Coal-mining In Public

Sitting on the Underground on my way in to work the other morning, with nothing else to do but look around, I noticed a beautiful-looking man. Mid-forties, with brilliant blue eyes, nice even white teeth, and a healthy head of hair, cut short and left slightly spiky on top. Strong masculine features with just enough wear-and-tear to give him that look of a man who knows what he's doing. And smartly-dressed, probably a banker or a broker, or something...................well, we were on our way out to Canary Wharf, so the choices aren't exactly wide-ranging (says the man who sits on a reception desk in a polyester suit!). But even by 'finance industry' standards, he was well turned out. His suit was fitted, his shoes were shiny, his shirt was crisp, and his tie was tied in a Windsor knot, not the usual off-centre, lazy knot that tie-novices use. Silver cufflinks, and a beautiful watch finished off this vision of captivating, masculine loveliness.

And as I gazed longingly at him, imagining how it would feel to wake up next to him, he reached up..........................picked his nose and ate it!

Now, even though we all claim not to, it's a fact of modern life that we all get 'dry' noses. From time to time, we find ourselves with an annoying little piece of desiccated snot clinging to the inside of our nose, and no amount of nose-blowing can dislodge it. It has to be removed manually. So we go to the toilet, or somewhere away from the gaze of others, and we deal with the problem. Privately.

Tragically, the man of my dreams (or nightmares it seemed), had no such inhibitions. For three long, never-ending stops, from London Bridge to Canary Wharf, he proceeded to shatter my dreams by rummaging around up his own nose. And not a discreet little rub or pick, but a full-scale nasal excavation, deep-shaft, sinus-mining.

I'm a pretty easy-going person. Well, actually that's not completely true, in fact it's not true at all. I'm a total fuss-pot when it comes to personal hygiene (amongst other things), but please don't tell me that this kind of thing is now acceptable. Nose-picking, at least public nose-picking, is dirty, and something you go to the toilet to do. This man would never dream of flopping out his old man and banging one out in public, but was more than happy to treat the entire carriage to a demonstration of 'bogey nutrition'.

Sadly, nowadays, he is not short of company when it comes to pushing the boundaries of acceptable (or unacceptable) public habits. You don't have to look too hard to find an array of truly Olympian demonstrations of what Miss Jane Austin would describe as 'things one oughtn't to do in polite company'. Noses and ears are picked, spots are popped and drained, fingernails are bitten, filed, or clipped, and groins, tits, and armpits are scratched. With the exception of 'hawking up a mouthful', 'gobbing on the floor' and spontaneous sexual gratification, a morning journey to work can often resemble every well-brought-up person's idea of a Victorian mental asylum.

And nobody evens exchanges eye-rolling, disapproving glances anymore. We just placidly sit, watching as the man of our dreams proceeds to turn our stomachs.

Have we turned from a nation obsessed by 'what people will say' about the slightest thing, into a nation secretly aroused and excited by how far we can push people before they finally crack and snap 'Do you mind! I'm trying to read!'

The Perils of Pedestrianism

We are constantly being reminding of how dangerous our roads are. Every day, there's another news story about multiple motorway pile-ups, road-rage attacks, and failing brakes in brand-new Toyotas. The Sun newspaper claims that 'it's total carnage out there!' while The Guardian think it's simply 'a matter for considerable concern'. But everyone agrees that driving isn't nearly as safe as sitting in your own front room with a cup of Earl Grey and a Rich Tea (or a rich banker!). As a result, inner-city speed limits are being slashed faster than shop prices to the extent where it's difficult to tell if a car is actually moving or not, and using a mobile phone while driving carries a maximum penalty of 25 years (or a lifetime ban on acrylic nails for ladies in the London boroughs of Southwark, Lambeth, and Lewisham which was agreed is a fate worse than prison).

Cyclists have also been officially classed as 'at-risk', and now, clad in all-in-one 'hi-vis' lycra body-suits and flashing lights, they resemble low-flying UFOs speeding along their new (and apparently safe) potholed cycle-lanes.

But with all this focus on road-users, has anyone noticed how perilous it's becoming to be a simple common-or-garden pedestrian? Pavements are supposed to be the safest place, because all we do is walk on them. How dangerous can that be? You just have to put one foot in front of the other, and hey presto, you get from A to B. But, the reality is that pavements in London are the new 'transport front-line', the new 'paving-slab Darfur'.

To start with, as a result of numerous, but always essential, emergency works carried out by numerous utility companies, pavements in many areas now resemble some kind of apocalyptic, post-earthquake artist's model of San Francisco. Paving slabs are so uneven that describing them as a flat surface is like describing China as 'the land of the free'. Our councils invest huge sums of our council tax money into repaving and landscaping our streets, and then allow utility companies to randomly dig them up and simply throw the paving slabs haphazardly back into the hole, or scatter a handful of tarmac over their excavation. This means that the only way to avoid tripping every time your leave home, is to walk with eyes cast down, scrutinising every next step for danger. If the crazy-paving doesn't get you, then the sporadic sprinkling of dog-shit probably will.

So, we shuffle nervously along staring at the floor, looking like sulky teenagers minus the hands in the pockets, thinking that we're probably safe. We're safe as long as we don't lose concentration for a second and miss a piece of British Gas, or BT's latest work of modern art. If we were chameleons this would work, but we're not. Our eyes can only look in one direction at a time (unless you have a lazy-eye like 'crazy Daniel' who lives two doors away), which means that you have a 20% chance of bumping into another downward-looking pedestrian, a 50% chance of bumping into a 'Use Opposite Pavement' sign, or a 100% chance of bumping into a piece of bloody 'street-furniture'.

Where the term 'street-furniture' came from is anyone's guess. Well, actually, it's not, we all know that it was invented by the same companies who make all this 'street-clutter', this useless, pavement-blocking crap. Most businesses have now correctly realised that we are all far too terrified of breaking an ankle to take our eyes off the road and actually look into their windows. Shops, cafes, restaurants, and galleries have taken to strewing the width of the pavement with signs attempting to inform us that, between midnight and 2am only on the first Sunday in October, we can get half a free-range lobster and a glass of Vietnamese Riesling for £6.95. Fantastic value, but little consolation when you're laid-up in hospital with a broken leg and a tray of unappetising pureed hospital 'fayre' on your lap.

Isn't walking dangerous enough already with the cracks, and the dog-poo, and the chuggers, and the road-signs, and pavement-cyclists too terrified to use the road?

Whatever happened to the idea of a pavement simply being an empty flat surface that took you from one end of a street to the other. You may as well just walk along the road into on-coming traffic, your chances of serious injury are far lower.

I love Ben-Al-Madeeeeena, I do!

Part 2: Ear Mate! Two Pints of Lager and a Large Kebab!

In the summer season , bulking out this mind-numbing ex-pat, human ballast, are the bottom-end package tourists; the cream of northern England's housing estates. The squabbling, cheaply-tattooed, 'problem-family' holiday groups, rowdy, drunken hens and stags, newly-matched trailer-trash, modern-day Tracey and Darrens. They form a human layer of scum and float uselessly on the surface of social humanity in our depressed, inner-city, BNP hot spots.

Chain-smoking 35 year-old grandmothers with ankle-chains, tattoos, and non-existent grammar. Foul-mouthed, belching, balding husbands, slouching along in Nike trainers, with beer-bellies hanging over their shorts like one huge round hairy breast. Deluding themselves into thinking that anyone is actually impressed by the social depths of inbred, uneducated squalor that they've reached. The shame of Britain with their ASBO's, and litters of 'at-risk registered', next-generation social and educational excrement.

They have no respect for the country hosting them, nor interest in the people whose home this is. They're not looking to discover another culture, or expand their knowledge of how others live. All they want is to realise their holiday-fantasy; whole streets filled with nothing but pubs selling cheap pints, and restaurants and takeaways selling greasy kebabs drenched in chili sauce, and all-day breakfasts doused in ketchup. Pints of lager, pints of ketchup, pints of grease, and forty Benson & Hedges, all blended into a disgusting, putrid soup that they can pour down their karaoke-scarred throats. Like selfish, ungrateful parasites, their low standards and ignorance spill out, like the beer that slops from their endless pints, running onto the table and dribbling down onto the ground. They feel threatened by anything unfamiliar, and defend themselves by mocking it. They stuff their faces with endless plates of 'full-English' and chips, scour the place for fast-food, and refuse to eat 'that foreign muck' demanding the same low-standards they find at home.

Do they care whether it's Spain, Greece, or the local sewage plant? No, they want cheap sun, cheap booze, and cheap grub! A hotel near the beach that they can reach without having to expel too much effort, either mental, physical or linguistic (God forbid they should need to try to ask directions or look at a map).

You can see them in Benalmadena, ambling in classless extended family groups, 'down t'beach' like a lost evolutionary link, already slathered in pizza or nicotine-flavoured, zero-protection, sun oil. Women in bikini tops and shorts, men topless with England football shorts, a towel in one hand, and an ever-burning cigarette in the other. Bleary-eyed from a night of boozing, scoffing and shagging, and adorned with an array of cheap, market-stall jewellery, knock-off designer sunglasses, and love-bites. It's like a distressing, condensed version of the annual wildebeest migration of the East African savannah. Hundreds of socially-identical, sub-human figures moving as one down to the shore, and then back again at the end of the day. Having roasted themselves to the point of permanent scarring, they glow like radioactive particles in the dark, as they sizzle back to their hotels for a late-afternoon 'sleep n'shag'.

Every creature has its preferred habitat, and this is the habitat of the British package tourist.

The one thing I just don't understand is how the Spanish could have let this happen. How they could have allowed part of their country to be populated by an alien species who make no positive contribution and do nothing but destroy and devalue everything they touch.

Am I missing a point somewhere?

I love Ben-Al-Ma-Deeeeena, I do!

Part 1: The Ex-pat Cuckoos

I'm a hispanophile, or an iberophile. Either way, I have a passion for Spain, and almost all things Spanish. It's a country that I love to visit because it's blessed with some of the best examples of everything. Hugely varied, but always breath-taking countryside, exciting cities and sleepy villages, dripping with centuries of history and culture. A true gastronomic paradise; meats, and fruits, and vegetables, accompanied by fantastic wines. And warm, friendly (if rather noisy) people who typify the vibrancy and warmth of southern Europe.

This weekend, I visited a friend living temporarily (thankfully) in Benalmadena (the stress is on the third syllable, not the fourth).

Although the name is Moorish, meaning 'Children of the Mines, the town dates back to long before that, and has been settled waves of invaders and migrants; Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Moors, and early Christians, all of whom have left their mark. Sadly, having flourished under waves of settlers, Benalmadena seems to have met its nemesis.....................the British ex-pat community, supported by their conquering seasonal army of British tourists, and bolstered by a smattering of Dutch, German, and Irish holiday-making mercenaries.

Benalmadena has turned in the genetic equivalent of a badly-made horror film. Imagine a place almost entirely populated with all those people you would normally cross the road, or even move home, to avoid. Only there, you can't cross the road to avoid them because they're on the other side too! It's the Invasion of the Calorie Snatchers, The Cultural Black Hole, The Day Fashion Stood Still, or the 'All-Day Breakfast Club'.

The standing army is an 'ex-pat' community of flabby or pinched-looking, aging northern couples (combined ages 125 years), who have never been further from Benalmadena than a bus trip to the shopping centre in Fuengirola. They claim to 'know a lot about the area', and to 'love all things Spanish', but can barely speak 10 words of the language (badly), and can't tell you who the Prime Minister is (of Spain or Britain). They shuffle mutely along the seafront in their sandals and comfortable seasonal outfits, fleeces in the winter, shorts, beer-bellies and elasticated skirts in summer, occasionally tut-tutting about the dog shit which coats the pavements, and moaning about the Spanish and how unfriendly they are. Then, they slink miserably and silently back to their badly-decorated 'piece of home' set back from the noise if the seafront, to cook up yet another 'piece of home'. They 'really do love all things Spanish', but can't bring themselves to eat 'foreign food', which excludes anything that can't be found on the shelves of Sainsbury or Iceland, and can't be microwaved, or boiled in the bag. Spanish food is too greasy, heavy, acidic, salty, fishy, bony................................the list goes on. Just the thought of it sends them rushing for the Andrew's Salts.

Why these whingeing old wind-bags don't just move to somewhere less foreign, like Torquay or Bournemouth, is anyone's guess. Property prices? The opportunity to feel more interesting than drying paint? Or maybe just to surround themselves with an identical group of geriatric dullards so that they don't feel quite so insignificant. But, unfortunately, Spain drew the shortest straw in the global ex-pat lottery, and was awarded a lifetime's supply of moaning human cuckoos.