A nice cuppa tea [TIME FOR A RANT]

How great is tea? It’s a great British institution, maybe one of the greatest (it’s right up there with red pillar boxes and bowler hats), and it’s one that I’ve embrace wholeheartedly since childhood. My parents were great tea drinkers, oh yes, it was part of the fabric that kept our often sparring family together, but it means much more to me than simple nostalgia.

Think how shocked I was the other week then when BB contestant, Michael Barrymore, ended the scathing ‘I’m a bigger celebrity than you, you’re just a nobody’ argument with ‘coffee anyone?’. Are all our cherished ideals and standards slipping forever into transatlantic smog?

A cup of tea whatever anyone says, will always be more British, and more comforting than any latte, mocha, cappuccino-style nonsense you can mention. And another thing, why is it these days that you always get offered coffee first, and tea as an afterthought? Us tea drinkers must stick together to preserve our genteel traditions. If we’re not careful soon we’ll all be spelling colour without a u and praising the Lord at the drop of a hat.

Gin and tea are the only two drinks you really need in life… Mother’s Ruin and Mother’s little pick-me up. What more does anyone need? We need ‘tea and sympathy’ not coffee and schmaltz. {END OF RANT]

I'm a bit bored in January so going to the cinema lots

Brokeback Mountain, Odean Covent Garden- 21st January 2006
A Cock and Bull Story, Islington Vue- 22nd January 2006

OK. So I said that January would be a dry month for gigs and so it has been. So to comfort myself and repel the increasingly suicidal urges my terminal lack of money has inspired in me, I’ve been going to the movies rather a lot this month.

This weekend I went to the movies not once but twice…

On Saturday I headed over to the Odean Covent Garden to see a movie that everyone I know has said is fantastic, and, joy of joys, it turned out they were right! Apart from the fact that Heath Ledger is barely audible through the majority of the film (although I’m sure his accent is very authentic), the brilliance of the other elements of the film (stunning mountain scenery, a totally unsentimental script) more than make up for some minor incoherence (there’s taciturn and then there’s ‘face like granite- what’s that he’s saying?’). Anyway, it’s good stuff, very sad and very true.

On Sunday I went to see A Cock and Bull Story in Islington and it was the complete opposite- that is, very very funny indeed. Rob Brydon, apart from being Welsh like myself, is a very funny man (likable idiot I think is the correct terminology) and by far and away stole the show from Steve ‘I’ve got a big fat ego’ Coogan, who, fair dos, seems up for a bit of self-parody and castigation, making fun of his own Roger Moore-esque philandering reputation. Basically it’s about the filming of a version of ‘Tristram Shandy’ but is really about the playfully competitive relationship between the two comics; the new Vic and Bob if ever one was needed.

Anyway, was well pleased with the outcome of my cinema-going excursions and would highly recommend both movies.

Christmas , miss much?

Well, no. Christmas in Caerphilly, South Wales, goes pretty much like this- arrive Christmas Eve, drink two cans of cider (after usual greetings to GSG siblings), collapse on sofa, feel groggy with cider and snotty cold (yuk yuk), big fat tabby cat belonging to sibling jumps on chest, cough-cough. Oh it's Christmas Day! Presents exchanged (dvds, chocolates), Snowballs drank (2), dinner eaten in determined fashion, more coughing and choking, blood vessels in nose expanding, turkey very nice, trifle even better (very soft on throat). Any more details needed? Oh mad relatives visited on Christmas Day afternoon (seriously bonkers, us gin people are a bit cracked; it's in the blood), and on the day after Boxing Day we visit an out of the way pub in some God forsaken part of south Wales, don't ask me where, which my father insists on. To make myself feel slightly less tuberculer, and to innoculate myself againt the London smog, I eat a generous portion of garlic chicken. Then it's off back to London. You know smelly and hostile as it is, I'm actually glad to get here. Next 3 days spent in horizontal position.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!