Franks for the memory

Some folk in these parts are worried about a new reality show called Made in Chelsea because it may distract attention from The Only Way is Essex. Let's hope so. Apparently it portrays a bunch of nice-but-dim Sloanes with lots of money but no taste (I will mention the Royal Wedding later). As opposed to TOWIE which...er....
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Occasionally one is privileged to witness one of those sporting events you hadn't quite prepared yourself for like those who turned up at Old Trafford on the last day of the 1981 test believing it was all over or who went along to the athletics meeting in which Usain Bolt smashed the world 100 metres record or when Tiger Woods won his first major.
Yesterday I watched a kind of Usain Bolt moment and felt honoured to have done so when I went to Newmarket for the 2,000 Guineas and saw a horse called Frankel storm to victory in a way which made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
Thanks to that coach crash on the M11 and my son's cricket match we only arrived 20 minutes before the big race. But what a race.
As racing fans will know, Frankel was odds on favourite so it was no surprise to see him win but the style in which he did so, streaking into the front at the beginning and just galloping further and further away from his rivals was remarkable.
We were near the finishing line and the crowd cheered and applauded Frankel as if was Rocky beating Apollo Creed at the end of 12 punishing rounds. Of course many had money on him but there was still a kind of appreciation of witnessing a true classic.
Some memorable sporting occasions are the result of an underdog overcoming the odds or a team on the ropes recovering to win. But others are the sheer pleasure in watching someone or something dominate their sport or their event to such as extent you can only stand back and gasp and say 'wow' and that's what Frankel did. These things tend to happen when you are not eaten up by the fervent loyalty of supporting 'your team' so you can truly appreciate a sporting colossus as a neutral.
Like Federer or Woods or the West Indies cricket team in the 1970s, this was a 'wow' moment.
And I had an each way bet on the 33-1 outsider which came second! (Thanks to John Halpin for the tip.)
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I'm not going to say much on the royal wedding which attracted 25 million UK viewers - which means 35 million didn't watch it. And I thought I was the only one.
According to the Radio Four bulletin, 19 million of those viewers saw it on the BBC. You couldn't help but imagine the newsreader was waving two fingers in the air at ITV as she read it.
A couple of observations. Even in tails Elton John looks like my wife's nan. And Beatrice or Eugenie appeared to come as Tim Curry, one of my friends pointed out. Apparently fascinators are the big fashion howler of nos jours, whatever that means.
A lot of people seem to think it was a 'people's wedding', as if it's the sort of wedding any of us will ever have.
Equally a lot of people seem to think this is an excuse to offer the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge advice. Not me. I reckon someone will have had a word in Kate's shell-like to warn her against accepting lifts from someone with a French accent driving a Mercedes. And I'll just point out to Wills that, like many men marrying for the first time, the second one is usually better.
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What the royal wedding did do was introduce me to our next door but one neighbours, Terry and Val, a retired couple who, it turns out, spent most of their married life two streets away from where I grew up in Ilford.
We met at a royal barbie held by our mutual next door neighbour. It is striking that even though we've lived here six years, we do not know many of our closest neighbours. And I bet that happens in a lot of areas, unfortunately.
Terry and Val are lovely and, like a lot of us, have moved further East as they prospered in life.
But increasingly, people tend to keep themselves to themselves these days and it means you don't chat over the garden fence any more.
I've never believed the old days were always the rose tinted utopia where you could leave your door open and everyone knew each other like my parents made out (my dad grew up near Cable Street in the 1930s so not all his neighbours would pop round for a cup of tea and a plate of chopped liver as they passed).
But, as the Ilford-Manor Park pop combo The Small Faces once remarked: "Wouldn't it be nice to get on with your neighbours?"
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Talking of neighbourhoods, as a young man, I used to think Leytonstone High Road was, in many ways, one of the most quirky and original streets in London and loved its diversity. Not just in ethnic terms but in the kind of shops. I reckoned you could buy everything you ever needed in life in this East London road with few, if any, need of major chains.
I'm sure there are other streets in other cities in other parts of Britain the same and I bet they are not any more.
There was a car showroom that specialised in British classic sports car even though it was nestled in one of the drabbest and poorest parts of the capital. There was a shop selling model railway equipment for enthusiasts who came from all over the country, a music store stocking instruments and sheet music and for some bizarre reason, an office for the National Union of Seamen even though, as far as I can fathom (geddit) London E11 is as far from the coast as you can imagine.
Some chains had a branch here, like Woolworths, the Co-op and incongruously, Russell & Bromley.
The road had several pubs of varying degrees of roughness, including The Green Man and Laurel and Hardy, many of which had independent bands on stage and the restaurants included a fantastic Jamaican, a South African, Nepalese and every other nationality under the sun.
And now? Well, driving through today for the first time in a while, The Engine Shed is still there I think (it's not easy to spot unless you know it's there) for the trainspotters, but there's no Hills garage with an E-Type in the window. There's a Tesco at one end which has done for many of the smaller food shops though there is an East European specialist and a couple of Asian minimarkets.
There's some but not many sit-down restaurants which seem to have been replaced by 100 takeaways selling various forms of chicken and, naturally a McDonalds but thankfully no Starbucks, Costa or Nero.
The eel and pie shop is boarded up, I noticed, which is another part of East End life disappearing, and someone tells me that thousands of South Africans now live round here, adding their own colour and spontaneity to the area.
But it's also full of pound shops and those ubiquitous mobile 'fone' outlets that can unlock a locked handset, which is not for people who have bought a stolen mobile, no not at all for that kind of thing.
It's a drab, dreary street and I recall some three or four years ago there was talk about a massive regeneration of the area to coincide with the Olympics down the road.
Apart from installing a confusing one way system and speed bumps every ten years, I can't really see the improvement.
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The Sun ran a story quoting an 'FA' source confirming that newly promoted QPR will be deducted points for some complicated irregularities over a player's registration. Manager Neil Warnock is on TV quite a lot at the moment describing The Sun's source as being in their own newsroom adding 'my barrister says we won't be deducted points'. Which, let's face it, is what you pay a barrister for. I don't know who's right or wrong. But Neil Warnock is an anagram of Colin Wanker. Thought I'd just mention it.
Have a lovely May Day comrades...Solly