This chap is a British Army spokesman who was on the BBC talking about the troops spending Christmas in Iraq and I took his picture because his name was Lt. Col. Dickie Winchester. I didn’t think British officers had such marvelous names as that anymore, at least not ones so young who didn’t also have massive, Jimmy Edwards-style whiskers. With a name like that he should be leading men over the top at the Somme, not dull PR duties in Basra.

The other thing I noticed about Dickie was that, despite his old-school-tie name, he didn’t sound in the slightest bit “posh” and instead spoke with a rather generic middle-class English accent that could be from anywhere south of Birmingham. There was a time when someone with his name and rank would have been all “Bally good show chaps!” and plummy, aristocratic vowels but, apart from the odd appearance by the Royal Family, these days you don’t hear frightfully proper “BBC English” much anymore — especially not on the BBC itself. Apparently talking “proper” and sounding upper-class is out of fashion these days, something to be embarrassed about even among the upper classes themselves whose children are dropping their ‘aitches and adopting the more common sound of so-called Estuary English in an effort to fit in with the new English egalitarian meritocracy — a country run by celebrities and footballers instead of the old Eton-Oxbridge network. Which of course it isn’t, you know those buggers are still in charge.

The only time I heard an old-fashioned upper class accent in London was when I was having lunch at one of the traditional stomping grounds of British nobs, the Peter Jones department store in Sloane Square. Among the crowds of modern young couples pushing their progeny around in Bugaboo pushchairs I’d catch the occasional sound of some haughty, crisp old-money voice and it was such a surprise to the ears I’d stare at the person as if I was looking at some rare bird on the endangered species list.

I’m not turning into Evelyn Waugh in my old age and mourning the decline of the ruling class (plus, I talk common as muck meself), but what is a shame is the continuing loss of colour and character to the national palette and, I must admit, hearing someone crisply crossing their Ts and talking in those clear, cut-glass tones does sound rather pleasing to the ear (especially coming from the mouth of a Jenny Agutter or Joanna Lumley), and what a dull place England would be if we all ended up talking like David Beckham. Knowarrimean?

Download: The Ruling Class – Monochrome Set (mp3)

The vast sea of cranes that is still dotting the London skyline after what must be a decade-long new construction frenzy made me wonder if the city will ever be “finished” or if it would forever be growing and changing like some mutant, shape-shifting beast.

Then it occurred to me that was probably just what your average Londoner felt during Victorian times: “All this bloody building work going on all the time, are they ever going to be finished with their new bridges and tunnels and train stations and museums and statues?”

But will the Gherkin still be there 150 years from now?

Download: This Is Tomorrow – Bryan Ferry (mp3)

Back to the grind after a lovely week in The Smoke, though it would have been a lot lovelier if the dollar was currently worth more than the paper it’s printed on.

After extensive anthropological research (ie: talking to my mates and reading the papers) I want to revise what I wrote in my previous post about English teenagers and their cellphone use. The problem isn’t that they’re talking loudly into them on buses, it’s that they’re murdering each other over them.

Shockingly, 51 kids have been killed by other kids this year in England — over 20 of them in London alone. According to some recent studies English children these days are out-of-control feral beasts, obsessed with celebrities and consumer gadgets and depressed and stressed-out wrecks scared of their own shadows.

I don’t want to get all Daily Mail on you, but stories like this remind of the sickness that afflicted the country in the 1970s when it felt like there was something rotten at the core of England. Back then it was our economy and industry that were broken and falling apart, now it’s our families and children and it’s happening behind a shiny facade of go-getting 21st century capitalism where the capital is awash with money, kids dream of Big Brother tabloid celebrity, and you can buy a loaf of Ciabatta 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

I’ve only been living abroad for 15 years but sometimes it feels like I’ve been gone over 100. Pretty soon there won’t be anything left for us to feel superior to Americans about.

Download: Pop A Cap In Yo’ Ass – Ben Watt featuring Estelle (mp3)

I’m off to London for a holiday tomorrow so there won’t be any posts for a week or more. I haven’t been home in two years so I’m excited to be going (not least because I get show my little girl the city her Daddy grew up in) but that’s mixed with the sad feeling I always get when I go back that it’s changed too much for me to really feel at home there anymore.

The other day I was talking with another London-born friend of mine who lives in New York and we both agreed we couldn’t live there now as the place we knew just doesn’t exist, not just because the clubs, pubs and cafes we knew are gone but now there’s a level of in-your-face vulgarity, rudeness and 24/7 consumerism I really didn’t think the English were capable of. Which is fair enough, London is a vibrant, modern city and is supposed to move forward, there are more great restaurants, more shops, more choice in all sorts of things (if you have the money) but I’d gladly lose a little of that in exchange for fewer surly teens jabbering loudly and moronically into their cellphones on the bus, fewer nasty drunks in the West End on a Saturday night, and fewer chain coffee shops (aren’t we supposed to drink tea?) Yes, I’ve turned into my Dad, he was born there too but left when he retired, couldn’t stand the traffic and the people anymore.

But it’s still the place I grew up in and lived for 30 years, my family are there along with a million great memories, they can’t take that away from me. No matter what I’ll always think this song is true.

Download: London’s Brilliant – Wendy James (mp3)
Buy: “Now Ain’t The Time For Your Tears” (album)

“We would sacrifice all our wires, wheels, systems, specialities, physical science and frenzied finance for one half-hour of happiness such has often come to us with comrades in a common tavern.”
G.K. Chesterton
What’s Wrong With The World (1910)

Now this looks like what I call a proper boozer. A friendly and unpretentious place presided over by a smiling, ruddy-faced landlord with half a tub of Brylcreem in his hair. Exactly the sort of place you’d want to order a pint, a bag of Cheese & Onion, and settle down for a few hours of talking bollocks with your mates, unmolested by the racket of satellite television, blaring music, or lads and ladettes getting loudly shit-faced on Cheeky Vimtos.

But like a lot of other simple old English pleasures the proper boozer has recently been under assault, besieged by the modern barbarian hordes of ghastly chain bars and “upscale” gastropubs*. Every time I go home it seems another old favourite pub has either closed or had a makeover and been given a new, stupid name like The Cabbage and Ferret’s Trousers. The Public Bar and Saloon have been knocked into one huge, noisy hangar of a space, the genuine old fixtures ripped out and replaced with fake ones, behind the bar is a surly Australian student and the new menu is all Brioche, Brie, and Balsamic Vinegar, with traditional grub like the Ploughman’s vanished like relics of that dark time before we were all dreadfully continental and sophisticated and didn’t know what Extra Virgin Olive Oil was.

If you find a proper boozer you should treasure it, I don’t live in England any more but some of the most pleasurable nights of my life were spent in it’s pubs, playing darts at The Andover Arms, watching the sun go down over the Thames outside The Blue Anchor, throwing up down my mates arm at The Spotted Horse, being stripsearched by the police in the gents of The Star & Garter, and getting headbutted in The Quill. Halcyon days.

Download: Two Pints of Lager And A Packet of Crisps Please – Splodgenessabounds (mp3)

*Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against good food in pubs, I used to drink (and eat) at the original gastropub, The Eagle in Farringdon back when it first opened and loved the place (they did a fantastic steak sandwich). But now every bloody pub in England thinks that “just” being a boozer isn’t enough and they have to offer fancy grub too, usually with poor and over-priced results. There’s nothing wrong with just serving crisps, nuts and pork scratchings, all you really need food in a pub for is to soak up the beer anyway.