Alan Coleman

Tea. Nobody in this country can make a decent cup of tea, the only people that can come close are myself and my mother, and even she doesn’t bother to make a proper cup any more.

The worst place to get a cup of tea in this country is at any kind of ‘Great British’ establishment that would pride itself on serving up a nice cup of ‘Rosie Lee’.

A truck stop at the side of the road for example. A white caravan on the A road heading out of any satellite town, grubby Union Flag and dirty looks, fat blokes stood around chuntering and bacon that tastes oddly of fish.  Re boiled water in a polystyrene cup, a cheap tea bag and far to much full cream milk. Utterly Foul.

What about the Great British Café? Slop some warm water into one of those massive steel pots with a week old A4 size tea bag and pour the tepid liquid into the same amount of skimmed milk for a truly vomit inducing beverage. “Sit yourself down love, I’ll be straight over”. Properly disgusting.

But by far the worst cup of tea anyone in this country could ever consume is served up by the British Army. The organisation itself is so unbelievably tight that it buys the cheapest of everything in massive bulk, including tea bags. ‘The Brew’ is usually knocked up in large green plastic insulated containers that smell faintly of mould, diesel and urine in equal measure. The fluid is mixed with UHT milk until frothy and left for at least 45 minutes to cool before being poured into paper cups  with two heaped tablespoons of sugar (plastic spoon with no handle). The resulting slop is referred to lovingly as ‘NATO’, a drink that is so far removed from anything consumable to beggar belief. Soldiers drink gallons of this shit, they simply can’t get enough of the stuff. Why? I just don’t know.

It’s a fairly sad indictment on this country when the cheap refreshing drink for which we became world famous is almost impossible to obtain on a daily basis. In fact, the only place to get a half  decent cup of tea is at MacDonalds.

A few years ago I wrote about The sanitisation of war, how our media have come to depict warfare in general as not only just, but as a simple story of good against evil in the manner of a Commando comic.

On page 47 of today’s free Sport magazine, the Royal Air Force have taken out a full page Commando comic style advertisement for staff. It’s taken us a while to get to the point where this is an acceptable depiction of something quite terrifying, but I think we’ve been prepared gently and can now relax, safe in the knowledge that war is not only fun reading, but is also something to aspire to.

The advert features the handsome Flight Lieutenant Sean Langrish, an epitome of the well rounded young man, complete with steely determination and well rehearsed student sneer. (In another advert he’ll be seen relaxing over a few beers with an orange juice swigging colleague, however everyone knows that not drinking in the forces is tantramount to homosexuality).

The story is as follows. The lads on the ground in Helmand are cornered, brave Sean calls in some Laser Guided Bombs, he keeps his promise, the enemy is eliminated and he’s got 24 new bezzie mates. No really, that’s what happens! Then we’re ‘all good’! Fucking superb! If only I wasn’t so old!

There’s money to waste on misleading adverts though isn’t there? We know that because there’s cash to be spunked on teaching the country’s two most over privileged brothers to indulge in learning to be Search and Rescue pilots. The Palace must be getting wet thinking about that little number when it comes to fruition. All the tabloid glory, none of the risk, everyone’s a winner! Essentially, it’s this week’s hobby, a well deserved break from playing football with six year old African children with no legs, or from getting cunted in China Whites.

This is nothing new though, The RAF, like the military in general, has a history of outrageously misleading adverts bent on showing that in War, there’s something for everyone. Remember the ridiculous Cinema adverts of a few years ago that suggested that young people could progress from delivering pizzas on a moped to piloting a Harrier? Yes, that’s going to happen isn’t it?

No need to worry too much about it though, when the reality of the cartoon like battle against evil ends up with no arms to have a wank with, there’s always Help for Heroes.

Royal Air Force. Be part of the story.

It’s happened very quickly, in the last couple of years it seems that the way that we speak has changed more than in the last four or five decades.

It’s like an epidemic has taken hold affecting everyone between the ages of twenty and forty, and what’s more I’m sure people do it to annoy me specifically. Is it a fashion thing? It must be, it’s not like we’ve started using the word ‘get’ and ‘grab’ instead of ‘have’ just to make our request a little clearer. Also, people of my generation didn’t talk like that when we we’re at school, so it is, fashion.

I wouldn’t mind so much if it was teenagers that adopted this slang and carried it on into adult life, which would sort of make sense. But hearing adults using these teenage Americanisms sounds a little like being down with the kids. And there’s only one thing worse than an adult who thinks he’s down with the kids, that’s an adult that actually is down with the kids.

I almost want to get a job in Pret A Manger so that I can correct those thirty something’s who pretend to be too busy to ask me for a coffee properly.

“No, you can’t get a coffee, I can get one for you and you can have it.”

“No, you can’t grab a receipt, you can ask me for one and I’ll give it to you.”

The whole ‘Can I get a coffee’ culture just reminds me of Radio One and that ‘Too cool for school’ slurred middle England accent. It’s everywhere from T4 to Sarah Cox, which is fine provided you’re younger than twenty. Otherwise, it’s simply time to grow up.

It annoys me when people fake confusion when you’re trying to explain something to them. Looking at you like you’re from a different planet whilst repeating back to you what you’ve just asked,  slowly.

Managers are past masters at faking confusion, it’s something they learn at those high five motivational seminars. The fake confusion that accompanies the simple phrase, “How come it’s taking so long?” Will usually look like the face of a History student when asked to wire a mains plug onto an iron.

In fact, pulling faces in general is a bad habit to get into. Happy, sad or confused, you’ll always end up looking stupid, and probably quite ugly too.

What’s so wrong with telling someone that you simply don’t understand what they’re saying? That’s a sign of confidence surely?

I was taking some photos this morning on the way into work and managed to get a picture of something I noticed a few weeks ago. It’s a sign, painted on brickwork, for a cafe that was established in 1854. Veglio & CO’s Cafe.

This sign has only just become visible due to some demolition work being carried out on the rebuild of  Tottenham Court Road Underground station. It’s strange to think that this particular sign was probably covered up after the last war, only to be uncovered 60 years later. I was wondering to myself if any older person has seen the sign and remembers it, or even remembers going to the Cafe.

This sort of signage is nothing new of course, it’s practically everywhere. In fact I remember seeing an almost identical sign in Chelmsford a few years ago after some demolition work, it was only there for a couple of weeks before being hidden again for another 20 years, or however long it’ll be before the ‘Internet Ready’ lifestyle apartments see the wrecking ball.

It looks fairly precarious so will almost certainly be taken down, and I can’t decide whether or not that’s a shame. Part of me thinks it should remain as some kind of museum piece, but then I think about how today is so far removed from the society of 150 years ago there’s not really much point. It is a city after all, and there’s no point living in one unless you’re going to accept continuous progress. We can only keep hold of so much that attatches us to the past.

However, to contradict myself I’ve always thought that if I ever had a property with a sign like this I’d repaint it and restore it to it’s former glory – Champion Spark Plugs, Marmite or even Bryant and May Safety Matches, products from an austere and far less wasteful era when war was easy to understand and bullying was just a little bit of fun.

PS. There’s a Bryant and May sign down in New Cross just down from the Amersham Arms.