Hooray for Sollywood

I've had my way and the house is being painted in the colour I want. I've also managed to prevail in choice of front door. However, the missus has put her foot down over my proposal to give our house a name to go with the number.
My ex-wife was the same. Her name was Angela, I wanted to combine her name with my first name and my all-time Spurs hero but she said Glenmarangie sounded daft.
And we're here again. No, we're not going to name our house. And no, I've been told, we can't have giant white letters, standing upright on the front lawn, spelling out SOLLYWOOD. Back to the drawing board.
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Shame about Gil Scott Heron. Saw him at The Commonwealth Institute in London in 1983 and it was, truly, one of the best five concerts I've ever been to. It was the most chilled venue I've ever watched
His spoken commentary to The Revolution Will Not Be Televised may have dated in some of its cultural references but remains one of the most powerful political statements put to song I've ever heard. Just as moving was Johannesburg, about apartheid. Funny how there is now a whole generation growing up who find it hard to believe apartheid ever happened and, when they ask how it was allowed to continue for so long, then I haven't really got an answer.
But I love Heron's The Bottle.
I went to a charity ball last year and, while we ate and quaffed champagne in our dinner suits, the house band played a kind of cheesy listening version of The Bottle. Not sure if they knew that while we were getting pie eyed on fine wine, they were singing a song about the painful and debilitating slide into alcoholism.
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Any group of at least three men, all over 40, in a pub on a lunchtime, will end up talking about one thing...lawnmowers.
Women believe we stand around talking about football or, more ridiculously, women. My wife is convinced we just make lists of which famous females have the best breast like some middle aged version of Gary and Tony in Men Behaving Badly.
By the way, my top five is Ann-Margret, Kim Novak, Anita Ekberg, Claudia Cardinale and Maria Grazia Cucinotta who was in a film called Il Postino. Oh, and maybe Snooki from Jersey Shore. Only joking.
And I wish we were. Talking about boobs I mean. Because inevitably, these days, it seems the convo (I love that abbreviation!) sooner or later turns to power tools, DIY and lawnmowers. And that's when I become hopeless.
I can bluff to a certain extent but the simple truth is, I'm hopeless at DIY and though I do it, I don't much enjoy gardening and have absolutely no interest in machines or gadgets in general and ones that are practical in particular.
Actually, that's not completely true. I do get fussy about choosing which TV we should buy, I love Apple products even though I know they're overpriced and I have a good eye for flash cappuccino makers, as long as my wife descales it now and again.
I try and get out of gardening or DIY using several old age excuses for why I can't do it. 1.I'm mostly Jewish - by which I mean I'm not so much a Jew, just Jew-ish. I tell my RC-raised wife that it is a well known fact Jewish men are no good at DIY. We're wired to be entrepreneurs or lawyers or in showbiz where we can earn enough money to pay other people to put our shelves up. We're not really supposed to be that sporty either. I mean, look at Avram Grant. And Mark Spitz was an exception. Joan Rivers once said that if Jewish women were meant to do aerobics, God would have sprinkled the floor with diamonds.
However, my wife then points out that some of my Jewish friends can sand a floor and build an extension while making chicken soup and playing the violin, all at the same time. So she buys into some stereotypes but not others.
2.I'm an artist darling. I create, not construct. I build with words not bricks. The blank page is my workshop and the typewriter, pen and intellect are my tools. To which she says I should get them sharpened then.
And 3.I'm left handed and it's well known that left handed people generally cock up DIY because of the way our brain is dominated by...blah blah blah. We make good celebrity chefs, fine presidents of the USA, excellent creators of long running American cartoon series and longer living Beatles. But builders? No.
Plus, I don't want to. Also, I'd get it wrong and that means paying extra to get it fixed. And I'm too busy blogging.
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I was supposed to go and see Duran Duran tonight on a corporate freebie at the O2 but Simon Le Bon has cancelled. So instead of Rio who dances on the sand, I'll be watching Rio who has a mouth like a guppy, playing at Wembley. I hope to see a good game of football and may the best team win.
Buenos noches amigos...El Solly