For crying out loud!: the world according to Clarkson, volume three Read online

  Experts say this is because grown-ups are now far too busy earning money for their metered water and their speeding fines to have much left over for the cultural needs of their young.

  I’m not so sure, because last week I sat next to a thirtysome-thing chap at the barber’s who’d come inside, not for a haircut, but to have his hands manicured. He didn’t appear to be homosexual.

  In fact, because he talked at some length about his forthcoming family skiing holiday, we can presume he has young kids.

  So what’s his excuse for not reading them a bedtime story? ‘Sorry, Octavia, there’s no Hungry Caterpillar for you tonight because Daddy spent half the day having his fingernails oiled.’

  How un-busy do you have to be to think, ‘It’s four in the afternoon on a Thursday, so I know: I’ll pop to the hairdresser’s and spend an hour or so having exotic creams rubbed into my thumbs’?

  And it gets worse because on the barber’s shelves there were a million badger-hair shaving brushes. Who buys them? How empty does your life need to be before you think, ‘No, I won’t use a disposable razor and some foam from a can. If I use a brush, and whip up some lather of my own, I can make this shaving malarkey last for hours’?

  Later, in Jermyn Street, which for those of you in Arbroath is a street in London where you can buy tailored shirts and shoes made from the soft underbelly of a grey seal, I saw a prosperous-looking man in a baker’s shop agonising over what sort of plumped-up, crusty, almond-infused loaf he should buy. Plainly, he wasn’t on a tight schedule.

  Then we have a friend of mine who flew all the way to Siena to buy a selection of silk contrada flags that were then used as a lining in his next bespoke suit.

  Everywhere you look these days you see people paying a fortune to waste time. It’s almost as though our lives are now so wealthy and so healthy that to inject a bit of worry and angst we trouble ourselves with the scent of the soap in the guest bedroom, or the breed of sheep from which our clothes are made.

  There’s a shop near my flat in London that sells nothing but hand-knitted super-soft golfing jumpers. What moron gave the owner a loan for that?

  What did it say in the business plan, for heaven’s sake? ‘Yes. The rent is expensive in Notting Hill, but I believe there are enough people who will drive right across town, park, come into my shop, buy a £200 jumper and then go all the way home again.’

  I would have told her to get lost. But someone didn’t and because the shop is still there after six months I can only presume she was right. There are enough people out there who are prepared to devote an entire afternoon to buying a jumper.

  It’s not just London either. While perusing the Google Earth website the other day – it was more fun than reading the kids a bedtime story – I zoomed in on the house where I grew up. Now this is Doncaster. A town that we were told would wither and die when the mines closed.

  I don’t think so, because the spy in the sky reveals that the parkland at the bottom of the garden has been converted into an 18-hole golf course.

  So even there, among the out-of-work miners, there are people who have so much spare time in their lives they will spend half of it playing what’s essentially an expensive game of marbles. Doubtless in the £200 jumper they drove all the way to Notting Hill to buy.

  There are now 2,500 golf courses in Britain covering half a million acres. That means golf takes up slightly less space in the nation than Carmarthenshire. And with 1.2 million registered players, is about seven times more popular.

  And shooting. Way back when the Tories were in power the only people who blasted away at pheasants were the idle rich and the blue bloods. Not any more. Now, for four months of the year, every wood in the land is full of people stomping about in the rain.

  Today there are so many people with so much spare time on their hands that 569,000 own a shotgun certificate. And their hobby is now such big business it has created 40,000 jobs.

  Then you have people who spend their free time doing surveys. One lot last week said they’d watched 168 hours of prime-time television and that gay and lesbian people were only featured for 38 minutes. How can your lives be so empty that you think this is a worthwhile use of the most precious resource you have: time?

  And what about the people who decided to find out why so many parents were not reading their children a bedtime story. And then came up with the wrong answer.

  It has nothing to do with a lack of time, or a hectic schedule. And everything to do with the fact that The Very Hungry Caterpillar is the dullest and most stupid book in the history of literature.

  Sunday 5 March 2006

  An Oscar-winning village hall bash

  So, you’ve read all about the post-Oscar parties that were held in Los Angeles last week and now you fancy bringing some of that glitz, glamour and sophistication to a bash of your own.

  Well, happily, the internet and the gossip magazines are awash with ideas. Obviously, you won’t be able to emulate Elton John, who for his do imported thousands of roses and adorned them all with hot-pink Swarovski crystals.

  And nor will you have the clout of George Clooney, who peppered his party with people like Mick Jagger, Rachel Weisz and Madonna.

  Still, there’s plenty of advice on what music to play, what clothes to wear, what sort of linen to use and how best to stuff a sugar snap pea with cheese made from the breast milk of a mongoose. Frankly, though, if you want to throw a party, I have a much better idea…

  A couple of weeks ago an old friend hired a village hall in the hellhole that is Surrey and booked a Led Zeppelin tribute band to come and play.

  Did I want to go? Honestly? No. I’d rather have walked through Tehran in a Star of David T-shirt.

  It got worse. Our party would be all male and if there’s one thing I simply cannot abide it’s single-sex gatherings. What’s the point? The top five worst experiences of my life have all been stag nights. All that speedboat, snooker cue, business deal, BMW, golf, ‘whoa, look at the tits on that’ chest-beating nonsense.

  Yes, the men in question would all be old friends, people I hadn’t seen much since leaving London 10 years ago. But if you’re going to play catch-up, why do it in a village hall while being assaulted by four blokes who think they’re Led Zep? And get this, the tickets were £15. Exactly £5 more than I paid once to see the real Led Zep.

  Still, I went, and it was fantastic, precisely because no one had tried to stuff sugar snap peas with cheese. It was just a group of middle-aged people in a room who, for one night only, could pretend they were 18 again.

  It wasn’t easy. For instance, when I was 18 I was very good at carrying up to eight pints from the bar to where my friends were sitting.

  But I seem to have lost the knack. Three glasses had me so stumped I had to make two journeys. And when I was 18 I could stand for more than 10 minutes at a time without getting backache.

  Another indication of old age came when I went to the lavatory, where I overhead one chap saying to another: ‘Sorry I had to land in your field the other day.’ How Surrey is that?

  Also, at 1970s gigs the audience provided their own eerie light by holding cigarette lighters aloft in the ballads. Not there they didn’t. The light came instead from a million shiny bald patches. Viewed from the back the audience really did seem to be a big flat reflective disco ball.

  Sadly, with no hair to let down any more, the audience had tried to dress down instead. This meant Boxing Day corduroy and quilted sleeveless Puffa jackets teamed with training shoes. It wasn’t a good look. But then looking good wasn’t the point.

  At most middle-aged parties the hosts try to be sophisticated and grown-up. But why? We have to be responsible when we’re at work, and mature when we’re at home with the children. Surely, on a night out, we shouldn’t be quaffing cheesy peas. We should be getting drunk and shouting.

  In Surrey that night we parked on someone’s lawn, drank gallons of beer from plastic glasses, never spoke about schools and listened to music
that wasn’t dinner party Dido or background Bacharach.

  This brings me on to the band.

  If you closed your eyes you really could imagine that it was Plant and Page up there. And if you opened them again the illusion didn’t really go away. Wigs and lots of denim did create an illusion that they were the real deal. The lead singer even seemed to have a length of authentic hosepipe down his trousers.

  Although, after the gig was over, the reality came flooding back. Because the man who was Robert Plant gave me a lift to the local pub in what was undoubtedly a Renault Scenic.

  Being Surrey, of course, the pub had been bistrofied. It was also spinning round quite a lot. And then the next thing I knew I was in a bed, it was 8.30 in the morning and there was a Kalahari thunderstorm in my head. And some major tectonic shifting as well.

  We moan about hangovers as we grow old. We complain that when you’re 40 rather than 14 they’re so much more difficult to shift. But a hangover is simply a reminder that you had a good time. You should learn to embrace it.

  I certainly embraced mine. Along with the lavatory bowl, and all the soft furnishings in my house, for several days afterwards. It had been a very good party.

  And here’s the thing. You can do it too, for nothing. Why waste a fortune on linen and roses? Why try to be like Elton John or George Clooney when you can rent a village hall, hire a £1,500-a-night tribute band and then flog a hundred tickets at £15 a pop?

  No one will feel very glamorous. They’ll feel something so much better. Young.

  Sunday 12 March 2006

  The secret life of handbags

  Every week a new survey of some kind tells us how much time we waste sitting in traffic jams or watching television or waiting for automated call centres in Bombay to quote us happy.

  Recently, I was told that over a lifetime the average man wastes 394 days sitting on the lavatory. That’s 56 weeks, wailed the report despairingly, though I can’t imagine why. They’re the happiest and most peaceful 56 weeks of a chap’s life. I love being on the lavatory more than I love being on holiday, and I certainly don’t consider it time wasted.

  And anyway, 56 weeks is nothing compared with the amount of time I really do waste, standing outside the front door in the freezing cold waiting for my wife to find the keys in her handbag.

  And then there are the aeons I waste waiting for her to answer her mobile phone.

  Normally, it rings for 48 hours before she finds it nestling at the bottom of her bag, underneath a receipt for something she bought in 1972.

  These days, if I suspect her phone might be in her bag I write a letter instead.

  It’s quicker.

  The American army think they have a tough time trying to find Osama Bin Laden, who is holed out in a cave somewhere in the mountains of Afghanistan. But really they should thank their lucky stars he didn’t choose to hide out in my wife’s handbag.

  God, I’ve just thought of something. Maybe he did. Maybe he’s in there now, with his AK-47 and his video recorder. Maybe he’s using the mobile she lost two years ago to supply Al-Jazeera with news.

  I read last week that women in Britain spend £350 million a year on handbags and that there’s one particular brand that has a year-long waiting list even though it costs £7,000. You wouldn’t want to dance round one of those at a disco.

  What’s more, it’s said that on average women have up to 40 handbags each. To find out why, I spoke to our children’s nanny, who reckons she has about 25. Apparently, it has something to do with the seasons.

  She claims she couldn’t use her favourite bag in the summer because it’s made out of some cow and ‘would look all wrong’.

  So what then? Should a summer bag be made out of cuckoos? Or dragonflies? Or Freddie Flintoff?

  The idea that a handbag has something to do with style was backed up by a spokesman for Jimmy Choo, who said that if you have good shoes and a good bag you will look right.

  Rubbish. If you are fat and you have only one tooth there’s no handbag in the world that will mask the problem, unless you wear it over your head. And I don’t recommend that because if you put your head in a handbag it would take two years to find it again.

  On average, we’re told, the contents of a woman’s bag are worth £550. That sounds about right. Fifty-five thousand things worth one pence each. My wife, however, claims that the contents of hers are worth ‘over £3,000’. Not including cash. Or, presumably, the VAT due back on all the receipts in there.

  So what does she have, then, that could possibly be worth three grand? Well, there’s an iPod and the aforementioned phone. And a bag full of make-up that probably cost a hundred quid or so. But we’re still £2,000 light.

  So, though I know it’s poor form, I’ve just been to the kitchen for a look and here’s how it breaks down. Down below the crust, in the asthenosphere, we find a pair of spectacles that she doesn’t need and three – that is not a misprint – three pairs of sunglasses. Which seems excessively optimistic, frankly.

  Why, I asked later, do you have a pair of spectacles in your handbag when your eyes are fine? ‘Well, I might need them at some point,’ she said. So does that mean there’s a Stannah stairlift in there as well, and some incontinence pads?

  Below the eyewear, in the upper mantle, there is some chewing gum, which she never eats, coins for countries that don’t exist any more and pills for things that cleared up 15 years ago. I did not dare to go further than this, into the inner core, for fear of finding the bones of Shergar. Or a secret pocket being used by Al-Qaeda.

  But there was something I noted. You know the ivory-billed woodpecker that ornithologists believe became extinct 50 years ago? Well, let me tell you. It didn’t.

  I genuinely don’t understand this need to carry everything you’ve ever owned around with you at all times. No, really, when you’re out and about you don’t need to have cough medicine for children who have already grown up and finished university. And if you don’t believe me, ask a man.

  When I go out I take keys for the house, keys for the car, a telephone, a couple of credit cards, some money, two packs of cigarettes, a lighter and a packet of mints. And even when I’m wearing jeans and a T-shirt, which is always, I cope just fine.

  Then there’s my wallet. I never leave this at home, principally because it contains the single most important thing a man can have about his person: endless pages torn from newspapers and magazines. Something to read, in other words, when I’m supposedly ‘wasting time’ on the lavatory.

  Sunday 19 March 2006

  Bad-hair days on the local news

  There seems to be a consensus that locally run businesses and organisations are better than multinationals and superstates.

  We regularly reject the European Union in favour of quaint old Westminster, and we love the idea of local councils even though they’re run by people who are a) incapable of getting a proper job and b) mad.

  All last week there was much brouhaha about plans to shrink the number of police forces in England and Wales from 43 to about 20.

  This worries us. We don’t want Dixon of Dock Green to be replaced with the FBI.

  Then, of course, there is the high street. We loathe supermarkets even though they are convenient and sell good, clean food at low, low prices. Yet we love local shops despite the fact that they’re preposterously expensive and all their vegetables are shrivelled-up weeds covered in mud.

  For me, though, the worst example of parish thinking is to be found on the television every night. Local news.

  I want to make it plain at the outset that I do not blame the people who run these journalistic outposts. They operate on a tiny budget that means they can only respond to fires, and idiotic press releases written by lunatics in high-visibility jackets.

  Everyone interviewed on local news programmes is in a hi-vi. Just last week I watched some people clearing litter from a beach near where I don’t live and all of them were resplendent in Day-Glo over-clothing. Why?

>   Other givens on local news are that all reporters, when covering a flood, will stand in it. And that when there’s a helicopter involved, they’ll stand under it so they have to shout.

  Then there are the pick’n’mix stories. There’s always someone laying garage flowers by the side of a busy dual carriageway. Then you’ll have something about the environment, a pointless vox pop, a cute animal, possibly on a skateboard, a broken baby incubator, and someone who’s just emerged from a not terribly important crisis and needs counselling.

  In local news, counselling is the pay-off for pretty well every single story.

  Local hospital closes down. Staff are offered counselling. Dog falls offskateboard. Owners are offered counselling. Child excluded from school. Stupid, fat parents in hi-vi jackets are offered counselling.

  Then you have the slightly plump woman, with a charity T-shirt hastily pulled on over her normal clothes, who’s organised a fund-raising fancy-dress fun run for the hospital that saved her husband’s life after a car crash/bout of cancer/fire.

  That’s interesting, for the poor chap’s immediate family. But it’s of no consequence at all when it’s happened in Southampton and you don’t live there.

  This is the big problem for local news teams. Unlike a local newspaper that only covers events within 10 miles, local television is nothing of the sort. Only last night, for instance, my local news programme brought details of a football match in Milton Keynes and exciting footage of a small heath fire in Dorset that injured no one and damaged no property.

  I might have raised an eyebrow if I lived in one of the houses saved by what politically correct local news reporters always call ‘firefighters’ rather than ‘firemen’. But I don’t. I’m only watching because some budget-minded television executive has decided Chipping Norton, Milton Keynes and Dorset are all the same place.

  So, why, you may be wondering do I tune in if these programmes make me so angry? Well, I love them. I love the gear-graunching mistakes. Last night, for instance, our local girl referred to Steve Redgrave as ‘Sir Redgrave’. And I love the way some reporters really do think they’re Jeremy Paxman, bludgeoning some dimwit councillor in a hi-vi jacket into issuing an apology for the cracked paving stone that caused the dog to fall off its skateboard.