boys from another school (an RC one as it goes) and one of them sneered 'Jew'.
Now the thing is, apart from being quite offensive, my daughter isn't even Jewish. All my kids are atheists, as are their parents, but unlike us, they haven't grown up in a religious environment. My wife was brought up a Catholic and I, it will probably surprise you all to know, as a Jew. As the joke goes, I was practising but when I realised I wasn't any good I stopped practising.
However, I was a bit shocked about the 'Jew' thing on the bus. My daughter was angry that it was racist, confused because she doesn't consider herself Jewish and now resigned to the fact that she has inherited more of my genes that she had previously realised.
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However, what is has done is fuel a bit of interest in her heritage and in a nice way. Tonight she asked me and her mum to come down to the school with her to listen to this brilliant and spirited woman called Anna who is a survivor of children's ghetto set up by the Nazis in Czechoslovakia. In their house there were 50 Jewish children from all over Europe, many were sent off to Auschwitz and didn't return while others died of illness.
Yet during the war, older children and adults went to the house, which acted as a kind of children's prison, to teach them lessons and music. Many of the teachers were great academics before the war and few survived. Out of the kids 15 survived and 12 are still alive and regularly meet even though they live all over the world. Anna became a concert pianist and a professor teaching music at a major Czech conservatoire.
It is a lovely story and, in front of a packed hall full of enthralled kids and adults alike, she answered questions with grace and patience. Most remarkably I thought, she kept repeating the fact that she had no bitterness, rancour or anger but was thankful for surviving and wanted to encourage love and hope.
I do have a tenuous connection to the whole concentration camp thing. My auntie Edda, who was Polish, was in Belsen. She wasn't my auntie then, of course. But my uncle Sammy - the son of Austrian immigrants - was a British soldier with the United Nations peacekeeping force at the end of the war and liberated Belsen where he met Edda. They married and went off to run the poshest hotel in Jamaica before coming back to settle in Suffolk. Bizarrely, she became a Jehovah's Witness.
Footnote: Sammy's family name, that of my grandmother, was Baumwald which sounded far too German back in the East End in the 1930s. It means, literally, Tree Forest (but can mean Forester too). Most of the family changed it to Beaumont to make it sound more British. One changed it to Bell. Sammy changed it to Treforrest! That's enough of my family history.
Peace my friends....Solly